Thanks to all who reponded to my previous sorry post.It was simply a case of feeling sorry for myself. This is not a forum where replies are expected. I guess that I was just wondering if anyone reads the articles I post. I know from my own experience on the old TB2000 forum that many people just want the info and not the hassle of a debate and thats fine with me. I do not intend to quit so I guess everyone will have to continue to put up with me. Thanks again for the reponses.

Martin

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), August 23, 2000

Answers

Martin,

What's to debate about the facts?

Power goes off, and boils the Kaliforny cities.

Oil pipe explodes and wipes out a two whole families because they pipes were not inspected often enough by quailified / concerned / conscientious staff.

A Himacane sits on top of Taiwan and dumps feet of rain.

Are these debateable? Nope, it's just "head shaking news"

If your feeling lonely then ask for feedback. We're here for you.

Fondly,

Perry

-- (perry@ofuzzy1.com), August 23, 2000.

Martin,

It's was good to check if these posts are being
read. Thanks to all who responded.

-- spider (spider0@usa.net), August 23, 2000.

Since this forum started, at least three times a day I read the posts here. Thanks to Martin and all other contributors.

cheers

-- spaceman spiff (spiff@space.com), August 23, 2000.

Martin:

I don't think you have any idea how widespread your influence is. Just last night, I had a converstion with my brother about the power situation in California. (We are both native Californians transplanted to the East Coast.) Thanks to this forum, I had read about it and had followed the links. I knew much more about the situation than he did.

Thank you.

Sally

-- Sally Strackbein (sally@SallysKitchen.com), August 23, 2000.

Glad to see you've recovered, Martin. I'd suspected the lapse might have been temporary. And thanks for your appreciation, Perry.

Can we have a brief discussion about sources? I use the worldwires at www.7am.com as a twice daily read. However, the site has several sources from around the world that I simply don't have time to go into. Perhaps some of the readers would have time to check them out for a wider variety of info of events in various countries.

-- Rachel Gibson (rgibson@hotmail.com), August 23, 2000.

I check in to GICC daily, as well, and appreciate your diligence and contributions, Martin.

Building on Sally's comment, "Thanks to this forum, I had read about it and had followed the links. I knew much more about the situation than he did.", I find that local news often doesn't cover the story, and that I, too, know more about something going on elsewhere, from my GICC readings, than local people do. Leading me to suspect that political (and economic) pressures suppress local news.

Rachel, I think you've got a GREAT idea to identify sources, and invite people to cover different ones that they're attracted to. You might want to post a specfic thread on that, for visibility.

Thanks

Jan

-- Jan Nickerson (JaNickrson@aol.com), August 25, 2000.

Jan, thanks for the encouragement. I've done what you've asked (I think). Let's see what happens.

-- Rachel Gibson (rgibson@hotmail.com), August 28, 2000.

Thanks so much to everyone for your extraordinary efforts to keep the information flowing.

Sincerely,

-- Paula Gordon (pgordon@erols.com), August 29, 2000.