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Cold River, a kind of story for readers who thirst after exciting foreign non-fiction - a fluid memoir You are different. So is Cold River

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If all of this sounds like a substantial re-thinking of the economics of American newspapers, that's what it is. And it's time Prof dreams of newspapering freed from the profit motive

The Blog, The Press, The Media: Lesson One: you need a lot of money.
Since the late 1990s policymakers in most OECD countries have been looking for ways to maintain the employment that underpins the wealth of their countries’ citizens.

The story of Silicon Valley shows that successfully linking science and industry may not be as easy as just adopting a winning formula. That doesn’t mean we can’t learn from the Silicon Valley experience. Lesson One: you need a lot of money. The 21st century ‘knowledge era’ promises that science will kick start new industries and refashion older ones. In this vision of the future, economies will no longer rely on steel and ‘rust belt’ industry. IT and biotechnology are keystones of the ‘new’ industrial order, the ‘clean’ and ‘knowledge-based’ engines that will drive both economies and societies.

• Jane Marceau Why Can’t We All Have a Silicon Valley? [ Newspaper websites shouldn't try to out-Google Google ; PR: retrain its work force, recognize the influence and credibility of blogs and experiment Now it's time to go the distance ; Hurricane Katrina made clear blogs are a useful, if not mission-critical, form of communication. They've earned their keep over the past week, even in an area where communications and Internet connections are compromised. Bloggers aren't exactly free spirits, but be prepared for the unexpected and disruptive. Bloggers love to disrupt the status quo by one-upping reporters or waving attractive "add-water-and-stir" content-management tricks -- better, faster, and cheaper -- in front of wounded, frustrated Webmasters Ten Simple Rules for Dating a Blogger ]
• · The Voice of the Blog: The Attitudes and Experiences of Small Business Bloggers Using Blogs as a Marketing and Communications Tool ; The Language of Weblogs: A study of genre and individual differences
• · · My thoughts on this matter are no different than sex, drugs and rock and roll. Have an open dialog with your kids about what are the do's and don'ts of online behavior Monitoring your children online? ; j quiggin Contests and departures ; We start work when most people are quitting for the day, and we develop the kind of gallows humor that comes from regularly ingesting stories of humanity at its worst -Newspaper copy desks attract a quirky bunch of people Keep the Internet. Just give me Jeff Balsai's brain
• · · · j quiggin Miles of comments ; The Year in Review
• · · · · Mike Wallace: Between you and me ; Film: Good Night, And Good Luck ; How to Make Up Stories for the Tabloids, Fox News, etc. ; The White House's Media Takedow
• · · · · · Blogs are an interesting phenomenon to look at, but I don't think to date that they're as compelling as some people think. There's an insider quality to blogs -- people who look at blogs tend to be political junkies or more cultural junkies Expert weighs in on the future of journalism ; Ex-Chicago Trib staffer launches Chicago Daily News online ; They have to figure out a way to honor the very best journalism … and not merely protect the newspaper industry Online journalists feel slighted by the Pulitzer Prize board

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John Spierings discusses the main findings of the How Young People are Faring report Insiders or outsiders?

Eye on Politics & Law Lords: Goanna tales
Last week, I told you a little of my strange friendship with a convicted murderer, the "enforcer" for the Painters & Dockers Union, Billy "The Texan" Longley. At the same time I had what might seem an even stranger friendship with Kerry Packer.

This week I'll tell you how those friendships collided.Although I'd worked for his father, Kerry and I had never met. But we disliked each other from a distance, on principle. Then he invested in a film I was producing, The Getting of Wisdom. Over the course of a few meetings I found myself liking him. I'll leave the details to the autobiography I'll never write - suffice to say that Packer was highly intelligent and very lonely. And we were more alike than we'd expected, both half-educated, both having survived harsh childhoods. Most of all, I liked Kerry's curiosity. He's not the sort of bloke who reads books so we'd talk for hours on end about anything and everything - from black holes to ancient history - passionately disagreeing about politic

• Phillip Adams [The Reserve Bank’s relationship with government is working well, except from an anachronistic process of appointing board members, writes Time for transparency ; Following the seventeen arrests, the debate becomes more complex, argues Andrew Lynch Suddenly, Security is no longer abstract ]
• · Property boom hangover: the debt ; How is trust in government created? It begins at home, but ends in the parliament
• · · How well prepared is Australia to meet the twin challenges of infectious disease and bioterrorism? This paper explores these issues and offers some advice about how Australia should incorporate these challenges into our thinking about security. The paper considers the spectrum of biological threats, both natural and deliberate. A summary is available online. Plague anatomy: health security from pandemics to bioterrorism ; Behind the execution of Nguyen Tuong Van lies a repressive city-state whose problems are becoming clearer Managing the contradictions
• · · · Australia has been selective in implementing its international obligations How Australia protects war criminals but not asylum seekers from torture ; How Saddam's man was cleared
• · · · · It is difficult to discover just who is actually advocating the cold rational systems The Enlightenment revolt against rationalism ; Oil output may well be at or near its peak level, and oil prices are likely to remain high for the foreseeable future. But adjusting to changes in relative prices is what market economies do best, at least when adjustment is supported by coherent and well-designed public policies. The Oil Shock of 2005 John Quiggin
• · · · · · The trial of King Charles I of England before the High Court of Justice in 1649 was, in essence, a political contest between a former sovereign and some of his former subjects over the rights of sovereign Trying times: The life and times of a tyrannicide ; Four Corners goes inside Supermax, Australia’s toughest jail, home to killers and suspected terrorists. Supermax

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Yesterday my godsons Jacob and Alex brought with them laughter and dancing stories. While Lidka and Christopher brought with them borsch and pirozky as well as a philosophical discussion on marriage and freedom. Every human freedom has its limits: we cannot falsely shout “fire” in a crowded theater nor knowingly print libelous stories about another person. In every aspect of our lives we accept limits to freedom, but in the case of the limits set by marriage we gain a great deal in return: longer, healthier lives; better sex; and decent children. Loyalty to spouse and children and relatives enhances our capacity to enjoy the freedom we have...

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Blogs, podcasts & e-newsletters make it easy for anyone to be a journalist ... But just as the debut of desktop publishing led to some very ugly documents, these newer tools are spawning some very sloppy journalism, which does no good for the reputation of participatory media 10 Journalism Tips For Bloggers, Podcasters & Other E-Writers

The Blog, The Press, The Media: By-the-book New York Times blog
A top editor at the New York Times gives that newspaper's take on blogs, as reported in L.A. Observed:

Yesterday we launched a genuine, authentic, by-the-book New York Times blog. It’s Carpetbagger, by David Carr. It’s part of a new movie-awards-season web site called Red Carpet, which includes a bunch of things you won’t see in the newspaper, like weekly columns by Joyce Wadler and Caryn James. You’ll see a refer on today’s front page, which I boldly, if ignorantly, declare to be our first-ever page-1 refer to a web-only feature. At the very least, it’s our first-ever page 1 refer to a blog.

• We’re blogospheric. [ TV Scoop, blog on UK television ; What I Wish I had Known]
• · Bog use has exploded in the last year, with an unpredictable and dramatic rise in both new users and new services. Jeffrey Henning describes this leap in his new study The Blogging Geyser, surveying the field as it stands now and predicting a total of 53.4 million blogs by year's end.

Read the earlier study, The Blogging Iceberg, to learn why the common conception of blogs--imagining them to be regularly updated, op-ed style columns written by a public figures and read by thousands--is only accurate on the surface.Keep up with the continuing dialogue about these studies, and other analyses of the blogosphere, by reading Blog Survey; Yahoo has added the popular del.icio.us social bookmarking, recommendation website to its growing stable of community-driven internet properties Yahoo gobbles up del.icio.us ; How alternative media have transformed politics on the left and the right ; The Media Dragon Loves us
• · · WSJ ; The Many Blogospheres – A Few Niche Blogs
• · · · If I Didn't Build it, They Wouldn't Come: Citizen Journalism is Discovered (Alive) in Watertown, MA ; Fortune Magazine's Innovation Weblog
• · · · · Investor relations and blogging ; Need to find an expert? This list has over 100 blogs listed Weblogs published by industry analysts
• · · · · · DIY $100 Laptop ; Ad dollars threaten bloggers' rebel reputations

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... Sometimes your crazy impulses, your irrational impulses, are the right ones. To have the courage to follow them can lead to a sort of bigger understanding of what life is like....

No matter what form the dragon may take, it is the mysterious passage past him, or into his jaws, that stories of any depth will be concerned to tell.
- Flannery O'Connor

I am in the jaws of the dragon as Flannery would say. As the movie rolls forward on the screen, this is where the obstacles, tests, ogres, and the ordeal begins. Mr. Campbell's trial and initiation. (Aside: That's good news my teacher says last night. Yep, being in the lion's mouth is how Ramana Maharshi put it. There's no way out. The lion will take care of the rest. It's inevitable.) This is a phase of doubt. And oft times miracles. The knight is now firmly committed to quest for the Holy Grail. The unknown lays between the them. Of Journals, Journeys, Julie and Julia

Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: Secrets of the Fathers
I dreamed and fantasised about what my biological father would be like... You look at people’s faces, you always wonder...
Their quest constantly ran up against a wall of secrecy that has surrounded sperm donation for decades. But gradually, they discovered clues: his education, his field of work, even a description of his teeth...

The right to know versus the right to privacy... as donor-conceived children battle a secret system in the search for their biological fathers

• Gift of Life: Good Night, and Good Luck [The Los Angeles Times, columnist Meghan Daum has an op-ed that begins, For pro-choicers like myself, Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr.'s position regarding spousal consent for abortion seems like one more loose rock in the ongoing erosion of Roe vs. Wade Shouldn't men have 'choice' too? ; ‘Soft pawn’ row as chess world discovers sex]
• · Telling tales against the tide ; George Clooney doesn't mind swimming against the political tide Rebel with a cause
• · · If we think poets and painters have better sex lives, it may be that they are good at persuading us - Sex and art ... It’s a great chat-up line. But why would Pablo Picasso think anything else?... Sex and art are really the same thing ; Man is a social animal – utterly dependent on forming and maintaining relationships with other people FREEDOM: The Ties That Do Not Bind: The Decline of Marriage and Loyalty
Beauty is the battlefield where God and the devil war for the soul of man Art in Crisis
• · · · Journeys involve both highs and lows ; “Puritan roots run deep,” says Hugh Hefner, whose parents would not show affection: “no hugging and kissing.” He is making up for it The oldest swinger in town
• · · · · Procrastination cure: you put on workshops for sufferers. Trouble is, some who sign up miss the first session, or don’t show at all... Procrastination cure; Mary McCarthy mistook snobbery for morality, just as Edmund Wilson mistook life for literature. Theirs was the union of a true bitch with a genuine bully... Forgetting Edmund Wilson
• · · · · · Chinese Etiquette Lessons for Germany ; Rebels Without a Clue - Communism tried to transform capitalism. It ended in tragedy. The counterculture tried the same. It ended in farce

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I have heard it said that you can always tell if someone you meet is a member of Bondi Iceberg, a drinking club as Timmy says with a huge AA type swimming problem, because they'll mention it in the first 30 seconds ...
At the Iceberg club last night, we were surounded by the sound of Liverpool accents as so many English folks are part of the establishment. Imagine all the wonderful people at my club
Dave (swam Bondi to Bronte at 42 minutes) and Maree of Tamarama fame shared with us their impressions of the Beatles. Other Englishmen, Terry and Jonathan (an ex- Olympian) (after a sea food luncheon - eat and drink as much as you can at the Woollahra Bowling club) danced their happy souls to every tune be it by Lennon or any tune from the contemporary kind. The memories of Lennon in a strange way made Ian (swam Bondi to Bronte at less than 40 minutes) continue the great, ongoing conversation about best movie ever made, the Spin City. However, not according to Marcus who has the best collection of DVDs of films and is about to watch Star Wars for the seventh time A very sweet Rocketboom today about John Lennon. Listen to all those Icebergers sing ;-)

Is there anymore any such thing as six degree of separations? Not if you come across Dave and Maree they even know my new neighbours, Vicki and Angela ....

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Cold River, a kind of story for readers who thirst after exciting foreign non-fiction - a fluid memoir You are different. So is Cold River

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I blog to remember who I am ... The sky’s the limit when it comes to what bloggers can do to make a difference in someone else’s life. Books and blogs - They’re the New Black!
Television can make you famous, but it can’t keep you famous. It’s more like an opiate—as soon as you stop taking your daily fix, you get all pale and clammy, and before long you vanish in a puff of near-transparent mist over a Cold River ...

This was the story of a twelve-year-old girl who had nowhere to go. Humbert had tried to turn her into his fantasy, into his dead love, and he had destroyed her. The desperate truth of Lolita's story is not the rape of a twelve-year-old by a dirty old man but the confiscation of one individual's life by another. We don't know what Lolita would have become if Humbert had not engulfed her. Yet the novel, the finished work, is hopeful, beautiful even, a defense not just of beauty but of life ... Warming up and suddenly inspired, I added that in fact Nabokov had taken revenge on our own solipsizers; he had taken revenge on the Ayatollah Khomeini ... As Christopher Hitchens reminds us, Lolita Haze would be 70 this year

Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: Gods and Generals
Death may be immortality’s opposite, but it confers a similar invulnerability. Death dealing and bent on dying, Achilles has achieved absolute freedom

It makes me very aware of my wasted life as an artist; I should have chucked security and settled for Bohemianism in which my talents might have flowered more originally. Perhaps wife and child and the desire for roots have been a mistake. I should have given an adventurous Lear by now and invented a clown. Ah well. What I have is a dear good wife, a dear good son and a house with views of rolling downs, trees, grass, and open skies. And a pretty good collection of books. -Alec Guinness (diary entry, Jan. 1, 1981)

• Heroes are not necessarily amiable [They're supposed to be hellish wastelands: Chill out in the outer reaches, admiring the view and reciting poetry with Homer and Virgil. As night falls, drop down a few circles to where the real party is: among all those gamblers and fornicators. The 10 Best Dystopias ; The typical American female TV criminal is nasty, cutthroat, cunning, duplicitous and sexy to boot Bad Girls ]
• · Jim Collins's best seller is that rare business book that finds an audience beyond corporations. Now he's got a sequel for organizations not ruled by the bottom line ...There will be no glitzy media tour to sell it--if people want it, he figures, they'll know where to find it. Good to Self-Publish: A 'Good to Great' Second Act ; Walden Plans Book Line In 'Narnia,' Tycoon Seeks Blockbuster With a Message
• · · Cookies at Christmas ; Now, I know why some animals eat their young. Christmas Letters: Gag Me With A Spoon
• · · · Knowing your heart is the best treat life has to offer magic follows Publish or Perish: It’s Not Only for Academia ; Men are often accused by women of, to put it bluntly, having their brains in their balls. A joke, of course. But perhaps not as much of one as people might like to think Bigger testes mean smaller brains
• · · · · For starters, being polyamorous doesn't mean you're shagging a bunch of people. It may mean that you only have one other partner Social animals - Intimacy adds to the quality of your life ; Your how-to guide in loving more than one Polyamory? ; Testosterone and Trust
• · · · · · For an Englishman in New York, happiness is never having to say you're sorry Against Politeness ; Premarital sex is now just a part of the process of getting acquainted Who’s a virgin these days? ; A generation after Mao suits, China is coping with an epidemic of free love Sex, Please--We're Young and Chinese

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The journey to democracy never ends. This is a constant journey.
-Bill Clinton

Margo's got more guts than the entire Press Gallery. What a pack of pussycats they are…oh look, I'd better stop now Love from all your friends

Eye on Politics & Law Lords: Havel: Don't forget freedom
Former world leaders voice concern about authoritarian regimes

Former President Václav Havel's message is unequivocal: Democratic countries should support the struggle for greater freedom in authoritarian states such as Cuba, Belarus, Myanmar and North Korea.
So he told other former world leaders Nov. 10–12 at the Club of Madrid's first Prague conference, an annual gathering of retired heads of state. At the event, this year focusing on the state of democracy in the postcommunist world and attended by former U.S. President Bill Clinton, Havel said, "We should not forget that there are still countries that are not free."

• Democracy was at a critical stage
• · Despite barking at others for the last decade, the Federal Government has conveniently overlooked two important competitive reforms. And the hypocrisy has come back to haunt it on both. Grain of politics in regulation ; No one feels guilty about using tax preparation software instead of a live accountant. Yet many feel it’s wrong to outsource tax preparation to India. Why?
Why People Hate Economics
• · · Terrorism arrests - moving from the political to the judicial ;
• · · · It is the beginning of October. A thick fog envelops Brussels. The solid headquarters of the EU Commission, like the other institutions, lies hidden beneath a compact, grey blanket. It feels a little peculiar to be researching lobbying, the very image of obscure politics, on a day like this. Fifty metres away I cannot even make out the entrance to the Commission - lobbying and a potential lobbyist registry ...Lobbying in the mist
• · · · · Two retired senior Tax Office auditors said yesterday they knew of political interference in tax audit and enforcement procedures, some involving federal ministers. Tax auditors blow whistle on ministers

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...happy new year
may we all
have our hopes
our will to try
if we don’t
we might as well
lay down and die
you and I

I have visited WD every day, two or three times a day, for years. I have always read the good posts (left, right, in-between) and ignored the trolls. I've learnt much. Margo, your a helluva lady ... "We shall overcome". And we (and you) will. All the trials. All the tribulations. All the petty nastiness. G'day: Sadly Margo is thinking of saying goodbye to WD

The Blog, The Press, The Media: Is Blogging Dead?
Good Question, eh? W.H. Auden, The Dyer's Hand, noted: What the mass media offer is not popular art, but entertainment which is intended to be consumed like food, forgotten and replaced by a new dish.

The Small Press Center for independent publishing is hosting their eighteenth annual Independent and Small Press Book Fair this weekend, December 3rd and 4th in New York City. Among the events will be a panel discussion called “Is Blogging Dead?”
Harry Reasoner makes me smile:
Journalism is a kind of profession, or craft, or racket, for people who never wanted to grow up and go out into the real world...
If you're a good journalist, what you do is live a lot of things vicariously, and report them for other people who want to live vicariously.

• Has blogging lost its sexy edge? [According to Weingarten, a Los Angeles resident, Wolfe and his contemporaries recognized one salient fact of life in the sixties: the traditional tools of reporting would be inadequate to chronicle the tremendous cultural and social changes of the era. War, assassination, rock, drugs, hippies, Yippies, Nixon: how could a traditional just-the-facts reporter dare to provide a neat and symmetrical order to such chaos? He couldn't, really. He needed to offer perspective instead, to form opinions and take sides. He needed to sort through current events, as tumultuous as they were, and tell us stories about ourselves in ways that we couldn't, stories about the way life was being lived ... and what it all meant to us. The Gang That Wouldn't Write Straight ; 'New Journalists': They gave readers more, not less ]
• · The other day, the Wall Street Journal ran a story that adds fresh evidence to an intriguing trend described in some detail in THE NUMBER: how so-called “life planning” has begun to reshape the language and the practice of traditional financial planning. THE NUMBER: life planning ; Shrinking Dollars
• · · There should be a book titled "How News Is Made," a book that could be for journalism what "The Jungle" was to the meatpacking industry. My version would offer no conspiracy theory, but I'd point out the preponderance of sloppiness and lazy thinking coupled with a herd mentality, most especially in business journalism. How News is Made ; Chattering oracles are telling us that newspapers will die soon, as the Internet takes over If Old Journalism Dies . . .
• · · · P2P: good for the backlist, not good for best-sellers ; One of the favourite games of literary people is that of best first lines The deepest rooted of last lines is the childhood one: And they all lived happily ever after... The end. At last
• · · · · Parables about famous, infamous, and anonymous European moral actors at moments of decision Portable Words ; Tim Worstall's entertaining new anthology of web writers, 2005 - Blogged, puts the best into a book Blogbuster ; Revolutions don't usually work out quite as planned. And that's what's happening now in the technology world with blogs. They are every bit as important as their boosters said they would be. But in an entirely different way. While there are now as many tech blogs as stars in the sky, only a tiny fraction of them matter
• · · · · · The word is out. Sex does not sell, at least in terms of government funding Research is a sex-free zone ; Keyboard Shortcuts 10 Things Every New Mac Owner Should Know

Family Long Long way away

gab2-2
Originally uploaded by jozefimrich.

WE are miles away, but we send our greetings with smiles ;-)

Babka Grannie

gab2-11
Originally uploaded by jozefimrich.

Smiles all the way from Sydney to the heart of Europe where our anthropological story started all those years ago ;-)

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I spoke to my Mamka (Mom) this morning it was 5:30 am in seaside Sydney and evening in the High Tatra Mountains. The temperatures also could not be more different as it is nice and warm here whereas it is freezing in my old home country. At 89 ( in February next year) Mamka is bright and alert and can recall so many childhood stories I have forgotten. My sister Gitka is her guardian angel keeping her company as they share stories and sew or knit together. They are an amazing couple of friends - so alike in appearance and temperament - so much more than daughter mother relationship ... Both cannot get over that we have moved again as neither my sister or my Mamka ever left their place of birth and are still living where they were born. I am glad that they have always provided for me with a sense of stability, a place and home to call whenever my heart desired ... My sister and my Mamka seem to agree with the sentiment expressed in the sweet sixteen points below

16 THINGS THAT IT TOOK ME OVER 40 YEARS TO LEARN

1. Never, under any circumstances, take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night.
2. If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved and never will achieve its full potential, that word would be "meetings."
3. There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness."
4. People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them.
5. You should not confuse your career with your life.
6. Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance.
7. Never lick a steak knife.
8. The most destructive force in the universe is gossip.
9. You will never find anybody who can give you a clear and compelling reason why we observe daylight savings time.
10. You should never say anything to a woman that even remotely suggests that you think she's pregnant unless you can see an actual baby emerging from her at that moment.
11. There comes a time when you should stop expecting other people to make a big deal about your birthday. That time is age eleven.
12. The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion, economic status or ethnic background, is that, deep down inside, we ALL believe that we are above average drivers.
13. A person who is nice to you but rude to a waiter is not a nice person.
(This is very important. Pay attention. It never fails.)
14. Your friends love you anyway.
15. Never be afraid to try something new. Remember that a lone amateur built the Ark. A large group of professionals built the Titanic.
16. Men are like fine wine. They start out as grapes, and it's up to the women to stomp the crap out of them until they turn into something acceptable to have dinner with.

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'On The Importance of Telling Stories'
My grandmother often told me the story of her father-in-law who found out just before Christmas that he was going to die. Determined to live through the holiday to be with his family, he died right after the new year. She and my grandfather, then very young newlyweds, took that rapid loss as a lesson to live for the day and be happy with what they had - a lesson they truly followed. When she became old and my grandfather died, my grandmother thrived on telling old stories to keep herself going. It wasn't so much that she was living in the past, but the telling of the stories made the past alive and relevant It is that same sense of the need to live in the moment while telling stories of the past that Joan Didion has infused through her memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking.

If I had a million dollars, I would slap it all down on the table in front of any jackass that said they could write a fabulous book if only they had a big fat advance, and tell them they could have every single penny if they could bang out a genuinely salable book in six months ... because your basic loudmouth non-writer is no more capable of writing a salable book than I am of piloting a 747, and roughly for the same reason—it’s a skill you have to learn, baby, and one generally learns the writing skill by writing most days of your life (and generally—alas—you’ll be doing that for little if any pay).
– Whatever
Publishing, Writing, Getting Published

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I survived the Bondi to Bronte ocean swim. Just ... is the operative word ;-) In at the deep end no one asks you about the time it took. It is one thing to walk from Bondi to Bronte but it is another thing altogether to swim the distance. Swimming around the rocks really does give you a strange sense of existentialism ... as well as a deep sense of being part of this amazingly wonderful world!

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François Truffaut defined a great movie as a perfect blend of truth and spectacle. Now it's become bifurcated. Studio films are all spectacle and no truth, and independent films are all truth and no spectacle."
-Howard Franklin

Former editor in chief of Grove Press and co-founder of Carroll & Graf Kent Carroll is featured in LA Weekly for Europa Editions, the sprightly new publishing venture he has just started in New York, as a kind of book club for Americans who thirst after exciting foreign fiction Tough Guys, Effete Snobs and Mad Women: Introducing Europa Editions

But Enough About Me ...Let's talk about other writers and books.
Did you know that today was the day that Elizabeth Bear's latest book Worldwired debuted in the stores?

Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: Time is a very strange thing.
Time is a very strange thing.

So long as one takes it for granted, it is nothing at all.
But then, all of a sudden, one is aware of nothing else.
It is all about us, it is within us also,
In our faces it is there, trickling,
In the mirror it is there, trickling,
In my sleep it is there, flowing,
And between me and you,
There, too, it flows, soundless, like an hour-glass.
Oh, Quinquin, sometimes I hear it flowing
Irresistibly on.
Sometimes I get up in the middle of the night
And stop all the clocks, all, all of them.
Nevertheless, we are not to shrink from it,
For it, too, is a creature of the Father who created us all.
Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Der Rosenkavalier (music by Richard Strauss, trans. W.H. Auden)

• The number of men paying women for sex has nearly doubled in a decade, says research. Why? Time is a very strange thing [Some couples may disagree, but romantic love lasts little more than a year, Italian scientists believe. Romantic love 'lasts just a year' ; Hot off the page ; Relationship breakdown and separation can be a challenging time, but you are not alone Australian's are suffering from a new epidemic called ‘Divorce Disorder’ ; So many young women who can make sense of spreadsheets, quote Shakespeare, and tone discrete muscle groups – can’t cook a proper Thanksgiving dinner Many young women wish they knew their way around the kitchen ; This week has seen a report showing shocking attitudes to rape and a case thrown out of court after the prosecution said drunken consent is still consent. Naomi Wolf looks at what can be done to improve a desperate situation Take the shame out of rape ]
• · Showing their lighter side, Forbes introduces yet another list: the richest fictional people Forbes List: Richest Fictional People ; Forbes’ List of Imriches ; Literacy is in the eye of the beholder
• · · Nomads: The Jewish Century ; Myth and Memory in the American Identity ; Hans Magnus Enzensberger looks at the kind of ideological trigger required to ignite the radical loser - whether amok killer, murderer or terrorist - and make him explode The radical loser
• · · · Yes, we know you can identify T.O. and 50 Cent. You're a devoted reader. But who or what is Slavoj Zizek? The wild Seinfeldian philosopher ; Pop philosopher Colin Wilson provide clues to a serial killer’s motives? Scott McLemee is banking on the idea A Killing Concept; Useful for understanding the current political situation? Piled Higher and Deeper
• · · · MetaxuCafe: Literary cool-kid hang out? Time sink you didn’t know you needed? Best idea ever? Yes, yes, and no, unless you disqualify sandwiches, in which case, yes. Latest Entries from MetaxuCafé ; I wanted to recommend that everyone go read the Reproductive Rights issue of Nerve It is hard to get flies off of honey
• · · · · Great Stories, People, Books & Events in Literary History::Tortured ROMANTICS ; I know it's the hip thing to talk about how overrated sex is, but ; In Hollywood, there’s a studio price and an indie price

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A recent trip to the American Electronics Association Financial Classic by Ben Lynch of Deutsche Bank Securities was a real eye opener to the divergences that have occurred in technology investing since Elliot Spitzer clamped down on the abuses of the Technology Bubble Anytime of year is perfect for Following the Money, But ...

The Blog, The Press, The Media: The freedom of press in the Czech Republic is very high
Developments in the offing could curb media's hard-won gain

International free press advocates are praising the media in the Czech Republic, which, they say, are among the most independent in the world.
"The freedom of press in the Czech Republic is very high," says Marc Gruber, the acting director of the Press Center in Brussels, which is a section of the advocacy group Reporters Without Borders. "Like other countries in Central Europe, the Czech Republic has integrated well into the European Union."

• Czechs singled out for a thriving and independent press [ Republican fesses up to blog ID raid ; Best of the Web Launches Blog Directory ]
• · Building media relationships: two-way panic ; I don't know how many times President Bush can announce a 'major' speech on the Iraq war that turns out not to be major, but he seems to be going for a record. ... The Blog House: Cheers and jeers for the speechmaker-in-chief
• · · Saving the Net ; If the paranoids are right, the Net's toast How to Keep the Carriers from Flushing the Net Down the Tubes
• · · · The hypocrisy of the media ; It is my mission to tell you the truth no matter how much it may hurt because the truth will illuminate what needs to be seen -- good, bad or ugly Christmas Came Early: 6,200 Visits In One Day!
• · · · · Match.com, one of the top internet dating websites, has been accused of hiring people as "date bait" to go out with some of their one million customers to encourage them to keep paying for the service Online matchmaker sued for dating scam ; Sorting the World by Design
• · · · · · Totally Unauthorized site A voice for the techies ; Remember Patrick Goldstein's article on the negative effect bloggers are having on the Oscars from yesterday's LA Times? LA Times bites, Bloggers strike back: Film Blog Group Hug

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Last week has been aimed at settling me and my angel Gabriella at Bondi and preparing me for the Cold River Bondi Bronte ocean swim tomorrow. [I am back to my 95 kg from 103 kg more palatable for my 6.2 frame] If there are no posts on Monday it means my 40 something body just could not take the surf and the rocks ;-)

A man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possession - Leo Tolstoy: War and Peace Pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy Be happy not rich

Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: For Love of Freedom: Tales of Desperate Science Fictional Acts
Because of the Cold War emphasis on dystopias, Cold War writers like Philip K. Dick, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Samuel R. Delany had to find radical new ways to express their inexpressible hopes about the future, claims Jameson. In Dick's uncanny novels, the author demands of us that we decide for ourselves what's real and what isn't ...

Josh Glenn writes a terrific column for the Boston Globe's Ideas section. It is called "The Examined Life." This week, he wrote "a long-form essay I've written for today's Ideas: It's about Fredric Jameson's new book on the utopian possibilities of dystopian science fiction by the likes of Philip K. Dick, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Samuel R. Delany."

Fans of Dick, Delany, and their ilk warn neophytes not to read too many of their books too quickly: Doing so, as this reader can attest, tends to result in pronounced feelings of irreality, paranoia, and angst.
• Josh Glenn on utopian ideas hidden inside dystopian sf. [ There is no alternative to free-market capitalism ...; Science Fiction Cold River runs so deep ]
• · Communal TV viewing by families and groups of friends is on the rise again after years of decline, thanks to shows such as Strictly Come Dancing, The X Factor and Doctor Who. TV has a unique ability which other media simply don't possess - it brings people together Family viewing on the rise
• · · Tolstoy understood human consciousness better than anyone who ever lived ... Her single-minded faith in love, which befits a romance character but is pure hell on one who resides in a realist work, plunges her into isolation and paranoia . Anna’s fate illustrates the dangers of such kinds of all-or-nothing thinking. And all at once she thought of the man crushed by the train the day she had first met Vronsky, and she knew what she had to do. The character, not the author, fulfills the omen. Anna provides her own foreshadowing, and fate has nothing to do with it I knew that she knew what she had to do: All about Jozef and Anna Semankova ;-); One must write, if not from taste then at least from despair. For, to reduce everything to a single truth: work is less boring than pleasure. Work like war is not just a scrapbook of atrocities and bad luck. It is not a series of alarming photographs. War is hell because it happens to people Cold (War) River: we didn't plan it this way