Thursday, July 14, 2011

Something New

I've been looking at the new 'Dashboard' of Blogger. Like all things Google these days, it has been simplified to the extreme! But it does have some great new features and it is much easier to navigate. The feature I am not all that fond of is the graphic representation of the traffic on my blog. Yikes! I must be talking to myself these days. That's okay, I was very interested in 'traffic' a few years ago and tried my best to keep it entertaining, but I'm not an entertainer at heart, I'm an observer. Every once in awhile I get motivated to write some lengthy post of indignation but then that feeling passes and I'm back in observation mode. Relaxed.

Speaking of being motivated...last night I finished the book, The Imperial Cruise by James Bradley. I now have a morbid fascination with the book, as on one hand, I want it out of the house because of the evil it contains; the words of Teddy Roosevelt and William Howard Taft. Yet I read it again as I find it hard to believe that these things really happened. They did. For instance, Mr. Bradley tells a short version of the Opium wars and of the fortunes made by Anglo entrepreneurs selling opium. Names we know...Warren Delano (think FDR), Cabot, Russell (think Yale Skull&Bones) Low (think Columbia University) Green (think Princeton) Forbes and Perkins.

 Enough of that ancient evil! We do have some fresh evil out there and that's the story of Rupert Murdoch and his handling of the "News of the World" hacking scandal. First, he shuts the newspaper down. Now where's the evidence? Harder to find when the newspaper no longer exists. The scandal grows, none the less, and it makes headlines on all of the news services...except FOX. They ignore it in favor of a story about Jennifer Anniston...did she or didn't she have plastic surgery?

2 comments:

  1. You don't talk to yourself, Steven. I find your great commentary all about in my blog neighborhood. I visit whenever I've a fresh batch of calling cards, although I don't always leave one, and I think of you as an integral part of my virtual family now.

    On Bradley, then. " I want it out of the house because of the evil it contains." I smell what you're stepping in, here! This book is the very cure for any naive American self-congratulation one might still have left. It took me forever to plow through this because I kept having to stop for a few days to try to de-tox.

    I hold The Imperial Cruise directly responsible for my great flight into escapist literature and film. We should pool our reviews for a What Not To Read post dedicated to boomers drowning in too much reality.

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  2. I was being slightly facetious there, Nance, I do know that you and valued others are readers. It's a wonderful circle of like minded and I value all of your writings...

    I do miss reading K's posts...

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