Ouch. My heart hurts. Given that I was just about to step onto
a plane from Seattle to Los Angeles this morning when the FAA
shut down the airport, today's events struck just a bit close
to home.

If we can get something positive out of this (and stop me if I
am stretching a bit), it seems to me that the work of
[syndication] can help in some small way to make the world
a better place. For what we are doing is spreading news and
hopefully truth.

If a person gets their news from just one place, they have one
perspective. When I lived in Maryland, way too many people
thought that The Washington Post was the gospel truth. But the
work that we've done with syndicated headlines tells us
otherwise. There are many aspects to the truth, and by allowing
our customers to see more than one viewpoint perhaps we can help
them to be informed citizens and not slaves to single-sourced
media. I know for sure that I've received a lot of feedback from
my users telling me that they've been able to see the world from
many new and informative vantage points. This is what I am
talking about.

Clearly those in impoverished, isolated towns are not going to
directly benefit from anything that we are doing now. Clearly
the information on some web site will not help oppressed masses
overthrow a despotic regime.

But every little bit has to help. And I can't help but think
that what we've done so far, and what we can do in the next 6
months, might help in some way.

I sincerely don't believe I am stretching the truth when I claim
that what we do will result in people having access to more and
better information, and that they will be able to make better
decisions and to reject sole-sourced dogmatic views. I see no
harm in that, and I see a lot of good. There's probably no way
to measure our progress, and I doubt that we will ever stop a
war or a terrorist attack. Let's do what we can, though.

Jeff;

Jeff Barr - Vertex Development - (mailto:jeff@...)
Address: 4610 191st Place NE. Redmond, WA 98074;
Phone: Office: 425-868-4919 - Home: 425-836-5624
IM: MSN: jeffscottbarr@...; AIM: jeffscottbarr
Homepage: http://www.vertexdev.com/~jeff
Resume: http://www.vertexdev.com/~jeff/resume.html