Seeing the unseen and hearing the unheard

“Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness…”

Happy birthday to soulful Gina ... Tomorrow is the Opera House's birthday in a rather wild and eventful city of ours 🎉🎈🎇



DEADLY snake was seen slithering along George St, Sydney sending people into a panic. Slippery Drinking MEdia Dragons: unseen unheard red-bellied black snake has been caught drinking in a pub in the center the city of Sydney

Click here to listen to Katha Pollitt read 'Lot's Wife' poem

Trudging behind the broad backside of God she hums her useless tune Oh little black dress at the back of the closet, who will crush you now against his chest?

Green Italian boots in a midnight window,
a scrabble of rats, a hand
lit from within like a tulip—
Who dashes down that street to meet her lover?
Who sits in the movie theatre
coiled, silent, a black cat?

The dark-eyed daughters idly stroke their breasts.
A jackal crouches in shadow, hungry for salt.
At the base of a dune that heaves to the blank horizon
a palm tree shrugs its shoulders
as if to say: Well, what did you expect?

Podesta to Tom Steyer in leaked email: ‘I didn’t expect to get f—ed by you’ The Hill

Unseen unheard and unlinkedin Binge Breakers... TriStan Harris learned that the most-successful sites and apps hook us by tapping into deep-seated human needs. When LinkedIn launched, for instance, it created a hub-and-spoke icon to visually represent the size of each user’s network. That triggered people’s innate craving for social approval and, in turn, got them scrambling to connect. “Even though at the time there was nothing useful you could do with LinkedIn, that simple icon had a powerful effect in tapping into people’s desire not to look like losers...”
Joe Elman compares the tech industry to Big Tobacco before the link between cigarettes and cancer was established: keen to give customers more of what they want, yet simultaneously inflicting collateral damage on their lives. Harris, Elman says, is offering Silicon Valley a chance to reevaluate before more-immersive technology, like virtual reality, pushes us beyond a point of no return.How to fight iPhone LinkedIn etc addiction (You will not find MEdia Dragons on LinkedIn or Facebook or etc as we are total losers ...]

Herbal teas and health ...

When Librarians’ Freedom Of Speech Gets Silenced, What Do The Rest Of Us Have?

“Parsons added, ‘This is private property.’ It is revealing that a policeman should have imagined, even in a heated moment, that a public library was private property.”

The old cliché about advertising was, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” The new cliché is, “If you’re not paying for it, you’re the product.” In an attention economy, you pay for free content and services with your time. The compensation isn’t very good. 

Jacob Weisberg Explains The Corrupting Influence Of the Attention Economy 

RUSSIA DROPS FISH BOMB ON NEW ZEALAND AFTER NZ PRIME MINISTER KEY ATTACKS PRESIDENT PUTIN John Helmer. From Helmer by e-mail: The covert story here is the NZ Govt’s decision to end the nuclear-free zone ban on US warships.

The Australian Government Mobile Service Centre ‘Desert Rose’ will hit the road to give people in the Shire easy access to essential government payments and services in October. 

The Australian Government Mobile Service Centre ‘Desert Rose’ To'R - NT emblem

We Celebrate Creativity (But We’re Also Suspicious Of And Hostile To It)

“The paradox of this bias against creativity lies in the fact that creativity — along with its close cousin innovation — is frequently celebrated in business as a most desired organizational trait. Reports of management excellence from McKinsey to KPMG state that creativity among the workforce is a basic requirement for long-term business success. Why then does the organizational immune system kick into high gear whenever exposed to the very thing it needs to survive?”

Fundamentals of Public Impact sets out a basic theoretical framework that aims to “help governments navigate their way from idea to impact” amid growing “fears that populations will become unwilling to support public institutions through taxation or to participate in the democratic process”.

Fortunately, in the educated view of CPI co-chairman Michael Barber, there is cause for optimism:

“Interacting with policymakers from Canada to Kurdistan, South Africa to Australia, has also left me with the firm conviction that the allure of public service still holds strong. The best and the brightest continue to flock to governments far and wide. Theirs is a shared ethos which overpowers the higher salaries or fast pace that might be on offer in the private sector.”

Working as a public servant can be one of the hardest jobs around, says Barber, but he adds that public frustration that tax is being wasted and “public services aren’t matching expectations” should not be surprising:

“This frustration builds. It generates cynicism with the political process and democracy more generally — and this is very dangerous.”

Getting stuff done in government: three elements of public impact 

Mick Gatto's House is for sale...

Recent criticism of government websites highlighted the need to improve readability. But what exactly are readability measures, and should agencies rely on them? In a series of 2016 reports, an Irish software company reviewed the clarity of government websites in Australia, New Zealand, the United States, the United Kingdom and South Africa. This increased awareness of one of the most common measures of plain English: readability. The readability debate: is there a formula for the write stuff?

Avoiding Viruses in DNC/DCCC/CF Excel Files Another Word For It. For readers playing alone at home

  “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” by Bob Dylan   (1965)   You must leave now, take what you need, you think will last But whatever you wish to keep, you better grab it fast Yonder stands your orphan with his gun Crying like a fire in the sun Look out the saints are comin’ through And it’s all over now, Baby Blue. The highway is for gamblers, better use your sense Take what you have gathered from coincidence The empty handed painter from your streets Is drawing crazy patterns on your sheets This sky, too, is folding under you And it’s all over now, Baby Blue. All your seasick sailors, they are rowing home Your empty handed armies, are all going home Your lover who just walked out the door Has taken all his blankets from the floor The carpet, too, is moving under you And it’s all over now, Baby Blue. Leave your stepping stones behind, something calls for you Forget the dead you’ve left, they will not follow you The vagabond who’s rapping at your door Is standing in the clothes that you once wore Strike another match, go start a new And it’s all over now, Baby Blue.