BBC World News Comes To My TV

BBC-world-newsBBC world News HD has been added to our cable lineup on Uverse in Irvine. I’ve spent the last few weeks bathing in its deep pool of content. This is not another CNN, Fox News, MSNBC. No! This is real news.

A friend of mine who’s roamed the globe the last few decades says the Beeb has its biases. No doubt. I’ll take that in return for actual news content.

For much of America the unrest in Kiev, Ukraine has just become visible. kiev firesIt’s been front-and-center on BBC since I’ve been watching. So have protests in Thailand and Argentina.

The unrest in all three of these Second World nations threatens to topple their governments or at the least remove their effectiveness to actually control what’s going on.

These are important stories, but stories not heard here where the conventional wisdom says viewers don’t give a crap about foreign news. That’s how you’re viewed–disinterested in anything outside the states.

Shouldn’t we know what’s going on around us? Can’t we be trusted to view stories which give the news context?

Getting the BBC is good news and bad news. The good news is I have less Benghazi, Bridgegate and Piers Morgan. The bad news is, real news is still thinly watched in America.

Photos From Argentina

My friend Wendie just spent a week visiting Argentina. She stayed in Buenos Aires and traveled to the falls at Iguazu. Whenever there was food, there was beef – it was after all Argentina.

I enjoyed reading her reports and was anxiously awaiting her photos. They came this morning, and they’re very cool.

The most interesting photo, to me, isn’t of a place or person, but these seltzer bottles!

This really takes me back. When I was a kid growing up in an apartment, we were on a seltzer delivery route! Every week at our front door, for anyone so inclined to steal, there were seltzer bottles. Of course, at the end of the week we put out our empties.

It seems such an anachronism that someone would go to the trouble to deliver these glass bottles on a regular schedule. The world doesn’t operate that way anymore.

I can’t say there’s any difference now, getting seltzer in a 2-liter plastic bottle, except it doesn’t look like these. Certainly, without the seltzer bottle, the Marx Brothers, Three Stooges and Clarabell would have needed to find another line of work.