<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div>On Oct 14, 2010, at 11:38 AM, Dan wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: Verdana; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: medium; "> "most major news stories seem to be bad news"</span></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Yes but that is actually a reason to be optimistic. News by its very nature is about the unusual and the unexpected; if we lived in a true dystopian society the front page of the New York Times would contain nothing but happy feel-good stories, the thing about the nun who threw 42 baby seals into a wood chipper would just be another day in hell and not worth reporting. </div><div><i><br></i></div><blockquote type="cite">"but this one was good news."</blockquote><br></div><div>It would have been even better it there had been no cave-in, but then it wouldn't be news it would just be another day at work in the mine.</div><div><br></div><div> John K Clark</div><br></body></html>