If anyone knows what it takes to succeed in the frontier otherwise known as Melbourne 16th Street, it is Gabriella Imrichova. Good luck and Happy Birthday Gabbie … Vaclav Havel too dreamt of success and make self believe work for you! Havels and Hattons of these world make us realize that there is no reason at all that with hard work, we can’t be brilliant...
As they say: "If everyone is thinking alike, someone isn’t thinking." —General George Patton Jr.
New Greek Bestseller: A serial killer is stalking the wealthy suburbs of Athens with an idiosyncratic choice of victims. They are all rich Greeks who have failed to pay their taxes, and their corpses have been left scattered among the ruins of the ancient city, dead of hemlock poisoning, the means of Socrates' execution Warning: This novel is not to be imitated ; I read an unsettling, insightful article on the Greek crisis in the German weekly newspaper, Die Zeit, written by the Greek crime novelist, Petros Markaris. Entitled In Athen gehen die Lichter aus (The Lights Are Going Out in Athens) The Lights Are Going Out in Athens
The first surrealist president The Lights Are Going Out Everywhere
It’s no secret that the best ideas—the ones with the most impact and longevity—are transferable; an innovation in one industry can be exported to transform another. But even more resonant are those ideas that are cross-disciplinary not just in their application but in their origin
HAVEL was creative not only in outsmarting the police when he could but also in living his life well in spite of all the pressures on him. There are thousands of stories of this … one that comes to mind here in this setting, is that, when he was in prison with the Archbishop of Prague, he organized chess tournaments – not, as the archbishop said at his state funeral, because Havel really liked chess, but because it provided a cover for Archbishop Duka to say mass under the ruse that the prisoners were just playing chess.
• Czech and Polish secret police were too lazy [Here is a little puzzle: a man in an ordinary small town has married 20 women. All of those women are still alive and none of them is divorced. Yet the man has done nothing illegal. Who is he? Worked it out yet? If not, it might help if you relaxed – perhaps you should take a warm shower or a gentle stroll. When you unwind, your brain will begin to produce pulses of a particular frequency known as alpha waves. And it is when your brain is in the alpha groove that you have the kind of creative insight needed to solve apparently insoluble puzzles. Back from your shower? Then you’ll know that the man in our story is a priest. Here is a little bohemian puzzle; Mr Hawke's talent for downing a pint has previously earned him a place in the record books. Here is Antipodean one ]Havel also laughingly told a s story of skiing up the high Tatra mountains – a struggle as he was both a heavy smoker and a non-athlete. He did it so he could meet at the top, on the border, with Polish dissidents like Jacek Kuron and Adam Michnik – neither of whom were any better skiers or athletes than he was and both of whom could match him as smokers. They came to share ideas and enjoy each other in the only place they could, a ski hut smack on the border of their two nations at the top of the Tatra mountains.” It was a good gamble – “the Czech and Polish secret police were too lazy to ski up the mountains to catch dissidents.”
• · Media Dragon is a decade old next month and planning for your digital life after your physical life is no longer a strange niche behaviour The Government Would Like You to Write a 'Social Media Will'; It used to be that you could just pick up and start over as a new person. You could get yourself a new identity, go off the grid, or just reinvent yourself completely. Even if you've never committed a crime, there's something seductive about going missing. But new technology and a heightened security state are already making it much harder to disappear. Already, there's a new tool being developed that could identify people at airports with 98.8 percent accuracy, based on their footsteps Media Dragon ; Despite the popularity of terrorist cyber attacks in the movies, nation states rather than non-state actors such as terrorist or criminal groups currently pose the greatest cyberthreat. For example, the Crisis and Risk Network provides the following threat ranking, from most serious to least serious (1) State-sponsored actors; (2) “Ideological and politically extremist” non-state actors; (3) “Frustrated insiders”; and (4) “Organized criminal agents” and “individual criminal agents.” The Emergence of the Cyber Militia ; A fascinating trend is consuming Silicon Valley and beginning to eat away at rest of the world: the radical simplification of everything. The only companies or products that will succeed now are the ones offering the lowest possible level of complexity for the maximum amount of value The Simplicity Thesis
• · · So how do we spot the future—and how might you? The seven rules that follow are not a bad place to start. They are the principles that underlie many of our contemporary innovations. Odds are that any story in our pages, any idea we deem potentially transformative, any trend we think has legs, draws on one or more of these core principles. They have played a major part in creating the world we see today. And they’ll be the forces behind the world we’ll be living in tomorrow How to Spot the Future ; Spotting the past - She wasn’t exuberant like Sophia Loren, vivacious like Gina Lolobrigida, or intense like Anna Magnani. But she was just as talented. What distinguished her from these women were an ordinary-girl quality, a soft-spoken manner, a most delicate face, and the ability to deliver truly heartbreaking performances. Anna Maria Pierangeli
• · · · Write with authority. You earn the right to write with authority by reporting and working hard. Which is true. The way I like to phrase that idea is in the title of this post: “I’m there, you’re not, let me tell you about it.” This, I think, is the original source–headwaters–for all forms of authority in journalism I’m there, you’re not, let me tell you about it ; I’ve been scouring the web for examples of tax and revenue agencies using web 2.0 tools as part of their operations. Here’s a short list of some of my favourites so far. First up is a great video created by a member of the public as part of a Canadian Revenue Agency YouTube competition to promote the loss of revenue due to the cash economy Yes, Tax Agencies can benefit from Web 2.0!
• · · · · Outsourcing and Insourcing Jobs in the U.S. Economy U.S. multinational companies play a significant role in the rate at which jobs are created in the U.S. economy ; In a forest north of Copenhagen, Danish architects Frederik Agdrup and Nicholas Bjorndal of Eentileen used just a computer, a printer and 820 sheets of plywood to build a 125 square meter (1,345 square foot) home in four weeks. Named Villa Asserbo, the home is the pilot project of Eentileen’s Print a House project. Print a House project. ; A Thursday night report of a KGB bar reading featuring Jürgen Fauth, Tom Perrotta, and Mark Leyner. The more conspicuous you were, the easier it was for people to take you at face value — they just wrote you off as a couple of harmless dirtbags and left it at that. KGB Bar ; Along with the other media he has mastered, from tabloids to satellite television, Rupert Murdoch has recently taken to Twitter. On February 15, he tweeted, “To hell with politicians! When are we going to find some to tell the truth in any country? Don’t hold your breath.” His words remind us yet again that Murdoch is a man of iron nerve, not say brass neck, though they might also suggest a degree of delusion. Throughout his career, every time he has come near calamity, that gambler’s strong nerve has always somehow managed to rescue him. But the concatenation of scandal and disaster that has now engulfed his News International group—which owns the Sun and the now-defunct News of the World as well as the London Times and other papers—is of a different order. I understand where Mr Murdoch is coming from, I really do. Mr Murdoch never ever worked for KGB
• · · · · · The man who feels himself unloved and unlovable—this is a character that we know well from the latest generation or two of American novels. His trials are often played for sympathetic laughs. His loserdom is total: it extends to his stunted career, his squalid living quarters, his deep unease in the world. The loser’s worst—that is to say, most important—problems are with women. His relationships are either unrequited or, at best, doomed. He is the opposite of entitled: he approaches women cringingly, bracing for a slap. Great American Losers; The national secretary of the Community and Public Sector Union, Nadine Flood, said that there was ''no doubt that agency heads do complex jobs and should be paid appropriately'' On $800,000, the cats get fatter
