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Canadian defence minister escapes rocket attack in Afghanistan

November 7, 2007

Canadian Minister of Defence Peter MacKay just narrowly escaped a rocket attack by the Taliban in Afghanistan yesterday morning. He was visiting Forward Operating Base Wilson 20 kilometres west of Kandahar.

MacKay escaped into a Jeep as the first explosion went off at 11:00 a.m., local time (UTC+4:30). The second rocket, which struck 15 minutes after, hit four Canadian soldiers. The soldiers are now in good condition.

MacKay was picked up by a helicopter an hour later.

Some military experts and reporters on the scene suggested that the attack would not have been targeted to hit MacKay specifically. But according to Canadian Press reporter Bill Graveland, the Taliban could have guessed someone important was present when they saw Blackhawk helicopters.

"I don't believe that there was any way they had any idea the Mr. MacKay was there, but if you see a number of Blackhawk helicopters flying over a base, you're going to assume it's somebody important," said Graveland.

"I do not believe he was targeted," said Chief of the Defence Staff General Rick Hillier. "I think these are things that have occurred [coincidentally] in time and space."

MacKay held a news conference at Kandahar Air Field last night.

"There was an explosion. It was a loud bang," said MacKay. "When it happened, we heard the explosion, we heard the whistle overhead, we were told to get down and we did. Thankfully, again, when missions like this are underway, you're given a very thorough briefing as you'd expect. We're told how to react, everything went like clockwork. We were taken out of harm's way very quickly, and put in an armoured vehicle. And I'm grateful for the experience, because now I have a greater appreciation of how competent, how able and how successful our people are in the field."

MacKay is in Afghanistan to talk about improving the country's economy, security, health care and education.


text:
User talk:99.247.222.60

Welcome
Thanks for experimenting with Wikinews. Your test worked, and has now been reverted or removed. Please use Sandbox for any other tests you want to do, since testing in articles may disrupt the site's working and will be reverted quickly. , welcome to Wikinews! Please refrain from using content pages for testing. Here are a few good links for newcomers on how to edit Wikinews:

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license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: User talk:99.247.222.60


text:
Comments:Efficient wins Melbourne Cup

 * Efficient deserved to win this Melbourne Cup and rightfully did soKrayz-one 22:06, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Memories...After a work accident and on a pension as a single dad with no money,I went in a $22 poker game online,won $4000.Went in another few weeks later ,won $30000.So took son on round world trip.Had been telling everyone Efficient would win Melbourne Cup after his 2006 Derby win.Was 2nd day of our trip,in Bangkok hotel foyer with loads of Aussies who all had their $10 and $20 on favs.I had $270 each way at between 40 and 60 to 1 and 125 ew tote.Wow ,what a trip it was then.Efficient will never be forgotten by my son and I,what a horse,what a holiday.TY..P.S.I am now and have always been a $5 a bet punter,$10 if on a roll,so this was huge for me,biggest ever bets.The only time I have had over $10 since was when he won at 30 to 1 in the Turnbull,I think the race was.I had saved $10 a fortnight all winter and had $65ew on him in that race too.TY again Efficient.

title: Comments:Efficient wins Melbourne Cup


text:
User talk:124.170.139.250

Hi moved your edit from Deadly shooting at high school in Finland to talk:Deadly shooting at high school in Finland as the news article for the disaster is probably not the place for a compilation of the guys entire website. Bawolff ☺☻ 22:20, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Welcome
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title: User talk:124.170.139.250


text:
User talk:62.65.192.81

Welcome
Welcome!

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If you have any questions, you can ask them at the water cooler or to anyone on the Welcommittee, or ask me on my Talk page. Again, welcome! --SVTCobra 23:37, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Deadly shooting at high school in Finland
Thank you for your contributions to this story. Do you have a source for the time of death that you added. We need to list all sources. It is OK if it is in Finnish. --SVTCobra 23:37, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

 * http://www.iltalehti.fi/jokelantragedia/200711076820140_jt.shtml

 * thank you. --SVTCobra 03:27, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

title: User talk:62.65.192.81


text:
Comments:Canadian defence minister escapes rocket attack in Afghanistan

Usually a minister of defence doesn´t go to another country to talk about economy.
 * He was talking about Afghanistan's economy. --SVTCobra 23:47, 7 November 2007 (UTC)


text:
Comments:Three Massachusetts workers dead after water pipe explosion at power plant

What was the cause of explotion?
So, is anything known about the possible cause of this event?

At this time, they're investigating, my dad however believes it was steel fatigue, as he himself at one time worked with boilers (still has his fireman's license) and that it also possibly neglect on part the of the management, but then again my father also believes that Oswald didn't act alone. --TUFKAAP 16:05, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

material failure of boiler tube
this is an example of Engineers and managers ignoring the industry potential problems and doing nothing about it. the plant management is particularly responsible because they have to utlimate responsibility to insure the safety and health of the public in these plants. there are many industry accepted methods of Non destructive examination that can provide a very reaonable idea of the potential for cracking and the propagation of existing flaws into longer cracks that can become throuh wall. second is that the material in these old plants preamtrurely fail due creep damage or creep rupture properties being on the low end of the scale. the article does not talk about the other factors ie errossion / corrosion of the inside wall thickness of the pipe / tube. this is also and area that the industry knows so much about today and with the advances in technology today there is no excuse for this to happen. you can contact me back at weldtech@qwest.net thank you for your time —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.164.206.82 (talk) 04:02, 11 March 2008 (UTC)


text:
User talk:213.156.52.112

Welcome
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Article
Hi, could you please stop creating articles on the longest book title ever. They were deleted because they are copyright violations and the event is old news, not current news. You might want to try Wikipedia instead of Wikinews. Thanks.  —Fellow Wiki  Newsie 00:01, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

title: User talk:213.156.52.112


text:
Comments:12 'fire bombs' found inside Buffalo, New York apartment house

It would be interesting to know the result of the investigation.
 * Well this was kept on the hush hush anyways...so anything that comes of it would likely be kept quiet too. DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 03:09, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm puzzled by the phrase "the dead dog" in this article: it implies that either (a) the dog owned by the woman in the story was killed, or (b) originally there were three dogs left in the building, but one had died. Could someone clarify this? Thanks, 134.134.136.5 16:53, 12 November 2007 (UTC) (llywrch on en.wikipedia)


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User talk:212.116.219.75

Hi. We do not publish biographies. We're Wikinews, we publish news. Therefor, I deleted Alderfasi. I hope you understand. If you need any help, don't hesitate to ask. Bawolff ☺☻ 01:10, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Welcome
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If you have any questions, you can ask them at the water cooler or to anyone on the Welcommittee, or ask me on my Talk page. Again, welcome! Bawolff ☺☻ 01:10, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

title: User talk:212.116.219.75


text:
User talk:Jaime Saldarriaga

Welcome
, welcome to Wikinews! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

Our key policies - if you read anything, read these! Here a few pointers to help you get to know Wikinews: There are always things to do on Wikinews: By the way, you can sign your name on Talk pages using four tildes ( ~~~~ ), which produces your name and the current date. If you have any questions, you can ask them at the water cooler or to anyone on the Welcommittee, or ask me on my Talk page. Again, welcome!
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I would like to stress the usefulness of signing your comments with ~ or using the signature button (fourth one from the right in the edit mode). --SVTCobra 01:17, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Your recent edits
Hi there. In case you didn't know, when you add content to talk pages and Wikinews pages that have open discussion, you should sign your posts by typing four tildes ( ~~~~ ) at the end of your comment. On many keyboards, the tilde is entered by holding the Shift key, and pressing the key with the tilde pictured. You may also click on the signature button located above the edit window. This will automatically insert a signature with your name and the time you posted the comment. This information is useful because other editors will be able to tell who said what, and when. Thank you! --SineBot 12:30, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

title: User talk:Jaime Saldarriaga


text: User:Bawolff bot

title: User:Bawolff bot


text:
User talk:Alderfasi

Hello again. If you need any assistance, don't hesitate to say so, or come on Chat. Bawolff ☺☻ 01:40, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

title: User talk:Alderfasi


text:
User:212.116.219.75

Iam Ali Alderfasi associate professor of crop physiology at King Saud University, College of Food & Agricultural Sciences, Riyadh Saudi Arabia. I built this site to share with you my interest work area and to feed back from you. I am working in the area of crop physiology. My interest of research is environmental stresses such as drought, heat, salinity, light, air pollution and other stresses, which most of them are very serious under our local area in Saudi Arabia. Therefore, I will try to study these stresses and to find some solutions for them from the point of physiological plant mechanisms and other soil & plant managements. link titleInterest Research: Crop Physiology:- Plant Water Relations, Plant Environmental Stresses Such as Drought, Heat, Salinity, Nutrient, Light, Diseases, air pollution and other stresses and how plant can resist these stresses and What are the mechanisems of resistance.

title: User:212.116.219.75


text:
User talk:Nextstopmedia

Welcome
Thanks for experimenting with Wikinews. Your test worked, and has now been reverted or removed. Please use Sandbox for any other tests you want to do, since testing in articles may disrupt the site's working and will be reverted quickly. , welcome to Wikinews! Please refrain from using content pages for testing. Here are a few good links for newcomers on how to edit Wikinews:

Our key policies - if you read anything, read these! Here a few pointers to help you get to know Wikinews: There are always things to do on Wikinews: By the way, you can sign your name on Talk pages using four tildes ( ~~~~ ), which produces your name and the current date. If you have any questions, you can ask them at the water cooler or to anyone on the Welcommittee, or ask me on my Talk page. Again, welcome! Jcart1534 02:04, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
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title: User talk:Nextstopmedia


text:
User talk:Businessman332211

General Explanation
I am a member of each and every wiki project (aside from the foundation wiki because it doesn't accept general members. I work MOSTLY off the english wikipedia but I am present on all of the sister projects from time to time. I do not always get on them all all the time.  Basically if you need anything that's halfway important about any of the wiki-projects, then please put them on my talk page (same username) for wikipedia.  I check these whenever i get some time to do extra work on one of the other wiki's.  It just depends on what I feel like doing and when I get some extra time for some of wikipedia's, sister projects. --Businessman332211 02:12, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

title: User talk:Businessman332211


title: File:8November2007.pdf


title: File:8November2007.sxw


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User talk:71.227.135.213

Hi, the paragraph you took out in the Washoe article appears to be correct given both the sources listed at the bottom of the article and my understanding of the field(granted that of an interested layperson). What precisely do you think is wrong with that paragraph and do you have a source for your claim? JoshuaZ 02:39, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

title: User talk:71.227.135.213


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User:David Shankbone/White

Tell me about your new album. It’s called Big Dream Boulevard and it’s the first studio album I made. It’s not so new; I made it in May of 2006. It’s produced by Seamus Igin, who is the leader of a fairly renowned band named Solas. You mentioned you used to explore more dark themes in your work, but that lately you are more exploring lighter fare. What themes are you exploring on this album? In the future I am hoping for more light themes. I feel like I have worked through a lot of the darkness, and personally I feel like I’m ready to write a batch of lighter songs, but that’s just how I’m feeling right now. My last record, Big Dream Boulevard, was a pretty heavy record and that was not intentional. I write what is on my mind. What were you going through that made it so dark? The record is drawn from my whole writing career, so it’s old and new songs as well. I wasn’t going through anything in particular because it was spanning a wide time period. I think it’s fair to say that over all I turn to music in times of trouble and need as a therapeutic tool to get me through sadness. That’s why I tend to turn to music. So my songs tend to be a little darker, because that’s where I tend to go for solace. So themes like personal struggle with relationships and existential issues. What personal relationships do you struggle with? A lot of my songs are about dating and relationship troubles. That’s one category. But a lot of my songs are about existential questions because I struggle with what to believe in. Do you believe in a higher power? I’m sort of an atheist who wishes I could believe something. What do you believe? It’s undefined. My parents were ardent atheists and they drove this rationality into me, and I’m trying to stray away from that. It’s a challenge. Any dogma that’s driven into you as a kid can be hard to overcome. I think I’m spiritual in music, which is my outlet, but I just can’t get on board with an organized religion. Not even Unitarianism. I do miss something like that in my life, though. Why do you miss having religion in your life? I think every human being craves a feeling that there is a higher purpose. It’s a need for me. A lot of my songs express that struggle. Does the idea that our lives on Earth may be all that there is unsettle you? Yes, sure. I think there’s more. I’m always seeking things of beauty, and my art reflects the search for that. You had said in an interview that your family wasn’t particularly supportive of your career path, but you are also saying they were atheists who weren’t curious about the things you are curious about. It sounds like you were a hothouse flower. Yes. I think what went with my parents atheism was a distrust of the arts as frivolous and extraneous. They were very pragmatic. They almost sound Soviet Communist. Yeah, a little bit [Laughs]. They had an austere way of living, and my wanting to pursue music as a career was the last straw. What’s your relationship with them now? I don’t actually speak to my mother and stepfather. Why? A lot of reasons, but when I was about 21 I was fairly certain I wanted to go the music path and they said, “Fine, then go!” That’s the reason you don’t speak with them? That’s the main. “Go ahead, do what you want, and have a nice life.”  So the music thing cost the relationship with my parents, although I think there may have been some other things that have done it. That must be a difficult thing to contend with, that a career would be the basis for a relationship. Yes, it’s strange, but my love of music is perhaps stronger for it because of the sacrifices I have made for it early on. I had to fight. Would you say in your previous work some of your conflict of dating would have been birthed from how your relationship with your family? How do you see the arc of your work? My songs are sort of therapy for me, so you CAN trace my personal progress through them [Laughs]. I think there is some improvement. I wrote my first love song the other day, so I think I’m getting the hang of what relationships are all about. I’m ever grateful for music for being there for me when things weren’t going so well. Has the Iraq War affected you as an artist? Not directly, but I do have a few songs that are political. One about George Bush and the hypocrisy, but it’s very indirect; you wouldn’t know it was about George Bush. How has it affected you personally? I feel sad about it. People say my music is sad, but it’s a therapeutic thing so the war affects me. The struggle to be original in art, but it’s innate. When you are coming up with an idea for a song and then you all of a sudden stumble across it having been done somewhere else, how do you not allow that to squelch your creative impulse and drive to continue on. That’s a good question. I started writing in a vacuum just for myself and I didn’t have a lot of feedback, and I thought what I’m saying has been said so many times before. Then my songs got out there and people told me, ‘You say it so originally’ and I thought ‘Really?!’  The way I say it, to me, sounds completely trite because it’s the way I would say it and it doesn’t sound special at all. Once my record came out I got some amount of positive reviews that made me think I have something original, which in turn made me have writer’s block to keep that thing that I didn’t even know I had. So now I’m struggling with that, trying to maintain my voice. Right now I feel a little dried-out creatively. When I interviewed Augusten Burroughs he told me that when he was in advertising he completely shut himself off from the yearly ad books that would come out of the best ads that year, because he wanted to be fresh and not poisoned by other ideas; whereas a band called The Raveonettes said they don’t try to be original they just do what they like and are upfront about their influences. Where do you fall in that spectrum? Probably more towards Augusten Burroughs because I when I first started writing it was more in a vacuum, but I think everyone has their own way. You can’t not be influenced by your experience in life. Who would you say are some of your biggest influences in the last year. Who have you discovered that has influenced you the most? Influence is kind of a strong word because I don’t think I’m taking after these people. I’ve been moved by this girl named Denais Mitchell. She’s a singer-songwriter from Vermont who is really unique. She’s just got signed to Righteous Babe Records. Patty Griffin just moves me deeply. You moved out of New York because you had some difficulty with the music scene here? I feel it is a little tougher to make it here than in Boston if you are truly acoustic folk lyric driven. I find that audiences in New York like a certain amount of bling and glamour to their performances. A little more image, a little cooler. I felt for me Boston was the most conducive environment. Do you feel home up in Boston? I do, and part of that is the great folk community. Why do you think Boston has such a well-developed folk scene? It’s always historically been a folk hub. There’s a lot of awesome folk stations like WUMB and WERS. Legendary folk clubs, like Club Passim. Those have stayed in tact since the sixties. Is there anything culturally about Boston that makes it more conducive to folk? Once you have a buzz, the buzz creates more buzz. Some people hear there’s a folk scene in Boston, and then other people move there, so the scene feeds itself and becomes a successful scene. It’s on-going. Do you have a favorite curse word? [Giggles] Cunt. [Giggles] Really?! You are the first woman I have met who likes that word! Oh, really? I’ll use it in a traffic situation. Road rage. [Laughs] Do you find yourself more inspired by man-made creations, including people and ideas, or nature-made creations? I love nature, but it is limited. It is what it is, and doesn’t include the human imagination that can go so much further than nature. What are some manmade things that inspire you? New York City as a whole is just an amazing city. People are so creative and it is the hub of personal creativity, just in the way people express themselves on a daily basis. Do you think you will return? In theory I will return one day if I have money, but in theory you need money to enjoy yourself. What trait do you deplore in yourself? Like anyone, I think laziness. I’m a bit a hard on myself, but there’s always more I can do. As a touring singer-songwriter I work hard, but sometimes I forget because I get to sleep in and my job is not conventional, and sometimes I think ‘Oh, I don’t even have a job, how lazy I am!’ [Laughs] Then, of course, there are times I’m touring my ass off and I work hard as well. It comes in shifts. There are times there is so much free time I have to structure my own days, and that’s a challenge. When is the last time you achieved a goal and were disappointed by it and thought, “Is that all there is?” Something you wanted to obtain, you obtained it, and it wasn’t nearly as fulfilling as you thought it would be. I was thinking about the whole dream of becoming a musician. I want to maybe do a research project about people’s dreams and how they feel about them after they come true. It’s really interesting. They change a lot. When I was 17 I saw Ani Difranco on stage and I wanted to do THAT, and now I’m doing it. Now I think about Ani very differently. I wonder how long it took her to drive here, she must be tired, you know, I’m thinking of all the pragmatic things that go on behind the scenes. The backside of a dream you never consider when you’re dreaming it. To some extent, having my dream fulfilled hasn’t been a let-down, but it’s changed. It’s more realistic. What is the new goal? Balance. Trying to grow my career enough to make sure it doesn’t consume me. It’s hard to balance a touring career because there is no structure to your life. I’m trying to take this dream and make it work as a job. How challenging is it to obtain that in the folk world? There’s not a lot of money in the folk world. In generally right now I think people’s numbers are down and only a few people can make a living at it. It’s pretty competitive. I’m doing okay, but there’s no huge riches in it so I’m trying to think of my future and maintain a balance in it. Do you think of doing something less folk-oriented to give your career a push? Not really, I’ve done that a little bit by trying to approach the major labors, but that was when the major labors were dying so I came in at a bad time for that. I found that when it comes to do it yourself, the folk world is the best place to make money because as soon as you go major you are paying a band. More money more problems. More money, more investing. It’s a hard question. What things did you encounter doing a studio album that you had not foreseen? Giving up control is hard when you have a producer. His vision, sometimes, is something you can’t understand and have to trust sometimes. See how it comes out. That was hard for me, because up until now I have been such a do it yourself, writing my own songs, recording them myself. What is your most treasured possession? I’d like to say my guitar, but I’m still looking for a good one. I have this little latex glove. [Laughs] It’s a long story— Please! Do tell! When I was in college I had a romantic friend named David, he was kind of my first love. We were young and found this latex glove in a parking lot. We though, “Oh, this is a nice glove, we’ll name him Duncan.” You found a latex glove in a parking lot and you decided to take it? Yeah [Laugh]. He became the symbol of our friendship. He’s disgusting at this point, he’s falling apart. But David and I are still friends and we’ll pass him back and forth to each other every three years or so when we’ve forgotten his existence. David surprised me at a show in Philly. He gave Duncan to the sound man who brought it back stage, and now I have Duncan. So he’s kind of special to me. IF you could choose how you die, how would you choose? Not freezing to death, and not in an airplane, because I’m afraid of flying. Painlessly, like most people. In my sleep when I’m so old and senile I don’t know what hit me. I’d like to get real old. Would you be an older woman with long hair or short hair? I guess short hair, because long hair looks a little witchy on old people. Who are you supporting for President? I’m torn between Obama and Hillary. Someone who is going to win, so I guess Hillary. You don’t think Obama would have a chance of winning? I don’t know. If he did, I would support Barack. I don’t really care; either of those would make me happy. What trait do you value most in your friends? Kindness. What trait do you deplore in other people? Arrogance. Showiness. Where else are you going on tour? Alaska in a few days. Fairbanks, Anchorage and all over the place. I’m a little nervous because I will be driving by myself and I have this vision that if I get hit by a moose then I could freeze to death. And you have to fly up there! Yeah, and I hate flying as well—so I’m really scared! [Laughs] Is there a big folk scene in Alaska? No, but I hear people are grateful if anyone makes it up there, especially in the winter. I think they are hungry for any kind of entertainment, no matter the quality. [Laughs] Someone came to us! I actually played there in June in this town called Sedovia, that has 300 people, and all 300 people came to my gig, so the next day I was so famous! Everyone knew me, the gas station attendant, everyone. It was surreal. So you had that sense of what Ani DiFranco must feel. Yeah! I was Paul McCartney. I thought this was what it must be like to be Bruce Springsteen, like I can’t even buy a stick of gum without being recognized. Did you like that? I think it would be awful to be that famous because you have moments when you just don’t feel like engaging.

title: User:David Shankbone/White


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Meat Loaf calls off European tour

November 9, 2007 American musician Meat Loaf has canceled the remaining dates of his 2007 European tour on Tuesday. This decision was announced less than a week after the performer prematurely ended a concert in Newcastle upon Tyne.

Earlier reports attributed Meat Loaf's medical problems at Newcastle to a sore throat. This week's announcements indicate that the rocker sustained a vocal cord cyst that requires weeks of treatment and possibly surgery.

Despite Meat Loaf's indication at the Newcastle concert that his career might have ended, a most recent statement on his fan site declared that he would be "coming back strong in 2008" with hopes of new concerts following treatment.

title: Meat Loaf calls off European tour


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Template:Popular articles

These statistics are generated from Wikistats. They are based on number of visits to each page over the last hour. These statistics include all visits, both by people and by automated computer programs. Although these are probably reasonably accurate, they are easy to distort. Please note that sometimes these statistics are updated on an irregular basis. This page was generated at 18:18, 9 December 2015 (UTC) for the time period 17:00–18:00 UTC 24 hours ago.

title: Template:Popular articles


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Talk:2007 Baseball World Cup Day 1: Taichung starts prior to Taipei

Brock, I took some liberties in copy-editing some of the quotes. Please look at them an see if they reflect what was actually said. Thanks. --SVTCobra 04:07, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
 * You damm RIGHT.... You got my idea as Minister Wu said. Today, APB 2007 will be joined at basebvall report. Brock contact... 08:00, 8 November 2007 (UTC)


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New Zealand police blocked from laying terrorism charges

November 8, 2007

Following dozens of raids across New Zealand a few weeks ago, the Solicitor General has advised the Police Commissioner, Howard Broad, the New Zealand Police may not lay charges against those arrested under the Terrorism Suppression Act 2002.

On October 15, when the raids occurred, 17 people were arrested and twelve of those were referred from the police to the Solicitor General, David Collins QC, to lay charges under the Terrorism Suppression Act. His consent was needed to lay charges relating to the act. Those arrested were charged with breaching the Firearms Act, however.

Mr Collins came to his decision due to insufficient evidence that there was planning or preparation of a terrorist act of any kind by those activist groups raided, and that the Terrorism Suppression Act is "complex and incoherent". He said that it would be difficult to currently apply the Act to a domestic terrorist. "The key reason I am not prepared to authorise prosecutions under the act is there is insufficient evidence to establish to the very high standard required that a group was preparing a terrorist act."

Those raided included various Māori and environmental activists who had been alleged to have undertaken training in terrorist camps.

Mr Collins does state though that he is not criticising the police based on his decision. "Nothing could be further from the truth. They have acted entirely appropriate in referring the evidence to me."

Some of the evidence will be made public in future firearm charges, but some will be withheld from the public Mr Collins regrettably said.

However, Mr Broad admitted that no other laws had been breached, and charges could not have been laid under the Crimes Act.

Currently, Parliament is proposing amendments to the Terrorism Suppression Act. Due to the use of the Act in the police raids, there are currently widespread protests. Parliament was briefly locked down on Thursday when a small delegation of protesters came closer than is customarily permitted.


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Comments:New Zealand police blocked from laying terrorism charges

Dam it. I really wanted them to burn in hell - er I mean jail. And also, I do not want Broad to lose his job over this. Some have called for his resignation (commentators), but I do not agree with them. You win some, you lose some.

And also all my Maori jokes are now useless :'( ~ --Nzgabriel | Talk 04:09, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Weak Legislation?
Should New Zealand Terrorism Suppresion Act be revised?.Jaime Saldarriaga 16:44, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I think so Brian | (Talk) | New Zealand Portal 09:50, 9 November 2007 (UTC)


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List of stupidest laws in Britain revealed

November 8, 2007

The results of a survey by the UK TV station UKTV Gold has revealed the 10 most stupid laws, as determined by the 4,000 participants. It is unclear as to how many of the laws are true, or still in effect but at least one has been determined as being a myth. The ten laws are listed below.

 * 1) It is illegal to die in the Houses of Parliament. 27%
 * 2) It is an act of treason to place a postage stamp bearing the British monarch upside-down. 7%
 * 3) In Liverpool, it is illegal for a woman to be topless except as a clerk in a tropical fish store. 6%
 * Mince pies cannot be eaten on Christmas Day. 5%
 * 1) In Scotland, if someone knocks on your door and requires the use of your toilet, you must let them enter. 4%
 * 2) A pregnant woman can legally relieve herself anywhere she wants, including in a policeman's helmet. 4%
 * 3) The head of any dead whale found on the British coast automatically becomes the property of the king, and the tail of the queen. 3.5%
 * 4) It is illegal to avoid telling the tax man anything you do not want him to know, but legal not to tell him information you do not mind him knowing. 3%
 * 5) It is illegal to enter the Houses of Parliament in a suit of armour. 3%
 * 6) In the city of York it is legal to murder a Scotsman within the ancient city walls, but only if he is carrying a bow and arrow. 2%

At least some of the items on the list have been confirmed as urban legends. A spokesman for Liverpool City Council commenting on the third item stated "It's something that has been heard of before and does crop up from time to time, but it is absurd... It is a myth and totally made up. It has no basis in fact".


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Nobel Prize winner Arthur Kornberg dies at age 89

November 8, 2007 Stanford biochemist Arthur Kornberg, winner of the 1959 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, died on October 26, 2007 of respiratory failure. He was 89. He is survived by his third wife, Carolyn Frey Dixon.

Kornberg is best known for his discovery (with Severo Ochoa) of "the mechanisms in the biological synthesis of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA)", including the isolation of DNA polymerase I, which led to his Nobel prize. He was the first scientist to make DNA in a test tube. He also studied pathways for synthesis of ATP and nucleotides, and he was the first to synthesize PRPP. In his later years, Kornberg studied inorganic polyphosphates.

Kornberg's son, Stanford structural biologist Roger D. Kornberg, won the 2006 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for work on the molecular basis of eukaryotic transcription.


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Category:Chemistry

eo:Kategorio:Kemio es:Categoría:Química fr:Catégorie:Chimie ru:Категория:Химия sr:Категорија:Хемија

title: Category:Chemistry


title: User:Bawolff/pict/2007/45


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Edmund White on writing, incest, life and Larry Kramer

November 8, 2007

What you are about to read is an American life as lived by renowned author Edmund White. His life has been a crossroads, the fulcrum of high-brow Classicism and low-brow Brett Easton Ellisism. It is not for the faint. He has been the toast of the literary elite in New York, London and Paris, befriending artistic luminaries such as Salman Rushdie and Sir Ian McKellen while writing about a family where he was jealous his sister was having sex with his father as he fought off his mother's amorous pursuit.

The fact is, Edmund White exists. His life exists. To the casual reader, they may find it disquieting that someone like his father existed in 1950's America and that White's work is the progeny of his intimate effort to understand his own experience.

Wikinews reporter David Shankbone understood that an interview with Edmund White, who is professor of creative writing at Princeton University, who wrote the seminal biography of Jean Genet, and who no longer can keep track of how many sex partners he has encountered, meant nothing would be off limits. Nothing was. Late in the interview they were joined by his partner Michael Caroll, who discussed White's enduring feud with influential writer and activist Larry Kramer.

On literature
'''David Shankbone: What questions are you tired of answering?
 * Edmund White: Is there a gay sensibility?  People ask it all the time…the best answer to that I ever saw was somebody said, “There is no gay sensibility and it has had an enormous impact on society.”  Otherwise, I’m pretty easy.  I try to rethink the question each time.

'''DS: Have you noticed your answers change much?
 * EW: Oh, yeah.  I’m a philosophical spirit, so that means you think through everything each time, unless you’re doing ten interviews a day and your own book tour.  Otherwise, if it’s like this, you try to think it out.

'''DS: When you notice you are very flexible in your thought and change notions easily, does it have broader implications for you?
 * EW: Sure, I think I am often working out things that I later will write.  To the degree that I write in an essayistic way, or even in my novels, I work up opinions I try out and use later.

'''DS: One interview I did was with a young novelist named John Reed—
 * EW: I know him.  Cute boy.

'''DS: Yes, married, kids. But he feels a problem with creating a new generation of readers today is that the literary canon does not have many modern works at the grade school and high school level, and young readers feel disconnected from reading.
 * EW: I think he’s wrong; I don’t know where he is living.  If you go to high schools now—because I teach 18, 19, 20 year olds—they don’t know the classics.  All they know is The Color Purple and stuff like that.  They all know The Color Purple but they don’t know The Fairy-Queen.  They have never read Milton, but they have read Augusten Burroughs or David Sedaris.  So, he’s wrong.  [Chuckles]

'''DS: But what’s taught is not modern—
 * EW: No, it is!

'''DS: Augusten Burroughs is taught?
 * EW: Absolutely!  Absolutely!

'''DS: That would seem like racy material for grade school or high school.
 * EW: I don’t mean in Alabama; in America the curriculum is determined by each community, which is unlike every other country in the western world.  So, in Tuscaloosa they are not going to teach something racy, but in Darien, Connecticut they are.

On work as a gay writer
'''DS: Does it bother you to be considered a gay writer?
 * EW: Well there is a question I have asked many many times.  I think it would be unrealistic to say I’m not a gay writer.  I emerged with a gay literary movement—The Violet Quill—which was a group of gay writers who all started publishing in 1978, and I was labeled from the very beginning a gay writer.

'''DS: And you embrace that?
 * EW: Embrace is another thing, but it would be unrealistic to deny it or act like it is some terrible offense, because if I am known at all it is because of the idea of gay literature.  Sometimes you wish you could have a wider readership, but every writer wishes that.  More women and straight men, but we all wish we had a wider readership.  In America, especially, everything is niche marketing and identity politics.  That’s not true in England, so much, and it’s certainly not true in France.

'''DS: In England you have kids reading Afro-Caribbean literature because they don’t have a sense that it’s a “black thing”?
 * EW: Yes, that’s right.  For instance, most of the well known writers in England under 50 are former colonial people, whether it’s Ishiguro—he’s Japanese and that wasn’t part of the empire, but still—or David Hogue Davies.  Caryl Phillips, who is a black man from the islands who lives now in New York but is one of England’s most important writers.  Also Salman Rushdie.  In other words, the way we categorize people and dismiss them is not true of England because in fact the major winners of the Booker Prize over the last thirty years are people who would not have been allowed in a private men’s club in England 50 years ago.

'''DS: Do you see a generation that can assume the mantle for the Violet Quill or is there not a necessity for it?
 * EW: There’s not a necessity for it now, but there was then.  It’s always been hard to get gay books published, and it’s as hard as ever.  It’s very hard to get gay books published.

'''DS: Why?
 * EW: The market is very small.  Only 3% of all people are gay and if you take a diminishing dumbed-down reading public to begin with, and say you are only aiming for 3% of that market, that’s awfully small.  So gay novels if they are successful sell 5,000 copies.

'''DS: What is a gay novel?
 * EW: One that is marketed as gay.  Usually a picture of a cute boy on the cover.

'DS: Would Hollinghurst’s Swimming Pool Library'' be one?
 * EW: Well, he’s a cross-over writer.  He’s a little different because he did win the Booker Prize with The Line of Beauty, and he was the editor of The Times Literary Supplement, which is the most prestigious reviewing organism in the English-speaking world.  He has a dark brown voice and he went to Oxford and he knows everybody.  He’s admired by everybody.  London is such a different place because in America writers teach in different universities and they are scattered all across this huge country and they sometimes know each other, but not usually.  Whereas in England they are all journalists, they live in London, and they all know each other.  It’s a very small world, which is good and bad.  One of the good things is that if somebody is really talented like Hollinghurst and has accumulated a bastion of power like the TLS, he’ll have enormous impact, and everybody knows it.  Whereas here somebody like David Leavitt is teaching in Gainesville, Florida.  That’s pretty far off the beaten path even though he’s a wonderful writer.  His last book, The Indian Clerk, was reviewed on the front page of The New York Times book review very glowingly.  Nevertheless, it doesn’t sell and nobody cares.  It’s very hard.

'''DS: You think that’s because of a lack of a community of writers?
 * EW: I think there’s a number of things.  One of the things that is important for gay writers, gay publishers and gay academics is to try and develop a market.  You can see that with something like Harry Potter where everybody thought the children’s market had completely vanished and now it’s back in a huge way because of that one book.  I have a friend, Claire Robson who is a lesbian writer that lives in Vancouver.  Canada, being a semi-welfare state has a lot of money for public things.  She’s trying to develop older lesbian audiences, younger gay male audiences.  She’s organizing reading groups, study groups, autobiography writing groups.  All of this stuff that is paid for by the government.

'''DS: Earlier you were saying what makes a book a certain genre is a marketing function.
 * EW: Yes, but I think that what she is doing is trying to create readers who will then buy gay…I’m not saying all gay and lesbian books are cynically marketed.  There were a lot of books when I was young that weren’t marketed as gay books; books by Proust, Thomas Mann and so on.  Andre Gilde.  They had gay themes but the “gay novel” didn’t exist then.  The problem is we have an awfully lot of good gay writers and very few good gay readers.  I don’t know why that is, but it’s true.

'''DS: Who are some good gay writers?
 * EW: Vestal McIntyre, Patrick Ryan are just two.

On sex
'''DS: You said in an interview that the smartest people are the best sex—
 * EW: [Laughs]

'''DS: —what is sex to you?
 * EW: The most important thing in the world.  I had a sex partner who I thought was really great sex but one day he said to me, “I really enjoy playing basketball more than having sex,” and I was so offended.  I thought that was like somebody saying, “I’d rather go shopping than go to church.”  It seemed to be so trivializing of this sacred thing of sex that it was hard to see him again after that.  So what is it for me?  Something very transcendent and I turn my life upside down to have it as frequently as possible.  No, it’s not frequency, it’s quality that’s important.

'''DS: How can something repeated so often still be considered sacred?
 * EW: What about the mass?

'''DS: Do you only have sex once a week?
 * EW: They have mass every day.

'''DS: People don’t go to mass every day, typically.
 * EW: They can.

'''DS: They could.
 * EW: No, I’m having sex more often than once week.  It’s hard to defend the position logically, I just mean to me it’s important.

'''DS: Is that the main criterion for a partner?
 * EW: No.  I’ve lived with Michael for 12 years and I don’t think that has ever been the key issue between us.  He’s a writer, compatible and he’s one of the most interesting people I know.  He’s always unpredictable.

'''DS: You have an open relationship?
 * EW: Yes.

'''DS: Do you think that’s a necessity in order to have a successful relationship?
 * EW: I wouldn’t preach for anybody else; I mean, everybody’s different.  But for me, yes.

'''DS: Where do you tend to find your sexual partners?
 * EW: On-line, now.  Silverdaddies.com; daddyhunt.  That’s where you go if you’re older.  Or Manhunt and gay.com.  Or slavesformaster.  Those are all sites where I’ve met people.

'''DS: Are you a slave or a master?
 * EW: A slave, but I’m not much of one.

'''DS: Why are you a bad slave?
 * EW: I’m not into pain and it has to strike me just right or it starts to seem ridiculous.

'''DS: At what point does it start to seem ridiculous?
 * EW: Too much leather, bad grammar on the part of the master! [Laughs]

'''DS: [Laughs]
 * EW: Like, “Lay down” instead of “Lie down.”

'''DS: Are you always submissive?
 * EW: I have dominated, it’s just not as pleasurable.  When I was younger I had slaves, even for a whole year at a time.

'''DS: You had a slave relationship.
 * EW: Yes, for a year.

'''DS: What was that like?
 * EW: One day we were on acid down in Key West and I realized I didn’t even like him, so I broke up with him.  I thought it was okay to be doing it if I actually like or love him, but if I really have contempt for him, that’s no good.  It has to be an expression of love.

'''DS: What psychological issues come out in a relationship like that?
 * EW: Unrequited feelings for love from your father, often times.   Longings for passivity.  A lot of people have that.

'''DS: To give up the feeling they always have to be in control in their waking lives?
 * EW: I have a good friend who is a European novelist who was willing to literally hand over all of his belongings to this master, just signed over everything he owned to live in a cage the rest of his life.  It turned out to be a fraud to fleece him of his money.

'''DS: That must have been disappointing for him.
 * EW: It’s a good thing he discovered that in time, didn’t lose his money and didn’t live in a cage the rest of his life, because he’s actually a very interesting person with a very full life.

'''DS: What psychological issues did you work through in your slave-master relationships?
 * EW: Different ones.  If it’s not an on-going thing then you would get tired of it and drop it all together.  It’s not a very major part of my life.

'''DS: Did it used to be more so?
 * EW: Yes.  But it was also a fresher scene back then.  Now it feels like a very tired scene and I hate people in leather, I think that’s so stupid.

'''DS: Like they are wearing Halloween costumes?
 * EW: Yeah.

'''DS: As if the fashion never changes? It’s always the same chaps, the same harness…
 * EW: Yeah…yeah, that’s right.  One of the interesting things about Robert Mapplethorpe—who was a friend of mine and I have quite a few pictures here by him, including two of me—he had leathers made for him in Amsterdam with red and blue piping, fitting in an interesting way with different kinds of leather.  A patchwork effect without making it look silly.  He was very elegant.  They were attractive and sexy.

On incest in his family
'''DS: In an interview you said that you are known for the incestuous feelings that were in your family—
 * EW: [Laughs]

'''DS: —what advice would you give to couples pursuing an incestuous relationship?
 * EW: You mean like a father and daughter who want to have a love affair?

'''DS: Or a brother and sister.
 * EW: God, move to a more tolerant country, first of all.

'''DS: Do you think there is a problem with it?
 * EW: I think incest becomes more difficult if it’s intergenerational than if it’s in the same generation.  And it becomes more difficult if it crosses the sex barrier.  For instance, two brothers who have sex with each other when they are growing up, for instance—they’re 14 and 16—it is never a very big deal.  Whereas if a brother and sister have sex and are both teenagers, it is often traumatic, especially for the girl, and it will show up in her psychoanalysis later, and problems with her marriage, with frigidity and so on.  If it’s her father she is sleeping with, it becomes a very big problem for her psychological adjustment.

'''DS: Is that because there is an intrinsic problem with it, or because of societal reactions to it?
 * EW: I think that it probably comes to the same thing because in every society it’s a problem.  So whether it’s genetic or societal, I don’t know.  But it’s universal.  Anthropologists try to speculate why that would be.  Some people say that it has to do with the divisions of authority and power; for instance, if a daughter is sleeping with her father then her mother has no authority over her because the daughter has in a sense replaced the mother because she’s the ideal partner—she’s younger, prettier, whatever.  It screws up the whole family system.  It’s a very interesting subject.  But I think I’m right: two brothers, no big deal; two sisters, no big deal.  Brother-sister becomes a problem, or mother-son it becomes a huge problem.

'''DS: So you’d advise an incestuous couple not to pursue it?
 * EW: Oh, I don’t give advice! [Laughs]

'''DS: You had mentioned particular issues about a father may arise in a slave-master relationship. You were sexually attracted to your father, so do you think you worked through your own issues with him?
 * EW: Yes.

'''DS: Where do you think that attraction came from?
 * EW: I don’t know; I think it’s very hard to explain attraction.  If I’m attracted to you right now, why?  I don’t know why.

'''DS: But that’s something people could perhaps explain more readily than attraction to one's father.
 * EW: I don’t know; I wasn’t really raised by my father.  I lived apart from him and I would spend every summer with him, but not see him much during the year.  My parents were divorced from my age of seven on.  I think the incest taboo sets in and turns somebody off sexually with somebody they know very well and lives with.  I think with my father he was somebody who every eye in the family was focused on and he was a sort of a tyrant and nice-looking, the source of all power, money, happiness, and he was implacable and difficult.  He was always spoken of in sexual terms, in the sense he left our mother for a much younger woman who was very sexy but had nothing else going for her.  He was a famous womanizer.  And he slept with my sister!

'''DS: What you describe is power; are you still attracted to power?
 * EW: No.  I mean, my idea of power, but not everybody’s idea of power.  In other words, I wouldn’t want to go to bed with Bush…

'''DS: Would you let him blow you?
 * EW: No.

'''DS: Why not?
 * EW: I find him repulsive.  I wouldn’t even let a Republican blow me.  That does cut down on a number of people I guess—

'''DS: What did your father’s incestuous relationship with your sister do to you?
 * EW: I was envious of my sister.  I wished I had that kind of access to him.

'''DS: Did you try?
 * EW: Yeah.

'''DS: And he spurned you?
 * EW: No, it was so subtle he probably didn’t even know I was longing for him because, I mean, we’re talking about the 1950’s in Cincinnati, Ohio, or Texas.  He didn’t know I was gay until later and he would tell me he had just fired a man because he thought he might be gay, or at least he wasn’t married and he wore a ring.

'''DS: How would you respond?
 * EW: You couldn’t say anything.

'''DS: Did he ever know?
 * EW: About me?  Yes.  Fairly early on, when I was about 15.

'''DS: What was his reaction?
 * EW: He was horrified, because he thought it was my mother’s bad influence because I had led an overly sophisticated life with her.  He thought I should lead a simpler life and put in hours and hours of yard work and that would make me straight.

'''DS: Your mother was attracted to you, right?
 * EW: Or anybody that was around, I think?

'DS: [Laughs''] The old doorknob adage? [Laughs]
 * EW: [Laughs] Yeah. [Laughs]

'''DS: Do you think that played a role in your being gay?
 * EW: A classical Freudian explanation would be suffocating mother and absent father makes somebody gay.  I actually had both of those elements, but I don’t think that’s a universal formula for creating homosexuals.

'''DS: I interviewed an eminent psychoanalyst named Joseph Merlino and he said it’s a mixture of things—nature, nurture, both.
 * EW: You don’t try to explain heterosexuality and yet it’s extremely difficult to explain.

'''DS: How so?
 * EW: If you get beyond the simple biological fact that we want men to fuck women so we’ll have babies, that doesn’t explain the psychological dynamics of how men come to regard women as so attractive.  I think the way advertising works in our media and movies I think it would be make more sense if all men are heterosexual and all women are lesbians, because women are held up as being so attractive and so much the focus of sexual desire, that I think that would be more logical.  Especially when I was growing up.  You never saw a naked man except Indians in cowboy and Indian movies.  You never saw a bare-chested man.

'''DS: The courting rituals are similar between gays and straights.
 * EW: The courting rituals are very different, because heterosexual men spend a lot of time courting women before they get them; whereas gay men get them instantly if they are going to get them at all.  The most romantic moment with gay men—this is something Michel Foucault said, it’s not an original thought—he said the most romantic moment for a heterosexual man is the build-up to sex, and for gay men the most romantic moment is when you put your trick in a cab and you go back home alone thinking about it all.  [Laughs]

On American politics
'''DS: Who are you supporting for President?
 * EW: Nobody.  I guess I’ll vote for Clinton, but very reluctantly.  She’s more experienced and has had a lot of time to think about government and how to deal with Congress.  She’s learned from her own mistakes, and from her husband's mistakes, too.  I think he learned from his mistakes.  The way they had such a disaster with their health proposals, or their gay proposals for the army, I think they learned from that and she has benefited from all that.  She was a full partner.

'''DS: Would we benefit from having Bill Clinton back in the White House?
 * EW: He’s charismatic and a wonderful mind.  Since he’s been out of office he’s been involved in a lot of public welfare interests, whether it be international poverty or AIDS.  The Tsunami.  I would say he’s broadened his interests since he was in office.

'''DS: Nicolas Sarkozy: fascist or liberator?
 * EW: Neither, but he’s better than a lot of people thought he would be.  He’s appointed a lot of Socialists and even Communists to his government.  I think people feel he is not part of the Grandes Écoles system, even though I think he went to one, but he doesn’t seem quite as much a part of the establishment.

'''DS: So you have no issue with him?
 * EW: No, not at all.  Maybe I will, and we all thought we would, but he’s turned out to be better than that idiot Ségolène Royal with her frozen smile.

'''DS: How has the Iraq War affected you?’
 * EW: It’s very depressing.  Michael is more conservative than I am and he’ll get mad at me—
 * Michael: But it is depressing.  It’s very depressing.
 * EW: It’s depressing—this is where he’ll get mad at me—I think it makes it depressing to be an American.  Especially when you’re abroad, because most Europeans we know are very sophisticated in that they can separate an individual from his country’s politics better than most Americans can.  Remember everybody talking about Freedom Fries.
 * Michael: It’s all ridiculous.  I don’t get embarrassed being an American, but I definitely avoid going places where Americans aren’t popular.
 * EW: But aside from all that, just living here year after year when you have a government that you hate, and that is systematically destroying the fabric of our society, and just taking apart everything they can think of.  “Health care for children?  Veto that.  School system?  Let’s destroy that.”  Whatever you can think of.  “Prisoners rights?  Let’s create Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib.”  Everything!  I just sent a check today to the ACLU.  It’s really the time to be doing that.

'''DS: Nadine Strossen is such a believer. I guess you need to be a believer to be President of the ACLU. What trait do you deplore in yourself?
 * EW: It sounds ironic because I have been publishing recent years a book every year, but I actually feel I am lazy.  I’m very unfocused, so I guess I get things done because I’m broke all the time, so I have to do it for money.  Another trait I don’t like about myself is an “I’m right and your wrong” quality.  There’s a slight dictatorial side, probably because I’m a teacher and I’m given that authority based upon my position.  I can run roughshod over other people’s opinions and not really take enough time to tease out what they are really trying to say, what is valuable, or what I can learn from them even though I completely disagree with what they are saying.

'''DS: You have to choose whether to blow up China or India, and if you do not choose then they both go. They are roughly equal in population according to their last censuses; which do you choose?
 * EW: I think I would blow up China.  I majored in Chinese in college and I was a great admirer of traditional China, but I don’t really like modern China very much and I’ve never had a desire to go there.  I feel like whatever wisdom or culture or civilization they had they pretty much destroyed through the Cultural Revolution, paradoxically, in the Seventies.  I think that will end up being the worst thing that happened in the Twentieth Century, worse than the Holocaust.  It killed more people and it destroyed the fabric of their society more than anything.  India never really had anything comparable.  They had the British, they had the Raj, and that was pretty damn bad, I guess, but it was an ambiguous thing.  It preserved a lot of things and it destroyed others, but it consolidated power in India.  It had been so many different little kingdoms.

'''DS: So is China.
 * EW: Yeah, that’s right, although the Chinese empire is very old.  There is nothing comparable in India.

'''DS: It’s more cohesive now, but China, once the Communist Party loses its grip on power, it’s going to fall apart.
 * EW: I don’t think so.  Maybe Tibet.

'''DS: You have Muslim provinces, you have Tibet. You have problems in the south with the north. Hong Kong. You don’t think that there will be a domino effect that when one goes, the others will go?
 * EW: I don’t think so.  You know why?  China has been one country.  Obviously Tibet is a different problem.  Manchuria is a different problem.  Mongolia is a different problem.  But if you forget all those problems, and you just talk about the central provinces—which are immense—that’s always been one country for almost 4,000 years with an emperor ruling it. Starting with the Han Dynasty, which is about the time of Christ, with an elaborate civil service system.  That’s what Confucius was about.

'''DS: So the age of the end of the empire won’t touch China? It won’t be a Soviet Union?
 * EW: If you look at Russia and all those places, like Georgia and Uzbekistan, those are all different little countries and it was the Soviet Union that dragged them all together and when the Soviet Union croaked they all fell apart.  I think China traditionally was unified.

On his intimate relationships
'''DS: What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
 * EW: I think I felt it about three years ago.  I was dropped by a guy I was really in love with, and it took me back to my late twenties when that had last happened.  I didn’t even think I was capable of that kind of suffering anymore, but I just cried every day for a month and all the time.  I went to a shrink then, and he said, “I can’t even work with you, you’re so depressed.”

'''DS: Why did he drop you?
 * EW: He found a new lover and he discovered he wasn’t really a top, but a bottom.

'''DS: How does having a relationship like that fit in yours and Michael’s?
 * EW: Nobody seems to understand it very well, and I’m not sure we’ve even articulated it.  Michael has a full time boyfriend who is a German who is quite a bit younger than he is.  He’s a historian, he’s a PhD student in history.  And I have a fulltime boyfriend who is a PhD student at Harvard in philosophy.  We both like each other’s boyfriends.

'''DS: Do you think not articulating it is what makes it work?
 * EW: Yes.  We’re very very affectionate and we’re both bohemian.  Neither of us ever had an ideal of getting married and having a white picket fence, adopting a Korean girl or being respectable, or anything like that.  When we first met we both realized we are each sluts, so we cheerfully acknowledged that and went our way.  We’re in it for the long haul with each other.  Most couples, straight of gay—50% of all straight couples end in divorce—I think it would be even higher if people could afford to get divorced.  Partly the people who stay together are limited financially.  Anyway, I think that if you’re really in it for the long haul, you have to give each other a tremendously long leash.

'''DS: Do you always practice safe sex?
 * EW: I do.  Well, unless it’s somebody who is also positive.  If I’m positive, and somebody else is positive and he wants to bareback, that’s fine.

'''DS: But there’s different strains of the virus, correct?
 * EW: Or so they say.  I don’t think so.

'''DS: You’ve never known of anyone who has said, “Oh, now I have a different strain and none of the drugs are working.”
 * EW: No.  I think that’s something doctors told people because they were trying to scare the ones who are already positive and weren’t responsible towards their partners.  They were trying to give them a personal reason for practicing safe sex.  “Oh, your own health will deteriorate more if you don’t watch out.”  I think that’s bullshit.  I don’t always tell my partners I’m positive, but I always practice safe sex with somebody I don’t’ know and I just assume that’s enough.  If they ask, I always say the truth.

'''DS: What difficulties have you encountered physically from being HIV positive? Has it been a difficult row to hoe?
 * EW: No.  I found out I was positive in 1985, and I was probably positive already for five or six years at that point because I was very active sexually in the late seventies, early eighties.  I would go to the St. Mark’s baths, which was very close to where I lived, and get fucked 20 times in an evening, so why would I have not been positive then?  The first test became available in 1984, but I moved to Paris in late 1982 and I wasn’t really living near any place.  So when I had the test done in 1985 in Zurich, the results had to be sent to America to be analyzed; we had to wait three months to get the results.  That’s when I found out I was positive.  I only started taking meds a few years ago.

'''DS: Why did you start?
 * EW: My doctor advised me to because my counts had dropped below 500, or something.  They had always been around 700 for years and years.  Suddenly it seemed like they were drifting faster and faster down.  I thought if I took meds I would have more energy, and I did.  I used to take two naps a day.

On Edmund White
'''DS: How would you like to die if you could choose your own death?
 * EW: A heart attack in my sleep.  That’s the most beautiful death.  You’re not conscious of it, the pain, and you’re gone in a second.  It’s no fuss for anybody else, either.

'''DS: What about dying consciously makes you uncomfortable?
 * EW: Nothing, except that usually if you’re conscious you have a long, lingering disease.

'''DS: You could be hit by a train.
 * EW: That’s fine, but I that would be more painful than dying of a heart attack.  Maybe not, that might be good.  A lot of times when I’m in a storm in a plane, I think I wouldn’t mind if it goes down.

'''DS: Do you believe in a higher power?
 * EW: No, not at all.  I’m glad people do believe who are in the recovery programs.  I was an alcoholic—I guess you have to say I am an alcoholic—and stopped drinking in 1983 and I never went to AA or anything.  I was living in Europe where it was awfully hard to find AA in English, or even in French.  It just isn’t part of their mores.  It was very easy for me to stop.  It was impossible for me to moderate, and very easy to stop.  Same thing with smoking.  I smoked four packs a day for twenty-some years, and from one day to the next nothing.

'''DS: If you’re going to sin, you’re going to fuck the devil?
 * EW: [Laughs]  Well, I think I’m very compulsive.  So it’s not like I’m defiantly smoking four packs a day or defiantly drinking three bottles of wine, but it’s just what happens when I start doing those things.

'''DS: What’s your favorite curse word?
 * EW: I don’t curse very much and everybody agrees with that. Don’t you agree with that Michael?
 * Michael: His favorite curse word is fuck.  There’s a lot of fucking.

'''DS: Have you ever altered your opinion of somebody based upon their star sign?
 * EW: If they brought up their star sign that would alter my opinion of them. [Laughs]

'''DS: What would you find a bigger turn-off in bed:  somebody who was flatulent or somebody who spoke in a baby voice?
 * EW: A baby voice.  [Laughs]  I think because flatulence I guess I could see as part of normal human physiology.  It’s not an affectation if you fart.  If you talk in a baby voice it’s a deliberate affectation and I think affectations in general are repellent.

'''DS: Is that one especially repellent to you?
 * EW: It’s funny that you mention it because I have a character in my new book Hotel de Dream who is an androgyne, and it’s based upon a real person.  I wrote a book called memoirs of androgyne.  Not only did she want men to treat her—him—as a BABY, but he would give a blow job to anybody if they would say to him, “Isn’t this the cutest whittle baby that every did live,” and so on, and bounce him on their knee.  I suppose if somebody was really kinky and dirty and wanted to be powdered and burped I could get into it, because I tend to like things that are demented like that.  But if you were just in bed with a guy with a five o’clock shadow like you and all of a sudden he started going, “Goo goo goo goo” it would be a little alarming.

'''DS: What trait do you deplore in other people?
 * EW: Injustice.  It can be anything like if it’s the laundry man refusing to pay up to a little old lady, and he’s lost ten of her shirts and gives her some rigmarole and gives her forms to fill out…I’ll defend her.  I get really hot under the collar.  It’s not injustice done to me, it’s anybody.

'''DS: What do you value most in your friends.
 * EW: Loyalty is very important, but I’m very easy-going with people.  For instance, we have a friend who really was impossible recently, but I guess if I really like the person I see why he does these things and I’m not going to reproach him.  I don’t give advice and I don’t reproach people.

On Larry Kramer
'''DS: What role do you think you play in the gay community?
 * EW: I don’t think I’m very prominent in the gay community.  A typical Ed White moment was—I was one of the six founders of the Gay Men’s Health Crisis.  Last summer they had the 25th anniversary of the organization.  I went to the party because I was invited.  There are only three of us who are still alive of the six original founders.  Everybody was dressed in black, they were all in their thirties, they were all AIDS professionals, and nobody knew who I was.  I just wandered around completely by myself.  Hillary Clinton whizzed past me, looked at me in kind of a strange way as if she might know me, gave this very clever, very well-informed, very rehearsed talk, and whizzed out.  Then I looked in this dining room where I saw six hundred chairs where they would all be thanking each other and congratulating each other, and I thought, “Get me out of here!” and I left.  And nobody noticed.

'''DS: Do you have a relationship with Larry Kramer at all?
 * EW: We’re enemies.

'''DS: Why?
 * EW: We were friends and I think I stayed friends with him longer than anybody else, but even I finally gave way because he attacked me in print in the most vile and disgusting terms.

'''DS: What did he say?
 * EW: When I first moved back to America 10 years ago—
 * Michael: It was before that, the year before that.
 * EW: The year before.  I had a book that came out called The Farewell Symphony, which I think was maybe my most important book.  I sent Larry an early manuscript of it because I wanted his opinion of it.  All he said to me was, “Did you really have that much sex?” and I said, “Well, Larry, everybody did in the seventies except you.”
 * Michael: Although that’s not what he was saying in that documentary last week.
 * EW: Yeah, there was a documentary about Fire Island where he was talking about he, too, was part of the scene.  Which wasn’t true because he wasn’t; he’s too ugly.  [Chuckles]  Anyway, suddenly he decided to attack my book and me months before it came out in America in these really disgusting terms.  "Edmund White’s mouth is busier than his toilet—“
 * Michael: No it was your ass.  Your ass has been busier than a toilet seat.
 * EW: Oh, right, that’s right.  And all this stuff.
 * Michael: It’s kind of a mixed metaphor...
 * EW: Right, it doesn’t even make sense.  He’s an idiot.
 * Michael: But before that, he denounced you in front of a live audience, before it reached print.

'''DS: But up until then—before that, you had been…
 * EW: Yeah, we had been friendly-ish
 * Michael: Larry was resentful that he had gone to Paris in the middle of the crisis.
 * EW: And he was mad that I had written a biography of Jean Genet when every gay writer should be thinking about AIDS and only about AIDS.
 * Michael: He thought Ed had alighted himself out of the situation.  He doesn’t know what real writers are, because what they do is spend their time writing and not yelling in public.
 * EW: I only have an issue with him because he attacked my work at a time when I was very vulnerable.

'''DS: Why were you so vulnerable?
 * EW: I was just moving back to America and it was my biggest and best book, and it was a book about the AIDS crisis... [Sighs]
 * Michael: And you hadn’t published a novel in about ten years
 * EW: Yeah.
 * Michael: And he really did go in to attack mode at this conference in Key West, and sitting next to Ed at the table, hogging the microphone, and yelling and denouncing him to the audience and telling them, “Where are our Tolstoys?  Where are our Flauberts?”  I mean, as if he were anything close to that.  Using it as a platform to talk about his own novel, which he has been promising for such a long time.
 * EW: That was already ten, eleven years ago.
 * Michael: Yeah, he was about to give the world his Tolstoy.  And that summer he denounced Ed’s book in print, they published part of that novel—his novel—in A&U, Art & Understanding.  It was a big literary issue with Andrew Holleran and—
 * EW: --and his was just laughable.
 * Michael: His was like, “Nurse Fuckface turned to Doctor Cuntbrain—“  Literally!
 * EW: Names that were like out of Dickens.
 * Michael: But with tits, and—
 * EW: Vulgar.
 * Michael: Well, it was retarded.  It was not funny.  He’s not funny, is the problem.  If he could make that funny, which he could if he had a Monty Python kind of sensibility, but it was just embarrassing.  It was kind of gooey.  But of course nobody reacted like that because they like Larry because of his political dossier.  So, that’s just my little bit on the whole thing.  He’s done a lot of great stuff in terms of AIDS movement, patient rights and all that stuff.  That’s fine.  But he’s also kind of a smear artist.
 * EW: And everybody forgives him!  He’ll call Mathilde Krim, who is one of the most important people in the eighties in the fight against AIDS, and she’ll say she’s like Himmler.  Then she’ll come on television and they’ll ask, “Dr. Krim, what do you think of Larry Kramer comparing you to Himmler?” and she’ll say, “Oh, Larry, I love him!”  And that’s what they say.  They all love him.   I don’t.  I think he’s an asshole.


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Comments:List of stupidest laws in Britain revealed

This is arcticle is vapid and IMO unwanted. Prasuk 07:36, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

This is not news-worthy.

Freedom!

Unclear legal situation
This unclear legal situation looks like a surprise to me.Jaime Saldarriaga 17:19, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Obviously #3 doesn't belong on the list, if it doesn't exist.

Number 9 doesn't belong either. Although it is a little old fashioned, it still makes sense.

Cannabis prohibition should have been included, what could be more stupid than a law banning a plant that is safer than aspirin?

The UK equivalent of a Motor vehicle act, should also be included, as they should have been banned 100 years ago. How smart is it to let private motor vehicles take over your motorways, when they must be responsible for over half a million deaths in the UK by now. Trains, bicycles, pedal cabs, and cargo-bikes, could meet all your transportation needs with no tail-pipe emissions and only tiny fraction of the crash deaths.

WTF
WHAT this is a load of bull —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 212.121.193.253 (talk • contribs) 12:04, 25 January 2011

Comments from feedback form - "lol"
lol —212.219.229.11 (talk) 13:44, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Comments from feedback form - "this is hilarius"
this is hilarius —81.141.153.105 (talk) 21:47, 8 October 2012 (UTC)


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Talk:One killed in clashes over World War monument in Estonia

POV story
This story is biased to the Russian point of view. The monument is still in existence, and it was just relocated. Russian media has a notable anti-Estonian bias and tendency to write false information about the events in Estonia. Thus, on news concerning Estonia, Russian media outlets should not be considered as a verifiable source and I would suggest to refrain from using Russian media coverage on Estonian events because those are biased and POV pushed and participating in propaganda attacks. Tarmo Tanilsoo 07:53, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks for pointing that out. If you spot any specific errors in the article, let us know so we can issue a correction on them.--Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 18:50, 8 November 2007 (UTC)


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Severe weather warnings issued in UK

November 8, 2007 A 1.5m tidal surge is expected tonight in the United Kingdom and could lead to flooding on the Kent coast, according to the UK Met Office. The surge is expected to cause "severe" flooding and the Thames Barrier was closed at 2000 UTC. The Environment Agency have said that there is "extreme danger to life and property" and have evacuated 200 people on the coast. 1,300 properties are thought to be in the affected area.

The Environment agency representative said that they would have extra staff available to inform the public of the risks but are also asking people to check that others are aware of the potential risks, especially to the elderly.

The surge has been caused by the high wind speeds of over 80 miles per hour, and could be over hurricane force, high tides and low pressure over the North Sea. There are currently 42 flood warnings of various degrees, eight of which are rated severe.

North Sea oil platforms are being evacuated in advance of the storm. BP is expecting to shut down the production on its North Sea oil platforms on Thursday. At the same time, Conoco Inc. has announced, that they will evacuate around 500 staff oil from platforms at the Ekofisk oil field.

The METAR reports from Ekofisk Oil Platform are indicating continuously intensifying winds. At 11:50 UTC on Thursday, wind gusts of 57 knots were reported

title: Severe weather warnings issued in UK


text:
Wikinews:CommonsTicker/20071108

8 November

title: Wikinews:CommonsTicker/20071108


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Talk:List of stupidest laws in Britain revealed

I have a source that confirms #3 as false, #2 is probably also false since there is nothing in the laws of treason that could be interpreted as such. I don't really understand what's meant by #8. #10 is a bit misleading - it's absolutly not legal to murder someone under these circumstances, just because an ancient piece of unrepealed legislation exists doesn't mean it's the law, more recent statues overrule it.

This poorly researched list has just been passed around news agencies with very few of them bothering to do any research, perhaps we can do a little better. Darksun 11:42, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

The opening paragraph of this article looks like it was written at 2 or 3 different times, and I'm having a lot of trouble figuring out what it means. I think the fact that some of these are urban legends shouldn't undermine the article, as it never purports to be a list of accurate laws. It is simply a reporting of a poll done by a TV station. It is, however, difficult to say for sure what happened on the TV show due to the first paragraph :-\

Sure we can try to do better. If you have sources that think #2 and #3 are false, then lets see them. Kingjeff 15:53, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

I've unpublished it. We're not going to uncritically repeat some list of unconfirmed urban legends and rumors. There's a minimal quality we should strive for which isn't just repeating this sort of thing. We should republish when we have a better idea which are "true" and how "true" they are. JoshuaZ 16:38, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

editprotected - all links in the sources section are broken
editprotected - all links in the sources section are broken
 * At the time the article was written, presumably all the sources were working. This article is now archived. The news is old. Sources that no longer work aren't removed and replaced with new ones. DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 16:05, 13 December 2012 (UTC)


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User talk:Tonywalter22

Article added by you
Hi, Analsex is not a news item and so has been tagged for deletion. Wikinews is a project devoted to writing news articles. If you want more information feel free to look at Introduction. If you have any questions feel free to leave them on my talk page. JoshuaZ 13:07, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

title: User talk:Tonywalter22


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User:Zir/draft

English Heritage recommends listing BBC TV Centre

http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/server/show/ConWebDoc.14079

=
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The Guardian Newspaper today reports that the sale of the BBC subsidiary BBC Resources Ltd., has cost £3.4m in consultants fees - almost £1m more than the £2.3m trading profit the commercial division is estimated to have made for the last financial year. This loss was released by the BBC following a freedom of information request.

Fourteen months after advisers were appointed to try to sell BBC Resources Ltd., only one of the three business units has been sold - its Outside Broadcast division to Satellite Information Services Limited, for an estimated £20m.

The sale of the BBC subsidiary BBC Resources Ltd., has hit a hurdle after it emerged that the BBC could be left with a loss of up to £15 million on the deal. The cost of transferring the pensions of BBC Resources staff from the BBC pension scheme to its new owners could be up to £50 million according to a Guardian Newspaper report.

Managers from the division will meet with union representatives from BECTU on Monday to discuss this and related sale issues. BECTU general secretary, Gerry Morrissey is quoted as saying: "If the BBC gets less than £50 million for BBC Resources then how can it fulfil its duty of care to licence fee payers?"

It is believed that the BBC had hoped that a surplus in its pension fund could be used to bridge the possible £50 million gap — but the trustees of the fund have said "no". A BBC source said: "This is being discussed at the highest level".

Since April 2004 members of the BBC pension scheme have seen their contributions into it increase regularly, the BBC — like many other employers — having reduced its contribution (to 4.5% of payroll) over a ten year period when the stock market was booming in the 1990s.

The Guardian is seen as a reliable source on BBC matters, having reported the proposed sale of BBC Television Centre back in January 2007, with the formal announcement finally being made by BBC Director General Mark Thompson on October 18, 2007.

Background to the Resources sale
The Resources business-to-business unit was formed in 1998 and operates television studios, post-production and outside broadcast facilities for it's parent share-holding company, the BBC. It does not own any studios or premises, its assets being staff and equipment.

Advertised for sale on 16th August in the Financial Times, The Times and Broadcast and last year making profits of £5.2 million with a revenue of £126 million, the disposal — led by Ernst & Young — invited expressions of interest for the whole division or for each of its three operations separately. The BBC has yet to release the names of the short-listed companies.

BBC Resources was the first of the BBC's commercial business-to-business divisions to be set up as a limited company and will be the last to be sold, the BBC having previously divested itself of BBC Technology and BBC Broadcast — BBC Worldwide, formerly BBC Enterprises, will remain in-house as it earns revenue from the archive, media and licencing of products — in the year to 31 March 2007 Worldwide had a turnover of £810.4 million, generating profits of £111 million.

The BBC wants to use any money raised to be put into international commercial expansion and content, most probably through Worldwide.

It had been intended to float Resources back in 2005, but this was postponed for two years following strike action and ACAS talks in June 2005 — the BBC giving an undertaking that there would be no preparations made to sell the company until January 2007, and no sale allowed before July of this year. The current time-scale would see its disposal by the end of the current financial year in March 2008.

BBC Outside Broadcasts
The division — part of the BBC's commercial subsidiary, BBC Resources Ltd — owns a fleet of 15 television production units plus sound, support and communications vehicles (making a total fleet of over 90) and is based in self-contained premises in Langley, three miles north-west of Heathrow. These units cover events ranging from music festivals and state occasions, to Wimbledon and World Cup football.

BBC Studios
On 7th March 2008 the surprise announcement was made that the studios operation — employing around 350 staff at Television Centre and Elstree — would be "retained by the Corporation as a commercial business" after failing to find a buyer.

BBC Post Production
The fate of this third business has yet to be announced with the BBC continuing negotiations with the preferred bidder "understood to be a company based in west London".

BBC Costume and Wigs
Was not included in the privatisation — in early October 2007 it was announced that the business was to close within six months and the entire stock sold as a complete collection. The sale fell through, and on 14th February 2008 the department ceased trading, with a BBC spokeswoman adding that "the arrangements [the corporation] was pursuing have not worked out and BBC Resources is currently inviting interested parties to consider making an offer to purchase."

BBC Costume and Wigs — which had been trading as part of BBC Studios — was the second largest collection of its kind in the UK, after the leading suppliers Angels The Costumiers.

Background to the Resources sale
The Resources business-to-business unit was formed in 1998 and operates television studios, post-production and outside broadcast facilities for it's parent share-holding company, the BBC. It does not own any studios or premises, its assets being equipment and staff (approximately 960 plus 165 administration staff).

Advertised for sale on 16th August 2007 in the Financial Times, The Times and Broadcast and in 2006-07 making profits of £5.2 million with a revenue of £126 million, the disposal — led by Ernst & Young — invited expressions of interest for the whole division or for each of its three operations separately. The BBC has yet to release the name of the preferred bidder for BBC Post Production.

BBC Resources was the first of the BBC's commercial business-to-business divisions to be set up as a limited company and is the last to be sold, the BBC having previously divested itself of BBC Technology and BBC Broadcast. BBC Enterprises, now known as BBC Worldwide, remained in-house as now does BBC Studios.

It had been intended to float Resources back in 2005, but this was postponed for two years following strike action and ACAS talks in June 2005 — the BBC giving an undertaking that there would be no preparations made to sell the company until January 2007, and no sale allowed before July 2007. It had been hoped to dispose of all three divisions by the end of this month.

title: User:Zir/draft


text:
Major protests in Venezuela over proposed constitutional changes

November 9, 2007 On Wednesday, November 7, 2007, tens of thousands of Venezuelans participated in a march in Caracas to protest President Hugo Chávez's efforts to change the Constitution of Venezuela, which would remove any limits on presidential terms, allow the president to control the Central Bank of Venezuela and enable him to create new provinces governed by his own appointees.

A group of students who had participated in the march were fired upon by masked gunmen as they returned to their university campus in Caracas. "If we do not take action now, we will be condemned to live without democracy under a communist dictator," said a flyer distributed to students.

Chávez supporters were not silent however: "If you light the fuse, be prepared to put it out, because if you don't, we will give you a beating," said one on state television.

"We will not fall into the trap," said Eleazar Narvaez, head of Central University of Venezuela. "The weapons we use are ideas, not guns."

"Don't allow Venezuela to go down a path that nobody wants to cross," student leader Freddy Guevara told Globovisión.

Protests also occurred in six other cities, and there were violent clashes between students and throwing rocks, and police shooting plastic bullets. Demonstrations occurred in the cities of Mérida, Maracaibo, Puerto la Cruz, San Cristóbal, Barquisimeto and Valencia on Wednesday.

Clashes grew with dozens of students surrounding a building where gunmen were hiding. Armed men arrived later, and chased the students away. Government officials blamed the media for inciting disorder.

Chávez is seeking to enact a number of controversial reforms, but is seeking to submit them for a public approval via a national referendum on December 2. There are concerns that the protests could disrupt the arrangements for the referendum.


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Albanian group claims responsibility for Macedonia clashes

November 8, 2007 A group, calling itself the Political-Military Council of the Kosovo Liberation Army (UCK) says it was behind yesterday's armed clash with Macedonian police forces which left at least six dead.

In a statement, the organization claims that its members, formerly of the “Albanian Territorial Liberation Army“, had been "forced to assemble a regular military unit in order to protect the endangered Albanian people, and every inch of Albanian territory.“

This Thursday, the situation in the Tetovo region village, the scene of yesterday's battle, is calm.


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Comments:Albanian group claims responsibility for Macedonia clashes

United Nations should have something to do about this fact. Shouldn´t it?. Jaime Saldarriaga —Preceding comment was added at 15:34, 8 November 2007

UN
The UN and the EU should stop supporting the terrorist, drug-dealing Albania in everything. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 178.148.152.156 (talk • contribs) 22:01, 8 September 2017 (UTC)


text:
Talk:Edmund White on writing, incest, life and Larry Kramer

Original Reporting notes
In person interview conducted in New York City at White's apartment on October 12, 2007. --David Shankbone 15:40, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Parts requiring cleanup

 * Carl Phillips is a black man from the islands who lives now in New York but is one of England’s most important writers; Salman Rushdie. - That doesn't seem to make sense. --Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 22:03, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
 * He was rambling...listing names of people. --David Shankbone 22:19, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Great interview, but one minor quibble. This sentence:

"To the casual reader, they may find it disquieting that someone like his father existed in 1950's America..."

is really inelegant. What is the "to" doing in it? And who is the "they"? It should read: "The casual reader may find it disquieting..."
 * As a general rule we do not edit articles for grammar more than a week after they are published. (With the idea that older articles should serve as a historical record. See Archive conventions) This article was published 2 years ago. Bawolff ☺☻ 04:45, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

White says "If you go to high schools now—because I teach 18, 19, 20 year olds—they don’t know the classics. All they know is The Color Purple and stuff like that. They all know The Color Purple but they don’t know The Fairy-Queen."

The latter work White refers to is The Faerie Queene, a poem by Edmund Spenser, not The Fairy Queen, a musical work by Henry Purcell.