A media machine to distract Facebook "They won't be able to keep supporting the stock next week, so presumably both they and the IPO investors will soon be nursing a nasty loss. Everyone will then firmly describe Facebook as a great long-term investment."
Believe him or not, Thomson rises to the occasion "It's not often you can sit in Parliament for an hour, listening, and be totally captivated. But so it was from noon this afternoon as the member for Dobell, Craig Thomson, delivered his feisty defence from the crossbench."
Parent health care and the obsession with longevity "We make certain assumptions about the necessity of care. It's an individual and a national responsibility. It is what's demanded of us, this extraordinary effort. And yet what I feel most intensely when I sit by my mother's bed is a crushing sense of guilt for keeping her alive."
Deep-sea microbes live life in the extremely slow lane "Just how plodding are these ancient creatures, who are buried about 100 feet deep in the seabed? Some of them haven't received any new food for 86 million years, when dinosaurs still walked the Earth."
Robin Gibb, Bee Gee, dies at 62 "With brilliant smiles, polished funk and adenoidal close harmonies, the Bee Gees - Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb - were disco's ambassadors to Middle America in the 1970s, embodying the peacocked look of the time in their open-chested leisure suits and gold medallions. They sold well over 100 million albums." (Also: A life in pictures, via The Guardian)
