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Urgent versus important, and the macro Kate should create. Also, 7 other things worth knowing today.

In court, it’s common for a judge to tell the jury to avoid outside news coverage. But you might have seen how difficult that’s become to enforce recently, in the lawsuit that Sarah Palin filed against the New York Times.

The jurors found out during their deliberations that the judge had decided to dismiss the case.

(He was waiting until they reported their verdict to make the official order, so that when the case was inevitably appealed, the appeals court would have the benefit of knowing what the jury thought).

Most interesting to me is how they found out: not by defying the judge’s request or overhearing something in a hallway, but because several of the jurors got instant push notifications on their phones from various news organizations, telling them about the order.

One of the big unsung dilemmas of our time has to do with the constant, technology-infused battle between urgent and important. I think it goes like this:

• Unimportant, non-urgent things are disguised as urgent, and somet…