Digest – Jan 24 2010

It’s how it goes down every Sunday night/Monday morning.

– HOME

Garibaldy of the Cedar’s has an interesting post on the changes in centre-leftism. The comments are worth reading too. Also over on the CLR, WorldByStorm deconstructs John Waters’s latest musings; the financial crisis… it’s all in your head… courtesy of the journalist [claims John Waters].

…[Waters] apparent inability to accept that people can arrive at opinions about matters without mediation by journalists or politicians and that these opinions can diverge quite strikingly from his own thoughts is now palpable. Or, to put it another way, he just doesn’t seem to get that other people have beliefs and thoughts of their own and aren’t just empty vessels or actors who must dance to his, or anyone else’s tune.

Journalist, Gerard Cunningham, on the news business. Note the word business.

Author and freelance court reporter Abigail Rieley has been covering Eammon Lillis’s trial for the Evening Herald and Sunday Independent, but her blog is where the real depth can be found. She’s writing long-form, descriptive, prose almost daily about what happens each day in court. Go there and read up.

Constantin Gurdgiev expands on Brian Lucey and Charles Larkin’s Sunday Business Post piece on where our third level sector needs to be moving.

Nyder O’Leary, despite finding himself hitting a wall with FOI, has an excellent article on the cost of building schools. It nicely illustrates  the general non-decision-making of Government and their habit of kicking to touch via Commissions.

– WORLD

Popular Science have a short, but interesting, piece on the remarkable way Moscow’s stray dogs are evolving. It originally came from this more in-depth, fascinating, feature in the Financial Times.

An excellent explanatory article from the Washington Post on the new Massachusetts senator, Scott Brown’s, views on healthcare reform. Alec MacGillis details how Brown would broadly support reform if there wasn’t already higher than average health care access in his home state. His voters have cover already, they should not have to pay for others to get it, it’s claimed. Provincialism, not just in Ireland.

The Interpreter blog of the Lowy Institute of International Policy (in Australia) on Fiji’s “brazen provocation” of New Zealand. Also, a reader responds to the post.

James Fallows of The Atlantic on Hilary Clinton’s Internet freedom speech.

GOOD have a two-minute infographic on the the foods the American market consumes. A decent watch, worth a look (sponsored by Whole Foods, though sources are cited).

– OTHER

Tips on speed-reading, see video…