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Monday, February 13, 2012



Wallace Stevens sold insurance, William Carlos Williams was a physician, T.S. Eliot was a banker, ‎ Steve Jobs distorted reality , Jozef Imrich slaved in the NSW parliamentary library. If you like laws and sausages, you should never watch either one being made To hell with starving for your art

BYZANTINE SECTION NUMBERING
The Income Tax Assessment Acts (mainly ITAA 1936) and the Taxation Administration Act 1953 are replete with examples of what might be loosely called "creative" section numbering eg s 8AAZLE (treatment of payments etc and RBA surpluses), s 102AAZBA (Modified application of CGT - change of residence), s 159GZZZZG (Rebate election re tax-exempt infrastructure borrowings), etc.
In a December 2011 Federal Court decision ( DCT v Brilliant Homes Management Pty Ltd [2011] FCA 1539) involving the winding up of a company due to a running balance account (RBA) deficit debt (Part IIB of the Taxation Administration Act 1953 deals with RBA statements), Rares J lamented the use of convoluted section numbering as follows:
The unfortunate Byzantine modern tendency of Commonwealth Parliamentary drafters to include amendments to legislation that have a series of letters after them makes the explanation of these provisions more difficult and hard to comprehend. Re-enactment of legislation with appropriate renumbering of provisions such as s 8AAZJ would simplify the comprehensibility and explanation of legislation. The absurd use of such lettering was also found in the criminal cartel provisions in ss 44ZZRF and 47ZZRG of the Trade Practices Act 1974 (Cth) that was misleadingly retitled, but not comprehensibly structured, as the Consumer and Competition Act 2010 (Cth). These are the central provisions that will have to be explained to juries, using two numbers and four letters, each time the section is mentioned in argument either to the judge or jury Mildly amusing
Czech Out House of Lords Debate on Tax Avoidance

We are the 99% How most Media Dragons and Their readers can navigate the blogosphere
A born freelance. John Leonard’s prose--breezy, pun-filled, playful--was never ponderous or self-important. No one wrote cultural journalism quite like him. If you consider a collection of John Leonard’s essays and reviews as a lifelong accounting, you will have a good idea of what went on of significance in the latter half of the American twentieth century and the first years of the twenty-first. Though reviewing literary work was his calling, it did not box him in. He was a born freelance, going wherever that tenuous life led him, from the monuments of high culture that he was inspired to celebrate, to the commodities of the low, from which he would take gleanings where most of us would find none. It is difficult to understand how, with his immense reading and the sustenance his mind sought, he could have sat himself down year after year to examine the products of television. Yet there he was, considering what it meant when sitcom settings moved from the kitchen to the living room, and the family characters sitting on the living room couch, and presumably watching their television, seemed to be watching him.

Did not Eliot return to dead cultures, ancient languages, and the Legend of the Fisher King? Did not Yeats sustain himself on the Irish folklore? Did not Lawrence traipse across continents to Mexico, seeking the meaning of the Aztecs, the wisdom of primitive man?… Yours is a motel civilization…. Your art makes no sense and your music is too loud.”


• Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Reading John Leonard: A Tribute ; [The literary gatekeepers and fiction publishing. Marketing the boundaries: The fiction of Margo Lanagan; They’re a moral compass: testing our ethics, shaping our politics, spurring science, and piquing our curiosity... What’s the meaning of literary bmonsters? ; Social-science pugilist. The proudly politically incorrect Charles Murray is back, and he still can’t resist the urge to provoke. Cue the scholarly outrage Urge to provoke ; Orwell called them “disgusting tripe,” Camille Paglia considers them a “corrupt practice,” Stephen King winces at their “hyperbolic ecstasies” – Book blurbs have been a scandal since antiquity... I Greet You in the Middle of a Great Career: A Brief History of Blurbs ; Publishing with Double Dragon has been likened to marrying royalty—the honor is greater than the pleasure Double Dragon Publishing; ]
• · Books about poverty typically propose solutions or decry the problem. Katherine Boo is up to something else. She shows how poverty is lived She shows how poverty is lived: Poverty as Destiny ; His name is synonymous with brutality, and he had a penchant for rape and pillage, but is Attila the Hun unfairly maligned? flagellum Dei, the scourge of God Nice Things to Say About Attila the Hun
• · · The new censorship. Editors are no longer frightened of politicians but of Islamist violence, oligarchs, and CEO’s, says Nick Cohen. Ours is the age of bound and gagged journalism... Bound & Gagged; Vaclav Havel was keen to the limits of rationalism, and insistent that something stands above us, beyond our understanding. The Village Voice gives out theater awards called the Obies (for Off-Broadway), and during the 1980s the Voice’s theater department voted to bestow one of those prizes on the distinguished absurdist Václav Havel, who dwelled in the faraway absurdistan known as the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic... Democracy and the Human Heart
• · · · We all have many things to be grateful for and often we’re so busy in the chaos of daily life to take time and fully appreciate everything we have. For this reason gratitude is sometimes referred to as the Forgotten happiness ... ; The world is full of success stories – tales where the little guy takes a great idea and builds a thriving business, dominates an industry or takes over the world. But emulating such success is no easy task and can be daunting for even the most experienced person. So how do you become successful? Richard St John has eight secrets to share...
• · · · · The Penny Hoarder - Buying housing used to bestow multiple blessings, but their flow has now dried-up Housing fundamentalism fails
• · · · · · She was a flamboyant depressive; a woman who kept a revolver in the drawer and bullets in a tin of Pledge.” And you thought you had mommy issues Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? Elderschadenfreude, explains Sandra Tsing Loh, is the secret pleasure of hearing about aging parents who are even more impossible than yours. Prepare to experience it Daddy Issues