Posted 8:19 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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Overhead at the water cooler:
-I regret the day I was married. Consider yourself lucky. I was married for a whole year ...
-How is your ex wife … she has been drinking since I left her seven months ago. Don't be silly - no one celebrates that much ...

My lovely Anne Warfield noted: A true leader is not one you look up to because they are the best. A true leader is one that draws the best out in you. Brett Lethbridge - NO LIMIT: A Search for the Australian Artistic Dream

Why is it that so many girls wax lyrical over dating some bloke who refuses to return their calls, won't be caught dead meeting her folks and never buys her gifts (unless he wants something in return)? Introducing the bad boy - a.k.a. the blokes we tend to fall hopelessly in love with. Modern society is becoming increasingly restless and non - committal due to such large variety of choice. Yet has the concept of romance been blown out of the cold river? Nice guys finish last: Girls always, always fall for the bad barranqueros

Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: Performing a Miracle with Friends
Contagious behavior: We aren't emotional islands. We are walking mood conductors. Laugh and the World Laughs With You

Why do we laugh? Laughter has surprisingly little to do with jokes and funny stories. It is an ancient, unconsciously controlled vocal relic that co-exists with modern speech----a social, psychological and biological act which predates humor and is shared with our primate cousins, the great apes. With startling effect, laughter reveals why humans can talk and other apes cannot and leads to the discovery of the event essential for the evolution of human speech and language.

• via Phil, Kristen and James Pettifer The three hardest tasks in the world are neither physical feats nor intellectual achievements, but moral acts: to return love for hate, to include the excluded, and to say, I was wrong: Wantok bilong yu ('your friend' in pidgin) [The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page - Saint Augustine Absence becomes the greatest Presence; Listening is a key leadership skill. The first step in listening is to close your mouth ; Forgiveness means giving up all hope for a better past. Kokoda ]
• · Strategic dreams often turn into nightmares if companies start engaging in expensive and distracting restructurings. It is far more effective to choose a design that works reasonably well and then develop a strategic system to tune the structure to the strategy. Great article, unfortunate title. Why is everyone so afraid of Disruption? How to implement a new strategy without disrupting your organization ; Sir Richard is unique and he, more than anyone else, knows how to drum up the publicity. Dick's spa stunt Richard Branson's Aussie sex romp video ; IT marketing smarts ; Get your eBay auction listings via your favorite RSS reader Auction
• · · For years, teachers, after school group leaders and librarians have been advocating for Walden Media to move into the publishing space. With the tremendous partnership we've established with our friends at Penguin, we can finally maximize the strong trust we developed with our audience and deliver the high level of quality product in publishing that we do in our films Penguin Children's Is Latest to Add Film Partner, In Agreement with Walden; It's the element of danger, of surprise, of being naughty, of adding a sense of sexcitement Why women cheat ; Can men and women really just be friends?
• · · · Ensnared by time-wasting traps, managers can fast get bogged down in repetitive tasks and irrelevant details. Enlightened organisations around the world are forging pathways for change. David Parmenter shares seven practical ways to clear the calendar and reclaim the day. Seven Time Wasters – And how to evict them ; A war on Sydney's taxi ranks looms after Macquarie Bank was finally given permission by the State Government to set up a new taxi network. The move is expected to annoy the industry doyen Reg Kermode - The taxi industry is far removed from the rarefied atmosphere of merchant banking Mac attack on taxis gets the official thumbs up
• · · · · You are what you eat (but cook it first). A life in the raw ; Another night, another spate of shootings with two more lives lost Wedding turns into a funeral for murdered boxer ; The Premier, Morris Iemma, yesterday accused Mr Debnam of hysteria, exaggeration and of undermining police. Mr Debnam claimed the Government was "in denial" about violence in the area and claimed there were drive-by shootings "every day" We need saturation policing on the streets
• · · · · · Very interesting on the development of media images of women and sex - not for the better. It isn't time to dip your toe into the icy waters of singledom just yet. The history of playboy's centrefolds ; It seems old fashioned dating is out. Yep, welcome to the new trend to hit the singles scene: "Hooking Up" So what's the appeal? Well when we're overworked, stressed out and way too busy to tap into our emotional energy, hooking up seems like the next best thing... What if we're simply sick to death of searching for "the one"? The Hookup Generation - no-strings attached type liaison; Forget oysters and strawberries - it seems that work has become the new aphrodisiac of the 21st Century. Yet with tough deadlines, rough deals and hefty sales targets, what makes us so addicted to the hard grind? Our lust for the job erodes our lust for each other Hooked on Asteron

Posted 10:33 PM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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When you have come to the edge of all light that you know and are about to drop off into the darkness of the unknown,
Faith is knowing one of two things will happen: There will be something solid to stand on or you will be taught to fly.
~Patrick Overton

No ONE has ever accused corporate America of being shy when it comes to making its pitch for our dollars. So when the blogging phenomenon became mainstream it was hardly a surprise that the likes of Microsoft, Google and General Motors took it up to spruik their wares. Blogging the brand

The Blog, The Press, The Media: Corporate Blog - Enterprise Blogs and Wikis
Amazon.com uses blogs, wikis, plogs (personal web logs), and social tagging to generate site stickiness and direct customers toward desired products such as Cold River. Blogs are often published by book authors and wikis are used to allow customers to enhance information about products.

A recent AMR Research Alert mentions that "one of the world's largest high-tech manufacturers views wikis and blogs as part of its overarching knowledge management strategy..." This company is also mentioned as being an Open Text LiveLink user and having 64,000 employees in 73 countries.

• Getting Aboard - Reaching the next level [Authority of the Wikipedia ; It's time for the ivory towers to embrace the potential of the 'blogging age' Blog or be damned?]
• · Spoiled by Google Google has trained us not only that search can be very good but that it can be very easy Report: Majority of Web Sites Lack Search Savvy ; You take the lowest road, and I'll take a low road... Conveying Accountability through the Member’s Web Site
• · · It's what you know and how you use it The role of IT in knowledge management has been redefined Blogging the world ; Sociology of blogging Desperate Sourcers ; I am partial to using SAP Improve your Supply Chain
• · · · Judged by Recruiting.com as the best post from HR and Recruiting related blogs last week Why blogging works - Gautum Ghosh ; But your Honor, he is an idiot and she is a liar! And he made me cry!!!!!
• · · · · A decade ago, the concept of an online job board might have been chalked up as science fiction. The world of Internet job boards has exploded into an annual $1.3 billion industry and continues to grow exponentially, The International Association of Employment Websites 40,000 employment websites online ; Often over-the-edge thoughts on sourcing, recruiting, hiring, and onboarding... Does your organization have a soft belly to those whose goal is to identify your rainmakers and possibly hire them away? Meet the Edge
• · · · · · Cameron's Brain: Marty's right - ajaxWrite is amazing ; Another take on the great Vista blogger flurry of huffiness Daily comments on PR, media and related stuff ; That's my sentence ... that's my sentence ... that's my -- wait! He ad-libbed that one! The Speechwriter's Slant: IS GHOSTWRITING ETHICAL?

Posted 10:57 PM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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I’m back in my place at Bondi once more, having just wrapped up another bittersweet long weekend. Sad circumstances and easy to book Virgin Blue helped me to catch up with many of my friends at Brissie not just the huge family. ... Winston Churchill said somewhere or other that there are few things in life more exhilarating than being shot at without effect. I thought of this utterly characteristic remark a few days ago as I watched how fast the time flew in Brissie. So on Saturday I caught up with wonderful friends Phil, Kristen, James; even managed to share a story ot two with Peter and Elizabeth. The day was peppered with scenic drives around the Gap, an artistic conversation with Brett Lethbridge at Paddington, coffee with rich cake at flower shop and later dinner at Wilston at Earth and Sea. On Sunday morning I had coffee at Northlakes with family John and Anita, Michael and Kathy and around lunchtime AFL grounds and the club tucker at Aspley created a hearty atmosphere as we watched #42 (James) kick the ball. Kristen as always was the giver of life running around the football players supplying one an all with H2O. In the afternoon Phil and I clocked 22 laps swimming at Ferny Grove pool ... In the evening the invasion of the Boonah crowd Rob Meegan and Bella took place. The night was young at midnight as the Bohemian Plzenske beer flowed while Antipodean barbie kept Kristie and Phil busy with all kinds of surprises.
Amazingly, I even caught up with Kerrie at the musty library corners of the Parliament House and a chatty morning tea in the renovated part of the cafeteria overlooking Brissie river. River was the highlight of my day as the dining table along the Brissie River provided many hours of soulful conversation with Vanessa. There are some great quotes in the novel of my life. I like the one from Schopenhauer: "A novelist should aim not to descibe great events but to make small ones interesting." The nasty review for Cold River on Amazon was dimissed by an interesting observation by Vanessa using similar technique practiced by Lichtenberg: A book is a mirror; if an ass peers into it, you can't expect an apostle to look out ;-)

The creative person wants to be a know-it-all. He wants to know about all kinds of things: ancient history, nineteenth-century mathematics, current manufacturing techniques, flower arranging, and hog futures. Because he never knows when these ideas might come together to form a new idea. It may happen six minutes later or six months, or six years down the road. But he has faith that it will happen.

My father in law Les Rossiter was one of the most creative creatures on earth. He once shared with me the following story in Batehaven (Anzac Day circa 1991):

There are two waves drifting along in the ocean, one a bit bigger than the other. The bigger wave suddenly becomes very sad and upset. The smaller wave asks what's wrong. "You don't want to know," the bigger wave says. "What is it?" the small wave asks. "No - really - it's too terrible. If you knew what I knew, you'd never be happy." The small wave persists. Finally the big wave explains: "You can't see it, but I can see that, not too far from here, all of the waves are crashing on the shore. We are going to disappear." The small wave says," I can make you happy with just six words, but you have to listen very carefully to them." The big wave doesn't believe it -- what does the small wave know that he doesn't -- but he's desperate. After a while of doubting and mocking the small wave, the big wave finally gives in, and asks the small wave to tell him. And so the small wave says: "You're not a wave, you're water."

Posted 10:00 PM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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There is a famous tax case where a judge used the analogy of a tree to explain the difference between capital and income. The capital is like the tree and the income is the fruit. In a country where tax planning is almost as important as the resources sector, losing money is not always a bad thing. So when ABC Learning Centres said earlier in the month that it was taking over its smaller rival, Kids Campus, Melbourne operative Geoff Lord should have been pretty happy. Australian Financial Review, 24/03/2006, Market Wrap, page 52 Lord's light shining a little more brightly

Eye on Politics & Law Lords: True blue Australian spirit
Courtesy of Margaret Lake:

I am not often givent o surges of patriotism but events of recent days have caused my heart to swell with national pride - and it has nothing to do with our medal haul in Melbourne. True courage and character are revealed in the face of adversity and that is exactly what we have seen from the people of North Queensland and many other Australians this week.

• Carolyn Tucker Sunshine Coast Daily (Maroochydore) [This database assists in the efficient exchange of information by providing links to publicly available websites that contain information that might often be requested by competent authorities - Aussies and Bohemians - Database of public websites relevant to Competent Authorities ; The NSW opposition is again calling on the government to honour its commitment to the GST agreement by cutting business taxes to kickstart the state's economy. Iemma 'must cut business tax ]
• · AWB's no-pay-no-grain scandal should be sending chills into board- rooms across Australia. Blurred lines encourage companies to align morality with tax deductibility ; The share of national income captured by Australia's wealthiest individuals has leapt to its highest since the Korean War So, it is the rich what gets the pleasure
• · · The FBI and CIA were very concerned with the outsourcing of year 2000 work offshore because there was no easy way to control or prevent backdoors, malicious code or other opportunities for computer criminal activity in such practices. (ATO offshoring close, March 9) To provide such an opportunity to overworked and underpaid programmers in these offshoring countries, where there have been a number of reported white-collar criminal issues related to outsourcing, is an operational risk far too serious to consider in regard to something as sensitive as tax systems. Too touchy for tax ; Why "Get Rich Quick" will only ever cost you money
• · · · AUSTRALIANS who declare an income of zero are spending more on their tax affairs than the average worker, suggesting they are exploiting the tax system by using loopholes and legitimate financial structures Taxation's park bench mark attacked ; By John Wasiliev: The Australian Financial Review. Page 28. The Australian Securities & Investments Commission says promoters of illegal superannuation access schemes target vulnerable people. In many cases these same people are legally entitled to gain early access to their savings anyway. Executive director of consumer protection, Greg Tanzer, says promoters deliberately use people's ignorance of superannuation rules so they can earn exorbitant commissions. Fund members in severe financial distress can gain access to some of their savings by applying to the fund trustee. Money can also be released on compassionate grounds and for medical treatment Early access to funds is possible - 22/03/2006
• · · · · It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a government in possession of a healthy surplus, must be in want of a tax cut. The difficulty for the Howard government is persuading Australians that a surplus -- estimated to be as large as $15 billion this financial year -- does not equal an over-taxed population. Australian Financial Review, 25/03/2006, There's politics in tax ; I idolize Warren Buffett. The investment legend is unafraid to stick to his convictions, regardless of how unpalatable they may be at a given moment. When United States investment legend Warren Buffett says he is worried, the rest of us ought to be hearing alarm bells. Buffett, arguably the world's best known share investor, is worried about costs - "frictional costs" that threaten to dramatically lower investor's returns in the future. Our miracle economy is running out of spark.
• · · · · · Freedoms at risk as banks forced to act ; Why the biggest beneficiaries of globalization may be pimps, drug runners and other crooks. Merchants of Mayhem ; There are ... Merchants of Mayhem... : Consider these disparate and disturbing facts from Illicit, a new book by Moisés Naím Unsecured nuclear material ...

Posted 12:56 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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If a man hasn't found anything worth dying for, he hasn't anything worth living for.
- Dr. Martin Luther King ( My father in law was a hero like no other)

Little moments make a day
Days turn into years
You've watched me grow up
As I watched you grow old
But now it seems like I'm looking on
and you're the one moving on,
I'm the young one, watching your go free.

So go free to your first love, free to your dreams,
Where the clouds are lined with gold and joy is always there.
So go free to perfection,
Free to eternity.
Where today never becomes tomorrow.

So be free with your first love, free in your dreams.
Where the clouds are lined with gold and joy is always there.
So be free in perfection,
Free in eternity.
Where today’s peace lasts forever.
-Sarah Rossiter (30/7/1999)


Leslie Rossiter – 12 May 1919 to 23 March 2006 A Summary of His Story told by Michael Rossiter and on Behalf of Anita and Lauren

Mum & Dad met at a local dance in Sutton Coldfield, a suburb of Birmingham, during WW2 and Sinatra was the hottest singer around at that time – and one of Mum’s early favourites…..but Dad was more a Bing Crosby man


Leslie Rossiter was one of 8 children born to John & Laura Rossiter in Birmingham, England. The family home was in an inner suburb of Birmingham and Dad was born at home on 12 May 1919, six months and one day after the official end of WW1.

John Rossiter was Royal Navy veteran and served as a “stoker” – i.e. he shovelled coal into the boilers of navy ships, during WW1. He later became a maintenance engineer and lost an eye in a work accident. There is no record I can find of his mother’s occupation prior to marriage and she became a full-time mother with 8 children to feed.

Dad had 3 sisters (Grace, Margaret &…) and he was one of 5 boys – the second youngest. Bill was a businessman and moved to South Africa and raised his family in Rhodesia, now called Zimbabwe. John became a jeweller, had his own manufacturing jewellery business in the centre of Birmingham and his son Greville still operates that business in suburban Birmingham. Albert was 3 years older than Dad – worked in a factory all his life. Dad was particularly close to his younger brother Arthur, who was very musical and was a professional musician all his working life.

When Dad was about 9 years old the family moved a few miles north to an area called Sutton Coldfield. They lived in public housing in Gunter Road, Pype Hayes and Dad attended the Pagett Road School, where he was keener on sport than lessons. He represented his school in soccer and was vice captain of the cricket team.

He left school in July 1933 and at the age of 14 went to work in a bakelite factory – hard black plastic for electrical insulators and other goods, like the old-style black telephones you see in early movies.

Dad was not happy with this job and eventually obtained an apprenticeship as a Silversmith with the jewellery company called Joseph Smith & Sons, Birmingham, the centre of the jewellery trade in Britain.

By 1939 Dad was a qualified tradesman and 20 years of age. But in September that year Hitler’s forces invaded Poland and Dad, like millions of other young men and all his brothers, volunteered for military service. Like his brothers he enlisted in the Royal Air Force and when he said he was silversmith the Air Force people decided he would make a good aircraft mechanic. So Dad was shipped off to the RAF base at Toxteth, about 40 miles north of Birmingham, to be trained to repair aircraft engines. When Dad & I visited England in Ocotber 1996 I took him to the Royal Air Force museum north of Birmingham and when we stopped in the carpark he said, “This is the first place I was stationed after joining the RAF.”

He was ultimately assigned to various light and medium bomber squadrons, working on mainly on Mosquito & Beaufighter fighter/bombers, then Blenheim and Boston mid-range bombers. He served in England, Ireland and France from 1940 to 1946. He achieved the rank of Leading Airman (2 stripes), was in charge of a bomber maintenance team and was awarded various medals for his military service. (On coffin)


The war had a number of long term consequences for Dad. He had always been a hard, conscientious worker. He was also a worrier and was always concerned that he and his ground crew had done everything they could for the flight crews. Ultimately he developed stomach ulcers and lost weight a fair bit of weight – dropping from his “fighting weight” of 10 stone (about 70 kilos) in 1939 to about 9 stone (about 50 kilos) by the end of the war. In 1946 he was pensioned out of the RAF with a 30% disability pension.

Probably the greatest thing to happen to Dad during the war occurred when he was home on leave one time in 1944/45. Back then Dad was a keen dancer and regularly attended community dances that were popular back then. One evening he went to a dance in Sutton Coldfield and for one of the dances the ladies were asked to choose their partners. An 18 year old local girl called Ruth Read asked Dad for a dance. At some stage he was smitten for life and she must have been very keen on him too as they were married at St Mary’s Methodist Church, Pype Hayes, in 1946.

Some friends and family members said Mum was mad for marrying Dad – they claimed he was already half dead, had one foot in the grave and wasn’t a great prospect. Dad has obviously outlived most of those doom-day merchants. Over the years the family has sometimes joked with Dad and said he may have had one foot in the grave in 1946 but it was always going to be a battle to get the other foot into the grave. Dad was the last surviving member of the 8 children in his family.

There was a severe housing shortage in England after the war. M&D had no choice but to live, first with Dad’s family and later to Mum’s mother’s house in South Road, Erdington, where Anita was born in March 1947. Mum had a difficult pregnancy and birth so it was a while before they tried for any more children.

Dad had returned to work as a Silversmith with Joseph Smith & Sons and in 1950 they managed to get their own place to live.


By the end of the war, Mum had had enough of cold, rainy days and post-war shortages in England. She talked to Dad about moving to Australia and in 1951 set sail for the Promised Land “Australia”. The only other member of Dad’s family to leave England was his brother Bill. He and his family moved to Rhodesia, now called Zimbabwe, in 1950.

M&D had to pay the full cost of their journey to Australia. At the time British people could pay 10 pounds ($20) for passage by boat to Australia….thousands of “Ten Pound Poms” came to Australia during the 50’s. Mass movement of people by aircraft was not available back then.

Dad had earnt too much as a silversmith so they had to pay their full fare – about 60 pounds per adult and half fare for Anita….about $300 at the time – a huge amount of money. In May 1952 they boarded the S.S. Orion to head to Melbourne. Mum & Anita (aged 5) was chronically sea sick the whole time and it took 6 weeks on the boat just to reach Perth, WA.

Mum could not face anymore boat travel so they ended their journey at Perth. There was an economic depression in Australia at the time and jobs were hard to find. Nothing was available in jewellery trade so Dad took whatever job he could find to feed and shelter his family. Amongst some of the jobs he tried was farm hand, orchardist (strange jobs for an inner city kid). He also worked as a Forest Warden in southwest WA – he’d have to live by himself for days at a time up a huge tower in the jarrah forests ready to report any bush fires.

They lived in Perth a few months before catching the train to Melbourne. More odd jobs for Dad but Mum found the grey skies and wet Melbourne weather too much like England so they headed to Sydney. The three of them arrived at Central Railway in Sydney, did not know anyone or anything about the city. They ended up living in a caravan for 6 months in the northern beachside suburb of Narrabeen and Dad worked as a cook in a fish and chip shop while he tried to find other work but jobs were still tough to find.

They moved back to Melbourne and Dad got a job back in the jewellery trade. The rented a small terrace house in Caulfield. This house had been owned by a carpenter and had a workshop at the rear which was ideal for Dad to use as a jewellery workshop. Dad asked his employed if he could make some extra jewellery at home at night and weekends. Soon he arranged for Mum to get paid as his assistant. Over the next 9 months they saved up the full deposit for a brand new house in Moorabbin, a new suburb on the west side of Melbourne.

As they settled in Melbourne they met some friends from England, joined a local Methodist church and became life-long friends with Bill & Edna Hider, an older Australian couple, who later became god-parents to Michael & Lauren.

In early 1954 Mum was pregnant again. She carried the child full term but had problems during her pregnancy. The baby girl was born in mid-September but died within 24 hours. A couple of weeks later their minister and family doctor, who also attended their church, came to see M&D at home. They asked M&D if they would be interested in adopting a newborn boy who had been put up for adoption. Things worked a lot different back in the 50’s …and could sometimes happen very fast compared to these days. I was born on Sept 24 and 2 weeks later became the newest member of the Rossiter family.

Dad had worked terribly long hours in saving up for the home and his eye sight was shot to pieces. He could not longer work in the jewellery trade so they sold the house and bought the general store at Tremont, a small community up the Dandenong Mountains north of Melbourne. The shop sold all sorts of food but was also the area Post Office and petrol station. Mum often ran the shop while Dad was out delivering the mail or travelling down to Melbourne to buy fresh fruit and vegies.

This line of work required Dad to have a car so in 1955 he bought his first car – a little 2 door Thames panel van – about the size of a Holden Barina or Toyota Echo. He has an accident a few months later and wrote it off when he managed to roll off one of the narrow roads while delivering the mail. He bought a new Prefect van – same size and shape as the Thames van. We lived in Tremont for about 3 years before moving to Sydney again. The shop still stands in Tremont but a large self-serve petrol station has been built & attached in the backyard.

In 1957 they sold the general store and bought a fruit and veggie shop in Sefton, a suburb in south-western Sydney, near Bankstown. We lived in a new brick house at 18 Marks St, Chester Hill. We all attended the Sefton Methodist church, just up from Dad’s shop. It was around this time that Anita first met a young blonde-haired man called John, from nearby Yagoona. He obviously caught her eye…but that is another story.

In 1959 Dad sold the shop and tried his hand as a Real Estate Agent. He worked for a number of companies in the Sydney suburbs of Guildford, Bankstown, Auburn and Lakemba. In the late 60’s he worked for a company based in the up market area called St Ives, on the north shore of Sydney.

St Ives is well away from the industrial areas of southern Sydney and this move seemed to fix the chronic sinus condition that Dad suffered from for many years. This is probably about the only health issue I recall that effected Dad. He use to complain all the time about his back, neck, knees and a stomach but none of us remember him having a day off work with illness. It was a family joke that Dad was a chronic hypochondriac – only happy when he had a health condition to whinge about. Dad had finally managed to give up smoking in the late 50’s and this no doubt improved his health.

In 1960 Mum became pregnant again and this time spent about 6 weeks in hospital during her last trimester. Anita and I stayed with a couple of family friends for this period and on 6th September, Lauren safely arrived on the scene.

In 1962 we moved to Winston Hills, north of Parramatta, and Dad became actively involved in the local Methodist church at Northmead. He had also been introduced to the work of various overseas mission groups but World Vision seemed to really take hold of his heart.

In 1970 he had opened his own Real Estate business in Westmead, in partnership with a former colleague. Dad approached World Vision with his work partner and they asked how they could help the organisation. They purchased a 16 mm movie projector and for the next 5 or 6 years Dad spent lots of week nights and weekends away at various churches and community groups showing World Vision films, talking about their work and promoting the World Vision child sponsorship program.

Also in the early 70’s M&D decided to move from the Methodist church to the Baptist church. They had both been involved in various aspects of church work and this continued at the Baptist church. M&D also bought a small caravan in the mid-70’s and apart from touring holidays, had the van located at a beachside caravan park in Bateau Bay on the NSW Central Coast for a few years.

In 1972 Mum took Lauren for a trip back to England to meet family members and tour the country side. Dad could never stand being away from Mum for any length of time so this was a great test for him. He did not plan to go as he was running a new small business and couldn’t really afford the money or time to be away. Within days Dad was pining for Mum. Anita, John and I did our best to keep him on track with business and other commitments but we were fighting a losing battle.

After Mum had been away about a month or so Dad came home with an airline ticket and announced he was flying out the next day to England. He had a miserable trip over stuck behind someone smoking a cigar from Hong Kong to London (smoking was permitted in all areas of aircraft back then). He had a miserable time back in England, opened up old wounds with a couple of family members, found the whole place different to his memories and couldn’t get back here soon enough. When they got back we explained to Mum that we had all been battling every day to keep him here once she flew away – we had tried hard but Dad’s passion for Mum knew few boundaries.

As Dad approached his 60th birthday in 1979 he started talking about retiring. Due to his War Service disability he qualified for a full pension from the age of 60. Unfortunately for Dad he found that this pension was means tested and his income over the previous year had been too high to permit him to take the full pension. So he sold his business, took 12 months off from paid work and formally retired 12 months later.

In 1980 M&D drove to Melbourne for a holiday and to catch up with old friends. They drove home from Melbourne via the coastal highway and stopped in Batemans Bay for a few days. They fell in love with a newly-built house in nearby Batehaven and when they got home promptly announced they were selling up and moving down the coast.

In August 1980 they settled into Batehaven. They became foundation members of the newly formed Batemans Bay Baptist church. They enjoyed bushwalking, joined a community choir and made good use of their caravan. Mum joined various craft groups. Dad played golf and bowls, worked in the garden but also got under Mum’s feet.

After 12 months or so Mum sent Dad out to get a part-time job in Real Estate so she could have some time to herself. Over the next few years Dad worked a couple of days per week, made an occasional sale and earnt some extra cash. They really seemed to enjoy these sunset years – going for daily walks, picnics up and down the coast, little trips away and their various other interests.

On 8 November 1993 Dad’s world suffered an irreversible blow. On a clear, sunny M&D went for their morning walk – Mum collapsed into Dad’s arms and we were all shocked by her sudden, unexpected passing. Mum had always said she expected Dad to survive her – she said it was in the genes. Members of her family lasted into their 60’s and 70’s and had heart attacks. Members of Dad’s family lasted into their 80’s and 90’s.


In 1996 Dad said he wanted to go back to England for a holiday and see members of his and Mum’s family. The family knew we could not let him go alone. I had loads of long-service leave so I took 6 weeks off work. We spent almost a month in England and 2 weeks in Zimbabwe visiting Bill’s son Terry and his family. We stopped for a couple of days in Perth to visit his sister’s son, David Cutler and family.
(David's daughter Laura - named after Dad's mother, is in the photo used on the Order of Service for Dad's funeral)


The rest of the story most of us know. It became obvious that Dad was sliding into dementia after Mum passed away. In 1999 we sold the house and tried to settle Dad in a retirement facility in Batemans Bay. He used to walk many miles every day and did not settle well. He was badly injured in a fall and came to my home to recover. Dad’s short-term memory and vocal skills were crumbling as his dementia got worse.

In early 2000, when Dad was staying at my place before he suddenly moved to Queensland my daughter Sarah was struck by the passion Dad obviously possessed for Mum and the loneliness he expressed concerning their separation. Sarah wrote some words reflecting on her Grandfather and I’d like to invite Sarah to read those words to you now … Little moments make a day ...

Posted 7:36 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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What cannot be cured must be endured. Endure cheerfully!

Do not multiply your wants and then feel like a beggar. Reduce your wants and feel like a king.
- via Vanessa @ Bris Vegas ;-)

From Budapest to Mumbai to Stockholm, writers are jumping on the "Bridget Jones" bandwagon, with revealing results. The Chick-Lit Pandemic
Database of descriptions of hundreds of products. How Products are Made

Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: This Passion Called Love: History of Single Life
Booze is as old as civilization. In fact, it might be the reason we have civilization at all: The first known cookbook is a Sumerian formula for making beer, and growing grain or grapes for alcohol production was a mainstay of economies from ancient Greece to the American frontier.

Even back in the good ol' days of ziggurats and temple prostitution, though, there was always a certain tension between alcohol's ability to raise spirits and its tendency to loosen morals. Hammurabi's Babylonian law said that if a woman dedicated to a god were to even enter a drinking establishment, she should be burned to death. Novels such as Rona Jaffee's The Best of Everything made urban watering holes seem like the natural environment of the men and women, great of ambition but loose of morals, who moved to the big city to make their way in exciting careers in advertising, fashion and publishing.

• Go into any restaurant, club or corner dive bar in Sydney, New York, London, San Francisco, Edinburgh or Los Angeles on any given night of the week, and you'll see the truth of what worried Hammurabi back in the day: Mixed Drinks - the torrent of joy juice that flows at apartment-house parties [Two Good Eggs - People in New York change sex partners quicker than the crosstown bus Wanted: A Few Good Sperm ; Good article from Cyberskeptic's Guide via The Virtual Chase. Here's a good one: The Art of Public Records Research]
• · Temperance is primarily about desires for the greatest pleasures, and the greatest pleasures result from the most natural operations, which are those that have as their purpose the preservation of the individual and the preservation of the species. Pleasures of meat and drink and sexual pleasures ; People are just so on-edge about this kind of stuff now Publishing's Pendulum Swing
• · · Lobbyists in Love: With power couples, conflict of interest is what makes them interesting. No one here wants to be "the wife."; Older women like sex. That less-than-earthshaking claim has raised eyebrows and ire The sexual revelation
• · · · So we all know how to act. Be nice & don’t do crime, kick puppies, or start forest fires. But those are easy Mr. Manners ; Series coming up: Blog Role Models
• · · · · Three Good Reasons to Start Your Own Company ;
• · · · · · Conversation may be one of the most fundamental political and social acts Are We Having a Conversation Yet? An Art Form Evolves; There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. Love and Literature

Posted 12:28 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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In life, unlike chess, the game continues after checkmate.
- Isaac Asimov, "Foundation and Empire"


Find out how much is your media dragon worth Inspired by Tristan Louis's research into the value of each link to Weblogs Inc

Posted 7:19 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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Alright, I've been known to jump to conclusions now and again when it comes to dating, but I'm usually just letting you know what some other dude said. Hmm ... I've received a cryptic message that says that Katie Kosko is rumoured to say that DATING IS LIKE SEARCHING FOR THE PERFECT WINE. One date is too fruity, another too dry, and still another too much bouquet (cologne overdose). But once you find the perfect variety that suits your taste, get drunk. Katie is a real wife - Desperate housewives, wife-swappers, and the women of Bravo Barranqueros. — Wives are hot right now. During Sex and the City's original run, its Carrie Bradshaw, an urban bachelorette, was television's symbolic woman

Some things are sacred like Czech Sigmund Freud’s views on life: ‘Dogs love their friends and bite their enemies, quite unlike people who are incapable of pure love and always have to mix love and hate.’ I also really like this post by Doug Thompson on the life of a newspaperman. Thompson says: You are the chronicler of life in a community, the conscience of society, always watching, always questioning, and always searching for the truth beyond the hype. So journalists need you. But you need them, too. If journalists don't tell you about this stuff, who will? The system won't tell you, not even in America. That's why all successful democracies have had a free and independent media. No system will easily admit its wrongs. Just a newspaperman

The Blog, The Press, The Media: Going the Extra Mile: Hi Jozef
Just wanted to draw your attention to AustralianBlogs.com.au which is staffed by a small but dedicated team of volunteers who believe that the Australian blogosphere produces high quality blogs that are just as good, if not better than those available offshore. Local content for local readers.

Hope you find it useful. www.australianblogs.com.au
Cheers
Jon
AustralianBlogs.com.au is a free community resource to bookmark your favourite Australian blogs. Similar to del.icio.us (but less invasive - we don't need you to register or login), you can add your bookmarks or just browse to see what's popular.
It is a place where Australian bloggers can showcase their work, and the blog-reading public can find interesting, relevant and popular Australian blogs.

• If you meet the above, drop over to their site and add your blog: Thanks Jon and the Dream Team; What Google developed wasn't artificial intelligence, but something closer to what O'Reilly Media tech guru Rael Dornfest calls "artificial artificial intelligence". That's the brand of technology most likely to win this race: not the machines we use, but the machines that know how to use us. Man vs. Machine in Newsreader War : [For All Five Of You That Care - Jozef Imrich: Nudity No 'Big Deal' - A nude James Bond? Oh my. How vulgar. Daniel Craig is not stranger to going full frontal on film, so why not bring his willingness to go nude to James Bond? 101 Insider Secrets from Top Direct Sellers of Cold River ; Kudos to Darren from ProBlogger for spotting this service - AdSense Blacklist. Adsense revenue booster? ; Never before in the history of advertising has it been possible to spend five bucks, write a couple of ads, and get instant access to over 100 million people in less than 10 minutes. But with Google AdWords, you can do exactly that - right now. Google AdWords Keyword Tool - A Useful tool for AdSense Publishers ; Journalism: Resources from advocacy to media watchdogs ]
• · 6 months, 2,174 miles, 14 states, 2 hikers and one trail. And we are going to walk the whole thing: Out of the Jungle and Into the Woods The Appalachian Trail; I gather that I can thank S for advertising link to this program - Scope of Professional Coaching in Health Care. Certified Coach Program for Health Care Specialists
• · · Bill Ives on The Clueless Manifesto- Giving Credit to the Stupid Question ; World Map of Site Visits ; Finding (Almost) anybody: nice guide to using public records from FIU prof Neil Reisner Barranqueros of this world; Guide to public records for business, lots of good links here to company searches, lots more. Construction Weblinks: Public Records Guide.
• · · · No question is too crazy to snare a prize ; A great guide to using Gmail from Life Hacker. Gotta try some of these.... Hack Attack: Become a Gmail master ; Incorporate A Simple Tool- Make A Name For Yourself Become a Household Brand Blog Your Way to Profits
• · · · · Media Matters for America has sent a letter to Washingtonpost.com editor James Brady saying that putting in a political operator to write a political blog with a conservative slant does not balance out the perceived liberal blogging of a veteran journalist like Dan Froomkin. When is blogging relevant? ; Yep, I agree with Atrios and the good folks at Media Matters. The Washington Post, or rather its online incarnation, has managed to capture the essence of the silliness of the 'media bias' debate in one easily digestible set-piece of its own making Reaction in several talking places ;
• · · · · · Good discussion from Steven Baker on Business Week's Blogspotting blog about whether journalists should contribute a blog to a profitmaking website without compensation. Should mainstream bloggers be paid extra? Should I? ; We Smirch, new celebrity gossip news and blog scanner from Memeorandum. Us Exclusive: Nick's Revenge Video

Posted 6:37 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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Don’t mind me… I’m just over here frozen in terror. I’m in this terrifying limbo right now, wondering how am I going to survive the latest attack on Cold River. Let me tell you what sole survivors like me do not want. Bad reviews! I foresee a lot of vodka in my near future ;-) Every author becomes a mother when he begins to create a written work. For male writers, producing a piece of writing is the closest they ever come to being pregnant and giving birth to that adorable bouncing bundle of joy named Story. The bottom line is that I have no idea whether anyone will have any desire to read it. Will people who don't know me at all grab the book off the shelf to read it? That would be lovely, but I didn't think about the audience when I was writing. You're building the book for yourself, and it becomes your companion. If people hate it, then that's great — at least they have an opinion about it.
Writing and selling for most of us is more than telling a little tale. It is not just a short hike up a lovely trail to a nice fat czech. It is instead, a long, lonely road of toil, and more toil. More often than not, the road is paved with rejection slips, and the fat czech is many, many miles away...
Cold River described as door stopper by an opinionated coward ;-) Giving Birth to your ugly baby on Amazon in Taschenbuch

Bad reviews are a rite of passage! means your getting there...
Phillip Adams

That's disgusting - I'm sorry you got that!
Cheers,
M.J.
M.J. Rose - Author of The Delilah Complex

Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: Today, Tomorrow, All the Time
Don't miss the largest gathering of screenwriting talent ever assembled! Some people say that persistence is more important than talent in breaking into the film industry Persistence, "Film Fuss"

Final Draft and scr(i)pt magazine present a one-of-a-kind scriptwriting and creative development industry conference, marketplace and meeting sessions. Panels featuring A-list screenwriters, agents, managers, producers and development executives will examine the craft and business of scriptwriting for film, television and interactive media. Don’t miss this unprecedented opportunity to learn from the professionals who drive the entertainment industry.

• A-List Advice - A-List Talent - There are only a dozen or so times when the statuette was awarded to an undisputed classic such as "It Happened One Night," "Gone With the Wind," "Casablanca," "All About Eve," "On the Waterfront," "The Bridge on the River Kwai," "Lawrence of Arabia," "The Godfather" and The Godfather Part II. Ten films that give Oscar a bad name ; The Film Snob's Dictionary: An Essential Lexicon of Filmological Knowledge [Welcome to the virtual water cooler for writers, general tips about avoiding/dealing with fraudsters, book doctors ... Alerts for Writers ; Bewares and Background Check ; Preditors & Editors ]
• · And trying to explain what the hell is wrong with everything: My Life Among the Deathworks by Philip Rieff may be such another book Three Worlds, One Book: Rieff Tries to Explain It All ; Lauren often said that the love of money is the root of all evil. In our attempt to keep up with the Joneses, money can be the cause of many relationship battles. With the likes of hefty mortgages, fancy cars and plasma television screens to be shared, how do we prevent or handle those inevitable money woes? As Aristotle Onassis once said: If women didn't exist, all the money in the world would have no meaning For Love or Money?; To marry or not to marry?
• · · Blog Your Way to New Opportunities ; Gone were the days of doing heavy research in dimly-lit libraries. I didn't have to commute downtown to look up information. The Internet Changed My Writing Life
• · · · Giving Birth to Your Story ; Yuri Andrukhovych's acceptance speech for this year's Leipzig Book Prize for European Understanding causes a minor furore Europe - my neurosis
• · · · · Why become a politician? What drives people to pursue a political career? Is it idealism, ideology or because they enjoy being bossy? And how much can politicians expect to influence events? Why become a blogging pollie? ; Let me tell you what men want. Let me tell you why some middle-age men wear the sports jerseys of semiliterate behemoths half their age while others customize their cars with so many speakers they sound like the hip-hop version of the San Francisco earthquake as they roll down the street. Recognition. Men want others to recognize their significance. They want to feel important and part of something important. All politics Is thymotic
• · · · · · Borrowing the idea from Oprah Winfrey, one television book club has reshaped British fiction. What do publishers make of R&J's choices? Reading Richard and Judy; Escape With Honor: My Last Hours in Vietnam ; No one may ever know unless social psychologists shake off their fascination with jerks; and let's face it Why Do People Behave Nicely?

Posted 8:49 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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Isolated in love as in a dark wood,
Our two hearts, breathing their peaceful tenderness,
Will be two nightingales singing in the eventide.
Without anxiety as to what Fate holds in store for us,
We shall walk side by side,
Hand in hand, with the childlike soul
Of those whose mutual love is unalloyed—will it not be so?
-Paul Verlaine, "N'est-ce pas?" (trans. Roger Nichols)

To love is to risk not being loved in return. To hope is to risk pain. To try is to risk failure, but risk must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing. Over our meal at Parliament House with Patricia and Caterina et al I will share how much my year has been peppered with funerals and other sad stories. With some special people you cry and they cry with you ... Last month my family said good bye to my mother, yesterday my father-in-law Les Rossiter passed away. My thoughts are with Michael and Anita and Lauren as they prepare for the last rite of passage as we gather in Brissie next week to bid our final farewell ... Les developed ulcers during WWII as he was the engineer who was used to unusual questions about the planes and pilots. Using the technology available at the time, how did the Lancaster pilots know when they were at this precise altitude during their bombing runs? .... He felt guilty for every young pilot who did not return to the base. He remembered their names, he remembered their little likes and dislikes, he remembered them on every ANZAC Day ... Les you meant a lot to me. Thanks for being such a special man and even more special dad to me in my exile ...

Posted 6:46 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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Andrew Tink like very few politicians demonstrated that his electorate, his constituency, his Sydney and the world could trust him. His advice and counsel were sought throughout his parliamentary life because the principles that motivated him are universally respected: decency, humility, compassion and dedication. Andrew Tink knows well that politics should be the most honorable profession in a free society. Jean Jacques Rousseau, 18th-century French philosopher, expressed this warning almost 250 years ago: "As soon as public service ceases to be the chief business of the citizens, and they would rather serve with their money than their persons, the State is not far from its fall." Civility is caring for our society without wanting to control it or profit by it. That's the art of politics. Tink, who has made himself almost a lone Australian expert on Lord Sydney through painstaking archive searches, recounts his hero's achievements and the part they played in the history of the English speaking world. I will never forget Andrew’s leadership at the Public Accounts Committee. Andrew even helped out with washing the dishes at night ;-) It is a double honor to keep in touch with Andrew after I left Parliament. The world of politics is without any doubt the corner stone of our very existence ... Never, ever will it be said that Andrew Tink lost his political vision

Eye on Politics & Law Lords: My former Chairman and Liberal stalwart Tink bows out
Senior NSW Liberal MP Andrew Tink has announced he will retire from politics at the next election, saying he has recently found himself off the pace and increasingly testy with other people.

The opposition's legal affairs spokesman will not contest his northern Sydney seat of Epping at the next election.
He will stand down as a member of the opposition frontbench immediately. The 52-year-old former barrister, who is one of the hardest-working opposition MPs, said he had decided he could not commit to another four years in state parliament. I'll certainly miss the chainsaw voice of Mr Tink with his points of order

• Off pace and increasingly testy: I'll miss Tink: Iemma [Goodbye … Andrew Tink greets Michael Egan Stress strikes - and another political career goes west ; Thankfully, Andrew Tink is still around to inject some grunt into the bearpit Joker in the pack ]
• · In a court of law whoever tells the best story wins. The fact is a very simple one: we live in a story-driven world. Andrew has many amazing stories respected by all sides of politics. LIKE Othello, NSW Liberal MP Andrew Tink -- the Opposition's able and energetic legal affairs spokesman -- has "given the state some service". But unlike Othello, Mr Tink -- who has announced his intention not to seek re-election as the member for Epping next year -- has nothing to reproach himself for, during his time in office. As one of the Opposition's brightest -- perhaps the brightest -- performers, Mr Tink gave his party much-needed substance and intellect, and his absence will leave a gap which his party will find difficult to fill. The Opposition's brightest Othello; Andrew Tink MP
• · · The Book Andrew will write Towshend puts Lord Sydney in shadows ; List of famous Old Sydneians
• · · · Senate Clerk Harry Evans charts the stagnant waters of Parliamentary reform and outlines an agenda for future change. Evans says the current government, like all governments, would rather control parliaments than be made accountable to them. He calls for constitutional, legislative, and institutional reform to allow parliaments to better fulfil their obligations to the public Parliamentary Reform ; Male MPs barred at lawn party Male MPs in the NSW Parliament are seething over a decision to stop them from attending the International Women's Day celebrations on the lawns of Government House They are bleak, but not that bleak ; The thirst after happiness is never extinguished in the heart of man. Childless, middle-aged couples may regret the life choices that ended their family lines. Yet they have no children with whom to share their newfound wisdom. Hit, hit me
• · · · · Rewarding public servants who cut red tape and a "one in, one out" strategy for Government regulation are the centrepiece recommendations of the Australian Business Limited (ABL)/State Chamber plan to slash red tape in NSW submitted to the NSW Government. Another recommendation is that a uniform definition of "wages" be developed for payroll tax, income tax and workers compensation liability within and between States and Territories. Chief Executive of ABL/State Chamber Mark Bethwaite said the 2005 Red Tape Register found that the average NSW business was spending 200 hours a year filling in paperwork required by Government departments. Cutting Red Tape In Nsw - Uniform "Wages" Definition Sought ; Political Humor ; Wonkette Politics for People with Dirty Minds
• · · · · · Three years on: the tragedy of the Iraq invasion is that there won't be another ; No need to back pointless studies ; Michigan political blogs cover the spectrum

Posted 7:22 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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Then let us love one another and laugh. Time passes, and we shall soon laugh no longer—and meanwhile common living is a burden, and earnest men are at siege upon us all around. Let us suffer absurdities, for that is only to suffer one another.
-Hilaire Belloc, The Path to Rome

The Australian is concerned about "three certainties about Australian fiction today: fewer books are being published, sales are falling and shelf-lives are shorter." Lits out: Shrinking Support for Australian Novelists

Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: The Dream Life
I have been in a bad mood for the last, well, to be perfectly honest, 25 years, since 7 July 1980, but for the sake of this blog post we'll say last few months.

Films have often been compared to dreams. Indeed, there is something dreamlike about those images moving before us as we sit still in the dark of a movie theater. Hollywood is called the "dream factory," and dreams have inspired avant-garde filmmakers, too. The great Surrealist Luis Buñuel, for example, made his first film, Un Chien andalou (1929), from a screenplay that he and another young Spaniard in Paris, Salvador Dalí, derived from their dreams. No one who has seen this startling dream-film can forget its opening. A man sharpens a razor, goes out onto a balcony and looks up at the full moon as a thin cloud slices across it, at which point the eye of a woman who has appeared out of nowhere is sliced with the razor. Even if this is, it is there on the screen with so vivid a quality of physical reality that we recoil in shock, as if our own eyes were under attack.

• Occurring in the man's imagination [Margo Hammond interviews poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko. This song has been a secret anthem of my soul ; Vote for the Greatest Living Writer I’m Rich ; Janice 'Girlbomb' Erlbaum Dishes on Her Sex-Crazed and Drug-Addled Past and How Life Is Different Now GIRLBOMB: A Halfway Homeless Memoir ]
• · American culture has always warmed to what's cool cold river ; My search for smiles is taking me to some wonderful places. The merest touch of lippy
• · · Literature is good with words Whose side are you on? ; It’s difficult to feel that books matter when most Americans don’t read even one book a year, when writers struggle to get published and noticed under the avalanche of celebrity biographies and diet books, and when nearly all of the book gifts I’ve given to friends have yet to be read. Real Life and the Life of the Lit Major
• · · · Woe unto the manly. So scorned, so sublimated When was the last time you could throw a punch?; Double Dragon really, really thinks you should go to Amazon river and dive into Cold River ; People are remembered by their flowers and seeds, not their mulch. Fuck interviews. Papal attraction: Douglas Coupland tries to interview Morrissey
• · · · · What America learned from 9/11 -- what other nations already knew, from their own dread acquaintance with terrorism and the anguish left in its wake -- is that people can just disappear, can vaporize, can put on a hat and coat and leave in the morning and never come back, can turn a corner and fade from sight forever. What happens when people simply go away? ; Is there ever a time and place for censorship? I disagree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it Tom Stoppard: Free speech is not a human right
• · · · · · Should parents have the right to prevent their daughters from having abortions? ; Go back a few millenniums, and we've all got the same ancestors.

Posted 9:10 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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The way one betrays one's old loves—getting the new one to read Trivia or Matthew Arnold, going to the same churchyard. When we are older there seems no new approach left. The disillusionment of finding out that something (say Trivia) has been his thing with someone else.
-Barbara Pym, undated notebook entry

Editorial on How years of monopoly undermined newspapers. Failing to mourn the end of the Golden Age of newspaper monopoly

The Blog, The Press, The Media: Net dreams
MARCH Madness starts this week in America, and for the rest of the month millions of basketball fans will watch the country's college teams dunk on each other, until the final of the men's national championship on April 3rd. CBS, a broadcast-television network, has shown the event since 1982—but this year it is conducting an experiment. As well as broadcasting the games on TV, it is streaming them live over the internet free of charge, accompanied by advertisements.

Everyone's got a digital tsar now, or if they haven't, they're frantically searching for one, says Peter Kreisky, a media consultant. Many large media firms have recently formed separate digital divisions. With the exception of Time Warner, which in 2000 merged with AOL, an internet-access firm, most of these contribute only a tiny slice of their parent company's revenues

• Desperately seeking digital revenues [The eBay of intellectual property will launch this April, allowing companies to buy & Sell technology patents ; Eben Moglen, Newsmaker: Free software's white knight ]
• · James Surowiecki on the end of network neutrality and the Future of the Internet ; Nowadays, there is a tremendous attention about Social Networking and Blogging technologies. The reason is very clear for me. Is Buzz Marketing a Fad ?
• · · TV and movies and all that jazz are not replacing our imagination, just adding another layer to it. Not In Place Of But In Addition To ; Hey, we are talking about a major transformation -- if not a revolution -- NEW PR JOBS
• · · · The Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer, Chris Pearce, recently released The Australian Guidelines for Electronic Commerce. Consumer confidence is fundamental to the growth of electronic commerce ; If we needed further evidence of the undesirability of a government having control of the Senate, the media policy announced by Communications Minister Helen Coonan is a perfect example Public missing out, again
• · · · · What Democrat Bloggers Want ; Send lawyers, guns and money - the shit has hit the fan. Communications reform
• · · · · · Money changes everything Marimow says joining NPR was like being sprung from prison ; THE E-MAIL began circulating among minority journalists the moment the announcement was made: "New York Times Company to establish diversity officer." Kudos to NYT for addressing diversity issue, says Poblete ; WP's Spinner is jumpy, angry, depressed after covering war

Posted 8:46 PM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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Two men were sitting next to each other at the Iceberg bar. After a while, one guy looks at the other and says, "I can't help but think, from listening to you, that you're from Ireland."
The other guys responds proudly, "Yes, that I am."
The first guy says, "So am I. And where about from Ireland might you be?"
The other guy answers, "I'm from Dublin, I am."
The first guy responds, "Sure and begora, and so am I. And what street did you live on in Dublin?"
The other guys says, " A lovely little area it was, I lived on McCleary Street in the old central part of town."
The first guy says, "Faith and it's a small world, so did I! And to what school would you have been going?"
The other guy answers, "Well now, I went to St. Mary's of course."
The first guy gets really excited and say! s, :And so did I. Tell me, what year did you graduate?"
The other guy answers, "Well now, let's see, I graduated in 1964."
The first guy exclaims, "The Good Lord must be smiling down upon us! I can hardly believe our good luck at winding up in the same bar tonight. Can you believe it, I graduated from St. Mary's in 1964 too."
About this time a woman walks in to the bar, sits down and orders a drink.
The bartender walks over to her shaking his head and muttering, "It's going to be a long night tonight."
The woman asks, "Why do you say that?"
The bartender replies, "The Murphy twins are drunk again."

My purpose is not only to make the lions roar. Bounce. But to trigger people's imagination. Bounce. Bounce. It's not only sex that's exciting, Mr. Holdengräber says, but the life of the mind. When you come into contact with a great idea, it can change your life. In the Age of the Overamplified, a Resurgence for the Humble Lecture

Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: Love may be lovelier the second time around
Without something to hate, said Wm. Hazlitt, we should lose the very spring of thought and action. The hate-filled Duke-North Carolina rivalry

If we could survive without a wife, citizens of Rome, all of us would do without that nuisance. So proclaimed the Roman general, statesman, and censor Quintus Caecilius Metellus Macedonicus, in 131 B.C. Still, he went on to plead, falling birthrates required that Roman men fulfill their duty to reproduce, no matter how irritating Roman women might have become.

• A Tar Heel Gives the Devils His Boo Final glory [Call it an absence of “social capital” or “trust.” In some topsy-turvy African nations, it’s in people’s interests to do what damages everyone else Why Poor Countries Are Poor; Celebrity Big Brother, is produced by the great grandson of the man who built the London sewer system. Somehow, it fits Big Brother - pure McLuhan]
• · Urban sprawl is charged with endless sins: causing global warming, pollution, obesity, killing family farms, cities, mom-and-pop stores The Way We Live Now ; Economic Man is a lovely pawn for academic theorists. But he does not exist. Real people are driven by weird, irrational, self-sabotaging, even altruistic behavior. Like all revolutions in thought, this one began with anomalies, strange facts, odd observations that the prevailing wisdom could not explain. Casino gamblers, for instance, are willing to keep betting even while expecting to lose The Marketplace of Perceptions ; How a small, leftist publisher in Vermont is having a national impact Do the Write Thing
• · · An inheritor of War and Peace sings of love and loss
Leo Tolstoy's great-great granddaughter ; There are times, one reader said, when I wish I could unread it. Another was persuaded by it that life was empty and without purpose. A powerful book.. The Selfish Gene: It's all in the genes ; Hundreds of Heads Books is dedicated to working with booksellers to promote our Cold River books online and offline
• · · · Annie Proulx’s Brokeback Oscar hopes were dashed by Crash. Now there’s blood on the red carpet, and the taste of sour grapes in the mouth... Blood on the red carpet ; Ted Morgan’s memoir of his own Battle of Algiers is a love song for a ruined city and a damaged people. War enriches no one... The Front Lines of Fear ; Want to be German? Name three philosophers
• · · · · Sometimes, mere words are just not enough to express to a friend or loved one how we feel. Yet, try we must. ; What lying does do is damage the relationship between reader and memoirist. Autobiography is a genre that is defined solely by a handshake. There’s no internal distinction between an autobiographical novel and an autobiography. Rather, it’s the autobiographer’s pledge to try to tell the truth that makes a reader respond differently . . . . And when this quaint contract turns out to be a con, we feel like rubes. The Predictable Scandal ; In a society where polite discourse is impossible, improving the world may become impossible, too. Most Frequently Challenged Book? It's Perfectly Normal The Power of Escapes: How Soul and Mind Interact
• · · · · · The latest abomination in CEO pay; The lure of incentive pay

Posted 1:13 PM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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It is sobering to realise that I have lived nearly a decade (off and on) of my life with The Iceberg Gene — for better, for worse ;-) Inside the function room at the club stood hordes of the port loving swimmers, some leaning forward like wind-bent grasses. I and a few others unconsciously defied the dress code by wearing our usual shorts and striped t-shirts while most swimmers wore bright hawaian shirts. After five-and-a-half hours of eating and drinking we clapped in honour of those souls who make the club tick as they are the ones who make the Captain’s job bearable. When Captain Ken Spears, President Brat Payne and club members gather on Captain’s Day, much is exchanged. Including words of gratitude. Friendship has many meanings, encompasses many things, but recognizes few limitations. Life hands us many different things, good and bad. One of the greatest gifts we receive is the respect of a good friend. Some people divide others into categories. These are family, they say. These are friends. But being one doesn't necessarily mean they can't be both. Characters like Timmy, Robbie and Dave are like brothers to me ...
When people find out you are an Iceberg the most common question they ask is 'Why do you do it? I like to reply, 'Why don't you do it? Keith Posha Leslie always says: 'You are more than welcome to join us ... You can tell what people are thinking - It is too dam cold for swimming or They are bloody idiots! Small but determined group achieve the minimum 75 swims over 5 seasons. These people are the real' ICEBERGS
Real Icebergs also provide live acts, smart-ass pirate jokes and soulful songs by Gary and Lofty and dance by Ted who were witty and quick, too witty, too quick ... The iceberg club rivalry between Australia and the world has become the greatest rivalry in winter swimming clubs. What makes Bondi Iceberg stand out in such high iconic symbolism from others? Why does this club so persist? Lofty presents two extraordinary faces to the world: one that of a quiet fellow who likes to swim and drink and ponder things, and the other that of an absolute entertainer, a guy who sings, smokes cigarettes through his glass eye and jumps up and down on the floor ;-) Without something to care about like the survival and success of the club, we should lose the very spring of thought and action ... Two little boys had two little toys - There's room on my horse for two From the mouth of babes (now grown), comes infinite wisdom and compassion ... The boys play on wooden horses then as men fight on real ones. It teaches a lesson of loyalty. And this is what the Iceberg is all about ... It's not easy to define something that is both universal and unique.

Posted 8:03 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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Happy Saint Jozef's Day to me ... March 19 is the Jozef 'name day' in Catholic calendar
TO WHOMEVER FINDS THIS NOTE:
Collect all the tapes, all the writing, all the history. The story of this moment, of this action, must be examined over and over. It must be understood in all of its incredible dimensions. Let all the story of this People's Temple be told. Let all the books be opened. If nobody understands, it matters not. I am ready to die now. Darkness settles over Jonestown on our last day on earth."
-From a handwritten letter found recently in the People's Temple FBI files at the Historical Society.

No ONE has ever accused corporate America of being shy when it comes to making its pitch for our dollars.Blogging the brand

The Blog, The Press, The Media: Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely
I started thinking about the import of newspapers starting blogs when I looked at Greensboro101 for the first time

Reader loyalty and engagement with the site: that's why newspapers need blogs. Some understand that, some do not. "The puzzle simply isn't solved by newspapers starting blogs, even though it's a good idea to learn the form by doing it."

• Seeders of Clouds: Latest on Newspaper Blogging [Trevor Cook compiles an impressive list of trends on the subject of PR and Blogging Why Blogs Will Never Replace PR ; Good writing is good writing no matter where you find it. However, each medium has its own unique considerations. One of the key points to consider about the text on your web site is microcontent. In online writing, little things mean a lot ]
• · Find Best Phone Card for your calling destination: Sydney v Prague ; Media dragon Am I geekier than I thought?
• · · Once people discover your secrets, your life might as well be over VC Confidential Blog ; Sometimes money does grow on trees and rivers
• · · · Those Busted Blogs; Sarah-Jessica Parker is developing a tv show based on The Washingtonienne. The Washingtonienne the Next Carrie Bradshaw?
• · · · · Getting a system accepted is not always straightforward. Politics is a normal and legitimate part of the IT business. It's just how decisions are made at a high level. If you want your project approved, or if you want funding, you need to know who to go to and how to lobby. It also helps to watch Yes, Minister The political side of systems ; AUSTRALIA Post has boosted its PrintSoft global digital documents business with the acquisition of Program Products in Britain and France. The deal follows Australia Post's purchase of Melbourne-based PrintSoft in July last year, which included a 15 per cent stake in Program Media Dragons: Post office to deliver digitally
• · · · · · There is no consensus for the exact dates of Gen Y but I use 1978-94; these young Australians, then, are between 12 and 28 years old. They are motivated more by personal fulfilment and social responsibility than by traditional monetary rewards and are rejecting the corporate culture of work first, life second. Life's a beach and so is work ; How smart companies are creating new products -- and whole new businesses -- almost overnight Media Dragons and Speed Demons; From Sydney and Stockholm and Tokyo they come, as well as from Denver and Dallas. Anyone who has worked long and hard on a blog, Media Dragon zine, or web product realizes how ephemeral they are Lets get it all on paper ; A Slate story on digital thespians analysed What Right in Digital Actors? ; Now, don’t be fooled by the “current boyfriend” stuff on my bias meter: I’m a fickle girl, and I change those boyfriends like I change the paper lining the birdcage. I do have my perpetual boyfriends, my kinky little harem of talented, sexy boys

Posted 7:07 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.
-White Queen. Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll

Absolutely Sophie Jermyn, a creative soul, who might one day help Gabbie to make a dent in the universe of acting ...


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Posted 1:10 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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I hate flowers. I paint them because they're cheaper than models and they don't move.
- Georgia O'Keeffe

You know you're at Bondi Iceberg club when the guy in front of you in the line for Gabriella’s favourite calamari and chips, the strange dude with the silver mobile in his golden suit, actually is James Packer (James and Frank Lowy are two Ausies considered the richest men in the world), rather than just some tall hipster who looks like him. And later when the Czech waitress with impressive accent who is standing behind the bar suggests in her tone of her voice to hurry up and get his ass moving ;-) This brings me to Bukowski's later works grapples for meaning and (lost) authenticity in the fat-and-happy, driving-a-BMW years, is interesting because the contrast between his lean years and later success is just so stark and difficult to swallow. Franzen, if crass, probably knew what he was doing Oprah: Irony and humor: the realization that there's a way to go on, but ultimately no cure

Sputnik Sweetheart is a little like an Eric Rohmer film, in that everybody talks incessantly and not always cogently, but their babble matters less than the deeper feelings and human truths it betrays. Alas, it also runs the same risk of appearing slight the moment one abandons the effort of caring Murakami Haruki : Before I became a writer, I was running a jazz bar in the Center of Tokyo

Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: Freedom to insult
Antipodean = 'one who is from a part of the earth that is diametrically opposite'

We may be at the mercy of the great powers, but we’ve always kept our heads above water with irony and perseverance. One of the most frequently challenged authors of the past decade has two books on the American Library Association's (ALA) list of the most frequently challenged books of 2005. Robie H. Harris' “It's Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health” heads up the list, while “It's So Amazing! A Book about Eggs, Sperm, Birth, Babies, and Families” rounds out the top 10. Both books drew complaints for sexual content.

• Love may be lovelier the second time around, but literature just turns ugly [Condemned by their own words: The ten worst autobiographies ; Powerful women are either sexually voracious rulers like Catherine the Great or Elizabeth 1, or treacherous bitches like Cleopatra or Helen of Troy Celia Brayfield; Believing Makes It So Happy Antipodean ; Adam Shand's journey into Australia's outlaw nation to examine the claims that bikies are the foot soldiers for organised crime… Unhappy Antipodean Outlaw nation ]
• · Gregor Samsa did not die near the end of Kafka's The Metamorphosis but instead lives, as a beetle, with a side-show of human oddities Reissued: Insect Dreams by Marc Estrin; With great black clouds of Schadenfreude gathering over successful debut novelists, it’s a miracle anyone ever writes a second book at all. An author can’t win with a second novel. If your first novel was a flop, you know that you’ll be dead in the water if you don’t knock ’em dead with the second: Ludmilla’s Broken English Blood in the Cold River: how sharks love the scent of second novels
• · · These are tough times for writers in Zimbabwe, says Martin Goodman Fighting for fiction ; The retailing or remarking of any work has to carry the past into the future. The question of originality is an interesting one. Originality belonged to God. Humankind reflected and copied Her word ; If the writers Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh win their case against Dan Brown, will the journalist who first described them as "historians" be able to claim royalties from everyone who has subsequently copied him? The imitation game ; If you had to pick just one book to take to the moon with you, what would it be? 10 Welsh authors pick books for a long trip along Cold River; Coping with a breakup is hard for everyone, but in my opinion, it is harder for men than it is for women. This is especially true for all those men who were involved in long-term relationships. It's not fair
• · · · If you struggle with the moral questions raised by the disastrous political commitments of certain otherwise stimulating or even essential writers, then ponder this anecdote. Letter from Sarajevo ; Finns head the list in terms of newspaper reading and library use, and studies show that Finnish children read better than any other country’s: dedicated to Aleksi and Anton Letter from Finland ; Dedicated to Minna Monaghan A Presence with Secrets ; Monika Kruesmann - Just saying 'no', just doesn’t cut it The gap between rape and consent
• · · · · The New Eastern European Intellectual: Why do some EEs make a fortune while so many others struggle financially? A Culture of Lies; It's also about a family coping with death and madness, so there's plenty to get your teeth into. he risk in transferring a play to the screen, of course, is that it will be dragged down by its theatrical origins Proof
• · · · · · Simone Weil wrote that suffering is a sign of God’s love. That is her beautiful use of paradox. Bidden or not bidden, God is present ; It is like what we imagine knowledge to be: dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free, drawn from the cold hard mouth of the world -Elizabeth Bishop At the Fishhouses Australia's Eureka Street follows the leaders online

Posted 6:56 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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Marvelicious Leprechauns: St. Patrick's Day 2006

In a shady nook one moonlit night,
A leprahaun I spied
In scarlet coat and cap of green,
A cruiskeen by his side.
'Twas tick, tack, tick, his hammer went,
Upon a weeny shoe,
And I laughed to think of a purse of gold,
But the fairy was laughing too.

Tonight all kinds of characters, as strange as Marcus and Ian, will be celebrating St Patrick’s Day at the Iceberg where my Irish Captain Dave Kelly of Wonderland Park fame will be wearing the green stuff and drinking the black stuff. My godmother Sidka chose well for me my very own confirmation name as among the Irish Catholics I am also known as Patrick Imrich while for most green dragons I am just another Jozef who tends to continue the name day celebrations through to 19 March ... The St. Patrick's Day custom came to America in 1737 Irish recipes include corned beef and cabbage, apple mash, Irish soda bread, boxty, and others ...

So have a Happy St. Patrick's Day

Posted 5:58 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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I never imagined I would live to see the day when the United States and its satellites would use precisely the same arguments that the apartheid government used for detention without trial. It is disgraceful ... One cannot find strong enough words to condemn what Britain and the United States and some of their allies have accepted.
-Archbishop Desmond Tutu,
quoted in “Blair Calls Camp in Cuba an ‘Anomaly,’”
New York Times, Feb. 18, 2006

I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.
- Clarence Darrow

Until quite recently, the history of nineteenth-century sexuality was one of total repression. As the excesses of the aristocracy gave way to the domination of the bourgeoisie, women, it was argued, became cloistered and corseted, while men--when they were not whoring after the double standard--were stuffy, inflexible patriarchs. Today women's sexual behavior is more like men's than ever before in human history No Sex Please, My Mother was British!

If you are not a Media Dragon reader, a human rights activist, or otherwise obsessed with Middle East and Otoman empire, you can be forgiven for not having fisking on the tip of your tongue. 2006 is the centenary year of the philosopher Hannah Arend Fear and loathing set in: Politics and cosmopolitics

Eye on Politics & Law Lords: See! He beat me!
If the oases are destroyed by sandstorms or an excluding world, there are still watering-holes to keep mind and soul together.

As Arendt points out: the oases exist free of political relations. What went wrong was the politics, our pluralistic existence and not what we can do or create as individuals: the isolation of the scientist and the artist, the intrinsic, world-less relations between people as it exists in love and, in some cases, friendship. When one heart reaches out to another, like in friendship, or when the world around them goes up in flames, like in love. Without the preservation of the oases, we would not know how to breathe

• Islands in the Net [As Kierkegaard has a character say in Either/Or, "The smallest of causes can bring about the greatest of effects." No Two Alike ; The woman responsible for picking which books are sold by Tesco, considered one of the most powerful posts in the publishing world, has left the British supermarkets chain to join HarperCollins. Supermarket chains now wield immense power in the publishing industry, selling books at deep discounts to lure shoppers -- to the great consternation of publishers and independent stores -- and heavily influence which authors become bestsellers Tesco's book maven heading to HarperCollins]
• · Lulu gets bigger; Rich Aussies get richer
• · · Does an international search for justice hurt or help the pursuit of peace? Bringing the wicked to the dock ; A man takes a woman home. Before long, he takes home another. Then he adds a third, or even a fourth love interest, flitting between them on a whim and as his workload allows. Each jostles for his attention, dealing with the knowledge she's not the only one. A scene from a 19th-century Mormon community? Or Memoirs of a Geisha where a woman might receive a kimono for her kind understanding? Try Sydney 2006. With gender ratios out of balance, Thirroul's Sydney based Barranqueros have never had it so good ; The living things that did not have the knack to deceive or that had less ability to lie died of starvation or by being eaten. They did not survive to reproduce, more than those who possessed the quality to lie and had a better chance of multiplying. Thus, evolution produced the best corporate liars Why we lie
• · · · These people who line their pockets with the lives of our loved ones? the big dark .....; Beyond Left and Right: Frank Furedi’s “Politics of Fear" ; Do we really live in an age of accountability? Ten years of Accountable Government?
• · · · · Consider Alexander Pope’s famous aphorism from his 1735 “An Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot” about the tonic effect of the dimpled smile: “Eternal smiles his emptiness betray, as shallow streams run dimpling all the way ... At least I know what I am trying to do, which is to live deliberately without roots. I would put it like this. America may break one completely, but the best of which one is capable is more likely to be drawn out of one here more than anywhere else.” W.H. Auden Federal Court Secrecy
• · · · · · Australia’s Daily Telegraph used school records to show that public school teachers took almost 390,000 sick days last year Australia Teacher Sick Days ; Deborah Howlett of the Newark Star-Ledger used legislative and county records to find that 42 of the 120 [state] lawmakers have two — or three — elected or tax-paid positions New Jersey Legislative Double-Dipping

Posted 6:43 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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Crish was not so innocent as to believe that perfectly requited love was the only kind that lasted. As counselor he had listened to a hundred tales of one-way love, unilateral love, hopeless love. Of course there were love stories with happy endings and there were love stories that never seemed to end at all (for years after Chris's mother died, his father went on loving her memory), but Chris knew that love for some was a continual giving without getting, love spilling from the heart like water from a hillside spring, love bubbling up from a vast reservoir and coursing off as unrestrained as a river to the sea.
-Jon Hassler, The Love Hunter

Albert Einstein (the physicist not the blogger) summed it all up: Women marry men hoping they will change. Men marry women hoping they will not. So each is inevitably disappointed. The party was a big hit with everyone and even Eva seemed happy after navigating her way through the crush of partygoers outside the venue. This was the evening of a particularly alcoholic night out with the spirit of Charles Bukowski. This was very generous of Buk. Nights out like books are not isolated artefacts. It is written in context. A cultural milieu. A sort of a sociology-of-work context, only creative writing, art, for which the writer might not ever be paid. A labor of love. How do you put a price on a labor of love? How do you put a price on your spouse, or significant other's labor of love? There is also a book before it and a book after it in the catalog. The fact is that numbers are the perfect way to dehumanize tragedies, to make us cling to imaginary patterns in the chaos, and to draw emotion out of exiled life. A raw nerve had been struck: love-chasing literature

One of the problems I had... I was a writer. And it has taken me the longest time to arrive... Because it was a dilemma. My friends... There were friends of mine who were in jail because they had made bombs and had planted them. There were friends of mine who had to run for their lives into foreign countries Courageous pessimism

Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: New York: Right before your eyes
Abhorred by the chefs who cook it and the waiters who serve it, overrun by Times-toting diners willing to endure hour-long waits to O.D. on cholesterol and carbs, brunch tends to disappoint - manifesto on all things superlative

Bars hidden behind unmarked doors are the faux-grunge counterpart to bottle-service clubs. Back Room, which fronts as a closed toy shop—you creep down an alley to find the entrance—is really no more of a mystery than its rumored investors, Tim Robbins (who’s been tending bar) and Mark Messier, but its devotion to the concept is charming. Drinks are served in teacups to foil “the bulls” (as the police were known in thirties gangster movies), the front door has a peek-and-speak hole, and a sliding bookcase reveals a second bar.

• The best local watering hole for wherever you live. Walking to bars is extremely dangerous. I wouldn't do it, but it's slightly safer than driving Bars in the Hood and Back Room [The secret clubs and back-room deli-slash-dive-bars where the city's most enjoyable carousing goes down. We all love NY even if we never walked the streets; While in Sydney this contagiously friendly swimming pub is a neighborhood hangout in a neighborhood where people don’t really “hang out.” People know each other by name, but they’re always willing to learn a new one. This blessedly undiscovered clifftop boîte is also the picture of romance. It remains a refuge for lost singleton souls and poor writers. This is without any doubt the last place, dear Margaritas, your husband will come looking for you and if he does we shall straighten him up ;-) Iceberg swimmers and flirt summer and winter without fail: Time that went easily, time that was a pleasure to do as you give what you can, and you take what you need. Good writers shouldn't really have the time for very active sex lives. Even if a wall of flesh is after them Which Swimming Shoes Would You Make Love In? ; Thoughts are pure, words aren't -- I say that somewhere in The Quorum: What's the point of being a writer? Prague Pill: Having Sex With Women Who Wear Glasses ]
• · Women On Writing: Review: I have no script. The story is me and the people around me. It's there, it's real life and there is no other. I'm not carrying any other story. There is little suspense. There is little violence. There is little drama. I'm interested in the celebration of life and irony. I have always regarded myself as transnational author. There are many different routes into the film-making industry – and many of these involve luck and chance. There is no set path that will guarantee you success, but there are definitely a number of things you can do to prepare your story for the best chance. Start blogging ... Cold River: The Cold Truth of Freedom ; It might have become easier to locate hard-to-get books, pictures and maps Tome raiders : but you will not find Cold River by JI in Australia True! as at 11 March 2006 AD
• · · I will be talking about my life in football and other things as well. There will be a few surprises in there ;-) My first 249 months by W Rooney ; Translators of fiction are like priests who stand between us and the literary gods. We need them even as we pine for direct contact Novels found in translation ; Can sexual inadequacy or deprivation turn angry young men into killers? Extremism: the loser's revenge ; What do commercial fishermen, holocaust rescuers, mall shoppers, tax payers, blood donors, nuns, serial mercy killers, John Dillinger, and people who obey traffic laws all have in common? Looking for Kindness in Most of the Wrong Places; Expect Saint Martin’s summer, halcyon days, Since I have entered into these wars. Glory is like a circle in the water, Which never ceaseth to enlarge itself Till by broad spreading it disperse to nought. In reality weird sex is a billion dollar business and it wouldn't make billions unless it was completely normal like toilet paper or milk The Absinthe Literary Review Short stories, poems, poetics and essays ; A New York buzzing with the scandal of James Frey is a picquant location to interview Peter Carey ... It's trite to say it, but the US is a country run by liars going to war on a fantasy, so it's interesting to see people getting self-righteous about James Frey Peter Carey: Fakes, frauds, lies and hoaxes
• · · · It surprises and pleases me that strangers still want to have sex with me, because I have two children and am 37 and am completely out of the closet as a mental wreck. Drugs are Nice ; This is really stupid, to fall in love with every person that you sleep with Sex With Emily ; Breaking up is hard to do. Once the relationship is over - get over it. Besides, if things were so great, you'd still be together, right? How to survive a breakup
The genius who painted the Sistine Chapel was also rude, puerile and a tad pornographic. Another figure I touched while the restorers’ backs were turned was a biblical character called Booz, who appears in the Old Testament as a kindly Jew who marries a much younger woman, Ruth, from a different tribe. The Michelangelo code
• · · · · As soon as people step out of poverty, they become potential Media Dragon customers ... Searching for the invisible man: Economics rediscovers the entrepreneur ; Puzzles over her illogical longings ; Shopping, cooking, eating, washing dishes... it's all such a time-sucking, distracting chore. Best to wrap it all up in plastic and hurry it along, lest lost time eat at you. Pot, this is kettle... I thought this was a forum for pop opinions ; Tits and giggles, really, when it comes right down to it, and perhaps more tits than giggles. Metaphorically speaking, it's tits that make us want to buy something, whether it be a journal or a car or a handbag or a sweater for a baby ... if tits can be made to stand in for the quotient of glamour, or the promise of effulgence, or the metronomic catapult of image saturation: one eye on the tit back at the tit back at your eye. Tits equals extra. Tits equals vibration. Tits equals fiction! Tits equals valley and leverage, glen and demonstration. Tits equals hot food for the rest of your life Tits and giggles: round, probably warm
• · · · · · How did a 40-year-old woman fool the world into thinking she was teenage prostitute and wunderkind author JT LeRoy? As a punk rocker, porn writer and phone sex operator, Laura Albert had been inventing herself for years. She is JT LeRoy ; Right, like Nixon. Whenever he got a question he didn't like, he'd say, "I'm glad you asked that," and then he'd change the subject... and then we had sexual intercourse, if you know what I mean The Naked and the Dead; Samuel Johnson might have said, "It is hard out here for a pimp, Sir, and there's an end on it" Picking Up the Lyric but Missing the Beat

Posted 11:55 PM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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Somewhere in Sydney, you can press your ear to the cornerstone of a skyscraper and hear a faint but distinct whirring sound. Don’t be alarmed — it’s just the body of stories, spinning in its antipodean soul. Whenever, Bob, Dave, Geoff and J gather together all kinds of anecdotes come alive ... How enjoyable it was also to catch up with Dr Cope in a place where panoramic Sydney is on your vista platter. Two hours of talk just flies by so fast as judges come and go rejunvenated by the manna served on 14th floor cafeteria in Macquarie Street. One learns that Greig Tillotson had been appointed as the chief Librarian at the NSW Parliamentary Library. Some news is sadder as many of us have said goodbye to our parents in the last few weeks others have spent some time in hospitals ... Then quickly catch up with gossip with parliamentary staffers at Nippon club. An invite by N, the sexiest legs on earth, to invade Wine Banq (pronounced in nosal Bau) could not be resisted nor a dance at the Marble Bar later on in the night.
As you step into its graceful interior and surrender to the charms of its marble arches, stained glass doors and ceilings, ornate carved mahogany bars and famous gallery of Julian Ashton rural nudes you feel as if you were in a certain palace in Prague. Speaking of Prague, the waiter at the bar was very complimentary of Prague restaurant at Kellett Street where he went the night before, but was even more impressed when I told him about my friend Richard who received a scholarship at the Julian Ashton art school. Luckily for me, I only had to shout shiraz of ‘Mount Eye’ at the Marble Bar as my royalty are drying up. Banq is just astronomical for poverty stricken writers. By strange coincidence, I crossed paths with a friend of a friend and ended up having dinner at Chinatown with W. Rather bizarre dinner, but scalopini were fresh and so was the fish that looked at us with sad eyes from the plastic bag. I never realised that W would know any Triads, but how wrong one can be. I am still alive to blog about the strange encounter tonight so they cannot all be as ruthless as suggested by some insiders ;-)

Posted 6:34 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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What a liv an bamba yay -- when the two sevens clash -- it dread
What a liv an bamba yay -- when the two sevens clash -- it bitter, bitter, bitter
What a liv an bamba yay -- when the two sevens clash -- a man ago feel it
What a liv an bamba yay -- when the two sevens clash -- you better do right
-- Culture, Two Sevens Clash

Meet Antipodean long tail of infomaniacs Trevor Cook , Tim Dunlop , Perry Middlemiss , John Quiggin , Gianna ; Antony Loweinstein , Genevieve and Mark Bahnisch. They blog on widely divergent subjects, but in their determination to push the envelope and in their reliance on the whole wide world to help them do so, they’re on common ground. Cream of the Australasia

Will success spoil MySpace.com? Wassuuuup!? Sutra Lounge

The Blog, The Press, The Media: How to be a Corporate Blog Evangelist
Read both popular blogs, as well as blogs in your industry. Learn how to find them using a variety of tools, listen to the conversation.

Depending on the company DNA, creating and growing a business blogging program may be an easy or a difficult task.
Evangelists have a tough job in front of them as the program requires high and broad corporate approval. Articulating a vision to adopt a two-way, informal communication tool is a challenge when the medium associated with 'teens'.

• Two-way, informal communication [Trevor Cook recommends Too much information; surf the noise and much more; Okay, I admit it. I have a crush on Jane. Chances are, those feelings are not shared by Joe Klein. Ragheads ; Why haven't e-books caught on? ]
• · I'm in no mood to pick up the pen. Show her where the pain is beautiful, swollen, hot ... On Valentine's day, I guest-blogged over at that great website MurderSheWrites.com, about my experience with an unpublished writer who'd just finished his first manuscript How Dare You Not Read My Manuscript?; The wonderful Scots writer A L Kennedy has some hilarious yet realistic answers to these questions on her website: via katharine weber ; Computer technicans are threatening chaos at fast-food outlets, supermarkets, banks and airports unless they get a pay rise Geek threat: we'll take you down
• · · Leo Morris writes ‘If newspapers treat blogs as they should, as a technological innovation instead of a threat, perhaps they will enable a leap, too. Blogs will evolve as well -- they have to.’ Two worlds ; The Big News: Shrinking Reportage ; Of all the unhappy trends I have witnessed – conservative swings on television networks, dwindling newspaper circulation, the jailing of reporters and "spin" – nothing is more troubling to me than the obsequious press Lap Dogs Of The Press
• · · · This is the West Indies, this is that realm which once, in its innocence of history, mistook the lantern of a caravel for a light at the end of a tunnel and paid for that dearly -- it was a light at the tunnel’s entrance. This sort of thing happens often, to archipelagoes as well as to individuals; in this sense, every man is an island.... Art And Capitalist Relations And Why Publishing On The Web Might Be Interesting ; You are Channel Seven. Your hot new title for 2006 is Commander in Chief How will Australian TV cope with the internet? TV is a medium of ideas
• · · · · Blogging doesn't get any easier, however many times or years (4 years in June 2006) you've done it. We know that Media Dragon isn't the Oprah of blogging. We post links that span a broad ironic gamut, from experimental to the more mainstream, and we're not quite a household name. But we'd like to think we've achieved a measure of success precisely because we've pursued our vision. I don't know whether my mission is ironic or profetic. Or is it just pathetic? Alas, stones having been thrown, when some bloggers found out the best kept secret on the web Top 100 political blogs (#441 worldwide) ; One Asteron flack recently noted that, “Media Dragon is no joke. By some measures - such as the site Blogstreet - the antipodean dragon is the most influential blog site among the 13 million out there.” However, Cold River and its ranking on Amazon is flooded with irony. So I plan to use it as much as possible before it's outlawed Amazon from Hell v Cold River ; International Herald Tribune, France In the Internet era, the old media, like newspapers and television, are sometimes seen as dinosaurs, about to be rendered extinct by aggressive predators Old and new media meet but can't make connections
• · · · · · Upstartle runs Writely.com, which helps people access and edit documents from any computer on the internet Google edges closer to taking on Microsoft ; Whether economic, political, or religious in nature, our world is structured by ideas. And these ideas move so quickly through our media today that they are often accepted before they have been examined for truth. Modern media has the emotional power to make ideas feel true even when they are not. A single moment caught on film can render an entire story somehow “truthful” to an undiscerning audience. Investing in the Industry of Influence

Posted 6:43 PM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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The great lesson from the collapse of communism is that complex modern societies can't be governed according to a single principle. The capitalist-socialist hybrid is messy, but it has proved durable because it reflects the two drivers of human economic behaviour, competition and co-operation. We don't need to invent a new guiding principle. We do need to rethink the role of the state in light of the fundamental changes in our society over recent decades. Mark Bahnisch of Larvatus Prodeo knows how to stir Chris Sheil and Jason Soon ;-) Reinventing Government and The Third Way

Eye on Politics & Taxes: Melting Pot's chance
The anti-Muslim sentiment voiced in recent months echoes the rhetoric of an earlier time, writes Emily Maguire.

Responding to Peter Costello's recent comments about Muslims in Australia, the Queensland Premier, Peter Beattie, accused the federal Treasurer of "trying to appeal back to the 1950s". Beattie would have been just as correct if he'd said the 185. This month, 155 years ago, a group of Chinese immigrants working at Long Pocket, near Ipswich, were attacked by their white co-workers.

• When leaders stoop to politics of fear [Like those old jokes about Chinese food never quite being enough so you have to keep going back and having another helping, tax reform always seems to offer more political benefit than it ever manages to deliver. And once one round of reform is completed, it's not long before someone somewhere is calling for more and that single voice eventually becomes a chorus. The Howard Government, despite its reformist credentials, has tended to shy away from taxation reform. Few would argue that the current system is a model of fairness and equity, or that reform would not yield substantial economic benefit for all Australians. Equity and reward must be the goals in tax reform; The High Court ruled today that property and shares made available to the wife of a barrister who did not pay tax for almost 40 years should be made available to trustees acting for his creditors High Court rules against tax-dodge lawyer ]
• · Taking corporate social responsibility seriously Is CSR A-OK? ; Althusser and Foucault on Machiavelli's Political Technique. If the beatific smile of a child signals innocent sincerity, adult life is cloaked with masks and disguises. It cannot be a Real Person, a Concrete Individual ; Newly retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor took on conservative Republican critics of the courts in a speech Thursday. She told an audience at Georgetown University that Republican proposals, and their sometimes uncivil tone, pose a danger to the independence of the judiciary, and the freedoms of all Americans O'Connor Decries Republican Attacks on Courts
• · · Democracy & political naiveté,; We've smashed the Cambodian stack, the Vietnamese and the Latin American stack Triumphant Crean challenges Beazley over factions ; All I can see is risks, the risk that selecting a person from a particular faction or indeed sub-faction or fraction is more important than getting the best possible candidate Cut factions' power, Gillard urges
• · · · Richard Pratt and Bob Carr have known each other for many years - Visy Carr in advisory role to packaging giant ; Local companies are developing intrapreneurship programs to cultivate corporate leaders and drive innovation The way up: kissing up - kicking down
• · · · · ANAO report said that the ATO has appropriate strategies to address targeted elements of the cash economy. Its strategic directions are risk-based, follow the expert advice of the Cash Economy Taskforce and are consistent with overseas approaches ANAO audit report on ATO's strategies to address the cash economy ; Australia's income tax law, now almost a century old, may be many hundreds of times thicker than it was when adopted in 1915, but it is difficult to argue that it is much better. What can be argued is that it represents little more than a collection of ad hoc, complex and knee-jerk political responses to nine decades of unresolved problems... Success and Challenges of Online Tax Filings Examined by Policy Expert In general, citizen satisfaction levels with online filing have been quite high. The Case of Online Tax Filing ;
• · · · · · Asteron general manager sales and distribution Peter Jowett says advisers using Wealthstar will benefit from a single application form for both personal super and life insurance. Asteron takes risk in new platform ; What if there were a funeral for Asteron and nobody came? ; Kosmix a new search engine for Health, Politics, Travel

Posted 7:42 PM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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Today I had a quick lunch at Dunes which is located at 1 Marine Dr Wollongong. The place overlooks the saltiest dunes and beaches even if the lunch was short it was long enough to appreciate the genuine country hospitality. Now I understand why my brother in law Michael with better half Cathy care so much to move up from Kiama to Wollongong. It is not just the fact they will be closer to work - the move is about much more ... If you close your eyes you detect how complicated tunes those dunes orchestrate for the innocent bystander- The dunes do whistle! Trust me ... Dunes

Posted 6:04 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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Now We Are Talking: the barbecue is burning with organic eye fillets as I am locked out when I open a door for my Czech mate the front door bangs and the sound carries over the Wonderland Park. It is amazing how much the potential of burnt meal gets one’s adrenolyn rushing through your body. Without any doubt absailing had come in handy as I was up two floors from the concrete ground and standing next to my barbie searing the meat again in less than a minute. How embarrasing, however, to lock both of your hands between balcony bars ;-) Aouch! To blog or not to blog - here's some link love ... To blog or not to blog

A Change of Scenery, but Not of Purpose, on This Column's Long Journey. Good morning, Government department workers!
Bloglossary: Find terms used in blogs

The Blog, The Press, The Media: You're Only as Good as Your Next One
Gary was a loner in Congress and his overly cerebral nature alienated some people. Hart has a brilliant mind but has not been able to fully contribute to the country he loves, which is a tragedy.

When I was in office, the morning TV shows were dedicated to public policy," says former Colorado senator Gary Hart. "You'd turn on the 'Today' show and they'd have serious discussions of health-care problems and Cold War issues, and they'd have people from Congress on. Now it's all about lifestyle. It's cooking, it's dressing, it's celebrity-oriented, it's promotion of other television programs on the network, it's sensationalism. I think the heirs of William Randolph Hearst have taken over the whole industry

• Hart remembers when morning shows covered serious issues [The A+ list of Aussie bloggers ; Top Ten Sources is a new site that finds best blog sources on a topic ; Lulu expansion Five more European sites ! 1,000 new titles a week ! ]
• · So Long Mr. Jeeves, Ask.com is Here Gary Price's explanation on Resourceshelf ; Study: people misinterpret tone in e-mails; Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down
• · · Skipease: a blog about skip-tracing, public records and people finding ; Second Annual Blog Appreciation Day
• · · · One By One Media, LLC; Media companies across the world jockey for the best of the new internet businesses: Chris Sharkey, Audrey Hunt, Stayz, b5 media, Darren Rowse, Shai Coggins Online buying frenzy: big business swoops ; Try this on for size: According to researcher eMarketer, the ad market for podcasts will grow to $300 million in 2010 from $80 million this year Podcast Riches?
• · · · · Newspaper stories about five drug-related murders in Nuevo Laredo on Tuesday were buried after editors were threatened by drug cartel members "If we publish it, we die. It's that simple," says editor ; Today, if we want to get a message into the public’s conversation, we just make a post on a blog. If The Wall Street Journal goes after a client, we don’t have to accept that anymore. Let’s post the documents we gave The Journal; let's show the interviews the newspaper decided not to show. It used to be I would schmooze you and I was your flack "You're not God anymore"
• · · · · · What is it about blogging that causes so many of the people who do it to believe they've been anointed to an online College of Cardinals, with their own personal stone tablet engraved with The 10 - or possibly 20 - Commandments of Blogging? You're not really a blogger if ... ; Like the Internet, blogging has been over-hyped Has blogging peaked?

Posted 9:23 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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McMurtry Thanks Booksellers at the Academy Awards:
The Oscar goes to somebody who should have gotten it a couple years ago, but got screwed over in favor of somebody else who got screwed over before him. At the 78th annual Academy Awards in Los Angeles, several of the Oscar-winning films were based on books -- Brokeback Mountain, Memoirs of a Geisha, Capote, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Constant Gardener, and Tsotsi. While Steve may be happy to see happy hot nipples, I'm pleased that Cold River is attracting a few inquiries from American film makers. Like the law, the Cold River is not designed to make us honorable, only bearable ... It is Vidal that it is not enough to succeed. Others must fail! By the way, in his acceptance speech for Best Adapted Screenplay, Larry McMurtry acknowledged the role of books in film, and he offered a paean to All the booksellers of the world

Why must great literature from Macbeth to Madame Bovary to Anna Karenina have all those sad endings? Time to cheer things up. Rid the world of all the negative consequences that limit us all. Given the freedom, tireless media dragons fail To Cuddle Cold River: Defeat is Victory, Death is Life

Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: Omen: Licking Your Way to Marriage
Don't worry. It won't last. It never does ... I asked my wife how she feels about this topic, and she answered: "Arrrrmg muuuumm baaaarrrr arrrr muuum."

It's cruel what I've done to my husband. Though, in my defense, I can honestly say I didn't set out to trick him into marriage. It just kind of, er, happened. I mean people age. Responsibilities pile up. I can't very well be doing that morning, noon and night, as I'd led him to believe in our brief courtship. Plus, it's tax season. I'm not exactly in the mood when one part of my brain is adding up mileage between Pittsburgh and Bethlehem.

• It can't cut you slack. LOL! What a bunch of women. Cruel, cruel, cruel... [Gerardo Barranquero is the nervousy person telling nervousy jokes for the nervousy people sitting at the Asteron resting room on 24th floor how sex on the first date is apparently on the rise Great Sex-pectations ; The beautiful part of writing is that you don't have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, brain surgery. I want to make clear at the outset - I was the first Czech writer who used to have a moustache that made Tom Selleck envious. Making Love in Public-- An Interview with Phyllis Curott, The Love Spell; Plenty of Smelly Fish? First date mistakes: too much neck hair. Rude to wait staff. Lateness. Too many mentions of ex. Saying, “My third marriage wasn’t my fault” Chasing Daylight: Picky, Picky; There is a universal law about growth: everything is either growing or dying. Remember to live with passion! What are you willing to do to create the new relationship you desire? ]
• · Watermark Books in Wichita, Kansas, is nearing the 30-year milestone, but still brimming with youthful enthusiasm. Founded in 1977, the store has relocated twice, once in the early 1990s, and 10 years ago, when it also added a café. The 5,000-square-foot store now anchors the oldest strip mall in Kansas, Lincoln Heights Village, which features many locally owned stores. Hitting the High Watermark in Wichita ; Halos of deceitful, misguiding light, filling people's hearts with both fear and delight Taking Stories to Bed
• · · Czechs Living Abroad - Thousands who fled communist rule remain abroad despite law Few Czech émigrés reapply for citizenship ; Life is first boredom, then fear. Whether or not we use it, it goes, And leaves what something hidden from us chose, And age, and then the only end of age - Philip Larkin Bohemian Alex is all about Sweeter sixteen
• · · · Pejman Yousefzadeh tells us why war, coffee, fair trade and show business are all intertwined The coffee wars ; At first blush, it strikes me that most women believe that there is something sexy about being rich, as in me ;-) ... List of my peace brothers who happen to be rich men. Am I not God anymore? Ranking of world's billionaires by Forbes: # 1 Jozef Imrich
• · · · · Everyone who goes to the movies knows how good Cate Blanchett is, which is why the Australian production of “Hedda Gabler” in which she’s currently touring is such a hot ticket. All about Cate ; Philip Larkin - There certainly is a cult of the mad these days: think of all the boys who’ve been in the bin—I don’t understand it. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Hardy—it’s the big, sane boys who get the medals. The object of writing is to show life as it is, and if you don’t see it like that you’re in trouble, not life. A thought that is sweet and sharp abides in my soul, a wearying and a delightful burden ;-) Promise is the capacity for letting people down - Dedicated to Lauren
• · · · · · A work of art that contains theories is like an object on which the price tag has been left. One of the most moving things about Petrarch’s life was his intense desire to read, along with the precious rarity of good books Rereading the Renaissance ; The cult of the mean girl Minna Monaghan - It happens to the best of women even who celebrate 40 something birthday in March ;-) Naked ambition : How much do women care about other women? ; Septuagenarian sex. When it comes to women’s sexuality, the line between emancipation and oppression is wafer thin Sex and the Seasoned Woman

Posted 11:37 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

My crowd reached the Macquarie Theatre an hour before the talk started so we elbowed our way to occupy the seats at the main theatre. Every seat in the house was taken within 5 minutes of the doors opening and security had to shoo a few step-sitters out. Fortunately, Mac U was able to videolink the lecture to several other venues on campus. The 1000 strong audience showed their appreciation with a standing ovation. Fisk speaks at Macquarie Uni God bless Balmain pubs for creating such soulful atmosphere after the speech. Bohemians of Czech and South African temperament are nocturnal people and like to stay out all night ;-)

We may have forgotten about the Ottoman Empire, but in the grand march of history it has not forgotten about us... Knowledge Without A Larger Understanding

Posted 6:03 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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I haven’t fallen off the edge of the earth. I am recovering from another series of strange coincidences so I have not been replying to my emails. I am finding lately that emails drain me - not sure why ... What is going on so many people around me are in hospitals or undergoing some kind of treatment - radiology is a word on many lips

Writing is like crime. The page is about what you can get away with. We break and enter, transgress, autopsy the living and dead, rob, exchange identities, lie, confess, steal. The arts of writing and successful crime are the same. Opportunity. Robbery. Seizure. Con. Misdirection. Theft. Fiction is a form of fraud, the most elegant, exquisite and complicated forms of creative fraud.
-Kate Braverman

You know you need to clear your head once you start having less than divine dreams with writers like Miranda Devine By George, Hollywood's out of touch

Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: Speaking truth to power
How is it that some liars, thieves and moral midgets like Gerardo Barranquero are perceived by Asteron and other times by other companies as exemplars of probity and virtue?

Why is it that some people who really do possess the 'right stuff' are perceived as dishonest, untrustworthy and not up to scratch? What is it about human perception that allows us to attribute good qualities to bad people on some occasions, and on other occasions to ascribe bad qualities to good people? In the 1980s, when I was a current affairs interviewer with a certain amount of inside knowledge of the virtues and peccadillos of many for the political and corporate doyens of the time, How could some 'Crooks in Dark Suits', as I came to know them, hold such enormous sway over the polity, over the investment community, and over the backroom boys and girls who often bankrolled their apogean journeys into the corporate, and "'sometimes political, mainstream? Conversely, why were many patently talented 'Honest Joes and (Jozefines) left out in the cold river? Why did many perceive them to have suspect motives, negative qualities and unappealing personalities? Did they look, behave or talk differently?

• CHARISMA. Magic, Appeal, Influence, Magnetism, Aura, Radiance. You can't define it The bases of social power [A deputation of Australian independent film-makers will head to Canberra next week to argue for tax changes that they say will allow them to compete internationally and lead to a surge in local film investment Push for tax break on local filming ; The New South Wales Parliament makes the video and audio material available on the following conditions: i. The material shall not be used for: political party advertising or election campaigning; satire or ridicule… Some guidelines have reached Media Dragon regarding the NSW Parliament's exciting new Video Hansard]
• · Two days after St Jozef’s day on 21 March to coincide with Harmony Day I will become part of taxing Antipodean history: Thank you Sharmini Taxing Times ; America's Most Admired Companies, 2006 from Fortune. And the winners are...
• · · Fishing for talent in a sea of change ; Cold Blackwell of Water Have I hit the mark?
• · · · When a bohemian barman who's told by a broken hearted wife that her husband Scott Reid is cheating on her discovers she is ready to jump the harbour Bridge, he marries her, convinced that God will honor his good intentions and make the couple fall in love. But can it really be that simple? Heart of glass; As child care grows harder to find and afford, parents are pressing for reform. But who should pay - and what are the costs of getting it wrong? More than six in 10 young people in NSW are putting off having children because they cannot afford to get on the housing ladder, a Daily Telegraph survey has found. The website study has found 63 per cent have delayed starting families because house prices have soared. Putting a Price on Our Children
• · · · · Do Writers Need Web Sites? by C.S. Paquin; Another new free archive from Newspaperarchive.com, here are pages of newspapers carrying stories about the sinking of the Titanic in 1912. The stories are searchable. Titanic Newspaper Archive
• · · · · · Saturday partners in crime swimming across the Bondi Bay, Dave Kelly the Irish Captain and Ian, Jonesey, (required oxygen mask after bluebottles bit him ;-) do note this 2005 World Shark Attack summary ; #1 song on this date in history from Billboard charts, back to 1940 ; Memories of Lauren ;-) 1984 ... "I Just Called to Say I Love You" by Stevie Wonder

Posted 6:33 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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THE market has, as it should, started to give David Leckie and his team the credit they deserve for turning around what for so many years was a chronic underperformer - the Seven Network Give Leckie and some women behind his success such as Izzy credit for U-turn :-) : Seven Network’s research manager, Isobel Kerr says Seven has formed relationships outside the immediate business in Australia to ensure Seven maintains its relevance to viewers and advertisers into the future. Seven in heaven

Blue Plate Special combed through the 100 largest sites Blogging at America's 100 Biggest Newspapers : Mr Sapo’s sister Widexplorer

The Blog, The Press, The Media: Who Links to Whom – Stuff for Blogs Stats Addicts
Bill Ives blogs ‘in two ways, as a professional during the week and, on the weekends, as someone who just enjoys stuff, like music and food and does not pretend to be an expert in any of these topics:

So where is the real picture? The links go from a low of 13 in blogrolling to a high of 18,700 in Yahoo!. Who Links to Whom showed the 13 from blogrolling and I know that many are missing here. I would also trust the Google links at 1,310 more that the 18,700 in Yahoo. Ice Rocket, MSN, and Technorati were fairly consistent (148, 164, 187). It is my understanding that Google shows all the active links while Technorati only shows more recent ones were you ar eon the front page of a blog. My rank with Technorati and Alexa Traffic is quite different.

• Ranking file [What you are about to read is quite possibly the most serious media story of the year to date. It is a tragedy and a drama that envelops into one great act of Romano-Greek proportions ; Timeline: Employee Headcounts for Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft; Whenever new media tries to replicate old media, it tends to fail. When it takes advantage of the unique social and personal behaviors of this new medium, it does pretty well Deja Vu All Over Again ]
• · Amazing Dulance ; How often can you use a little link love to help reveal government wrongdoing? Maine Office of Tourism Internet Budget was $7,000 a month in 2004
• · · Display your PR , backlinks and pages indexed! Page Rank by Google ; In addition to Media Dragon, another cheeky Ausie blog is featuring as # six on Google; They love Julia Gillard too Larvatus Prodeo
• · · · On the day of my Mum’s unreached birthday the Cultural Ambasador, David Tiley, created a new abode: faster, deeper and always picturesque The Barista Extraordinaire ; A place to come together and spread the word of the zero movement. The zero movement com
• · · · · Sterling language ; DDoS Attacks Target Prominent Blogs
• · · · · · Wal-Mart Enlists Bloggers in P.R. Campaign An epiphany, an aha ; The Internet's Dark Side Mistrust never sleeps

Coda: Most savvy infomaniac, like Media Dragon, will be there ;-) as Robert Fisk is in Australia for a very short week to promote his latest book, not entitled Cold War or River, but rather The Great War for Civilization, and he will be speaking in Sydney tonight in the heart of the Prime Minister’s electorate, the Macquarie Theatre. Major kudos to Antony Loewenstein for pulling this one off! Can’t make it to Sydney to hear Robert Fisk speak? No problem! Antony Loewenstein has secured permission for Weez of mashinegun keyboard fame to to digitally record and podcast .
No foreign journalist is more closely identified with the Middle East than the British writer Robert Fisk. None of this has made Fisk notably modest, as the thousand-page heft of his latest book suggests:-) As someone who has dined with Osama bin Laden, Robert Fisk believes he understands a little about the modus operandi of the infamous warlord. A collection of Articles & Reports by Mr. Robert Fisk + Audio & Video

Posted 7:54 PM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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It's late, I'm tired, so forgive me if visits to magnificent Thirroul always give pleasure - if not the arrival, the departures ;-)

Novelists today tend to be pretty bloodless creatures. Look at their bios: They’re mostly workshop professors or M.F.A. hatchlings. They review their peers’ books, sit on grant panels, give readings and interviews, and, during their free time, cook up soft-boiled bores to pay their children’s tuition. None of that for Michel Houellebecq! The French author, lately of The Possibility of an Island, is an old-style enfant terrible: more lecherous than Pepys; more bibulous than Hemingway; more wretched than his own dim lodestar, H. P. Lovecraft. Here, for illustration’s sake, is what Emily Eakin wrote for The New York Times of her visit to Houellebecq:
Houellebecq answered the door in stocking feet … and ushered me into the living room. He curled up in a chair with a pack of Silk Cuts and a bottle of Jim Beam and hardly moved for the entire weekend… . By the time we sat down to dinner—in the living room—he was too inebriated to eat. He picked at his boiled crab and got some of it on his sleeve. His head began to nod; his eye- lids drooped. But for the first time all day, he looked almost cheerful. “I am the star of French literature,” he slurred. “The most radical one of all.” He reached over and petted my knee. “What’s your name again?” he mumbled. “How would you like to be in my erotic film?” A satyr against mankind

Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: Ondon Erotic Book Fair
The deal we did with Amazon was right for the time because it gave us a very cost-efficient way of providing maximum service to our customers, but we are due to make some changes to punch our weight on the online channel.

As was the case last year, one of the more interesting and provocative moments of the fair came during a panel on "21st century issues," moderated by Hachette Livre UK chief Tim Hely Hutchinson, and featuring Vicky Barnsley from Harper UK, Alan Giles of HMV, agent Gill Coleridge from Rogers, Coleridge & White, and Stephen Page of Faber & Faber.
The most newsworthy remarks, at least as far as Reuters is concerned, have to do with Amazon, even as panelists continued to fret about Google. Barnsley said, "Personally, I see Amazon as a bigger threat to publishers," having displayed "interest that they want to move into the publishing space.... They recently hired someone from Penguin US; they are approaching agents and trying to acquire content, which is very different from what Google is doing."

• If we take the supermarkets on directly, we're dead Super Sales [Jozef Imrich’s commercialized despair Double Despair : Handheld Compatible:Palm OS: Palm III series, V series, VII series, m100 series, m125 series, m500 series; Handspring Visor series; TRG Pro; Sony CLIE; IBM WorkPad; PocketPC and PocketPC 2002: Hewlett-Packard Jornada 420, 430, 430se, 540, 545, 547, 548, 680, 690, 720, and 820; Compaq iPAQ H3600 series; iPAQ H3100 series and Aero 1500 series; Casio Cassiopeia E115, E-125 and EM-500 series. Cold River: a survivor's story ; Ten Simple Rules for Getting Published ]
• · I realize now that when I acknowledge my strengths I strengthen my relationship with myself. How I wish I started this sooner. When we acknowledge our strengths, we acknowledge and connect with our passion. Our strengths are what we are naturally good at. Multiple Streams of Energy; If you're letting them scream at you, you're giving them permission. Change the way you respond or tell them you find it unacceptable Building strategies ; An Australian mother-of-four who was rescued after three days on a dinghy says the experience was "beautiful'' despite being belted with wild weather and having no food or water. Adrift mother's 'beautiful' ordeal
• · · Wife who accepted mistress : Cliff Bambridge of 1 Ocean Street of Thirroul fame has the history of Jeeps and Juicy stories at his fingerprints: The world famous author, DH Lawrence arrived in Thirroul in 1912 and finished the novel "Kangaroo" whilst there. This watercolour by Sydney artist Gerardo Barranquero depicts Lawrence bathing with pregnant chatterley lover in the Pacific Ocean at Thirroul ; Desperate Feminist Wives: Why wanting equality makes women unhappy
• · · · Now that I am free Media Dragon I conduct a wide range of inquiries and research for The Depth and Bredth of Sam and the City : If she's doing the hair flick, giving you prolonged eye contact, shy smiles and giggling at all your (dumb) jokes, then don't go anywhere ... she might just be into you Secrets of attraction ; Unhooked: Are we too picky?; We need to heed Mansfield’s wise and eloquent conclusion: “A free society cannot survive if we are so free that nothing is expected of us.” Do opposites really attract? : Parrot from the ravine - protected species Loro barranquero: Is the Burrowing Parrot Endangered?
• · · · · THE sort of coffee you drink says a lot about who you are and where you're from There's a whole latte love, but espresso's new buzz ; How to Crash the Oscars ; And is globalisation a blessing or burden on women? Globally, women academics have been underrepresented in absolute terms
• · · · · · Today we live in a world of ever-growing scarcity If Our Job Is Work, and Marriage is Work, And Recreation is Work, When Do We Have Fun? ; The left has a new guru. And he hates shopping and mobile phones Prophet of gloom

Posted 6:44 PM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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A super store that sells new husbands has just opened in Sydney at 2 Market Street where a woman may go to choose a husband. Among the instructions at the entrance is a description of how the store operates. You may visit the store ONLY ONCE! There are six floors and the attributes of the men increase as the shopper ascends the flights. There is, however, a catch: you may choose any man from a particular floor, or you may choose to go up a floor, but you cannot go back down except to exit the building!

So, a woman goes to the Husband Store to find a husband.
On the first floor the sign on the door reads:
Floor 1 - These men have jobs.
The second floor sign reads:
Floor 2 - These men have jobs and love kids.
The third floor sign reads:
Floor 3 - These men have jobs, love kids, and are extremely good looking.
"Wow," she thinks, but feels compelled to keep going.

She goes to the fourth floor and sign reads:
Floor 4 - These men have jobs, love kids, are drop-dead good looking and help with the housework.
"Oh, mercy me!" she exclaims, "I can hardly stand it"

Still, she goes to the fifth floor and sign reads: .
Floor 5 - These men have jobs, love kids, are drop-dead gorgeous, help with the housework, and have a strong romantic streak.
She is so tempted to stay, but she goes to the sixth
floor and the sign reads:

Floor 6 - You are visitor 31,456,012 to this floor.
There are no men on this floor. This floor exists solely as proof that women are impossible to please.
Thank you for shopping at the Husband Store.

A New Wives store opened across the street.
The first floor has wives that love sex.
The second floor has wives that love sex and have
money.
The third through sixth floors have never been visited ...
As Sam explains What men really want

CODA: If you want to crash in March the glitziest supermen supermarket party of all, The Super Promina’s Asteron, , here's a tip from a professional: Show up at the theater, dressed as a chef carrying a live lobster, looking really concerned ;-)

Posted 6:55 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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They were bolder in 2005 than perhaps at any other time since 1994 Down The Middle. The media are brimming with profiles of potential 2008 presidential contenders, but these stories rarely expose who is behind the image-selling -- the "brand managers" who create campaigns Profiles In Plastic

Eye on Politics & Law Lords: SYMPOSIUM: A Decade of Howard Government (23 Feb 2006)
Affirmation of ‘the family’ as ‘the most important institution in our society’ (Howard 2005) has been a consistent claim and political touchstone of the Howard Government.

In the aftermath of World War Two, Australia carved out a unique position in the international trade regime, developing an independence and influence that belied the size and structure of its economy (see Capling 2001). During the 1970s and 1980s, Australian governments capitalised on this position to vigorously promote a more inclusive, development-friendly multilateral trading order. This was a bold move in the face of the discriminatory bilateralism and aggressive unilateralism of the world’s largest economies, particularly the United States. With the election of the Howard Government in 1996, however, this proud historical trajectory was to change. We examine the systematic reversal of Australia’s fiercely independent stance, a reversal that symbolises the country’s shift from player to pawn—America’s pawn—in the international trade regime.

• Howard the politician speaks quite adroitly about women as both paid workers and carers Howard’s ‘Choice’ [In the global struggle for the advancement of human rights, the United Nations has reached a defining moment How principles defeated politics : Nikita Khrushchev gave his secret speech to the 20th Party Congress in the Kremlin fifty years ago... Robert Conquest ... Wm. Taubman... Anne Applebaum ... Claire Bigg ... Roy Medvedev... Jeremy Page ... Boris Kagarlitsky ... John Rettie ... Nina Khrushcheva ... Tom Parfitt ... Richard Bruner... and what an electrifying speech it was. Carlin Romano on why Cold-War cultural tactics should be a hot topic Battle of Khartoon ; Khrushchev’s speech]
• · Establish a royal commission and someone will drop the cliché that governments only appoint commissions when they know what the answer is going to be Royal Commissions bite back ; Were you as thrilled as I was when you learned that Google was resisting the government's efforts to obtain its Web-search data? Gmail Intuition
• · · We are about to repeat history with a period of significant increase in unemployment. You might think, “How is that possible? Everybody is talking about the lack of skills in Australia.” Creatively creating jobs; Compulsory super - not so super duper: No guts, no guile and no glory
• · · · A look at how much about the ambassadorial lifestyle has changed. The past is another country, they say, and it is hard to find your way back Diplomatic baggage ; Goodness knows what had happened between them. But I post this because it underscores the fact that women just aren't safe in this society, not even from the men who claim to love them. Not even when they are pregnant: Compliments of the hard core irony of my life - Gerardo Barranquero ; via soulful Gianna
• · · · · As Stevens puts it: 'There’s no such thing as a career path anymore – it’s crazy paving, you lay it yourself.' In order to lay a path you need stones. For a career path the stones are relevant work experience and continuous development of key skills Portfolio Careerism: Are You Ready ? ; Some heroes get pulled and pushed around, long after they are pushing up daisies
• · · · · · Blogging about pregnant Barranqueros, it should be noted that unlike mothers at Thirroul across the Pacific ocean French women might not get fat, but they are getting pregnant in increasing numbers. That is because in recent years French Governments have poured money into income and other support for those who have children. French lessons ; Domestic law punishes individuals who commit crimes, not families, villages, or ethnic groups. Why should international law punish states? Sins of the fatherland

Posted 7:50 PM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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What Good Is A Blog If You Can't ... fess up that you have had a testing days in the last seven months, at least help get buzz for your book and to some extent let readers know about some ironic (hard core) links. As they say it is never late until midnight and after that it’s early ... Now between the lines and out I am in a need of a huge bottle of Jim Beam!

Progressives and curious people around the country want to get foreign news unfiltered. So how can ordinary people do this on the cheap? Big Stories, Shortwaves

The Blog, The Press, The Media: A new and insidious threat to the World Wide Web
And there is a new and insidious threat to the World Wide Web: a slowly rising tide of "original content" on Internet sites that is at best worthless

There is a new and insidious threat to the World Wide Web: a slowly rising tide of "original content" on Internet sites that is at best worthless, and at worst possibly even dangerously inaccurate. I should know; I've been writing some of the stuff myself

• Our Columnist Creates Web 'Original Content' But Is in for a Surprise [ Readers Bemoan 'Original' Content ; Blogging law profs assault ivory tower: Is it scholarship, or a cyber chit-chat? Law Schools package ]
• · Hell hath no fury like a philosopher scorned - even one who doesn't believe in hell. Two of the leading philosophers of evolution have been caught in an email slanging match When evolutionists attack ; In a world of way-too-much media, no one medium is ever going to get a firm grip on our attention Those Busted Blogs
• · · BuzzMetrics Our Word-of-Mouth ; BuzzMetrics to Monitor TV Show Buzz ; Isobel Kerr noted ‘Seven is exploring further research opportunities in the area of inter-activity and viewer involvement in event programs Inter-activity (PDF version)
• · · · Isobel Kerr, Research Manager Seven Network Measurement and evaluation: Free TV taking on research role ; The Internet provides Arab liberals with the platform and anonymity that they need in order to begin bringing an online Enlightenment to the greater Arab world. In Arabic, 'Internet' Means 'Freedom'
• · · · · Author Douglas Preston has posted a letter via PublishersMarketplace member Susan Henderson's blog recounts his recent arrest in Italy while he was there to complete research on a book he is writing along with Italy's Mario Spezi and a Florentine serial killer. "This was a naked attempt to use the power of the state to intimidate and silence two journalists, and it may be a prelude to a legal action in Italy to block publication of the book." He adds: "We desperately need to publicize this attack on journalistic freedom. I'm back in America and safe, but Spezi is at grave risk. His financial health, his career, and his very freedom, are at risk." Naked attempt ; National Library of Australia Launches Libraries Australia Portal Libraries Australia
• · · · · · Online Searches Conducted in January 2006 Reach Almost 5.7 Billion 5.7 Billion of Media Dragons ; Sabrina Presents Workshop on Best Sites and Services for Research Digital Initiatives: Ask The Expert

Posted 10:18 PM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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Lots of Media Dragons in 2006—young and old—are coping with deep problems related directly or indirectly to sex. Many have been burned by current sexual practices—such as hook-ups that create emptiness, or cohabiting relationships that go nowhere—and are looking for new ways to build a loving physical relationship with a member of the opposite sex. Many would welcome, more generally, a fresh way to strengthen their relationships with loved ones A cover story of good sex/bad sex

Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: The Importance of Human Touch
Finding true love, good sex, and spousal happiness is not easy in modern world because we are working with a batch of concepts that are actively in our way. Today’s favorite ideals of equality and freedom, however attractive and appropriate in the political or economic realm, are not adequate bases on which to build happy home lives. Love relations and family life are distinct social spheres that need concepts and ideas of their own, not just hand-me-downs from politics and economics.

There are fashions in virtue, as there are in clothes. Frankness and compassion are in this year, discretion and fortitude are out. Indeed, fortitude is now regarded less as a virtue than as a psychological defect.

• Several readers, you old flatterers you, comment that Media Dragon is Mainly Good: Manly Good or Manly Evil [New research claims that boys are more likely to be born to confident women than girls are Is sex a matter of chance? ; Sex Obsessed All roads lead to sex ; Describing someone as "New York," Nora Ephron once observed, is really just a euphemism for Jewish, and since "Sex and the City" epitomized New York Stereotypes and the City ]
• · Jacques Sedat's Czech Freud ; Reagan and Gorbachev: How the Cold War Ende Standing Down ; Critical thinking pedagogy was designed for adoption across the social sciences and humanities and was not intended to be a proto-logic or introductory logic class for non-philosophy majors Collective Self-Examination: Thinking Critically about Critical Thinking
• · · Who holds the power in publishing? Why do some books become bestsellers? A look at the top 50 players in the world of books ; Mark Thwaite www.readysteadybook.com
• · · · When I heard recently that the London Underground had started piping classical music on to some of its platforms, it reminded me of a strange little episode from high school. Tube Tune ; French Tune
• · · · · Are rugged good looks really more attractive? Making looks; And more ladies' laments: Facing the truth: Where have all the Hollywood hunks gone?
• · · · · · A look at the unpredictable business of turning books into movies. I hope that some of the rather horrid figures and sounds that passed before us at the theatre didn't haunt your dreams. There were too many ugly ones. The next time I shall take you to something prettier Making Books; Jozef Imrich tries desperately to communicate the appeal of High Tatra apres-ski to a attention deficit audience Stereotypes and the Cold River

Posted 4:56 PM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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Fireworks tend to follow me everywhere I dance even last night the roofs of Pelican River were peppered with sparkles only five meters away ...

Never such innocence,
Never before or since,
As changed itself to past
Without a word—the men
Leaving the gardens tidy,
The thousands of marriages,
Lasting a little while longer:
Never such innocence again.

In the topsy-turvy world of chain bookselling, never poke a Media Dragon while he is marketing:
I cannot say with certainty which of my motives are the strongest, but I know which of them deserve to be followed Why I Blog

The Blog, The Press, The Media: Time for the last post
On a winter-cold morning last autumn, before the leaves could summon up the energy to burn and fall, the barbarians entered the gate. A group of feisty young writers, known only to millions of readers by their blog names - Gawker, Gizmodo, Wonkette and Defamer - were in a soigne studio in New York’s Chelsea district to be photographed for the February issue of Vanity Fair magazine.

The irony was sweet: Gawker was supposed to make fun of this kind of inside-the-establishment posing. But the victory was sweeter: it was a signal moment, a benediction from a magazine that, more than any other, has become the plush chronicler of the celebrity establishment.

• Would George Orwell have made a good blogger? Maybe. But it still would have been a waste of his time, as it is for a lot of others Would George Orwell have made a good blogger? [You think the London Book Fair is about making deals and licensing rights, but the press will be focusing on oddities like the official demonstration debut of Margaret Atwood's LongPen device--invented to let her conduct fascimile book signings via a computer Author-turned-inventor Margaret Atwood launches book-signing gadget; HarperCollinsAdvantage: A site that lets booksellers purchase directly from the publisher online]
• · An electronic clearinghouse that uses emerging technologies to deliver more powerful searches will be tested by the Australian accommodation services industry Ontology to find room at the inn; ;
• · · Cluelessness is underrated. It's the newbie who does something he didn't know was supposed to be impossible. The Clueless Manifesto from Larry Osterman's WebLog ; MEDIA: John Grogan Likes It Ruff Bessie and Marley
• · · · IT Community Blog Choice Awards ; Put AdSense on your blog! Blog Ads
• · · · · Bringing music therapy to Bloggosphere; Sci-Fi / Fantasy Blog
• · · · · · Local author’s book featured on Oprah’s blog; Blog opened for law-makers, political advisors ; Companies are tuning into cyberspace to find out what potential customers want Companies pay to listen to blog buzz

Posted 1:24 PM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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Where on earth can one find a more soulful atmosphere on Friday night than at the Iceberg. There are million different pieces of stories such as the analysis of the Brittish empire by Timmy to Middle East updates by every Fisking member ;-)

Attention sad and lonely Cold River filmmakers! If you are the proud owner of a great tragedy short that has been passed over (“jilted”) by a festival, avenge your rejection and submit to the Jilted Film Festival! It’s a fresh, fun, campy way for up-and-coming filmmakers to make lemonade out of lemons and celebrate the spirit of perseverance. The Jilted Film Festival is held April 2006 in NYC. Deadlines Fast Approaching: How To Get Jilted: Film Festival!

Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: My Surreal Vienna: Find the magical door to FREEDOM
That's what happens to exiles; they are scattered to the four winds and then find it extremely difficult to get back together again.
In life, timing is everything. Being in the right place at the right time makes all the difference. I've always believed that luck plays a far greater part in a successful life than conventional moralists are willing to admit.

On July 7, 1980, I became the enemy of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic and was sentenced to life imprisonment. On July 8, a part of my parents died. On Radio Free Europe they listened to my obituary, five years after their daughter Aga had died. It turned their world inside out. My parents believed I was dead for over forty hours.

• The entertainment industry is like no other industry. If you want to be a lawyer, you go to law school; if you want to be a doctor, you go to med school. There is no equivalent to these in film-making or book publishing. The only constant is this: everyone finds their own way in ... Szirine ignites my story as it has been viewed in 100 countries and by almost 100,000 readers War and Peace of escapes: The Philosophy of Chance [Machiavelli knew it, but modern politicians forget that having luck on your side often counts most. The politics of chance ; Lucky for Rousseau and Hume that they're dead. Otherwise, these pivotal philosophers would have everyone camped on their doorsteps to record their snarling catfight. Two remarkable minds, and a friendship that became a feud ]
• · Aristotle already knew it, and so does Clive James: happiness is “a by-product of absorption” in a job of work Two scholars explore the fragility of contentment. ; T-RIFF promotes film both as an art form and a catalyst for positive social change ... An entirely new production up their sleeves that will no doubt knock your socks off. They strive to produce an annual international film festival that brings us exposure, innovative means to gain resources and artful career growth choices Hollywood by the Bay...
• · · New aged guys in the 80s. Metrosexuals in the 90s. Retrosexuals in the naughties. And technosexuals today? What do modern women really want? What women want;
• · · · As Leo Schofield knows well, the restaurant industry is notoriously difficult. Margins are narrow, competition is tough, and restaurant operators are frequently held hostage to rising prices for energy and commodities Why La Sala and other restaurant chains are thriving; Tonight's Mardi Gras Parade is the colorful public climax of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras which this year opened on February 3. The parade starts at Hyde Park in the heart of Sydney and winds its way through Oxford St, then Flinders St, to Moore Park. Sydney's Gay Mardi Gras: From Protest to City's Biggest Party
• · · · · What advantage did sex offer when it first appeared and why does sex persist in modern organisms, stopping them from becoming asexual again? Sex: Why bother? Evolutionary mysteries probed at UH ; And you knew this was coming: Gay Porn "The Da Vinci Load" to be released the same day as "The Da Vinci Code" Dan Brown, Cover Your Eyes Embarrassing Peggy Noonan America has become creepy for women who think of themselves as ladies Embarrassing the Angels
• · · · · · And here's some advice for the Ph.D. student and the everyday academic who has missed a deadline: Get over your shame and get the job done (as if) Academic AWOL ; Embarrassing Peggy Noonan America has become creepy for women who think of themselves as ladies Embarrassing the Angels

Posted 6:59 PM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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Once you get past every paper in the Western hemisphere filing the same basic story on the Da Vinci Code case, it's pretty quiet out there ... except for La Sala an atmospheric multidimensional warehouse to dine and wine. Last night was one of those amazing nights in Sydney - multicultural to its sixth degree of separation ;-) as Newd Zilland and Luxembourg make a great combination for soulful conversations peppered with mamahoos. Not even big enough on most maps of Europe to contain the letters of its name, Lilliputian Luxembourg makes up in snazz what it lacks in size. It has a wealth of verdant landscapes crisscrossed by cold rivers and dotted with the sort of rural hamlets that most people associate with fairy tales.

On a winter evening amidst a driving snowstorm a man on horseback arrived at an inn, happy to have reached shelter after hours of riding over the wind-swept plain on which the blanket of snow had covered all paths and landmarks. The landlord who came to the door viewed the stranger with surprise and asked him whence he came. The man pointed in the direction straight away from the inn, whereupon the landlord, in a tone of awe and wonder, said: 'Do you know that you have ridden across the Cold River and the Lake of Constance?' At which the rider dropped stone dead at his feet.
Roman soccer star Paolo Di Canio is infamous for flashing the Hitler salute to his team's far-right fans The Fascist Soccer Star and the Auschwitz Survivor

Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: Café society: Modern Socrates
Across the city, novelists, artists, architects, musicians, playwrights, screenwriters and poets abandon their homes for café society.

She sits at the back of the café with her lined notepad, her books — poems by Billy Collins, Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead — and a look of dreamy possibility.
Where will her thoughts take her today? To the unfortunate man, head drooped in sleep, at a nearby table? To thoughts of love, for she is young, pretty and unattached? To a play she will soon be acting in? What matters is that Tracy Michailidis writes, three pages every day and often in this café, Alternative Grounds. "I'll write about anything," she says, "anything to get the pond scum off the top of my brain."

• The Artist's Way: The Devil Wears Prada & Mean Girls [Absolut Artist Gabby Malpas Double Happiness: Jewellery ; Top 100 Political Blogs International Double Media Dragon ]
• · Some people say anger puts spring in your step. It gives you energy and fires you up. Imagine how much anger I have accumulated in the last seven months. Anger Stress is a modern priviledge. Turning stress around ... ; Women and their questions can be a frightening experience. Sitting there with TV remote in hand, defenceless, when suddenly you cop a “Don’t you love me, honey?” Muddled men are now resorting to women as a benchmark for defining themselves. Metrosexuals. Diva fits. Believing sensitivity a greater virtue than truth. How to scare and confound men
• · · Is freedom just another word for many things to buy? Freedom is about having choice ; A Clockwork Orange is a novel of immense power. Linguistically inventive, socially prophetic, and philosophically profound, it is very close to being a work of genius... [Y]outh is only being in a way like it might be an animal. No, it is not just like being an animal so much as being like one of these malenky [small] toys you viddy being sold in the streets, like little chellovecks [men] made out of tin and with a spring inside and then a winding handle on the outside and you wind it up grrr grrr grrr and off it itties [goes], like walking, O my brothers. But it itties in a straight line and bangs straight into things bang bang and it cannot help what it is doing. Being young is like being like one of these malenky machines. A Prophetic and Violent Masterpiece; To say I was delighted and privileged to interview Salman Rushdie on the publication of his latest novel is an understatement Salman Rushdie
• · · · · Case Study: A Shake-Up at Harvard ; David Horowitz's latest attack on America's left-leaning college professors doesn't add up Right, left, and wrong Like all his supporters I know anything about, Horowitz is not interested in civilized, intelligent discussion. He is interested in character assassination, not truth. He’s interested in self-promotion, not reasonable argument. It IS time we stop paying him attention. Anything we say falls on stone ears. Let him preach to the choir if he wishes, until the choir too is weary of his vitriol. Who’s Afraid of David Horowitz? ; Student, you're lazy! Professor, you're a zero!
• · · · · · Cupid had two arrows. One was made of gold for virtuous, lasting love. The other was made of lead, and it incited lust... What makes Cupid's arrows stick? ; Struggling with an important but difficult decision? The best way to deal with your problem: Stop thinking about it. Might the ingredients of life have formed by chemicals coming together in a “warm, little pond,” as Charles Darwin suggested? In the beginning...; People buy pricey kitchen machines hoping the right gadget will make them want to cook. It won’t work: you can’t get domestic happiness so easily. Are We Worthy of Our Kitchens?

Posted 7:07 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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Ken Follett's 1978 spy novel The Eye of the Needle contains the following:
His name is Frederick Bloggs, and he gets annoyed if you make jokes about it.

Rumors of blogs' demise are exaggerated, but a lot less obsession would be healthy Blog Epitaphs? Get Me Rewrite!

This is not a media dragon or a beech tree, but rather my MD or my beech tree, something that I, with my sensations, have constructed in all its details. Everything that I see, hear, smell or feel are not qualities that exclusively belong to the beech, but rather are characteristics of my sense organs that I project outside of myself. In the eye of the naive person only the one world of appearances is visible, which, surrounded by space and time, is full of sounding, smelling, coloured things. In this way soulful life offers to the naive man an unlimited enrichment of his world, while the physicist makes of him a beggar.

The Blog, The Press, The Media: In a Dark Time ... The Eye Begins to See
Six Apart's Mena Trott helped start the stampede by co-designing user-friendly software. But she thinks the blogging trend is only just beginning

It's hard to imagine the world without blogs. The publishing technology has become a cultural and political force. One of the reasons for the rapid growth of the blogosphere is the existence of user-friendly blogging software such as Moveable Type. The program was designed with simplicity in mind by Mena Trott, a former graphic designer and early blogger (she launched dollarshort.org in early 2001), and her husband, Ben Trott, a programmer.

• The Future of the Blog [The verticals, as Gary Price calls them, win in this case - By vertical, I mean travel-specific search engine. Finding a Hotel ; Your Daily Cup of Ontology ; Slate has 8 millions readers. Honest. Or maybe it's 4 million. Which should you believe? There's only one media-ratings system no one takes seriously: Web site rankings.]
• · There was a time when the press was the strongest guardian of free expression in this A Failure of the Press; Rendez-vous at Vnunet ; Retailers and companies in the European financial sector are haemorrhaging money because of poorly performing e-commerce websites Poor e-commerce sites cost UK millions
• · · Government says IT boosts productivity by billions; And yet... In all the houses and streets there is peace and quiet. Out of fifty thousand townsfolk there's not one ready to scream or protest aloud Virtual Economics As If People Mattered
• · · · At first sight it looks like a regular cell phone — same size, same shape, same overall appearance. But beneath the digital face lies a .22-caliber pistol, a phone gun capable of firing four rounds in quick succession with a touch of the otherwise standard keypad. GunCellphone ; The first order of business is to keep an open mind The Long Tail: Death of the Blockbuster
• · · · · Take a walk through actual days in the lives of professionals in top careers ; Yahoo! Free speech in China
• · · · · · A single global readership may explain its growing success at a time when most magazines are experiencing declines in circulation. The Brits May Be Onto Something ; As Bill Bryson aptly noted, Britain is a small island. The bigger, the better? The British small publisher begs to differ publisher begs to differ. And as long as Google sells ads, publishers be damned Is Google mad, or just bad at reading? Library Book Search:
• · · · · · · So what's the secret of Cold River?An absence of bylines is all part of the prestigious media dragon’s mystique. Slovak-born Andy Warhol(a) is credited with saying (and I paraphrase): The most sincere form of art appreciation is writing a check. Of course Andy would think that—being an artist—but I'm not so sure that's as true today as it was when Andy offered it. Not in France anyway All comedy, is tragedy, if you only look deep enough into it ; UK Blackwell Death plucks my ear and says, Live—I am coming ; Cold River: The Cold Truth of Freedom ; Quartermelon; Paperbackshop-US; Bookplace Ltd; LAKESIDE BOOKS Stratford Books ; Political Science > Communism & Socialism 9781554043118 US ; UK ; Canada; Whole Wide World

Posted 9:54 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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Why, oh why, has no one called the victory of Evo Morales a revolution, despite it sharing some of the characteristics of the "coloured revolutions" in post-Soviet countries? Roses, oranges... and coca

When I was young (yup, this is mostly a Grumpy Old Men column), no one cared about superannuation reforms. Today small superannuation funds want more reform of the Australian superannuation industry. Virgin Money says that large funds are making it difficult for members to exercise their right to change funds. It claims that members are being misinformed and the process of change is being made difficult. Industry Fund Services is critical of some eligible rollover funds. A survey shows that most of these funds make little return after fees. Both funds have called for more changes to super legislation Virgin Money CEO, Rohan Gamble and others, believe that many consumers have been misinformed about changeover processes by groups such as Promina, Asteron, AMP, Colonial First State, Recruitment Super and Rest Super. Watchdog readies probe on super choice dirty tricks You bullies say funds - ASIC to break super chain

Eye on Politics & Law Lords: Health ties: Australia and New Zealand Health Policy
Developments in Australian general practice 2000-2002: what did these contribute to a well functioning and comprehensive Primary Health Care System?

In recent years, national and state/territory governments have undertaken an increasing number of initiatives to improve links between general practice and the rest of the primary health care sector. This paper reviews how far these initiatives have contributed to a well functioning and comprehensive primary health care system during the period 2000–02

• Primary Health Care System [Jeff McMullen, chair of the Ian Thorpe Fountain for Youth which is involved in improving educational and health outcomes, explains how literacy can mean life in remote Aboriginal communities When literacy can mean life ; Australian local democracy: past to present ; The personal is political. What is it that makes life livable? And why should life be bearable in some nations but not in others? Unlike Sigmund Freud, I do not think mankind suffers from a universal death wish, any more than it benefits from a universal instinct for self-preservation. Some people have a death wish, and others don't. The devil's sourdough and the decline of nations]
• · An interview with George Soros on the global movement for an ‘open society’. Soros on opening up closed societies ; From Parliament to sporting fields, the ethic of "whatever it takes" rules Packer, ANI and the ethics of corporate secrecy ; Only a meaner nation could turn Kerry into a saint ; An investigation into the private and public finances of Rick Santorum Might want to reconsider becoming the ethics czar
• · · Middle-class snout in Treasurer's trough - Herald Sun (Melbourne), 21/02/2006, John Beveridge - Peter Costello must love this time of year. Every man and his dog comes up with sensationally unsustainable ideas about how the budget surplus should be spent He's in a win-win situation; Spy agencies and police across Australia may soon be given powers, for the first time, to monitor the phone calls, email and text messages of people not suspected of any crime. The power to spy on terrorism and serious crime suspects already exists Big Brother says hello ; Heads roll in Machiavellian mystery
• · · · Is there any smart tax or treasury officer who is not sallary sacrificed or negatively geared? I seriously doubt it ;-) By Peter Cerexhe. Smartinvestor, 01/03/2006, If you are well read about the tricks of running a property investment or have attended any of those become a millionaire through property' seminars, you may have picked up on the strategy of seeking a cut in the tax taken out of your wages by your employer. The idea is that since you are going to get a large tax refund or tax credit at the end of the year (because you're bleeding through your negative gearing), the Australian Taxation Office may as well let you get the tax benefit week by week instead Tax refund: now or later ; Does the High Court disagree more often in constitutional cases? ; Abolishing income tax returns could save the economy $3 billion in lost productivity and give most people the equivalent of an extra public holiday a year. Economist urges scrapping of annual income tax returns
• · · · · Bill Clinton: Now everyone can make a difference Power to the people; Police Cameras in Your Home
• · · · · · Receiving almost no corporate media coverage, a Senate committee recommended on January 31 the passage of a bill that will make it easier for the Australian Defence Force (ADF) to police and shoot civilians. The powers go well beyond dealing with a terrorist threat and in important respects put the military above state criminal laws New shoot to kill powers: Da Capital Iron Curtain in the making? ; From depression to freedom

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River of Reforms

Taxing Times Ahead
Tax system comes under microscope: We know that governments are traditionally loath to call investigations unless they already know the outcome usually goes without saying. Yesterday, however, Peter Costello was happily boasting about the likely result of his surprise, quickfire inquiry into Australia's international tax competitiveness. It is hard to see how a one-month inquiry comparing our tax system with overseas can find answers to sustain this nation's future. After Treasurer Peter Costello's announcement yesterday, NSW politicians quickly zeroed in on GST revenue. NSW government calls for GST overhaul ; Costello gets little GST sympathy; We begin with Adam Smith's contention..that peace, low taxes, and good government will lead a nation to prosperity. Timmer updates this view by analyzing the role that investments in education, technology and trade have made in the rapid progress of countries like South Korea, Singapore, and Brunei. He concludes that the "miracle" of getting rich lies in creating a durable set of institutions - some public, some private - that encourage the "Smithian conditions" as well as economic openness for long periods of time. Unfinished tax symphony
• · · Businessman Dick Warburton and business lobbyist Peter Hendy will lead a comprehensive study of all taxes in Australia as a springboard for major reforms. Treasurer Peter Costello said yesterday the study would also examine overseas tax systems to find ways to lower the burden on average Australians. An inquiry into Australia's tax system will help Treasurer Peter Costello decide on a new wave of tax reforms in time for this year's federal budget. Mr Costello said the inquiry, which is expected to report by April 3, would focus on how Australia's tax system compared with other developed countries. The findings of a lightning inquiry set up by Peter Costello to settle the argument about whether Australians are too highly taxed will drive instant tax relief in the May budget, almost certainly offering cuts to highincome earners. The Treasurer appointed prominent businessmen Dick Warburton and Peter Hendy yesterday to report within five weeks on how Australia's income, business, superannuation, property, indirect and transaction taxes compare with international and regional competitors. By Peter Costello's reckoning, Australia's personal tax system ranks only so-so by international standards. It sits on the middle of the ladder. After 10 years in government yesterday's announcement of an inquiry to benchmark the Australian tax system against those of comparable countries is long overdue. Given the parameters and the time frame for reporting it will probably find that, taking into account all levels of tax, Australians are not overtaxed. Shape of things to come: I’m here to change politics, not to have politics change me ; Imrich One Agenda, Many Voice: Being Poor is Expensive
• · · · Judging by the submissions to the taskforce set up last year to identify practical options for reducing the compliance burden on business from commonwealth government regulation, there is obviously some heavy and impractical baggage weighing on a range of industries and individuals. The regulation taskforce set up by the Prime Minister and the Treasurer last October has had just over three months to consider 151 submissions from concerned parties, including exclusive private schools, mortgage providers, small business and large financial institutions. Red tape in need of a quick snip ; Tax – who's telling the truth?
• · · · · Federal Treasurer Peter Costello has revealed he was "scarred for life by the GST experience", admitting the introduction of the tax was flawed and too generous to the states. As he prepares to celebrate the Howard government's 10th year in office, Mr Costello has revealed he believes the intended transfer of responsibility to the states in return for $35 billion in GST funds was a "failure". Costello's GST nightmare: Respect goes further than love in politics ; State welcomes GST shakeup ; Bold as brass NSW just wants a fairer slice of the pie
• · · · · · The NSW Parliament, which resumes tomorrow, will celebrate 150 years in May. Celebrations will be low-key, but is there much to celebrate? Parliament matures, not so its members; Govt to review Commonwealth penalties