Journalist of the month: Borzou Daragahi

Libya's coup: Turning militants against Al Qaeda
This is the first encouraging paper about terrorism in a long long time. As a Pulitzer finalist, Mr Daraghi does not need the congratulations of my little blog, but this is a fine paper indeed. It baffled me.
Moreover, the Los Angeles Times is one of the best papers in the world for international politics:it is about time I nominate one of their great journalists with this heartfelt thank you.
I did not know that Libya was making any effort of that kind. Seen from here, many countries seem a bit apathetic regarding terrorism, just like for the Israel-Palestinian conflict: it is complicated, and there are people very active at taking advantage of it. People and politicians who thrive in wounds, like fly larvae.

So today, some good news. I needed that.

On Tiger Woods

Quite a few people made money out of trashing Tiger Woods, with excuses ranging from "the public needs to be informed" to "If I do not do it, somebody else will."
Well, tabloid guys, you should follow Tiger's example: quit that job and become better persons.

Thinking about business

"... the alpha and omega of business life has become keeping up the share price. Innovation and investment can go hang."

In an interesting paper of Will Hutton in the UK Guardian

It would be funny, if it were not so sad

you got to read this.
I am not commenting on it: I am speachless

I am almost out of it!

The Art of the Insult

I am surprised to see our major newspapers accept comments that are not very helpful: "President Bush is an idiot", "President Obama is a fool"...I think that guys who write like this are wife beaters, always steaming. Are newspapers so afraid of losing their non-paying customers that they do not dare letting go of this mud? To me it is like Hitler showing up around the corner: there are consequences to disrepecting democracy.

I was ready to write a piece on how politics degenerates in this country, but then, when I opened my last issue of The New Scientist, I found that the editor had suppressed about one third of the comments on a paper about some obscure acceleration of a satellite.
There is page after page of: "This comment breached our terms of use and has been removed." I found the reading hilarious: how come readers with most probably a college degree dare insulting one another on a subject that nobody understands?
More wife beaters. I should not be surprised: I met racists and wife beaters in any social category.
Insult used to be more poised a few centuries ago. The Prince of Ligne used to say that Casanova would have been handsome, if he had not been so ugly.
Voltaire once removed his hat when a priest crossed his way. He was asked if he was reconciled with God. "We salute each other, he answered, but we are not on speaking terms."

Journalists of the month Connolly-Murray

- Doctor, I do have health insurance, but it does not work when I am sick.

This is the first time in months that I think I learned something useful about health care in
8 Questions about health-care reform: Update
Reporting by Ceci Connolly and Shailagh Murray
Here is the link

There is a lot of work behind this paper and the authors make very clear for us what is going on.
Great Job!