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Making change and taking action are personal. Always has been. Now I find my commitment to sustainability has gone to another level as I like millions of parents before me have seen my worldview expand dramatically with the news that Sasha is modelling in London and Gabbie is studying acting at Fox Studio ...
As Virginia invaded our place from Bristol, Mal and I talked over Kofi with Gabbie about her future at the Studio and on Sunday ice cream against the sunset of at Watson Bay tastes the most nostalgic ... After achieving so much at swimming Gabbie passed the audition for the Brent Street Studio of Talent Development High School at Moore Park Brent Street is far more than a performing arts school. It is the energy centre of a much larger organisation, specialising in various facets of the entertainment industry. Students from an early age mix and mingle with professional performers. They watch actual rehearsals and are exposed to the real industry. This is unique and part of the culture that produces high caliber graduates year after year. When will I be famous? ELLE Macpherson's brother says he is fast expanding his child talent company to meet demand from active youngsters. Ben Macpherson's publicly-listed talent agency Artist and Entertainment Group acquired Sydney's Brent Street theatre and dance school in October and is now looking to take the brand national. Gabriella first Rich and now Famous ;-)

The Lives of Others 'Entering the blogosphere': some strategies for using blogs in social research … Since 1999 Media Dragon and other blogs have become a significant feature of online culture. They have been heralded as the new guardians of democracy, a revolutionary form of bottom-up news production and a new way of constructing self and doing community in late-modern times. This article highlights the significance of the blogosphere as a new addition to the qualitative researcher's toolkit and some of the practical, theoretical and methodological issues that arise from this. Some of the key ethical issues involved in blog data collection are also considered. The research context is a project on everyday understandings and experiences of morality

Jay Rosen The limitations of the crowd
On Creative Economy, MARGARET SIMONS looks at the results of an experiment in online reporting launched by Jay Rosen

Just when you think you’ve got a handle on what the internet is or might be, it shifts. Those of us who have in middle life familiarised ourselves with Google and email while dismissing social networking as a passing fad for teenagers should be thinking again. The data suggest that social networking may turn out to be what the Internet is all about – its killer application – and that our children will think us stupid for not seeing this at first glance.

Last month’s issue of Computer magazine made a bold claim – that social networking internet sites were not merely time wasters or means for teens to organise parties and share music. Rather they were “an evolution in human social interaction.” Professors Alfred Weaver and Benjamin Morrison – both researchers in computer science – claimed that the use of social networking sites is causing a major shift in the internet’s function and design...

• WANDER the mahogany-veneer rows of most Australian newsrooms over the last five years and you would have heard from various old farts that the internet was nothing to get too excited about. At first it was said to be a passing fad. Once that line ceased to be credible, it was said that it didn’t really matter. What mattered was content, and the credibility of the brand, and most of all good journalism. The method of delivery made no essential difference.
• · The internet looks like becoming a single social networking platform Catching up ; Slavic Village has street after empty street of boarded-up houses, their roofs caving in, collapsed balconies hanging from the fronts of buildings. Subprime people in Sydney all living in the streets …
• · Michael Fullilove of Lowy Institute for International Policy:
This paper argues that diasporas (communities which live outside, but retain their connections with, their homelands) are getting larger, thicker and stronger – with important implications for global economics, identity, politics and security. World wide webs: Diasporas and the international system ; Effective protection against insider trading is critical to market confidence and, over time, liquidity. This paper deals with the key company and market risks associated with poorly governed director and executive security trading. Director and executive security trading
• · · It remains something newspapers are embracing as the 2008 presidential campaign hits its stride and the primaries loom Political Bloggers at Newspaper Sites in Drivers Seat for 2008 Campaign Coverage ; Today I heard Raintown by Deacon Blue for the first time in about 20 years Artistic coverage - Nostalgia for Beginners: Raintown
• · · · Analytics is like writing, or art. There isn't a single "analytics" to learn, rather it's a state of mind paired with a set of skills. You need to love exploration and discovery, solving puzzles, shaping data like clay, proving yourself wrong. Since August 2005, We Feel Fine has been harvesting human feelings from a large number of weblogs. Every few minutes, the system searches the world's newly posted blog entries for occurrences of the phrases "I feel" and "I am feeling". When it finds such a phrase, it records the full sentence, up to the period, and identifies the "feeling" expressed in that sentence (e.g. sad, happy, depressed, etc.). Because blogs are structured in largely standard ways, the age, gender, and geographical location of the author can often be extracted and saved along with the sentence, as can the local weather conditions at the time the sentence was written. All of this information is saved. We Feel Fine ; Ingram chairman John Ingram issued a brief statement on Amazon's recent move to drive POD publishers to use Booksurge if they want their books sold directly by the e-tailer, noting it clearly is alarming many of our publisher partners. At the same time, Ingram reports that so far we've been unable to get a response directly from Amazon.com. He says, We all live in a world where decisions are made about insourcing and outsourcing, and free choice is important. At Ingram Book and Lightning Source, we are going to work really hard to continue to be the compelling choice as publishers make their outsourcing decisions.... At Lightning Source, we produce a great product and thus do justice to our publishers' valuable titles. There is no question that we provide the highest print quality, the fastest turnaround speeds, and the most comprehensive portfolio of channels for a publisher's books. Amazon changes rules for print-on-demand publisher
• · · · · Bank bailouts: corporate success is the success of a few individual executives; but when the company fails, we must all fail with it. Socialism for the rich: the unwise free market; ON MY 50th birthday I've officially become a happily grumpy old man. Here for the record is what makes me grumpy.
People who talk and read during the pre take-off airline safety demonstration - especially the federal minister who chatted through the life jacket instructions on her way from Adelaide to Sydney the other day.
Wires under my desk that become entangled without being touched. Politicians and bureaucrats who fail to recognise they are the employees and we are the employers. People who take forever to say goodbye when leaving one's home. Back-office types who request the "original" death certificate when sorting out an estate. Marx and Engels
• · · · · · Graeme Wood, the founder of one of this country's most successful online destinations, actually took "making money while you sleep" to a logical conclusion by creating a site that effectively sells beds at hotels to a world virtually addicted to travel. ONE of the greatest pay-offs for the new-age online entrepreneurs is that as soon as they create a website that eyes want to surf to on the internet, on a regular basis, and the marketing campaign has some traction, it's just a matter of making money while they sleep. What If Wotif; Here’s a cool demonstration of pure engagement. No, it’s not an innovative new media idea or the hottest viral on YouTube. It’s a “How tall are you?” measuring stick. On its own, knowing Arnold Schwarzenegger is 187 cm tall doesn’t grab me, but the knowledge that Maria Sharapova and Jozef Imrich is as well ;-)

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People love hierarchies. When anarchists get together to form an anarchist association, the first thing they do is elect a governing committee...

The temptation to choose and shape stories to maximise ad revenue may be overwhelming, especially when most online media sites are losing money or surviving on wafer-thin profit margins. The death of quality journalism - or - how to give a story Google juice

Martina Navratilova returns to her Czech roots ABC jumps into digital hyper drive
The ABC has leapt further into the digital media age, announcing a 24/7 "continuous news centre" and more than 60 new websites pushing local news to regional communities.

A wonderful egalitarian world of knowledge on the web? Hardly, says Tyler Cowen. Error, falsehood, and lies abound on the Internet.

• Cooked Digital Books Why are we still surprised when "non-fiction" is less than truthful?; [Our ABC Tale ; So there you are, living through a phase in your exuberant youth which you will one day find embarrassing. As your family and maybe your high school sweetheart does already. But you live in the Ukraine, and you decide to play with some very unpleasant people and somehow you get dead. Russian Mafia; Fascinating pictures. Certainly gives one a better understanding of the criminal psyche and the criminal world in general. History of tractors? Soviets now Capitalists…; ‘False face must hide what the false heart doth know”
Another Underbelly]
• · Vladimir Putin used to be careful to pay lip service to democracy and the rule of law. That’s how every ruler of Russia had talked since Gorbachev. A Touch of Menace - Who was fooled? ; Marcel Proust’s Jewishness may have allowed him to perceive more sharply the hypocrisy and hostility exposed in the Dreyfus affair Madame Proust: A Biography
• · The Old Country Slavic minister's speech on Morava River: Me and my two mates and our old story; The recent death of Roy Scheider got me thinking about storytelling. In his iconic role as Police Chief Brody, Scheider connects us into the heart of Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-winning movie Jaws
• · · Imrich and so are my maaates Lessons from the Failure of the Communist Economic System ; George Soros, Zdeněk Bakala and Robert Amsterdam, lawyer of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, meet in Prague for PASOS debate Soros and Bakala
• · · · Czech President Vaclav Klaus seamlessly sailed to his second five-year term as he was sworn into office at a joint session of the bicameral parliament held and some Czech powermakers like to stay youngKlaus; TENNIS great Martina Navratilova has regained her Czech nationality more than 30 years after fleeing its communist rule to live in the US. After 30 years, Navratilova's Czech again
• · · · · It can be tough earning 'domestic Sydney' wages but paying 'global Sydney' mortgages. But it is all about supply and demand. The Sydney paradox; Courtesy of Stephen B Sydney from the sky
• · · · · · Imrich and a longtime fan of that most powerful of icons, the smiley face. ; Sad face "In a sometimes tearful, often contrite telephone interview" the author
known as Margaret B. Jones (actually Margaret "Peggy" Seltzer) admitted to the NYT that her "memoir" LOVE AND CONSEQUENCES "was entirely fabricated Gang Memoir, Turning Page, Is Pure Fiction

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I was once a stranger in Sydney, a long time ago ;-)

Today and after St Patrick and sT jOZEF'S NAME I feel like a veteran who has spent many Easters at June's place among so many lovely friends ..

I don't know you
But I want you
All the more for that
Words fall through me
And always fool me
And I can't react
And games that never amount
To more than they're meant
Will play themselves out

Take this sinking boat and point it home
We've still got time
Raise your hopeful voice you have a choice
You've made it now

Falling slowly, eyes that know me
And I can't go back
Moods that take me and erase me
And I'm painted black
You have suffered enough
And warred with yourself
It's time that you won

Take this sinking boat and point it home
We've still got time
Raise your hopeful voice you have a choice
You've made it now

Take this sinking boat and point it home
We've still got time
Raise your hopeful voice you have a choice
You've made it now
Falling slowly sing your melody
I'll sing along
Listen to this lovely song from Irish Czech haven Falling Slowly Falling slowly, eyes that know me And I can't go back Moods that take me and erase me ...

If it's my last breath: as certain as death Following the money
There’s a juicy little scandal unfolding in in Liechtenstein — whose national slogan might as well be “Why Pay Taxes?”

Spies, whistle-blowers and threats: tax haven is called to account
The day that Toytown went to war, the traffic stopped. For more than a week Liechtenstein (population 35,000) and Germany (population 82 million) have been locked in an extraordinary row involving spies, bankers, a whistle-blower with a shady past, a furious prince – and tens of thousands of well-heeled but anonymous tax evaders. From Britain, from the United States, but, above all, from Germany.



Revelations concerning payment by HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) of £100,000 to Heinrich Kieber, a former Liechtenstein banker, for details of secret offshore bank accounts held by British taxpayers raises a serious moral dilemma about how tax evasion is combated in modern times.
During the 17th century the practice of rewarding informers was reviled by the common law, with Chief Justice Coke describing informers as "viperous vermin" who "vexed the subject for malice or private ends".
But the ending of the Star Chamber precipitated a paradigm attitudinal shift.
Writing in the 18th century, Jeremy Bentham described an informer favourably as a servant of the government employed in opposing the enemies of the State Certainly by the 19th century it was common practice for an informer to receive a moiety of any penalty recovered in a revenue matter.
In 1868 Parliament codified the position by empowering the Commissioners of Inland Revenue at their discretion to reward any person who informed them of the commission of a revenue offence.
The present law is wider and enables HMRC to pay a reward to any person "in return for a service which relates to a function of the Commissioners or an officer of Revenue and Customs

• Haven of fears; [Helping evasion is distinct from legitimate tax competition. Monaco or Bermuda or Switzerland are fully entitled to set low rates of personal and business tax to attract wealthy individuals and companies to their jurisdiction. What is not acceptable is helping those who live elsewhere to evade the taxes that they owe Haven evasion ; Trounced on tax: raids aim to halt Europe's havens ]
• · Tax authorities tread fine line. Australian Financial Review, 06/03/2008, Editorials, page 78. Wealthy Australians with bank accounts in 'unco-operative' tax havens such as Liechtenstein and Monaco must be opening their copies of The Australian Financial Review with trepidation these days. The shield of tax haven bank secrecy is easier to pierce, and now the case of the stolen Liechtenstein bank records is taking on a life of its own….
We should not be too squeamish about this. Concealing income from tax authorities is blatant evasion without even the pretence of legal avoidance, and a serious crime that deserves to be prosecuted with the full weight of the law. But tax authorities must exercise their powers properly. And governments of rich countries need to accept that their high taxes make the tax evasion industry more lucrative. There appears to be a change in the political mood ; Helping evasion is distinct from legitimate tax competition. Monaco or Bermuda or Switzerland are fully entitled to set low rates of personal and business tax to attract wealthy individuals and companies to their jurisdiction. What is not acceptable is helping those who live elsewhere to evade the taxes that they owe List of tax havens
• · In the 1980s and 1990s, the public began to protest the large compensation packages executives were receiving. Average workers were struggling while executives got raises, even as the corporations they worked for failed. This disconnect between executive compensation and executive performance led Congress to attempt to curtail executive compensation. In 1980, the average CEO made 42 times the average hourly worker's pay. By 1990, the average CEO made 107 times the average hourly worker's pay. In 1993, Congress enacted tax legislation intended to rein in excessive executive compensation. However, in 2000, the average CEO made 525 times the average hourly worker's pay. Compensation amounts that executives receive since the enactment of the tax provisions are increasing dramatically, not decreasing. Money for Nothing and the Stocks for Free: Taxing Executive Compensation
• · · Linkage between tax and financial accounts is common in Europe, although it takes varying forms. This does not result in complete book-tax conformity, however, and recent developments in accounting may be increasing divergence rather than reducing it. Despite the strong arguments in favour of conformity, there are also good reasons for some divergences, meaning that the most likely outcome in any system, whatever the starting point, is partial convergence Financial and Tax Accounting: Transparency and 'Truth'
• · · · The next bubble must be large enough to recover the losses from the housing bubble collapse. How bad will it be? Some rough calculations. Bubble of black tulips

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None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.
-Johann von Goethe

I suppose that Sasha and Gabbie are experiencing the Easter of 2008 in London so Happy Easter girls wherever you happen to be



Flying with the past of fatherhood, away from the earth.
Forgetting the saddness of evening,
the paradise beyond the clouds,
Where a turtle travels only
when it sticks its neck out ...




Neither individuals nor nations become corrupt all at once, nor are they enlightened in a moment.

Arthur C. Clarke's assertion, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, comes to full fruition in cyberspace—a realm of avatars and instant messaging. And magical thinking may help us pluck the fruits of digital technology.

Though the rational mind knows what a picture is, it’s hard to hit a baby’s photo on a dartboard: our aim falls prey to deep intuitions... 2001 AD

CODA: Easter 2008 AD - Arthur C. Clarke, whose visions of the future became scientific fact, is dead at the age of 90 ...

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Very few people wish me happy name day these March peppered days - well by confirmation name I am addressed as Patrick while my real name is Jozef - on 17 March I must celebrate my confirmation name day and today is St Jozef's name - My sister Gitka always remembers to send me a message even if she is busy in Prague helping my other sister Eva to get organised;-) This year I did not let this important excuse to have a drink slip by unnoticed among friends - well == this week lots of things from the past keep flooding back...

Including the idea of coming to Sydney, which was transformative. You would become a different person here. Many refugees tend to agree... The moral admonitions of Cold War that loom so large in the European memory are invisible to Australians. With time and distance, evil fades... Imagine you fall on hard times of isolation in exile and (it's hard, but try) imagine further that you never want to be right if the government is wrong …

As long ago as 1628, Sir Edward Coke suggested that legal materials should not be published in English lest the unlearned by bare reading without right understanding might suck out errors, and trusting in their conceit, might endamage themselves, and sometimes fall into destruction. Worries about sucking, endamaging, and destruction persist to this day, though the conceit is arguably heavily concentrated on the other side of the issue.

People — and by “people” I mean “lawyers” — generally believe that there are two consumers of legal information. The first is a “law person” — a judge, lawyer, academic, or student — who makes sophisticated professional use of caselaw, statutes, regulations, treatises. The other is the “man in the street”, someone who is having an episodic, traumatic encounter with the legal system: getting crushed by debt, getting divorced, getting arrested. This leads to a misconception: the idea that both the literature and the audience for it are sharply bifurcated. On the one hand, there is “legal information”, a specialist literature that the man in the street doesn’t want and couldn’t understand in any case. On the other, there is what I suppose one might call “advice to the law-lorn”, simply-written, presented in bite-size chunks via newspaper or television, and providing orientation for those participating in one of the episodes mentioned earlier, or perhaps trying to solve a consumer-protection problem.

He was no lover of the common law, which Blackstone put on a pedestal. On the contrary, he described the common law as a place of “dark Chaos”. He advocated substitution of the codification of law and its enactment in statutes passed by an elected Parliament which would take the place of the step by step accretion of common law principle, performed by analogous reasoning by judges of infinite variety. For him, codes and statutory principles would “mark out the line of the subject’s conduct by visible directions instead of turning [the subject] loose into the wilds of perpetual conjecture”. He had great powers of invective, often directed against ‘Judge and Co’ (ie the Bench and the Bar), whom he saw as a ‘sinister interest’ profiting from the operation at great cost to the public of an unnecessarily complex and chaotic legal system in which it was often impossible for a litigant to discover in advance his legal rights. .

Those words are a paraphrase of HLA Hart, taken from an address given by Australian High Court Justice Michael Kirby at the Law via the Internet ‘99 conference Kirby’s talk still rings true now, painfully close to a decade later:

Providing undigested legal material is not enough. It is essential that we provide citizens with the tools of thinking through problems, finding the applicable legal rules and deriving from legislation and case law any principle that must be obeyed….Throwing onto the plate of people, with fundamental misapprehensions about their legal institutions, a huge mass of undigested legal data will not truly make the law free and more accessible. It is the duty of schools and universities to help the next generation, including the overwhelming majority who are not lawyers, to appreciate the way in which law is written, may be found and is applied - at least in those matters which are of greatest concern to the ordinary person. Otherwise, Bentham and his followers will have been outfoxed once again by Judge & Co.

In the years since Kirby’s speech, we’ve seen enormous progress in making law available. Courts, legislatures, and agencies have all provided online warehouses full of their work product (and indeed the e-Government Act of 2002 requires Federal courts to do so). More recently, interest from open-access advocates among the technorati has resulted in admirable projects like public.resource.org, AltLaw, and an important and exciting venture in cross-subsidy for open access, Justia . Nameless for now

I believe what happened to Mark D'arney, Alan Beverstock or David Draper is one of the more shameful episodes in this whole place called the NSW Parliament or the Bear Pit. There was much whispering in the back seat, dancing in the shadows, and searching for missing paper clips, but, obviously, none was found missing ...

Can we change the heart of politics? Rocking the Rivers of Mateships
The Iemma Government has been rocked by explosive claims that convicted paedophile Milton Orkopoulos was tipped off by senior parliamentary officials that police were investigating him. Ms Sneddon said she was told on February 8 by Elaine Schofield, the NSW Parliament employee services manager, that the new MP for Swansea, Robert Coombs, had not wanted her on staff.
Earlier in the morning, Orkopoulos had joked with journalists about what time the jury was likely to reach its verdict. As more than a dozen journalists entered a sweepstake on the time of the verdict, Orkopoulos jokingly entered, choosing Friday at 11.30am. He won the pool, but when the time arrived, the smile had long vanished from his face. The jury found he had sex with two boys after supplying them with cannabis and heroin while they were minors after 1995.

Gillian Sneddon, who worked as Orkopoulos's electorate officer in the Hunter seat of Swansea, said she feared she would be killed after learning that Russell Grove, the clerk of the Legislative Assembly, had met with Orkopoulos to tell him about the investigation. Soon after that Russell Grove from Parliament, the clerk of the Legislative Assembly, sat down with Milton and had a meeting with him to tell him about it. ... The Herald revealed on Saturday that Ms Sneddon's employment as an electorate officer was terminated by the NSW Parliament on February 22, the day she first testified against Orkopoulos.
Mrs Sneddon accused a senior parliamentary official of holding a meeting with Orkopoulos shortly after she phoned an officer at Parliament and revealed she was helping police. The official is now under pressure to answer whether he informed the then speaker and Labor MP John Aquilina about the allegations.
Ms Sneddon, Orkopoulos's former electorate officer in the seat of Swansea, said she helped collect evidence for police and told a parliamentary official about the investigation on September 11, 2006.
"Soon after that, the official from Parliament sat down with Milton and had a meeting with him to tell him about it," she told Radio 2GB's Ray Hadley. "This was a covert police operation and by Milton knowing about it, that was in fact endangering my life." Ms Sneddon, made redundant the day she began giving evidence in the ex-MP's trial, said Parliament had effectively protected Orkopoulos.
She showed The Daily Telegraph a statement from Parliament's employee and corporate services manager Elaine Schofield which was supplied as part of her worker's compensation claim. In part the statement said: "(The official) and I had a meeting with Milton Orkopoulos arising out of Ms Sneddon's absence and workers' compensation claim. "During that meeting Mr Orkopoulos acknowledged he was aware that a police investigation was being conducted in relation to him.
"He indicated to us that they were old matters that had previously been dealt with by police and they were being rehashed. "He indicated that the allegations were promoted by his wife's former husband and . . . they related to interference with a young male."
Ms Sneddon said colleagues at the Swansea electorate office told Orkopoulos of her role in the police operation, photocopying documents.
And what did Parliament do - they had the locks changed to keep me out. Because I was assisting police, Milton obviously conspired with Parliament to have me locked out. So in effect what Parliament was doing . . . they were protecting the subject of the police inquiry, they were locking out the police witness.Orkopoulos is awaiting sentencing after being convicted last week on 28 child sex and drug charges.

• Tip-off put my life in danger - staffer; [SMH 1; SMH 2; DT; ABC’ Courier
]
• · The internet’s instant reduplication of data, ideas, and media underpins all sectors in our economy. We need this gigantic copy machine... ; Children lie early, and often, for many reasons: to avoid punishment, bond with friends, gain a sense of control. And there’s another reason

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We are in a fragmenting culture, where our certainties of even a few decades ago are questioned and where it is common for young men and women who have had years of education, to know nothing about the world, to have read nothing, knowing only some speciality or other, for instance, computers. What has happened to us is an amazing invention, computers and the internet and TV, a revolution. This is not the first revolution we, the human race, has dealt with. The printing revolution, which did not take place in a matter of a few decades, but took much longer, changed our minds and ways of thinking. A foolhardy lot, we accepted it all, as we always do, never asked "What is going to happen to us now, with this invention of print?" And just as we never once stopped to ask, How are we, our minds, going to change with the new internet, which has seduced a whole generation into its inanities so that even quite reasonable people will confess that once they are hooked, it is hard to cut free, and they may find a whole day has passed in blogging and blugging etc
-Acceptance Speech, Doris Lessing, Nobel Prize in Literature

According to a famous Cold River philosopher, there are three types of people: those who make things happen; those who things happen to; and those who say, what happened? In cyberspace, 15 minutes of fame becomes 15 certain seconds ... But the Guardian Newspaper in London ok, even if they do misquote! It's a Darwinian process - About 99 percent of these ideas are going to die. But some will emerge and spread. Warhola of 15 - 15 seconds and my Brissie connection Baden ;-)

If God made us who made God? In the end, the web is about connections
Websites link to resources, resources recommend articles, articles refer to experts.

Without links, websites are invisible. Social networks create links between people, forming connections based on interests, expertise, past employment or education, and friendships. Law librarians, while remaining aware of their pitfalls, can use social networks such as LinkedIn, Ning, Facebook, and even MySpace to promote useful websites and legal resources as well their own expertise and interests. "A survey of U.S. journalists by Brodeur, a unit of Omnicom Group suggests that blogs are not only having an impact on the speed and availability of news, but also influence the tone and editorial direction of reporting. The survey is part of an ongoing research project by Brodeur in conjunction with Marketwire to dissect and understand the impact that social media and blogs are having on traditional news delivery. The online survey was conducted among a random sample of North American reporters and editors, and was focused on understanding how social media and blogs influence their work."

• Head Report; [Tail Report has launched with the goal to map out how money is made in the blogosphere. Tail Report works by asking users to anonymously submit information about their site's traffic, rank and monthly revenue. In return, the user receives a custom report detailing what other websites are making and how their revenue compares based a number of factors, such as traffic, rank, number of RSS subscribers, age, number of employees, content, and ad networks. Tail Report ; ]
• · It's well known that kids influence family decisions. The Economist calls them Trillion Dollar kids, but the gist is that kids under 14 influenced almost half of American household spending in 2005. That's around $700 billion. Now imagine all that persuasive energy put behind sustainable enterprises and you've got a revolution underway... Dillhons: Out Of The Mouths Of Children;
• · What is it about tattoos? When I was young, having your skin marked with 'Mom' in a heart, a skull and cross bones, or a loved one's name was left to sailors and others tough enough to take the pain and the consequences when they changed girlfriends. Today, tattoos are fashionably mainstream... like Cold River Tattoos: More Than Skin Deep ; In Ezra Harel's first interview to the Israeli press, he declared that if bond-holders of Rogosin (TASE:ROGO), the company he controlled under Sunday, had been "rational, not greedy an arrangement could have been reached". Lessons in Greed
• · ·, By Charles Babcock, Thomas Claburn, John Foley, W. David Gardner, Antone Gonsalves, Nicholas J. Hoover, K.C. Jones, Elena Malykhina, Richard Martin, Paul McDougall, Marianne McGee, Chris Murphy, Cora Nucci, Art Wittman, and Serdar Yegulalp, InformationWeek, January 26, 2008
"Our guide to great blogs and Web sites worth adding to your bookmarks. The selection ranges from obvious picks like Technabob and Search Engine Watch to more obscure destinations such as Location One, istartedsomething, and GottaBeMobile Top 60 Little-Known Technology Web Sites; Once upon a time, in the great city of Milwaukee, lived a brilliant legal professional named Bella. Bella was part of the litigation practice group at Big, Bold & Smith, s.c. Every Monday the group met to discuss current issues. One Monday, a colleague named Greg informed everyone of a recent decision that could affect the outcome of a large case the firm was handling. After the meeting, Bella asked, "How did you hear about that case?" Greg answered, - I saw it on a blog I monitor. Bella is Bewildered About Blogs
• · · · Scientific American: Wikis, blogs and other collaborative web technologies could usher in a new era of science. Or not. By M. Mitchell Waldrop: "The explosively growing World Wide Web has rapidly transformed retailing, publishing, personal communication and much more. Innovations such as e-commerce, blogging, downloading and open-source software have forced old-line institutions to adopt whole new ways of thinking, working and doing business. Science could be next. A small but growing number of researchers--and not just the younger ones--have begun to carry out their work via the wide-open blogs, wikis and social networks of Web 2.0. And although their efforts are still too scattered to be called a movement--yet--their experiences to date suggest that this kind of Web-based "Science 2.0" is not only more collegial than the traditional variety, but considerably more productive. It's a Darwinian process = About 99 percent of these ideas are going to die. But some will emerge and spread ; French women d’un certain âge tend not to get fat and to stay lucky. They don’t see sex as a privilege for the young and beautiful...Women of France; It’s not just fads and fashions in the likes of shoes or music that spread through social networks. There are also states of mind – happiness, loneliness, altriusm... ; Show me a woman with a good three inches of cleavage on display, and I’ll show you a woman with little faith in her powers of conversation... Truth
• · · · · “Where is home?” asks George Konrád in his memoir of life under totalitarianism. We know the answer: Memory is home... WHERE?; Melancholia is a miraculous invitation to rise above the contented status quo and imagine untapped possibilities. We need sorrow to make us human, alive... Ask any soul-baring 40-year-old exile what he most longs for, and he likely won’t tell you it’s a better career or a more money: he wants freedom to search for meaning of death ;-) Sadness ; Yet another faked memoir: this one from a “mixed-race former child drug-runner” from South-Central
Fake memoirs are once again hitting the headlines. Only last week, Margaret B Jones’ ‘autobiographical’ account of growing up as a mixed-race foster child on the wrong side of the tracks in Los Angeles, Love and Consequences, was celebrated as a work of inspiration. One of America’s leading literary critics, Michiko Kakutani, said it was a ‘humane and deeply affecting memoir’. Now, however, the author has been unveiled as a very white Margaret Seltzer, and her story has been exposed as pure fiction. Auto lies; Memoirs ; Crying Wolf
• · · · · · Not only does Wikipedia need its vandals, the vandals need an orderly Wikipedia, too. Without order, their culture-jamming lacks a context... With Cold River, whatever the rest is, it isn’t silence. The Cold War streams still dominate Central European literature and heart ; Terrorists: often sour, lazy nobodies, ugly, of febrile imagination and small talent, who can only become somebody by murdering others... Terror

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NO ONE has ever accused Media Dragon of being shy when it comes to making its pitch for Cold River :-) Radio dreams come alive in the blog PR whistles a different tune

I am an optimist. I believe in our ability to shape the future, right wrongs, make life better and create new opportunities. That's why I am a huge believer in little people who pay taxes and who do make a difference … Remember that great love and great achievements involve great risk ;-)

Jogging through the websites Waning influence
Media Dragons came across a recent US survey which notes that 90% of American leaders say dysfunctional behaviours have become acceptable in the workplace. Shifting blame, gossiping and harbouring territorial attitudes are three of the most destructive behaviours. Equally discouraging is the finding that 64% of leaders do little or nothing to change the pattern.

And then there is this - Engage. If you’re going to get the benefits of the Edge you have to spend time there, not just pop in for a quick visit. Anything that starts with “E” is always good by me. Energy, Education, Emotion, Experience and, yes, Edge.

• My wise friend June overcomes all her difficulty in life by imagining that she is like a cork on a huge wave ... Living on the Edge; [In our and/and world, definitions of all sorts are becoming blurred and no more so than the roles of writer and artist, filmmaker and ideas person. To me many people in advertising are stuck in the past, worrying about their ideas being taken seriously as creative contributions. Write STUFF;
As with word-processed files, a lot of metadata may hide in a digital photo. A.J. Levy highlights this fact and provides information about some tools that can help you find it. Finding Data Hidden in Digital Photos ]
• · Blogging the brand | Australian IT ; Hiring blogger ...
• · Blogging can help you feel less isolated, more connected to a community and more satisfied with your friendships, both online and face-to-face, new Australian research has found. News Corp Has Big Plans for MySpace.com; Blogging boosts your social life: research
• · · Mark Bahnisch deploys years of experience to doubting research showing that blogging boosts your social life, while Peter Black looks at Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales’ apparent dumping of his girlfriend on Wikipedia itself, and also contemplates the death of email. Missing Link Daily; Via Club Troppo and courtesy of Blogpond comes word of a Nielsen survey claiming that 2.3 million Australians have Media Dragons Media Dragons: How many Australian bloggers are there, anyway?
• · · · HAVING an onlife life revolving around sites such as MySpace, Facebook or Youtube does not lead to less time in front of the telly, according to a study. But it does cut face-to-face communication. Diggers Everywhere; Australians DO Blog - number of Australian bloggers
• · · · · It’s not what other people think of you that matters. It’s what they can find out about you on the Web that will affect your ability to get a job or promotion, rent an apartment, buy a house, be accepted into the school of your choice or find the love of your life. How to defend your online reputation: five tips ; Ian McPhee PDF The ANAO’s contribution to improving public sector administration
• · · · · · Gregg Keizer: Corporate executives should think twice about the information they disclose on social networking sites such as Facebook, a Hong Kong-based security company warned today after duping gullible CEOs and finance directors into revealing personal details that could be used for so-called spear-phishing attacks. CEOs on Facebook easy to dupe says researcher, ; Stephanie Overby: There are things you can do in just one third of an hour that can have a meaningful and, yes, even a long-term, positive effect on your life, your job and your enterprise. 20 things you can do in 20 minutes to be more successful at work

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I am reading The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power and my fingers wonder through the digital rivers ... the happiest and the saddest of sites linking below ;-)

The Down Side - Sadness may be good philosophy -- and better for you

Ach ... If only we'd listened to John Locke. In his Second Treatise of Government, he declared that human beings were entitled only to "life, liberty and" -- get ready -- "estate." As in property. Leave it to Mr. Jefferson of Virginia to change that last item in the trinity to "pursuit of happiness." What he neglected to tell us was that, 230 years later, we would still be pursuing it.

Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy

A split second, a life’s sentence - Babble with Beckett: How foreign languages can provide writers with a way out of the familiar Mallarmé once remarked that poetry should make air and silence hang around a word

In the universe in recent months, there has been an outbreak of agonising about the state of book reviewing of Cold River ... The powers of discrimination that have made writers both fearful and dismissive of critics have traditionally given them a wider authority too.

Blogging like Consciousness is nothing but a word authority of critics is being undermined by a raucous blogging culture and an increasingly commercial publishing industry

What happens deep beneath our feet of Google? - Google bohemian media dragon and you’ll get, did you mean: the future of literature as we know it? Why a sense of entitlement can wreak havoc in Cold Rivers?

New York has always been about jockeying for position, and being named to the board of the New York Public Library remains one of the jewels in an ever more exclusive crown; the current Board of Trustees counts among its members New Yorker editor David Remnick, Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr., humorist Calvin Trillin and former Harvard president Neil Rudenstine, not to mention several captains of industry, chief among them Blackstone Group chairman Stephen Schwarzman, as well as socialites such as Annette de la Renta. Bookish March

Things are becoming more instantaneous in an era when delays are rampant and increasing. There are faster flights and cars but more people in airplanes and on the roads. People who crossed Iron Curtain or grew up during the Depression were happy to have a job and stuck with one for a lifetime

International Tax Evasion Scandal Spreads - I seem to see first hand so many journeys from haven to hell Swiss and Luxembourg authorities defend their system by saying tax fraud is wilful, while tax evasion is only forgetful

John Christensen is a former economic adviser to the States of Jersey and the UK government and is director of the Tax Justice Network. John is the new Vaclav Havel, John Hatton, James Cumes on the global scale! The OECD’s approach to tax transparency requires information to be exchanged with other jurisdictions only on request. In other words, you must know what you are looking for before you request it. This is shockingly inadequate. We need the automatic exchange of tax information between jurisdictions and all developing countries must be included. Stop this timidity in ending tax haven abuse

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In 1906, the first Public Service Commissioner, Mr D McLachlan, observed that:
The great incentive, which is ever present to the businessman, is, by the very nature of things, absent in public administration. The department of the Civil Service which he administers (or assists in administering) is not his own; he suffers no personal loss; he enjoys no personal gain; and why should he bother? Why should he incur the odium of his subordinates by enforcing strict discipline and insisting on continuous and undivided attention to duty? Why should he addle his brain and burn the midnight oil in studying the literature of other nations for improved methods when he gets no special thanks for it, but probably finds himself in the end for little better off financially than if he had allowed things to drift along in the old way? These are the questions commonly put to himself by the perfunctory official and they constitute one very potent reason why Civil Service administration has not attained the high state of efficiency that the public interest demands'

On 01 Mar 2008 Alex Mitchell, New Free Kid on the Blog, writes | The Australian Financial Review | Alex Mitchell is the former state political editor of The Sun-Herald and former president of the NSW parliamentary press gallery. The Labor Party in NSW has bred a particular type of political animal, and they're running the show, argues Alex Mitchell. A state of disgrace

Beyond the surrealistic headline: Is Old South Wales: Ripe for a revolution? The battle to break Britain's crime lords
Career criminals used to treat a spell in prison as an occupational hazard, confident that they would soon be revelling in their ill-gotten gains. Now the police are seizing millions in assets, from racehorses to holiday homes. But are they making a dent in crime’s £18 billion annual bill?

Experienced policemen are hard to shock. You name it, they’ve seen it, bagged it or banged it up. In April 2005, however, squads from four Midland forces, making a crack-of-dawn “swoop” near Market Harborough, were treated to a sight which, as one officer puts it 2½ years later, “still makes my jaw drop”.
On the dot of half past six, 350 officers from Leicestershire, Derbyshire, Northamptonshire and Lincolnshire raided a number of local addresses, including seven on the Justin Park travellers’ site, where they had “reason to believe” some shady deals were being made. “Operation Lucky” was what they called it, and they couldn’t have chosen better. It didn’t take them long. In a scene reminiscent of Treasure Island, they dug into a traveller family’s garden and levered out a weighty, lozenge-shaped parcel trussed with gaffer tape. Their own video shows an officer tearing at it like a child on Christmas morning.

• Experienced policemen are hard to shock. ; [Trust the Charitable cuases? £234bn of mortgages put in trusts supposedly for the benefit of good causes ; The spectacle of tax inspectors pursuing Germany's richest citizens may bolster faith in the rule of law Specter of haven not; Liechtenstein Germany paid for tax secrets Story of tax lives ]
• · Wollongong - Conman 'can't recall' impersonating ICAC officer Allegations of sex and corruption take centre stage ; It has bold proportions, amazing performance and the jaunty lines of broad-shouldered good looks. It is the power that won't corrupt. Grunt in the Gong: it's not all about sex
• · · The owner of the kebab shop where Wollongong power brokers met each morning at a so-called "Table of Knowledge" just wants the media to go away 'Table of Knowledge' kebab man stews ; Whatever happened to the real news? It now seems to come with helping or two of what can only be described as trivia or gossip. Selling out political celebrities
• · The US is notable among major nations in how little it has suffered in foreign wars. Shedding blood for liberty; 'The Australian' wears its heart on its sleeve and remains an ideologically-driven publication with a long history of campaigning behind it. Advocacy or analysis? A retrospective on 'The Australian'

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If you don't build your brand online, through either a blog, participation in social networks, or your own Web site, not only can people not find you, but you will have no way to portray your value and creativity.At the same time, he says that any job recruiter is likely to search for your online presence, and that means you want to make sure that your brand stands up to such scrutiny. Blog and be real - On the Job: Personal brand a big bonus in tough job time

For those who wish to understand the struggle in the Government's breast, Who Runs Britain is essential reading
They hadn't heard of hedge funds, monoline insurers or subprime mortgages, but Marx and Engels would have been unsurprised by the effects of the credit crunch and the market turbulence of recent weeks. In The Communist Manifesto's paean to the achievements of capitalism, they observed that its salient feature was "everlasting uncertainty and agitation" where "all that is solid melts into air" Spectrum of Spectrum on global scale

Who runs Britain?
The Super-rich and How They’re Changing Our Lives by Robert Peston

Surprise, surprise. As the bastions of the world financial system come crashing to the ground, a small voice cries from the ruin. It is that of the goddess, greed, assuring us she is still good.
In 2005, the retailer Philip Green paid himself £1.2 billion from his stores empire. He conduited it through his “offshore” wife to avoid tax and received a knighthood from Tony Blair. Last year, the 54 billionaires said to work in Britain were estimated to have paid just £15m tax on earnings of some £126 billion. Four thousand City employees received bonuses of £1m or more, and if any of them paid the 40% tax the rest of us pay they were mugs. Most will still receive the same bonuses today.

• Who runs Britain?? The Super-rich and How They’re Changing Our Lives by Robert Peston Is greed good for us? ; [Search and be real January 2008: Search Engine Land's Most Popular Stories; Eastern europe booming economy ]
• · Parliamentary Library Briefing Book; Key Issues for the 42nd Parliament. 1.Content Regulation; 2. Broadband Policy; 3. Media Ownership; 4. Communications overview: Media Dragon
• · Blog to note - Misconduct by Science
• · · Tax evasion is a global scourge. The "black" economy has, by some estimates, reached 10 percent of GDP in advanced countries and can top 70 percent in developing countries. And it is getting worse. Evading tax evasion