From a letter sent by American essayist Robert Benchley upon his arrival in Venice:

"Streets full of water. Advise."

Today's Charlotte Green, she of the definitive BBC accent, got caught out by a fit of the giggles whilst reading an obituary live on air this morning. It seems she was amused by the preceding news story, concerning a very early recording of the human voice, and was unable, along with the appropriately named though generally dour Jim Naughtie, to control her hysterics. The brilliance of the story comes in the reporting of apparent 'meltdown' at the BBC press office as a result, which proves two things: 1) Today still matters & 2) Radio 4 listeners clearly have an excess of time on their hands. Listen here for the full, hilarious item.

You can stream the full album, add to your playlists and share with others all via the magic of the interweb. Check out the page here.

Does anyone else think that the Conservative shadow cabinet is made up of people who look like the nerdy kids everyone hated when they were at school?

"Tibetan protests against Chinese rule have spread to another part of China, after days of demonstrations and violence in Tibet's main city, Lhasa." from bbc.co.uk.

This has ended up messier than anyone would have wished. The Chinese come out of this looking not only distinctly shoddy in their approach to human rights, but also secretive, disingenuous and deeply untrustworthy. The West, meanwhile, is put in an awkward position. To condemn or not to condemn? The Olympics are ready to roll in a few short months, and what do we find the host country doing? Massacring innocent monks - and that is surely a pleonasm, in any case.
Tough times ahead. How is China to be corralled as it continues its ascent to be the next superpower? Ethics are mightily insubstantial when forced to weigh up to the sheer brute power of capitalism.

It strikes me that in ramping up her rhetoric, and in particular questioning Obama's qualifications to become commander-in-chief, Hilary Clinton runs the risk of handing the Republicans pre-prepared anti-Obama slogans, should he win the nomination (as still, given the maths, seems likely) and go on to contest McCain in November. HRC needs to be careful, not only to avoid handicapping the Democrats in the race for the White House if the nominee happens not to be her, but also if ultimately Clinton and Obama are offered on a joint ticket. Both need to remember that they are not fighting the presidential election yet, and that whatever arguments they use against each other now may come back to haunt them come the Autumn.
Obama's current argument is undeniably the more sophisticated, and most likely not to cripple the opposite candidate:

“There are people that will always do politics as usual better than we will,” said Robert Gibbs, the communications director for Mr. Obama. “That’s why people want something different.”

Is it a little too clever though?