---

Existence is tedious, anyway; it is a senseless, dirty business, this life, and goes heavily. Every one about here is silly, and after living with them for two or three years one grows silly oneself. It is inevitable... As Anton Pavlovic once observed: How strange... why does God give sweetness of nature, sad, nice, kind eyes, to weak, unhappy useless people - and why are they so attractive?

Chekhov's bitter comedy about country life, drinking vodka, shooting, love, sadness and ennui. What would Gabbie say? There's little wonder it sold out months before opening Richard Roxburgh and Hugo Weaving are captivating in Uncle Vanya, and are still playing to sell-out audiences at Sydney Theatre

Post Script in Sydney: Sydney wife's Russian roulette ordeal: husband charged

Expect the worst - you will never be surprised How to be a popular blogger
By now you’ve probably heard about social media and how it’s making celebrities out of mild mannered public 。。。

Most importantly to be a successful blogger you have to have a sense of humour and not take your self too seriously

• How to be a popular blogger ; [ Grog's Gamut is actually Greg Jericho, ; Fairfax Radio’s Latika Bourke has been named the 2010 Walkley Young Australian Journalist of the Year for her outstanding coverage of the Liberal leadership crisis that saw Tony Abbott topple Malcolm Turnbull. Latika Bourke
• · You become aware that something is 'going on' in the Department, and you decide you must do something about it ... Blowing the whistle into an empty room; At least 72 aides on both sides of the aisle traded shares of companies that their bosses help oversee, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of more than 3,000 disclosure forms covering trading activity by Capitol Hill staffers for 2008 and 2009 Congressional Staffers Gain From Trading in Stocks
• · · The more accurate the forecast the better. Wrong. When it comes to making money all you have to do is look at a list of the 10 best and worst performing stocks in the ASX 200 stocks in the past 12 months and you will realise that all the money is being made in the stocks that everyone gets most wrong, not right Popular Stockmarket Delusions for Dummies; The complete moron's guide to the top 10 long-term stocks； Stocks
• · · · Rajaratnam and one of his co-defendants, Danielle Chiesi, an analyst at another hedge fund, who were the primary targets of the wiretaps, have argued that prosecutors failed to disclose crucial information required by the Wiretap Act to the judges authorizing the electronic surveillance. White Collar Watch: Using Drug War Methods to Look for Insider Trading; The novelist John le Carré, a former British intelligence operative, has given a rare interview to Democracy now, plugging his new book Our Kind of Traitor and ruminating on a wide range of things - including several issues close to TJN’s heart. One, of course, is money laundering:
"Now, this isn’t fiction. That part of it isn’t fiction. Money laundering is simply everywhere. On the grand scale, it’s endemic to banking . . . .money laundering is not some distant fantasy. It’s actually how you handle the profits of extortion, tax evasion, criminal conspiracy and huge quantities of drug money, how you get that into the white sector.
The thing is, it is very undemocratic, because if you or I go to one of these banks along here somewhere with a few thousand dollars in a briefcase, if I’m a Brit and do it, I have to give a really thorough explanation. Bank manager may call in the police. I have to produce my passport. If I want to open an account, I have to produce a utilities bill and all of that. But, if Mr. Orloff comes to a bank here and says, "I am from Russia. I have millions and millions of dollars, please. And here is a letter from a reputable lawyer in Moscow. And here is evidence that I run hotels, casinos, whatnot," bank manager says, "What are you doing for lunch?" And we’re away. So, the bigger the sum, the easier the crime.
John le Carre on all things secret – and unacceptable
• · · · · Morrow is offering a total of 30,000 shares in himself at £10 a piece (he's retaining 30%, "the vital organs and so forth"). Because he's not legally allowed to sell shares in himself, what investors are actually buying is a signed photo of the author, with the shares given for free. Author to float himself on the Stock Exchange ; Kind Kindle to Strangers and his organs ; Red diaper babies

---

Denis Dutton, founding editor of the esteemed web digest Arts & Letters Daily, passed away today at age 66 after a battle with prostate cancer. We echo the sentiments of Three Quarks Daily that Dutton’s site set the gold standard that we have aspired to match in our own curating of slightly different intellectual content on the web. Denis Dutton, 9 February 1944 – 28 December 2010

CODA of Dutton's Note: Amazon announced this morning that the latest version of the Kindle has surpassed Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows as its biggest selling product of all time. In just five months, new Kindle replaces ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’ as best-selling product in Amazon’s history

---

Rap News episode five, titled News World Order: War on Journalism was made in October, ahead of Assange's leak of almost 400,000 secret logs from the Iraq War, and deals with the implications of the release. Comedy Absurd ; Assange rap cameo raises eyebrows

War on Journalism Sunshine: The truth is out there,
Julian Assange: The Memoirs After dumping mountains of secrets about others, Julian Assange is reportedly planning to divulge some information about himself

Canongate has refused to confirm this story, but several outlets have picked up on it since yesterday afternoon: Everyone's favorite WikiLeaker -- and alleged rapist -- Julian Assange, has sold his memoirs. It's expected that they will be published sometime in 2011, with a first draft from Assange due to his editor by March.

• Memoirs: the anarchic age of the internet [ Google Rapped; What a difference WikiLeaks makes ; Pirate Party aims to draw whistleblowers exposing corruption Bohemians at the Gate ]
• · WikiLeaks' next target is big business - Unable to contain his excitement any longer, Julian Assange has revealed the target of his next 'Leak– Bank of America, come on down! Banks - Anarchist or Messiah ; Protest lost the moral plot
• · · Will it make closed societies more open and open societies more closed?
Popper; Writing in 2006 as the president of a then unnamed NGO and Australia’s “most infamous former hacker,” Julian Assange noted that “foresight requires trustworthy information about the current state of the world, cognitive ability to draw predictive inferences and economic stability to give them a meaningful home… secrecy, malfeasance and unequal access have eaten into the first requirement of foresight (‘truth and lots of it’). Foresight
• · · · Evgeny Morozov discusses the implications of WikiLeaks on open vs. closed societies, the paradox of attacking state power, and the future of Internet privacy. Cloak and dagger doesn't come close to describing how Nicky Hager came to secure the New Zealand WikiLeaks cables. He reveals the spy-novel subterfuge the group demanded, what it was like in their office the day the cables were released to the world, and offers a peek inside the mind of founder Julian Assange.
WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, and the dark side of Internet freedom ; wIKI ;
• · · · · Blurring Line Between Spy And Diplomat;
[Foreign Desk] ; Wikileaks: Leak Me Something I Didn't Know
• · · · · · Representative democracy is built on trust. One way of earning trust as a government is by being open about what you do - as far as possible. This will in turn mean that the public feels trusted with access to quality, un-spun information and will be more likely to take part in the political process. They blame Assange, but embarrassed officials can blame themselves. ; Flood of Leaks

In June 2002 Media Dragon was born. In June 2010 the death of Media Dragon was exaggerated. As now after six months of spamming attacks, the Media Dragon is back thanks to Google ...

---

Media Dragons and academics on naming blogger Grog's Gamut, aka Greg Jericho. Don't believe the hype - To invert Beckett: I could go on, I want to go on, but I won't go on

'I FEEL myself empty and can't put pen to the implacably white paper," French poet Mallarme wrote in an 1864 letter to a friend.
To be an old man and finished at 23 ...

In 1901 Hugo von Hofmannsthal, that precocious poet, stopped writing his celebrated verse at 26, after penning a pamphlet in which he had a character, Lord Chandos, speak for him: "I have quite lost the faculty to think or speak on any subject in a coherent fashion . . . Everything fell into pieces in front of me, the pieces into more pieces, and nothing could be contained in single concept any more."

Fifty years later, Samuel Beckett would express something similar: "There is nothing to express, nothing with which to express, nothing from which to express, no power to express, no desire to express, together with the obligation to express."Nothing to express


Teach Us To Sit Still Man Bites Murdoch - Jornalist weaves threads of past and present
Sacked Herald Sun editor launches 'a toxic mix of backstabbing and undermining and double dealing, of treachery and appalling duplicitous behaviour.' Ray Martin conceded he could have his 'card marked' by Rupert Murdoch's men for launching Bruce Guthrie's book Man Bites Murdoch at Bottega restaurant.

WHAT'S the collective noun for a room full of former newspaper editors? A press gang? A sack of editors, perhaps? Whatever, it was direly needed at the launch of Bruce Guthrie's memoir, Man Bites Murdoch, at the Bottega restaurant on Bourke Street yesterday.... Martin said the book served as a fantastic window into the alcohol- and adrenalin-fuelled newspaper world, and Guthrie's story was a litany, a catalogue, a cocktail, a toxic mix of backstabbing and undermining and double dealing, of treachery and appalling duplicitous behaviour.

• Ray jokes: Bruce Guthrie tell-all book 'the greatest pack of lies' [Without an anthology you haven't really existed Writers on writing ; We struggle writing songs to be honest. It's not easy. The thing is that we don't consider ourselves as natural musicians, we are more amateurs. song writing ]
• · · He is one of the world's most important men - but to former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd he was simply known as "Spanky Banky" - nickname for UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon Party Thieves ; Self-promotion and personal selling are skills many of us aren’t confident with but for writers they have to be good at telling their own stories to sell their work. Media
• · · · The secret lives of judges ; One must avoid ambition in order to write. Otherwise something else is the goal: some kind of power beyond the power of language. And the power of language, it seems to me, is the only kind of power a writer is entitled to - Blocked: Why do writers stop writing?
• · · · · The best way to look at literary awards, and strong dollar, is to see them as a necessary evil. Strong dollar and tax loophole 'hurting Australian artists' ; We have always, of course, found solace in our canine pals - the writer Milan Kundera famously said, "Dogs are our link to paradise. They don't know evil or jealousy or discontent." But our reaching out to them in previously unseen ways - not only through the books, but also devices like Puppy Tweets, a USB receiver attached to your pooch that activates your computer to send you tweets from Fido such as, "I bark because I miss you" - is a manifestation of people seeking new Dogs are our link to paradise; The struggle to exist and to remember; most of all, the struggle to speak. Can you be creative and still make money in Australia?
• · · · · · Amazon called on writers and publishers on Tuesday to submit short works to a new section of the US online retail giant's electronic bookstore called Kindle Singles; Where in the World is Cold River - http://kindleworld.blogspot.com/

WHEN, early in Shakespeare's greatest play, the ghost of King Hamlet makes his fateful nocturnal appearance on the battlements, it is the stolid realist Horatio who distrusts the evidence of his senses. "But this is wondrous strange!" he mutters lamely. Prince Hamlet, by contrast, exalts in the weirdness unfolding before them and delivers a firm rebuke to his friend: "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio/ Than are dreamt of in your philosophy... it is absurd to complain that it is unthinkable for an admittedly unthinkable God to make everything out of nothing, and then pretend that it is more thinkable that nothing should turn itself into everything.

Dreams of Water - a gathering of people in charge of the world's books suddenly turns into a bloodbath When writers start to show their age