Monday, April 18, 2005



Cookbooks divide food into two categories: savories and sweets. Savories are protein—appetizers and entrees, meats and vegetables, lunches and dinners. Sweets tend to involve dough. Some claim that savories cooks are artists, improvising freely, while sweets cooks are scientists, measuring everything. This is as true as any generalization, but it did scare me away from making dough ... Every Sunday night, in preparation for the Sopranos, I made a different Bolognese Sauce and fresh tagliatelle. I could not master Marcella's technique and longed for an Italian grandmother to teach me the tricks . Ach, is there is brave foody soul out there to blog about the differences between Sydney and Melbourne

Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: Crouching Tigers & Hidden Media Dragons
Millionaire British rock stars, painters and authors face losing a tax haven an hour’s flight away in Ireland.

Since 1969 Ireland has had an artistic tax exemption scheme (now Section 195 Taxes Consolidation Act, 1997) which exempts income earned from the sale of artistic work from income tax under certain (fairly liberally interpreted) circumstances. For decades artists from other nations have also taken advantage of this situation. moving to Ireland (or at least spending enough time there) to qualify -- but, as Maurice Chittenden reports in the Sunday Times Artists could lose their big Irish tax break:


Irish artists' tax exemption: The falsified hopes rising like kites [Is it an insidious attack on nearly 2,000 years of Christian tradition, thinly veiled as fiction? Author Dan Brown courted controversy, then capitalized on it ; Frayn cleverly stitches together a drama that is partly a Cold War spy thriller, a history play and, moreover, a human drama about duplicity, trust, betrayal and love. Democracy, Sydney Theatre ]
• · People really know themselves that the dark age is ahead. They're worried, and they haven't articulated it, but they feel it Dark Age Ahead ; I rather like the bank metaphor. It has a certain grandeur, as well as perhaps order, authority, safety and above-boardness. I see a tall, elegant building of classical form, at once austere and reassuring. New words are the deposits: anyone can make them; all are received with thanks; each is added to the store. But this is where the bank metaphor falls down: once in, the deposits become a public resource, available to anyone who wants to dip or dabble. Pedants be warned, the wordbank is open ; Trend Watching
• · · "Ick Factor" Living in a wealthy, safe, stable city may be bad for your wellbeing ; The $30,000 Mercedes!
• · · · Take a group of emerging writers, put them in a bar and watch the crowds roll in The First Fiction Tour; The curse of the prolific author The Problem With Writing Too Much ; The common law drew a distinction between persons of unsound mind from birth (“idiots”) and those who became so subsequently (“lunatics”). VJC v NSC [2005] QSC 068 at [7] per Wilson J
• · · · · Judith Regan is the world's most successful and influential publisher - but her critics say she is foul-mouthed, tyrannical and utterly ruthless Judith Regan - The Angriest Publisher In New York ; Bollywood is the world's biggest producer of movies. But its marketing efforts are weak and uncoordinated Star: Bollywood Needs Marketing Help
• · · · · · The owner of a brothel in a small town in southern Poland is closing down his business out of respect for Pope John Paul II Brothel owner sees the light ;
Last October, Crown Royal Whisky opened up a Crown Royal Barbershop on Lafayette Street in SoHo, NY, with barbers from Levels on hand to clip all comers, gratis, for one month, seven days a week. Crown Royal Barbershop