The Israeli invasion of Lebanon and associated death and suffering has been greeted with giddy delight by some, Harpers magazine reports. As shocking as these grotesquely inhumane delusions are, it is some consolation that perhaps it will distract them from child beating for a while.

Never let a good slogan...

go to waste...

"Read my lips; no new taxes." - Bush I

Probably a lie. Possibly a genuine mistake.

"I did not have sexual relations with that woman." - Clinton

Definitely a lie. About something that's none of our business.

"We do not torture." - Bush II

Hmm...

For most of my adult life I have tried to believe in essential human decency; that every human being since the dawn of humanity has carried in them the potential to do good and the will to do it, although this is often frustrated by circumstance or personal weakness. The inverse of the doctrine of original sin, if you like. I feel obliged to declare this in preface to what follows.

I spent the first 20 years of my life as an anglo in the Sutherland Shire, if "life" is the right term for what one has there. Hop in the indispensible car and go from home to work to home to work to home to Westfield shopping mall and repeat for four score years and ten.

It had to happen: the US Patents and Trademarks Office has published the first patent application to cover a fictional storyline, echoing the example in an article Richard Stallman wrote for the Guardian earlier this year.

The question now is, how long before major entertainmant companies start patenting thousands of random story ideas, with no requirement to actually use any of these ideas themselves, with the intention of silencing authors that do not happen to work for them?