Jennifer Aniston stories, tales of the travails of someone's son embracing rap - these are front page articles? I'm sorry to say, but I really don't care about this sort of pablum. What happened to the 'Salon' I've read for the last eight years? I can turn on mainstream television news and watch puff pieces like the ones Salon has been trotting out lately on the front page.

I'm on the verge of dumping my subscription in favor of more serious news. I already find myself visiting Salon less and less.

And the new layout stinks.

"she laments that she missed his final moments because she changed her outfit three times before coming to see him; she wanted to look beautiful. Then, when her fellow interns cannot convince her to abandon his pale corpse, Alex Karev, her past fling, picks her up like a knight carrying a damsel across a distressing puddle."

. . .uhhh

I've never seen this show before in my life, but I wandered across the season finale. But. . .at least in the episode that aired here, the guy doesn't die, there's no outfit-changing scene, there's a marriage proposal, and everyone is happy in the end, much like a hallmark card or ABC after-school special.

As far as I could tell, from my brief viewing, the show didn't veer into fizzy-soap-opera waters, it was flat-out a fizzy soap opera.

I, too, received a message from QuickTime indicating that I needed to download a new component. This wouldn't be so awful (I guess), if they would actually deign to mention WHICH ONE. Since you get directed to a page with links to about 7 or 8 3rd party codecs, not knowing which of these you need makes the default choice, "screw it". Bummer. Seems like it would have been a funny clip.

Jon.

Stewart.

Yes, this highly entertaining piece nearly redeems CT for all those flaccid advice collumns.

While the question, 'what constitutes saying 'no''? (if not saying, 'no' itself) is a tough one, even tougher is the question, what constitutes 'starting the act'? Answering this question seems to require an excursion into some pretty serious issues in metaphysics (what distinguishes one act or event from a subsequent act or event?) for which the court is undoubtedly ill prepared. And perhaps that could be overlooked, but for the completely obvious nature of the question. How could one fail to see it coming?

it's really not clear who got scammed the most:

- The people that supposedly granted the "journalist" his grant

-The "journalist", who seems to have been taken by the most obvious of scams (it seems pretty obvious from even the most cursory reading, that "Reagan" and "A Mohammed" are the same person. )

-anyone who actually read the entire piece (this includes me)

-The editors at Salon, who bought this obvious crap (which a previous commenter accurately described as having been written in a hotel room by a loser who got no real story.

Wow. I really didn't expect this level of abject cluelessness here. My own excuse for being scammed was that I was fascinated By all the scamming going on in the article and I really thought there was going to be a punchline. I hope whoever gave this author his "grant" asks for the money back.

You guys all have it easy. I work at 2-3 gyms, but the one closest to my home, where I work out the most, is in a city facility that also houses the old folks' day center.

Now don't get me wrong, there's one or two sixty year old guys there that go in a bench numbers that would be impressive in a fit twenty year old man. But mostly, the day center seems to me like a mausoleum. And the music played in the whole building reflects it.

The short end of it is that you've got to bring your own music, no matter where you work out.

I really couldn't do much more than speculate about what Reagan/ A. Mohammed's scam was. His emails sure have the phrasing of a 419, though; and the followups read like many other followups to fraud.

But I surely agree with you on the following:

"Yet instead of exploring that issue in any depth, the would-be Great White Hope goes home and writes a satirical piece about the crazy starving African he met while trying to win a Pulitzer."

What a tool.

"What's funny is that this

Is exactly how many Salon posters talk down to anyone who doesn't reflexively agree with them. I guess being a condescending prick is something self anointed 'progressives' do. Iokannen, if the shoe fits......"

What's to agree with or disagree with in the article? There's just no content there! There's no story in this story! No one here is disagreeing with some point, especially not with any political point progressive or otherwise, that Wadhams made. To be honest, this is because Wadhams makes no points. The article is literally pointless.

This is some clueless shlub playing journalist who travels to Africa, gets scammed and doesn't have the brains to realize it, and vomits his quite uninteresting thoughts onto the printed page for us. And for some reason he thinks we should care.

The very article by Armstrong that is cited makes this rather astonishing claim:

"Also, science tells us that it is impossible to hear a bullet, because they travel faster than the speed of sound."

Perhaps that was just Armstrong's example of another unreasonable belief held by today's students, like the belief that 20% off a $40 dress makes a $20 dress? I can't tell.

In any event, jpfrog nails it on the head below when he writes: "so long as our society stigmatizes would-be scientists as "geeks", "nerds", "uncool" etc. etc., regards intellectual distinction with contempt, and disdains the self-discipline required for any significant expertise in art or science, the society will get what it deserves. . ."

And I guess we can blame the Liberal Elite for that.