Julie Burchall's turned her bolshy eye to the place of marriage and babies in the ideas of modern young women. In the London Times, she quotes a friend as having said: "I wouldn't want to hang out with an adult who screamed, cried, threw up, tried to maul my tits and never paid for a round of drinks - why should I make an exception just because they're short?"

Ever heard of a Russian/Cuban film called Soy Cuba? The Guardian says it's "...One of the masterpieces of world cinema, the outcome of the Soviet Union's first exposure to the world beyond its frontiers since Eisenstein's encounter with the Mexican revolution in the 1930s which produced his unfinished opus Viva Mexico."

A UN controlled internet? In the Wall Street Journal, Brian Carney, a member of the paper's editorial board says: "The US is making apocalyptic predictions of what the UN would do if given control. Those predictions are probably optimistic; UN control would be a disaster. But there is a third way, as Mr. Gore might say. That alternative doesn't serve the interests of either the US government, which enjoys the control it currently exercises, or its critics, who would much prefer to do their censoring under a multilateral umbrella. But if the US continues its Internet brinkmanship, the third way will become not only likely, but inevitable."

The UN really has made a reputation for itself as a hopeless administrator. Even aid agencies (well, one of them, anyway) are prepared to agree. The Guardian quotes the emergencies director of Save the Children UK as having said that an idea floated recently, that the organisation might control a pool of funds to be released quickly in the event of a disaster somewhere in the world, wouldn't work. "They simply cannot move quickly enough. They are too unwieldy. Global assistance is being delivered more and more by NGOs. One would not want to make up a system where the only people to benefit from UN funding are UN agencies."

Newspapers have no future without online and digital services, media executives heard at a World Association of Newspapers meeting in Madrid. "We are getting the whole organisation ready for a digital future," said Simon Waldman, director of digital publishing at Guardian Newspapers, whose Guardian Unlimited site is by far the most popular British newspaper online site, ahead of The Sun, The Times and The Telegraph.

"Within 'six to seven years', the group planned to dedicate 80 percent of its time to digital activities, compared to 20 percent at present, Waldman told the conference, entitled 'Beyond the Printed Word'."

Let's hope the people at our daily paper in Bermuda are listening - their digital effort is the internet equivalent of a broken-down Model A being pulled by a horse...and a nag of a horse at that.

John Bolton seems to have embarked on a speaking tour designed to embarrass the United Nations into doing something to reform itself, after a year of scandal. The Washington Post followed him to a lunch given by the Foreign Policy Association, and heard him warn that the US Congress may take action if the UN doesn't come to the wicket. The Post said "In his most critical assessment of the agency since becoming ambassador to the world body, Bolton said the broader UN membership has not recognized the urgency of approving administrative changes designed to restore the organization's credibility, which has been tarnished by revelations of corruption in the oil-for-food program and reports of widespread sexual abuse by UN peacekeepers.

"The scandals 'did not arise out of thin air,' Bolton said. 'The mismanagement and the corruption that we have seen in the program came out of an existing culture on First Avenue,' where UN headquarters is located. Bolton said 'it's hard to have conversations' with his colleagues about the extent of 'mismanagement and corruption' uncovered by former Federal Reserve chairman Paul A. Volcker, who recently ended an 18-month inquiry into abuses in the United Nations' largest humanitarian program.

"Bolton said UN members will be confronted with heightened congressional scrutiny if they fail to reform the agency. 'When you don't feel a sense of movement and progress toward solving the problem - if I can say it's an American national characteristic to solve problems and not massage them - we're going to have increasing difficulties.'"

I'll bet more new young singers have been compared to Billie Holiday than to any other singer, alive or dead. Here's another one. The Guardian says that when he heard Corinne Bailey Ray sing, Jools Holland said she had "A voice so fabulous that after I hear this I will melt." Pondblog reader Britgirl, in whose company I once heard a voice very much like that, may give us chapter and verse if I promise not to mention fox-hunting again for....oh, let's say until after Christmas.

What an excellent story! A New York Times reporter looks at the effect of ethnic diversity in New York on the age-old struggle to soothe colicky babies. It may not sound like much to people used to reading about murder and war, but I'll bet this intelligently-chosen piece will be the best-read story in the Times this morning: "...Little New Yorkers are being comforted with Colombian cinnamon tea, soothed with Egyptian recipes for rosewater and calmed with infusions of anise seed, fennel, chamomile, or 'hierba buena', a kind of spearmint plant that Latin American mothers and baby sitters seek out in supermarkets. Others are dosed with 'gripe water', the elixir once bootlegged from the former British Empire, and now sold over the Internet in nonalcoholic versions with names like 'Colic-Ease' and 'Baby's Bliss'.

"Sure, methods from the heyday of America's machine age are still popular: place the crying baby atop a vibrating washing machine; run the vacuum cleaner full blast near the cradle, or take the wakeful infant on a midnight ride (preferably on a route without stoplights).

"But now, with more immigrants in the city than ever before, so too are there more ancient anticolic traditions practiced down the block: Chinese acupressure, Haitian belly binding, Mexican swaddling, Indian oil massage, African cowry shell bracelets. And just as exotic foods from distant cultures enter the city's culinary mainstream, these methods are being examined and tried by the city's natives and nonimmigrant transplants, desperate for any way to stop the screaming."

The Wall Street Journal statistically analyses the differences between the experience of Muslim immigrants to the US and that of immigrants to France, and arrives at some not-very-surprising conclusions.

"Consider the contrast with the US. Between 1978 and 2002, the percentage of foreign-born Americans nearly doubled, to 12% from 6.2%. At the same time, the five-year average unemployment rate declined to 5.1% from 7.3%. Among immigrants, median family incomes rose by roughly $10,000 for every 10 years they remained in the country. These statistics hold across immigrant groups, including ones that U.S. nativist groups claim are 'unassimilable'. Take Muslims, some two million of whom live in America. According to a 2004 survey by Zogby International, two-thirds are immigrants, 59% have a college education and the overwhelming majority are middle-class, with one in three having annual incomes of more than $75,000. Their intermarriage rate is 21%, nearly identical to that of other religious groups.

"It's true that France's Muslim population - some five million out of a total of 60 million - is much larger than America's. They also generally arrived in France much poorer. But the significant difference between U.S. and French Muslims is that the former inhabit a country of economic opportunity and social mobility, which generally has led to their successful assimilation into the mainstream of American life. This has been the case despite the best efforts of multiculturalists on the right and left to extol fixed racial, ethnic and religious identities at the expense of the traditionally adaptive, supple American one.

"In France, the opposite applies. Mass Muslim migration to France began in the 1960s, a period of very low unemployment and industrial labor shortages. Today, French unemployment is close to 10%, or double the U.S. rate. Unlike in the U.S., French culture eschews multiculturalism and puts a heavy premium on the concept of 'Frenchness'. Yet that hasn't provided much cushion for increasingly impoverished and thus estranged Muslim communities, which tend to be segregated into isolated and generally unpoliced suburban cities called banlieues. There, youth unemployment runs to 40%, and crime, drug addiction and hooliganism are endemic."

The Weekly Standard says its man has seen a list of senior jihadists who have been given refuge in Iran. "The list reads like the Who's Who of global jihad, with close to 25 high-ranking leadership cadres of Al-Qa'ida - planners, organizers, and ideologues of the jihad from Egypt, Uzbekistan, Saudi Arabia, North Africa, and Europe. Right at the top in the Al-Qa'ida hierarchy: three of Usama Bin Ladin's sons, Saad, Mohammad, and Othman.

"Al-Qa'ida spokesman Abu Ghaib enjoys Iranian protection, as does Abu Dagana al-Alemani (known as the German), who coordinates cooperation of the various jihadist networks throughout the world from Iran. They live in secure housing of the Revolutionary Guard in and around Tehran. 'This is not prison or house arrest,' is the conclusion of a high-ranking intelligence officer. 'They are free to do as they please.'"

Poor old Bashar Assad probably didn't get the exposure he wanted for his speech yesterday at Damascus University, what with bomb attacks in Jordan, Tony Blair losing a key vote over security measure in Parliament in Britain, and Amir Peretz beating Shimon Peres for the chairmanship of the Israeli labour party yesterday. What Assad wanted to say to the world was that he thought that all the hooha about the Hariri assassination was just the West trying to punish Syria for its uncompromising Arab stand on Lebanon, Iraq and the Palestinians. He stressed that Syria condemned terror attacks in Iraq and was keen to seal its border from infiltrators.

The urban legend spinners are at it again in the Middle East. Haaretz has denied that security people warned Israeli guests at the bombed hotels in Jordan to get out before the bombs went off: "There is no truth to reports that Israelis staying at the Radisson SAS hotel in Amman on Wednesday were evacuated by Jordanian security forces before the bombing that took place there. The Israelis were escorted back to Israel by Jordanian security personnel only after the attacks had taken place, contrary to earlier reports."

The Guardian has interviewed a little-known, black US bluesman whose musical roots are embedded in Appalachian soil. Otis Taylor calls his music 'trance blues', which the paper says "could be a sidelong reference to the influence of the late John Lee Hooker, whose harmonically static, open-ended boogies seemed unusually close to the African roots of the blues while remaining permanently at the cutting edge of modernity. Equally fundamental to Taylor's music, however, is his immersion in the banjo-driven Appalachian ballads that are usually thought of as the white man's counterpart of the blues.

"'The banjo was originally an African instrument,' Taylor points out during a telephone conversation from his home in Boulder, Colorado, as he prepares to leave for the UK. 'And it sounds natural to me.'"

Judy Miller has left the New York Times after two weeks of negotiations over the terms of her retirement. Bill Keller, the Times's editor, announced Miller's departure in a memorandum to his staff and, probably by agreement with Miller, also released a memo to her agreeing that he had mischaracterised her actions in two respects when he wrote to Times staff some time ago criticising her actions. Keller has not exactly covered himself with glory in this long-running affair. He admitted that he should have supervised Miller's reporting much more closely than he did, and, in his efforts to distance himself from her, seems to have muddied the waters by being overly critical. Thnere is speculation in the commentariat this morning that he may himself resign.

Buyers had a wild night at Christie's in New York last night - the New York Sun says "In the first 10 minutes of Christie's auction of postwar and contemporary art last night, eager bidders paid record amounts for works by each of five contemporary artists. That was just the start of what is best characterized as a very, very big sale. The house took in a staggering $157.4 million, a record for any auction of contemporary art and $23.7 million more than Christie's record sale in the category last May.

"...Richard Prince's photograph of a photograph, Untitled (Cowboy) (1989), sold for $1.25 million, which was not only a record for any work by Mr. Prince but for any photograph at auction. There was little that buyers in the packed salesroom would not spring for, from such postwar stalwarts as Rothko and Willem de Kooning to Pop masters Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol to 1980s ironist Jeff Koons. Just four lots of 70 faltered."

Irish critic Colm Toibin declares, in the Guardian, that Irish playwrite Tom Murphy is "the nearest thing to genius that Ireland can boast of". Many will wonder why he stopped so short.

Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA case officer who is now a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, is the author of a pair of interesting articles published this morning. In the Wall Street Journal, he argues that sloppiness is systemic in the CIA, so much so that it undermines the basis of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's case in the Valerie Plame affair. "Langley's systemic sloppiness - the flimsiness of cover is but the tip of the iceberg of incompetence - has repeatedly destroyed agent networks and provoked 'flaps' with some of our closest allies.

"A serious CIA would never have allowed Mr. Wilson to go on such an odd, short 'fact finding' mission. It never would have allowed Ms. Plame potentially to expose herself by recommending such an overt mission for her mate, not known for his subtlety and discretion. With a CIA where cover really mattered, Mr. Libby would not now be indicted. But that's not what we have in the real world. We have an American left that hates George W. Bush and his vice president so much that they have become willing dupes in a surreal operational stage-play. You have to give credit to Langley: Overseas it may be incompetent, but in Washington, it can still con many into giving it the respect and consideration it doesn't deserve."

The second appears in the Weekly Standard, where Gerecht argues that George Bush is being judged by too harsh a standard on Iraq.

"On none of the major Middle Eastern issues that define this administration - the war in Iraq, thwarting clerical Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons, the struggle against Middle Eastern autocracy and Islamic extremism, and the democratization of the Greater Middle East - is the administration doing brilliantly. Concerning clerical Iran, a member of the now-never-mentioned 'axis of evil', President Bush is doing almost as poorly as President Clinton did against North Korea (the embarrassing image and words of Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in Pyongyang are very hard to top). And the administration's ongoing display of weakness toward the clerical regime may well have ugly ramifications in Iraq, where fear of American strength is an extremely important factor in dissuading the Islamic Republic from trying to sabotage the growth of democracy...Nonetheless, add up all the negatives and positives, and the administration is still ahead. A survey of the region and issues ought to reveal that the Bush administration, though of diminishing internal strength and international vigor, is likely to leave the Middle East and the United States in far better shape than we were before the invasion of Iraq."

The CIA may be sloppy and leaky, but it does get one thing right - encouragement of and investment in companies producing new technology that can be used by the military. The The Globe and Mail notes this morning that "A venture capital fund set up by the Central Intelligence Agency just made its second foray into the domestic market, buying a stake last month in Vancouver-based Idelix Software Inc."

I don't know, and can't easily find out whether this fund has anything to do with the imaginative and successful Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, which was set up in the Sixties. But I assume it does, because they both have the same aim. DARPA was responsible for funding development of many technologies which have had a major impact on the world, including computer networking (starting with the ARPANET, which eventually grew into the Internet), as well as NLS, which was both the first hypertext system, and an important precursor to the contemporary ubiquitous graphical user interface. It was also responsible for the development of the M-16, the stealth fighter, those lightweight spy planes that are being so useful in Iraq and elsewhere, and a host of other advances.

Tech Central Station writer Michael Young says the UN report on Syria's involvement in the Hariri assassination contains information about a dimension of the affair that has gone unnoticed. "...There is a narrower aspect to the report that has gone largely unmentioned, but that shows how Syria's Baath regime has managed to both peddle a secular image while also maintaining ambiguous ties to Islamist groups...disapproval of the regime and Syria's social and economic tribulations pushed an increasing number of youths toward Islam, since the 'public…was offered a simple choice: Islam or the official ideology'. In trying to keep a lid on the religion by expanding educational institutions and mosques it controlled, the Assads may have inadvertently played sorcerer's apprentice to an Islamist revival they will be unable to control, particularly if the regime is destabilized by the Mehlis inquiry."

Every single note of The Grateful Dead's famous 1969 4-night concert at the Fillmore West has been published on a 10-CD set. But good luck finding a copy at a reasonable price (there's one now on Ebay at $499). As the San Francisco Chronicle says: "The set clearly struck a nerve with Dead fans. With no more promotion than two e-mails and a small ad in Relix magazine, the set, which went on advance sale in late July, was sold out by Labor Day, two months ahead of the release date. 'We didn't want to break the limit,' said Cameron Sears, president and chief executive of Grateful Dead Productions, who made the box. 'It was a very expensive box to produce, and any changes to the plan would have screwed up the whole works.'" Sure...the buzz created by the shortage was a complete accident.

The US Ambassador to Zimbabwe said some unflattering things (true, but seriously unflattering) about Zimbabwe at the United Methodist Church's Africa University in the eastern border town of Mutare the other day. He said "corrupt rule", not sanctions, was to blame for Zimbabwe's economic problems. "'Neither drought nor sanctions are at the root of Zimbabwe's decline,' Mr. Dell said in the speech. 'The Zimbabwe government's own gross mismanagement of the economy and its corrupt rule has brought on the crisis..."

Now, as the The Washington Times reports, some seriously unflattering things are being said in Zimbabwe about Mr Dell: "...reports have accused Mr. Dell of frequenting a public garden where 'many of our youthful citizens have been deflowered, lured by the greenback from generous and flaunting foreigners not given [to] enjoying sex the conventional way.'"

Washington doesn't seem too fussed. The State Department said simply yesterday that Mr. Dell had 'effectively refuted regime propaganda that blames Zimbabwe's economic problems on European and U.S. sanctions.' But Dell could be expelled. The Zimbabwean Foreign Ministry has summoned him to appear and is expected to announce any action to be taken today.

The security fence in Israel has been such a success that the Russian Government is considering putting one up on its border with Checnnya. The Jerusalem Post says: "Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Internal Security Minister Gideon Ezra met on Monday with Dmitry Kozak, head of counterterrorism in Chechnya and the Kremlin's envoy to southern Russia, for talks on the effectiveness of the security fence and Israel's overall success in fighting Palestinian terror."

A Pondblog reader in England has pointed to this outstanding article by Simon
Barnes of the London Times, published in the Los Angeles Times. It's a kind of meditation on the significance of Charles Darwin's work on evolution, and that of Edward O Wilson, the American who he considers Darwin's heir: "...The ineluctable truth (is) that humans are animals: exceptional animals, but animals whether they like it or not.

"This thrilling, jaw-dropping, liberating fact has troubled the inordinate self-pride of humans ever since. You are free to deny it, however. You are also free to deny the theory that the Earth is round. You can also, if you wish, deny the theory of gravity: But that will not make a 1,700-page book of Darwin's writings fall upward when you drop it. Like it or not, the book will land on your toe.

"Does all this sound aggressive? In your face? A hideous, invasive challenge? How odd because Darwin was the gentlest of men, holding back the publication of The Origin for years because he didn't want to upset his wife. And odd too that Wilson is of the same company: an easy-natured man with a cozy, affable Southern drawl and kind, considerate manners. What you notice straightaway is not the fact that he has a mind like a laser. Rather, that he has a huge and unstemmable love for what he does. And what he does is to consider endlessly the endless forms most beautiful with which we share our planet."

Hugo Chavez isn't one of us, he's a cartoon of himself, somehow sprung to life and escaped from his page. In Granma this morning, he's quoted as having said: "The FTAA has been defeated by the peoples of this continent and today saw its interment in Mar del Plata. But this does not mean that capitalism is dead; capitalism is the next to be buried..."

Can you imagine plugging yesterday's newspaper in to a computer to turn it into today's edition? Get used to the idea, because the technology exists. No more inky fingers...I can't wait!

The young men rioting in Paris and elsewhere in France are triumphantly calling their handiwork "Baghdad on the Seine", I hear. We don't know what their immediate aim is, but if it is simply to carry on making mischief, they made a mistake last night, when they shot at policemen trying to stop them. Also, one report I read this morning said the French Police claim to have intelligence that the rioters have quick access to heavier weapons than shotguns. If M Chirac has the stomach for it, these developments are ample justification for asking troops to get involved, something the police will have been calling for for some time, I should think. That will dampen the riots down, but as Mark Steyn says (without a great deal of humour, it must be said), it's a sort of Pandora's box that has been opened. In the Washington Times, he writes:

"For a half-decade, French Arabs have carried on a low-level intifada against synagogues, kosher butchers, Jewish schools, etc. The concern of the political class has been to prevent these attacks from spreading to targets of more, ah, general interest. They seem to have failed. Unlike America's Europhiles, France's Arab street correctly identified Jacques Chirac's opposition to the Iraq war for what it was: a sign of weakness."

The Guardian's architecture reporter, Jonathan Glancey, is positively warbling about the success of a house in London designed by a young architect, Gianni Botsford. His design makes maximum use of of the light available at the site. Glancey writes: "Like light itself, the house is all but invisible. Although constructed of solid concrete, along with steel, aluminium and a great number of sheets of glass, what proves to be one of the finest new city homes to be found anywhere in the world is hidden behind a dense meshed-steel wall; for the casual passer-by, there is absolutely nothing worth seeing.

"Behind the screen, though, Botsford's house of light is a thing of architectural sorcery made possible not by sleight of hands or smoke and mirrors, but by patiently applied science. Lit almost entirely from a great glass roof and a number of courtyards, some glazed, others open to the sky, this unexpected and quietly revolutionary structure was designed using a process the architect had been researching and developing while at the Architectural Association school in London. It is his first major commission, and it is quite brilliant.

"What there is, in abundance, is intelligent planning, generous rooms, ingenious internal views through and across the building, and light and air exactly where these are wanted. Botsford, by the way, says that he did not have the idea of an ancient courtyard house in mind. Or, at least, not self-consciously. 'The design,' he says, 'is based on what was possible and what seemed right for the site...What was most important to the project was the nature of light, how it would get into all corners of the house, and how the house could be serene even though in a densely packed part of the city. What was special, a real privilege, was the fact that my clients allowed me to spend six months researching the nature of light."

An intelligently-designed Canadian health project in Tanzania has had rare success - cutting infant and adult mortality rates in two pilot districts. The Globe and Mail reports that it has been such a success, at so reasonable a cost, that it's being expanded to the whole of Tanzania.

"TEHIP uses simple monitoring tools to figure out what is causing the most deaths - in Tanzania's case, often malaria and diarrhea - and targets the bulk of health spending at those diseases," the paper said.

To mark its 60th anniversary, Commentary asked three dozen of the world's leading thinkers some interesting questions:

"1. Where have you stood, and where do you now stand, in relation to the Bush Doctrine? Do you agree with the President's diagnosis of the threat we face and his prescription for dealing with it?

"2. How would you rate the progress of the Bush Doctrine so far in making the US more secure and in working toward a safer world environment? What about the policy's longer-range prospects?

"3. Are there particular aspects of American policy, or of the administration's handling or explanation of it, that you would change immediately?

"4. Apart from your view of the way the Bush Doctrine has been defined or implemented, do you agree with its expansive vision of America's world role and the moral responsibilities of American power?"

From the likes of Paul Berman, Francis Fukuyama, Victor Davis Hanson, Paul Johnson, Norman Podhoretz, Nathan Sharansky and Amir Taheri, they got some really first-class answers. It's a fat read.

Journalism is a cruel sport, Observer reporter John Naughton muses, as he gleefully swings his boot into the groin of a Microsoft that he feels has been knocked to the ground by a shift to web-provided computer services. "Web services represent a paradigm shift in the way we think about computing. In the old days (1975-2002) the platform (the PC) was the computer: what web services are doing now is moving us to a world where the network is the computer. This shift represents the gravest strategic threat that Microsoft has faced since Netscape appeared in 1994...

"Which is why the prospect of web services bothers them more than somewhat. It threatens to make the platform irrelevant - and conjures up images of an alternative universe in which users can reach a powerful word-processor or spreadsheet via the web - thereby forgoing the pleasure of paying exorbitant licence fees for Microsoft Office...if Microsoft were to become a major provider of such services (which it is technically quite capable of doing), it would be tantamount to cannibalising its core business - the lucrative Windows and Office franchises."

No sale. Microsoft didn't become the largest and most successful tech company by accident. If there were some way of measuring underestimation, Mr Naughton's analysis would be somewhere down at the silly end.

The Independent says, a little melodramatically: "When the 5,300-year-old body of a Stone Age man was discovered entombed in a glacier in the Italian Alps in 1991, it was hailed as one of the most significant archeological finds ever. Then the deaths began. These were strange, often accidental deaths of people who had come into close contact with the frozen corpse, dubbed Oetzi. There was talk of a curse. Could it be that the Iceman was angry at being disturbed from his 53 century-long slumber?"

Elsewhere in British news, an expert seems to have been able to disprove the stories that drunks tell (especially Canadian drunks, apparently), to the effect that after many drinks in a rural hostelry, as the Times rather nicely puts it, they head out into a nearby field and , boom, overturn a cow.

And in the United States, a lawyer says that the theory of intelligent design is "the next great paradigm shift in science."

The United Nations is trying hard to ignore the Volcker report's damning criticism of the organisational culture that allowed the oil-for-food corruption to flourish. At a private dinner attended by the Sunday Telegraph in New York last week, Bolton gave guests a hard-hitting critique of life at the UN.

"'In the bubble on First Avenue, Volcker is just ignored. I talk about it, but it's a solitary conversation. Nobody else will be fired unless people are indicted by outside authorities. Corruption didn't arise out of thin air, it arose out of the culture of the place. Bribes, mismanagement etc - it would be unacceptable for executives in any normal organisation.'

"As an example, he cited the fact that UN staff could accept gifts worth up to $10,000 in a year without any requirement to disclose them. In a rare breakthrough for American pressure for reform, the UN announced last week that it planned to reduce the $10,000 figure to $250 under rule changes proposed by its new under-secretary for management, Christopher Burnham, a former Bush administration official."