Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to all my readers!

Thanks for visiting my site, commenting and emailing me. I hope I have added a little knowledge to the blogshpere or at least my two cents worth.

One of my closets friends, (he is Scottish - I'm American) is a pessimists while I am an optimist. We were discussing the state of the world over a pint the other day and you can imagine how the conversation went. I saw all the good things to be happy about while he saw only the bad.

One area that I did think was very bad was the rampant bias in the press. I gave him several examples, mostly anti-American, from the BBC, the Guardian and others. I demonstrated how the BBC uses "fake" sources in places like Iraq to bolster their anti-American stance. I told him how I felt that the anti-American media was to blame for much of the ill feelings toward America.


It was a "gotcha" moment for my friend and he grabbed it like a crock grabs a water buffalo. Aha! He pronounced! And you don't do anything about it he glared. I was stunned. This is a very close friend of nearly 20 years.

For starters I'm giving you proof of the bias in the media. I pointed to another friend at the bar and told my friend how I had changed the other fellows views with just such conversations.

Then I told him about blogging and my blog. What the hell is blogging?

This happens to me 2 or 3 times a month. While blogs are "the" story in the US for 2004, you hear almost nothing in the UK press about blogs and blogging. Yet, there are some very good UK blogs here. Biased BBC is naturally one of my favorites. Here are a few others:

Daily Ablution
Talking Hoarsely
Harry's Place
Expat Yank

I'm sure there are many others. I'd like to see it dramatically increase in 2005.

This may be my only post today as we are going "first footing" today. For my American readers, first footing in Scotland involves visiting your friends, ensuring you take lots of your favorite drink. When you arrive at your friends house you offer them a drink from you bottle and they return the favor by offering you some from their bottle. Thus, a good time is had by all.

Before the advent of central heat, we only had coal fire places. The custom them was to also take a chunk of coal to place on your friends fire. There is a saying here in Scotland, "long my your lum reek with another man's coal".

Happy New Year once again and have a good one!
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