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Few happy days are entirely unspotted by melancholy. I just had an exceptionally fine one, and my mailbox overflowed with congratulations by the time it was done, but I couldn’t help thinking of departed friends with whom I would have rejoiced to share my good news, and how they would have rejoiced to hear it. As I remembered them, I thought of the stark confession Dr. Johnson made in the preface to his Dictionary: “I have protracted my work till most of those whom I wished to please have sunk into the grave, and success and miscarriage are empty sounds: I therefore dismiss it with frigid tranquillity, having little to fear or hope from censure or from praise.”

Tim Dunlop and his liberal views: Blogosphere on the road to being amusingly vexatious

The Blog, The Press, The Media: Here's To The Losers
Study the front page of a major paper some time; huge portions of the content are all about keeping score. Who's a billionaire now? Whose movie flopped? Who's being sued? Who lost everything?
In politics, one man's win creates many losers. And America knows what to do with those pathetic figures as they lie there prostrate and broken. Kick 'em hard.
Here's Slate's Fred Kaplan on the departing secretary of State:
And so the other shoe has dropped on the sad career of Colin Powell. Here is a man who enjoyed the most appealing life story in American politics... a proud black man who could have made a serious run for president under either party's banner -- chewed up and spit out on the shard-strewn sidewalk of Losers' Boulevard.
• I once was blind -- and still can't see. My blind spots blot out half of Australia: Born Losers
• · I love blogs and bloggers:
Says WP's polling director
• · · · If journalists manage to capture the diversity of this topic, They may help the public understand that moral values involve a way of life -- not just a label