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Best wishes to Bawa and everybody who shares this special day with him. After dining at Hungry Czech then singing "Happy Birthday" and cutting of the cake amazing stories from Kenya and Panjab came out

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Some bad news is not new; it's made worse by the fact that it's caught in a long-term trend that shows no sign of reversal ... Dragon’s writing on the wall tend to attract trouble...



Our Bronte neighbour wrote in mid September a letter to Australian regulators which detailed his concerns about a fund manager in Australia known as the Astarra Strategic Fund – formerly known as Absolute Alpha.
This letter resulted in regulatory action against a cluster of related funds (almost twenty), however my letter was almost entirely about only one fund in the group. I did not make any major suggestions in the letter about other funds in the Astarra complex. My involvement was detailed today in the Sydney Morning Herald (see stories here, here and here, with the first story on the front page below the fold). There was no genius in my letter – everything could be found (fairly easily) on the internet – and the original tip-off came from a reader of my blog – who noticed links with a story I wrote up in March 2009


Fear 'We did it ourselves!
As for the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence. The next best, the people honour and praise. The next, the people fear; and the next, the people hate ... When the best leader's work is done the people say, 'We did it ourselves!
--Lao-Tsu

An obsessive routine in carrying out the details begets conformity and complacency, which in turn dulls everyone's mind. That is why even as they pay attention to details, they continually encourage people to challenge the process. They implicitly understand the sentiment of CEO-leaders like Quad/Graphic's Harry Quadracchi, Oticon's Lars Kolind and the late Bill McGowan of MCI, who all independently asserted that the job of a leader is not to be the chief organizer, but the chief dis-organizer.

• chief dis-organizer Leaders of capital and social funds [THE corporate regulator has expressed no concerns about two men owning Australian financial services companies, despite questions about the men's role in a British broker involved in a penny stock scandal.
BusinessDay revealed last week that Jeffrey Revell-Reade, based in Austria, and James Sutherland, based in Hong Kong, owned Australian companies that received three financial services licences from the Australian Securities and Investments Commission. ;
The Association of Independently Owned Financial Planners (AIOFP) has received unconfirmed reports that $85 million of the missing $118 million of assets within the Astarra Strategic Fund (ASF) are safe AIOFP finds $85m of Astarra Strategic assets ; Google i ; Google ii ]
• · The ever expanding volume of information we face on a daily basis - and the wide range of issues in relation to the concept of information overload, ranging from concerns about information fatigue, information interruption, information access and information transparency that require attention to the costs and benefits of faster and more voluminous flows of data, knowledge and decision management Overloaded ; The establishment of the Senior Executive Service (SES) in 1984 sought to create a Service-wide strategic leadership in ideas, management, and ethics in accordance with the Westminster principles and conventions of public administration as they operate in the Australian model of government. The 25th anniversary of the creation of the SES provides an opportunity to acknowledge and celebrate the achievements made during this time, and to focus on the challenges ahead The Senior Executive Service 25th Anniversary,
• · · Data losses to incur fines of up to £500,000, BBC, 12 January 2010. The UK Information Commissioner's Office will be able to issue fines of up to £500,000 for serious data security breaches. The new rule is expected to come into force in the UK on 6 April 2010. The size of the fine will be determined after an investigation to assess the gravity of the breach. Other factors will include the size and finances of the organisation at fault. Individual cases will also be assessed on whether the breach was accidental or deliberate and how much distress the leak of information caused ; Reinventing management
• · · · The art of management ; The heroic leader, media dragon, the charismatic, goal-scoring superstar who doesn't mind carrying the team on his back, is out. Enter the post-heroic leader, the quieter, engaging team player who brings every player into the decision-making process. In fact, today's complex business environment requires a leader who combines the best of both styles Is heroic leadership all bad?,
• · · · · Australia's first taxes were levied to meet the challenges of those early days. They may also have been relatively efficient, equitable and simple, particularly since most of the revenue for the gaol came from import duties on alcohol – 'the more the citizens drank, the more money there was to control them' If we were able to ask Governor Hunter of the new colony of New South Wales why he introduced the very first taxes in Australia – taxes applying to imports – I suspect his answer would be, simply, that the colony had to finance the building of a new gaol because the old one had 'inexplicably' burnt down, private subscriptions had proved insufficient and Britain had refused further subsidies. Ken Henry the VIII ; Individual income tax returns [electronic resource] : necessary or not? : Toni Balik Australia : CPA Australia, 1998 TAX OFFICE IS NOW ON MEDIA DRAGON, FACEBOOK, TWITTER The Tax Office has advised that it is now on social networking site Twitter providing "tweets" (much in the style of an SMS message - 140 characters or less) on the latest updates on new measures, changes to legislation and reminders of upcoming due dates. The ATO says those keen to take a look without signing up to Twitter can go to http://www.twitter.com/ato_gov_au [http://www.twitter.com/ato_gov_au http://www.twitter.com/ato_gov_au
• · · · · · Nicknamed the “Pirate of Prague” for his bargain-basement purchase of post-Soviet privatization vouchers in his native Czechoslovakia, Kozeny, 46, got in trouble with U.S. authorities when he tried to pull off a similar maneuver in the Caspian Sea nation of Azerbaijan in the late 1990s. Bohemian Pirate; As researcher Alan Block described the metastatic growth of the tax-haven phenomenon in his groundbreaking work, Masters of Paradise: Organized Crime and the Internal Revenue Service in the Bahamas, "professional criminals were those who took it upon themselves to organize crime. Their true work was the process of organizing crime itself."GAO reports that CSC has 21 subsidiaries "in jurisdictions listed as tax havens" by the federal government. Some of the firm's global operations are located in tech manufacturing powerhouses such as Bermuda (1); British Virgin Islands (4); Costa Rica (1); Hong Kong (5); Ireland (2); Luxembourg (2); Macao (1); Singapore (4); Switzerland (1). Masters of Paradise; Alexander Zvygintsev, Russia's Deputy Prosecutor-General, said Britain and Israel harboured more Russian criminals than any other countries. He told the newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta: "It is no coincidence the capital of [Britain] is often called 'Londongrad'. It seems that London, as a major financial centre, is turning into a giant laundrette for laundering criminally sourced funds. Britain called crooks' haven
Scots like Jock agree

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Virginia’s Visit from Bristol what an earthy title for a brilliant novel ...

Whatever you do avoid a movie named Being in Heaven as it felt as being in Hell when Media Dragon watched it.

But watch and enjoy Crazy heart as we live on the thin ice of unexplained phenomena The whole world's crazy but me and thee

Second generation Hollywood, his dad Lloyd Bridges was a major heart-throb in the 60s, Jeff Bridges admits having famous parents made it easier for him to be successful in Hollywood. A hokey story about a washed-up country singer is rescued by a wonderful performance by Jeff Bridges who shows off his musical as well as his acting talent in Crazy Heart. ; Based on a 1987 novel of the same name by Thomas Cobb, this film is a quality romantic drama that carries considerable punch. Jeff Bridges adds an expertly developed and totally credible character to the gallery of movie drunks. Jeff Bridges, nominated for an Oscar for Crazy Heart, believes the secret to success lies in a four-letter word: Love!


The Way of All Debt Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth
Legendary novelist, poet, and essayist Margaret Atwood delivers a surprising look at the topic of debt. In her wide-ranging, entertaining, and imaginative approach to the subject, Atwood proposes that debt is like air - something we take for granted until things go wrong. And then, while gasping for breath, we become very interested in it.

Payback is not about practical debt management or high finance. Rather, it is an investigation into the idea of debt as an ancient and central motif in religion, literature, and the structure of human societies. Margaret Atwood writes “These are not lectures about how to get out of debt; rather, they’re about the debtor/creditor twinship in the broadest sense – from human sacrifice to pawnshops to revenge. In this light, what we owe and how we pay is a feature of all human societies, and profoundly shapes our shared values and our cultures.”

• Payback is not about practical debt management or high finance [ BBC; Massey filled with dangerous ideas ]
• · What I’ve learned from 30 years of teaching The Merchant of Venice - Paula Marantz Cohen has been teaching literature for 30 years, and “the longer I teach, the more I enjoy teaching Shakespeare. As I grow older and wearier, his plays seem to deliver greater matter and art in a more condensed and lively way than any other text I could choose. To be clichéd about it: Shakespeare offers more bang for the buck.” If we want a happy ending, at some point with Shakespeare we must draw a line and close our eyes to the injustice an ending may entail Consider Shylock, My Students, and Me - By Paula Marantz Cohen; while gasping for breath, we become very interested in it ; debt as an ancient and central motif in religion ; Putting the U.S. Debt Problem in Perspective - Due to massive increases in federal spending, the economic future of the United States looks gloomy. The interest cost to "carry" the U.S. public debt was $383 billion in Fiscal Year 2009 and is estimated to exceed $700 billion by 2019. Taxes can be increased only so much before taxpayers rebel by working less or voting incumbent politicians out of office. Another alternative--monetary expansion--also has limited potential for paying down the debt: it leads to rising prices and, eventually, rising interest rates, which would make it harder to sell U.S. debt abroad Could the U.S. Default on its Debt?
• · · Seeking How the brain hard-wires us to love Google, Twitter, and texting. And why that's dangerous, by Emily Yoffe Writing on the walls of filthy liars; Actually all our electronic communication devices—e-mail, Facebook feeds, texts, Twitter—are feeding the same drive as our searches. Since we're restless, easily bored creatures, our gadgets give us in abundance qualities the seeking/wanting system finds particularly exciting...If humans are seeking machines, we've now created the perfect machines to allow us to seek endlessly.
You can't stop doing it. Sometimes it feels as if the basic drives for food, sex, and sleep have been overridden by a new need for endless nuggets of electronic information. We are so insatiably curious that we gather data even if it gets us in trouble. Social bohemian media dragon bandwagon
• · · · JD Salinger's reclusiveness was as famous as his slim output of books. The life of JD Salinger, which has just ended, is one of the strangest and saddest stories in recent literary history A lifetime of celebrity for J.D. Salinger from just one Cold River ; Like many of my fellow pilgrims, I hit adolescence only to discover my autobiography had already been written; plagiarized, in fact, by a man named J.D. Salinger who, in appropriating to himself my inner mass of pain and confusion, had given me the unlikely name of "Holden Caulfield." (You think you had it bad: I come from the High Tatra Mountains, didn't make it through prep school, believe the world divides into two kinds of people, phonies and, well, me.)
• · · · · I’ve been spending some time recently on planet Janacek. You could call planet Janacek the earth inside this earth – the molten planet of passion below the solid, congealed crust. You don’t visit the territory carved out by the Czech composer Leos Janacek without risk; but the risk is not so much to your physical safety as to your emotional comfort. Janacek, as much as the late JD Salinger’s Holden Caulfield, has no time for phoneys or phoneyness Love of the world
; Seldom has a man who wrote so few words attracted so many as J.D. Salinger, the reclusive author who died on Thursday at his remote home in Cornish, New Hampshire, at the age of 91 Google on Loneliness

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John Brockman’s Edge question for 2010 asks over a hundred intellectuals, “Is the Internet changing the way you think?” the go-to site for the world’s procrastinating intellectuals


Timothy Garton Ash Cut This Story!
Newspaper articles are too long, encrusted with conventions that don’t add to your grasp of the news

George Orwell’s diaries attest to his deep dread of rats. Perhaps not the only thing he shares with characters in Nineteen Eighty-Four... All day clearing out strawberries, which have not been touched since last year. It seems one plant will put out anything up to 12 or 15 runners ...
Promote a conspiracy theory, and your phones will be bugged, your office burgled (but not robbed), your hard drives fragment, and your emails vanish Or so you’ll think. This season's fashion in conspiracy theories—for those out of the loop of enlightenment—concerns health. The Web sites, marginal cable shows and radio phone-ins are full of tales about how Big Pharma and Bad Government are deliberately spreading diseases or manufacturing scares in order to sell us expensive drugs, gull us into dangerous vaccinations or just simply to create an atmosphere of panic which will allow "them" to take over.

• George Orwell’s diaries
[During the Cold War, when Pete Seeger coaxed classrooms full of kids to join him in folk songs, no one saw America’s “singing left” as much of a political threat.
The law of unintended consequences gave a quirky twist to the relation between the Old and New Left and, in the process, lent peculiar accents to America’s musical and political culture that we can’t seem to get rid of even today. The folk revival—a fad sandwiched between the beatniks and the hippies—may have been brief, but it was also the baby boomers’ coming of age, and its echoes have been lasting. Bruce Springsteen made a splash in 2006 with his Seeger Sessions. Ry Cooder paid homage to Woody Guthrie in the 2007 release My Name Is Buddy. Sheryl Crow told Billboard magazine that her song, “Shine Over Babylon,” is “very environmentally conscious, in the tradition of Bob Dylan. Where Have All the Lefties Gone?
; Sovietology was a powerful force in Cold War history, giving the West a better understanding of its adversary. Today, we need a jihadology
In 1945, the United States faced a dire threat. The rising power of the Soviet Union and the spread of communism in Eastern Europe -- and, soon enough, worldwide -- represented a new enemy that imperiled postwar hopes for a peaceful and prosperous world. The United States was poorly equipped to comprehend, let alone respond to, this emerging global danger. The federal government had few experts who spoke Russian or had a deep knowledge of Russian history and culture; universities were barely better off. The field of Soviet studies emerged as a response and became the catalyst for a network of area studies programs that would soon follow.
Sovietology was a powerful force in Cold War history ]
• · Formulaic book-beat stories: how Writer A struggled and made it big, how Writer B’s novel is marketed, or Writer C’s huge advance. Bob Thompson tries to avoid the formulas... The opening piece, “Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream,” begins with a description of the San Bernardino Valley, east of Los Angeles, and of “the hot dry Santa Ana wind that comes down through the passes at 100 miles an hour and whines through the eucalyptus windbreaks and works on the nerves.” Three pages later, with an October Santa Ana bearing witness, a dentist’s wife named Lucille Miller watches her husband burn to death in the family Volkswagen. By the time I emerged from this sinister dreamscape I had overshot my bus stop by a mile.; The French Resistance continues to excite the imagination because of its sheer drama and mystery – embodied perfectly in the story of Jean Moulin... As we approach the 70th anniversary of Charles de Gaulle's historic broadcast from London on 18 June 1940 that inaugurated the French Resistance, interest in the story remains undiminished. It is, though, increasingly difficult for the French to fit the Resistance into their collective memory of this difficult period. There is a prevalent British misconception that the French exaggerate their glorious Resistance exploits-everyone claiming a "resister" in the family-in order to gloss over the darker aspects of the Occupation. In truth, those darker aspects are as present in public discussion today as the Resistance. Every school in Paris has a plaque reminding people of the role played by the Vichy state in the deportation of the Jews. The Resistance continues to excite the imagination because of its sheer drama and mystery
• · · Timothy Garton Ash’s technique lies in a mixture of reportage and judgment, circling and deepening, as the one reinforces the other.
Promote a conspiracy theory, and your phones will be bugged, your office burgled (but not robbed), your hard drives fragment, and your emails vanish. Or so you’ll think. The problem of evil and the origins of the devil, who has inspired Goethe, Heine, W. S. Gilbert, Paul Valéry, Berlioz, Gounod, Turgenev and Randy Newman, to name a few Strange footnote ; Upper mismanagement. Why can’t we make things anymore in America? Two words, says Noam Scheiber: business school
• · · · As tattoos go mainstream, it becomes hard for criminals to signal their devotion to crime. They look more and more like ordinary citizens.. It is a truth universally acknowledged that messing with a guy who has facial tattoos is a really bad idea. Getting dirty words tattooed on your eyelids—a popular choice, judging from the mug shots available online—is a serious commitment. It is, as social scientists say, a “signal that is costly to fake.” The bearer of a facial tattoo announces to the world: I expect to be in prison for most of my life, or to hang out with people who consider prison experience a character reference.; The moral triumphs and failures of leaders carry a greater weight and volume than those of non-leaders. In leadership we see morality and immorality magnified. Leaders are human. That is their strength and their weakness. As humans, they are unpredictable creatures, capable of extraordinary kindness and cruelty
• · · · · Toys for Boys; Bankers

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Happy Fourth St Valentine Malchkeoun ;-)

Start by doing what’s necessary, then what’s possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible.
-St Francis of Assisi.

Great teachers, Like Mrs Chamilova or Dr Cope or James Cumes, can’t be identified in any reliable, objective way. They have a gift: some mystical quality we revere but can’t replicate.
For years, the secrets to great teaching have seemed more like alchemy than science, a mix of motivational mumbo jumbo and misty-eyed tales of inspiration and dedication. But for more than a decade, one organization has been tracking hundreds of thousands of kids, and looking at why some teachers can move them three grade levels ahead in a year and others can’t. Bohemian Alchemy


Media Dragons: You know people have tried to put us off as being crazy Literary magazines were once launching pads for great
Literary magazines were once launching pads for great writers and big ideas. Is it time to write them off? VQR editor Ted Genoways wonders...

It is impossible to write about such a book as Best European Fiction 2010 without also writing about America's disinterest in such a book. American literary culture is insular? Oh, yeah? Are Czechs all that taken by fiction coming out of Denmark? Do Latvians groove on Philippine poetry?
With Eric Rohmer, as with Mozart, Austen, James, and Proust, art was not just about life. It was about discovery and design and reasoning with chaos. TO those of us who have seen all of Eric Rohmer’s films it is impossible not to remember when, where, with whom we saw each one. I even remember the second and third time I saw his films. “My Night at Maud’s,” “Claire’s Knee,” “Chloe in the Afternoon” are grafted onto my life. Something happened between me and these films at the Thalia, at the Brattle, at the old Cinémathèque, or at the old Olympia Theater on the Upper West Side. But I can no longer isolate what that something is. I don’t even care to know what was exclusively Eric Rohmer’s and what was mine, what he was ever so cautious to convey and what I most likely misunderstood completely. The mix, as sometimes happens, becomes the work of art.

• Once [Emotions trump rules. This is why, when we speak of moral role models, we think of their hearts, not their brains. Frans de Waal explains Empathy's not a uniquely human trait, explains primatologist Frans de Waal. Apes and other animals feel it as well, suggesting that empathy is truly an essential part of who we are The Evolution of Empathy ; Russians can go nutty when it comes to dogs. In Moscow, stray dogs, like Bessie in Austria, have recovered their genetic wolf roots. They have also learned how to board subways and where to step off. All by themselves... Russians can go nutty when it comes to dogs named Bessie or Bestia ]
• · With morality, we build a castle in the air and then live in it. It has no objective foundation, but it is a real castle You can say the same of money.; Irving Thalberg knew he was fated to an early death. This made him impatient with mediocrity and ambitious for success in his limited time Mortality
• · · Teenage peasant girls in the Middle Ages did have occasional religious visions. Few went on, like Joan of Arc, to lead armies. ...Joan of Arc belongs to that select club of historical figures (Shakespeare, Napoleon, Lincoln, Churchill) who are so endlessly fascinating that new biographies appear on a virtually annual basis. And this is to say nothing of endless literary and artistic portrayals—in Joan’s case, by everyone from Shakespeare to Shaw to The Simpsons. ; Was Joseph a drag queen with his “coat of many colors”? Did Ishmael molest Isaac? Maybe not, but the Bible is more risqué than many would prefer “And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and He took the bone of Adam’s penis and made him a woman.” ... Er, wait, wasn’t it from one of Adam’s ribs that Eve was created? Not according to Ziony Zevit. A professor of Semitic languages at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles Zevit posits that the Hebrew word tsela (literally “side,” but traditionally translated as “rib”) employed in Genesis refers in fact to Adam’s member. Adam’s Family Jewels
• · · · With wine, “as with women and horses, the real best is second best.” Wine lover Roger Scruton apparently means it, too... Wine Lovers; You know people have tried to put me off as being crazy. Thelonious Monk was only too willing to use the notion to his advantage. "Sometimes it's to your advantage for people to think you're crazy." He ought to have known. Monk was one of only a few jazz musicians to appear on the cover of Time magazine (others include Louis Armstrong, , Duke Ellington and Wynton Marsalis) and was celebrated as a genius by everyone who mattered Dave Brubeck
• · · · · I’m a misfit,” David Gelernter says. Yes, and a fiercely independent one, like his hero, the visionary prophet, William Blake Can you know something you don't know you know? I’m a misfit,” ; Slovak born Andy Warhol is everywhere. He’s in Europe. He’s in Asia. He’s quoted in papers every day. He has energy still. He’s just, you know, still alive.. Who Fears a Free Mikhail Khodorkovsky? Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s fate stands as a warning, not only to Russians, but to the West. Why is the Kremlin so afraid to see him set free?...
• · · · · · When Rilke died of leukemia, he did not want to know the name of his disease. For him, all that was worth knowing was in his poems... Leukemia ; Paybacks

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Media Dragons believe there's more to love about tax season than most people realize. To spread the love, H&R Block is offering what may be your smartest Valentine's date ever. Make a date with H&R Block this Valentine's and pay only $14 for any H&R Block At Home online product if you register Feb. 12-14. You will receive the full menu of advanced features that H&R Block At Home Basic, Deluxe and Premium offer
It's not often that we see an editorial article that prompts us to get the scissors out of the drawer to cut it out of the Extra.
My partner and I recently spend a week in Hawaii. It intrigues me that we left on Friday night, and arrived on Friday morning.
I rang home to see if we’d already left but had to leave a message on the answering machine. Travel expands the mind. We met new people, experienced fantastic scenery and attractions, and created havoc on the Honolulu Freeway.
I also learnt about humuhumunukunukuapua’a. Airline flights are another matter.
Flying cattle class means Jenny Craig meals, Corolla legroom, abysmal movies, and airline bobsession with Fosters. And other people’s kids. For eight and one half hours, we were in a flying crèche.
Crying, tantrums, seat kicking, playing in the aisles and oblivious parents. “It’s OK dear, we’ll be there soon”. No we won’t. We’ve only just flown over Auckland, you dill. Parents need to control their children or be seated in a special area. Some consideration please. - GK Flying solo - Always being positive can become a negative

To run with extra’s theme, is anyone else fed up with the constant publication of letters expressing frustration at trivial annoyances in people’s day today lives? Personally I had to stand quite close to someone on the train this morning and got wet in the rain. Anyone care? Thought not. –CY Don’t sweat the small stuff


How I make the rich even richer: catching the mood of my generation From parliamentary failure to beaurocratic (sic)absurdity: Who are the liars in your life?
Tax Prof Daniel N. Shaviro (NYU) has a forthcoming novel, Getting It (iUniverse, 2010)

Bill Doberman is a liar. He's also a conniver, a phony, a hypocrite, and a cad -- and those are his good points. But will it all be enough to save him on the Night of the Long Knives -- when his law firm, Ashby & Cinders, picks, at most, one new partner -- coming up in just six weeks?
His fellow associates hate him. The partner he's working for wants to destroy him. And does Mr. Cinders, sitting at the top of the food chain, even know who he is?
Not to mention what Lyla will do if she catches him being unfaithful again ...
"Evelyn Waugh meets John Grisham. Hilarious and gripping." Tax Prof Joseph Bankman (Stanford)

• Liars ; [I tend to bounce in and out of communism and capitalism and I have found something nice to say about nearly every ism I have experienced. Except Political freedom ; The irony of dictatorships is that when democracy emerges from their ashes, it is sometimes the ex-dictator's top generals who, metaphorically speaking, pound the nails in the coffin of the dictator and make it possible for civilians to keep the military away from the helm of power. This was the case with the successful democratic transitions of Spain, Portugal and Greece many decades ago, and with those of Chile and Argentina more recently, as Independent Institute Senior Fellow Alvaro Vargas Llosa explains in his latest column. The irony of dictatorships ]
• · Tax, Wheatley and a tale of two Wickenbys ; That encounter moved Mr Egan to … claim he had been "intimidated and terrified" by "the big, burly Usher of the Black Rod", who had approached the Treasurer " in a threatening way with his rod over his shoulder
• · · Jonah Lehrer wrote in December about how psychologists are learning more about how the creative brain functions, using the example of a simple but powerful experiment among college students. One group was given the smallest permission to think fearlessly, and they jumped at it ; Past;
• · · · The former staff member, who was not named, made a protected disclosure to the clerk of the Legislative Assembly, Russell Grove, in January claiming Ms Paluzzano falsified the pay records of her parliamentary staff In an email to Mr Grove, the former staff member said he was accused of threatening Ms Paluzzano. I argue that I was simply trying to fulfil my responsibility to the NSW Parliament of reporting conduct that I find questionable ; The revelation that former public servant Terry Charles Spence had turned whistleblower came as a surprise to everyone Parliamentary embezzler blows whistle on MPs ; Mark D'Arney
• · · · · A lot of hype and hyped-up criticism have accompanied the launch of the iPad. The critics have missed the point. The iPad is not a netbook or scaled-down laptop. It is not a workhorse loaded up with functions and hardware. It is a platform for story-telling, interactive, personal and immediate Insanely, Fantastically, Brilliantly Amazing ; Reminding the world to get a little Insane

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Media Dragon is drowning in tablet rumors which keeps thinking differently
Some fads in the world are not just drawing attention but also make one wonder as to how there are blind followers to every trend. Apple and other Fads


The sad truth is, we have the tax system we deserve. We have not paid enough attention to what is being done in our names in Washington, so we are where we are. We won’t get a simple, fair, and efficient tax system until we demand it. So far, we have not -- but hope springs eternal. Lack of transparency is a moral hazard


Inch Past the High-Water Mark Advisors to the Affluent
They are bankers, but you won’t find one at your local branch of the NatWest.

They earn multimillion-pound salaries, either at a flat rate, on commission, or by owning their own companies and equity funds, investing more than £300 billion on behalf of their clients every year. Often public-school and Oxbridge educated, they are influential and charismatic, yet their names and faces are largely unknown to the public. Until now, that is: for the first time, Spear’s Wealth Management Survey has listed the Top 50 wealth managers in Britain in a Power Index.
Their job is to look after the megabillion pound assets of the super-rich — wealth that only 25 years ago would have been secreted away in offshore accounts. The 1980s Big

• Super rich [The lesson is that if it sounds too good to be true it probably is - An American citizen suspected of being behind a massive tax fraud scheme was extradited from Israel to the US massive fraud case ; “Another crazy idea popped into Bill Comiskey’s head: What if the tax department required banks to turn over their customers’ mortgage applications? “ Ideas ]
• · Estate agents, journalists, bankers and politicians are generally deemed the professionals least esteemed by the general public. But as the acrimony over how to repair the public finances intensifies, some parts of the tax profession are gaining pariah status as well. Working in tax: system struggles with complexity ; Two things are certain about moving money overseas: First, it’s necessary if you want to shield at least some of your savings from the capital controls, wealth taxes and confiscations that will (not might) be imposed by over-indebted governments in coming years. Second, there’s a whole ecosystem of predators waiting to exploit the first-time offshore investor’s inexperience. So knowing the risks and how to avoid them is crucial
• · · President spokesman denies any grounds for suspicion in motives behind decisions. Pitr has been a fugitive from Czech justice since 2007, after being convicted of tax fraud Klaus pardoned criminals linked to gang ; The conversation can last less than 30 seconds. But it's an exchange that has resulted in criminal fraud subpoenas, felony charges and jail time for business owners across New York state. And it usually goes something like this: Unfortunately for the store owner, the customer is really an undercover investigator with the state Department of Taxation and Finance. New York prowling for tax cheats
• · · · For me it began in the early 80's when I worked at the Parliamentary Library Your first Apple, or how it all began... ; Above Law ;
• · · · · Apple tablet: Next big thing is here - Apple fans eager to swallow the tablet. If you're reading this Wednesday and you haven't heard of the tablet, I'll wager you a MacBook Pro that by Thursday you'll have heard more than you can read … The veil was finally lifted on one of the most hotly anticipated gadgets in technology history tonight as Apple's Steve Jobs held aloft the iPad, Apple iPad: the wait is over – but is it future of media or oversized phone? ; iThing: The Best Tablet Spoof Yet - Apple launches the iPad, its 9.7" colour screen tablet, which aims to rob Kindle of growing ebook market and be hottest gadget in technology history iPad on Google

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Not every blogger would begin a history of the 2010s with a vignette in which the oldest house in King Street is peppered with stories from the dream team Peter, Linda and the richest man in the world. Big Night Out fireworks filled with an F- 18 flyover, a 100-gun salute, a new tax crackdown or gala ball?

2010 is not any old year. It marks the centenary year for the Australian Taxation Office, a silver anniversary of the introduction of capital gains tax and a ten anniversary of GST (31 January 2000 to be exact - according to Phil).
Australia Post will honour our centenary with a commemorative stamp that will be circulated among our public. It will be co-designed by tax office staff and launched before November 11, 2010.
The Royal Australian Mint will honour our centenary with a circulating 20 cent coin. It will be designed by tax office staff and released in 2010.

Indeed, GST has been with us for nearly 10 years. This time ten years ago, there was talk of riots in the streets and fears of a consumer strike as prices went up and the threat of price policeman Alan Fels waving his stick. But as it turns out that was the least of our worries. Dr Ken Henry - I like to pay taxes. With them I buy civilization

Recent Survey: Taxpayers giving the rich a cheap ride: survey - Most Australians believe high-income earners do not pay enough tax, and nearly all think low- and middle-income earners pay too much

Taxation is the price we pay for civilization. A Taxing Year to Remember
Michael D'Ascenzo who is widely recognised in Australia and globally for his expertise in taxation and superannuation. (Note - Michael D'Ascenzo is not related to a Canadian actor who is known as Rainbow "Rain" Papadakis in the children's television show Naturally, Sadie.)

Michael D’Ascenzo took up his role as antipodean Commissioner of Taxation on 1 January 2006. When Michael D’Ascenzo joined the Tax Office in 1977, during the bohemian Havel’s Charter 77, he was captured by the exciting work associated with challenging the tax avoidance schemes of the late 1970s and early 1980s, particularly trust stripping and ‘bottom of the harbour’ schemes.
"This tax haven project (Wickenby) is one of the big success stories of the G20," the OECD's head of tax policy, Jeffrey Owens said. "This is not a numbers game. We have seen a real change in attitudes towards compliance."

*The Canberra Times captured a few interesting snippets about the Commish - John Hatton, AO also likes the quote from the Amerikan Oliver Wendell Holmes:

Few children nurse a desire to become that legendary figure of hate, the tax man.
And when young lawyer Michael D'Ascenzo applied to join the public service more than three decades ago, he admits he had little wish to stay at the Australian Taxation Office he now leads.
"The ATO was the first to ring back. I came here with the intention of being here for a few months until I got a better job," he said.
Yet, Mr D'Ascenzo's passion for tax issues grew and he has now been Australia's Taxation Commissioner for more than four years.
The 56-year-old, whose expertise is sought-after worldwide, has been made an Officer of the Order of Australia for his service to public administration and the tax profession throughout his career.
He says his enthusiasm for his work springs from its crucial contribution to the community. During his 33 years with the agency, the Tax Office's work has grown beyond collecting public revenue to protecting workers' futures by administering sttperannttation law and helping cut red tape for businesses.
"I like the phrase that [American jurist] Oliver Wendell Holmes usually used, that `tax is the price we pay for a civilised society' ... You really are making a great contribution to the community and to Australia." He agrees the Tax Office will always need to battle to win the community's affection. That's the light at the top of the hill. It's the aspiration we go for ... If we can take a few steps forward, then that's progress," he said. "At the end of the day, you're trying to redress thousands of years of stereotyping. while people might not boast about it, deep down, most people appreciate the work we do on behalf of the community." He said the Australia Day honour was not his award alone, but one he would share with the Tax Office and its staff.
But today's achievement clearly means a lot to the Italian-born Mr D'Ascenzo, whose pride was clear when he reflected on how much the award would have meant to his recently deceased mother. "My only regret is that my mum's not here for this moment."

• Minister Congratulates Tax Commissioner on Australia Day Award ; Italian-born Mr D'Ascenzo ; Our ABC [The Historian, Leigh Edmonds, is to capture the official history of the Tax Office recognising our past, present and future Tax Office Centenary significant memoir; Official history ; The Federal Court has dismissed an application by 3 taxpayers seeking an interlocutory injunction to restrain the Tax Office from carrying out an examination of the taxpayers under s 264 of the ITAA 1936. Daniels v Cranston [2009] FCA 1412, Federal Court, Lander J, 20 November 2009 From Bottom of the Harbour to Wickenby Tax Havens;]
• · Australia could have had a goods and services tax (GST) 20 years sooner, had John Howard had his way. GST on John Howard's agenda in 1979
10 years of GST - The trials and tribulations - Memories of Lara Dunston ; Treasury boss Ken Henry has set himself an ambitious goal: he wants to shake up how we all think about rivers and roads A New Tax System In 2009 Jeffery Owens, the head of the OECD’s Centre for Fiscal Affairs remarked, Who would have thought 25 years ago that the ATO would be so highly regarded internationally?; Praise for ATO war on offshore tax cheats
• · · A Flood of leaks from the government about its plans for superannuation and tax reform are causing distress and confusion in the business community and among pre-retirees trying to plan long-term savings and investments. Tax reform leaks are causing concern; Ken Henry report: Contact us before we contact you.
• · · · For weeks – no, months – I have suppressed the dark thoughts. As the new year dawned, the twinges of panic became more persistent, yet I remained paralysed by doubt and guilt. With each passing day, the pressure grows more unbearable… I really must find out where the money goes ... You can help by supporting a piece of US legislation called the Energy Security Through Transparency Act, which would require oil, gas, and mining companies to publicly disclose payments made to governments. Follow the money," which shows just what happens when you buy gas every day ; The macroeconomic arguments for the GST I think were, and remain, watertight. Remember, in the 1980s as Treasurer Keating was for it before he was agin’ it as PM in the 1990s?. The GST introduced a broad-based, growing revenue stream for government and ensured that the wealthy couldn’t avoid paying tax on their (large, and growing) expenditures, even if clever accountants meant they could largely avoid paying much on their income. A particular innovation of the Australian model was to reserve GST revenue to the States, ostensibly making it available for service delivery (schools, roads, hospitals) to the communities that had paid it. We can quibble over how much in % terms each state pays and gets, the competence of the state governments as service providers, and the difficulty businesses face in complying with their collections and remittance obligations — but still I think the macroeconomic argument has proven its validity ten years on. still I think the macroeconomic argument has proven its validity ten years on.; The excise legislation is more than 100 years old as excise has been levied on a number of commodities since 1901. 1901 - that means even older than the oldest Public Accounts Committee in Australia
• · · · · Over the past ninety years the High Court has been divided in its approach to the definition of 'duties of excise'. Initially such duties were confined to taxes on the production or manufacture of goods. This definition was gradually extended to include taxes on goods imposed at any point in the distribution process. Over time the Court came to accept that exceptions should be made for taxes on alcohol, tobacco and petrol, and hence the States have been permitted to tax these goods. The plaintiffs were charged under the Business Franchise Licences (Tobacco) Act 1987 (NSW) with selling tobacco in NSW without a licence. The Act provides for a licence fee, which includes a set amount, plus an amount calculated by reference to the value of tobacco sold during the 'relevant period'. The 'relevant period' is defined as 'the month commencing 2 months before the commencement of the month in which the licence expires'. The plaintiffs argued that the licence fee imposed by the Act was an excise and hence invalid due to section 90 of the Constitution. A majority of the High Court (Brennan CJ, McHugh, Gummow and Kirby JJ) agreed. - The case that made GST possible What is an excise duty? Ha and Hammond v NSW ; The states have been urged to undertake their own Henry-style reviews of their tax systems and act on the findings, rather than blame Canberra for their economic woes States urged to review tax
• · · · · · Accountability, flexibility and transparency have become, in recent decades, the mantras of management in Australia and New Zealand as the public sector attempts to become more like the private sector. Driven by economic rationalism, by managerialism, by the election of right-of-centre governments and the movement of left-of-centre governments to the right, and by a different expectation of what governments can and should do, public administration has morphed into new public management (NPM). Governing the Government: The Paradoxical Place of the Public Accounts Committee; Back in 2002 my old Public Accounts Committee celebrated centenary and its courageous chair Andrew Tink knew how to deliver a speech ... When Lieutenant James Cook arrived at Botany Bay at the end of April 1770, he brought with him two future Parliamentary Committee witnesses who would turn out to be crucial to the British Government’s decision to settle Australia. Those future witnesses spent their short time at Botany Bay examining everything in sight and making copious contemporaneous notes of whatever caught their eye. They were of course, Joseph Banks and James Mario Matra who along with Captain Cook himself wrote in their Journals about the sandy soil, strange vegetation and even stranger animals. The Role of Parliamentary Committee Witnesses in the Foundation of Australia, Mr Andrew Tink MP

CODA - STUART WASHINGTON - blast from parliamentary past writes well. It reads like an airport spy novel: an unsolved murder in a Tokyo red-light district, exotic tax havens around the world, and thousands of defrauded investors in Britain. Add to that some $118 million tipped in to Astarra Strategic Fund by Australian investors which, almost three months after authorities blew the whistle, is still not properly accounted for. The investigation by regulators is understood to include every possibility - from the $118 million being "misplaced" to misappropriation. "misplaced" to misappropriation. Authorities were alerted in September in a letter from the Bronte Capital blogger, John Hempton, about the improbably smooth returns achieved by Astarra Strategic, which advertised itself as an investor in hedge funds.

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In my wild erratic fancy visions come to me of Clancy
Gone a-droving 'down the Cooper' where the Western drovers go;
As the stock are slowly stringing, Clancy rides behind them singing,
For the drover's life has pleasures that the townsfolk never know
-Banjo Paterson (Banjo Crabbe)

On T-shirts, as capes, as tattoos covering arms, faces and ankles, the Australian flag was the real star of the Australia Day at the iceberg and the Crabbe Hole …

The Crabbe Hole (- a place to be on Australia Day or any day ...)
Bondi Icebergs
1 Notts Av
Bondi Beach 2026 NSW
Phone: 0403 074 447


Boxing Klokan Kangaroo - Ripples Andrew Crabbe has put together a pleasant list of beachside favourites ...

Australian English, or Strine, is arguably the most international of all English dialects. It has been shaped by its Pommy parent, American television, one million of Australia's 20 million inhabitants living in foreign countries at any one time, and Australia having strong sporting relations with all other Commonwealth countries.

Just in time for Australia Day, Homer Simpson has been declared the honorary Australian of the year. Ralph magazine made the announcement to commemorate The Simpsons' 20th anniversary on the airwaves. Homer's well-known fondness for Australian specialties such as beer, barbecues and sports (watching them on TV, that is) also landed him the job of guest editor for the mag's February issue. So 21st century Bohemian Soldier Svejk (The Good Soldier Švejk (also spelled Schweik or Schwejk) also known as Homer is on Australia Day named honorary Aussie

Alone of all the races on earth, they seem to be free from the 'Grass is Greener on the other side of the fence' syndrome, and roundly proclaim that Australia is, in fact, the other side of that fence.

Ach, antipodean Rosie Williams asks herself some hard questions about Australia Day in her article, Lest We Forget, published on January 25th in On Line Opinion ...

Australia Day 2010: learn something new about Australia and then tell someone you know or meet Underdog Down Under: Can one be both European and Australian?
Last year I sat in my apartment trying to figure out what to do about Australia Day. There was a celebration in the local park, a beautiful riverside niche where I often enjoy the local cafe. Yet today I felt torn. Would the celebrations carry on around the Indigenous Australians living on what we feel are the margins of society, looking past them as though they do not exist? Had anything changed since the 2008 Apology? Was Australia Day celebrating an achievement or an invasion?

These questions troubled me and having no answers kept me away from the park. I realised that for time unknown Aboriginals had sat by that river doing pretty much what everyone was doing today: socialising, eating, living. And there the Aboriginals are - still doing exactly the same thing in the new millennium. This timeless culture lives among us yet we do not see it. With all our educational programs we are still blind. What we see as culture: nice rooms, expensive furnishings and stiff behaviour does not acknowledge the respect for nature, the rites and customs that grew up with this ancient land.
We live alongside one of the oldest cultures on earth yet know almost nothing about it So often we think of history as boring and irrelevant without realising that the history of Australia is the history of the world. Australia has a rich history dating back into the mists of time and one which we need to know
I'd be the first to say this country is a great place
But if we call it 'home' there is a few things we must face
This is a nation made from murder, the theft of land
And the denial of rights we must understand
Yeah, they call it "Black Armband" but these things are facts and it's time to
Acknowledge what's happened
Cause tomorrow songs are made from today's sounds
Today's cacophony - of course it has a background

• The country itself is the ultimate joke; the wave you body-surf into shore after a day at the beach could contain a shark or a rip-tide and, when you get back, your house could have been burnt to the ground in a bush fire. That's where the whole 'no worries' thing comes from ; [ See also Rosie's site brentonfletcher.com; Media Dragons Down Under]
• · The Crabbe Hole - Kick back and watch the parade of sun lovers at this tiny poolside cafe that cooks with flair.
Food Great ingredients shore up the well-made breakfast and lunch snacks.
Service DIY and so laid-back, it's barely there. But everything arrives quickly and with a smile.
Atmosphere Priceless postcard views and snapshots of all manner of humanity.
Value Good. About $12 a person.
Noise Low. A constant ocean and outdoor hum.
Recommended dishes Tuna sandwich, chicken sandwich, fruit bread with agave-scented ricotta, coffee
HE SPRAWLS on a bench overlooking Bondi's ocean baths, his enormous belly spilling over an almost obscene thong, arms and legs spread open to the sun.
I spot this pleasure seeker as I make my way down the ramp to the Crabbe Hole, a tiny cafe above the pools at the world-famous Bondi Icebergs Winter Swimming Club.
This beached Buddha is exactly the kind of subject that photographers from the late Max Dupain to his son, Rex, would take pictures of as they studied the relationship between ocean and human forms.
This is the view from the Crabbe Hole, which is wedged between the gym and the sauna on the deck overlooking the pools. You go through the turnstiles and the pool guys waive the entry fee if you tell them you're just coming to eat.

The baths at the southern end of Bondi Beach date from 1887 and are the home of the Bondi Icebergs club, which dates from 1929. To join, you simply have to swim three out of four Sundays every month from May to September for five years.
It's much easier to sit at the cafe, dating from 2007, when a local actor called Andrew Crabbe saw an opportunity to offer artisan-made bread, barista-grade coffee, organic juices and niche-brand ice-creams to swimmers and sun worshippers.Helen Greenwood Sydney Morning Herald Good Living; Andrew Crabbe
• · · Ripples Andrew Crabbe has put together a pleasant list of beachside favourites The menus are like family members: the same but different; Cookbooks are only one genre of food writing. Helen Greenwood runs workshops on food writing. She says there are many ways to describe food that doesn't involve saying yuk or yummy. For our 'how to write' series, Helen Greenwood spoke to the Book Show's Sarah L'Estrange about describing what you eat and what food means in literature; Bondi Crabbe;
• · · · The Taming of the Shrew By William Shakespeare Andrew Bibby, left, and Andrew Crabbe really need to rehearse their Nazi salute.

• · · · · THE FIRE RAISERS Biedermann (Andrew Crabbe); Lord/Baptista Andrew Crabbe
• · · · · · 26, As we collectively sober up from yet another Australia Day weekend it is an opportune time to reflect on the ambiguities and inadequacies of celebrating a nation's achievements and cultural diversity on a day that represents the beginning of what Indigenous academic Anne Pattel-Gray has termed The great white flood: What Is The Australian Story?
As we collectively sober up from yet another Australia Day weekend it is an
I'm a Migrant : A true short story from the experience- Josef Imrich, Glenn Clarke. wentworth stories about Josef Imrich,; icebergs; Dans of underbelly
• · · · · · · Don't have significant stories to tell, perhaps apart from the indigenous story... Australia at its heart is so racist that I don't think we can stomach it.There is a stereotype that Australian men dance like Frankenstein. Their lack of rhythm and stiff knees has many of them resembling a chicken or jack in the box bouncing from side to side. Other men just watch over the dance floor, beer in hand, as they perhaps beat their chin to the music. - This is a wonderful reminder that Australia is one of the great homes to people who crossed the world seeking freedom and opportunity ... This work reflects the joyous hope that refugees bring to Australia. The more horrible their previous life experience, the greater their hope that Australia will offer an opportunity for a life of peace and harmony.
Why is Gallipolli such a big Australian story? It’s one of Australia’s great, great, great stories, of courage and stupidity. Australian author Peter Carey; Terry McGee and I David Williamson stands alone in the world of Australian playwrights. The man is a genius who weaves good humour into his psychological explorations. (Even Shakespeare would have been impressed. ) You Know You're Australian When; Films; unspeakable aspect of the Australian migrant experience; Kenneth Slessor's Five Bells is perhaps Australia's most popular poem. Slessor started writing poetry during the great war. The anguish endured as he wrote about his friend found floating in Sydney Harbour. It was the last poem Slessor that ever wrote
• · · · · · · · Here's a bit of a tip: if you do rent, always go directly through the owner. Real estate agents treat you the same way banks do. To them you are nothing more than a ledger entry.
Owners – for the most part – treat you like a human being. All they really want is someone decent who won't trash their investment property or give them trouble. Forget the Great Australian Dream, renting sets you free ; Australian folklore since European settlement has established a folk identity of Australians as resilient people who laugh in the face of adversity, face up to great difficulties and deliberately go against authority and the establishment - reflecting a 'larrikin' spirit. The bush and the outback are also identified as characteristic of Australian life along with bushrangers, shearers and drovers.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them. Amazon; Google Books; Books on Google; Google Stories; Haiti's capital is a study in extremes

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Economics Blogger and Blog Rankings by Scholarly Impact
Franklin G. Mixon Jr. (Mercer University, Department of Economics) & Kamal P. Upadhyaya (University of New Haven, Department of Economics and Finance) have published Blogometrics, Eastern Economic Journal (2010), vol. 36, pp. 1–10. Here is the abstract:
This study gathers information on a wide array of economics bloggers and blogs in order to develop a ranking of economics bloggers that is based on citations to their academic research. This ranking is used in an iterative process that next presents a ranking of economics blogs that is based on the ranking of economics bloggers, and finally a ranking of economics departments that is based on the ranking of economics blogs. The ranking of blogs included in this study is positively correlated with an external ranking based on their productivity (popularity), whereas the department ranking presented here comports quite well with department rankings in Coupé (2003) and Roessler (2004) that are developed with more traditional measures, such as the impact of the scholarship of an economics department's faculty.

Here are the Top 10 Economics Bloggers by Scholarly Impact:

1. Gary S. Becker (Chicago), Becker-Posner Blog

2. Gregory Mankiw (Harvard), Mankiw's Blog

3. Richard Posner (Chicago), Becker-Posner Blog

4. Nouriel Roubini (NYU), RGE Monitor

5. Paul A. Samuelson (MIT), Inside the Economist's Mind

6. Nicolai J. Foss (Copenhagen), Organizations & Markets

7. Justin Wolfers (Pennsylvania), Freakonomics

8. Daniel Hamermesh (Texas), Freakonomics

9. Richard B. Langlois (Connecticut), Organizations & Markets

10. Steven D. Levitt (Chicago), Freakonomics
Here are the Top 10 Economics Blogs by Scholarly

France is considering a tax on Google to support old media companiesAmazon, Google and taxes, oh my! from Don't Mess With Taxes

Will the rich flee the U.S. to fairer tax climes?

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Happy birthday Dial ...

Google and blogger.com rock even more so now that Australian and French researchers are claiming that watching TV will increase the risk of you dying young.

iMrich (Meaning, if you own it, you have enough dough for yet another gadgetiMrich (Meaning, if you own it, you have enough dough for yet another gadget

Robert Hughes once wrote: I feel guilty when I'm not writing and when I'm writing I feel guilty I'm not writing well enough ...

Radical mazement of Memoirs Down Under
What do Mick Gatto, Roger Rogerson, Mark “Chopper” Read, Graham “Abo” Henry and Arthur “Neddy” Smith have in common? That’s right. They’re all published authors.

There is a view that these books are little more than crime pornography. I must admit to a certain fascination. In fact I possess a substantial True Crime library. “I, Mick Gatto” and Rogerson’s book will shortly be added to it.
I’m not bothered by the assertions that these books contribute to the phenomenon of the celebrity gangster. It’s just that if I were a crook, I’m not sure that penning an autobiography would be all that good for business.
The American Mafia hid its light under a bushel so effectively that until 1957 their very existence was dismissed as a nasty rumour.
At that time a particularly diligent state trooper in upstate New York noticed an unusually large number of limousines parked outside the summer residence of Italian-American, Joseph Barbaro. The trooper took down the registration numbers and discovered that all of the vehicles were registered to a John Doe of Hoboken, New Jersey.

• Underbelly [Winning awards is something every media dragon loves to do Red Carpet Treatment ; When writing first drafts you look for the rhythm and the energy. But mostly it’s a matter of feeling a way forward. On Cold Rivers and other places]
• · In recent years a large number of best-selling books have been victims' tales of suffering at the hands of adults. A whole new genre – the misery memoir – established itself. Several of these books have been contested by family members and some cases have gone to court. The most high-profile was that of Constance Briscoe, the barrister who claimed to have been viciously abused by her British Jamaican mother. The mother sued her and lost. The weight of silence is the gravity of all the unsaids, the unseens, and how they shape our lives unforgettable story of of remembering, forgetting, pretending, of becoming who you are; Franz Kafka's manuscripts are the subject of a protracted legal battle that one can only describe as, well, Kafkaesque. Kafka left his papers to Max Brod to burn them. After that the plot picks up, explains Independent Institute Senior Fellow Alvaro Vargas Llosa explains in his latest syndicated column. Brod published most of the papers, making Kafka a literary icon. After Brod fled Nazi Germany for Tel Aviv, he gave some of the remaining papers to his secretary and companion Esther Hoffe, who bequeathed them to her daughters, who then sold some and kept the rest--in what is now a smelly, damp animal shelter hardly conducive to preserving the old works. Kafka’s Ordeal
• · · Getting things done is not the same as making things happen. You can reply to emails, pay the bills, cross off the to-do’s, fulfill your obligation, repeat what you heard, go with the flow, anticipate roadblocks, aim for “good enough.” Or you can organize a community, take a risk, set ambitious goals, give more than you take, change perceptions, forge a new path, create possibility, demand excellence. Don’t worry too much about getting things done. Make things happen. NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE FOR MEDIA DRAGONS; How Official Unemployment Stats Mislead Fuzzy unemployment math
• · · · Inside my body aches,
pain from cold rivers
Turns to lakes
Like a bonfire, flames to dust,
To give to take, Slumber dreams
To nightmare wakes
Pure love can turn to lust,
Everything turns to rust
We start to die as we are born,
Dusk comes quickly after dawn
Dawn awakes after dusk,
Everything turns to rust
Life in this world is inherently paradoxical: Everything passes and everything matters; everything turns to dust and everything is of infinite value and importance.
What I know is that everything I touch just turns to dust.
Pure love will turn to lust,. Everything turns to dust
Pure love will turn to lust,. Everything turns to dust; Trials, tragedies, triumphs
In a chapter titled, "To Be Amazed", Louv talks about a time when a rabbi, a Protestant Minister, a Catholic priest and an imam met in his living room to discuss parenting. Rabbi Martin Levin, of Congregation Beth-El, offered a wonderful description of "spirituality", quoted from a Professor Abraham Joshua Heschel.
"to be spiritual is to be constantly amazed. Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement. Heschel would encourage his students to get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed."
When I look into the eyes of my two children, I'm sometimes reminded of a quote from Abraham Heschel: Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement. To get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted.... Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be filled with wonder. Indeed, nothing is trivial. There are no inconsequential moments of life. Every thought, feeling, and decision we make is an As it is written, "We live once, and then we face judgment"
Life in this world is inherently paradoxical: Everything passes and everything matters; everything turns to dust everything is of infinite value and importance.
An old chassidic tale says that every person should walk through life with two notes, one in each pocket. On one note should be the words, I am but dust and ashes; On the other note should be the words - For my sake was this world created.
Maybe it's because I am examining my 30 years in Australia my new home, my exile, my strange exisistence, but I've become more and more conscious of the fragility and glory of life. Each of us is given the choice to graciously accept the inevitable passage of time or confront life with inner protest and despair. everything passes.
• · · · · Why constitutional coffee break is important for physical and even (mental) wellbeing ;-)Office workers are being encouraged to get up and out of their chairs more often, as new research suggests too much sitting down is literally killing us. The human body was designed to move, his report concluded, which also found the increased mortality rate affected both the healthy and unfit. Offices make a stand against sitting Some companies make internal email-free time; Playscripts “consider how a company could succeed by reinventing its role as reality changes.” His method involves characters and their roles, storylines and connections, links and rules, plots and subplots. More fun than the usual approach to strategy planning! Strategy Tools for a Shifting Landscape
• · · · · · 'Banking' is a necessary public good that all Australians require access to in order to make their way in life.Establishing a People’s Bank; People in richer nations are more likely to feel enjoyment and love, and less likely to undergo pain, boredom, depression or anger. Money can buy you love

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Every path has a few puddles.

Good judgment comes from experience, and a lotta that comes from bad judgment.

Your fences need to be horse-high, pig-tight and bull-strong.

Forgive your enemies; it messes up their heads.

The best sermons are lived, not preached.

Life is simpler when you plow around the stumps\


Cold River - Memoir: His Story Remember Me? One Life. Six Words. What's Yours
Deceptively simple and surprisingly addictive, Not Quite What I Was Planning is a thousand glimpses of humanity—six words at a time.
One Life. Six Words. What's Yours?
When Hemingway famously wrote, "For Sale: baby shoes, never worn," he proved that an entire story can be told using a half dozen words. When the online storytelling magazine SMITH asked readers to submit six-word memoirs, they proved a whole, real life can be told this way too. The results are fascinating, hilarious, shocking, and moving.
From small sagas of bittersweet romance ("Found true love, married someone else") to proud achievements and stinging regrets ("After Harvard, had baby with crackhead"), these terse true tales relate the diversity of human experience in tasty bite-sized pieces. From authors Jonathan Lethem and Richard Ford to comedians Stephen Colbert and Amy Sedaris, to ordinary folks around the world, everyone has a six-word story to tell. After Harvard, had baby with crackhead

Once upon a time Ernest Hemingway was challenged to write a story using only six words. Impossible, some thought. Not for Papa, as Neal Conan explained on NPR's Talk of the Nation. The next day Hemingway produced this: For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.

• What gets me up in the morning? Sum Up Your Leadership in Six Words [I'll try harder next time.; After weeks of wall-to-wall for Palin, Agassi and Carrie Prejean, it is clear our narcissistic culture is obsessed with memoirs When too many memoirs are barely enough]
• · What is history without the personal memoirs of those who were there? Those who actually experienced the events and shared their thoughts on both the events and the times the occurred in. Autobiographically speaking,; We consume memoirs in huge numbers because we need them, writes Ben Yagoda. Other lives lived help us shape our own stories
• · · Fiction Vs. Memoir; Remember Me? Memoir: A History
• · · · Elizabeth Gilbert is the embodiment of the phrase "new BFF." She gives you a hug the first time she meets you. She has a warm smile, booming laugh, and sparkly eyes that telegraph candor and empathy. Her effortlessly approachable persona, translated to the page, propelled her 2006 memoir, Eat, Pray, Love, into what she describes as a "megajumbo international bestseller." Hollywood and Oprah came calling; readers embarked on Eat, Pray, Lovepilgrimages to places mentioned in the book. In more than 30 languages, Gilbert made herself a whole lot of new Best Friends Forever. Lightning striking twice; I started my public life as a Communist but quit the party after it began supporting the British during the Quit India movement; Some find them ridiculous but I call them beautiful. They are six-word memoirs. Six-word memoirs? Yes – pithy little verbal packages that convey more than you might imagine.

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In democracy it's your vote that counts. In feudalism it's your count that votes.

Every great idea starts with a dream. If you stand for nothing, you’ll fall for everything. I had no idea a theater publicist had coined the term, "blogosphere." Nor did I know the man behind this term was himself a blogger who didn't even like the word "blog." Ideas can be as brief as Graham's own life (he died at age 41).

In these new straightened economic times, we’re all having to work harder, knuckling down to the task at hand, and making sure we’re building a future that is sustaining and rewarding. It’s not easy. But it’s easier if you love what you’re doing, and you’re doing it all the time. Naysayers will say nay, but its actually easier than ever to devote yourself to what sustains you. All you need is a computer, and the desire to make a difference. It’s not about putting the reader at the heart of everything we do. It’s about putting ourselves at the heart of everything the reader does

Armageddon Media Dragons Eeerie deja vu - The Man Is Gone, But Long Live The Blogosphere
Most bloggers I know don’t much like the word "blog", and they have even less affection for blogosphere

Wikipedia says credit — or blame — for coining "blogosphere" goes to Brad Graham, a theater publicist and blogger in St. Louis who died this week at the age of 41. Look him up on Google and you’ll see: "Blogosphere" is his legacy.
But thank goodness, Graham was joking when he first said it — at the very birth of the form — in September 1999. He, too, didn't much like the word "blog" — "Oy! That name!" he exclaimed on his site, Bradlands. And so he worried about where this would lead us: perhaps to jokes about "falling off a blog," or worse, blogorreah

• Brad Graham [ Welcome to the Blogger's Choice Awards 2008 ; 2009 Blogger Appreciation Awards 2009]
• · Much like corporate America, PR is undergoing a sea change in how it does business. As traditional media shrinks and online/social media grows, a new breed of PR professionals is coming into its own. And although the word “integrated” is used way too often when describing the perfect campaign, it’s still a word that resonates. So what drives the perfect communications mix? People. Tweets and YouTube aside, PR is still a vocation dependent upon people and their creativity, innovative thinking and leadership. Those strengths perfectly describe the winners of PR News’ PR People Awards and the Hall of Fame inductees in this issue.
• · · Too many blogs, not enough ideas and thoughts! Nevermind, that didn't rhyme (blobs?). What I've been pondering on since I tagged Divya Uttam (and she tagged me back!) is the purpose of these so called blog memes. What is it? Could it be word of mouth marketing? Could it be search engine optimization? Or more simply, is it a form of 'innocent' link baiting? ; For those who bring unique and creative elements to their blogs. For those who incorporate art, music, creative writing, photo's, and other beautiful visual effects into their website. For those who put a unique spin on things and come up with new ideas. This award is for the artsy, the funky, the inventor, and even the rebel. Writer's Reviews Blogger Awards; This awa2rd is for those creative individuals who stand out from the crowd.
• · · · Computer Weekly’s search for the best blogs in IT is back for its second year, and this year’s competition, brought to you in association with IBM, promises to be bigger and better than before.; My friend, Jean Fischer, honored me with the Kreative Blogger Award. Thanks, Jean! iving the award to seven other bloggers, but please don't feel you must do the same Kreative Blogger Award
• · · · · Lonely Planet 2009 Travel Blogger Awards ; It turns out that older men chasing younger women contributes to human longevity and the survival of the species, according to new findings Old men chasing young women: A good thing

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After the year 2009, the New Year 2010 has in store various things for different bloggers. It is expected to be an eventful year with achievements and success in every field. This year you would achieve bigger goals and fulfill those commitments which were pending last year. Whatever work we had thought of taking up but failed to do so, should be taken up this year. We all would try to make this New Year 2010 more successful and joyful. Nothing but the strength of your convictions can keep a self-improvement promise going for at least 365 days
Happy New Year (ABBA)

DESPITE being threatened, kicked and having fireworks aimed at them on New Year's Eve, police have congratulated revellers on celebrating Sydney in style - thanks to George and Vicki; Michael and Michelle

A new year and a new set of challenges for Media Dragons Old Is New Again - Long live ...
You'll probably be able to hear the thud as most people trudge back to their first day at work of the New Year

The Romans told us just about everything we'd need to know about how they regarded new beginnings through their name for the first month of the year. They chose the name of Janus, their mythological god of the doorway.
Janus, you’ll recall, had two faces, a convenience that allowed him to look both forward and back. As 21st-century Americans, we adopt a similar approach. More than just counting down, partying and the midnight toast, it involves both a rueful glance over our shoulder and an eager look ahead.That’s what the flurry of year-end top 10 lists is all about. It fulfills our instinct to pause, evaluate and sum up.
The same can be said for our hapless habit of making New Year’s resolutions. Turning the page to a new calendar means the opportunity to rededicate oneself. It means a chance to resolve to do better.Now it’s true that some of those resolutions seem most notable for the ease and quickness with which they are broken. But they also carry a bonus benefit. They prompt us to stop and take stock. They remind us that we can do better.

• Out with the old year, and in with 2010. Today is a day for celebration and for hope of better things to come. After a rocky 2009, we all hope for a brighter year ahead – especially for our personal economies. Old year or new year? ; [There once was a planet called Earth, Then, 4.5 billion years after birth,... A poetic view of Copenhagen; Vicki and George of Gilbert and Michael and Michelle of Rawson Streets Sydney ]
• · Technology changes cap amazing decade ; Price quits over money… 100 essential websites… Fox fudges the numbers
• · · Man over manatee; Huge Iceberg Twice as Big as Hong Kong Drifting South of Australia
• · · · iTunes Picks the Best of 2009; 12 biggest controversies of 2009
• · · · · Why Are Publications Trying To Bite The Google Hand That Feeds Them?; Candace Sams's decision to report bad Amazon reviewers to the FBI is further proof why it's best not to respond publicly to your critics When authors attack ; Writing a book is hard, and often thankless. It takes years of effort. You have to fight throughout against pessimism - not just the doubts of other people, but your own as well. You probably won't make any money. And when your book actually reaches the marketplace, you can bet that some people will say mean things. What to do when your friend writes a book