How to take a Photograph

How to take a photograph

Catch the sun
in the frame, just above
the point of setting
so my skin glows
and my eyes are shadowed
and the apartment buildings that bore me
at noon are irradiated
with warm alien light.
I’ll look away from your eye,
your eyes, and think of something
sweet enough to smile at,
but not funny enough to drag out
a laugh. Hold in your lens
my collarbones, the length
of my eyelashes, and I’ll tilt
my chin at the exact angle
of invitation, of mystery.
Copyright © 2013 by Brooke Grasberger
Constant Current of Cold River

Edwina Tims going back in time February 2013:

OK -it's 1:53pm on Tuesday 02/26 in Bratislava, Slovakia.... and the sun just came out for the first time since I left Atlanta on Saturday. Temps are still low and the snow is still on the ground if on the dirty side now.
It has been 20 yrs since I was last in Slovakia and it has changed - become more westernized. More advertising, new buildings, lots of young folks in fashionable clothes. The apartment blocks still look like they used to - flat concrete sided structures.
The Sheraton Bratislava is AWESOME. Forgot I was a Starwood Perfered Guest and have ended up on a special floor with some additional niceties. Instead of checking out the National Gallery as planned on Sunday after my arrival, I decided to visit the in-house spa - sauna and a massage (prices the same as the US, except in Euros). Well work the effort after a less than comfortable coach class flight.
Food is fantastic (braised veal cheeks, with honey sauteed onions, pureed turnips and a red whine reduction sauce last night... and a glorious creme brulee - mouth feel was sheer decadence). Even the mall food court where we have lunch is very civilized - real plates... they actually garnish the food.

The Power of Touch @ Easter: Out of Cold River & Sea

The true message of Easter is not one of sweetness The realities of Easter Cardinal George Pell; THE Easter message of redemption and renewal, even in the wake of despair, betrayal and death, is one we can all take time to embrace in a spiritual or secular fashion -- or both

It's no secret that a pat on the back or a peck on the cheek can make you feel special. But experts now say that the right kind of touch can lower your blood pressure, improve your outlook, and even make you better at math. Here's how to turn up the tactile in your life The Art Touching

Julian Assange “excites opposition” among journalists because “he shames us”, reckons veteran Australian reporter John Pilger, who has become a friend and vocal supporter of the embattled WikiLeaks founder. Assange had “done an extraordinary thing”, Pilger told a packed house at the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival in Bali. “He set out to find out what great power and government and vested interests say in private, as opposed to what they say in public.” Pilger on Assange

Prague Heroes: Bohemians & Antipodean historians

What can I possibly write about this brilliant book that hasn’t been said already?  HHhH by Laurent Binet has been reviewed both to great acclaim and to biting criticism all around the world and no wonder, it’s one of the most interesting books I’ve read in a long time. Without Binet’s postmodern treatment of his material, the names of Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš would continue to be forgotten.  The author himself says it best on page 178-9.  The underlining is mine:

I’m fighting a losing battle. I can’t tell this story the way it should be told.  This whole hotchpotch of characters, events, dates and the infinite branching of cause and effect – and these people, these real people who actually existed.  I’m barely able to mention a tiny fragment of their lives, their actions, their thoughts.  I keep banging my head against the wall of history.  And I look up and see, growing all over it – ever higher and denser, like  a creeping ivy – the unmappable pattern of causality.   He makes us realise that even the choice of which names to include, which names to omit, falsifies the very history he is trying to tell

My former chairman, Andrew Tink, has created a snowball which is causing avalanche at rvery historical society gathering down under.

War birds … a Lockheed Hudson light bomber, similar to the one that crashed into a hillside near Canberra airport on August 13, 1940, killing 10 people.
It was the air disaster that brought down a wartime government: in August 1940, an RAAF Hudson bomber crashed near Canberra aerodrome, killing three key ministers and Australia’s leading general Fatal Fall ~ Andrew Tink

Special Event - Tuesday 9th April, 6.00pm for 6.30pm

ANDREW TINK
Air Disaster Canberra
Venue: Glebenooks, 49 Glebe Point Rd, Glebe
Cost: $10/$7/gleeclub free

RSVP: gleebooks - 9660 2333 or email: events@gleebooks.com.au

In 1940 during wartime, key members of Menzies' government die in a fiery plane crash. What went wrong and what happened next? Over the next twelve months, it became clear that the passing of Geoffrey Street, Sir Henry Gullett and James Fairbairn had destabilised Robert Menzies wartime government. As a direct but delayed consequence, John Curtin became prime minister in October 1941. Andrew Tink tells an engrossing and dramatic tale of a little-known aspect of Australia's political history.

Until I came of age, New South Wales was my whole life. In those days, Australians travelled a lot less within their own country, and I never stepped outside New South Wales until I sailed for London in the early sixties. Almost twenty years later I wrote a book called Unreliable Memoirs in which I tried to capture what it had been like to grow up in my Sydney suburb, Kogarah. For me, Kogarah was the centre of Sydney and indeed of New South Wales, if not the world entire Clive James

“Now that we could order any book at any hour without having to leave the screen in front of us, we realized what we had lost: the community center, the human interaction, the recommendation of a smart reader rather than a computer algorithm telling us what other shoppers had purchased.” Death of Cold Rivers widely exaggerated

Sharemarket or Supermarket: Drama at The Grownup Sandpit

"The love of justice is simply in the majority of men the fear of suffering injustice."
François de La Rochefoucauld, Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (No. 78) quoted by Vaclav Havel & John Hatton the Architects of Charter 77 & Charter 92 ...

Harry Eyres is just one jolly good thinker about the way we live our fragile lives. ‘I have experimented with using supermarkets less; and the less I use them, the better I feel’ ... In supermarkets it is not just money, as in the Roman saying, which does not smell: nothing smells; decay and corruption (not to mention the precise provenance of many goods) are kept at bay and out of sight. These are temples of a materialism which is strangely immaterial; even the earth that normally sticks to potatoes has been replaced by a synthetic substitute. Fish and loaves have gone together since at least New Testament times... While we are being biblical, we might as well move on to wine. How to defy the supermarket gods

Language fits over experience like a straight jacket:
“Amid the rubble, the fallen fruit,
Fermenting in its rich decay,
Smears [Krzysztof's] brandy on the trampling boot
And sends it sweeter on its way.” 

The Public Accounts Committee said last month that the UK should look to the Australian model for tackling tax avoidance. Paul Stacey, head of tax policy at the Institute of Chartered Accountants Australia, explains how their system works.Australia Does It Better

The head of Australia's multibillion-dollar Future Fund says high-frequency traders and computer-based algorithms have made it harder for investors to judge risk Learn to live with high-tech trading, says Gonski ~

WHEN the federal government appointed Chris Jordan as tax commissioner, it won plaudits for appointing the long-time KPMG partner for his business acumen. A hidden benefit was the fact that ASIC boss Greg Medcraft also did his time at KPMG and so knew Jordan well. One standout from this year's ASIC forum is the closer working relationship between the Australian Taxation Office and ASIC, which in principle offers real benefits. Both sides report a better working relationship, achieved in part by breaking down the cultural barriers between the two organisations. Phoenix companies being an obvious example, given the tax office wants to widen its net, and ASIC, through its registration of auditors, presents them with that opportunity. Funke Kupper keeps raiders at bay

During the discussion panel at the ASIC Forum this week, Australian Super chief executive Ian Silk called for higher standards in the superannuation industry, and suggested that some people in the industry were taking more than their cut Corporate Greed

"But it is notorious that the memory strengthens as you lay burdens upon it, and becomes trustworthy as you trust it."
Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater

Richness of Certainties Within Our Lives

"The richness of life lies in memories we have forgotten."
~Cesare Pavese, The Burning Brand

Magnificent Joe: “… a brutal little novel that manages also to be tender and funny.” Everybody dreams of change, particularly at the start of a freezing day's roofing, when the men consider "'Thirty-odd more years of this shite', and then everyone's lottery fantasy comes tumbling out … the same story day after day, slipping through clumsy mouths like worn rosary beads through arthritic hands." But this is a community in which not much happens, apart from one big thing that already did, and another that seems almost inevitable Of Mice and Men: Magnificent Jozef

“…ultimately centered on the brutal British experience of World War II, with characters caught in the blitz and Ursula joining a rescue unit for injured civilians. As powerful as the rest of “Life After Life” is, its lengthy evocation of this nightmare is gutsy and deeply disturbing, just as the author intends it to be.” Life After Life

“In spite of certain dark moments and some unhappy endings This Close is ultimately a book about the myriad ways we can choose to be there for each other in the darkest times.” Francis Kane’s This Close

Matt Haig has learned a thing or 30 in a decade in the book business. Read his list of ’30 Things That Every Writer Should Know’ Success depends on great words, and passionate people. The words are up to you. The people you have to pray for, and stand by them once you find them. .. The gatekeepers still have the power, but there are a lot more gates than there used to be People like your book more if other people like it ;-)

“How do you build empathy for the characters in your book? Make them suffer. That’s an old trick of the trade, and Elizabeth Strout, the Pulitzer-winning author of Olive Kitteridge, uses it brilliantly…” ''Her mother had never said, Susan, I'm sorry.... And it was too late. No one wants to believe something is too late, but it is always becoming too late, and then it is.'' ... Elizabeth Strout’s The Burgess Boys: Many Memorable Lines

“If writers were good businessmen, they’d have too much sense to be writers.”
~Irvin S. Cobb

“Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay. I’m always irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality and it’s very shocking to the system.”
~ Flannery O’Connor

Rising out of Ashes: New Normal - Hardly Normal

"Memory itself is an internal rumour; and when to this hearsay within the mind we add the falsified echoes that reach us from others, we have but a shifting and unseizable basis to build upon. The picture we frame of the past changes continually and grows every day less similar to the original experience which it purports to describe."
George Santayana, The Life of Reason

The theme for this year's ASIC Forum is the 'the new normal'. The world economy is moving from turbulent times to a 'new normal'. But what is the new normal and will it allow markets to remain fair and efficient? The theme for the ASIC & it's inaugural Annual Dinner was all about 'Inspiring Institutions

Ps: Malchkeon has all the stories from the corridors of Hilton ...ASIC High Speed Dilemma; Bolivia’s first international bond sale in almost a century is turning into a cautionary tale for fixed-income investors trying to bolster returns with the riskiest emerging-market debt.Bolivian debt discussed ;-); Making companies more accountable in how they work - and showing that they are improving - will increase investor and public confidence, making them more attractive to investors and giving the public more trust in their products and services. . Making companies more accountable to shareholders and the public

AUSTRALIAN Securities & Investments Commission chairman Greg Medcraft has urged investors and investment houses to exercise more care in dealing with complex financial products, highlighting the growth of self-managed super funds as the greatest challenge facing the regulator in the next decade. ASIC flags growth of SMSF; Pascoe on watchpuppy

Smell of Rain at Lake Munmorah

"Of course it was cause and effect, but in the necessity with which one follows the other lay all tragedy of life."
W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

Lake Munmorah marks the border between Awabakal and Darkinjung country. The actual Lake, is a very shallow lake that peaks at about 4 or 5 foot. In the summer jellyfish swim in the lakes and so do small fish. Lake Munmorah's Lake is quite large and has three main entrances; Elizabeth Bay, Tom Burke reserve and Colongra bay reserve.

Marlene, Barie and Dr Cope suggested that everything we are as adults is formed in our first ten years. The Big Question: throughout his childhood, the poet Robin Robertson recalls, the smell of rain was always present. Robin's were spent haunting the shore, or the streets, of Aberdeen: turning over scallop shells or the bodies of birds, or testing the washed-up crabs and jellyfish for movement: some kind of peril. I would walk to school past the abattoir with its ferrous whiff of spilt blood, the dull thuck of cleaver into flesh, the great headless bodies turning on their hooks; past the barber’s oils, astringents and lotions, his whetted razors; past the joinery with that lovely sweet scent of wood-shavings and—best of all—past Mitchell and Muill’s, the baker, their steamed-up window stacked full of freshly baked rowies and hot mutton pies. The smell of rain at Lindt ? Vale and Rybnik Vrbov

Mouthwatering Food: unearth exotic ingredients

Cuisine: Lao Prep time: 20 min(s) Servings: 4 as a side Created by Sourina Simmalavong

This dish can be eaten by itself as a snack or served with other dishes as part of a meal. While some Lao households make their own padaek, if you want to buy it ready-made, try the Thai Budu or Filipino Monamon brands. In keeping with the Lao way, prepare this dish just before serving, and not in advance

Ingredients
1 green papaya, peeled
1 tsp salt
6 red birdseye chillies
2 tbsp white sugar, or to taste
1 garlic clove (optional)
1 tbsp Thai shrimp paste
2–3 snake beans cut into 2 cm pieces, or 3–4 small Asian eggplant, cut into thin wedges, or
2–3 chopped garlic leaves, to serve (optional)
125 g cherry tomatoes, halved
juice of 2 large limes or 2 small lemons, or to taste
1–2 tbsp padaek (fermented fish sauce)
1 tsp Thai fish sauce

white cabbage wedges or sprigs of young morning glory and pork crackers, to serve Food Safari SBS Style

Scrumptious Stories

“The wonderful thing about books is that they allow us to enter imaginatively into someone else’s life. And when we do that, we learn to sympathize with other people. But the real surprise is that we also learn truths about ourselves, about our own lives, that somehow we hadn’t been able to see before.”
― Katherine Paterson

Scrumptious is the only word to describe Ann Kirschner's Lady at the O.K. Corral: The True Story of Josephine Marcus Earp: “This quick-paced biography has it all going on: sex, beauty, blood, guns, bad men and wild girls. Not to mention Hollywood and history.”

This year, when according to James Bond I am 33, virtual world characters keep mentioning that it is Media Dragon'S "Jesus year," the age Jesus was when he died. As in, I guess, if I hadn't saved mankind yet, I could pretty much be counted as a failure. I'm much more concerned about my "Byron year" of 36. As in, if I haven't gone to war, scandalized an entire nation, driven past lovers insane with jealousy, and written a few half-good manuscripts, then what the hell am I even doing with my life?

Stuart Nadler’s Wise Men: “With beautiful sentences and richly imagined characters, Wise Men contains echoes of previous great American novels, but makes a focused effort at originality.” In a certain kind of story, characters reflect and explore the financial world outside their narrative. A population left destitute by the American Civil War, for example, found hope in 1867 when Horatio Alger published Ragged Dick, a myth promising that honesty and hard work could take you from the poverty of a bootblack to the slightly less soul-crushing poverty of the lower-middle class. By contrast, an America barreling toward the Great Depression in 1925 ignored The Great Gatsby’s warnings about people who “smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness.” Wise Menwriters tend to be loners

If you've ever burned a journal you kept in high school, you'll appreciate Dave Bry's courage in examining — and asking forgiveness for — the most cringeworthy moments in his life in Public Apology. You can smell the adolescent flop sweat as he relives the time he betrayed a trusted camp counselor or tossed beer cans on Jon Bon Jovi's lawn (a standout essay, even if the apology is somewhat insincere). Public Apology

St Howell; St Patrick; St Jozef to Pope Francis: Bend, Not Break

"An unalterable and unquestioned law of the musical world required that the German text of French operas sung by Swedish artists should be translated into Italian for the clearer understanding of English-speaking audiences."
Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence

Sitting on a massive gold and red throne and dressed in white, a smiling Francis implored his audience to "not cede to the bitterness and pessimism that the devil offers us every day." Instead, the church must "find new ways to spread the word of God to every corner of the world." Many analyses of Saint Malachy's prophecy note that it is open to the interpretation that additional popes would come between the "glory of the olive" and Peter the Roman. Popular speculation by proponents of the prophecy attach this prediction to Benedict XVI's successor. Since Francis' election as Pope, proponents in internet forums have been striving to link him to the prophecy. Theories include a vague connection with Francis of Assisi, whose father was named Peter  Saint Malachy   (1094 – 2 November 1148) was an Irish saint and Archbishop of Armagh, to whom were attributed several miracles and an alleged vision of 112 Popes later attributed to the apocalyptic list of Prophecy of the Popes. He was the first Irish saint to be canonised by Pope Clement III in 1199.   Peter the Roman, who will pasture his sheep in many tribulations, and when these things are finished, the city of seven hills [i.e. Rome] will be destroyed, and the dreadful judge will judge his people. A discussion of this prophecy can be found following the  biography of the new Pope

Room Double 1 Double 2

Eddie Obeid's claims to a corruption inquiry that he played no part in his family's business interests have been contradicted by his read books ~ private diaries, which list scores of meetings with Sydney's most influential people, some of whom did deals with companies tied to the former Labor minister's family. Diaries; Room 1122 in the Parliament House of NSW may look unremarkable, but it was from this room that Labor powerbroker Eddie Obeid effectively ran the state. Three years of diary entries - from 2007 to 2009 - reflect an astonishing parade of politicians, developers, departmental chiefs, union bosses, business figures and colourful Sydney characters who were shown into the inner sanctum of room 1122. inner sanctum where the state was run; One of Sydney's top silks has been found dead at the base of cliffs on Sydney’s northern beaches. Mr Branson represented former NSW planning minister Tony Kelly and solicitor John Gerathy at the ICAC hearings. Christopher Branson RIP

Liberal party backbencher Catherine Cusack has launched a ferocious attack in Parliament on Labor MP Walt Secord, labelling him a ''liar, a cheat and a bully'' and accusing him of being ''the perfect replacement'' for Eddie Obeid Lib attacks Secord: liar, cheat, bully Mr Secord was communications tsar for former premier Bob Carr and was credited with many of the successful media strategies pioneered in NSW and eventually adopted by other Labor state leaders

Auburn City Council has sacked its whistleblowing general manager and moved to give councillors a greater role in council affairs Council sacks manager who acted ethically

Are We Ready for an Internet Cold War?

On a recent morning I awoke at first light, around 4:30 A.M., with the notion that poets were anthropologists of the soul. When I say I’m a poet, I mean I spend time placing things adjacent to one another and seeing what results. It’s like making a mosaic without having a fixed image or pattern or link to follow: "In poetry, language moves the way it does in dreams, where everything is superimposed very rapidly on everything else."

"[T]here’s an arbitrariness to what history allows to survive and what it doesn’t. Sometimes a cannonball, sometimes an earthquake, sometimes a bulldozer. And so things get piled on top of things and people try to make sense but there is no sense." -“I’m a storyteller at heart"

What kind of time is the time of tragedy? As the threat of a cyber war with the Chinese becomes more imminent, it's fascinating to consider how much the early stage of this cyber war actually resembles the Cold War of the nuclear age. Instead of the threat  of nuclear warheads capable of taking out communications systems and power grids, we now have malicious code capable of taking down nuclear reactors We are already fighting an Internet Cold War, we just don’t yet know it

"It should be noted that the Baroness had written a number of suicidal letters to Barnes around this time (she was short on funds and the winter was very long), but still, it looked like a mistake, or a joke. That is to say, 'coffee' is close enough to 'coffin.' L.H.O.O.Q." Vanessa Place • Constant Critic (

Serious Non Compliance has other Tax Consequences as well

"Just saying over and over, this is it. OK, so what is it. What is this that’s so important. So much depends. Something Urgent I Have To Say To You. Power phrasings. Life and death. Making aesthetic matters into life and death issues. Something you have to deal with Williams is, he’s telling you I wouldn’t be telling you about this if it weren’t incredibly important. And that’s an innovation in itself."
-Jordan Davis on William Carlos Williams • Constant Critic

Joshua D. Blank (NYU) presents Collateral Compliance, 162 U. Pa. L. Rev. ___ (2013), at Florida today as part of its Tax Policy Workshop Series hosted by Yariv Brauner and Omri Marian:

As most of us are aware, the failure to comply with the tax law can lead to civil and criminal tax penalties. But tax noncompliance has other consequences as well. Collateral sanctions for tax noncompliance, which are imposed on top of tax penalties and are often administered by agencies other than the taxing authority, increasingly apply to individuals who have failed to obey the tax law. They range from denial of hunting permits to suspension of driver’s licenses to revocation of passports. Further, as the recent Supreme Court case Kawashima v. Holder demonstrates, some individuals who are subject to tax penalties for committing tax offenses involving “fraud or deceit” may even face deportation from the United States. Criminal law scholars have written dozens of articles on the collateral consequences of convictions. Yet tax scholars have virtually ignored collateral tax sanctions, even though their use by the federal and state governments is growing. Blank Presents Collateral Compliance

IRS Ramps Up Hunt for Offshore Tax Cheats Tax Harmful Regimes & Banks

Coda: "[Robert Duncan's] teaching method was to collage 'conversations between texts,' just as his poems did. He rejected the workshop model of likes and dislikes, taste and distaste: 'We will be detectives not judges.... Week by week we will study . . . vowels, consonants, the structure of rime.' And he gave students and audiences what they implicitly craved from poetry: meaning, stakes. 'Poetry is not my stock in trade, it is my life.' 'In language I encounter God.' 'To become a poet, means to be aware of creation. . .' 'Vowels the spirit, Consonants the body.' - - Pixar’s 22 Rules of Storytelling are worth a good, hard think; In honor of National Grammar Day, here’s a map of twelve grammatical landmines

Throwback: The Enemy Within

Dear Jack: Don’t buy a single vote more than is necessary. I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay for a landslide.” -JFK

So much of life is a matter of pure coincidence, if that's what you think it is, just one mother of parliaments links Media Dragon, Edie Obeid, Kerry Packer, Graham Richardson ...
As far back as 2003 the former premier Bob Carr recognised that Eddie Obeid's ''untidy pecuniary interests' were a ''vulnerability for the government'' yet successive premiers, Mr Carr included, did not challenge his disclosures of his parliamentary salary as his only source of income Diaries & Special advisors

He was a Labor powerbroker, a kingmaker with an uncanny ability to bend people to his will. At the height of his power, Eddie Obeid could make and break Premiers. Now he finds himself at the centre of explosive corruption allegations that threaten his future, his family and the party that delivered him power

UpAbove : Many survivors of communism tend to stagger into a shelter or a bombed-out ruin, each eyeing the others from our shadowy corner. Wondering. Calculating ... in the good old Czechoslovakia it is Goodbye to Czech Václav Klaus

The Chinese look at Washington, and they think there must be some document somewhere, some flowchart saved on a computer in the basement of some think tank, that lays it all out. Because in China, there would be. In China, someone would be in charge. There would be a plan somewhere. It would probably last for many years. It would be at least partially followed. But that’s not how it works in Washington what China's hackers are looking for when they rifle through American digital assets

“The Gridiron is at one level a throwback, but it’s also a stylized version of the kind of old Washington social consensus that used to exist every day,” said Michael Waldman, who, as Bill Clinton’s chief White House speechwriter, helped him prepare for his Gridiron appearances. “It’s one of the only places that you get all these people in the room together anymore.” A throwback

Bohemians Drowning in Comedy of Errors

“The most important thing in life is to stop saying ‘I wish’ and start saying ‘I will.’ Consider nothing impossible, then treat possibilities as probabilities.”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

A 68-year-old egomaniacal and absent-minded theoretical physicist meets a bikini model online. Of course, all is not as it seems... Bohemian Girls

For three decades, the surveillance of Britain's supposedly communist writers and intellectuals was a comedy of errors. Between 1930-1960, Britain’s MI5 kept tabs on prominent intellectuals, such as Auden, Spender, Orwell, Koestler... One of the most mythologised aspects of the British secret state has been its attempts to keep tabs on literary intellectuals. As Ian McEwan's last novel Sweet Tooth showed, the idea that poets, novelists or playwrights could have been crucial to the progress of the communist menace is an enduringly attractive one. It flatters poets, novelists or playwrights, after all; and it causes spooks to go into conniptions of paranoia. a comedy of errors

Ours is an authenticity-obsessed age. Politicians, coffee shops, food, art are scrutinized for evidence of inauthenticity. But some things are too real to be true... One way out of this hall of mirrors is to insist ever more loudly that one’s own offering is really, truly authentic. No one is more authentic than Ray Kurzweil who is not a philosopher, psychologist, or neuroscientist, but he knows “the secret of human thought.” There is danger in such loose talk... How do we get from pure chemistry to full-blown psychology?

"It's somewhere beyond $881 million in drug money. If you're caught with an ounce of cocaine, you're going to go to jail... But if you launder nearly a billion dollars for international cartels and violate sanctions you pay a fine and you go home and sleep in your own bed a night." Elizabeth Warren Slams Federal Regulators Over Bank Money Laundering

Smart technology and the sort of big data available to social networking sites are helping police target crime before it happens policing is in a good position to profit from "big data"

New wealth, especially from China and Russia, is having a dramatic impact on European tourism, cities and traditional rural havens How the influx of new global elites is changing the face of our societies

From sweet peas to sour milk, every smell is a combination of synapses and electricity. Molecules fire up receptors in the membranes of your nose and signals stream through a delta of neurons into the dark recesses of your brain. By some alchemy, action potentials and dopamine can render an entire world.

Water equals time,” wrote Joseph Brodksy, “and provides beauty with its double.” The poet was writing about Venice and he, like Italo Calvino in his sublime novel Invisible Cities (1972), was intrigued by how the waterborne city was able to reflect the things we want to see – that it becomes a cipher for our desires

“Some might think that the creativity, imagination, and flights of fancy that give my life meaning are insanity.”
― Vladimir Nabokov

Hoping your wishes Come True year after year

"A little alarm now and then keeps life from stagnation."
-Fanny Burney, Camilla

As Abe (Abraham) Lincoln noted: "And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years."

"Keats fled from the egotistical sublime of Wordsworth’s generation. He suddenly became aware, in a Joycean epiphany, that 'What shocks the virtuous philosopher, delights the camelian poet.'" ~ one and only Thomas McCarthy

Happy Birthday Malchkeon ... A birthday is just the first day of another 365-day journey around the sun. Enjoy the trip and may the next year bring as many narative and cinematic stories such as LincolN or "Cloud Atlas", which like Lincoln, explores how the actions and consequences of individual lives impact one another throughout the past, the present and the future. Action, mystery and romance weave dramatically through the story as one soul is shaped from a killer into a hero and a single act of kindness ripples across centuries to inspire a revolution in the distant future. Mitchell's novel tells six interrelated stories in a variety of genres spread over a period of nearly 500 years, from 1850 to 2321. They run consecutively but stop just before their crucial concluding episodes, which then follow in the latter part of the book Cloud Atlas of Polish influence: Lana and Andy Wachowski

“Youth is happy because it has the ability to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.”
- Franz Kafka

Great Expectations of Imagination

"The imagination loses vitality as it ceases to adhere to what is real. When it adheres to the unreal and intensifies what is unreal, while its first effect may be extraordinary, that effect is the maximum effect that it will ever have."
Wallace Stevens, "Imagination as Value"

Claudia Karvan is that relatively rare thing – a child star whose career has maintained its upward trajectory. As she continues to branch out into writing, directing and producing. Last night Claudia (Wolfe) Kavan had nice things to sing aboUt Jozef and MD Claudia Kavan

Natalie Miller Fellowship Fundraising Screenings: Great Expectations By Director Mike Newel The fundraising screenings will be held at Hoyts Cinemas across Sydney, Melbourne and Perth. The Natalie Miller Fellowship's Patron, Australian actress Claudia Karvan will host the Sydney preview, as well as introduce NMF's inaugural recipient, Rachel Okine. Sue Maslin will host the Melbourne screening with keynote speeches by Carol Schwartz, one of Australia's leading business identities and Chair of Creative Partnerships Australia and Natalie Miller OAM SYDNEY, HOYTS ENTERTAINMENT QUARTER
WEDNESDAY MARCH 6, 6.30PM
Hosted by Claudia Karvan

Mo Yan isn't a dissident or an apologist. He is an individualist. “A great writer has to be like a whale, breathing steadily a alone in the depths of the ( cold rivers )”...

Amanda Prowse on Marcus Zusak’s The Book Thief: “I read it non-stop and felt the cramp in my stomach from the tense, gut-wrenching fear of anticipation on every page.” Book of a lifetime William Faulkner once said that the artist is “a creature driven by demons — he usually doesn’t know why they chose him and he’s usually too busy to wonder why.” The demons chose wisely in his case, yet you and I would be foolish to count on their discretion. I say that as someone who has tried and failed to publish a novel for a good decade, despite efforts that any dispassionate observer would consider impressive, if not outright troubling.Shire boys from the edge of the forest apologise for nasty book reviews

Leo Robson on Aleksandar Hemon’s The Book of My Lives: “Hemon’s title tries to turn the book’s lack of unity into a strength and even a theme – he has been at different points a teenage scallywag and a cautious immigrant , an accidental agitator and a conscious radical, a Sarajevan and a Chicagoan.”

“Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.”
- George Bernard Shaw

A Betrayal of Trust: Corporate Risk Appetite & Disclosure

Preparing for retirement is an absolute minefield and Australia's financial regulations are of only limited use in protecting investors. When it comes to running investment schemes, it's almost a case of anything goes, so long as you disclose, writes Stephen Long. Want to structure your financial affairs so that liquidators and receivers have no hope of getting back tens of millions of dollars paid in fees to entities you controlled before the scheme collapsed?
It's possible. Ask Bill Lewski. He knows how.
The saga of how he managed it - by apparently legal means - is a story that speaks volumes about the law, about regulation, and about the minefield facing Australians as they try to responsibly invest for their retirement Betrayal of Trust; Bill Lewski was the founder of the Prime Retirement and Aged Care Property Trust. It specialised in retirement villages; with the population ageing, many thought it was a good investment Bill Lewski

Victims of Financial Fraud (VOFF) spokesperson, John Telford, is accusing ASIC of having acted too slowly back in October 2009 in freezing a Trio-related bank account that contained investors’ funds. Trio

Despite the fact that his work is only part-time, his pay check from 9to5Mac is not. Weintraub [his boss] tells us, “I have an unorthodox model where I give my writers ad space on their posts and on the homepage. For Mark in particular, it has been very successful because his exclusives get a lot of attention.”
How successful? Weintraub says he “makes enough money to buy a Tesla every year (he hasn’t…yet) with change left over.” Teslas generally sell for ~$100,000 a pop Digital Dragons