Net Nuggets No 20

* The changing shape of US law on sexual harassment in the workplace. US law, but universal issues.

* A history of child prodigies over the centuries - it seems it is not just Hollywood child actors who have problems.

* Of course you can't take this sort of thing too seriously, but the latest Prospect list of the world's 100 top intellectuals contains 10 women. Slightly better than the world leader's count then.

* News you can use: a list of tips for getting the best out of Gmail. Now if only they wouldn't call the delete bin "trash" ...

* The internet as the new Samizdat. Contains lots of American newspaper/magazine gossip and this lovely critique of copy-editors (sub-editors):

"Written by Thomas Farragher, my colleague at The Boston Globe, it reproduced the Gettysburg Address as if the speech had had to pass through the meat grinder of the Globe's main copy desk. I'd just had one of my own harrowing experiences with those ferocious editors, and the parody rang true.

Fourscore and seven years ago (can't we just make it 87 years ago?) our fathers (WHO ARE THEY?? Any mothers???) brought forth on this continent (North America?? Northern Hemisphere??) a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men (people, men and women, what???) are created equal. (Why don't we just say they founded the United States and leave it at that? Pacing's better.)"

Like most good satire, it has an element of truth about it.