On a normal news day, it can be cool to work in a television newsroom. After all, I see feeds of news stories all day long from the network and its stations around the country. I see more footage than most typical viewers, because most local stations don’t have enough news programming to use everything that is available. Unless you …

On a normal news day, it can be cool to work in a television newsroom. After all, I see feeds of news stories all day long from the network and its stations around the country. I see more footage than most typical viewers, because most local stations don’t have enough news programming to use everything that is available. …

Cindy Sheehan now says she’s glad President Bush refused to meet with her as she camped outside his Crawford, Texas ranch.
“If he’d met with me, then I would have gone home, and it would have ended there,” she told the Associated Press on Tuesday.
She also stated, “I look back on it, and I am very, very, …

In a striking bit of irony, Venezuelan President

A recent article at “RantingProfs” accuses a CBS news crew of throwing a “cheap shot” at the pro-war side:
“But CBS’s Mark Knoller, while using the clip of a parent speaking, takes careful pains to point out that she is ‘the mother of a Marine safely home.’
You see the trick here.
Quote a parent, but be sure to quote one whose son …

I will try to redeem myself for last week’s blunder of question #6. Sorry to the early players last week for giving you a question that didn’t make as much sense as it should have. (I did correct the question later, so if you go back now, you’ll see what it should have read from the start.)
Amanda of …

Do we need laws to define what publishing versus self publishing really mean? Jim Winter over at “Northcoast Exile” says we do, all because of Print On Demand (POD) technology and the havoc it is wreaking in the industry.
While POD was supposed to revolutionize publishing by allowing for more smaller presses to compete with the larger ones and …

Shelly recently posted her take on speaking out in blogs, after reading a Chicago Tribune article about employees who have been fired for blogging about their jobs.
(Out of respect to her wishes, I did not post a response in her blog and I am not posting a link to her entry.)
In any case, she makes excellent points and I agree …

There are a lot of calls for truth these days. This standard doesn’t seem to apply, apparently, in the doctor’s office. According to a report from ABC News, Dr. Terry Bennett, a man who believes in “telling it like it is” learned how dangerous that can be after a woman he allegedly said was overweight left his office and went …

“It’s either fantasy or smut — and that’s sad,” says one concerned parent, on the options available to young teen readers these days.
According to a report by MSNBC, the “racy reads” are the publishing industry’s fastest-growing segment and that young girls are the biggest consumers.
The concern for parents is that books like Rainbow Party, Teach Me and the Gossip Girl …

Think you hate getting all of those credit card offers in the mail? Your frustration probably doesn’t hold a candle to that of Sami Habbas, a grocery store manager from Corona, California.
Habbas received a credit card offer from JP Morgan Chase. The problem? It was addressed to “Palestinian Bomber.” When he opened the letter, it …

Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson acknowledged late today what the rest of us already knew: that he did, in fact, call for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Monday’s broadcast of “The 700 Club.”
At first, on today’s broadcast, according to CBS News, he denied having made that statement and claimed that his remarks had been misunderstood. …

Author Tod Goldberg has a regular feature in his blog: he criticizes the generally-stupid and inane questions received by Walter Scott’s Personality Parade. The column runs weekly in the Parade magazine insert in most Sunday newspapers.
Most of the questions, which are supposed to be sent online, can be answered online by going to resources like the Internet …

Barbara weighs in on the Independent Single Professional Female in the Buckle of the Bible Belt. YEEHAAA!!”
In that entry, titled “Sheehan,” she lists me as being that isn’t completely on the level, either.
If we’re going to use the customer/manager example, let’s take a little closer look: okay, the President is our employee. What’s a good boss going to do …

Yeah, I’m still trying to figure out how “spaghetti” can be considered a snack food from last week’s quiz. It’s not something I’d snack on, but maybe somewhere in the world, it’s the equivalent of potato chips or popcorn. Stranger things have happened.
An odd thing happened with last week’s “first to play.” The rules specify that to …

Speaking at the National Book Festival on October 8, 2004, Novelist Patricia Wrede was asked what advice, besides “Read, read, read,” she’d offer to new writers. I am posting part of her response here for those who might be interested but don’t have the capability to play the webcast. (It runs a total of 37 minutes, which isn’t that long, …

After I posted a quote from Truman Capote about learning what the rules of writing, Shelly weighed in on her experience if being weighed down by the myriad rules other writers insisted were there:
I lost 10 years of trying to write for a pro market. While I wrote fanfic and learned, I regret I had to wait those 10 years …

This month’s edition of the Round Robin Photo Challenge was to submit a picture that captures something about who I am.
I am many things. One of the things that I am — which is both good and bad — is a loner. Therefore, without further explanation, my photo is, “Dinner for One.”

To see the other photos posted, here are …