Margo Kingston elaborates on the speech by Arundhati Roy and her speech to Australia You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train

Sophie Masson admires Les Murray

Tim Dunlop caving away:
John Willmot penned his poetry riddled with the pox
Nabakov wrote on index cards,
at a lectem, in his socks
St. John of the Cross did his best stuff
imprisoned in a box
And JohnnyThunders was half alive
when he wrote Chinese Rocks

Chris Sheil blogs about Peter Conrad who says
The happiness America dispenses must be purchase. So long as you have money, you can get fast food, carbonated drinks, Prozac, cocaine, Viagra, innumerable channels of trash beamed into your brain from a satellite, and a pin emblazoned with the Stars and Stripes to wear above your heart