Friday, January 14, 2005



Every movement, every age has its own unique human rights battle. Fifty years ago, blacks fought for their civil rights, then women for theirs, then environmentalists for the right to clean air, water, and food. And now in this age of systematically distorted information, we face a new human rights battle – one that we can no longer ignore. This battle is for the The Right to Communicate It’s a battle for openness, transparency and democracy. It’s about citizens winning real access to the mass media. Czech out the trends ...
A conversation with Bruce Sterling. Everybody's his own smuggler; everybody's got cousins offshore who send money and gifts home. So it's not like a state conspiracy to pilfer; it's more like the Dutch and hashish. You just don't look real hard, and the traffic takes care of itself. A lot of the retailers who are behind the flow of fakes are refugees who lost everything. They were living out of car trunks.
Now they blog and live out of kiosks ..

Literature & Art Across Frontiers: Literary Iceberg On Polish Horizon
Funny Business with the Nobel Prize for Literature: Waldemar Zyszkiewicz sees a common "red thread" (so to speak) of affinity to or even membership in the Communist Party. The Czech Jaroslav Seifert (1984) had a prominent position in the Czech Communist Party. The same was true of José Saramago (1998) in the Portuguese Communist Party, Gao Xingjian (2000) in the Chinese, Dario Fo (1997) in the Italian, and yes, Elfriede Jelinek, last year's winner, in the Austrian.

Finally, an interesting shot that he takes at Imre Kertész and Elfriede Jelinek, the 2002 and 2004 laureates respectively, whom Zyszkiewicz clearly puts into the "just not-bad writers who struck it lucky" category. How is it, he asks, that so many people had never ever heard of these two writers before they came out of nowhere to win the Nobel Prize? - and here is speaking not of the general public but of literary critics, professors, people who should have known about them.


It seems that without any changes wrung out the Swedish Academy by Nature, no author of conservative views has a chance at the Nobel Prize for Literature. Not even if they create an unquestioned masterpiece
NAMING NAMES - AND AFFILIATIONS ; [Michael Monbeck The Great Books' Greatest Lesson ; Midway through one of Barry Cohen’s earlier, funnier books he reminisces on a bizarre, fruitless issue that consumed the Whitlam Government at one time ... After Progress? The Four Questions of Global Politics ]
• · The big ideas of 2005 - #57 Jan/Feb 2005 ; [The clerk next door might sign on as bill@aol.com but also cruise chat rooms as Armaniguy, Cool Breeze and Thunderboy. In effect, they bury a part of themselves alive They begin secret lives in desperation]
• · · People say a bank clerk's life is monotonous. but it is nothing to compare with a novelist's Midnight Oil ; [The Secret Lives of Just About Everybody ; Wolf people suffer from one of the world's rarest genetic diseases: Their entire bodies are covered by a thick coat of fur Heart braised in lemon sauce]
• · · · The cat is out of the bag 100 Bloggers: An Introduction & Invitation to Blogging [It would be funny if it weren't true Great Publishing Adventure ]
• · · · · Like Glenns Rants, I got a bee in my bonnet, or perhaps a bug in my ear or isbn in my URL search to monitor my book Cold River: just enter http://isbn.nu/1894841069 Subscribe to Book Price Changes at isbn.nu ; [Get Ready for New ISBN 1 January 2007 ; You know you're a librarian when.... ; Why are women drinking so much? It's not just stress and spare cash - it's really down to sex The love drug]
• · · · · · Lemony Snicket's A Series Of Unfortunate Events