Cole's Notes - The Sunday Journalist

Vote for Jessica! who is truly deserving of being the Inked cover girl. Vote for Her - NOW! Photo by  Quinn Teechma Photography What was your first tattoo? Obligatory 18-year-old tramp stamp that has since been covered! My favourites have to be my back tattoo for my daughter and the large thigh piece I had done for my mother that passed away. Is it true that getting tattoos is addictive? Absolutely. So many plans for more. If you were voted Inked Magazine's cover girl, what would you do with $25,000? Photo by Quinn Teechma Photography I would definitely take my daughter on a wicked Disneyland vacation. More tattoos obviously, and then do the adulting thing and put the rest into my kids' college fund. Vote for Jessica HERE

February 6, 2020 Islam's Hidden Role in the Transatlantic Slave Trade By  Raymond Ibrahim From its inception, Islam's history with the West has been one of  unwavering antagonism and seismic clashes , often initiated by the former.  By the standards of history, nothing between the two civilizations is  as well documented as this long war .  Accordingly, for more than a millennium, both educated and not so educated Europeans knew — the latter perhaps instinctively — that Islam was a militant creed that for centuries attacked and committed atrocities in their homelands, all in the name of "holy war," or  jihad . These facts have been radically "updated" in recent times.  According to the dominant narrative — as upheld by mainstream media and Hollywood, pundits and politicians, academics and "experts" of all stripes — Islam was historically progressive and peaceful, whereas premodern Europe was fanatical and predatory. ...

On being a "Retired" Journalist So here it is 2020 - I got out of 2019 with minimal damage. As you can tell - there's wasn't much going on on in 2019 for my Blogging. I did (and still do) most of my posting on Facebook. Both Quotes of the day and Column of the day are part of what I have been doing as a hobbyist communication and content creation blogger. But I have been spending more time reading and cross-posting than creating.  Passing on other people's writing rather than creating my own. I was trying to build an audience and connect to more folks as well. While it did give me a more significant following and audience than posting in the Cole's Notes Blog was doing I was doing it it was the lazy man way by using my iPhone to curate and post on Twitter and Facebook. Also, I linked the Blog to my  Cooper's place page on Facebook and G+. Well, for 2020, I'm updating all this stuff to cut back on the Social Media to spend more time doing...

The Sunday Comic Page Perhaps this marks me as an old coot, but I miss the old Sunday Comic pages from the local newspaper.  There are always websites to serve up comics and it is a way for cartoonists to reach audiences - but the Sunday comic was always a reason to sit back with the paper and a cup of coffee and relax on a Sunday. Somehow it doesn't translate very well to the Internet Journalism of today. Jeff MacNelly's Shoe I've always loved this strip - I identify with Cosmo Fishhawk. I've had a few mornings like this Pluggers Now a days the Sunday comic is on an website - one of my favorites is Pluggers. Today on Pluggers - Comics by Gary Brookins - GoComics The First Pluggers from April 2001

Journalism still has power. But not the way you'd hope. by Sam Thie lman Tow editor at the Columbia Journalism Review. PETE HEGSETH, THE FOX NEWS PERSONALITY, Iraq War veteran, and a one-time guard at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, often receives compliments for his commentary on Fox & Friends, the popular morning show Hegseth frequently guest-hosts, from President Trump. Hegseth was briefly considered by Trump to head the Department of Veterans Affairs. Instead, he has used his platform on the president’s favourite show—and access to the man himself—to run the kind of journalistic campaign that used, more usually, to be pointed at water contamination in Flint, Michigan or public corruption in Bell, California. It has centered on the cases of three men accused or convicted of murder while deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan: Eddie Gallagher, Clint Lorance, and Matt Golsteyn. Hegseth’s attitude was that the men accused had done nothing less noble than falter sligh...

Quillette – Bill Frezza Build Your Own Intellectual Oasis Jan 5, 2020 at 7:12 AM Two years ago I started an experiment I would like to recommend to you. At the urging of my best friend, concerned not just about my happiness but my mental health, I went dark. Perhaps if enough people give this a try it could help pull our troubled culture out of its downward spiral. What do I mean by going dark? I've enjoyed a four-decade long career as an engineer, entrepreneur, and venture capital investor working with many others to help build the digital world in which we now live. As the years passed I became more of an "activist," devoting increasing amounts of time, money, and attention to various issues and causes impacting the body politic.  For 25 years I wrote regular opinion columns for publications like Network Computing and Communications Week, back in the pre-web days, transitioning to Forbes.com , the Huffington Post , RealClear Markets , the Daily...

Quote of the Day "... the biggest obstacles to an effective climate policy are no longer the climate "skeptics" who stubbornly deny that there's a problem in the first place, but the activists who can only accept the half-baked "solutions" that fit their preconceived ideology." At the root of our climate problem, writes Pope Francis in his ecological encyclical  Laudato Si , lies our human pride and arrogance: “The misuse of creation begins when we no longer recognize any higher instance than ourselves, when we see nothing else but ourselves.” Coming from a Catholic Pope, such sentiments are hardly surprising. For centuries, Christians thinkers have railed against pride as the first and worst among the seven deadly sins. But Francis is far from alone in his view. Many climate activists today, even though they don’t necessarily believe in a personal deity, share Francis’ diagnosis of our environmental worries. They too believe that our climate ...