CARLOS Tiger without Time

By Dan Marsh

I don’t know if you are aware of this or not, but apparently, Paris Hilton has been involved in some sort of legal fracas in L.A.

Perhaps you’ve seen it on the news. Paris, locked in the back seat of a patrol car, screaming on her way to jail. Paris, in better days, posing on various runways, with that stupid, smug, rich-girl look on her face, mugging for photographers.

I’m guessing you’ve seen this coverage, I don’t know. Perhaps some of you have been living under a rock the last few days. Perhaps some of you have never even heard of Paris Hilton. I wish I hadn’t.

I think the news media is a wonderful invention, I really do, but I also think that, somehow, the media has gone off the rails. Somewhere, somebody in an air-conditioned office in New York or L.A. or Atlanta decided that, you know what, people don’t really want “news.” They want to be entertained. Sure, there has been a terrible slaughter in Darfur; of course, there are millions dying of disease and starvation in Africa; and, oh yeah, our troops are getting killed by the dozens every day in a delightful little corner of the globe known as Iraq.

We don’t care about any of that.

Quick, tell me the reason for the genocide in Darfur.

Quick, tell me how the G-8 summit may or may not have positively affected the poor and starving masses in Africa.

Quick, what’s the latest on al-Qaida in Pakistan?

I’ll bet you don’t know, because all weekend, we have been fed a steady diet of Paris Hilton on every major news network. Don’t feel bad, I can’t answer any of those questions, either. I can tell you that Paris mouthed “I love you” to her mom while the judge was throwing the book at her. I can tell you the name of the Los Angeles County sheriff who unlawfully yanked Paris from jail where she allegedly belonged. (Lee Baca, brother of Chew.) I couldn’t tell you the current status of the Taliban in Afghanistan, or how much money we spent on Iraq this past week.

The media has trivialized the important and made monumental the utterly trivial. Paris Hilton is a spoiled brat. I don’t care about Paris Hilton. Yet Fox News re-hashed FRIDAY’S coverage of The Hilton Event on SATURDAY NIGHT’S prime-time broadcast. I can only assume nothing of importance was taking place anywhere else in the world. If so, Fox, MSNBC, CNN, ABC, NBC and CBS chose to ignore it.

I ran across an interesting story the other day. According to the Project for Excellence in Journalism, an independent think tank, Fox News, in recent months, devoted significantly more air time to the death of Anna Nicole Smith than any of its rivals. That’s not all. Fox is also providing less coverage of the war in Iraq than its rivals. I’ll quote from the story.

“Fox spent half as much time covering the Iraq war than MSNBC during the first three months of the year, and considerably less than CNN. The difference was more stark during daytime news hours than in prime-time opinion shows. The Iraq war occupied 20 percent of CNN’s daytime news hole and 18 percent of MSNBC’s. On Fox, the war was talked about only 6 percent of the time. Another story that has reflected poorly on the Bush administration, the controversy over U.S. attorney firings, also received more attention on MSNBC (8 percent of the newshole) and CNN (4 percent) than on Fox (2 percent), the Project for Excellence in Journalism found.

“If Fox’s audience is dominated by Republicans who are disgusted about hearing bad news on Iraq, it would stand to reason that you’d want to feed them less of it. Bill O’Reilly touched upon that idea on the air one night last December, telling viewers that the lowest-rated segment of his show the previous night was when Iraq was discussed. Ratings jumped at talk about Britney Spears, he said.

“The danger is whether those concerns eat away at journalistic credibility.”

My question is, are we really getting “fair and balanced” coverage of any issue from any of the nets? The obvious answer is no, not when they are shoving Paris Hilton down our throats 24/7.

Then again, do we really want to hear “bad news”? Do we really want to know what’s going on in Iraq, or are we more comfortable staring down our noses at Paris? You decide.

Dan Marsh is the editor of the Daily Siftings Herald

· Wonders of the Word: 2,200 approximate number of years since intellectuals in the Mediterranean and the Middle East selected the ancient seven wonders. Today, only one, Egypt’s great Pyramid of Giza, survives.

· Muslim outlook: 2.35 million of Muslims living in the U.S. of that number, two-thirds of adults were born overseas.

· Hurricane Season: 6 number of hurricane in an average season. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecast seven to 10 hurricanes for 2007. And 153 million of people who live within 50 miles of the U.S. coastline, more than half the population.

Source: TIME June 4, 2007

Ignoring all rationality and responding only to the lobbying of the RIAA, an arbitration committee in Washington DC has drastically increased the licensing fees Internet radio sites must pay to stream songs. Pandora’s fees will triple, and are retroactive for eighteen months! Left unchanged by Congress, every day will be like today as internet radio sites start shutting down and the music dies.

A bill called the “Internet Radio Equality Act” has already been introduced in both the Senate (S. 1353) and House of Representatives (H.R. 2060) to fix the problem and save Internet radio – and Pandora – from obliteration.

I’d like to ask you to call your Congressional representatives today and ask them to become co-sponsors of the bill. It will only take a few minutes and you can find your Congresspersons and their phone numbers by entering your zip code here.

Your opinion matters to your representatives – so please take just a minute to call.

Visit http://www.savenetradio.org to continue following the fight to Save Internet Radio.

As always, and now more than ever, thank you for your support.

-Tim Westergren
(Pandora founder)

Biography
Juan Diego Flórez was born in Lima, Peru on January 13, 1973 where his father, Rubén Flórez, was a noted guitarist and singer of Peruvian popular and criolla music. In an interview in the Peruvian newspaper Ojo, Flórez recounted his early days when his mother managed a pub with live music and he worked as a replacement singer whenever the main attraction called in sick. “It was a tremendous experience for me, since most of those who were regulars at the pub were of a certain age, so I had to be ready to sing anything from huaynos to Elvis Presley music and, in my mind, that served me a great deal because, in the final analysis, any music that is well structured – whether it is jazz, opera, or pop – is good music”. Initially intending to pursue a career in popular music, he entered the Conservatorio Nacional de Música in Lima at the age of 17. His classical voice emerged in the course of his studies there under Maestro Andrés Santa María. During this time, he became a member of the Coro Nacional of Peru and sang as a soloist in Mozart’s Coronation Mass and Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle.

He received a scholarship to the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia where he studied from 1993 to 1996 and began singing in student opera productions in the repertory which is still his specialty today, Rossini and the Bel Canto operas of Bellini and Donizetti. During this period, he also studied with Marilyn Horne at the Santa Barbara Academy Summer School. In 1994 the Peruvian tenor, Ernesto Palacio invited him to Italy to work on a recording of Vicente Martín y Soler’s opera Il Tutore Burlato and subsequently became Flórez’s teacher and mentor.

Flórez’s first big breakthrough and professional debut came at the Rossini Festival in 1996. At the age of 23, he stepped in to take the leading tenor role in Matilde di Shabran when Bruce Ford became ill. He made his debut at La Scala in the same year as the Chevalier danois in Gluck’s Armide. His Covent Garden debut followed in 1997 where he sang the role of Count Potoski in a concert performance (and the first modern performance) of Donizetti’s Elisabetta. Debuts followed at the Vienna Staatsoper in 2000 as Rinuccio in Gianni Schicchi and at the New York Metropolitan Opera in 2002 as Count Almaviva in Il barbiere di Siviglia. On February 20, 2007, the opening night of Donizetti’s La Fille du régiment at La Scala, Flórez broke the theater’s 74 year old tradition of no encores when he reprised “Ah! mes amis” with its nine high Cs following an “overwhelming” ovation from the audience.

Flórez is also active on the concert stages of Europe, North America, and South America. Amongst the many venues in which he has given concerts and recitals are the Wigmore Hall in London, the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris, Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall in New York, the Palau de la Música in Barcelona and the Mozarteum in Salzburg. In a departure from his usual repertoire, he sang ‘You’ll never walk alone’ from the Broadway musical, Carousel, at the Berlin Live 8 concert in 2005.

Flórez is the possessor of a light lyric tenor voice of exceptional beauty which, while not of great size, is nevertheless audible in even the largest houses due to its unusual harmonic structure. Its compass is two octaves, up to and including the high D natural, the higher part of its range being particularly strong and brilliant, with almost no sense of effort, while the lowest notes are comparatively weak. The head and chest registers are perfectly integrated, with no audible break in the passaggio. 

His breath control is impeccable, allowing the longest phrases to be sustained with apparent ease. The ornaments of bel canto, including the trill, are well executed, and stylistic errors such as intrusive aspirates generally eschewed.

Perhaps the most distinctive technical accomplishment is the singer’s total mastery of coloratura to a degree probably not matched by any other tenor who has recorded, and to be heard to best effect in his Idreno (Semiramide) and Corradino (Matilde di Shabran).

He was signed by Decca in 2001 and since then has released four solo recital CD’s on the Decca label: Rossini Arias which won the 2003 Cannes Classical Award; Una Furtiva Lagrima, which won the 2004 Cannes Classical Award; Great Tenor Arias which won the 2005 Echo Klassik award for the best arias and duets recital; and most recently Sentimiento Latino. In addition to his official discography, almost all his professionally performed roles have been preserved in radio broadcasts, and many also by television.

Juan Diego Flórez has been awarded the Premio Abbiati 2000 (awarded by Italian critics for the best singer of the year), the Rossini d’oro, the Bellini d’oro, the Premio Aureliano Pertile, the Tamagno Prize and the L’Opera award (Migliore Tenore) for his 2001 performance in La Sonnambula at La Scala.

A scuba divers in 1933 at Seattle Washington’s Alki beach

The Human Liberty Bell, Chicago 1918

I never had to choose a subject – my subject rather chose me.
Ernest Hemingway

I’m not going to get into the ring with Tolstoy.
Ernest Hemingway

I’ve tried to reduce profanity but I reduced so much profanity when writing the book that I’m afraid not much could come out. Perhaps we will have to consider it simply as a profane book and hope that the next book will be less profane or perhaps more sacred.
Ernest Hemingway

If a writer knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one ninth of it being above water.
Ernest Hemingway

If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.
Ernest Hemingway

If you have a success you have it for the wrong reasons. If you become popular it is always because of the worst aspects of your work.
Ernest Hemingway

In Europe we thought of wine as something as healthy and normal as food and also a great giver of happiness and well being and delight. Drinking wine was not a snobbism nor a sign of sophistication nor a cult; it was as natural as eating and to me as necessary.
Ernest Hemingway

In modern war… you will die like a dog for no good reason.
Ernest Hemingway

It’s none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way.
Ernest Hemingway

Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you.
Ernest Hemingway

Man is not made for defeat.
Ernest Hemingway

My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.
Ernest Hemingway

The “driving talk” is as important as the “sex talk” and the “drugs talk.”
When parents and teens agree on driving restriction and rules and the consequences of violating those rules, teens are less likely to take risk while driving.

Why, even bright, mature teenager sometimes do things that are stupid.
It’s one reason 16 year old drivers have crash rates three times higher than 17 year olds and five times higher than 18 year olds. Car crashes injure about 300,000 teens a year. And kill nearly 6,000. Is there a way for teens to get their driving experience more safely. (Data from Allstate)

Parents have power. Though conventional wisdom says teens don’t listen, 3 out of 4 teens say their parents would be the best influence in getting them to drive more safely. When parents drive safely, their children are more likely to safe drive as well.

We can all help stop teen driving deaths.

As yet, Bernard Shaw hasn’t become prominent enough to have any enemies, but none of his friends like him.
Oscar Wilde

At 46 one must be a miser; only have time for essentials.
Oscar Wilde

Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.
Oscar Wilde

Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same.
Oscar Wilde

Biography lends to death a new terror.
Oscar Wilde

By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, journalism keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.
Oscar Wilde

Charity creates a multitude of sins.
Oscar Wilde

Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them; rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.
Oscar Wilde

Conscience and cowardice are really the same things. Conscience is the trade-name of the firm. That is all.
Oscar Wilde

Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
Oscar Wilde

Consistency is the last resort of the unimaginative.
Oscar Wilde

Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
Oscar Wilde

Deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.
Oscar Wilde

Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.
Oscar Wilde

Do you really think it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations which it requires strength, strength and courage to yield to.
Oscar Wilde

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
Oscar Wilde

Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.
Oscar Wilde

Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.
Oscar Wilde

Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.
Oscar Wilde

Everything popular is wrong.
Oscar Wilde

Experience is one thing you can’t get for nothing.
Oscar Wilde

Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.
Oscar Wilde

Experience is the name every one gives to their mistakes.
Oscar Wilde

Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
Oscar Wilde

Fathers should be neither seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life.
Oscar Wilde

Hatred is blind, as well as love.
Oscar Wilde

He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.
Oscar Wilde

He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realise.
Oscar Wilde

He must have a truly romantic nature, for he weeps when there is nothing at all to weep about.
Oscar Wilde

This 1949 photograph of eight Fords up on hydraulic racks and ready for inspection, in Cleveland Ohio.

 Is bad to know the truth of the things? 

Is bad help to people who need our aid?

I know that is easier to have a life dedicated to our family and friends, forgetting of the others people or just to ignore them.

If we are happy with our family and friends, ¿why do not share a little that happiness with another people of the world?

If we are proud with the achievements and development of our country, then, why we do not supportive to the rest of the world?

Is not better to live in peace, love and justice with everybody?

We can begin to do a better world. We have the money and the power to do it. Then, ¿why we do not do it?

I am sure that everybody, wild or ignorant, they can understand when you treats them with respect, tolerance and justice. Why we do not do that?

See you later.
Carlos, Tiger without Time

When the troops finally come from Iraq and the judgment of history is written, how will we justify to grieving parents the pointless deaths of their children in service of this monstrous blunder?

Nicholas La Terza, California.
TIME, June, 2007