British forces are said to be making progress in a new operation to push Taliban insurgents out of a stronghold in southern Afghanistan.

Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2010 07:47:38 +0000

Germany holds an emotional memorial service for the 21 people killed in a stampede at the Love Parade dance festival in the western city of Duisburg last weekend.

Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2010 11:11:11 +0000

Pakistani intelligence officials cancel a visit to Britain in protest at comments made by David Cameron about Pakistan's alleged links to terror.

Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2010 10:23:10 +0000

Soham killer Ian Huntley is to sue the Prison Service for compensation after his throat was slashed in an attack by a fellow inmate.

Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2010 06:54:05 +0000

The worst monsoon floods in living memory kill at least 800 people and affect one million in north-west Pakistan, a local official says.

Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2010 13:31:35 +0000

A report into Australia's worst bushfires, in 2009, recommends sweeping changes to the way the government responds to natural disasters.

Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2010 04:26:43 +0000

Many more people will face having to pay back some of the money paid to them as tax credits because of Budget changes, experts say.

Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2010 12:39:55 +0000

A UN panel adds the Florida Everglades and Madagascar's tropical rainforest to a list of world heritage sites at risk.

Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2010 04:00:11 +0000

Two men from north Wales are being questioned at a central London police station over possible explosives offences.

Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2010 08:45:03 +0000

Counties appear set to be dropped from postal addresses in future years after complaints about out-of-date names.

Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2010 08:07:44 +0000

Four rowers are only 20 nautical miles away from smashing a 114-year-old transatlantic record as they approach Bishop's Rock off the Isles of Scilly.

Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2010 10:42:04 +0000

The fossil of a whale is at the centre of a bizarre customs wrangle at Cairo airport, the BBC's Jon Leyne reports.

Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2010 19:53:41 +0000

Police are searching for a 6ft (1.8m) long snake which escaped through a bathroom window at a house in Essex.

Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2010 09:51:42 +0000

Red Bull dominate qualifying for the Hungarian Grand Prix, with Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber on the front row ahead of the Ferraris.

Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2010 13:10:39 +0000

England lose Kevin Pietersen and Jonathan Trott in quick succession after lunch on the third day of the first Test at Trent Bridge.

Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2010 09:28:18 +0000

Great Britain's Jessica Ennis admits she faces a tough battle in the last two events if she is to add European heptathlon gold to her world title.

Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2010 11:33:08 +0000

Tottenham manager Harry Redknapp lambasts the timing of England's forthcoming friendly against Hungary.

Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2010 08:38:55 +0000

Britain's Andy Murray beats Alejandro Falla at the Farmers Classic in Los Angeles, but the top seed has plenty to work on ahead of his semi-final.

Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2010 06:30:44 +0000

A man will appear in court charged with rape after a 16-year-old girl was attacked at a Tyne and Wear Metro station in North Shields.

Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2010 09:44:19 +0000

The Health Protection Agency (HPA) investigates why at least 15 people fell ill during a wedding reception at a social club.

Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2010 12:07:34 +0000

The Scottish government says the argument for Scotland gaining more financial powers has to be won in order to grow the economy.

Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2010 10:45:22 +0000

A funeral service is held for a toddler who drowned after falling into a garden pond in Edinburgh earlier this month.

Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2010 12:18:18 +0000

A 27-year-old woman has died in hospital following a car crash in Cookstown, County Tyrone.

Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2010 12:13:43 +0000

Two 17-year-olds appear at Londonderry Magistrates Court jointly charged with attempted murder.

Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2010 10:07:00 +0000

Residents of a village from where a nine-year-old girl from south Wales has died in a rafting accident in Turkey have spoken of their shock and sadness.

Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2010 07:18:46 +0000

The National Eisteddfod is opening its doors to the public on the site of the former steelworks in Ebbw Vale.

Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2010 11:56:10 +0000

Three Kenyans are charged with the murders of 76 people killed when bombs exploded as they watched the World Cup on TV in Kampala, Uganda.

Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2010 16:13:11 +0000

Four white South Africans are fined $2,700 (£1,700) each after making a video humiliating black university workers.

Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2010 11:30:26 +0000

At least 15 people die at a mine in northern China, as a suspected explosives store blows up.

Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2010 02:48:01 +0000

Search teams in north-east China are still searching for thousands of barrels of toxic chemicals washed into a major river by flooding.

Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2010 11:30:04 +0000

Forest fires kill at least 23 people in central Russia, while a forecast of heavy rain brings relief to Moscow.

Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2010 16:26:09 +0000

Greece will use military vehicles to restore fuel supplies cut by a lorry drivers' strike, the government says.

Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2010 18:39:58 +0000

Colombia's Farc rebel group issues a call for dialogue with the new government after Juan Manuel Santos's election as president.

Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2010 21:05:26 +0000

A gay couple become the first to marry in Argentina under a new law allowing same-sex unions.

Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2010 17:55:40 +0000

Syria's president and the Saudi king call on Lebanon's rival factions to avoid turning to violence amid mounting political tensions in the country.

Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2010 19:39:20 +0000

A Hamas militant is killed and several are injured by Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip, hours after a Palestinian rocket hit the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon.

Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2010 11:37:40 +0000

Investigators scouring the wreckage of Pakistan's worst-ever air disaster have found the plane's flight data recorder, officials say.

Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2010 10:48:28 +0000

Five Taliban are removed from a sanctions list by the UN Security Council, a move sought by Kabul to ease rapprochement with insurgents.

Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2010 21:33:56 +0000

US economic growth slowed between April and June, with GDP growing by an annualised rate of 2.4%, the US Commerce Department says.

Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2010 14:48:09 +0000

The founder of Wikileaks rejects US claims he has blood on his hands after releasing leaked documents on the Afghan war.

Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2010 23:04:47 +0000

Many young people working free as interns may legally be entitled to pay, a report says.

Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2010 23:00:34 +0000

BA reveals a steep quarterly loss of £164m after being hit by cabin crew strikes and disruption caused by the volcanic ash cloud.

Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2010 11:22:45 +0000

Northwest Airlines will plead guilty and pay a $38m fine for fixing air-cargo prices, the US justice department says.

Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2010 19:45:44 +0000

The intelligence on Iraq's weapons threat was "not very substantial", former deputy prime minister Lord Prescott says.

Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2010 11:27:43 +0000

Merging all tax credits and benefits into a single payment is one option being considered by Iain Duncan Smith in a "radical" welfare shake-up.

Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2010 14:17:53 +0000

Three ex-Labour MPs and an ex-Tory peer lose appeals over a ruling that they are not protected by parliamentary privilege from prosecution over expenses fraud allegations.

Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2010 10:12:42 +0000

A lack of specialist medics to care for rape victims could be hampering conviction rates, doctors believe.

Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2010 00:03:26 +0000

Calcium supplements taken by many older people could be increasing their risk of a heart attack, research shows.

Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2010 22:59:08 +0000

The right of women to choose whether they have home births is being questioned by a leading medical journal.

Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:54:54 +0000

The Education Secretary insists there no is rush for schools in England to become academies, after criticism over the number of schools coming forward.

Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2010 13:40:02 +0000

Plans to reform A-levels could put students off maths and lead to university department closures, an academic body warns.

Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2010 01:20:44 +0000

More than 150 top schools in England have applied to become academies, government documents show.

Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2010 11:29:07 +0000

Owners of mobile phones are being asked to test the security of their network to see if enough is being done to stop eavesdropping.

Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2010 08:31:48 +0000

Newsbeat's had an exclusive look at new training being given to UK soldiers at the Royal School of Artillery in Wiltshire.

Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2010 06:37:19 +0000

Security researcher Ron Bowes tells BBC News why he collected and published the personal details of 100m Facebook users.

Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2010 11:40:36 +0000

The largest wildlife census of its kind conducted in Chernobyl reveals evidence of mammals declining in the exclusion zone.

Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2010 15:00:31 +0000

Land in the north of Chile is "ready" for another major earthquake, say researchers, adding that authorities did not act on previous warnings.

Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2010 17:39:19 +0000

The incoming BP chief executive has said it is time to scale back some parts of the oil spill clean-up in the Gulf of Mexico.

Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2010 18:07:23 +0000

Sports presenter Clare Balding makes an official complaint to the Press Complaints Commission over an article which mocked her sexuality.

Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2010 17:10:49 +0000

Comedienne and chat show host Ellen DeGeneres is leaving American Idol after one season on the judging panel.

Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2010 08:13:38 +0000

Ben Shephard bids farewell to GMTV after 10 years telling viewers: "I'm going to miss all of you, every single one of you."

Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2010 10:29:54 +0000

The Magazine's weekly quiz of the news, 7 days 7 questions - plus the Weekly Bonus Question.

Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2010 09:20:50 +0000

They frequently end in disaster and can be anything but relaxing. Why do we persist with the ordeal of family holidays?

Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2010 10:31:17 +0000

Tug of war, croquet and cricket have all featured at the Olympics. See what else has been in and out over the years.

Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2010 11:27:00 +0000

A report into the bushfires that tore across Victoria, Australia, in early 2009 has called for sweeping changes to the way the authorities respond to natural disasters.

Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2010 06:03:39 +0000

Jonathan Sumption, one of Britain's top barristers, talks to Matt Stadlen about whether judges have too much power, why history matters, the secret to a good cross-examination and why he applauds inequality.

Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2010 04:44:45 +0000

A bank manager from Sale, Greater Manchester, is hoping to become the first blind person to drive a car at more than 200mph.

Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2010 06:54:29 +0000

Punting would normally be seen as a tranquil way to pass a summer day on the river, but race punting is an altogether different affair.

Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2010 08:17:14 +0000

Chelsea Clinton, the daughter of former US president Bill Clinton, is to marry long-term boyfriend Marc Mezvinsky at a private ceremony.

Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2010 06:21:03 +0000

The first gay weddings have taken place in Argentina after the implementation of a law approved by parliament earlier this month.

Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2010 04:40:59 +0000

A hailstone weighing almost a kilo that fell in the state of South Dakota has been confirmed as the largest ever recovered in the USA.

Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2010 13:10:21 +0000

Urban sounds may dominate the music charts but there is still a buoyant market for live rock events.

Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2010 08:04:01 +0000

Why Chelsea Clinton continues to fascinate

Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2010 01:09:06 +0000

Striking pictures from around the world this week

Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2010 14:36:16 +0000

The sisters who had surgery to combat family cancer threat

Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2010 00:02:35 +0000

Polish town's struggle to emerge from shadow of Nazi horror

Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2010 10:24:39 +0000

Why so few people get under the skin of Afghanistan

Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2010 06:42:22 +0000

How did cast of Jersey Shore rile Italian-Americans?

Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2010 16:21:07 +0000

Israeli cricket's passionate players

Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2010 07:01:59 +0000

The stories behind the IRA 'Disappeared'

Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2010 08:59:09 +0000

The U.S. Veterans Administration is making upward of $12 billion in IT contracts available to businesses over the next five years, as part of an effort to modernize its operations.

Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2010 10:00:00 GMT

Android isn't just for smartphones anymore. Google's mobile operating system is coming to tablets that could rival the iPad in portability and usefulness for business.

Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2010 10:00:00 GMT

Working as a computer columnist is dangerous work. Living on the cutting edge of technology is fun, but it's an edge that cuts both ways -- it's a life-threatening lifestyle, according to new research.

Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2010 10:00:00 GMT

A few companies in the Fortune 500 need to upgrade their Web browsers. And while they're at it, a little in-house training on social engineering wouldn't be a bad idea, either.

Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2010 00:59:00 GMT

The former San Francisco network administrator who refused to hand over passwords for one of the city's networks was denied a new trial on Friday and is expected to be sentenced Aug. 6, a spokeswoman for the district attorney's office said.

Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2010 00:15:00 GMT

For companies deploying desktop virtualization, the main criteria for evaluating the success of the project is the end-user experience, according to a recent survey of 1,500 IT executives.

Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2010 20:45:00 GMT

SAP catches up with rival Oracle on the open source software front

Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2010 19:39:00 GMT

The nonprofit organization One Laptop Per Child wants to join forces to help develop the Indian government's planned $35 tablet.

Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2010 18:57:00 GMT

Next week's CRM Evolution conference will offer presentations on how technologies and economic forces are changing the software industry.

Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2010 18:48:00 GMT

Health-care providers looking to implement a mobile strategy need to understand the strong bond people have with their smartphones, concluded a panel today at the World Congress Summit on mHealth in Boston.

Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2010 18:12:00 GMT

View more news and analysis from Computerworld.com

There's an interesting cover story on the actress Laura Linney by Frank Bruni in the current New York Times Magazine. Linney's had a remarkable career in movies, television and Broadway, but it didn't begin taking off until she was 35. Now she's one of the small number of actresses over 40 getting meaty roles.

After losing close friend Natasha Richardson last year in a fluke accident that occurred on a ski trip, Linney's taken the lead role in the mortality-themed The Big C, a Showtime comedy about a woman with terminal cancer that premieres Aug. 16.

Linney was approached about The Big C in the summer of 2009. The first episode -- the pilot, really -- was shot in November, long before all the others, and Condon remembers that when she asked him to direct it, "she talked about how she felt almost this kind of compulsion to do this, because Natasha’s death had really, really brought so much into focus for her about the fragility of life, and figuring out what to do with it."

What her character on The Big C does with expressly numbered days is eat more desserts. Sneak cigarettes. Dig the backyard pool she has always wanted. Insist that her son spend time with her. And hammer certain life lessons into him before she loses the opportunity to.

I hope the show is funnier than Bruni makes it sound -- the Times has a tendency to make everything sound like an AP English homework assignment. Apparently, laughs are going to be mined from the life changes Linney makes, going from being a sensible wife and mother to someone who lets "her freak flag fly."

Showtime's example of the depths of her unleashed freakiness: "Who says you can't eat dessert as an appetizer?"

That still doesn't sound remotely entertaining. Linney has a tough job ahead of her.

Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2010 13:30:12 -0400

Ladies and gentlemen, the Ukelele Orchestra of Great Britain.

They also rock Shaft, Psycho Killer and Teenage Dirtbag. When they played London's Royal Albert Hall in 2009, the sold-out crowd of 6,000 included 1,000 people who brought ukeleles to accompany them on Beethoven's "Ode to Joy."

Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2010 12:32:12 -0400

We here at Studio B did not run the video and did not reference the story in any way for many reasons, among them: we didn't know who shot it, we didn't know when it was shot, we didn't know the context of the statement, and because of the history of the videos on the site where it was posted, in short we do not and did not trust the source.

-- Fox News anchor Shepard Smith on Andrew Breitbart

By virtue of publishing the Drudge Retort, I've been following the career of Andrew Breitbart for more than a decade. His rise to prominence from Matt Drudge's uncredited collaborator to liberal-hating firebrand has been quite remarkable, given the fact that he's just a self-made web publisher who never held a job of any importance in media, politics or academia.

By his own admission, he was an aimless and frustrated college graduate in the mid-'90s when he discovered the Internet and decided to reinvent himself on it:

"I said to myself, 'O.K., you are going on a date tonight, and you are not going to bed until you have gone all the way.' And I remember hooking up to the World Wide Web that night, and it was a revelation. It was just like shooting yourself into outer space, and trying to latch onto anyone else who was out there. I remember finding weather sites and earthquake sites, and being able to monitor earthquakes in real time, and that was weirdly invigorating."

I did not expect that Breitbart would rise as far as he has, but now that he's obliterated his reputation with an ugly racial smear against a decent woman in government service, I think the seeds of his destruction have been in place for years.

A little over a year ago, I wrote about how enraged he is all the time:

All external indicators would suggest that Breitbart has a lot to be happy about, but I've followed his work for years and he operates in a constant state of anger at the perceived mistreatment of conservatives, particularly in Hollywood. Since he's around my age, he's lived during an era in which the right wing was ascendant in American politics. I'm not sure he could have survived the '60s and '70s, back when conservatism was the marginalized ideology of Barry Goldwater and washed-up B-movie actors.

Four months ago, I documented how Breitbart has been lying to the media for years:

... Breitbart [has] the good fortune to work in online agenda-driven journalism, where no one is ever held accountable for being wrong. Breitbart lied back then, lied about the ACORN sting and will probably lie in furtherance of the next scoop he peddles to the mainstream media.

He can't be trusted.

I wonder how long it will take the Times and the rest of the major media to figure that out.

There are political points I could score here, since Breitbart's hatred of liberals makes it satisfying to enjoy his fall from grace. But as a self-made web publisher myself, I find it disappointing that he won't simply apologize to Shirley Sherrod and admit a mistake.

He managed to turn his association with Drudge into a huge media platform and doesn't have to answer to anyone. There's no reason he has to be as nakedly self-preservational as the major media, the way the New York Times and USA Today acted when caught publishing Jayson Blair and Jack Kelley's fictional news stories, as if the entire reputation of the papers would collapse like a house of cards if they engaged in open self-criticism.

Breitbart is his own boss. He appears to be rolling in dough. He has Founding Father hair. What good is being a self-employed media mogul if you can't admit you fucked up and try to make it right?

Related:

• Scott Rosenberg: "The problem with Breitbart is not that he is an activist in journalist clothes, but rather that he is a serial purveyor of deceptions who is somehow still viewed as a legitimate source by some of his colleagues in the media."

Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2010 12:38:20 -0400

Clinton Gallagher recently posted a blistering tirade against me in the comments of Workbench. He thinks that I'm part of a dishonest campaign against Dave Winer and the RssCloud element:

Cadenhead you are being a jerk putting words in the mouth of Dave Winer --again-- as those of us who used to read the RSS mailing lists can attest; so herein I speak for myself in this regard.Secondly, if you were as professional as you imply Cadenhead --and-- if you were an all-around decent kind of fair play fella (which you are having a problem with) you would use your ill-deserved name recognition to expose the fact that the feed validator at feedvalidator.org has been coded by the sleazy-weasel(s) Sam Ruby et al. to undermine RSS. ...

It is only your dishonesty, the lack of information, the lack of coding skills of the typical web developer and the bully pulpit that causes the rssCloud element to now appear as if must be relegated to the back seat.

I'd like to see rssCloud have a fair chance, the developers of WordPress agree and support rssCloud too so gfy Roger.

Normally I'd have some fun with his over-the-top personal attack and Winer psychodrama, but I'm completely bored with that stuff. RSS is eleven years old. Winer and his BFFs have their view and the RSS Advisory Board has ours. We endorsed the Feed Validator and wrote an RSS Profile to help publishers and developers adopt the format with a minimum of aggravation.

For people like Gallagher who think we suck rocks, the validator is open source and the profile is licensed under Creative Commons. If you hate Sam Ruby, hate me or hate the RSS board, you can use our own work to put us in our place. Though I must warn you there's no money in it and the RSS community is painfully short on groupies, if you don't mind that, knock yourself out.

As for RssCloud, it is now a year since Winer tried to revive it and he's never bothered to write a specification for all the changes he was making. Life is too short to waste time implementing his half-assed ideas. I use PubSubHubbub for real-time RSS support in my software. It's well-specified and it works great.

Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2010 11:49:40 -0400

The recent firings of Dave Weigel by the Washington Post and Octavia Nasr by CNN show that mainstream journalists, who are expected to display some personality and attitude on social media to better connect to the audience, will be fired the minute they make an important group mad. I don't envy the job of a reporter at a major media outlet pressed into blogging or tweeting for the company.

Conservative journalist James Poulos sums up the predicament well:

Writers now have competing pressures -- to be witty, quick, ironic, noticeable, flip, to dispatch every clay pigeon tossed up by a culture pandemic with pigeons; but also to self-edit, to self-moderate, to be reticent at the right time, to pussyfoot expertly, to pick battles, to avoid perils, to besmirch rarely, to duck blame, to satisfy spectral overseers. This is a serious pickle, is it not? And yet it now appears to be the cost of doing business. Possibly, this is the internet imitating life.

I found this great quote in a funny fake media orientation video.

Date: Sat, 10 Jul 2010 13:49:52 -0400

The DMCA copyright battle between the Associated Press and the Drudge Retort took place two years ago, but Woot CEO Matt Rutledge remembered it in a blog post this week.

Rutledge noticed that when AP covered the sale of his company to Amazon.Com, it quoted from his blog.

The AP, we can't thank you enough for looking our way. You see, when we showed off our good news on Wednesday afternoon, we expected we'd get a little bit of attention. But when we found your little newsy thing you do, we couldn't help but notice something important. And that something is this: you printed our web content in your article! The web content that came from our blog! Why, isn't that the very thing you've previously told nu-media bloggers they’re not supposed to do?

So, The AP, here we are. Just to be fair about this, we’ve used your very own pricing scheme to calculate how much you owe us. By looking through the link above, and comparing your post with our original letter, we've figured you owe us roughly $17.50 for the content you borrowed from our blog post, which, by the way, we worked very very hard to create. ...

We're major digital players now. Don't force us to pass this matter to a collection agency.

In response to Rutledge's mockery, I can only say woot!

Two years ago, when the AP was taking a massive barrage of criticism over using the DMCA to squash the free speech rights of blogs and social news sites, the wire service told Saul Hansell of the New York Times that it was going to produce fair use guidelines for bloggers.

The Associated Press, one of the nation's largest news organizations, said that it will, for the first time, attempt to define clear standards as to how much of its articles and broadcasts bloggers and Web sites can excerpt without infringing on The A.P.'s copyright.

AP never produced those guidelines. My gut feeling at the time was that AP would wait for the issue to blow over and forget it made that promise, because the company sells headline-and-lead syndication packages around the world. Telling people they might possibly be able to quote its stories without getting sued undercuts its business.

Date: Wed, 07 Jul 2010 09:38:42 -0400

A reader comment by Fabius Cunctator to an op-ed column against gay marriage:

Homosexuals do not achieve psychological satisfaction by engaging in same-sex sex. That is the reason that homosexuals are highly promiscuous compared to heterosexuals. Homosexuals can desire sex again only one or two hours after same-sex because they are not psychologically satisfied by their sex. Heterosexuals often can go for days, weeks or months before desiring sex again because they have achieved psychological satisfaction from their last physical sex act.

So heterosexual sex is so satisfying that one can go months without wanting to do it again. Homosexual sex, on the other hand, is so unsatisfying that it's desired as soon as one hour later.

He goes on to tell a married man of 20-plus years that having sex with his wife every 2-3 days is "abnormally frequent sex."

My condolences to Mrs. Cunctator.

Date: Thu, 01 Jul 2010 11:29:15 -0400

This year's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Tinkers by Paul Harding, is one of the best I've read in years. The slim 191-page book is about the last eight days of dying clock repairman George Washington Crosby, whose hallucinating mind wanders across time in his final hours, stopping at disordered points in his life and that of his father.

The first novel by Harding, Tinkers was rejected by numerous publishers and sat in a drawer for several years before it found a home at Bellevue Literary Press, an obscure non-profit publisher based in New York's Bellevue Hospital. It's the first book from a small press to win the Pulitzer since John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces in 1981.

I don't often like awardbait -- difficult literary novels with spare plots seemingly tailored for award consideration -- but the language of Tinkers is as exquisite as a T.S. Eliot poem. Harding is at his most evocative when describing the workings of an antique clock or the natural wonder of the New England countryside, yet the entire book is written with an tinkerer's eye towards the world. There may never be a more eyebrow-curling description of halitosis than when George's father Howard pulls the tooth of a suffering hermit who buys from his tinker's wagon: "A breeze caught the hermit's breath and Howard gasped and saw visions of slaughter-houses and dead pets under porches." When George witnesses his father's epileptic seizure at the dinner table on Christmas Day, it's a perfectly described moment of absolute terror -- and you can see why he's taking it to the grave.

At times, Tinkers wanders into pure existential reverie, like these thoughts from George's father as he drags his wagon of goods from one rural homestead to another:

Your cold mornings are filled with the heartache about the fact that although we are not at ease in this world, it is all we have, that it is ours but that it is full of strife, so that all we can call our own is strife; but even that is better than nothing at all, isn't it? And as you split frost-laced wood with numb hands, rejoice that your uncertainty is God's will and His grace toward you and that that is beautiful, and part of a greater certainty, as your own father always said in his sermons to you at home. And as the ax bites into the wood, be comforted in the fact that the ache in your heart and the confusion in your soul means that you are still alive, still human, and still open to the beauty of the world, even though you have done nothing to deserve it. And when you resent the ache in your heart, remember: You will be dead and buried soon enough.

I wasn't sure about this novel until I was 50 pages in, and even briefly considered abandoning it for fare more light than an old man's deathbed vigil. The cumulative impact of passage after passage like the above convinced me that Tinkers was a masterwork that would be cherished for generations, like a centuries-old grandfather clock.

Related posts:

• The New York Times, which did not review Tinkers, tells the story of its publication

Date: Sun, 20 Jun 2010 17:26:27 -0400

On Tuesday I visited five Congressional offices in the Capitol to make the case for small publishers who rely on targeted Internet ads for revenue, an event that rated a story in Politico. The Interactive Advertising Bureau invited web entrepreneurs to come to DC and meet members of Congress and their aides, hoping to make the point that thousands of Americans are running businesses powered by these ads. We're one of the only sectors of the economy that's been growing during this recession.

Although I had to pay my own travel and hotel costs, I accepted the invitation to tell the story of the Drudge Retort. As a former newspaper journalist, I've been able to run a social news site that receives two million visits a month because of the revenue generated by online ads. My wife lost her job as a reporter in a layoff two years ago, and we've endured the tough economic times with the help of the site.

There are a lot of Americans running web-based businesses in circumstances like ours. Reporting jobs are disappearing, so we've started our own media empire out of the house.

With several web publishers and a lawyer for the IAB as chaperone, I met aides for Reps. Diane DeGette (D-Colo.), Michael Castle (R-Del.), Bill Young (D-Fl.), Charlie Melancon (D-La.) and Mike Rogers (R-Mich.). We wandered around a catacomb of ancient underground hallways that connect the Rayburn, Longworth and Cannon buildings where members of Congress work, getting 10-15 minutes with each aide to argue that proposed new legislation would crush our businesses, send jobs overseas and cause web advertising to be considerably more annoying than it is today. There's an Internet privacy bill by Reps. Rick Boucher (D-Va.) and Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.), currently being circulated as a draft, that could be interpreted to require every bit of targeting in online marketing to be opt-in.

Although that sounds OK in principle, in practice there's a lot of personalization going on today thanks to anonymous cookies, IP addresses and the relationships customers build with online sites. Dell sends an email to you offering a warranty extension for your laptop. Google delivers local restaurant ads based on the geographic location of your IP address. An Amazon shopper who buys the latest Justin Bieber album is told he might also enjoy earplugs.

I thought I did OK in the meetings, though it's a challenge to pitch the public benefit of something that's so obviously tied to your own self-interest. I was reminded of the old saying that "what's good for IBM is good for America."

Before I went to the Capitol, I sought advice from the members of the Retort, getting all manner of helpful and not-so-helpful suggestions. One comment from Dirk, a libertarian member of the site, gave me something to talk about in several meetings.

At the end of the day the internet is about servicing humanity through the vital sharing of information. Government intrusion only hinders this important service that you provide. ...

Right makes might and you are in the right. This is "a unique medium for humanity to share information and ideas" don't let anyone compare it to any other areas of communication that have been regulated in the past and if they attempt to point out where those forms of communication have died off.

If you've spent any time on the Retort, you know that it's a cantankerous community of people of all political stripes who show up each day to yell at each other about the news of the day. And yell at me.

But one thing the members do agree on is that the Retort and thousands of other independent blogs are an important vehicle for free expression. The third-party ads that run on the site leave me beholden to no one, because I'm not required to directly solicit advertisers and other entities for support. The stories that run on the site are based on my own editorial judgment and that of the users who contribute their own links. The users of the site are as invested in the success of this business model as I am.

Although I did not get to meet a member of Congress in an official capacity, while crammed into one of the Capitol's tiny elevators in the Rayburn building, I accidentally elbowed a well-dressed mustachioed gentleman square in the nose. He had been graciously helping us find the tunnel to the Longworth building.

I found out later he was Rep. Ciro Rodriguez (D-Texas).

Related posts:

• Todd Curl (another event attendee): The Pungent Aroma of Democracy

Credit: The photo of the U.S. Capitol tunnel going to the Cannon Building was taken by Indianagal.

Date: Thu, 17 Jun 2010 12:23:25 -0400

I'm in Woodbridge, Va., this morning about to head out to the Long Tail Alliance Fly-In, a gathering of small web publishers organized by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and Google. As a publisher who uses context-based advertising on the Drudge Retort and other sites, I was invited to come to DC and meet with members of Congress to talk about why this form of advertising is important to online media.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has concerns that Congress is working on regulations that would kick this form of advertising in the fiddly parts:

Political campaigns have been launched at the federal and state levels to seek government regulation of many of the core processes and technologies that support interactive advertising. The IAB believes a disproportionately negative impact would be felt by small publishers whose advertising sales are largely or entirely managed by ad networks. This would affect advertising revenues and potentially diminish the diversity of voices and ideas on this most diverse of communications media.

I'll be liveblogging the event on Twitter using hashtag #iabdc. Follow me on Twitter to live this adventure in real time.

I don't know yet who I'll be meeting (Michelle Bachmann! Michelle Bachmann! Michelle Bachmann!). As the publisher of a liberal-leaning web site that calls itself "Red Meat for Yellow Dogs," it could be amusingly awkward if I get some conservative Republicans.

Then again, I'm here on my own dime trying to keep my bidness free of government regulation. So I'm practically speaking Republican already.

Date: Mon, 14 Jun 2010 09:42:26 -0400

On May 28, BP-employed reporter Paula Kolmar filed this dispatch from a shrimping vessel hired to skim oil from the Gulf of Mexico before it reached Alabama's coastline:

Over about four hours we, all guests of Gulf Coast native Captain Wade and his local crew, enjoyed the spectacular ballet at sea. ...

Watching the captains weave the long black boom as seamlessly as a professional ballet troupe performs an intricate dance, I found it difficult to believe that the rehearsals only started some weeks ago. ...

Gently caressing the sea surface, the three vessels circled and swirled, guiding the boom without changing the design.

A ballet at sea as mesmerising as any performance in a concert hall, and worthy of an audience in its own right.

If you'd like to see the ballet, made possible by a contribution of 40,000 barrels of oil a day into the Gulf of Mexico, it will be running through August and may be extended into the fall.

Date: Fri, 11 Jun 2010 19:47:01 -0400

The seven-week break I took on Workbench, which just ended 11 words ago, is the longest since I began my personal blog in 1999. I'm doing some work in social media these days and thinking about launching a new company to commercialize software I've been developing for my own use the past six years. I also am deep into the manuscript for a new edition of Sams Teach Yourself C++ in 24 Hours.

My absence did not make Target employees fonder, as a recent comment to my five-year-old tale of shopping humiliation demonstrates:

Lady,

You and your disgusting, obnoxious kids are the reason people hate working at Target. You come in, with your head up your ass, while your kids act like monsters, and then are offended when an employee has the audacity to mention it to you. Is it your goal to come into the store and make everyone else around you miserable? Please, do us Team Member's a favor and take your business elsewhere.

Sincerely,

A Fed-up Employee

Sorry to tell you this, FU, but my kids and I still shop at Target. I'd rather be harangued by teen-aged girls every time I visit the store than get within a mile of Wal-Mart. With your attitude and the fact you searched Google for the term Target sucks to find me, you're never going to become a Leader on Duty.

Date: Wed, 09 Jun 2010 16:20:48 -0400

In a draft of his upcoming book Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids, the economist Bryan Caplan mentions that he'd like to clone and raise himself:

I confess that I take anti-cloning arguments personally. Not only do they insult the identical twin sons I already have; they insult a son I hope I live to meet. Yes, I wish to clone myself and raise the baby as my son. Seriously. I want to experience the sublime bond I'm sure we'd share. I'm confident that he'd be delighted, too, because I would love to be raised by me. I'm not pushing others to clone themselves. I'm not asking anyone else to pay for my dream. I just want government to leave me and the cloning business alone. Is that too much to ask?

I'm surprised that Caplan takes it as a given that his son would be "delighted" by such a scenario. His clone wouldn't be raised by the same parents that he was, but instead would have a father with an extreme sense of his child's likes, dislikes, talents and flaws. That influence -- likely to be domineering and a little creepy -- would produce a much different person over the span of a childhood than how he turned out.

Caplan writes that he has twin sons, but they must not be very old yet or he'd realize that his clone will reject some of dad's traits on principle. Kids have a natural inclination to do things differently than their parents. With my three partial clones, if I'm trying to persuade them to try an activity or a hobby, the least persuasive argument I can use is that I liked it when I was their age.

So no matter how many genes we share, none of my sons will watch One Life to Live with me.

Date: Wed, 21 Apr 2010 18:52:50 -0400

San Francisco Chronicle cartoonist Mark Fiore won the Pulitzer Prize yesterday for his animated political cartoons. His work appears exclusively online, so it's the first time a non-print cartoonist has won the Pulitzer in its history.

One of his submitted cartoons was Science-Gate, which mocks the scandal over the ClimateGate emails in the style of an overheated political ad.

All of the quotes scribbled by the scientists in this cartoon are real, including a jaw-dropping one by the 16th century German astronomer Johannes Kepler about how he had sex with a virgin:

I suffered continually from skin ailments, often severe sores, often from the scabs of chronic putrid wounds in my feet which healed badly and kept breaking out again. On the middle finger of my right hand I had a worm, on the left a huge sore. ... At Cupinga's I was offered union with a virgin; on New Year's Eve I achieved this with the greatest possible difficulty, experiencing the most acute pains of the bladder.

This Kepler quote comes from an essay by Evan S. Connell printed in his book The Aztec Treasure House.

Kepler was 21 when he started the New Year off with a bang. He suffered from "boils, mange, smallpox, hemorrhoids, constant stomach trouble, and such bad eyesight that he often saw his world doubled or quadrupled," Connell writes. "He seems to have been impatient, sarcastic, cowardly and stingy, and he almost never bathed."

Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2010 12:32:55 -0400

Jonathan Bourne discovered something funny on the web site of David Benning, the Republican running for Congress against Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.).

Take a look at this photo of Benning, his wife and an unidentified couple in front of the famous door of Air Force One:

The photo is displayed on Benning's about page, where it has the filename airforceone.jpg. But as Bourne reveals, Benning wasn't actually rubbing elbows with the president and other high fliers:

Turns out the photo is of SAM 27000, the decommissioned Air Force One that has been an attraction at the Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley since 2005.

Anyone willing to pay the $12 admission fee can get his photo taken in front of the former Air Force One (copies of the photos are extra). How do I know this? Well, I had my photo taken with the Presidential prop last January.

Not only did Benning spend time on Air Force One, he was also SportsToday magazine's athlete of the year.

Date: Mon, 12 Apr 2010 15:42:05 -0400