rfmcdpei puts forward some arguments against consociationalism.

( I'm not so sure. )

Excellent post on hatred over at Obsidian Wings. Another for the blogroll.

I generally try to act on this: not to draw any bad conclusions about people until I have what seems to me clear evidence that those conclusions are warranted. Sometimes, people take this to mean that I try to be nice to my opponents, and they ask, "Why should we be nice to them?" But to me this isn't primarily about kindness at all, but about justice.

You may well hear me on "the World at One" doing a bit about Kosovo. (Not surprisingly.)

Edited to add: this link is supposed to give you the recording but I can't make it work for me.

...you may well catch me on the BBC TV Ten O'Clock News this evening.

Edited to add or on the BBC World Service Newshour later on (radio).

7) Dave Barry Hits Below the Beltway, by Dave Barry

Dave Barry is one of the funniest writers in the English language, but he is best at the length of his newspaper columns - his one novel, Big Trouble, is surprisingly flat. I did like his book on American history, Dave Barry Slept Here. This book, nominally about Washington DC and the US political system, contains some beautiful laugh out loud moments and some bits that are less memorable. One passage that stood out for me was his description of losing Democratic candidates, especially 1988's Michael Dukakis:

Dukakis was an intelligent man, but he was also a man who had essentially the same range of facial expressions as an iguana. He did not fire up audiences. When he was speaking, the audience expected that at any moment his tongue would come flicking out and snag a passing insect.

For those of us who remember those days, it all seems too true.

The best chapter, though, is the one on South Florida and why the rest of the US should expel it from the Union. Here his humour boils over into sæva indignatio, and is all the better for it. Not quite worth the price I paid for it but fun all the same.

8) The Saliva Tree, by Brian Aldiss

Actually a collection, including the title story which shared a Nebula with Zelazny's "He Who Shapes" (later expanded to The Dream Master). Several of the stories are non-sf - two about serial killers, whcih slightly surprised me, and one about the death of the medieval Serbian ruler Vukasin Mrnjavcevic. All exceedingly good stuff if you like your Aldiss, which I do.

So, looks like I got bumped from the Ten O'Clock News by a combination of the IRA and Aslan Maskhadov. Frankly I'm glad that things are sufficiently calm in Kosovo that it is unable to compete...