---

In 10 days time is St Jozef's Day
Modesty is the art of drawing attention to whatever it is you are being humble about.

PAIN and suffering are the bread and butter of most sole survivors but Jozef Imrich insists his book Cold River is a celebration of happy times … CREATING MYSELF: How I Learned That Risk taking comes in All Shapes, Sizes and Packages, Including Me, his coming of age memoir, from his troubled-filled youth to his inspirational turnaround in exile ;-) Risk: what does it mean to you?
Join the riskiest quotes of all times ... Quote the worst line – and win tickets to Laugharne


Can we change the heart of politics? Tear Down Fake Walls
Time assistant managing editor Romesh Ratnesar's TEAR DOWN THIS WALL: A City, A President and the Speech That Ended the Cold War, the history and legacy of President Ronald Reagan's iconic (and initially underappreciated) 1987 speech in West Berlin, which helped bring an end to the Cold War, as told through interviews with many of those who both helped create and shape the speech as well as those who witnessed it firsthand, to Alice Mayhew at Simon & Schuster, on an exclusive submission, by David Halpern at The Robbins Office (NA). Mixed Emotions

Packer or Imrich familes are to celebrate weddings in Sydney ... Details of the hush-hush wedding have been leaked and contradict widespread rumours suggesting the weddings was to be held in Prague! or Paris! Sydney on 7 September 2007

YouTube playing starring role in presidential race ...
It is guerrilla politics at its cleverest: The mysterious Internet video that compares US presidential hopeful Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to Big Brother is the boffo hit of the YouTube Web site. Classic YouTube

Aha - 1 Political Pioneering Clinton
2 - Edwards

3 - He really is the real Bumma - Obama

---

O n 8th of March the formula One and one make three is not without its attractions.
-Dostoevsky misquoted

I am here to write about The Power of the Human Spirit. Indeed, the human spirit has no limits. If you dream big, and you have the determination and the will to pursue your dream, it will become a reality. I dreamt of making stars;
I was given a planet of wet paint ...

Wet Paint Cafe
50 MacPherson St
Bronte 2024 NSW
Phone: (02) 9369 4634
Being located away from the beachside strip at Bronte has not done any harm to this cute little restaurant, which has firmly established a reputation as one of the seaside suburb's top nosheries.

The soft light of candles spills out onto the street and illuminates the tables of mostly couples and small groups. The gentle light lends the rustic old space a certain romance, making the yellow walls glow and transforming the tiny space from cramped to intimate. The menu is modern Australian, but sets itself apart with a Creole touch. The signature Louisiana stuffed chicken is a favourite with regulars, while the rest of the menu features plenty of Cajun spice. Local Paint

Local trend setters Local style but colours are from brazil ...

---

What makes greatness is starting something that lives after you. Michael Schaefer: Blog Pioneer

Cold River is among the sea of mixed emotions and gory specifics
Tribe of Hot Readers - I am humbled ;-)

The Curly Question
A version of this paper appears in Uniya Occasional Paper no.11, December 2006
One looks into the abyss in order to see beyond it.
Robert Jay Lifton
There is a scene in City Slickers in which the gnarly old cowboy Curly (Jack Palance) turns to the jaded city slicker Mitch (Billy Crystal) as they ride along the trail.
“Do you know what the secret of life is?”
“No, what?”
Curly holds up his gloved index finger.
“This.”
“Your finger?”
“One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and everything else don’t mean shit!”
“That’s great, but what’s the one thing?”
“That’s what you’ve gotta figure out.”
According to Google, the Curly Question has been invoked by smokers to help them quit and by sales people to improve their figures. But it is essentially the “meaning of life” question. Why am I here? Does my existence have any value, my life any purpose?
Human beings have an innate need to find meaning in their lives. The trouble is, the things that people used to rely on to give their lives meaning — for the most part family, work and religion — are losing their grip for many in the modern West. Where does that leave those of us wracked by doubt, ambivalence and insecurity asks Mark Byrne? Are we forced to choose between existentialist despair, materialist denial or fundamentalist certainty?

---

Work spares us from three great evils: boredom, vice and need.
-Voltaire

Some writers feel that blogging drains too much creativity and hinders their “real” writing. Others feel that blogging can absorb so much time that they devote hours to posts about their cat instead of revising that novel.
Truer words were never spoken. Blogging, like journaling, is addictive. It’s also esoteric. Many diaries develop a private language all their own, and invariably that bleeds over into other writing as well. In the case of blogging though there is the additional sense of urgency because people are waiting for that next post… Well, at least in theory there are people waiting. Sometimes I wonder if I am just writing for the Googlebot, and then I wonder if it enjoys what it finds

The drama of our time is the coming of all into one fate A Tribe is Forming - One Touch Handshake
Best Advice:

It's better to be hated for who you are than loved for who you are not.
It's better to fail at something you love, than to succeed at something you don't.
Everyone is always offering advice on everything. What's the best piece of advice you've ever received? What's the worst (and why)?
A journal is the perfect place to learn the ways in which language communicates authenticity as opposed to the way language is a tool used by political, advertising and marketing coalitions to make us purchase something, to make us hate this group or that one, and to make us look through blurry eyes at the daily transgressions against freedom and humanity. Learning the authenticity of your own voice makes it harder and harder to write in an inauthentic voice or listen to one; it makes it harder to believe what others want you to believe against your will."
The best advice I have ever been given was not to give unsolicited advice because it falls on deaf ears an makes people defensive. The worse advice I ever got was unsolicited advice, it made me really defensive.

• All Colours ...
• · Your journal is your private place … no more ;-)
Via Email from writers of note:

Body English. Write a “conversation” in which no words are said. This exercise is meant to challenge you to work with gesture, body language (or, as a baseball announcer I heard once misspeak it, body English), all the things we convey to each other without words. We often learn more about characters in stories from the things characters do with their hands than from what they say. It might be best to have some stranger observe this conversation, rather than showing us the thoughts of one of the people involved in the conversation, because the temptation to tell us what the conversation is about is so great from inside the conversation. “I was doing the opposite of Freud,” Desmond Morris says, of his famous book The Naked Ape that first studied the ways humans speak with their bodies. “He listened to people and didn’t watch; I watched people and didn’t listen.” Because of Morris, according to Cassandra Jardine, “when politicians scratch their noses they are now assumed to be lying—and the sight of the Queen [Elizabeth] crossing her legs at the ankles is known to be a signal that her status is too high for her to need to show sexual interest by crossing them further up.” Autistic children cannot understand human conversation even when they understand individual words because they cannot read facial expressions, which is clear evidence of how important other forms of language are. 600 words.
The First Lie. Tape-record a conversation. It’s a tried and true method of understanding how people talk, but still surprisingly effective. Obtain permission of the people you are taping. Instruct your group each to tell one small lie during the session, only one lie. Tell them, if they get curious, that some philosophers think that deception was a crucial learned behavior in the emergence of modern consciousness several thousand years ago. You can participate in the conversation yourself, but don’t become an interviewer. Let the machine run for a good long while, allowing your friends to become comfortable and less aware of the tape recorder. Listen to the tape a day or two later. Play it several times. Choose some small part of the conversation to transcribe (the lies may be interesting, if you can spot them, but more interesting should be all the other stuff they say). Transcribe as faithfully as you can. Do not transcribe more than one page of talk. After that, fill out the conversation with information about the people who are speaking, giving us only details about them that we need to know. The final product should be no longer than two pages long, double-spaced.

---

Websites around the world are getting a new computerized visitor among the Googlebots and Yahoo web spiders: The taxman. A five-nation tax enforcement cartel has been quietly cracking down on suspected internet tax cheats, using a sophisticated web crawling program to monitor transactions on auction sites, and track operators of online shops, poker and porn sites. Strom said now that the cat is out of the bag ... Tax Takers Send in the Spiders

---

It is about time Dragon paid some attention to the NSW election to be held in 23 days on 24 March 2007. My prediction is hung Parliament, or widhful thinking dated 1991 when John Hatton and his charter 92 independents brought sunlight to the sunny Harbour City ... State Election 24 March 2007 especially what the Herald has to say Parties vie for biggest loser title

NSW Election 2007 - James Bond 007 Idle speculation: March edition: Morris Iemma v Peter Debnam
Skepticism about Labor’s figures has spilled over from Crikey, Tim Dunlop and this site and into the news pages of the Sydney Morning Herald, which reports suggestions from a "senior Liberal source" that ALP state secretary Mark Arbib was "making it up". The surveys reportedly had samples of 150 (which the Telegraph has thus far neglected to reveal), so the margin for error wouldn’t have been much different if he had been. Nonetheless, the Liberals went to some effort to debunk the alleged Labor findings, providing the Herald with a progress report of their own.

For those as keen on a punt as Mackerras, books on the election are being run by SportingBet, Centrebet, Sportsbet and Sports Acumen. They are currently offering short odds on Morris Iemma remaining Premier: $1.16 compared with $4.50 for Peter Debnam for each agency except Sports Acumen, which is offering $1.17 and $4.40. SportingBet is also taking bets on 14 individual seats, with the odds currently on offer converting into the following percentages. Note that this indicates the likelihood of winning the seat, rather than predicted vote share.

• The blog that matters in NSW Herald of Sydney - Czech out the Green punter at ABC - Spin cycle; [Larva to Butterfly; Wizard of Oz Politics ]
• · The Premier, Bob Carr, is poised to use his historic win of a third four-year term to conduct a definitive shake-out of his cabinet - including the creation of super ministries - and embark on a wave of far-reaching reforms 2003 of past years; I make my debut in the NSW Election Campaign
• · Exclusives by Kelvin Bissett: ; Poll Bludger 1
• · · Master Poll Bludger; Iemma and Debnam are blogging on the Daily Telegraph site I will never forget Macquarie Fields’, Peter Debnam

---

Pretender to throne caught pretending
Lets stop pretending Gianna's sense of irony rocks - Filed under: Rightwingers say the darndest things — Gianna @ 10:06 pm

The Shorter Road to Surfdom - punchy and punchified Glenn Milne: Alternative PM acts like alternative PM. The cheek!

---

IT Builds a Better Idea
As companies seek more and better ideas, CIOs have an opportunity to reinvent the innovation process and, by enabling people to collaborate, make IT an engine for growth. Innovation in big companies has always been treated like gold—hidden deep inside secret vaultlike labs and protected from everyone except the researchers in lab coats. When products or services emerge from the labs after years of development—and just one in a hundred does—they fail most of the time. I have been instructed to share this story or else ... ;-)

Courtesy of the Daring lover of irony the Antipodean Barista AIDS via Special Documentary Hub

My mentor, Terry McGee, is familiar with Gorbachev's (sic) images from last year Gold Coast invasion.

---

Red Lantern set a few hearts on Fire at Crown Street Et Tu, Children of the world ... Royal Saint Valentine

To honour my days at parliamentary library of new south wales etc ... Love Library Day

---

Regrettably, the quality of congressional Web sites was generally disappointing. As we outlined previously in our January 2006 e-newsletter The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly an overwhelming amount of content and links were outdated on Member Web sites. In some instances, it was clear that sites hadn’t been updated since 2003 when we released our last report. They Are Back …

Blogosphere Now The power of the blogerati
As a blogger myself (but one who does it for my own writing release and Heaven forbid, fun, and not money), I am sometimes taken aback by some comments I get from readers, especially the anonymous ones. Apparently I am 'supposed' to take my blogging far more seriously than I do. I've discovered many believe a blog's power and/or influence is just as strong in some ways than some mainstream media (as utterly ridiculous as that sounds). Therefore, when I express my views (as stupid or as grand as I feel that day), I'm 'supposed' to hold myself to the same impartial standards as a professional in the media. So much for freedom of speech, creativity, opinion and/or a participatory dialogue.

A brawl has broken out over an opinion piece in London's Telegraph by British literary critic John Sutherland, who deplores the damage done by sloppy online book reviewers. Sutherland wrote on November 12 about a damaging series of reader reviews on the Amazon website of Victoria Glendinning's new biography of Leonard Woolf.

• John Sutherland ; [A New Zealand teenager who was sent on a computer training course as part of a police rehabilitation program has admitted to hacking into internet banking accounts and stealing nearly $NZ50,000 Teen hacker 'a very clever boy' ; Voters are all equal in NSW. But the good cash money son helps you jump the queue. Money Talks: Election Time ; Andre Elder on how young NSW legislature seems to be NSW politics in 2007 and beyond ]
• · It is the reaction, not the event, that determines leadership. Blogging politics In the first significant step towards free wireless broadband throughout NSW's most popular cities, the state government today announced a tender inviting Internet providers to bid for the large-scale development. NSW Minister for Commerce, John Della Bosca, announced Internet providers were being invited to take part in the Iemma government's initiative to provide free wireless broadband to the state's major CBD areas. NSW free wireless plan gets underway ;
• · Are these people in the corner office tone-deaf? The public is clamoring for clean corporate governance, and here they are cutting themselves cute little side deals with shareholders' money Crony art of Capitalism ; The internet bouncers
• · · Telstra and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation will announce shortly that they have established, separately, a presence in the cult virtual world of Second Life. They will join a growing throng of international companies - including Dell, Toyota, Adidas, IBM, and Intel - who have built a base within the virtual world, seeking to test its worthiness as a promotional and commercial tool. Australians in virtual world stampede ; Political journalists need to recall that fair and accurate reporting and informed debate are essential for a functioning society. A tired and emotional Glenn Milne’s rampage at the Walkley awards recently reminds us once again just how dodgy our political journalists are. We rely on people like Milne, Michelle Grattan, Paul Kelly, Laurie Oakes and the rest to inform us about our nation’s politics. They wield real power since they not only tell us the news, they tell us what it means as well.

The failure of Australia’s political media
• · · · Alexander Litvinenko died fighting a dangerous game against a Russia dominated by genuinely dark institutions.
The media is inevitably full of predictions about the Rudd/Gillard Labour leadership. John Hewson, Alexander Downer, Mark Latham, Rudd. The media reaction in each of these cases has been the same: “a fresh face”, “the dream team”, “a new generation”, positive coverage, polls shoot up. I was alerted to this funny story on Late Night Live. When the London Review of Books began taking personal ads, the content was quirkily British - as for instance in the ad from which I took the heading. “”Bastard. Complete and utter. Whatever you do, don’t reply - you’ll only regret it. Man, 38.” Apparently that ad was a huge success generating lots of inquiries. Now there’s a book based on the column full of all sorts of nonsense. Reality is darker than James Bond ; FRANK WARREN HAS been called many things. The most trusted stranger in America. A unique global guru. Today's Media "It" Boy. Father confessor of the world wide web Strangers' secrets have become a telling chronicle of the modern age.
• · · · · THE road to riches once swung through law, banking and business. But these days the young mega-rich are just as likely to be in fashion, film, or music. One in three of Australia's young multimillionaires aged 40 or under made their fortunes in the "creative industries", research shows. Among the older millionaires, only one in 10 were involved in creative pursuits. Young creative types the new mega-rich ; How's the book biz these days? I asked one of the real pros, Carole Baron, former topper at Penguin, G.P. Putnam's, Dutton, Pocket Books et al in her 25-year career, and today publishing director of a partnership between media heavyweights Time Warner and Bertelsmann A.G. that they call Bookspan. Hanging With Bookies and Bloggers
• · · · · · Free Excel Spreadsheets ; John Quiggin’s Wordpress dashboard recorded its 50 000-th comment. ; Ozblogistan and Club Troppo Missing Link makes a comeback!

---

Sikh of Sikhs, Bawa Jagdev has been rewarded for his services to the community at the Strangers Room at the NSW Parliament House on 8 February 2007 AD ...


Some friends and family amongst us are more than willing to go the extra mile on behalf of the weakest in our community. Bawa Singh Jagdev has contributed immensely to the Sikh community developing many education, religious and cultural programmes for the community. He was instrumental in establishing the first religious place of worship for the Sikh Community along with weekend language schools. Other significant work undertaken by Bawa for his community includes the provision of free meals for the community, the establishment of a free meditation area and the organisation of many cultural and sporting events, not only for members of the Sikh background but also those of Muslim, Hindu and Christian backgrounds. The 2006CRC Lifetime Achievement in Community Sector: Mr Bawa Singh Jagdev


The existence of the spirit world The costs of volunteering
Independent Weekly this week, on 10/02/2007, shares story by Moira Deslandes. Volunteers are an integral part of our society. More than six million Australians over the age of 18 volunteer each year and of that number, South Australians are leading the way with volunteering commitments

VOLUNTEERS are an integral part of our society. More than six million Australians over the age of 18 volunteer each year and of that number, South Australians are leading the way with volunteering commitments. At least one out of every two (or610,000 South Australians) freely share their time and skills with others.
This equates to 72.8 million hours volunteered each year. This investment in volunteering
returns dividends to our state, building our social, economic, cultural and environmental capital. However, in October 2006, Volunteering Australia conducted an online survey which found almost all volunteers (88 per cent) incur out-of-pocket expenses that are not reimbursed. Some 1,245 respondents completed the survey, of which 724 were volunteers and 466 were representatives of volunteer involving organisations. The remaining 55 respondents were from groups such as
government, media and business. The survey found that out-of-pocket expenses amounted to $600 on average for each volunteer and these costs caused sufficient impact on one-in-10 volunteers to force them to stop or reduce their volunteering participation.
Many other volunteers, although financially worse off, felt they were unable to relinquish their commitments due to the demand for the services that they provided, particularly in the community
services and welfare sectors. Broad areas where volunteers incur costs are transport (petrol/vehicle/public transport), telephone, safety equipment and clothing (including uniforms and their maintenance), and training. More than a quarter of volunteer involving organisations experienced an increase in reimbursement requests from volunteers over the past year.
Some organisations had to adjust their reimbursement policy or formula, or increase reimbursement levels, for example, following the impact of petrol price rises on travel expenses, and these growing reimbursement requests then compounded upon many not-for-profit organisational overheads. In the second half of this year Volunteering Australia brought together
a small taskforce of experts to look at the issue of rising costs of volunteering and to determine possible solutions. The national Costs of Volunteering Taskforce presented its report to the
Federal Government in December 2006 and urged it to consider several options outlining a national scheme to reimburse volunteers' out-of-pocket expenses.
The taskforce recommended six options that were divided into two categories:
reimbursement to the volunteer through the organisation for which they
work and personal reimbursement direct to the volunteer. It is hoped the
government will consider the options and work with the taskforce to bring.in
a simple and fair solution. Taskforce recommendations
Organisational reimbursement options:
1. Agrantprocessssimilartotheexisting
volunteer smallequipment grant (VSEG)
program through which organisations
would apply for funding on the basis
that they have reimbursed, or intend
to reimburse, volunteer out-of-pocket
expenses.
2. Government requirement for
volunteer reimbursement budget iii
funding applications from not-for-profit
organisations.
3. Tax credit to the not-for-profit organisation
- this would most effectively be
administered through the Goods &
Services Tax (GST) system as an offset
on the Business Activity Statement
(BAS) given that most not-for-profit
organisations are income tax exempt.
Personal reimbursement options:
1. A personal tax rebate.
2. A personal tax reduction.
3. A personal grant/claim process that
the volunteer would apply for directly
to the relevant government agency,
for example, the Health Insurance
Commission (ie: Medicare offices) and
provide evidence of relevant expenses.
Many volunteers don't wish to be reimbursed because they see volunteering
as a way of allowing them to meet and experience a diversity of activities
and people. Butforothers these costs are beginning to make an impact on their
participation, and this is an issue of some concern.
In Australia, we are fortunate to have a high level of volunteer involvement,
but we cannot be complacent. Our volunteers are under-recognised and
undervalued.
With more than 700,000 non-profit organisations countrywide, most of which are small and entirely dependent on the commitment of volunteers, the government and community need to do
all they can to ensure we do not experience a significant downturn in volunteer involvement, because of the rising cost of volunteering.

• Volunteer wins award; [The politics of giving; Turning a negative into a positive]
• · Prime Minister John Howard's 'decent Aussie values' test can't come quickly enough for me. A testing time for our new arrivals; Democracy is another casualty of the Iraq War: Gerhard Schroeder’s address to the survivors of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Public responsibility - lessons from the nazi era

---

While her songs take listeners back to innocence and humanity that no longer exists, Sasha is fighting to help make sure that the music does The Staple Singers on Triple JJJ

I remember my first exposures Down Under: The Story of the Story Bridge ;-)

---

As Abraham Lincoln said 'To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men' (and women)

Sheldon said in 2000 that the profession of author suited him best: There is no budget to worry about, you can have as many characters as you want; you can give them all yachts ... Sidney Sheldon, a writer whose keen grasp of popular tastes fuelled a string of feverishly romantic and suspenseful books - and made him a perennial bestseller - has died of pneumonia in Palm Springs, California, at the age of 89.
I try to construct them so when the reader gets to the end of a chapter, he or she has to read just one more chapter. It's the technique of the old Saturday afternoon serial: leave the guy hanging on the edge of the cliff at the end of the chapter Novels made good junk and their author millions

The Zeccola Family: a land of refuge for film lovers If Tomorrow Comes – Be it Art or Idea
Pull back the curtains on one of Australia’s most influential film families. It was in his birthplace, a humble southern Italian village, that Antonio Zeccola first got a taste for film. Every weekend of his childhood, he would watch movies screened by his father in the village church hall. When the Zeccolas migrated to Melbourne, they brought their passion for film with them. Over the next fifty years, Antonio Zeccola built his own cinema chain. Today Palace Cinemas is a family enterprise run by Antonio, his wife and their four children. It’s a major force in Australian film culture. But the movie business is as high risk today as it ever was, and keeping the family venture afloat is a nerve-wracking operation.

Antonio Zeccola is the Managing Director of Palace Films and Palace Cinemas with a 40-year history of distributing quality local and international titles in Australia and New Zealand. He has received credit as Executive Producer for Paul Goldman's Australian Rules and again for Rolf de Heer's Alexandra's Project, which was officially selected for screening at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2003, where it was nominated for a Golden Bear.
Antonio has a strong commitment to the Australian film industry and has invested in three of the country's most highly anticipated films of 2006: The Book of Revelation, Ana Kokkinos' follow-up to the past Palace Films success Head On; Irresistible, starring Susan Sarandon and Sam Neill; and Macbeth in which the director of Romper Stomper, Geoffrey Wright, brings Shakespeare's play to gangland Melbourne.
Palace Cinemas is Antonio's exhibition division with 73 screens across 21 locations in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth making it Australia's only national group of cinemas dedicated to the presentation of quality film. Antonio's passion for restoring, reinvigorating and saving cinema icons has led him to recently acquire and refurbish the Chauvel Cinema in Sydney and the Westgarth Theatre in Melbourne.
From the foyer to the big screen, the founder of Palace cinemas supports Australian films, writes Gabriella Coslovich.
Talk about extreme makeover. The foyer of South Yarra's Cinema Como used to have about as much personality as a railway station waiting room. Not any more. The new-look Como, being launched on Thursday, is unrecognisable - think bordello meets Gilbert and Sullivan (that's a compliment). Ten Canoes sails off with swag of awards
Credits:
KOKODA
GFN Productions
Executive Producers: Geoff Levy, Lynda House, Antonio Zeccola
Producers: Leesa Kahn, Catriona Hughes
Director: Alister Grierson
Writers: Alister Grierson, John Lonie
Sales and Distribution: Palace Films, Arclight Films

• Curtain falls with a wild ride ; [ Our celluloid wonderland ; For foreign artists often found our country a land of refuge for their misunderstood genius France: a land of refuge for foreign artists ]
• · TELEVISION production and film company Beyond International has closed its loss-making film distribution arm. Managing director Mikael Borglund said the division had been running at a loss for some time and was a major drag on company's earnings. Film arm beyond salvation; Feel free to go back and add comments to my Book Club entries on December 3 and December 10. This is a fluid conversation and I look forward to hearing from you. Book club
• · The hottest siblings in horror share directing and editing duties on their stateside debut, The Messengers, which was the top-grossing film of the weekend. The Messengers ; More and more moviemakers are choosing Australia's southeastern state as the home of their film shoots, including A Cry in the Dark, Picnic at Hanging Rock and, more recently, the live-action Charlotte's Web. Where the Wild Things Are
• · · Or, more prosaically: critical thinking is the skillful application of a repertoire of validated general techniques for deciding the level of confidence you should have in a proposition in the light of the available evidence. A shorter version is the art of being right. ; Sullivan breaks magic 49-second barrier
• · · · To Be Rich and Bohemian A Walk On The Virtual Side; Way Beyond Pretty
• · · · · Are beaches and books in danger?
The conventional wisdom would say yes. After all, more and more media--the Internet, cable television, satellite radio, videogames--compete for our time. And the Web in particular, with its emphasis on textual snippets, skimming and collaborative creation, seems ill-suited to nurture the sustained, authoritative transmission of complex ideas that has been the historical purview of the printed page. But surprise--the conventional wisdom is wrong. Our special report on books and the future of publishing is brim-full of reasons to be optimistic. People are reading more, not less. The Internet is fueling literacy. Giving books away online increases off-line readership. New forms of expression--wikis, networked books--are blossoming in a digital hothouse. No tension ahead of riots anniversary; Forbes has just put out a special edition on the future of books. It looks really interesting and that's just scanning the contents. Peopple still burn books. But that only means that books are still dangerous enough to destroy. And if people want to destroy them, they are valuable enough that they will endure.
"Books are humanity in print."
• · · · · · Donald Mitchell has written 2,923 book reviews for Amazon.com--and made $20,000 doing it. The Secret Life Of An Online Book Reviewer ; (By mate - Jonathan Enfield) Cold River is proof that persistence does pay off. I have never been able to explain to people how despite having such limited movement, achieving my dreams can lift the spirit so that I feel it’s possible not just to overcome my own physical limitations but to defy gravity itself. Man who catch fly using chopsticks can accomplish anything! Electronic publishing isn't leading to the death of books. Stop Worrying About Copyrights

---

As Abraham Lincoln said 'To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men' (and women)

Sheldon said in 2000 that the profession of author suited him best: There is no budget to worry about, you can have as many characters as you want; you can give them all yachts ... Sidney Sheldon, a writer whose keen grasp of popular tastes fuelled a string of feverishly romantic and suspenseful books - and made him a perennial bestseller - has died of pneumonia in Palm Springs, California, at the age of 89.
I try to construct them so when the reader gets to the end of a chapter, he or she has to read just one more chapter. It's the technique of the old Saturday afternoon serial: leave the guy hanging on the edge of the cliff at the end of the chapter Novels made good junk and their author millions

The Zeccola Family: a land of refuge for film lovers If Tomorrow Comes – Be it Art or Idea
Pull back the curtains on one of Australia’s most influential film families. It was in his birthplace, a humble southern Italian village, that Antonio Zeccola first got a taste for film. Every weekend of his childhood, he would watch movies screened by his father in the village church hall. When the Zeccolas migrated to Melbourne, they brought their passion for film with them. Over the next fifty years, Antonio Zeccola built his own cinema chain. Today Palace Cinemas is a family enterprise run by Antonio, his wife and their four children. It’s a major force in Australian film culture. But the movie business is as high risk today as it ever was, and keeping the family venture afloat is a nerve-wracking operation.

Antonio Zeccola is the Managing Director of Palace Films and Palace Cinemas with a 40-year history of distributing quality local and international titles in Australia and New Zealand. He has received credit as Executive Producer for Paul Goldman's Australian Rules and again for Rolf de Heer's Alexandra's Project, which was officially selected for screening at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2003, where it was nominated for a Golden Bear.
Antonio has a strong commitment to the Australian film industry and has invested in three of the country's most highly anticipated films of 2006: The Book of Revelation, Ana Kokkinos' follow-up to the past Palace Films success Head On; Irresistible, starring Susan Sarandon and Sam Neill; and Macbeth in which the director of Romper Stomper, Geoffrey Wright, brings Shakespeare's play to gangland Melbourne.
Palace Cinemas is Antonio's exhibition division with 73 screens across 21 locations in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth making it Australia's only national group of cinemas dedicated to the presentation of quality film. Antonio's passion for restoring, reinvigorating and saving cinema icons has led him to recently acquire and refurbish the Chauvel Cinema in Sydney and the Westgarth Theatre in Melbourne.
From the foyer to the big screen, the founder of Palace cinemas supports Australian films, writes Gabriella Coslovich.
Talk about extreme makeover. The foyer of South Yarra's Cinema Como used to have about as much personality as a railway station waiting room. Not any more. The new-look Como, being launched on Thursday, is unrecognisable - think bordello meets Gilbert and Sullivan (that's a compliment). Ten Canoes sails off with swag of awards
Credits:
KOKODA
GFN Productions
Executive Producers: Geoff Levy, Lynda House, Antonio Zeccola
Producers: Leesa Kahn, Catriona Hughes
Director: Alister Grierson
Writers: Alister Grierson, John Lonie
Sales and Distribution: Palace Films, Arclight Films

• Curtain falls with a wild ride ; [ Our celluloid wonderland ; For foreign artists often found our country a land of refuge for their misunderstood genius France: a land of refuge for foreign artists ]
• · TELEVISION production and film company Beyond International has closed its loss-making film distribution arm. Managing director Mikael Borglund said the division had been running at a loss for some time and was a major drag on company's earnings. Film arm beyond salvation; Feel free to go back and add comments to my Book Club entries on December 3 and December 10. This is a fluid conversation and I look forward to hearing from you. Book club
• · The hottest siblings in horror share directing and editing duties on their stateside debut, The Messengers, which was the top-grossing film of the weekend. The Messengers ; More and more moviemakers are choosing Australia's southeastern state as the home of their film shoots, including A Cry in the Dark, Picnic at Hanging Rock and, more recently, the live-action Charlotte's Web. Where the Wild Things Are
• · · Or, more prosaically: critical thinking is the skillful application of a repertoire of validated general techniques for deciding the level of confidence you should have in a proposition in the light of the available evidence. A shorter version is the art of being right. ; Sullivan breaks magic 49-second barrier
• · · · To Be Rich and Bohemian A Walk On The Virtual Side; Way Beyond Pretty
• · · · · Are beaches and books in danger?
The conventional wisdom would say yes. After all, more and more media--the Internet, cable television, satellite radio, videogames--compete for our time. And the Web in particular, with its emphasis on textual snippets, skimming and collaborative creation, seems ill-suited to nurture the sustained, authoritative transmission of complex ideas that has been the historical purview of the printed page. But surprise--the conventional wisdom is wrong. Our special report on books and the future of publishing is brim-full of reasons to be optimistic. People are reading more, not less. The Internet is fueling literacy. Giving books away online increases off-line readership. New forms of expression--wikis, networked books--are blossoming in a digital hothouse. No tension ahead of riots anniversary; Forbes has just put out a special edition on the future of books. It looks really interesting and that's just scanning the contents. Peopple still burn books. But that only means that books are still dangerous enough to destroy. And if people want to destroy them, they are valuable enough that they will endure.
"Books are humanity in print."
• · · · · · Donald Mitchell has written 2,923 book reviews for Amazon.com--and made $20,000 doing it. The Secret Life Of An Online Book Reviewer ; (By mate - Jonathan Enfield) Cold River is proof that persistence does pay off. I have never been able to explain to people how despite having such limited movement, achieving my dreams can lift the spirit so that I feel it’s possible not just to overcome my own physical limitations but to defy gravity itself. Man who catch fly using chopsticks can accomplish anything! Electronic publishing isn't leading to the death of books. Stop Worrying About Copyrights