'Some guy just tried to pick me up," I said incredulously to my friend Paul as we hurriedly left the Dublin Bookshop on Grafton Street.

It's a Lost world. We were doing fine with it but then the series started on British TV and their media went loopy and nearly did our heads in with talk of how unrealistic it is and what a crock we've been sold. Truth is, we want to be sold a crock. Unreality is where we live. Guide price, my eye, we'll give you another million for it. Lost and all its money (it spent £6m on the first episode) puts up nothing more outrageous than life does.

Over the next few days thousands of lucky Leaving Cert students will receive CAO offers of places in third level. If their experiences over coming years are anything like mine, they will have times of unprecedented freedom, meet great friends and have doors opened to them that will change their lives. While they might not be the best years of their lives, they will be the best years they have had so far.

For anyone interested in the peace process, the next few months are going to be interesting ones. In my opinion, while public attention may wane at times, the vast majority of people want the process to succeed. This is not to say that everyone sits on the edge of their seats waiting for the next twist in the developing situation. On the contrary, the process has not been like that for some time. Although certain events, such as the arrival home of the Colombia Three, have the capacity to cause some excitement, the process has become something of a slow dance.

She has been called the Rosa Parks of the anti-war movement. Cindy Sheehan has been camped outside President George Bush's Texas ranch since 7 August.

President Bush has done so much for women. Not at home, of course. Women in jeans in America may have their rights eroded by an administration where faith trumps science, but women in burkas? The president can't talk enough about how important their rights are.

National liberation struggles can have different phases. There is a time to resist, to stand up and to confront the enemy by arms if necessary. In other words there is a time for war. There is also a time to engage. To reach out. To put war behind us all.

Naomi Wolf compares the new Hillary Clinton 'biography' to a new biography of Mary Wollstonecraft, both examples of anti-feminist fiction, linking real political figures to folklore, rather than telling their true histories

With terms used such as 'grossly polluted' and news that Laois is the only county with a playground for one in every thousand children, Hilary Curley finds Ireland's first performance table for local government grim reading

In most, if not all, the media coverage of the trial of Mayo farmer Pádraig Nally, the murder victim, John (Frog) Ward was portrayed as a violent, drug-fuelled petty criminal. Ward was already known to the gardaí, had 12 sets of convictions and was due in court to face charges for threatening a Garda with a slash hook.