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Bureaucracy is a much-maligned feature of contemporary government. And yet the aftermath of September 11 has opened the door to a reassessment of the role of a skilled civil service in the survival and viability of democratic society Dismantling Democratic States

10 days that dismantled the Labor Party Bloodbath in Macquarie Street There were inklings of Bob Carr's resignation two months before the event, write a journalistic couple, Robert Wainwright and Paola Totaro, (czech out hard copy for an exclusive diary entry) Premier's silence gave game away

Eye on Politics & Law Lords: Taxing Australian Federalism
The States, argues former Queensland Treasurer David Hamill, are in danger of becoming just another set of service providers to the Commonwealth as major changes continue to be wrought upon the nation's fiscal powers.

The Howard Government heralded its New Tax System (ANTS) and the Goods and Services Tax (GST) as a major reform of Australia's taxation system that would also enhance the financial capacity of Australia's States and Territories to provide community services. It was claimed that these reforms would arrest the erosion of States' and Territories' fiscal capacity that had occurred with the Commonwealth expanding its role in the social and economic affairs of the nation over the course of the twentieth century. In reality, ANTS and the GST have done exactly the opposite

• ANTS [One in 13 of the country's wealthiest individuals will soon be investigated by the Tax Office or locked in disputes with it - many for failing to disclose offshore assets or income Pay your dues, Tax Office tells wealthy; The death of the NSW property tax and end of vendor duty will speed fall in house prices Carr denies delaying vendor tax decision ; Web Porn to be Taxed, Filtered]
• · Health: Policy or Polyfilla? We need political leadership in Australia ; Information, e-government and opportunity: A public housing estate online
• · · Hurting family life and the working poor Pell and Jensen raise IR protest to critical mass; Labor needs some conviction politics Kim Beazley’s Tampa? ; John Quiggin doubts whether further privatisation of Telstra will benefit taxpayers T3 will be another disaster
• · · · Traudl Junge, the central character of the recent controversial movie Downfall, lived in Sydney with her younger sister The secret life of Hitler's secretary; Torture: The slippery slope to surrender to terror ; Bin Laden may not be capable of organising terror attacks directly, but then he does not need to Al-Qaida is now an idea, not an organisation
• · · · · Mushy middle? No way! A twelve-point creative-centrist agenda ; Ten best American political novels, 1945 - 2000 ; It's the perfume of the radical that gives him his edge Why Giorgio Agamben is so popular ; Government Regulation of Irrationality: Moral and Cognitive Hazards
• · · · · · The Real Aipac Spy Ring Story -- It Was All About Iran ; Before the War, CIA Reportedly Trained a Team of Iraqis to Aid U.S Scorpions ; Galloway says Blair and Bush Have blood on their hands

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I didn't more than glance over the original report in The Bookseller. It said that the Bloomsbury bestseller Rock Me Gently - Judith Kelly's memoir of a traumatic childhood in a Catholic orphanage - was being rewritten after "similarities" were spotted with Antonia White's 1933 novel Frost in May Rock Me Gently

Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: The Traveler: The Tale and/or the Teller
The novel's disappointing start illustrates the risks and advantages of having an unknown author. With luck and the right story, an anonymously written book can seem like a secret everyone is dying to learn, a book that sells itself

When it was released in June, John Twelve Hawks' "The Traveler" seemed an obvious summer smash, a highly publicized, high-tech thriller cited by The New York Times as "page-turningly swift" and also praised in The Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle and elsewhere. Bur the book didn't stay long on best seller lists, failing to crack the Times top 10, and it's now falling off entirely

• Book Has a Marketing Problem: No Author [That's a genuine fake, isn't it? Writer's formula: 'This is a business' ; E-books, cheaper than even paperbacks, are the quintessential "literature for the millions" The Future of the Book ; Reference Libraries ]
• · As Russia's female authors continue to reap awards and top the bestseller lists, several of them share their thoughts about why the second sex has taken first place Women's Hour: Men are strategists, women are tacticians ; Britain should follow the US approach to citizenship, which emphasises not only diversity but the ties that bind The identity vacuum ; I was convinced that I should never see a single line of mine in print in my lifetime Solzhenitsyn's works
• · · Black day for the blue pencil ; The Book Standard Mary Roach's career has been driven mostly by powerful word of mouth Anatomy of a Buzz: 'Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife'
• · · · Once they were key figures in literary publishing, respected by writers who acknowledged their contribution to shaping books. But, editors are now an endangered species Italian rivers run high on drugs ; Sausages with cordial a recipe for asthma
• · · · · Moving house is one of the most stressful events in a person's life, not far behind the death of a spouse A moving reality check is in the mail ; Although nice girls are still expected to say no, it's another story for boys Let's talk about sex
• · · · · · BOOK Expo America Seeing the light; Phillip Adams: There are skid marks before the kangaroo The serious side of jokes

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Once a truth is universally acknowledged, some economists feel a duty to shoot it down. There are sound reasons for countries to incur debt In praise of debt ... Ach, What are Australia's big retailers up to?

Eye on Politics & Law Lords: Winning Ways of a Loser
Czechs choose an eccentric genius with little luck as their greatest countryman of all time. The problem is, he never existe

He's a hapless genius, a self-taught gynecologist, an explorer, a mathematician, inventor of the "notorious triple hammer. He seems maddeningly real, but he is imagined, flitting like an elusive moth through stories and plays that have made him the people's choice for the greatest Czech of all time

• August of Being Maddeningly real [Mikhail Gorbachev Perestroika 20 Years Later; A Leader Who Fostered Progress Even as He Held to Insular Traditions King Fahd, a man of maddening contradictions ]
• · Slovakian journal Kritika & Kontext A debate on the contemporary uses of liberalism ; Gerald Posner on the dramatic shakeup on the horizon in Saudi Arabia The Kingdom and the Power ; The Atlantic Monthly, Richard Clarke, imagines the future history of the war on terror War on terror 2011
• · · How conservatism leaves us vulnerable to nuclear terrorism. ; Experts differ over whether recent terror is driven by 'who we are' or 'what we do' Why jihadists target the West
• · · · Banality Of the Bombers ; An international democratic movement against terrorism emerged from the Madrid attacks of 2004 – it is time for world leaders to catch up Democracy’s early warning ; Constitutional law serves as a decisive battleground in the struggle over freedom’s moral and political meaning The Court, the Constitution, and the Culture of Freedom
• · · · · The NSW Opposition Leader, John Brogden, could not have asked for a more level playing field if he had been driving the grader himself The challenge for John Brogden ; We're in the red - Costa's bombshell ; More than half a million taxpayers will be told personally that the Tax Office is concerned about their work deductions, rental deductions or declared income, as the Tax Commissioner, Michael Carmody, broadens his focus from the big end of town to individual taxpayers Now tax chief takes aim at job expenses ; The Tax Commissioner, Michael Carmody has declared "it's no more mister nice guy" for those not paying their share of tax It's big brother time as the taxman gets tough on cheats
• · · · · · Why do Americans stand for Southerners idolizing the Confederacy, despite the evils of slavery and treason at its heart? What terrorists and Confederate heroes might have in common The Sin of Confederate Hero Worship ; Why Iranians don't think sex is sinful, the hypocrisy of American saber-rattling over Iran, and why George Bush and the mullahs are the same Sexual revolutionaries ; Police inquiry into Shaw out of order

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Democracy is not something you believe in or a place to hang your hat, but it's something you do.You participate. If you stop doing it, democracy crumbles
-Abbie Hoffman

While Ohmynews is changing the way news is produced in Korea, and Dan Gilmour is changing the way news for the San Francisco Bay Area of the US with Bayoshpere – here in the UK citizen journalism isn’t really taking hold Citizen-journalism already overtaken by big media in UK?

Buchwald helps citizen journalists write a really good column Voice of the people

The Blog, The Press, The Media: Potent Voices vs. Unheard Voices
The conventional news media are embattled. Attacked by both left and right in book after book, rocked by scandals, challenged by upstart bloggers, they have become a focus of controversy and concern.

Their audience is in decline, their credibility with the public in shreds. In a recent poll conducted by the Annenberg Public Policy Center, 65 percent of the respondents thought that most news organizations, if they discover they've made a mistake, try to ignore it or cover it up, and 79 percent opined that a media company would hesitate to carry negative stories about a corporation from which it received substantial advertising revenues

• Bad News [He hacks on and on about the "crisis" in old media in the Times Book Review Judge Posner's Incorrect Verdict ; Posner rehashed tired "liberal media" claims ]
• · Michael McKinnon and his battles with bureaucrats over access to vital documents explaining the decision making process behind federal government policies News loses FOI bid on taxation ; To Serve The National City And Through It The Nation FOI Act may as well be scrapped Transparency and accountability: a blistering editorial ; CCTV fails when it might be inconvenient to Police
• · ·
• · · · Save the rainforests by having a beer, help African school-children by eating chocolate: companies have discovered that the way to a customer's pocket is through his heart. But just how ethical is "ethical marketing?" Just how ethical is "ethical marketing"? Selling Goods by Doing Good ; The blogosphere sets off a debate on Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel ‘Guns, Germs, and Steel’ Reconsidered ; Jason Calacanis, fed up with the Technorati 100, will pay you $10,000 to design a Blog 500 list
• · · · · From Technology Review, Lawrence Lessig on how the people own ideas: We entered the youth camp that morning by passing down a long, white gravel road and under a wooden gate. Spread to one side, and for as far as you could see, were rows and rows of tents. In front were scores of showers, with hundreds of kids in swimsuits milling about, waiting to rinse. It felt like a refugee camp The People Own Ideas! [a response by Richard Epstein, ; Years ago I swore off responding to Professor Epstein in print--not because he's not full of ideas and very often right (he is both of those things, and more), but because it's so hard to get him to listen... and a rebuttal by Lessig ]
• · · · · · Dark Blogs Case Study 01 - A European Pharmaceutical Group ; Des Moines Register on bloggers: losers Blog 'reports' lack media's credibility ; Interview with the AdSense million dollar man, Jason Calacanis People who don’t like RSS advertising are freaks

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This constant tension, between the desire to know and strive for the truth and the internal certainty that is not dependent on anything concrete; between the words and categories and the physical and mental experience in which the words disappear Small wonder that Kabalah sits along the fence of the New Age of mysticism

Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: The Life of Brian and Bobbie Houston
While Hillsong revels in chart-topping CDs and the beaming approval of some prominent politicians, it does divide observers.

Some admire the church's material and spiritual success. Others suspect a political agenda and worry about Hillsong's financial arrangements. Through it all the Houstons have avoided personal media scrutiny, but tonight, for the first time, they've allowed cameras into both their church and their private life so people can judge for themselves. This is their story

• The worst thing you could say to me is that I look like a minister [Researching social policy: Trends, tragedies and triumphs ; Kadare does not consider himself to have been a dissident, has never claimed to be one, and cannot be accused of having perpetuated a myth of his own dissidence I'd like to thank my oppressor... ]
• · There've been stories about books for your mobile/cell-phone before, but here's a major publisher embracing the new technology and format Publishing on your phone; Thanks to Patricia and Caterina for this great review What Kevin Trudeau doesn't want you to know about
• · · Whose vision of an information society? World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) ; Can Culture be considered Cultural Goods and Services?
• · · · Why do people laugh at all? Poking fun What is the point of it? ; How schools are destroying the joy of reading
• · · · · Kafka of Kokroaches: Imagine a future in which terrorists seize an embassy and police can send in a remote-controlled insect outfitted with a microscopic video camera that reveals where the gunmen are hiding and what kind of weapons they hold Futurists look beyond, and it's not mere sci-fi ; And a warning to Europe from across the Atlantic: are you sure you want a privatized healthcare system like in the US? Doctor! Doctor! My private health insurance policy is driving me crazy!
• · · · · · Happiness is Overrated is a straightforward book about the value of happiness that develops a plausible conclusion A state or process of flourishing ; The prosperous Poles risk becoming too jaded—and apolitical—for their own good Too content by half

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To write what you are interested in writing and to succeed in getting editors to pay for it, is a feat that may require pretty close calculation and a good deal of ingenuity. You have to learn to load solid matter into notices of ephemeral happenings; you have to develop a resourcefulness at pursuing a line of thought through pieces on miscellaneous and more or less fortuitous subjects; and you have to acquire a technique of slipping over on the routine of editors the deeper independent work which their over-anxious intentness on the fashions of the month or the week have conditioned them automatically to reject.
-Edmund Wilson (quoted in Louis Menand, “Missionary,” The New Yorker, Aug. 8 and15, 2005)

There are lunches with old mates and then there are parliamentary lunches so soulful they're beyond any description. One day I am at the Sydney Eye Hospital and the next day I am next door tasting oysters and getting sympathy from Caterina and Patricia ... I was lucky for over 8 years to be surrounded by French and Italian cultures on daily basis, however since the year of the Sydney Olympic Games our paths moved us into different directions. New York, Queensland and level 8 ;-) ‘Before Patricia peppered the parliamentary papers with useful reports’, Members of the PAC claim, ‘there was nothing.’ She even encouraged a former Chair to write a book. (coming soon) There was no pause, we just picked it right back up from where we were last time ... The almost empty restaurant itself had flawless sight lines. What a luxury to have one's own taste validated and explicated. Ach, this is where we are all going to end up living in the next artistic stage of our lives - Slow Way of Life

A blog, you see, is a little First Amendment machine. The people at the BlogHer conference saw that. Many of them saw it better than I did. For in addition to its glories they spoke of the terrors of free speech, which seems to me a more balanced picture Blogging is more fun to do than to talk about

Ach, blogging is supposed to be democratizing the world of information, empowering the individual The Feminine Blogstique

The Blog, The Press, The Media: Blogs and Bestsellers: One and the Same?
Is there anyone left who doesn’t have a blog?

From top corporate executives to indie rock stars, everyone seems to have a weblog chronicling his or her adventures. And now, as the publishing industry has taken notice, it feels as if all those bloggers have landed blockbuster book deals. In the past two years, Wonkette’s Ana Marie Cox, Julie Powell and Jessica Cutler (whose blog is now defunct) have parlayed their popular online ruminations/rants/reports into big-money contracts. And the deals keep coming

• These bloggers have one thing in common: they're women [Licence to Roam Pure Google ; Sucking up to the A-list ; The New Gatekeepers in the blogosphere ]
• · Technorati was tracking over 14.2 Million weblogs, and over 1.3 billion links in July 2005 ; The new world paradigm of blogging
• · · Jeremy Wright Unsubscribing from the A-List; Talk Digger; When it comes to hiring and firing, the boss traditionally gets the last word. But the tables may be set to turn as disgruntled ex-employees find a powerful new voice in community forums Fired bloggers' revenge against bosses
• · · · 31 days to building a Better Blog ; Comscore ranks Blogger on top for traffic
• · · · · Rupert Murdoch's dynastic dream is ever more likely to die with him Dusk falls on empire of the Sun King; Is failure a necessary part of success? Google hits the goggle-box
• · · · · · The SMH farewells Robert Whitehead ; Amy Gahran What's in a Name?

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Do you have any advice for secular Americans who are faced with living in a country that's increasingly governed by religious fundamentalists?
If I have any advice, it's that every day that you wake up, don't say, "This is normal." Every day, wake up with this idea that you have to defend your freedom. Nobody has the right to take from women the right to abortion, nobody has the right to take from homosexuals the right to be homosexual, nobody has the right to stop people laughing, to stop people thinking, to stop people talking.
If I have one message to give to the secular American people, it's that the world is not divided into countries. The world is not divided between East and West. You are American, I am Iranian, we don't know each other, but we talk together and we understand each other perfectly. The difference between you and your government is much bigger than the difference between you and me. And the difference between me and my government is much bigger than the difference between me and you. And our governments are very much the same.
- Marjane Satrapi, interviewed by Salon.com

A proliferation of websites endorses the turn against workaholism Australian Idle Somewhere to hold an idle party or function? Czech out Restaurant of the Month: Prague Czech Beer Restaurant I will miss this year’s BBW held between 4th of August through to the 7th of August Byron Bay Writers' Festival

Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: Festivals far from the marketing crowd
Cynics who say literary events are all about selling books are wrong

...My God, this novel makes me break out in a cold sweat! Do you know how much I’ve written in five months, since the end of August? Sixty-five pages! Each paragraph is good in itself and there are some pages that are perfect. I feel certain. But just because of this, it isn’t getting on. It’s a series of well-turned, ordered paragraphs which do not flow on from each other. I shall have to unscrew them, loosen the joints, as one does with the masts of a ship when one wants the sail to take more wind…Letter to Louise Colet (29-30 January 1853)

• Festivals? Just a drop in the ocean [Six Reasons for a Book Blog ; Books Alive Australia Council's books promo under fire ; A conference celebrating independent publishing on the Internet Webzine 2005 ]
• · Statue Come to Life? ; The Great Gray Whale: Or, This Story Has No Moral
• · · via Dehumanizer ; Is it right to “tolerate” an abusive person? An authoritarian?; Shel et al says Dell Sucks
• · · · Psychedelic '60s: Home Page ; Past 60s Family Crest Rings
• · · · · Recipe how to be much cleverer than all your friends (so they really hate you) Logic ; Many flavors of creativity
• · · · · · Summer reading is an annual orgy of pretension and log rolling No, come on, what do you really read on holiday? ; Doctor’s Official Orders : Moderate alcohol drinkers better thinkers

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Workers are like lemons: When the rich have sucked out all the juice, they throw them in the garbage.
- Ricardo Flores Magon, Regeneracion, April 1911

Most new era marketers understand the power of promotion and branding as well as the benefits of low costs real-time connectivity offered by the Web Sexed up Marketing of Blogs:
A post...about posts..about posts... Recapped: Many quiet voices



The Blog, The Press, The Media: Media Blogs
Many blogs take it as their mission to monitor the so-called MSM, or Mainstream Media. Remember Rathergate?

That's where bloggers debated the legitimacy of George Bush-related military documents that were used in a Dan Rather report, ultimately proving them forgeries and causing uproar at CBS News. And since you can't beat 'em, mass media figures have decided to join 'em--and started blogging as well. Today it's tough to separate the media-watchers from the mass media itself. -- Mara Leventhal

• Rich Media [Mas Media and the Military; Computer Assisted Reporting ; Clicking with e-news ; Steve Rubel What's next after blogging and podcasting? ]
• · Buchwald helps citizen journalists write a really good column ; Covering the Supreme Court is tough for TV journalists
• · · Plain Dealer editor explains decision to run FBI probe story ; Revealed: Dirty little secret of the Washington press corps
• · · · It is one thing to be an expert blogger and blogging strategiest, it’s another thing to be an expert blog designer and programmer Chris Abraham ; If you could ask only one person for advice about starting a company or joining a startup, chances are you'd pick John Doerr John Doerr's Startup Manual ; Digital Citizens: Your creativity Go Digital: Your digital world
• · · · · Trends in Australian CEO contract terms ; via Jacobson Consulting: External Insights ; Blog Tools
• · · · · · Everyone knows the Web is a shopper's paradise, teeming with great goods and great buys Shopping Blogs ; It stands to reason that budding businesspeople would be attracted to Weblogs, those do-it-yourself publishing sites that embody the very spirit of entrepreneurism Small Business

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This monsoon only proved that there is absolutely no drainage system in the city Monster Monsoon at Maharashtra

Eye on Politics & Law Lords: Make mistakes, a departing leader offers a tip
Bob Carr spent his last afternoon as Premier teaching teenagers the art of speechwriting, the importance of joining a political party and the downbeat truth that life is never perfect

What is it about sunny weekends in Sydney? A week ago Bob Carr told us that a combination of Sydney sun and a good bottle of Chardy prompted him to quit politics. This morning his deputy Andrew Refshauge surprised everyone by following suit, even observing that it had been "a very sunny weekend" when he realised it was the right time to move. But, asks Christian Kerr of Crikey fame, was it really the sun that made him quit or storm clouds massing on the political horizon? Slash, burn and cast off Carr

• Head for the bear pit, kids [Resignations expose ALP's fault lines ; High profile minister Michael Costa has been given the finance portfolio and responsibility for delivering infrastructure in Premier Morris Iemma's new cabinet Iemma names new cabinet line-up for NSW]
• · When Philip Egglishaw last visited Sydney and Melbourne, he left behind a who's who and how-to guide to tax avoidance. John Garnaut has insider’s insider story Jet lag snares a tax haven tout ; Twenty-two judges face prosecution for not lodging tax returns for 2003-04 after they failed to heed final warnings by the Tax Office. Bob Debus, also offered the Tax Office more assistance if disclosure rules could be relaxed Tax Office clampdown ; NSW has scrapped its vendor duty and is now entitled to its fair share of GST revenue Fair Share
• · · I was lucky enough to see the première of David Bradbury’s latest film, Blowin’ in the Wind Blowin’ in the wind ; Two-thirds of Australians, including half of Coalition voters, believe Australia is more at risk of terrorist attack because of the Iraq war, and are willing to sacrifice privacy and civil liberties for protection from it Safety before liberty
• · · · The extra layer might only have been insulation against the light wind and cool of the hour, but an overcoat almost made him look like a spy I spy with my little eye something beginning with deputy commissioner ; Raimond Gaita Detention laws that erode rights are more a threat to our society than terrorists ; Keelty backs agent: extremists are here
• · · · · He's got the Order of Australia, but Harry Seidler is not an Aussie ; The Federal Government moved quickly to undo a hidden decision which stripped Harry Seidler of his citizenship 20 years ago Seidler a citizen again, as bureaucrats pass the buck ; Father of Paola, Paolo Totaro, Foundation chairman, NSW Ethnic Affairs Commission writes. Is there no end to the stupidity, no limit to the indecency of the Department of so-called Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs? Seidler shows lunatics are still running the asylum
• · · · · · Sydney's new radio station Vega 95.3 got off to a flying start with Bob Carr calling mornings host Wendy Harmer a "smart arse" Harmer the charmer ; John Singleton is worth $285 million Coffee on queue

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There is an aspect to political activism that involves an incredible sense of urgency, people thinking, 'I absolutely know what is right,' and spirituality advocates that people step back, reflect, and approach the world with a sense of mystery--that maybe they don't know exactly what is right. This is a good quality to bring into activism, to look at some of the deeper issues that way.
-Radical Middle Manifesto: unattributed quote in a friend’s bathroom

All in the same unhappy families and in one minute of making them happy again. As Joubert said Those who never back down love themselves more than they love the truth: I was Wrong ;-) 3 most important words in a relationship

Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: Madmen's Street
He may owe his survival to two factors: a residual respect for literature in his country, and the fact that he and Hoxha both came from Gjirokastër; in fact they came from the same street, the Catherine Watson version, "Madmen's Street." "It was a strange coincidence," he says, "we were both writers; well, he thought he was a writer. For years we had the same translator."

Being critical of a regime is a normal state of affairs for a writer. The only act of resistance possible in a classic Stalinist regime was to write -- or you could go to a meeting and say something very courageous, and then be shot

I had an agent once who told me that he loved my memoir, but he thought it would be better as fiction. Ach, how surreal, same week my friend had the opposite happen, an agent wrote he loved his fiction book, but wished it was a memoir ;-)
• Kadare was a participant in Hoxha's madness [Much like political blogs, literary blogs have made pseudo-celebrities of their creators while offering alternatives to the mainstream press. Their breathless late-night posts--part literary gossip, part book club chatter, part critical rant--discuss the books that aren't reviewed in The New York Times. The result? While they're not going to rival Oprah's Book Club Literary Blogs ; What's That You're Reading? Book Start ]
• · Books list an affront ; Seven Deadly Sins of Critics: Deadly,' We Don't Necessarily Mean Bad Enough About Me ; Job Hunting
• · · Need a good chocolate pedicure? Hankering for a taste of old Coney Island's Mermaid Festival? Metro blogging sites are sprouting all over the world ; Welcome to ResearchZilla.com, a community for current and aspiring research wonks ResearchZilla, a new online community of researchers
• · · · Old Hag ; The resurrection of Henry Roth ; Zen and the Art of Ignoring the Numbers ; Amazon Numbers
• · · · · Lawsuit targets 'Scissors' memoir ; Between the wit, bluntness, desperation and deceit, some say the personals ad has become a new art form Love in the personals
• · · · · · An investigator who helped break the Mafia cops case has admitted that he quit his job at the Brooklyn U.S. attorney's office to avoid getting fired for cutting a book deal about the sensational case, records show Mafia Cops Detective Left DA for Book Deal ; An investigator who helped bust two former city detectives on mob charges had 'business opportunity' Possible conflict in cops case

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The establishment people tell us that if the workers wanted to share the profits, it was called communism. When management wants to share profits, it's called a bonus
- Phil Donahue

Meanwhile, NSW Treasurer Andrew Refshauge has announced his resignation as Deputy Premier and as a member of Parliament today Iemma elected NSW Premier: Wild Times of Sydney

Eye on Politics & Law Lords: Going cheap: Sydney's transport secrets
It's amazing what you can get for $20 these days

How about a fully featured IBM server computer, slightly used by the State Transit Authority but with all its data intact? Data such as payroll and financial information, Sydney public transport passenger counts and a high-level code for the city's ticketing systems. That's what a Sydney computer engineer, Geoffrey Huntley, says he found on computers bought at a government auction recently - and it wasn't just one server; there were 12 of them. Some still had backup tapes in their drives. Huntley posted pictures of the computer system screens - with key information faded out to be unreadable - on his website (www.geoffreyhuntley.com) on Saturday. These included incident reports, charter bus hiring systems, school bookings, employee numbers and employee access PINs

• Centralise in order to make it easier for terrorists to obtain information at one place. Bring On the ID Card. Hackers can already sneak into the transport surveillance images Alan Jones [Like Sydney train stations, Boston is filled with noise pollution and Alarming Warnings; Arguments about welfare and poverty bring out strong emotions ]
• · Medical Indemnity National Data Collection: public sector 2003 to 2004 ; Nicholas Pengelley Finding Australian Law
• · · There’s no business like small business; Driving Success: How You Innovate Determines What You Innovate ; All leadership comes down to this: changing people's behavior. Why is that so damn hard? Science offers some surprising new answers -- and ways to do better Change or Die ; The SEIU, the largest union in the AFL-CIO (the US equivalent of the ACTU) drive divisional changes United We Stand?
• · · · Capacities to believe in both equality and slavery, are the stuff of history. What an occupation journalism, I mean, not since the SS was dissolved in 1945 has there been such an opening for insensate cruelty Carr's green legacy should be taken with a grain of salt ; Christopher Sheil: Carr’s achievement was to fashion a political model that proved successful for Labor in all the states and territories. Basically, the model involved Labor conceding ground to the conservatives on financial and crime policies, while retaining the presumption of a positive role for government in providing public services and protecting the environment to improve living standards The ambiguities of Bob Carr ; The politically elegant Bob Carr defined the strategy of politics as administration for the state Labor Governments Politics as administration
• · · · · Culture minister, dissident, playwright dies at age 62 Dostál loses battle with cancer ; Joyfully joining the world with all its risks
• · · · · · John Quiggin A Happy Day ; Xmas Island camps ; On the other hand, It's official: We're top of the world Down Under

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It is not enough for a handful of experts to attempt the solution of a problem, to solve it and then to apply it. The restriction of knowledge to an elite group destroys the spirit of society and leads to its intellectual impoverishment.
- Albert Einstein

Major media companies are investing in blogs. Is this a new boom or just a bubble? Cashing in on Weblogs

To get the feel of Web logs and blogging, visit some of these sites Blogs 101: NY Times
Forbes also goes through a selection process: We don't matter Blog Power

The Blog, The Press, The Media: Working the Digital River to your advantage
One of my goals as a press observer is to explain how journalists do what they do

If you tell people about how you gather information and put together a story, you'll gain their confidence a lot faster than by keeping the process a mystery or by writing in stentorian tones to give the impression that you've just engraved gospel onto a stone tablet. In this vein, a friend recently suggested that I try—"try" is the key word—to suggest ways for people to navigate through today's information overload and become reasonably well-informed without making it a full-time job the way news addicts like myself do. So here goes...

• Sydney H. Schanberg Rx for Info Overload [Adult dosage: Take one or two or three three papers and a website daily - add grains of salt and stir the Digital Decade That Changed the World We Are All the Web]
• · Up to 70 journalists, artists and photographers employed by Fairfax Business Media went on strike indefinitely yesterday over job restructuring flowing from the closure of two magazines Fairfax plan spurs strike ; Jay Rosen has a thought provoking post at his Press Think site entitled: PressThink, Live from the BlogHer Conference ; Interactive Storytelling, Rethinking Journalism Check out the five finalists in the 2005 Batten Awards ; The Herald believes city officials are telling other news orgs what the tabloid is up to Boston Herald won't get City Hall comment on exclusives
• · · The writer, Dilpazier Aslam - Rathergate treatment: When The Guardian, one of England's most respected newspapers, printed an opinion piece in the aftermath of the London terrorist bombings this month, nothing seemed out of the ordinary Scott Burgess: N.O. expat scoops London's Guardian; Press Tour getting bogged down in blogs Newspapers have become "strangely enamored" of blogs
• · · · How the bias-spotting industry has turned news into mush ; Miami Herald executives defend decision to fire DeFede
• · · · · It's also led to the worst split in memory between two media giants -- Time Inc. and the New York Times -- in an area where news orgs usually present a united front grounded in the First Amendment, reports the Wall Street Journal Plame case presents biggest test of secret sources in years ; The media give the public what the public wants; Novak: I don't think I've ever talked to Rove on the record
• · · · · · Dean Baquet, the next Los Angeles Times editor, tells Tom Scocca: "The truth is, the great secret is, over the five years that John [Carroll] and I have run the paper, we have cut a lot, and I think the paper is better -- not because of the cutting …. Baquet wants to choke budget guys who say cutting is good ; Is McClellan serving the president well in press briefings?

Robot History: Robot is a word that is both a coinage by an individual person and a borrowing. It has been in English since 1923 when the Czech writer Karel apek's play R.U.R. was translated into English and presented in London and New York. R.U.R., published in 1921, is an abbreviation of Rossum's Universal Robots; robot itself comes from Czech robota, "servitude, forced labor," from rab, "slave." The Slavic root behind robota is orb-, from the Indo-European root *orbh-, referring to separation from one's group or passing out of one sphere of ownership into another. This seems to be the sense that binds together its somewhat diverse group of derivatives, which includes Greek orphanos, "orphan," Latin orbus, "orphaned," and German Erbe, "inheritance," in addition to the Slavic word for slave mentioned above. Czech robota is also similar to another German derivative of this root, namely Arbeit, "work" (its Middle High German form arabeit is even more like the Czech word). Arbeit may be descended from a word that meant "slave labor," and later generalized to just "labor."
Japanese scientists have unveiled the most human-looking robot yet - a female android named Repliee Q1Expo Jozefina Robotova: Will You marry MD?

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The whole history of progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. If there is no struggle there is no progress.
Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning, they want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.
This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.
Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted
- Frederick Douglass (1857)

I’d say it’s not quite as bad as poker machines but probably a bit worse than racehorses How much of a gamble is farming?

Eye on Politics & Law Lords: Honest Abe
Knowing when to exit gracefully is not a quality we normally associate with politicians, so it was unusual when the NSW Premier Bob Carr decided to step down this week, 10 years after he won the top job.

But Bob Carr spent a beautiful Sydney weekend with his wife, contemplating his future, and decided that the time had come. He quoted one of his American political heroes, President Abraham Lincoln, saying he did so in the spirit of Honest Abe's second inaugural address — "with malice for none, with charity to all". It was just as well since his would-be successors for the job in the Labor Party were soon jockeying for position, with the odd elbow thrown in. NSW Police Minister Carl Scully said on Thursday he would not be pushed out of the race by the ALP's right-wing machine backing Health Minister, Morris Iemma. Friday he pulled out of the race. Mr Iemma now looks likely to win the caucus ballot on Tuesday and the premiership. Meanwhile, Mr Carr has been basking in the limelight of praise from his colleagues ... for example, the former NSW Premier, Neville Wran, who also decided to depart voluntarily after 10 years on the stage, said of Bob Carr: "People say, 'What's his greatest achievement?' I will tell you now, his greatest achievement was to keep on winning elections."

• Bob Carr: Revenge of the Nerd [ Lobbyist get up gears up for Senate ; Capital and Labor want some respect ; Get up!: first impressions? ]
• · Economics Blogs ; Ten Lessons for Nation-Building ; Rich Man’s War, Poor Man’s Fight: Race, Class, and Power in the Rural South during the First World War A Rich Man's War
• · · Russia’s split personality – symbolized by its Tsarist coat of arms, a two-headed eagle – has been on open display recently The Two Faces of eX KGB Chief Vladimir Putin; Britain’s social model has developed a distinctive, hybrid character under Tony Blair – both less “American” and more “European” than critics claim Blair’s opportunity: an Anglo-Social European model
• · · · China and the world economy ; The Great Indian Poverty Debate engages the mind as much as the conscience ; Why Britain is great
• · · · · Europe's largest nation is in decline and has been for several years. The very core of its economy has begun to shrink: a process that no reforms have managed to halt. Germany's problems are rooted deeply in the postwar era The German Defect; From the outside, it seems like chaotic violence. But it's worse than that. In Iraq, Sunni Muslim suicide commandos are launching bloodbaths among the Shiites, gradually edging the country toward civil war. Instead of becoming a democratic beacon for the entire region, Iraq is on the verge of disintegrating Is the Country Heading for Civil War? ; Now, IRA stands for I Renounce Arm
• · · · · · That feeling of being under suspicion: What of "profiling" as an anti-terrorism forensic tool? ; When the Profile Fits the Crime Critics protest that profiling is prejudicial. In fact, it's based on statistics ; Political Blogs

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I really didn't realize the librarians were, you know, such a dangerous group...They are subversive. You think they're just sitting there at the desk, all quiet and everything. They're like plotting the revolution, man.
-Michael Moore on Librarians who know how to keep Books Alive What's That You're Reading? Book Start

Nick Cave is a spiritual man, so I decided the best way to start was with a confession: I was a complete Nick Cave virgin. I'm not sitting here before you having spent 20 years falling at your feet. It was a real experience for me to learn your work. I went on a journey Darker is the day: Beware of blind spiritual spots

Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: Drive that Bears Historical Fruit
The ability to shift the audience from thinking Poor him! to Poor us! must surely be a mark of greatness in an actor

Dr. Thomas Woods has achieved a tremendous amount in a very short period of time. In fact, many of his contemporaries will be deflated to discover what his age actually is:
The Straussians argue that although the Lockean natural right of revolution – that is, the right to overthrow the government and replace it with a new one – inherent in the people is legitimate, no legal right of secession (the withdrawal of a state or states from the Union) exists

• History and Truth [The girls who just can't get enough of that gold: The women's relay team and Danni Miatke all triumphed today as Australia took its 10th gold medal at the world swimming titles in Montreal More gold at Montreal ; The Australian swim sensation on top of the world Reluctant Superstar ]
• · Money can't buy you love, but sadly it might just help shift the odds in your favour Wisdom's folly: Can't Buy Me Love ; The thing missing was the very sense that anything could be important What We Lose When We Forget What Sex Is For ; Francis Crick suggests where to find the seat of consciousness Crick's last stand
• · · A sellable product or service, great systems and terrific marketing The ways to succeed The agency has taken more than twice the 30 days allowed by regulation to review the 330-page book Anonymous former CIA Author Reveals Himself, As He Sues Agency ; The Elegant Variation Friday Grab Bag
• · · · Frankfurt Will Follow Surprise Hit with Book for Knopf The Writer Bitten by the Vampire Bug ; Vienna's Leopold Museum has invited the public to come in the nude to view an exhibition of erotic works by Austrian masters like Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele The Naked Truth
• · · · · Sarah Weinman All the pleasures and peccadilloes of the literary life Literary scatterbrained smatterings ; Bite sized literary gems for our busy lives
• · · · · · David McCullough loves good stories: Think about that little fifer boy, referring to a 15-year-old who makes a brief appearance in the book. He's going down to the battlefield and then a soldier walks by with a wound on his neck. In his diary, the boy tells how he asks the man if it hurts. To which the soldier replies, 'No, it doesn't hurt; matter offact, soon as I get it tied up I'm going back to fighting.' And the boy says, 'I was never afraidthereafter.’ 1776 and all that ; Between Sex and Power: Family in the World 1900-2000 Retreat of the Male; You'd think something so vital to the planet would be better co-ordinated. Think again Why time is out of sync