Sure Could UsE a Little GooD NewS TodaY

Good News is No News- LA Times


"THERE ARE stories you won't see, hear or read today. The
employment rate is 95.1%. About 29,564 domestic flights took off
and landed without incident. Four million Iraqi children
got safely to school. Meanwhile, their parents shopped,
drove to work or otherwise went about their daily routines, mostly
— overwhelmingly — without getting assassinated."

"The foregoing has major implications for how we get our news,
what we conclude from it and our perceptions of life itself. In its
most elementary sense, after all, newsworthiness is built on a
foundation of anomaly — the classic "man bites dog" paradigm. (A
second newsroom aphorism: "Nobody writes about the
planes that land.")

"Despite any conscious awareness... we internalize what we see,
hear and read. TV imagery, in particular, is bound to have a strong
visceral effect. If what we are shown is a tireless parade of the
dour, dismal and deadly, we can't help but be affected by it. We
conclude that the world is a pretty ugly place."

"The overselling of discrete facts — today's breathless endeavor
to build major "trend stories" out of random events, statistics and
quotes — serves up a circumstantial stew made of a spicy
anecdote or two, and maybe a minor research study, liberally
seasoned with the assertions of a compliant expert (who probably
has a vested interest in the form of a book he's hawking). It's
intellectually dishonest."


Good News eh?
O.K. How bout this for starters?..Heh.

The Associated Press
20 February 2006

ALBANY, Ga. (AP) - "It's every chocolate lover's wish that their favorite indulgence could somehow be healthy for them. Now, chocolate makers claim they have granted that wish.

Mars Inc., maker of Milky Way, Snickers and M&M's candies, next month plans to launch nationwide a new line of products made with a dark chocolate the company claims has health benefits.

Called CocoaVia, the products are made with a kind of dark chocolate high in flavanols, an antioxidant found in cocoa beans that is thought to have a blood-thinning effect similar to aspirin and may even lower blood pressure. The snacks also are enriched with vitamins and injected with cholesterol-lowering plant sterols from soy."

Healthy chocolate..go figure.
Sure beats hearin bout bird flu and botulism don't it?