The trouble with the world is that the stupid are so confident while the intelligent are full of doubt.
-Bertrand Russell
They can't get inside you.
-J[ozef], 1984, George Orwell
Just an ordinary life: When it comes to appropriating other people's stories - all the great, sexy things …Like attracts like - by thinking negatively, you attract negativity. Think positively about attaining something you desire, and you attract that outcome. The bien-pensant pissants and detectives of my dear Watson, those newtownish arch-Machiavellian characters, tend to provide much of parliamentary commentary such as how Mark Swinson is missed due to the broken pelvis. The stories are not the same in Russell Groves office occupied by Patricia and Rebecca and Francis. Terror and Travel suspects: Time to uncork the enormous potential of clerks
Can we change the heart of parliamentary bureau? Who is Who and What is Where
This year, the popular television show The Sopranos, a fictional account of a mob family, comes to an end. Unfortunately, in the real world, organized crime is not ending, it’s booming … It is taking off like a Bondi tram ;-)
Fraud is an ancient and familiar concept. The Bible, indeed starts off with two fairly stark cases of deception (I must say immediately, with a murder sandwiched between the two), one of which, indeed, if committed nowadays. Right at the beginning of the Book of Genesis, some of you may recall, the serpent deceived Eve, an unwitting accomplice, into inducing Adam to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and thus precipitated mankind into the mess we are in now. In relation to a mess of a different kind, a few pages further on, Jacob, rightly described as a "smooth man", defrauded his father Isaac of the mess of pottage due to his brother Esau ("an hairy man"), by impersonating his brother.
• Build your House of Parliament upon the River ; [Oddities and Numbers – & The Second, Third and even Fourth READING between the lines Sydney man drowns in Munich river ; Ah, Mr Bond, we weren't expecting you ]
• · What Your Sign-off is Really Saying - Find out what business etiquette experts have to say about the expressions we use to end work-related e-mails. Avoid using any word you wouldn't want to see on the front page of Media Dragon or The New York Times with your signature next to it.; IT was a bold plan to scam $150 million and send it to offshore banks, nutted out in the confines of a downtown Sydney pole-dancing club. It almost succeeded. Now Sydney's own Ocean's 12 are in court, charged over a conspiracy to rip off the Commonwealth Superannuation Scheme. Former Lady Jane's nightclub boss Thomas Anthony "Tony" Vincent, 66, and his 11 co-accused faced a commital hearing yesterday on a range of charges including recklessly dealing with the proceeds of crime, conspiring to cause a loss and dishonestly obtaining financial advantage. Former Lady Jane's nightclub boss ; The Herald's 'title deeds' with its tales of the rich and fatuous rarely strays outside the eastern suburbs. But Title Deed moved elsewhere spying on the ex-Usher Warren Cahill and the Macbeath designer, Jane Johnson, who shared a penthouse next to historians at Erskenville - The place is for sale for three quarters of the million dollar - Reading Hansard and poetry of parliamentary life and death
• · There's only been writing in Australia for just over 200 years, compared to this endless oral tradition. It does seem that it's a difficult place to write about, because it's so big and so old and there's been so little writing so far. 'I'm a giant fraud' ; I've become a lot more spiritual because of him. You've got to tell these stories
• · · The internet has given people the anonymity to say what they like - as rudely as they like Cyberspace: it's the new toilet wall ; Not even in George Orwell's wildest nightmares would he have suspected we could be so naive. Even in his most dystopic visions it is doubtful he would have suspected the change over the past decade in the Western world's approach to privacy Say goodbye to that quaint notion, privacy
• · · · Better than the real thing: virtual friendships thrive despite bans; Should we all lie down on the highway and let the author drive back and forth on top of us because he is the author? Grand theft author
• · · · · GERALD Stone's top-selling book, which makes explosive claims about the decline of the late Kerry Packer's beloved Nine Network, has ruffled media feathers since its release a week ago. I was dying to publish Nine expose