People A salute to Kurt Vonnegut at 80

God bless you, Mr. Vonnegut. Even if you don not believe in Him. And happy birthday. You're going to be 80 on Tuesday. So it goes.
Hard to believe. Hell of a career.
Some of us thank you for those short sentences, (see also Media Dragon’s mission and vision) those short paragraphs, those short ideas that showed American fiction could be smart, critical, wild, fantastic and intellectual without being Henry James.
· Eden Express [Philly]

Vonnegut is one of those people who has a resume so chocked full of impressive ups and downs that it leaves one wondering how he manages to fit it all into one life.

Politics Pocket politics
Ever wondered why politicians did not get hot under the collar over the cash for comment scandal? You know, the one where Alan Jones and John Laws got caught red-handed selling their opinions to the highest bidder.
· Voices of Revolt [WEB DIARY by Margo Kingston November 14 2002]

Susan Richards, the editor-at-large is a fearless woman. Democracy, after all, is like woman's work it is never done ... OpenDemocracy. We're on the streets because billions of poor are voiceless. The market's invisible hand won't bring economic justice to the world, but maybe protest will. Triple As, stripped for action ... the three women address the issues in Sydney. Anna, Amy and Anne-Lise escape conviction.

Media Dateline' reporter: Remain critical of media
What was absent (from election coverage) was there was no commentator on the specifics on the programs each party had. It was purely a discussion of tactics between the president and the Democrats. With the media and political system, it's all marketing. The media is dependent on those systems for that revenue, and that is a disturbing trend.
· Civic change lies in the citizens of America. [NorthWestern]

Literature Home-grown shows facing scriptwriters' block
Australian TV producers have been warned that if pay for writers doesn't go up, the quality of writing will decline. Compared with their counterparts in Britain and the United States, where good writing was rewarded, Australians had to write three times as much to earn an equivalent salary. Most Australian writers earn about $15,000 for an hour of television drama, and nothing from a repeated episode. By contrast, British writers received at least $56,000 for an hour of drama, with the same amount paid each time the episode was shown again. American writers typically earned a base salary of more than $178,000 a week.
· Triple Slavery [The Age (Melbourne) 11/14/02]

History gets a life

Once, when academic history was very young — in the 1850s — biography and history co-existed in harmony. But the fundamental difference between the two led to rivalries. Pronouncements by men such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Thomas Carlyle, that the history of the world is but the biography of great men, presented historians with a bête noire; one they have been hunting down ever since. Until this year, to the best of my knowledge, there was not a history department in the world which offered a degree in biography.
· Footsteps: Adventures of a Romantic Biographer. [Times on Line ]

Bohemian Stoppard

For me, the highlight of last night in Brisbane were the after-dinner introductions to the new party and the new beer site.
Politics has become so debased that it will be necessary to reach beyond the Westminster village for the FCP's founding leader. Sir Tom Stoppard, our greatest playwright, who spoke so brilliantly at The Daily Telegraph's Free Country conference in May, would be the ideal candidate.
· Mixed Bohemians in Two-party pub [Telegraph, London]