Saturday/Sunday, July 11-12, 2009

WEB BOHEMIAN Weekend Edition (Saturday/Sunday, July 11-12, 2009)
(1)- BALLARD – April, 2009, the news included stories about celebrity obsession, empty foreclosed properties, and the death of the man who forecast this media landscape years ago. James Graham Ballard, 78, died of advanced prostate cancer.

(2)- HISTORY -- The historian picks facts the way a mountaineer finds a route across a boulder field: one fact leads to another and then another and yet another, allowing the historian to cross the ground in reasonable time.

(3)- WAY TO THINK -- Spreading conspiracy theories – stories about a world warped by evil forces – remains the pastime of marginalised groups. But conspiratorial thinking, has become respectable.

(4)- NAUGHTY ADVERT -- An ice cream advert for the ice cream Gelato Italiano which showed a priest and a nun in a 'seductive pose' was banned after readers complained that it was offensive. It was a "light-hearted, tongue-in-cheek portrayal".

(5)- MISSING MAYBE -- An external audit of the Royal Canadian Mint (RCM) has failed to find millions of dollars' worth of "missing" gold. AT issue is a discrepancy in the amount of precious metals on the mint's inventory and in its actual stockpile.

(6)- KEEPING TRACK -- Buckingham Palace says the annual Swan Upping, dating back to the 12th Century, involving a census of the swan population on the River Thames, will be conducted by the Queen's official Swan Marker this month.

(7)- MISSING -- A Libertyville family is trying to find the owners of a two-foot-long Savannah monitor lizard that's been hanging around the hot tub. The creature is two feet long, five inches in diameter. It is a native of Africa.

(8)- NO MORE -- President Dmitry Medvedev has told Russians they must kick the alcohol habit. "We drink more now than in the 1990s, although those were difficult times," the ITAR-Tass news agency said Medvedev as said.

(9)- ASIA -- The similarities in performance of China, Taiwan and South Korea as their economies industrialised are considerable. From 1960–95, South Korea grew at an annualised pace of 8.1% and Taiwan at 8.6%. Likewise, China, since 1979.

POLITICAL COMMENTARY

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