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The holiday season just flew like never before. I have been doing lots of reading and even more catching up with friends and family. Lea (Liya) invaded Sydney for the first time and it is not often that my French family gets to celebrate their 18 birthdays in Australia. It was a pleasure to show Lea Sydney and the Blue Mountains last week ... A week is too short for exploring the colourful shadows of the Emerald City. We both agree that we hope to have Imrich genes as her grandmother, my auntie Zofka, is 91 this year and still coping with cooking and shopping and running around in her house in Champagne region.

Blogging tends to be neglected this days as the script for the film is taking most of my time. It is great to find thought provoking analysis of blogging. Antony who came to the launch of the Jones Town book by Chris Master has the bloggosphere talking ... By the way, readers can also catch up with Antony's rich material on the greatest blogging gift to Australia Crickey

Czech out Antony on Blogging

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It is Australia Day, a Canadian mate, Krista, is now a citizen and politics is what matters most in 2007 ... Rudd looks to Carr spin man for media skill
Walt Secord … will take over the Opposition's media strategy.
BOB CARR'S former chief spin doctor Walt Secord has been hired by the Federal Opposition leader, Kevin Rudd, to try to replicate the Carr Government's tightly controlled and highly effective media strategy.

Mr Secord, who will join Mr Rudd's staff as communications director next month, worked for a decade as Mr Carr's communications director. Mr Carr was known for developing close relations with key members of the media and ensuring generous coverage by giving exclusive stories to selected media outlets. Mr Secord, previously a journalist in Toronto and Sydney, worked with him from 1995 through to his retirement in 2005.

Mr Secord, 43, was known for digging up dirt on Opposition MPs and overseeing ministers' public statements. During question time he would hand out media releases from a trolley that was known by the press as the Trolley of Truth. As communications director for Mr Rudd, Mr Secord will be expected to craft policies and messages aimed at winning back key seats in NSW. In The Latham Diaries the former Opposition leader Mark Latham, who was no friend of Mr Carr, recorded that "backbenchers [in NSW] … are not allowed to scratch their backsides unless Walt gives them the green light".
McKew impressed to the max

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Ad hoc reading and odds and ends worth czeching out in terms of trends and patterns
Creative legal eagle Lawyer Lunch
As US Judge Tannenwald wrote in an oft-cited opinion, Diaz v. Commissioner:53 “the distillation of truth from falsehood . . . is the daily grist of judicial life.” Diaz
is also another good example for teaching about the importance of evidence in a case. legislative grace. their tenure in office is a matter of “electorate grace.”

- Privacy, as Victorian Privacy Commissioner Paul Chadwick recently observed, is a freedom most noticed in its absence. Sadly, we only seem to appreciate what we had once it's gone.
-
Ethics is an informal mode of control. “It’s the glue that stops excessive individualism.”

This hypocrisy is aptly articulated in the fable of two neighbors in rural
England, one a lawyer, one a farmer. The farmer, circumspect of
the lawyer’s wily nature, says to the lawyer, “sir, regrettably
your ox hopped over the fence separating our properties and was
gored by one of my bulls, and I wish to know whether I need to
make reparations”. The lawyer responded that of course the
farmer would have to make reparations and that he owed him
one ox. To that, the farmer replied, “very good, because actually
it was my ox that hopped the fence and your bull that did the
goring. So I suppose you owe me one ox.” The lawyer then
retorted that that was a different case with different facts and
therefore different principles applied. Disagreeing that there
could be a difference, the farmer rightfully exclaimed, “it does not
depend upon whose ox is gored!”
Long odds: a history of gambling
Human vice is the most certain thing after death and taxes, to paraphrase Benjamin Franklin.

The Winning Odds: pounds 8 on a fruit machine: 600/1; pounds 50,000 scratch-card jackpot: 2.57 million/1; top prize on the Lottery: 14.5 million/1.

Akio Kashiwagi, a Tokyo-based gambler who had once won more than $6m at Atlantic City's Trump Plaza, loses close to $10m in six days at a baccarat table. The following year he is stabbed to death in his home at the foot of Mount Fuji. Long odds: a history of gambling

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Mack and Kerner's thesis was that out of globalisation and computerisation, dodgy business practices and tax havens, there was evolving a resilient and almost uncatchable type, the "able criminal." He was like the poison-proof super-rat, said to be thriving off the fast-food culture of our streets: specialising in difficult-to-detect frauds, ripping off other criminals who wouldn't for obvious reasons go to the police, and implicating the police themselves, who had to protect their grasses and sleepers. Based in the likes of Jersey or Monaco or (these days) Dubai, he dealt in millions. Send No More Roses

Political parties topped the list as institutions most likely to be affected by corruption followed by parliaments and legislatures, the business sector and then the police according to the findings of Transparency International's Global Corruption Barometer 2006 released in Germany today. Political parties top the corruption list

In the 19th century, the then expanding USA went through the same process. Robber barons seized economic opportunities in the Wild East and in the Wild West and really everywhere else. Morgan, Rockefeller, Pullman, Vanderbilt – the most ennobled families of latter day America originated with these rascals. But there is one important difference between the USA at that time and Central and Eastern Europe today. A civic culture with civic values and an aspiration to, ultimately, create a civic society permeated the popular as well as the high-brow culture of America. Criminality was regarded as a shameful stepping stone on the way to an orderly society of learned, civilized, law-abiding citizens. This cannot be said about Russia, for instance. The Criminality of Transition

It is almost Lori time in Shik calendar and also time for light reading for all Indian mates: Millionaires from India, China drive London property prices

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Happy New Year ... and happy reading as stories is all we really own ... There were so many stories created at Iceberg last night with Mal, Lisa, Mark, Krys, Carla, Robin, Dave, Marie, Pauline. Not even the presence of the spoilt brat, Paris Hilton, could spoit the Silvester NY party at the hot Berg at Bondi ...

Blasts from the past: Under the Westminster doctrine of separation of powers, the executive government is responsible for the police while the administration of Parliament is the responsibility of the presiding officers and legislators. We should keep things that way ...

STATE MPs are apprehensive about the prospect of NSW Police special constables taking charge of security at Parliament and patrolling its corridors. At least one - Lee Rhiannon of the Greens - has vowed to ban the constables entering her office. She is appealing to other parliamentarians to join the boycott. It comes after previous conflicts with police when officers entered Parliament armed with warrants to search MPs' rooms as part of ICAC investigations. Two years ago indignant MPs instigated a review of historic parliamentary rights to prevent a recurrence of unannounced police raids on Macquarie Street.

For the past 150 years, Parliament's security has been controlled by the Speaker, the upper house President and the two clerks. But this Westminster tradition has been challenged by an ASIO review of security arrangements that recommended the introduction of special constables. Alex Mitchell: MPs want police to stay out of Parliament

The words we learn mostly come in under the radar, get filed, and then pop out obligingly when we need them. Sometimes, however, we're very conscious of a new arrival and, especially so, the first time we use it... "Well, it's always been a bit strange and it's never entirely natural is it? I don't know what the word is but natural doesn't fit," Clarke chuckles down the line from his home in southern England. "Still it was no place for a shrinking violet." A man of his words: Biggest stone hits The Glass House

When you consider that an entire plate of broccoli contains the same number of calories as a small spoonful of peanut butter, you might think twice the next time you decide what to eat
Top blogs for data analysis types

More Top blogs for data analysis types
Iceberg Secret

Time consuming adventures Movie Making
Not everybody wants to work with them, but independents may soon hold the balance of power in the NSW Parliament. Jonathan Pearlman examines their impact. On a Tuesday morning, in a small boardroom in Parliament House, the state's foremost anti- Baywatch activist is declaring, yet again, his undying opposition to letting cameras and bikinis run loose on his local beaches. "The reason I'm in Parliament is because of Baywatch," the Mayor of Pittwater and MP for the electorate of the same name, Alex McTaggart, says to a delegation of filmmakers, as his seven bemused independent parliamentary colleagues look on. "I've got nine pristine beaches. They're not workshops."

"A friend of mine who makes props for the film industry has not had work in the film industry for over a year," he said in a private member's statement. "He has a clever and unique talent but once the film industry deteriorates beyond a certain point, people like him will not be able to easily get back into it. I urge the Government to implement the recommendations of the NSW Film Makers Group." The political power of one

Another colourful writer and blogger luismgarcia2006@hotmail.com
ABCTales and its tribe

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Bits and Pieces of 12 Days to the Mas: Somehow, even the sound of divorce bells do not seem as dark when you look around - the sun still rises and the ocean is just as mysterious ...

Appreciation is like looking through a wide-angle lens that lets you see the entire forest, not just the one tree limb you walked up on.

Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing ...

What you put out comes back. The more you sincerely appreciate life from the heart, the more the magnetic energy of appreciation attracts fulfilling life experiences to you, both personally and professionally. Learning how to appreciate more consistently offers many benefits and applications. Appreciation is an easy heart frequency to activate and it can help shift your perspectives quickly. Learning how to appreciate both pleasant and even seemingly unpleasant experiences is a key to increased fulfillment.

The best things in life are not free but priceless.
-Benjamin Lichtenberg

Life is the greatest bargain—we get it for nothing.
- Slavic proverb

Nothing is more disgusting than the crowing about liberty by slaves, as most men are, and the flippant mistaking for freedom of some paper preamble like a Declaration of Independence, or the statute right to vote, by those who have never dared to think or to act.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

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There are so many movies I want to recommend. However, I stop with this one On Earth: As It Is in Heaven

Do experience the beauty of life, and you will take home a piece of heaven with you.
As it is in Sweet Sweeden

This is one of the best things to come out of Sweden since Abba - a completely charming, disarmingly frank, robustly opinionated and sweetly tuneful film about a small-town choir, a famous conductor and the redemptive power of singing.
Some people had to drive all the way to Poseville (Roseville) to view it

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Snipppets of cafe literature (Surry Hill - Sydney Dec 06) Dinosaurs or democracy?

Describing managers as dinosaurs is perhaps not very kind – but for visiting organisational experts Joan Goldsmith and Ken Cloke, it’s by way of being a wake-up call.
It’s not that managers don’t perform valuable functions, but that these ought to increasingly become the responsibility of employees to take on for themselves, explains Cloke.
The reality is that organisations are moving toward more democratic, participatory structures. And the things that can’t be managed – a list that includes trust, creativity, innovation, values, commitment and integrity – are much more the stuff of leadership.


These are the things you can lead people with. But you can’t stand over someone’s shoulder and design a step-by-step process for them to follow that will end up with them becoming creative.


Cloke and Goldsmith heralded The End of Management and Rise of Organisational Democracy in a jointly authored book back in 2002 and followed that up with The Art of Waking People Up: Cultivating Awareness and Authenticity at Work (both published by Warren Bennis). In New Zealand last month as guests of Massey University, they talked about how to create a democratic organisation and ran workshops on dispute resolution.
The two subjects are totally intertwined, says Goldsmith.
That’s because conflict resolution is at the heart of the change process and at the heart of any democratic organisation. What we’re talking about is everyone, at every level of the organisation from factory floor to boardroom, having skills in confronting conflicts, preventing them and resolving them when they do emerge.”
Cloke has a shorthand description for conflict in organisations.
We call it the sound made by the cracks in the system. What happens in organisations is that you get individual conflict but you also get chronic conflict.”
These are costly cracks.
We believe and know, because we’ve been working in this area for 25 years, that a conflict is not just something that isn’t working but is something that if it were fixed and made to work would allow the organisation to become far more effective.

It’s not a question of boundless sweetness and light. The point is that conflict can be both positive and energising if it is well handled. What they’re talking about is a higher level of conflict and higher order of resolution technique.
It’s to do with the attitude toward conflict and toward learning.
What we try to do is help managers not to fear the conflict but to take it on and use it as a learning opportunity both for themselves and those directly affected.
If swept under the carpet, conflict tends to expand – creating more widespread fissures in the system. It’s an issue that Cloke in his role as director of the California-based Centre for Dispute Resolution, knows plenty about. He says there is now a tool that provides organisations with a detailed ‘conflict audit’.
“This looks at the chronic sources of conflicts, how much they’re costing the organisation, how much managerial time is spent resolving them, what can be done to prevent them, what can be done to manage or resolve them better. This is a very powerful method that has saved companies millions and millions of dollars.”
But few companies have yet embraced it – though lack of conflict resolution ability is a major stumbling block in the creation of a democratic organisation. Hierarchic structures just don’t provide enough opportunity to resolve strife, says Cloke.
It’s difficult to have those face-to-face conversations in which informal problem solving or conflict resolution can take place. It’s very difficult for personnel to have a conversation with engineering or with sales. And this is what leadership does – it brings together disparate parts of the organisation into a single conversation.

Cloke and Goldsmith talk about ‘linking leadership’ that builds bridges between different teams. Or, as Goldsmith puts it: They make porous the boundaries between departments and organisations and provide a context of values and of human wellbeing for the work people are doing.
While the past few years have brought a whole raft of ‘leadership’ initiatives, Cloke doesn’t think many companies have got the whole picture. The language may have shifted but it hasn’t always been accompanied by a real shift in organisational power.
“The shorthand answer to your question is that we don’t see enough of a large scale transformation at this point in the way decisions are actually being made.”
Both he and Goldsmith – whose long-term collaboration means they’ve had “several years of trying to figure out how to argue better with each other” – reckon New Zealand offers a good case study in conflict resolution. That, ventures Clone, could partly be due to living on an island. There’s no place else to go to avoid conflict. Also because we have an indigenous population with a long history of conflict and a very intelligent decision to work these issues through.
That we’ve been able to make a stand on nuclear arms, resisted jumping to warlike solutions and made efforts to make amends for the historical pain caused by colonisation is something to admire, says Goldsmith.
Conflict resolution is still a very young field, says Cloke. But everyone involved in it understands that it has transformational power.
I don’t think we will be able to stop global warming, or solve problems in the Middle East or stop the war in Iraq or any of those things unless people figure out how to talk with each other and engage in joint problem solving.
People are capable of coming together in their conflicts and understanding each other and this is really part of the purpose of management. So we see conflict resolution as a place where management does become leadership – and you can’t do without leadership.

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Ach, Beware: The working memory is where new information is combined with existing emotions and knowledge, and is assessed for rejection, modification or long-term storage.
Survival and emotional data have the highest priority for making it to long-term memory. If your information is not related to these matters, it is automatically accorded a much lower priority by the recipient.
The main factor that will lift your management information up from the low priority is the strength of emotional content or connection it makes with the person.
Considerably less significant, but still enough to move out of short term and into working memory is information the brain thinks is new, makes sense and is relevant to the person’s life.

The trick to persuading
Brain research has revealed what makes good management communications:
• Information is delivered in ways that maximise the amount which gets into the brain in the first place (visual).
• Information will make sense against the existing knowledge of the audience and will be of use to the audience.
• It is likely that the information forms a great mental bridge between what is already known by the audience and what they do not know.
• To be that mental bridge, the manager provides a real-life context for the information, will use metaphors to make the information more relevant, and will get the audience to immediately act on the new information.

The art of management remains
The research has uncovered patterns of brain operation that free us of wishful notions of people being driven by logic, higher ideals, or economic incentives. We now know that information about physical and emotional safety of primary importance, followed by information that is relevant to individual’s lives and makes sense within their experience.
The art of management will be to use this new knowledge to bring about behaviour change that is not a match with what people’s brains may be prepared to accept easily ...

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Terry has been keeping me occupied on the script of all scripts in 2006 and it looks like the year of BOND 007 will also prove busy ... (PS: Michael R. and his MJR 007 number plate will be even more valuable on ebay in 007 ;-)

Cold River Review Deep Voices from the Foreign Past
No one can deny that Cold River is flowed everywhere in 2006.

A culture can evolve no faster than its language evolves. Language actually defines the frontier of the knowable. I take the language issue very seriously. I see us as being imprisoned within the limitations of our language. You can’t plan social strategy that you can’t talk about. You can’t build a work of art that you can’t describe somehow. So the goal is always to push language to its outermost limits and then beyond that. Wittgenstein said that “the appetition of language was for the unspeakable”. Not to be content with it or to contemplate it, but to take the unspeakable and speak it and thereby extend the frontiers of language.

Cold River Review The River Less Traveled

Swimming in deep waters of the Amazon has been a real joy in 2006 - despite a few spiteful characters from the incestous (sic) Shire ;-) Cold River on Amazon

While I never wanted to be part of the richest club in the world the destiny took me in the direction of the unexpected ;-) Cold River by the Richest clubs of them all - Forbes

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From 1997 until 2005 Graham was the patron of the Australasian Tax Teachers Association. Cynthia Coleman, who invited him to be patron is reported as having said:

“He came to every conference, he gave a fabulous technical talk, and he always said ‘put me up in the cheapest accommodation so I can meet the most people’ - he made himself available to everybody.”

Without any doubt, nearly everyone who heard Justice Hill speak at conferences on issues such as public private infrastructures became interested in tax issues. I first met him in late 1990s at one of the NSW Public Accounts Committee seminars and my interest in taxation was never the same ;-)
His greatest contribution to revenue law was in the area of practising, teaching and deciding revenue issues. Professor Patrick Gallagher had this to say of Graham as an academic:
' In that time, he had created an unannounced reputation as one of Australia's leading tax academics - albeit his academic work was always 'part-time' - in name at least. The quality of his teaching was exceptional and his writings and legal research (which have been fully catalogued recently by Colin Fong), in the form of papers, judgments and public addresses - not to mention the Stamp Duty service he wrote with Bill Cannon and Michael Aitken - were at the cutting edge of practical tax analysis .'
CONTRIBUTION OF GRAHAM HILL

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WHEN it comes to freedom of speech we are in danger of losing our sense of perspective, as well as our sense of humour. The latest proposal from Attorney-General Philip Ruddock is to ban books that praise terrorism and to censor TV shows like Big Brother. The status quo in Australia is shifting, writes George Williams
THE most depressing aspect of yesterday's landmark High Court decision on the Freedom of Information Act is the virtual how-to guide it includes for ministers of the Crown who want to keep documents secret. In killing off Michael McKinnon's four-year fight to get hold of documents about abuses of the first-home owners' scheme and the government tax revenue from bracket creep, the court backed four of Peter Costello's seven arguments stating their release was not in the public interest. Scrutinising our political masters just got harder

Catch a Fire of Freedom Noyce of Loud Note
conTROVERSY is the lifeblood of a university that is doing its duty. It has long been thus and it is today. Modern societies expect contemporary universities to be working at the frontiers of knowledge, discovering new insights that advance understanding and improve wellbeing. Discovery, whether in the biosciences or nuclear physics or other fields, raises questions that challenge orthodoxy within the disciplines and also in the wider community. Complex matters give rise to competing views and values. Restricting academic freedom

THE John Howard–Peter Costello leadership rivalry is moving towards a denouement of sorts. While the outcome is unpredictable, it is worth posing a question that goes beyond the standard political calculations over which man will ultimately prevail. Is there a point when a government’s longevity ceases to be compatible with the best democratic interests of the nation and, if so, are we approaching that time with the Coalition government, no matter whether led by Howard or Costello?

• The longer a government remains in power, the less it is willing to be accountable ; Why property investors love the tax man
• · Nicholas Gruen Improving capital taxation in Australia; Roy Davies, a librarian at University of Exeter, United Kingdom, has put together an impressive collection of links relating to financial scandals Scandals of Real Note ; Trust in business is falling, industry chief warns
• · · Legislative anarchy ; Court ruling says the days of tax exiles are numbered
• · · · Before the moratorium on income trusts was announced recently, they were costing Canada's treasury about $500 million a year, on target to reach $800 million or more - much more. No corresponding figure is available for the taxes Canadian firms and wealthy individuals are not paying Ottawa by parking their money in offshore tax havens. But the numbers are big, billions big. Overseas havens favour the wealthy ; Billionaire Roman Abramovich owns a large amount of property in London Londoners complain that it is expensive, dirty and over-crowded - but not everybody agrees. The capital, which is home to 7.4 million people, is also home to 23 of the world's richest people. With this tally, London was named yesterday as the 'unchallenged magnet' for the world's billionaires. No other city holds such a captivating power over people who have enough money to live in a palace anywhere that they choose. Research shows London is now home to the world's super rich

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Internet stocks stage comeback. By Emma Connors, 18/11/2006, The Australian Financial Review, Page 38. Australia's internet and new media companies are attracting strong interest from investors. Their prospects are increasing daily as the number of broadband connections in the nation exceeds 3.5 million. Outstanding performers include online accommodation booking service Wotif.com, job site Seek.com.au and domain-name registry Melbourne IT. Highly regarded companies planning to list soon include Hitwise and RP Data. The online advertising market in Australia is worth $A1bn and growing rapidly. However there are no guarantees - iiNet shares have declined 64 per cent in the year to November 2006. It's a sign of good IT leadership when a CIO takes a different path from his competitors. The Road Less Traveled

Brave Blogging World SEARCHER'S VOICE Hard Times
No one can deny that these are difficult times for traditional publishers and information services.

Competing with voluminous, universally available search services pouring data upon a waiting world at no visible cost — in other words, living in the “Google Age” — leaves services which have to charge to survive struggling. At the same time, trying to charge for content with an end-user market that, in large part, never experienced online before the Web puts the pressure on the content provider to come up with product that consistently and noticeably beats the freebie content every time. That’s a tall, tall order. To satisfy it fully, traditional content providers would probably have to restructure their whole systems, incurring significant, if not massive, cost burdens, and all at a time when their current market hold is decreasing, probably along with their ability to raise capital. In the grip of this challenge and, possibly, clinging to the subconscious, psychological support of the self-inflated ego, many traditionals seem more inclined to simply declare anything they produce, anything bearing their brand, as ipso facto top quality and worth whatever they charge. And, following the internal logic of this semidelusional position, they choose to prove it to those amazingly unobservant end users, unaware of the glory before them, by the most logical approach, to wit, denying them the content until they can learn to show it a proper respect.

When carried to extremes, the whole process can begin to look like a curriculum designed for Lemmings U. In an era when the one universal, first-and-foremost complaint of all information consumers is the issue of overload, an era when people reject the idea of a vacation lasting longer than 7 days because of nightmare visions of digging out from under an avalanche of e-mail messages, an era when not even need or greed can drive people to search one more search engine or even go further than two (three max) pages into Google search results — in this era of answers, answers everywhere drowning questions and questioners, someone wants to hide their data and wait until searchers clamber over hill and dale until they find it. Puh-leez!

And it gets worse. Some producers waver between a pro-Web and anti-Web strategy and come up with a composite business strategy. I’m looking for an analogy here. Zoological ones come to mind. How about “a camel is a horse designed by a committee”? No, that won’t work. After all, despite a somewhat nasty disposition and a distinctly uncomfortable riding surface, a camel can survive in hard places. A camel works. What about a mule? But a mule works too. In fact, it is stronger than the horse, its maternal parent, but no matter how well the hybrid works out, a mule is sterile. It can’t increase its numbers on its own. Sooner or later you’re back working with jackasses.

One classic example of a failure-bound composite business strategy — the me-first one — offers a whole range of mistakes. It wrongly identifies the true competition, attacks allies, diminishes both product quality and brand awareness, and sticks it to end users — all in one fell swoop. For example, this month the Financial Times (FT) will — once again — alter its information flow to its outside carriers. Factiva and LexisNexis, which once operated under a 4-hour embargo delay for Financial Times content — a delay expanded to 12 hours late last year — have to suffer a 24-hour delay.

FT apparently hopes that despondent Factiva and LexisNexis users will migrate to its site, FT.com, where you can get some current content for free and paying can get you more. For example, you can access an FT archive — a rolling 5 years — plus other services for $119 per year or $9.92 a month, while $300 per year or $25 a month will buy all that plus access to 500 World Press Monitor and Archive sources and more. Going to FT’s partner in digitization, ProQuest, may even get you a rolling 10-year FT archive.

Whoopee! Meanwhile, Factiva and LexisNexis offer FT archives reaching back almost a quarter-century (26 for Factiva, 24 for LexisNexis) with full-text collections of other sources numbering over 8,000 (Factiva Publications Library) and 34,000 in LexisNexis. Both Factiva and LexisNexis are busy finding new current business and financial sources to supplement their collections — now more than ever.

So what happens to the user? Both Factiva and LexisNexis have a policy of merging masses of sources into large groupings. It’s highly unlikely that most users will even notice the absence of the most-current FT information. Many times that won’t matter, as some other source will have supplied sufficient information. Sometimes it will matter, because FT will have met time-related user needs before other sources or because FT will have stronger, more informed and informative coverage. Most likely users simply won’t notice. They will think that they have searched FT because they see older FT references in the results. Over time, the breaking-news enthusiasts will simply come to think that FT isn’t a reliable source for the latest information, even in its own areas of focus. (For those not in the business field who don’t know the Financial Times, it amounts to the U.K. equivalent of TheWall Street Journal.)

Whether the marketing strategy works or not, whether the number of subscribers increases on FT.com, the devisers of this strategy have apparently ignored one key factor — a factor, by the way, that the real enemies of all traditionals (Google et al.) hardly ever forget — namely, the interests of the user. This kind of strategy decreases the quality of the content, depriving it of the benefit of full currency. People who use the established outlets for FT will simply not be getting the best FT has to offer, and, depending on which service they are using and which pricing plan, they may not even be getting their money’s worth. Imagine someone having to go back into LexisNexis to check FT a day later under a price-per-search-statement package. But, in any case, it means searchers have to waste their time doing second searches, either a day later on services they know or clicking over to another Web site (FT.com).

Maybe the benefit of gathering more registered users and opening up more advertising revenue opportunities makes the business strategy appealing to FT managers, as it has to other traditional content providers. But I don’t believe that any strategy that disregards the full interests of customers can truly serve the long-term interests of vendors.

• Winners think like winners. And, as one big winner is so fond of repeating, “First, do no evil.” ; Calling all moguls: a new haven for mega rich
• · This rocks: Search Engines ; Packer goes public on his desire to go private
• · · With Members back home and no floor and committee activity in October, it can be challenging to keep congressional Web sites fresh and interesting. But election years are exactly when constituents are looking for information from you, so your site needs to remain relevant to their needs The October Challenge: Stagnant Web Sites ; The government is likely to introduce its media reform legislation into parliament this week, but what's not in the Bills might be as important as what is, writes Jock Given Should we rely on the regulators?
• · · · Newspaper magnate Lord Northcliffe famously said 'news is what somebody somewhere wants to suppress; all the rest is advertising'. And when it comes to government in Australia a culture of suppression of information is endemic among politicians and civil servants. - Strike a blow for media and cultural diversity German Labour Rebecca Kaiser and Cuban Liberal Luis m Garcia Waging a cultural revolutionary war

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Just too busy being busy at Bay? It's not often that I break into song, probably because whenever I do, bad things seem to happen. Birds fall from the sky; normally gentle domestic animals suddenly turn rabid and terrorize peaceful suburban neighborhoods; fistfights break out amongst flower-bearing Hare Krishnas at Jervis Bay… Still how nice to anticipate the moment of song, peace and tranquility ;-)

As we grow up, we learn that even the one person that wasn't supposed to ever let you down probably will. You will have your heart broken probably more than once and it's harder every time. You'll break hearts too, so remember how it felt when yours was broken. You'll fight with your best friend. You'll blame a new love for things an old one did. You'll cry because time is passing too fast, and you'll eventually lose someone you love. So take too many pictures, laugh too much, and love like you've never been hurt because every sixty seconds you spend upset is a minute of happiness you'll never get back...
Don't be afraid that your life will end, be afraid that it will never begin.
- Anonymous Media Dragons

Children of Men Catch a Word
Imagine building a friendship with someone you thought you could trust - only to have that person deceive you! This happened to two famous women in the 1980s.
Is it possible for humans to discover the key to happiness through a bigger-than-life, bad-boy dog? Just ask the Grogans.

-I Know This Much is True never grapples with anything less than life's biggest questions....a modern-day Dostoyevsky with a pop sensibility. In his view, it's not just the present that's the pits...it's also the ghosts of dysfunctional family members and your non-relationship with a mocking, sadistic God, whom you still turn to in times of trouble -- which is all the time. [Oprah Winfrey's benediction]

Never underestimate the power of understatement. Many people wonder why Jane Austen's "Emma" has lasted in our hearts so long, and why we linger over her love. Emma's true love is finally recognized at the end: Mr. Knightley. It begins with him declaring his love for her, as they stand alone in a garden. The air is thick with emotion. What does she reply? Austen says: "What did she say? Just what she ought, of course. A lady always does." We end up filling in the blank with our own emotion, and when we think about it months later, we don't remember the absence of words, but the emotion we felt.
Also, it is usually better to show the emotion than to try and put it into the character's words (show it through actions and reactions). In real life, this is often the case.

• Writing about Wtiting ;
'To do our work, we all have to read a mass of papers. Nearly all of them are far too long. This wastes time, while energy has to be spent in looking for the essential points.
I ask my colleagues and their staff to see to it that their reports are shorter.
The aim should be reports which set out the main points in a series of short, crisp paragraphs.
If a report relies on detailed analysis of some complicated factors, or on statistics, these should be set out in an appendix.
Often the occasion is best met by submitting not a full-dress report, but an aide-memoire consisting of headings only, which can be expanded orally if needed.
Let us have an end of such phrases as these:
'It is also of importance to bear in mind the following considerations', or 'Consideration should be given to the possibility of carrying into effect'. Most of these woolly phrases are mere padding, which can be left out altogether, or replaced by a single word. Let us not shrink from using the short expressive phrase, even if it is conversational.

Reports drawn up on the lines I propose may first seem rough as compared with the flat surface of officialese jargon. But the saving in time will be great, while the discipline of setting out the real points concisely will prove an aid to clearer thinking.' Winston Churchill, 9 August 1940 'Brevity' - Memo to the War Cabinet
• · Entertainment and Poisone; ‘Community media is undoubtedly the way of the future’ –Rupert Murdoch (The Australian, 29 June 2006)
Think very carefully before you purchase a digital free-to-air television set or box. Depending on where you live, you might lose an entire channel. This may come as a surprise. It is unlikely that you will have read about it in the news or seen a warning sticker on a set-top-box. We were told that digital television would offer more television, not less. In fact, the underlying principle of digital conversion was that households who purchase digital receivers would still get to see programs shown on conventional analogue television. It was supposed to be ‘TV for all’, delivered free-to-air, whether through microchips or rabbit ears, right up until the analogue switch-off date. Why would any of us purchase a digital television set if we were going to get less television? Where is OurSpace on Digital Television? By: Ellie Rennie
• · · Online Opinion article: Australian literature on the nose? ; So here’s a question for you — Is it enough just to believe that governments should interfere less in both the economy and citizen’s personal lives, or does a person have to believe this for the right reasons? Is Andrew’s definition too narrow? Keating Musical: Liberal Light on the Hill ; Fearless and flexible: views of gen Y
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