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In addition, it is vital that there be a set of financial intermediaries, who are at least as competent and sophisticated at receiving, processing, and interpreting financial information . . . as the companies are at delivering it.” Puzzles are “transmitter-dependent”; they turn on what we are told. Mysteries are “receiver dependent”; they turn on the skills of the listener, and Macey argues that, as Enron’s business practices grew more complicated, it was Wall Street’s responsibility to keep pace.

Ancient history or not … Warsaw's new archbishop has resigned amid a scandal over his involvement with the communist-era secret police that has shaken the deeply Roman Catholic country. Archbishop resigns over spying

Can we change the heart of politics? Moral dilemma sharpens: now it's 'rat' or run dry
Dobbing, throughout history, has been seen as a despicable act — perhaps nowhere so much as in Australia, which has harboured a deep distrust of authority since convict days and adhered to a code of mateship demanding that citizens protect each other at all costs.

“I want to know what were the steps by which men passed from barbarism to civilization”. This query raised by Voltaire, the eighteenth century French philosopher may have numerous responses and answers. One thing is, however, quite clear that evolving the taxation system has been an important step taken by the organised societies while moving up the ladder of civilization.

• Testy Lines; [ Taxation and civilisation ; This month, Siemens, the Germany-based global engineering and electronics company, informed the United States Securities and Exchange Commission that prosecutors investigating the company for corruption have seized bank accounts in Switzerland and Liechtenstein, two leading "offshore" banking centres. One hand launders the other ]
• · Even if little else can be said for it, Little Chef is a British institution. So the company's turbulent week - when, a year after being ditched by one private-equity group, it was plunged into administration and then pulled back out by another - was noticed by many who normally pay no attention to such dealings. It was further evidence of the way private equity, that is shares in any company not listed on public stock exchanges, is increasingly important to British business. Where the traditional pattern is for private companies to grow before being floated on the stock market, there is now increasing traffic in the other direction, as new year figures from Thomson Financial confirmed. Companies worth a record £77bn globally were taken private in 2006 Business in the dark ; Democracy in Britain is in a dangerous state. Faith in politicians has sunk to an all-time low. But is the public image fair? Cash for questions, lobbying, political favours, patronage, party funding, whipping, indiscretions, secrecy, half-truths...What lies behind these issues? The Truth About Westminster
• · The decision by Bill Gates to give all his time in future to his foundation, and then by Warren Buffett to add $37bn to the fund, will together trigger a series of events of truly lasting significance. Warren Buffett gives $37bn to Bill Gates' Foundation and Gates to leave Microsoft to run it all ; Gates and windows
• · · All great men of the calibre of Marcus Einfeld, who devote their lives to worthy causes, deserve to be rescued by a blonde angel. Angela Liati has come forward to assist the former judge in his hour of need because, as she explained: "The man has given his life to good causes Jeff Shaw needs his own bombshell from a blonde ; Is there a politician or a judge left who's not in trouble?
• · · · Former ABBA star Bjorn Ulvaeus is accused of tax evasion, with officials believing Ulvaeus siphoned his royalty payments into a Netherlands-based construction company. Money, Money, Money was the title of one of former ABBA member Bjorn Ulvaeus' hits … The tax office agreed to reduce its claim to around $9.5 million, but Ulvaeus appealed the case. It wasn't clear when the court would consider the appeal. Money, Money, Money ; Dancing Queen
• · · · · Every part of the story on its own seems to be the same old, worn-out thing: appointing cronies, political intrigue, pressure, a case of one hand washing the other. Is there anyone left who's not corrupt? ; The national-security expert Gregory Treverton has famously made a distinction between puzzles and mysteries. Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts are a puzzle. We can’t find him because we don’t have enough information. The key to the puzzle will probably come from someone close to bin Laden, and until we can find that source bin Laden will remain at large OPEN SECRETS
• · · · · · 'No ifs, no buts': the government will turn a blind eye if you are rich You are rich … so am I; Communicating with Congress: How Capitol Hill is Coping with the Surge in Citizen Advocacy

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Nobody said it better than Francis Bacon, back in 1605, AROUND THE TIME OF THE MAKING OF THE NOSE FOR PERFUME:
For myself, I found that I was fitted for nothing so well as for the study of Truth; as having a mind nimble and versatile enough to catch the resemblances of things … and at the same time steady enough to fix and distinguish their subtler differences; as being gifted by nature with desire to seek, patience to doubt, fondness to meditate, slowness to assert, readiness to consider, carefulness to dispose and set in order; and as being a man that neither affects what is new nor admires what is old, and that hates every kind of imposture.

Sharing is what the blogosphere is all about Tips and Tools

Blogging and all that Jazz If Only Id Known! (Tips for a new website)
Everyone has a story, what's yours? Every one has tips what are yours?

In blogs we trust It only takes a bit of software to turn a column into a blog. It's all part of the inexorable drift of all media to the internet. I'm still a bit suspicious of the web, but hundreds of millions of users can't be wrong. What do you think?

• Blogging Starter Checklist; [ ah Blogs and Trust; For example, by merely adding a link to Google's blog search on both its homepage, the feature rocketed up the standings to become No. 1 in the field. ... Google stops providing 'tips' to its own products in its search results ]
• · GOOGLE has moved to put an end to the work of pranksters who manipulate the search engine so that, for example, looking for "miserable failure" will bring up a link to the home page of the US President. Search engine takes on web bombers and trust; There is clearly a culture within the ABC, or at least among its journalists, that they are above criticism. Best Blogs 2006. Déjà vu on the ABC
• · I’ve been home from hospital for a few days, and I can focus on fine print. I’ve cut my fingernails so I can type again. Bread tastes funny and I can’t tolerate coffee. I’ve been away a lot longer than we expected. Coming back slowly; Technorati may have been crowned king of blog searches ever since blogs started to make it big, but new market share numbers suggest that the popular blog search site could be taking the back seat to Google's Blog Search. Web market share analysis firm Hitwise says that, according to their numbers from last week, Google Blog Search has finally surpassed Technorati in web traffic—Google Blog Search now accounting to 0.025 percent of all web traffic and Technorati accounting for 0.023 percent. Google Blog Search outpaces Technorati
• · · The advice is still to be wary of strangers on the street, especially if they’re offering you candy. But with social interaction now fully available in today’s immersive Web 2.0 environments that are both online meeting space and ... By Alex Zaharov-Reutt. Teens getting savvier about MySpace, especially girls ; Search Market Predictions for 2007
• · · · To out-Google Google; Google Calendar overtaking its rivals

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In the information age, very few things are secret. Everyone from ASIO to the Freemasons has a website. So when The Sun-Herald publishes a list of Sydney's secret beaches, we cannot be accused of spilling the beans. All this information is available in streams of entries online, in guidebooks such as Andrew Short's Beaches Of The New South Wales Coast, and Tourism NSW even has a summer campaign promoting its favourite secret beaches. Secret Sydney beaches: A plethora of sandy hideaways tucked into hard to reach spots

Debut: Playing Robinson Crusoe and Jozef Imrich
Tiffany Baker's THE LITTLE GIANT OF ABERDEEN COUNTY, pitched as Wally Lamb meets Elizabeth McCracken, about a girl who grows physically and emotionally beyond her small town's wildest expectations, to Caryn Karmatz Rudy at Warner, in a pre-empt, by Daniel Lazar at Writers House (world).

Iowa Writer's Workshop graduate Alan Drew's book about a family whose lives are thrown into chaos when the 1999 Istanbul earthquake destroys the family's home and way of life, to Kate Medina at Random House, by Dorian Karchmar at the William Morris Agency.

Fifty-one-year old debut fiction writer Donald Ray Pollock's KNOCKEMSTIFF, a dark and wry work of grotesque southern gothic, based on the town of the same name in rural southern Ohio where the author was born and raised, with a violent and unsavory cast of characters hurtling from one life disaster to another -- from the father who pumps his son full of steroids in order to vicariously relive his glory days as a perpetually second-place bodybuilder, to the outback psychotic who gets unceremoniously mixed up with two teenaged siblings committing incest in a dynamite hole, to Gerald Howard at Doubleday, at auction, by Richard Pine of Inkwell Management.

Joe Dunthorne's SUBMARINE, narrated by a fourteen-year-old boy growing up in Swansea, on the south coast of Wales, to Bruce Tracy at Random House, along with Dan Menaker, at auction, in a two-book deal, by Georgia Garrett at AP Watt (US). UK rights to Simon Prosser of Hamish Hamilton.

Sandy Novack's debut novel PRECIOUS, set in 1978 during a summer when a young girl disappears from a small town in Pennsylvania, and the story collection LOVE & OTHER DISASTERS, to Jennifer Hershey at Random House, by Denise Shannon at Denise Shannon Literary Agency (world).
The True Story of the Iron Curtain Crossing: A collection of stories about how one escape can make a difference in the world
Second Life: A surprisingly upbeat, inspirational tale of escape

Elsewhere in silly news, at the start of the lawsuit between billionaire movie producer Philip Anschutz and novelist Clive Cussler, Anschutz's attorneys are now claiming the failure of film version of SAHARA had nothing to do with it being a bad movie--it's because the sales numbers for Cussler's books were exaggerated.

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

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

Czech out Antony on Blogging

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More Top blogs for data analysis types
Iceberg Secret

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cold River Review The River Less Traveled

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

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

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

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

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