I decided to google "toxin antonym" to find another word besides "medication" (which seems too long and grandiloquent). The answers are so overloaded with ads and come-ons that (at least on this front), the Web is edging toward uselessness. So I picked up Roget to get an answer. No luck so far.
Back in the day, there were limits on the number of ad-minutes per hour of TV. Those seem to have gone away. Instead, it seems to be a matter of us choosing to watch TV with few or no ads (the old networks and HBO) or those with many ads (basic cable), assuming that we don't use ads as a form of downers. (Some people are addicted to infomercials. Worse, many of the ads are more entertaining than some of the crap they call entertainment.) This competition -- plus the use of TIVO and other DVRs -- seems to keep the ads somewhat in check. Product placement is of course undermining this "solution," but so far the consumers seem to be winning (if they can afford DVRs). So far, there doesn't seem to be any solution at all on line, so it looks like we might be driven to read physical books and magazines, where the ads are much easier to avoid. -- Jim Devine / If you're going to support the lesser of two evils, at the very least you should know the nature of that evil. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
