Short & Sweet - week beginning March 4

Why are all the people who descend on my newsagent in the morning to pick up the paper white, middle-aged men? This is what I'm thinking as Wagga Wagga residents flee the flooding that threatens their town. The view from the Satchel office this morning is rainy but a trifle irritation compared to moving all your things and your family to safer ground; too little too late for the victims of the tornado that tore through the US on Friday leaving 38 dead. 

Let's catch up: A flood of media coverage sparked by the Finkelstein inquiry poured down on Friday with more coverage, as would be expected, today. 'The Media Satchel' will enter the fray once the 476-odd page document is read to satisfaction. This suggests one pressing concern: is waffling on about media matters perhaps occupying time and space than could be better spent elucidating some more important story? Alas, everything has its time and place, and the Government started this debate, after all. 
This week's agenda: With a new youth Bible study group to coordinate, I'm feeling energised by the task at hand while trying to adapt the schedule to accommodate more things that mean big things to me. Know what I mean?
The Word for the Week: "Whoever makes himself great will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be made great..." - Jesus, Matthew 23:12.
Quote for the Week: "A person is a person because he recognises others as persons." Desmond Tutu, South African activist and first black South African archbishop of Cape Town.
Dictionary.com word for the week: cant \kant\, verb:
1. To talk hypocritically. 2. To speak in the whining or singsong tone of a beggar; beg.
noun:
1. Insincere, especially conventional expressions of enthusiasm for high ideals, goodness, or piety.
2. The private language of the underworld.
3. The phraseology peculiar to a particular class, party, profession, etc.
4. Whining or singsong speech, especially of beggars.
"Foreign Minister Bob Carr has been quick to suggest that his Thoughtlines are of the past (it's a foreign country where people do things differently, you see) and not to be viewed as contradictions of government policy. His rhetorical cant is really quite entertaining... but, really, are any of us not guilty of the occasional hypocrisy?"
Reading: 'Carr's contradictions and the new diplomacy' at The Drum.

Girl With a Satchel