Two wonderful NY Times articles on... poetry! An heir to the Lilly pharma fortune gives over $100m to the little magazine Poetry -- which rejected her poems 30 years ago:

"She doesn't want her name on anything, and I doubt she's ever cut a ribbon," Mr. Parisi said. "That's good for us, because you don't get a plaque for supporting poetry. You better get a reward in heaven, because you sure won't get one on earth."

And here's one on the Northern Irish poet Paul Muldoon: "Nine is the ideal age to write a poem," he said. "You don't know what you're doing."

What really delights is that the Lilly story is #2 and the Muldoon piece is #14 on the NY Times list of today's most-mailed articles (which is always fascinating to check -- a favourite daily visit for me). Who'd a' thunk?

And just to make it a hat trick: the Times also has this on haggis, "the food of poets (well, one)".

10:20:23 PM  #   your two cents []

Blair's £6bn broadband promise. Tony Blair has pledged £6bn to deliver high-speed internet access to every school and doctor's surgery by 2006. [Guardian Unlimited]
10:10:24 PM  #   your two cents []

Fact and Fiction Behind Bond's Gadgets [Slashdot]
10:00:40 PM  #   your two cents []

Smartforce/CBT revenue to be restated: Skillsoft, which bought Irish e-learning company Smartforce early this year, said today it will have to restate revenue for Smartforce (formerly CBT) for the period from 1999 through the first half of 2002 -- in other words the period that starts just around when CBT rebranded itself as Smartforce, which also *happened* to coincide with a point when shareholders brought a class action fraud suit against CBT (written up in 1999 in the San Francisco Chronicle's brave and now, incredibly prescient series, Dark Side of Silicon Valley, here.

In 1999, no one wanted to hear the 'dark side' stories about some of the Valley's biggest heroes. The series sure makes interesting reading now. You can get a PDF of the entire series here. Here's a quote from it:

...But shortly after Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Arthur Levitt began his remarks, a hush fell over the executives and academics gathered at New York University's new Center for Law and Business.

``Too many corporate managers, auditors and analysts are participants in a game of nods and winks,'' said Levitt, the former head of the American Stock Exchange. ``Managing may be giving way to manipulation. Integrity may be losing out to illusion.''

Referring to the role of unreliable accounting in the recent Asian financial crisis, Levitt made clear what is at stake for the U.S. economy. ``Today, American markets enjoy the confidence of the world,'' he said. ``How many half-truths, and how many accounting sleights of hand, will it take to tarnish that faith?''

Ponder that for a while.

According to the Skillsoft article: "Skillsoft said it had discovered "several accounting issues" in Smartforce's pre-merger statements, primarily related to how the company recognized revenue from its contracts." Here's the full Reuters story.

3:54:30 PM  #   your two cents []

Will Rogers. "The more you read and observe about this Politics thing, you got to admit that each party is worse than the other. The one that's out always looks the best." [Quotes of the Day]
10:15:23 AM  #   your two cents []

And the shocking attempt to wrest away everyone's privacy in the name of national safety continues. Do you believe this will only be used against 'terror and espionage suspects'? The US government is sounding and acting far more paranoid these days than in the ultra-paranoid years of Nixon and the Vietnam War. Secret U.S. court OKs electronic spying. A secretive federal court grants police broad authority to monitor Internet usage, record keystrokes and employ other surveillance methods against terror and espionage suspects. [CNET News.com] Also see the NY Times coverage here. And as well, a court said police don't have to be around to serve a search warrant. Hell, they can just fax it in... The UK govt must be looking on in envy as the US grants the kinds of extensions to the RIP Act that the UK has tried to weasel through. At least the last attempt failed...
9:59:06 AM  #   your two cents []

From John Robb: WSJ.  This is an interesting message to send Wall Street.   Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and several other firms paid $1.6 m each for failing to keep e-mails as was required by regulation.  In contrast, Merrill Lynch was hit with a $100 m settlement to atone for wrongdoing evidenced in e-mails that it kept. 
12:05:19 AM  #   your two cents []