Good News Fountain of Bad Attitude.

Not to sound too negative about it, but there's yet more evidence that this power-of-positive-thinking idea may not be all it's cracked up to be. Cheerful cancer sufferers survive no longer than cranky ones. Election Prophets, Snipers, terrorists, bleeding markets: it’s time for the power of negative thinking.

Literature STILL NOT SWEATING

FIVE YEARS AGO, Richard Carlson was just a regular guy living in Martinez, working several jobs to provide for his young family.

Today, he's a household name, with 22 million books in print in 126 countries, and sales that continue to tick upward, all thanks to one ingeniously simple concept.

Sweating for peanuts: Australia

The Australia Council has a program for ‘eminent’ writers to rescue them from financial hardship. The program gives $80,000 each to authors who have published at least four works, regardless of age, and must 'dazzle' the board with their literary merit, critical recognition and contribution to Australian literature. Taking leaves out of Canadian Can Do literary culture.

Our Country, Our Culture

The days are over when publishers took chances on good writers who were unknown or difficult in order to bring distinction to a list dominated by bestsellers. The arts are under siege from three horsemen of what may be eventually seen as a cultural apocalypse ... From the right gallops the horse of moral correctness, determined to purify the arts according to preconceived standards of decency. From the left canters the horseman of political correctness, committed to laundering the arts of any perceived threat to racial, sexual, or ethnic sensitivities. And from the middle trots the horseman of aesthetic correctness, demanding that the arts conform to traditional, often conventional, rules of creative procedure.

Literary submissions of lightish note.