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Red today at the Hyde Park cafe Quater:

THERE are thousands of Elvis
impersonators and hundreds of
Beatles tribute bands.
Bjorn Again, the Abba rip-off
outfit, is now a multi-milliondollar
business operating out of
four continents.
And The Sketch has it from
impeccable sources that all-girl
group Lez Zeppelin enjoys an,
ahem, dedicated following.
Imitation isn't merely the sincerest
form of flattery; done
properly, it can be entertaining
and bloody profitable.

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I did not drown this morning at the Iceberg where water is cold like COLD RIVER whereas the coffee is as hot as exotic Indian honeymoon ;-) At Iceberg there are no ordinary moments ;-) There are moments in life and even our every day, that unbeknown to us, Warm droplets of wisdom fall upon us


Some people you come across coffee shops are better than others and Charles Bali could not disagree less ;-) Chariots of Sun: Steve Burton

What does Bondi Iceberg stand for. The Russians and the French have revolutions. Australia has passion for swimming and running. Today, Paul and Jennifer informed me that it only rained once in the last 37 years on the Sunday when the notorious CITY to SURF run takes place. There were waves of human bodies rolling down the Ben Buckley's cliff this morning as depleted Iceberg swimmers lapped the pool on the Notts Avenue ...

Definition of Iceberg:
A unique representation of a fast disappearing Australian culture; one that doesn’t take itself too seriously, one where competition is important but where a fair-go, generosity and mateship are even more so.
– Larry Mounser, Media Dragon from the Sunday Life Magazine

For the first time in the 37-year history of the event, The Sun-Herald is helping you to change the lives of others by raising money for your favourite charity as your run. Considered to be one of most famous fun-runs in the world, the 14km event attracts up to 60000 people each August. LISA TAYLOR: top fundraiser

Icegergs of Bondi: Lord Ted and Terry People are like stained glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within
The spaces between your fingers were created for swimming and so that another's could fill them in ;-) Characters like Lord Ted will tell you that when you want to test the depths of a stream, don’t use both feet...
Science obsessed Terry likes to share this snippet from Roger who said: Doctors and scientists said that breaking the four-minute mile was impossible, that one would die in the attempt. Thus, when I got up from the track after collapsing at the finish line, I figured I was dead.
Roger Bannister (After becoming the first person to break the four-minute mile, 1952)

The sermon on the mount has long been rightly understood as both a starting-point and a summation of Jesus ’s teaching. It begins with the Beatitudes (Mt. 5:3-12), in which Jesus delineates the categories of people he says enjoy special favor. The Beatitudes are all familiar to us as sayings, the best known being blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. But what, really, are they? Is Jesus merely pronouncing a blessing, offering good wishes to those whom he chooses to single out? In fact, there ’s more to the story than that.

The Beatitudes provide a dizzying commentary designed to turn upside down the political and social world of the Roman Empire of Caesar Augustus and of the Jewish religious elite of Judea and Jerusalem. This is the opening move of a more drastic and fundamental reassessment of political and social affairs, applying not only to its own time but to all future times, down to our day. More still: It points to the increasing fulfillment in this world of the promise of the human condition as such — and of the struggle against vast and daunting but not insurmountable obstacles that such fulfillment will require.

Jesus describes those who are truly fortunate, the lucky ones of their day. But it is not emperors, conquerors, priests, and the wealthy who enjoy this favor. Rather, it is the common people, those whom earthly success has largely passed by: the poor, the meek, the persecuted, the peacemakers. How can this be? Because though they may have been denied worldly success, what cannot be taken away from them is their potential to live rightly by one another. It is all too easy for those who enjoy the pleasures of this world to try to float above such obligations. Jesus goes on to say that so long as ordinary people stand for the right things and do not retreat in their rightness before those who seem to have more power, what ’s right will prevail. It’s their kingdom — a kingdom organized not from the top down, but from the bottom up. In the Beatitudes, Jesus offers a description of the community of goodwill his teaching will build in this world...

• Havelites shall inherit the earth not shallow characters we tend to come across in who accumulate the riches ; We come to love not by finding a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly. The glass is neither half-full nor half-empty: it's twice as big as it needs to be; [Sometimes bluetongue winner who swim in 14 degree freezing water are not grinners ;-( Lap 15 First over the line without blowing it ;-) Media Dragons - Joe aka Jozef Imrich ... ; Life lessons ]
•• On Thursday Bob Carr invaded another Sydney Iceberg, the Glebe Bookshop, just before the parliamentary staff farewelled Ian Wotton Glebe and Parliamentary Stories filled with intrigues and myths ; Anthony Loewenstein was busy for the last four months travelling around Cuba and the Middle East Dubai, Egypt, Iran etc; amazingly he enjoyed Iran the most Anthony ; Jack and others including Mr and Mrs Loewenstein were part of the great debate My Israel Question Launched at Gelebe Books by Peter Manning

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Elton John's war on the Media Dragons Elton John hates this blog

Unlike years past, efforts to overhaul the much beleaguered Freedom of Information Act are gaining real traction on Capitol Hill. Momentum More

Open Government Groups Push FOIA Overhaul
A lawyer and an expert in whistleblower law, Gualtieri founded Federal Accountability for Initiative Reform (FAIR) in 1998

. Many public service scandals have come to light in Canada over the past several years. A few notable examples are:
o The Tainted Blood Scandal, in which 60,000 Canadians were infected with hepatitis C, many of them fatally.
o The Gun Registry Scandal, in which a program with a budget of $2 million spent $1 billion without authorization or reporting of the cost overrun to Parliament.
o The Sponsorship Scandal, in which millions of dollars of public money were diverted illegally to government-favoured advertising agencies.

• Why This Subject Is Important to You; [ Gadgets ... ; More Gadgets; New Official Blog on Google Earth and Google Maps ]
• · After 7 uninterrupted years of writing this blog each day, I will be taking a brief vacation - no web, no email, no phone. Returning May 23. Feel free to send me updates so I can catch-up quickly upon my return. All your consideration is appreciated. With my thanks and best wishes Sabrina; A Site to See. In order to ensure that your PC is protected from malware, it helps to run a few tests. Auditmypc.com offers just that: a handful of free, relatively quick self-assessments. Options include testing the strength of your firewall and your protection against pop-ups. Auditmypc.com
• · Mark A. Phillips doesn't at all mince words when taking to task his fellow journalists, not sparing their feelings a bit. He even identifies by name one of the journalistic comrades of whom he is scolding. That being one Debra J. Saunders of the San Francisco Chronicle. My suggestion for Saunders and others who believe they know who "real journalists" are: Get over it....The reality is that defining a journalist by the very narrow scope Saunders chooses to use is a symptom of the greater illness that plagues many, what I call "traditional" journalists.. It's called Big Ego ; Pundit Payola
• · · Who's a Journalist These Days? "Journalists with the "Big Ego disease" often point at bloggers and other people without press passes and accuse them of not being "real journalists." But bloggers who provide analysis about newsworthy events are journalists." Repeat By Mark A. Phillips ; There's a lot of talk about blogs being wonderful marketing tools lately. In fact, many big businesses are quickly working on plans to launch their own corporate blogs to serve as communication channels for their customers. When it comes to corporate blogging, some companies have stumbled, some have soared and others are facing serious start-up challenges. Case in point? GlaxoSmithKline's new blog for over-the-counter diet drug, Alli. Corporate Blogging - Alli "Oops
• · · · Blog: Friends in high places: As you'd expect, Myspace is still the king of social networking with 114 million unique visitors in June. That equated to growth of 72 per cent in the space of a year. But the Comscore figures also show how quickly Myspace rival Facebook, is catching up. It had 52 million unique visitors in June, up 270 per cent in the last year. Blog: Beautiful potential; ugly getting there ; Web alert: They know nothing about you
̶ ; · · · · Still some value in the old media ; IWR takes you back to basics again, and explains the not-so-dark art of finding out who’s reading your blog and what they’re saying about it. So you have set up and are running a blog, but how do you know if anyone is reading it and who those readers are? Just as importantly, how do you keep track of what others in the blogosphere are saying about your postings? Simple. You get to grips with the small matter of monitoring your blog. And that means understanding three simple principles: site analysis, trackbacks and specialist search engines. Master all three and you will have achieved blog management nirvana. Although Google does not release figures of blog coverage, Technorati is not so shy and currently claims to track in excess of 86 million blog Technorati
• · · · · · I shall assume that it is not the business of an author to respond in detail to the threads that commentators develop, since they clearly have a life of their own. The US intervened in two world wars to save Europe from itself' Blog of all blogs; A new website has taken office stories online, inviting users to provide juicy details of romance be it Russell and Rebecca or other tidbits O'heir's lispy stories or Tadros larry and hardy episodes or even Roussos's ex Stories about losers with plenty of money ;-)

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I get up every morning determined both to change the world and to have one hell of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning the day difficult.
-E.B. White

Chasing your dream taking the road less travelled and all that jazz… In July 1980 I had the once in a lifetime pleasure to meet and work for Karel Schwarzenberg at his Viennese Palace a stone throw away from abode of an Australian Ambassador, Dr James Cumes, who lives with wonderful Heide and Kim. I never understood the better the sentiment of the statement than then ... To those who in their homeland have no freedom, and to those who in their freedom have no homeland.
Karel and Vaclav Havel have been good friends for a long time and Klaus never liked that fact… The appointment of Karel Schwarzenberg as foreign minister in the Czech Republic's latest temporary government has infuriated the Czech president, Vaclav Klaus * Prince Karl XVII von Schwarzenberg (to give him his Austrian title)

The Past is a Foreign Country A hero of his Bohemian time
He never went with the crowd and has written a political memoir like no other

THE publishers probably groaned on receiving the text of this unusual book. It seems scratched together and rushed—even a paste-up job. But there is craft in the casualness. Before becoming his country's first post-Communist president, Vaclav Havel wrote absurdist plays and prison letters about speaking the truth to those in power. An intellectual with a near-liturgical respect for words, he distrusts mass-media patness almost as keenly as he hated Communist doublespeak. A writer with his ear and his ironic humour was never going to spoon-feed readers with a smoothly blended fairy tale.
At the end of his presidency, Mr Havel left behind neither heir nor party. This was no surprise. His whole career, like this book, can be taken as a plea for individuality, for not going with the crowd. Mr Havel is sage enough to know that not everyone wants to stand out. Still, his lesson is a good one, and at times even funny.

• A bunch of the world’s most famous dissidents ; [A must link to journalism and exposure; A conference in Prague gives food for thought Refusenik: A Czechered meeting ]
• · It never fails to amaze me the things people spend time and money researching and the so-called "studies" they produce - It may seem obsessive, but every day — sometimes hourly — Aaron Shepard checks the Amazon.com sales rankings for his 12 self-published books Amazon of Cold River Ranking; Google has also developed prototype phones and talked over technical specifications with manufacturers including LG Electronics Gmobile: Google phone coming next year: report
• · Librarians as Change Agents: How You Can Help Influence Public Policy in the 110th Congress Dedicated to Dr Cope; The Government Domain: 'Insanely Useful' Legislative Sites - This is not your grandfather's online legislative research environment. It is not even your older sibling's legislative research environment Domain of key links
• · · Art of politics just follow the yellow rod brick road to tax havens or private equity - Political snag for Chalco. The Australian Nigel Wilson July 30, 2007. The biggest Chinese investment in Australia -- the proposed $3 billion Aurukun bauxite/alumina development -- is in danger because it has been blocked from receiving federal funding as a result of a federal-state political feud. Politicians, money always a bad mix: The inverted snobbery ; Fortunately, every now and then Media Dragon drops some knowledge about ex-communists: In this undated image released by Louis Vuitton former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev sits in a car, a Vuitton bag at his side and the Berlin Wall in the background as he appears in an ad campaign for the French luxury label. Move over Scarlett - Gorby's in town
• · · · Today you can read all about my Villawood in award-winning Australian director Bruce Beresford's memoirs, Josh Hartnett definitely wants to do this . . . true stories from a life in the screen trade Director's trade talk ; A wickedly funny account of celebrity, Hollywood and everything in between
• · · · · Ocker films Cold River, hot destination = Brilliant director haunted by a traumatic past Bruce Beresford Instincts Of The Heart ; Books and reviews

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Many people reach their conclusions about life like lazy school children. They copy the answers from the back of the book without troubling to work out the sum for themselves.
-Soren Kierkegaard

From Niches to Riches: Anatomy of the Long Tail An Amazon employee described the Long Tail as follows: "We sold more books today that didn't sell at all yesterday than we sold today of all the books that did sell yesterday." A niche of one: Cold River

Media Dragons: worst of times, best of times Fooled by Randomness of Exile Life
This columnist has more guts than his wussy liberal colleagues at the Daily Telegraph and I'm not saying this because I happen to be Bohemian.

The book says that you can't predict anything—that when things happen, you try to construct a narrative around what happened, and that narrative is almost always wrong. Why is the market up today? Because home sales did such and such. It's almost never why, but we need to have an explanation. If managers can check themselves from making those all-too-tempting efforts to construct narratives, fundamentally they will have an advantage over the rest of us.

• Matthew Prior telss us - Happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind. The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual ; [The "Airport Effect in blogging The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference; The Long Tail is safe from Google. On Google, the link-rich don't necessarily get richer. ]
• · The number of libraries participating in the Google Book Search Library Project just got a whole lot bigger with today's addition of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation. The July 2007 Book Sense Picks & Notables Preview ; Oprah Picks Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex Next Cold River ;-) The Age of Turbulence ; Author Adichie wins Orange Prize
• · few simple keystrokes may soon turn blather into books. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have discovered a way to enlist people across the globe to help digitize books every time they solve the simple distorted word puzzles commonly used to register at Web sites or buy things online Researchers turn Web blather to books ; Dogged by questions from the EU over Google’s data retention and privacy policies, Google say they’re following the rules Google takes care of its privates
• · · Australian companies are starting to twig that Web 2.0 isn't just the latest trend for designing web pages - it can be a vital business tool. It's web take 2.0
• · · · Once upon a time NIDA actors, or any actors, were in a position where they could turn down work they regarded as too commercial, The Sydney-based National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) is adjusting its practices to a changing world.

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An empty canvas, apparently really empty, that says nothing and is without significance. Almost dull, in fact. In reality, however, [it's] crammed with thousands of undertone tensions and [is] full of expectancy. Slightly apprehensive lest it should be outraged ... It can contain anything but cannot sustain everything ... An empty canvas is a living wonder -- far lovelier than certain pictures."
- My Polish mate, Wassily Kandinsky

Artists like Richard McSweeney are put on this planet to live an extraordinary life. These artists are born with innate knowledge of their own abilities. I'm sure you know someone who decided to be an actor or a painter at a young age, and stuck with it until reaching their goal.

Most of us, however, spend our lives searching for that purpose feeling fearful and unhappy, yet afraid to take the risks involved with change. Richard's creations are the most impressive debuts at Julian Ashton of an emergent painter in recent years. Richard tries to distill more than a mustard seed or the grain of truth in his masterpieces.

The painter makes real to others his innermost feelings about all that he cares for. A secret becomes known to everyone who views the picture through the intensity with which it is felt.
-Lucien Freud


*Painted by Richard McSweeney during 2005


Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the [enlightened] place where it leads.
- Erica Jong

Above all Richard keeps his imagination and colours fresh. An abstract of warmness in the rainbow forest of love.
*Richard is well aware that art is really people asking the eternal question, What is it all about?

*Sacred Trees by Richard McSweeney - drawn and imagined in his studio at 3/25 Mona Road - DARLING POINT 2027


The essential of painting is that something, that 'ethereal glue,' that intermediary product which the artist secrets with all his creative being and which he has the power to place, to encrust, to impregnate into the pictorial stuff of the painting.
-Yves Klein

Another masterpiece of light captured by Richard McSweeney in 2006

When I've painted a woman's bottom so that I want to touch it, then [the painting] is finished.
-Pierre Auguste Renoir

The most difficult thing in the world is to reveal yourself, to express what you have to. As an artist, I feel that we must try many things -- but above all we must dare to fail. You must have the courage to be bad -- to be willing to risk everything to really express it all.
- John Cassavetes

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National Libraries in Australia and Czech Republic are filled with biographies, memoirs, deaths and taxes. If prophecy is an expression of our contemporary fears and wishes, so too, to a very great extent, is history. A Dead Certainty of Chance: Feelings and More Feelings Media Dragons wanted to experience everything, taste everything, go everywhere, do everything. Our notions of the future have something of that significance which Moravian born Freud attributes to our dreams dreamt along the Morava River July - Brave New World at 75: There’s nothing sweeter in the world

Arrived late Sunday night. So tired, and the rudest concierge I ever met. It’s the Paris Hilton prison diaries... If you read literary blogs you know that hell hath no fury like a blogger scorned. For their part, serious writers assume that those who can, do, while those who can’t, blog. The Scorn of the Literary Blog What is wrong with the modern literary novel? Why is it so worthy and dull? Why is it so anxious? Why is it so bloody boring? Many a man fails as an original thinker simply because his memory is too good, said Nietzsche. There can come a point in life when this begins to make sense. Divine comedy

End of dreams, return of history. With the Cold War over at last, many thinkers blissfully hoped that conflict between nations would fade to a memory...
End of Dreams, Return of History

How can a country be so rich and yet have dreadful health care, a declining population, and a corrupt political system with almost no opposition?... The Russian Conundrum: Growing Economy, Failing Society

The body count among Russian reporters is now thirteen murders since Putin came to power. In each case the reporter was working on a story critical of government or business officials. Once upon the time Media Dragon had a price on his head by the KGB Putin Strikes Again

Romantics who visit Cuba from rich lands like to kid themselves that they have found a true alternative to capitalist democracy. Why? A Cuban death rehearsal

Can a woman with a literary bent, an editor, find the man of her dreams on the internet? Maybe, though it is clearly asking too much that he should learn to spell her name. One day, as a cure for a broken heart, a heart that had only barely survived a head-on collision with another heart, a heart just out of intensive care, bruised and limping and still shying at the sound of any traffic A Woman of His Dreams

Psychologists reduce happiness to a sensation and then regard it as the only thing that matters. Sure, but the Greeks knew a thing or two as well... More Happiness Please

Polygyny can benefit women, while men do well from monogamy. And beautiful people really do have more daughters: strange truths of human nature Ten Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature: Handsome Media Dragons have daughters ;-)

Sure, some girls can sprint well and lift weights. But on the whole, boys are more excited than girls by the use of urine as secret ink. Let’s face facts. In Praise of Skinned Knees and Grubby Faces

What’s the relation between punch lines and laughter? What’s So Friggin' Funny? Nothing—laughter is simply how we connect

A-bombs, or the final particles of matter. There are some things that are so serious that you can only joke about them ... Last laugh before the cold war

Hallmark now offers consolation and strength to those faced with the awkward irrelevance of Father’s Day in some homes Happy Father’s Day, Mom!

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NSW Parliamentary Press Gallery Gone Mild ...

Its advertising and circulation are being drained away by the Media Dragons, and its owners seem stricken by a failure of the entrepreneurial imagination needed to prosper in the electronic age. Surveys showing that more and more young people get their news from television and computers breed a melancholy sense that the press is yesteryear's thing, a horse-drawn buggy on an eight-lane interstate.

The American press has the blues. Too many authorities have assured it that its days are numbered, too many good newspapers are in ruins. It has lost too much public respect. Courts that once treated it like a sleeping tiger now taunt it with insolent subpoenas and put in jail reporters who refuse to play ball with prosecutors. It is abused relentlessly on talk radio and in Internet blogs. It is easily bullied into acquiescing in the designs of a presidential propaganda machine determined to dominate the news.

Newspaper reporters were once heroes of the culture, played in films by the likes of Clark Gable or Robert Redford. Not Today ... I am not afraid of death anymore, says Alexander Solzhenitsyn. I feel it is a natural, but by no means the final, milestone of one’s existence Not today

A prosperous, lucky country turns out to have been founded on genocide. Clearly, Australia urgently needs an intelligentsia to help it emerge from its dark moral labyrinth. Why Intellectuals Like Genocide?

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Why Speak?

In life, as in art, the beautiful moves in curves.

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.

Creativity is what makes humanity move. We were created to participate.

I was among soulful friends this weekend at French Pause at Bronte and the Kellet Street Aparatif and dining with Dr Cope at Mal's place. Well Dr Cope is rather fond of Mal's cooking as well as the German Wolfgang von Goethe or Greek philosopher Aristotle as both liked to stress that the roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.

Ach, Aristotle understood friendship, its uses, its pleasures, and its ultimate good. He would also have understood how deep conversations can keep it alive. Tides of opinion about creativity have ebbed and flowed at the Leichart (sic) markets of Orange Grove school fame - so what length one should go to in order to pursue our dreams and our creativity... Midlife is the perfect time to reinvent yourself. It’s time to stretch your wings and try something new, something exciting, something … creative. To write. To paint. To dance. What food do we need to feed the wings and the soul?

As the season of believing seems to wind down let me gently remind you that many dreams still wait in the wings. Many authentic sparks must be fanned before passion performs her perfect work in you. Throw another log on the fire.
-Sarah Ban Breathnach

Each of us has natural talent and/or passion . You may not know how yet, but you have something to contribute with your life. You were put on this planet to live a joyful life. You were put here to be happy and through that happiness - you will improve the lives of others around you. It is my belief that part of what we all need is to connect with our own creativity.

The scope of creativity is vast. Creativity is a part of the way we live our lives. The choices we make. Creativity is a way of living, painting, capturing the world around us ... Sunlight, water, and air are passed about more equally than coal and oil.

Goethe was a new kind of hero, and man who brought art and life together in a way that did not look like a grubby compromise. Goethe's Bright Circle

To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.
-Joseph Chilton Pierce

Creative people revel in making something out of nothing, so when a new year and a blank calendar appears, the possibilities seem endless. Suddenly, impossible editors aren't so intimidating, artistic debuts are only one workshop away and sales goals are easy to achieve. Inherent within the human spirit is the desire for fulfillment, a longing to carry out our creative aspirations by reaching new heights of accomplishment. Yet often the yearning can be suppressed by fear. Perhaps we aren't feeling good enough, smart enough or able enough to pursue and fulfill our dreams.

Art Links: Still Glides the Cold Stream

There are no problems - only opportunities to be creative.
-Dorye Roettger

What’s to tell between a banal work of art and one that takes banality as its theme?
The problem with assessing much modern art is that it's hard to tell the difference between a banal work and one whose theme is banality. So, how might we make a case against Damien Hirst? Damien Hirst's new skull is studded with thousands of flawless diamonds—but does that make it a flawless work of art? Doubting Art

Negative freedom is freedom from tyranny, while positive freedom is the freedom to realize your desires.

Save your city by giving money to the arts! Yeah, sure A study of media obsession with studies

Digital technology will end the archaic film distribution system and hasten the decline and fall of the Hollywood empire. Is Tinseltown really about to disappear from our cultural radar screens? Maybe... Terry McGee: Reel Glides on the Cold River

What is prayer, and how can it work? This is not just a question of religion, but of neurophysics – and logic... Are silent prayers transmissible to, or readable by, a supernatural being?

I would have been a happier man if I had been a painter, says Clive James, and indeed a happier man if I had been a gravedigger Don't worry, be happy

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The man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears.
- Montaigne

Every day last week has been filled with activities from swimming at the Iceberg to gym at the Seals Club at Carr's French colloured Maroubra to movies such as Clubland, Zodiak, and Lucky Miles. June and Richard were moved by the Antipodean take of the Lucky Miles.

Blast from the past took us to Darling Point boating club where Michelle from Brissie and Bek together with Adriane shared sailing stories in their secret voices. Having a cup a tea at Richard's place at Mona Road among his amazing drawings and his bohemian collection of Julian Ashton paintings is much treasured. The story how Richard managed to get scholarship at the Ashton school of art at the Rocks is truly fascinating. With such prominent artists as William Dobell, John Passmore, John Olsen and Brett Whiteley among those who attended, the art school became famous to several generations of students and continues it's rich heritage in educating art students today. Richard, an architect by trade discarded the comfort of regular wages in 2001 in order to follow the footsteps of Whiteley and Dobell. The Julian Ashton Art School, is a very historic Australian art school in Sydney. Founded in 1890 by Australian artist Julian Ashton, it is Australia's oldest continuous art school. It is Australia's oldest continuous art school

Exotic stories come to me in mobile format as Bawa and Dial are walking and living the hot streets of India and the Namesake is another great movie to acquire from your local DVD store.

The highlight story of this month, a month of memories of drowning and death, was sitting alongside Mal, Jenny and Kevin at the front rows of Belvoir Theatre and spy Geoffrey Rush to excel like no other actor in the world!

There’s a mirror in my entrails where everything’s reflected.

Exit the King presents Ionesco’s favorite hero, Berenger, as the fumbling king of a deteriorating country. It’s one of his most optimistic plays. As the finale of the Exit’s Absurdist Season, it has not just an apt name but also a vividly absurd set -- the huge colorful throne could be an upholstered lifeguard tower, flanked by mushroom-stools out of Alice in Wonderland. At Belvoir people are aware that more than 100,000 Australians are now over 90. Within a generation that figure is likely to double or treble as the sheer weight of numbers from the baby-boomer generation filters through the system.

The characters show the king’s country as a candied place where people in ridiculous disguises connive and flatter and lie; and any hopes for the show, at least at first, are just as false. Berenger seems to think his nation and power are intact, but his courtiers tell him otherwise. The doctor and his first wife, Queen Marguerite, seem to be staging a takeover. His second wife, Queen Marie, is on Berenger’s side. She’s the voice of optimism, wearing pink tights and a wedding cake on her head. When the doctor says something negative, she urges Berenger to “Sweep him off his feet in a whirlwind of willpower!” But of course it’s the royal willpower that’s failing. In Prague there are to people who are admired Tom Stopard and Geoffrey Rush... is extraordinary at every turn... a landmark production in the history of theatre in this country

As we are informed, the King must die by the end of the play. The play itself is simply a matter of getting there, as Berenger howls against his fate, moving from denial to terror to pathos to a final, moving acceptance. Ionesco has literalised the tyranny of the ego, which at the point of death refuses to contemplate its own annihilation, and will give anything - even the destruction of the entire world - if only it can go on living. But even the King, who once, we are given to believe, could command the sun itself, has to bow before death.
Rush is a great clown, and this role gives him plenty of scope for physical humour, especially in a scene in which (as the Guard announces) The King is Marching! But his skill is evident in his restraint; he never allows grotesquerie to degenerate into mere cartooning. Like Ionesco's writing, he keeps his options open: anything is possible at any time. He plays the full range of the text, from broad comedy to brutality to sheer pathos, until he becomes the everyking we all are, alone and afraid in our shabby kingdoms, facing the dark. Review of Exit the King

There is a famous prayer, called the Serenity prayer, which was originally composed by the German theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. The prayer says, "God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things that should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other." It has been a guide and comfort to media dragons, to soldiers and to alcoholics. It can also be a useful guide for policy makers when thinking about the future, and especially about the future of the internet.

There are some things we cannot change—the laws of science and of economics, the behavior of others, and sometimes our own desires and concerns. But there are many things that we can change, if we have the courage. And we need to have the wisdom to know what we can change, and how we should try to achieve change. We need this wisdom and courage because what the world morality will look like in the distant future depends greatly on what we do in the near future and on what we do now. The Middle Ages is a period in time. But medievalism just keeps moving forward. Geeking out on medieval quests is as old as Don Quixote. From dragons to scholars, one man's journey through medieval studies

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A Short History of Tax Shelters
A. Tax Planning Over the Ages.
1. Tax advisors have been figuring out ways to reduce taxpayers’ tax liability forever.
a. In Ancient Rome, farmers of small farms would obtain relief from taxes by transferring their lands to the nearest military chief or large landowner and rid themselves of tax obligations. The peasant farmer was better off. Tied to the land anyway, he could live in the same house, farm the same land, and use the same animals. Only the tax picture had changed; the Roman tax man would now have to deal with the small farmer’s master, who had the wherewithal to handle the Roman tax man. Adams, For Good and Evil: The Impact of Taxes on the Course of Civilization
(London and New York: Madison Books, 1994) at pages 113-14.
b. During the Middle Ages in Syria, Egypt and other areas of the Islamic world, the land tax could be avoided by newly conquered native populations if they became Moslems—unfortunately for the tax collectors, mass conversions of native populations to Islam drained off a large percentage of their tax revenue. Adams, For Good and Evil: The Impact of Taxes on the Course of Civilization (London and New York: Madison Books, 1994) at page 132.
c. In the 1600’s, landlords in Russia developed an interesting tax avoidance scheme. A new landlord would pay off a peasant’s debt and refinance the peasant on his own land. Poll taxes were based on a census, which was conducted every five years. Before the census was taken, new serfs would not be taxed since they were not on the census rolls. (The Russian government eventually had to pass a law preventing this practice.) Adams, For Good and Evil:
The Impact of Taxes on the Course of Civilization (London and New York: Madison Books, 1994) at page 169.
d. In Charleston, South Carolina during the first half of the 19th century, real estate taxes were based not on the value of the house or other structure situated on a lot but on the footage of the portion of the lot directly next to the street. Tax planning led to houses being built on deep lots which were very narrow where they fronted the street. Thus, a typical house built during that time might be 10 foot wide but 80 or even 100 feet deep—many of these houses still exist today.
2. The search for shelter continues. See The Wall Street Journal (“WSJ”) on
10/13/05: The Search for a Safe Tax Shelter

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A Short History of Psychopaths
Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work. By Paul Babiak, Ph.D., and Robert D. Hare, Ph.D.; published by ReganBooks, www.harpercollins.com (Web); 353 pages; $26.95.

Psychopaths and the damage they inflict on others are a popular topic in books these days. Nearly all of these books, however, concentrate on criminal psychopaths and are based on prison interviews. Snakes in Suits fills an important gap, examining the chaos that can result when a psychopath enters the workplace.

One hallmark of psychopaths, who make up about 1 percent of the overall population, is that they seek opportunities to promote their own self-interests unburdened by conscience.

With that as a motivating factor, psychopaths in the workplace operate in three general ways: some bully, some manipulate, and others are "puppet masters," adept at operating through others.

The authors provide advice on what the average employee should do if he or she believes that a coworker or boss may be a psychopath: Document everything, never confront the individual, and be prepared to seek work elsewhere.
Psychopaths may come to a corporate security department's attention when they cross the line of what is permissible behavior in the workplace, which could result in an investigation into harassment or criminal activity.
Perhaps the book's most valuable advice is that companies always conduct preemployment screening—checking educational, technical, and work references thoroughly. Doing so may give the human resource department the red flags it needs to spot the signs of psychopathic behavior before the person is hired. But the authors also note that it is not illegal to be a psychopath. What companies should be focusing on is whether someone exhibits inappropriate workplace behavior.
The authors also warn readers not to try diagnosing psychopaths, but they do describe behaviors and recommend actions that can protect a company and its employees.
The authors mix discussion and case studies to explain how psychopathic behaviors can cause problems in the workplace, and the liability companies can incur if those problems are not addressed.
Written exclusively for Beautiful Minds and Hearts

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The trouble with the world is that the stupid are so confident while the intelligent are full of doubt.
-Bertrand Russell

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They can't get inside you.
-J[ozef], 1984, George Orwell

Just an ordinary life: When it comes to appropriating other people's stories - all the great, sexy things …Like attracts like - by thinking negatively, you attract negativity. Think positively about attaining something you desire, and you attract that outcome. The bien-pensant pissants and detectives of my dear Watson, those newtownish arch-Machiavellian characters, tend to provide much of parliamentary commentary such as how Mark Swinson is missed due to the broken pelvis. The stories are not the same in Russell Groves office occupied by Patricia and Rebecca and Francis. Terror and Travel suspects: Time to uncork the enormous potential of clerks

Can we change the heart of parliamentary bureau? Who is Who and What is Where
This year, the popular television show The Sopranos, a fictional account of a mob family, comes to an end. Unfortunately, in the real world, organized crime is not ending, it’s booming … It is taking off like a Bondi tram ;-)

Fraud is an ancient and familiar concept. The Bible, indeed starts off with two fairly stark cases of deception (I must say immediately, with a murder sandwiched between the two), one of which, indeed, if committed nowadays. Right at the beginning of the Book of Genesis, some of you may recall, the serpent deceived Eve, an unwitting accomplice, into inducing Adam to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and thus precipitated mankind into the mess we are in now. In relation to a mess of a different kind, a few pages further on, Jacob, rightly described as a "smooth man", defrauded his father Isaac of the mess of pottage due to his brother Esau ("an hairy man"), by impersonating his brother.

• Build your House of Parliament upon the River ; [Oddities and Numbers – & The Second, Third and even Fourth READING between the lines Sydney man drowns in Munich river ; Ah, Mr Bond, we weren't expecting you ]
• · What Your Sign-off is Really Saying - Find out what business etiquette experts have to say about the expressions we use to end work-related e-mails. Avoid using any word you wouldn't want to see on the front page of Media Dragon or The New York Times with your signature next to it.; IT was a bold plan to scam $150 million and send it to offshore banks, nutted out in the confines of a downtown Sydney pole-dancing club. It almost succeeded. Now Sydney's own Ocean's 12 are in court, charged over a conspiracy to rip off the Commonwealth Superannuation Scheme. Former Lady Jane's nightclub boss Thomas Anthony "Tony" Vincent, 66, and his 11 co-accused faced a commital hearing yesterday on a range of charges including recklessly dealing with the proceeds of crime, conspiring to cause a loss and dishonestly obtaining financial advantage. Former Lady Jane's nightclub boss ; The Herald's 'title deeds' with its tales of the rich and fatuous rarely strays outside the eastern suburbs. But Title Deed moved elsewhere spying on the ex-Usher Warren Cahill and the Macbeath designer, Jane Johnson, who shared a penthouse next to historians at Erskenville - The place is for sale for three quarters of the million dollar - Reading Hansard and poetry of parliamentary life and death
• · There's only been writing in Australia for just over 200 years, compared to this endless oral tradition. It does seem that it's a difficult place to write about, because it's so big and so old and there's been so little writing so far. 'I'm a giant fraud' ; I've become a lot more spiritual because of him. You've got to tell these stories
• · · The internet has given people the anonymity to say what they like - as rudely as they like Cyberspace: it's the new toilet wall ; Not even in George Orwell's wildest nightmares would he have suspected we could be so naive. Even in his most dystopic visions it is doubtful he would have suspected the change over the past decade in the Western world's approach to privacy Say goodbye to that quaint notion, privacy
• · · · Better than the real thing: virtual friendships thrive despite bans; Should we all lie down on the highway and let the author drive back and forth on top of us because he is the author? Grand theft author
• · · · · GERALD Stone's top-selling book, which makes explosive claims about the decline of the late Kerry Packer's beloved Nine Network, has ruffled media feathers since its release a week ago. I was dying to publish Nine expose

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Sunday, stunning Sydney on Sunday: The water is getting cooler and cooler at the Bondi Iceberg, especially after the Russian Kozak dancing ...

Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before.
-Mae West


Grace is the sense in spite of anxiety, suffering, confusion, and discouragement, that we are accepted by our higher power and that in the long run everything is going to be Okay. As John Newton wrote in his great song, Amazing Grace, ... how sweet the sound that saved a poor wretch like me.
-Harry Holleywood

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Happy Birthday Steve wherever in Singapore you are with Tong Ling ;-)

There is an Indian proverb or axiom that says that everyone is a house with four rooms, a physical, a mental, an emotional, and a spiritual. Most of us tend to live in one room most of the time but, unless we go into every room every day, even if only to keep it aired, we are not a complete person.
-Rumer Godden

If you don't find it in the index, look very carefully through the entire catalogue.

Sunset is an angel weeping holding out a bloody sword.
No matter how I squint I cannot make out what it's pointing toward.
-Bruce Cockburn, Pacing The Cage

An Amazon employee described the Long Tail as follows:

We sold more books today that didn't sell at all yesterday than we sold today of all the books that did sell yesterday.

Eternal vigilance the price of freedom?