After former IMF chief and ex-presidential hopeful Dominique Strauss-Kahn was accused of rape at the beginning of last week, the most public of France’s public intellectuals sprang to his aid. Writing in the Daily Beast, Bernard-Henri Lévy, or BHL as he’s known in France, condemned the presumption of guilt inferred in media coverage of the alleged rape of a hotel maid in New York…

“Australians have a unique capacity to celebrate failure,” writes crime novelist Angela Savage in a piece on travelling, writing, Australia and the grandeur of failure published today on her blog. “I stumbled across a wonderful example of this during a recent visit to Red Cliffs in Victoria’s Mallee region. Red Cliffs’ main tourist attraction is Big Lizzie, the largest tractor ever built in Australia…