taking a break

This should provides plenty of entertainment as you sit in front of your computer with Word in the background, your paper still unwritten.

I'm presently listening to a debate between the The Economist and The Nation. The topic is globalization and both sides are making the arguments you'd expect. Thus far, I'd say The Economist is kicking ass in an English way, but I expected nothing different. I tend not to read The Nation, though curiosity does lead me to peruse its website every few weeks. I'm rarely impressed by the content, and when it's presented in printed form, The Nation is an even greater bore. Its aesthetic falls somewhere between Wired magazine and a locally available weekly (such as The Georgia Straight or The Portland Mercury). This is to say that I don't like the way it looks. Perhaps not the best criteria on which to judge a newspaper, but considering how much I read the news, I don't think it unimportant. That The Nation has been around since the mid-nineteenth century should be only a further embarassment to its editors. If they were to hire a new layout department, and rid themselves of their tiresomely colloquial tone (perhaps the most pernicious trend in journalism over the last decade), I'd certainly read their pages more often. Until then, The Guardian and Le Monde will remain my preffered sources of left-leaning news coverage. Anyway, I'm off to bed and so all I'm going to say about the debate is that it's worth a listen:

What's Good for Wall Street is Good for America

and I also came across this debate between Naomi Klein and a business writer for The Economist (though I've not yet listened to it):

No Logo vs. Pro Logo