Wouldn't it be a terrible, tragic, obscene irony if, in responding ... to these terrible, terrorist attacks, we forsook the very things that we believed had been assaulted.
-Prime Minister John Howard 17 September 2001

Paranoia in The Lucky Country The Australian way of life

The Antipodean way of life - relaxed, informal, welcoming - has been lost after the Bali bombings and in the shadow of international terrorism. We will also become less tolerant, less inclusive of other people and the community will turn in on itself.
· Ways of Terror [SMH]
· Ways of Nervousness [SMH]

Politics Michael Moore Live, and Kicking

At Times of Crisis be true to yourself, do the right thing every now and then and don't believe what the politicians tell you. Still, you needn’t be as optimistic or as persistent as Moore to believe that this advice might improve a world that could use considerable doses of improvement.
· On the use and abuse of Reality [Pop Politics]
· On the use and abuse of Fantasy [Antidotal]

Political Pigeonholing

Political Temperament matrix: the vertical axis tells whether you believe that people left to their own devices are basically good or bad, while the horizontal axis indicates how much you think people are responsible for their own actions.
· Good and Bad of Political Animal [Cal Pundit]

I keep reading things political like this Strange Lotts of Archers: Major Actors

Go read Charles Kuffner on former Texas Commissioner of Health William 'Reyn' Archer. I'm glad Charles took the time to look up Google and put this together. Makes you wonder why the Chron didn't fill in the blanks a bit more. Note how long it took for Bush to finally abandon Reyn Archer, and that it took a lawsuit to do it. Archer was in a much less visible role than Trent Lott, but by the same token he was more closely connected to him.
Calendar year 2002 saw a steady stream of high-profile scandals, including improper fundraising activities in the mayor's office, the Democratic primary petition fraud, the bankruptcy of Greater Southeast Community Hospital due to financial shenanigans by its owners, and now the unfolding story of the alleged embezzlement of millions of dollars in Teachers' Union funds. A constant throughout all of these improprieties is, of course, Anthony Williams's association with most of the scandals' major actors.
· Act of Arching [Off the Cuff]
· The State of Corruption [Washington Post]

Life Mysteries Politics is always a fruitful source of mystery.

Life is full of little mysteries and 2002 has thrown up its fair share of them. Here are several that intrigue me. Science has taught us that superstition is just a load of mumbo jumbo. Even so, we carry on with an irrational array of rituals and practices to keep a step ahead of fate. Touch wood? Why bother when we know it makes no difference?
· Intrique & Irony [SMH]
· Superstition provides a sense of control - if an illusory one [Guardian UK]

Music Some guilty pleasures aren't your fault.

Some guilty pleasures aren't your fault. Without sounding overly lefty-paranoid, the corporate mass media does everything it can to plant some songs deep in your skull, where your devoid-of-taste subconscious is powerless against catchiness in any form. This is why you'll hum along with Nelly's Air Force Ones, no matter how silly you think it is for grown men to sing about shoe shopping. Even if you're repulsed by the song, some part of your subconscious (Freud called it the death drive) can get your brain pumping The Macarena like your own personal shitty jukebox. (Speaking of corporate evil and The Macarena, Michelina's using that damn song in its ads may rank as one of the most cynical campaigns of all time, because no one on earth likes the fucking Macarena -- the tune is analogous to those ear slugs in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan).

Guilty pleasures can also come from your early childhood, back when your puddinglike brain wasn't developed enough to know that you were listening to crap (Mama, play 'Knock Three Times' again). It's a mystery of the human condition why so many of our adult preferences were formed at the age when we liked to eat paste (although it does help explain Creed). Criticism accomplishes something by allowing people to think about the cultural side of music.
· Gulity Pleasure [River Front]
· Prick Up Your Ears [The Nation]
· The Power of Music [The Nation]

Literary Loneliness Surrounded by Strangeness

In How to Be Alone, a hit-or-miss compilation of 13 magazine essays, Jonathan Franzen is obviously earnest in his belief in the redemptive power of great literature. Too earnest.
· How To Be Alone [Via Pop Politics]
· How To read the unfinished manuscript for Harry Potter book over the phone for an American girl who was dying of cancer. [Reuters]

Internet Much ado about blogging: Thinkers and Linkers

Blogging is democracy at it finest. At best, it creates a dramatic and dynamic exchange of information and ideas ... at worst, it creates atmosphere for fisking and blairing and makes many lawyers, accountants, professors look foolish. Once upon a time, bloggers were a select few thousand who blogged in oblivion. Terrorism changed that. Over 500,000 people from all over the democratic world now blog. Mainstream journalists ignore blogs at their peril. A well-known journalist blogger summed it up by saying “we can fact-czech your *^* (butt). Bloggers are brave, leaving themselves open to all kinds of bashing. Blogging is no longer limited to fisking - right-wing bloggers & journalists bashing left-wing journalists and visa versa (sic) and everything in between.
Talk radio, webzines, list servers, message boards and now blog sites have one thing in common. They are interactive. They let people talk back. Consequently, it is physically impossible for new media to do what old media did – that is, to shove unpopular ideas down peoples’ throats and pretend that the audience likes it. Ah, but that’s the beauty of blogging. The system is self-selecting. The worst blogs sink to the bottom. No one sees them. The best blogs rise to the top, borne aloft by the sheer number of bloggers who link to them. A blog will either contain few, long, well-written, time consuming posts, or many posts with a link to a "thinker" post or a news story, sometimes with a bit of comment.
· Fa(c)t Czechers [PLA]
· Well-formed (or even a half-baked) opinion [Richard Poe]
· I've linked to you; will you link to me? [USS Clueless]

Blogs and Books are written to be read, right?

A woman approaches the counter at a bookstore.
The guy behind the counter smiles and says, May I help you?

Yes. I bought this book last week, she said. "And I wasn't able to put it down for a moment.

The clerk replied, It was that good?

It had everything, the woman exclaimed. It had laughter. It had tears. It had drama, and comedy, and angst. This book explored every aspect of the human condition.
· Writing on the Web [Burning Bird]
· Double Dragon [Freezing Fish]