This will hurt me...

Got to love the news.

Via The Debatable Land , this is how I like 'celeb gossip news' dealt with! The 42 year old French Justice Minister Rachida Dati is up the duff . In typically French fashion (which always amuses me for a country with a Catholic majority), Dati has brushed aside journalist's demands for THE TRUTH, and says that she has no intention of revealing the father's identity and offers this comment that I like very much: I have a very complicated private life, and that's where I draw the line with the press. I won't have anything to say on that subject. Good in her, I say. Quite frankly, I'm mighty sick of hearing the press bleating on about other people's private lives as if it is meant to mean something to people. The bulk of gossip that seems to constitute 'news' these days has (or should have) little relevance to whether or not I vote for someone, go to see their movie, buy their record and so on. It's just all so boring ...

I am all for encouraging people's hobbies, but there clearly cannot be a better example of a slow news day than this here from the ABC here in Australia!

The ABC reported yesterday afternoon that "blogging can help you feel less isolated, more connected to a community and more satisfied with your friendships, both online and face-to-face." I must admit to feeling a bit this way as well, especially when you discover that there appear to be some (albeit not very many) people out there who are reading what you say (thank you Google Analytics ). The fact that potential exchanges are global in scope maybe intensifies the feeling of interaction. I've certainly interacted with more people from a richer variety of cultures than I've perhaps been able to prior to getting into the whole blogging experience (visiting other people's pages, leaving comments, joining into discussions on a whole host of ideas and issues that reflect the diversity of the globe). The study itself strikes me as a little flawed though, does maintaining a My Space page count as a blog? I've always thought of it as an aesthetically displeasing so...

Interesting article forwarded onto me by a friend about an angry Russian who beheaded two friends with an axe after returning home to find them cutting up and preparing to eat his favourite dog. In style that would make a fine episode of CSI, Chita prosecutors said in a statement: "Flying into a rage, the dog's owner picked up an axe from the floor and cut off the heads of the uninvited guests." The man then called the police and confessed to the killing. To be honest, my favourite part of the story was the final line: “It was unclear why his acquaintances wanted to eat the dog.” Quite.

There are reports today that the 10-year-old Aboriginal girl who was gang-raped by nine males was removed from a white foster family and sent home to the community where the attack occurred. The report, in The Australian, says the girl was in foster care because she had previously been sexually abused. The paper said she was returned to the Cape York community of Aurukun and was then gang-raped. The paper says social workers decided to remove the girl from her non-Indigenous foster family in Cairns because to keep her there would be tantamount to "another stolen generation". I get a feeling that this story is going to get a lot worse before it gets a lot better. HOWEVER, if it fires up black women to start tackling some of the serious (and quite frankly scary) issues related to black culture and its attitudes to women, then some good will come of it.