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Art is magic delivered from the lie of being truth. -Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia of Cold Morava River fame

The Many Meanings of The Ides of March & His and Hers ... In the middle of March Media Dragon has acquired a cheeky piece of photography by Natasha Murray (Tash) who is an emerging documentary/art photographer who lives and works in Sydney. Falling on the 15th of March, May, July, and October, or the 13th day of any other month, the ides signified the middle of the month on the Roman calendar. But Media Dragon is guessing that’s not the only context that you’ve heard it in before.

His & Hers a Story of our Life in Congested Sydney

Tash has exhibited in group shows in Sydney and Melbourne, and her work is held in private collections in Australia and New Zealand.
Tash is a finalist in the 23rd Muswellbrook Photographic Award. Amazing ... The View from Mandalay Hill

Bohemian Coda: The most legendary Czech rock band is reviving one of their seminal pieces of music for a performance that promises to be one of the highlights of the year. The Plastic People of the Universe will perform their rock suite The Passion Plays with the Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra of Pardubice and special guest Filip Topol, formerly of the Czech group Psí Vojáci, during a special one-night concert at Archa that will bring the Czech underground out from, well, underground. The concert is a fitting, if belated, cap to the "Week of Charter 77," which celebrated the 35th anniversary of the legendary political document, in which The Plastic People of the Universe played an important role.Legendary Czech rockers play with an orchestra: Charter 77

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In December 2011 The Czech Republic has lost one of its greatest sons in the passing of Vaclav Havel and In Australia Antipodeans lost an amazing daughter in Margaret Whitlam who passed away in March 2012. Both had the greatness to bend history itself. I had the fortunate life as I was lucky enough to meet both and whilst Vaclav was very shy and short, Margaret was tall and talkative like the Media Dragon. Even in the parliamentary lifts at Macquarie Street she was like an oasis of light, chatter box and commonsense. When she spilled into the corridors of power at the Mother of Parliament (NSW Parliament House) every corner was filled with the sound of her deep melodic voice … Margaret even remembered that a certain Czechoslovak who slaved for Dr Cope at the parliamentary library had a sister by the same name Margareta (Gitka) and the motherly Mrs Whitlam cared very much for the sad story of my sister Agnesa aka Aga. Margaret loved people. She was endlessly curious. Margaret Whitlam was the wise unshockable woman locked in conversation with strangers, listening and laughing, offering her brand of spare, no-nonsense advice.
In a National Trust poll in 1997 to choose the nation's 100 ''living national treasures'', Margaret and Gough were the only husband-and-wife team elected. Like John Hatton, Margaret and Gough deserved to be declared national treasures … Tim Freedman sang it all the way only songs lend their power to describe people between the lyrical lines "Come over have dinner with me, we'll play chess and drink claret Walk slowly down my little street, you can bring Margaret" To this day I remain in awe of what Margaret achieved in such a short space of time Indeed you can bring Margaret
So many tributes Oasis of Peace; Life of the party, but she was a woman of simple pleasures Commonsense Life's twists and turns Story of Margaret; WAVERLEY Council will honour the late Margaret Whitlam by naming a park or council facility after her. Mrs Whitlam was born and raised in Bondi and spent much of her life in the east. Council to honour Bondi girl Margaret Whitlam; Love is not an easy feeling to put into words. Nor is loyalty, or trust, or joy. But she was all of these. She loved life completely and she lived it intensely. Vale Margaret Whitlam AO, 1919-2012 ; ; Links by google

Mrs Whitlam's daughter Catherine Dovey spoke movingly in St James's church. Catherine used her own tribute to speak touchingly of her parents' seven decade relationship - which Gough himself has proudly referred to as “the longest prime ministerial marriage in Australian history". She spoke of her parent's "perfect match", describing how her mother's relentlessly positive outlook on life "made her a perfect foil” for Gough". "We called it 'thinking of fruit and flowers', a phrase she would use when she tired of anything she saw as unpleasantness, for instance what she called family arguments and what we called robust discussion" My mother had an enthusiasm for life and an interest in people that was unequalled It was Margaret who once noted: "Hell has no fury like a woman scorned, but a woman scorned has nothing on a mother protecting her young..."

Some believe there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world's ills. Yet many of the world's great movements, of thought and action, have flowed from the work of a single man a single woman - Amen

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Happy St Jozef's name to Media Dragons everywhere ;-)



Searching for Saint Jozef in Sydney

What’s the difference between story-truth and happening-truth? Where’s the line in nonfiction between cheating and distilling, artfulness and fabrication? What does it mean when a day of story-truth goes missing from history? It happened on 7/7 across the Morava River, where the soviet arrow of time was arbitrarily bent ... Fact Czechers

Has ever a fictional character so laid bare the horror of mortality as Ivan Ilych? Tolstoy was preoccupied with death – and his insights are now cropping up in medical journals How Tolstoy’s obsession with mortality became a teachable moment ; The Cold War warrior hypothesis. Men commit 90 percent of murders. The brutality is biological, in part. But power, not gender, determines belligerence...

Intellectual life in the Internet age. How to explain TED? It’s where the smart and the rich pretend they have something in common... Those Fabulous Confabs Surfing the Internet, says William Gibson, is like rummaging in the collective global mind. Somewhere there must be a site that contains everything we’ve lost...

The idiosyncrasies convey everything - Writers are “dildos for rent”; punk rock was a time before the “furry testicles of disco descended”: Has James Wolcott met a sexual allusion he doesn’t like?...
How does a fatalistic, damaged man cope after surviving a massacre? By embracing satire, and flashing a smirk at the absurd... Memoirs of a Voyeur - A firsthand account of the second-rate

“I will hate you till the day I die,” the thin-skinned Alain de Botton once told a reviewer. Now things are looking up. His self-help philosophy is catnip for the well-heeled in search of meaning.. No fire, no brimstone

Are you a mysterian? The more we know about the brain, the less we understand how it creates consciousness, says Colin McGinn. Maybe the mind is a puzzle that can’t be solved. All machine and no ghost?

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In Kezmarok and Vrbov there is a reference to an Irish based confirmation name so may the green and taxing colours fly everywhere on St Patrick's Day. St. Patrick, patron saint of Ireland, may well have been a tax collector for the Romans who fled to Ireland where he could have traded slaves to pay his way, according to new research by a University of Cambridge academic published on Saturday.

'Life is trouble,' Zorba continued. 'Death, no. To live--do you know what that means? To undo your belt and look for trouble!'
-Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek

How does a fatalistic, damaged man cope after surviving a massacre? By embracing satire, and flashing a smirk at the absurd... Black & Cold Irony of life

Middle age has its cold consolations, one of which is the knowledge that you're not nearly as important as you thought you were, or hoped someday to become. I used to save copies of everything I wrote

High Tatra Mountains, once a byword for soviet ski sanitarium, has been transformed into a welcoming tourist destination. The section on High Tatra Mountains in my local bookshop Berkelouw in Sydney is not promising, not even Ariel is able to oblige. Other countries offer travelogues with evocative titles – Italy, for example, has Under the Tuscan Sun, Spain has Driving over Lemons and France has Return to the Olive Farm. Old Czechoslovakia, by contrast, has My Cold War River, The Trial (Der Prozess), The Castle (Das Schloss), Amerika and The Metamorphosis . All of which have rather less of a holiday feel to them. The only certainty in some parts of the old Czechoslovakia is the way words are formed entirely or mostly of consonants, such as the term for the certainty in life Death which SMRT.

Soeaking of death, If I were dying, my last words would be: Have faith and pursue the unknown end.

Slov-what-ia? Aren’t they at war? Ok, so wee, peaceful Slovakia isn’t among the most-touted destinations. Big mistake. Here, you can climb alpine peaks in East Slovakia like the High Tatras, explore a clifftop castle in Trenčín, ski in Malá Fatra National Park and sit in as many old-town cafés as your rear can stand in Bratislava. Having emerged from its frumpy, communist-era chrysalis in time to welcome a horde of low-cost carrier junkies, the increasing numbers of flights and EU membership have pushed costs up in the capital. Outside the city and you’ll find traditional villages, terrific trails and prices a fraction of those in Western Europe. The High Tatras is the highest mountain range in Central Europe outside of the Alps. There is also a high density of bears in the region. The Tatra is also the name of a Czech vehicle manufacturer
-Lonely Czech Mates
Friends read all about Freud Born and Bread along the banks of Morava River

Want to understand the states of the former Soviet Union? Scrap political science and get acquainted with Gogol, Chekhov, Dostoyevsky... and Imrich, the “broken-windows” theorist

Extreme skiing: Quelle catastrophe! In High Tatra witches too came to dance and play their pranks
The Tatras are the highest part of the Carpathian range of mountains that sweep through Central Europe. They run for 53km along the boundary between Poland and Slovakia, although the majority of the range is in Slovakia. The Tatras are not that high and only cover a relatively small area, but in terms of the beauty and diversity of the landscape, they are hard to beat...
In a letter to a friend, Windham spoke of sheer drops “terrible enough to make most people’s heads turn”, of bottomless crevasses, ice blocks “as big as houses”, and of witches who came to dance and “play their pranks” on the ice.

That letter, and its evocation of a landscape that was thrilling and threatening in equal measure, helped change our relationship with the mountains for ever. When published in London, it sparked a fascination with the Alps and made them an essential stop on the Grand Tour. Soon, artists and poets, including Byron, Wordsworth and Goethe, were flocking to Chamonix. Mary Shelley was so impressed by the Mer de Glace she used it as the “awful and majestic” location where Frankenstein meets his monster. Her husband Percy described the edge of the Bossons glacier as “the most vivid image of desolation that it is possible to conceive”. In his poem “Mont Blanc”, he looked up past the glaciers, creeping “like snakes that watch their prey”, to their source in the high peaks, a “city of death, distinct with many a tower, and wall impregnable of beaming ice”.

• Ice of Tatras is a world unto itself - Upon death, Christopher Hitchens was greeted by Orwell. Hitchens didn’t believe his eyes. “This is all a delusion, my dear boy,” Orwell told him, “but enjoy it while you can”... 'I know myself,' he cried, 'but that is all.' [The most exhausting thing in life, I have discovered, is being insincere. The debate about promoting democracy should be a practical one, so here’s the practical reality: Policy makers and scholars don’t know what they’re doing... ; Am I or am I not going to have a martini?” Charles Murray will have a martini. Wine, too. Why not? Sobriety isn’t a “founding virtue”Jozef Imrich Will have a Martini too ]
• · The advice of the elders to young men is very apt to be as unreal as a list of the hundred best books. One day an ebullient and prolific hacker vanished from the Web. Blog, Twitter feed, open-source code: gone. It’s called infosuicide ; Quelle catastrophe!, Beckett’s wife exclaimed when she learned that her husband had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. She knew her man... Quelle catastrophe! ; Jeanne Proust was a nice lady, polite to her son. But she could also be niggling, infantilizing, and passive-aggressive. Yes, Marcel had mommy issues...
• · · So you want be a historian and reach a wide audience? Be like Barbara Tuchman and skip grad school–which would ruin you as a writer.. Media Dragon of Popular His Story ; Our mental lives depend on the brain, says Anthony Gottlieb, but our behavior is not best understood by looking inside it. NEURONS V FREE WILL
• · · · If art, culture and wisdom have taught us anything over the millennia – and cinema over its short, spectacular century – it is that we are all bewitched by what we shouldn’t be bewitched by. The attraction of human beings to the forbidden was established in the Garden of Eden and has thrived ever since. Look at us mortals today. Loving a safe and peaceful life, we look for the vicarious experience of danger and violence. We don’t want crime or murder in our lives, yet insist on them in our stories and movies. We hate or fear air travel, but thrill to screen stories about doomed airliners. Or doomed travel of any kind, including that by land or sea. Coming Soon ... ; For a moment, film criticism excited, surprised, and astonished. Think Ebert and Kael, both learned, literate, and smart, but never academic... When Critics Mattered
• · · · · · Everything can be bought and sold. As a result, society is more affluent – and more debased, says Michael Sandel... What Isn’t for Sale? ; Sales of two cities: how attitudes to buying and selling property vary in London and New York Sales of two cities ; The second last straw in affordable housing market rankings worldwide. Perhaps most remarkable has been the shift in Australia, once the exemplar of modestly priced, high-quality middle-class housing, to now the most unaffordable housing market in the English-speaking world Sydneyrella ; The choices that you make
Aren't all that grim.
The worlds I'll never see
Still will be around,
Won't they?
The Ben I'll never be,
Who remembers him? Overheard in Sydney
• · · · · · · Every week, Martin Kemp hears from people convinced they’ve found a lost Leonardo. One day someone really did. “I experienced a frisson”... Leonardo da Vinci ; The moral significance of people eating people. Cannibals are mental deviants, revolting curiosities. But they were once central to views of human nature. People who Eat People - Who is in 21st century cooking human flesh? The killing graph. A 46-year old statistician’s ability to quantify mass atrocities has launched a data revolution in the human-rights world.. The Body Counter

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Sometime in 1979 or 1980, a new phrase entered the Australian lexicon. Originating somewhere in the fertile imaginations of the Sydney legal or accounting professions, the evocative expression bottom of the harbour became known first in business circles, and then in the broader community, as a jocular euphemism for what later was determined to be the most formidable series of frauds committed in Australia in recent years. Twenty years later another phrase invaded the lexicon packed in Packer's Lunch tale . The Wickenby brand has been increased in the light of the Judge Bruce Lander founding that ANZ Vanuatu's customer information was transmitted to the parent bank's digital database in Australia, known as the global information warehouse (GIW). Therefore, the two notices to produce information sent to ANZ under s264 of the Income Tax Assessment Act sovereignty did not infringe Vanuatu's ; Two recent Project Wickenby-related court cases have reinforced community expectations that serious tax fraud should be treated sternly and appropriately, Tax Commissioner Michael D'Ascenzo said today. "Two appeal cases last week in the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal have resulted in successful outcomes for Project Wickenby, with even tougher sentences imposed and reaffirming the seriousness of tax fraud and evasion"

Over the barrel Media Dragons Under Fire
Bloggers Under Fire "tracks instances of bloggers , Internet users being threatened, arrested, harassed, harmed Bloggers Under Fire: "As activists and ordinary citizens around the world are increasingly making use of the Internet to express their opinions and connect with others, many governments are increasing their surveillance and censorship capabilities and taking legal or extrajudicial actions against bloggers and social media users. The threats to netizens are increasing. The Committee to Protect Journalists found in 2008 that 45% of all imprisoned journalists were arrested for activities conducted online. In their 2012 press freedom barometer, Reporters Without Borders cited 123 incidents of imprisoned "netizens" in twelve countries. Though the motivations of governments vary from country to country, the goal—to silence "threatening" voices—is the same.

EFF supports the principles of free expression laid out in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and believes that those principles must extend online. While our domestic work focuses on helping bloggers in the United States understand their legal rights, our international work focuses on the legal and bodily threats to Internet users in countries around the world. To that end, we have partnered with Global Voices Online's Threatened Voices project, which tracks individual cases of bloggers under threat or detention, to help shed light on this global phenomenon."

• Apart whilst still a part ; Writing, offered a form of therapy [Am I crazy? Perhaps.
However, three things generally happen as a result of their questions:
1. I learn in the process, usually in the pursuit of the correct answer
2. My perspective shifts and changes
3. We both end up with more questions, built on a rich set of shared experiences.
Three reasons why asking risky questions reduces risk ; The Oxford University undergraduate can currently speak 11 languages - English, Greek, German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Afrikaans, French, Hebrew, Catalan and Italian It's not all Greek to this student ; In contemporary media's never-ending mission to remind us how unexceptional our own children are, BBC News recently introduced us to a personable young super achiever named Alex Rawlings; Claims that it's all Greek to minister George Souris ]
• · Zeljko Ranogajec annually bets $1billion Secrecy surrounds his global operation He says his wealth a big exaggeration ; In 2007, Punting Ace.com estimated he outlaid $500 million on Australian racing every year, and accounted for nearly 5 per cent of total tote turnover across the country. ''That gives Zelyko essential control of tote prices in this country … he plays percentages and find [or creates] value. He is a numbers man, through and through.'' And he thrives on rebates ; Certainly they lived up to a personal interpretation of the title that came to pass at the Bondi Icebergs, the pool of turf wisdom. Warwick, Timmy and Lofty are life members of the Punt-Drunks Protective Association and Neil, the Betfair player, is perhaps more cerebral without the pokies bent
• · · We've all been there: trapped in pointless meetings where participants are afraid to speak honestly. We twiddle our thumbs through diplomatic PowerPoint presentations, waiting for the meeting to end so that the real conversations-which usually happen in private-can begin. 3 techniques to help coworkers at all levels interact more directly: break meetings into smaller groups; designate a 'Yoda'; teach 'caring criticism' Candor criticism teamwork ; By breaking down a meeting into its component parts and applying one of management's most recognized models, the author turns the art of a meeting into a science and offers constructive steps for that will turn any meeting into a true, value-creating exercise Smart workplace conversation: the knowledge economy's (new) organizational value chain ; The relentless "always on" work culture created by modern technology and job insecurity mean that most people (80%) continue to work despite being ill, with damaging effects on productivity and health Technology encourages work presenteeism claims research
• · · · The sum of virtues, values and traits equals good character, which, in addition to competence and commitment, is one of the 3 ingredients that make a leader effective and respected Developing leadership character ; Every leader needs to have smooth, productive relationships with those around him or her. But what makes for a rewarding relationship - and its opposite - has long been unclear or unknown until now. Neuroscience and the link between inspirational leadership and resonant relationships ; Specific skills executives should cultivate to tackle the challenges of the diversity of employee groups, technology and collaborative organisational structures: code switching between cultures; wielding digital influence; dividing attention deliberately 3 skills every 21st century manager needs
• · · · · Technology is shaping the way we live and interact with each other, but as it becomes an increasing central in daily life, researchers have begun to wonder about the affect it has on the happiness and emotional development of the next generation. Unfortunately, according to a recent study from Stanford University, it's not looking good... they're less happy and socially comfortable than their less connected peers ; IT'S a clock so accurate you need only reset it once every 14 billion years ; Days away from being billionaires, Gina Rinehart locks trust
for half a century
• · · · · · Judith Lucy is always glad when the new year starts. For many reasons, the festive season is, as she says, ''as enjoyable as an incontinent relative''. On a purely physical level, she might have one or two alcoholic drinks, so there are the hangovers to contend with. Life as a Bondi Beach babe; Judith Lucy ; What’s the meaning of monsters? They’re a moral compass: testing our ethics, shaping our politics, spurring science, and piquing our curiosity... Moral compass

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Inside every older person is a younger person wondering what happened.
- Jennifer Yane

Wishing you your happiest birthday yet
A birthday too special To ever forget Yullis or San Remo Renaissance Chef & Curator Dinner
So many wishes
So many smiles
Too many memories
Too few words
Like that ad in the FrenchFilmFestival - No wonder the world stops after all it's the golden age of French cinema ;-) To the world, you may be one person. But to me, you are the world ; Happy birthday to a person who is smart, good looking, and funny and reminds me a lot of myself ;-) Our birthdays are feathers in the broad wing of time. To the nation's best kept secret; Our true age because we identify with the kids who are crafty and retro-adorable, the morals sound and the rural nostalgia impeccably groomed in War Of The Buttons (La Guerre des boutons) a harmlessly old-fashioned tale of youthful rivalries between two Slavic and Sikh villages in the 1960s. War Of The Buttons

Only in High Tatra Mountains - Is this the ‘coolest’ cinema in the world

Is this the ‘coldest’ story in the world?

CODA for Malaysian, German and British - Sharm: [By Peter FitzSimons aka THE FITZ FILES] Last year, TFF's cousin, Andrew Tink - the former parliamentarian who triumphed over throat cancer - told his wife, Kerry, that he was going to dedicate his new book Lord Sydney to her. She replied: ''That's very nice but I'd rather have a diamond.'' This year, when the book began selling very well, he told her the dedication would most likely outlast us by many years. Her reply was: ''That's still very nice but I'd still rather have a diamond.'' So at the launch at Parliament House on Thursday - with those present including the Governor, Marie Bashir; ministers Hazzard, Berejiklian, Souris, Smith and Parker; the lord mayor, Clover Moore; and Andrew's old sparring partner Paul Whelan, who drove down from near Maitland in atrocious weather - he presented her with a diamond. And she was gracious enough to say that she didn't need to put on her glasses to be able to see it. A rare jewel ;
Lord Of Sydney - Book Launch in Chatswood

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First day of autumn in Sydney and we are at an inflection point in history, a shift not just in our politics but our consciousness. revolutions

Many of us would admit that we spend too much of our time in cinemas watching French Film Festivals … Most of us would prefer to find a more efficient way to manage our time in life, but we love the way time passes while we watch others showing us how to live, laugh and lament …. During a time where cinema is focused on being bigger and louder than ever before, it's refreshing to come across a film like The Artist where telling a great story remains at the heart. Director Michel Hazanavicius stripped the film back to basics, preferring to film in black and white to 3D; using music to tell the tale in place of dialogue and sound effects… The Art of Storytelling The war of the Buttons; Presumed Gulty; A separation

Someone Like You Challenges for Real Bob Carr
Wiping clean and reinventing his personal slate is just the first of the tasks foreign minister Bob Carr must undertake.

Bob Carr will not only need to bridge the yawning chasm that opened up between Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd and their respective offices, but he will alsoface a number of major and immediate challenges.
In trying to reconcile his blogging “baggage” with Labor’s formal foreign policy, Mr Carr should resist the temptation to emulate the Hawker Britton style of political spin and distraction that he mastered during his time as NSW Premier.
Already Mr Carr has sought to airbrush from history a number of his now rather inconvenient views. His description of the Dalai Lama as a “cunning monk”, and his warning that Australian politicians should not be intimidated into meeting “this theological politician” on his “too frequent visits”, have been removed from his website.
Mr Carr has also implored us to ignore his strident criticism of the Libyan intervention, considered by Prime Minister Gillard and former Foreign Minister Rudd to be among their finer foreign policy moments. His opinion that it was a “wrong headed amateur-hour intervention” of “towering stupidity” is now replaced by an admission that he was “completely wrong”.

• Only time will tell - The Carr coup [Carr felt qualified to talk about everything from National Gallery exhibitions of Renaissance art to Julian Assange and WikiLeaks ; Citizens and journalists are concerned about the prevalence of misinformation in contemporary politics, which may pollute democratic discourse and undermine citizens’ ability to cast informed votes and participate meaningfully in public debate. Academic research in this area paints a pessimistic picture—the most salient misperceptions are widely held, easily spread, and difficult to correct. Misinformation and Fact-checking: Research Findings from Social Science; Maria and I sang; danced at National Gallery during the Renaissance Appoggiatura ]
• · Scars and Stories is, at once, a beautiful and intensely irritating record. This music can be gorgeous, human, haunting, and affecting – and it can also be first class, self-indulgent nonsense Scars and Stories ；Poverty. It's a word at the root of much debate. What causes it? Who's accountable? How can we solve it? Now after twenty years of research, scientists are suggesting that 'toxic stress' in early life may be to blame, and preventing poverty may be as simple as giving a child a hug... HUG ;
This fraud begins around the birth of Charter 77. In 1977 a litre of diesel was free in the army of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic (Mark V also did not pay anything for his diesel or petrol in the hottest spot on earth the army barracks of Townsville) , "Star Wars" opened in theatres across the US, the maiden Apple II computers went on sale, a 25-hour black out occurred in New York City and 365 day blackout continued to place in Soviet Union. And, according to a SeattlePI.com article, that also was the year two men were in a bar fight in Baltimore, Maryland – and one man stole the other's wallet. He then proceeded to use the man's identity for the next 30 years. So, one guy stole another guy's wallet 30 years ago. You may ask: "How bad could it be?" Pretty bad, when you think that the victim's identity in this case is now tied to that of a career criminal Man who lived, committed crimes under stolen ID for 30 years sentenced
• · · In From Carr to Keneally respected experts analyse the four terms of Labor government in NSW: the premiers and their ministers, the political parties and their electoral fortunes; the role of independents; policies in all key areas; and changes in the bureaucracy, cabinet and parliament. From Karr to Keneally ; edited by David Clune ; Welsh heritage of Russell Grove Clerk Emeritus of the Legislative Assembly of NSW ; AS Barry O'Farrell approaches the first anniversary of his election victory, one thing appears to have survived the discredited Labor government: a political culture in which the loyalty of "mates" to each other trumps the public interest The casino scandal that blackens the Premier ; It has been a bruising week for the New South Wales Government as it approaches the anniversary of its first year in power The curious case of the Casino affair ; Questions about the characteristics of Members of Congress, including their age, education, previous occupations, and other descriptors, are of ongoing interest to Members, congressional staff, and constituents. Some of these questions may be asked in the context of representation, in efforts to evaluate the extent to which Members of Congress reflect their constituencies and the nation at large. In other instances, questions arise about how the characteristics of Members have changed over time, which may speak in part to the history of Congress. Representatives and Senators: Trends in Member Characteristics Since 1945
• · · · Ms Hesford helped write a book called NSW Legislative Assembly Practice, Procedure and Privilege and is regularly on hand during parliamentary debates to advise on procedure Procedural matters; The Rise and Fall of Nick Petroulias St Michael Investigations ; Ms Lorbek, the former lover of the disgraced Tax Office lawyer Nick Petroulias, had requested about $2000 in government child support this year. Instead, she received $2 million. And she spent it. Love child ; Other Scandals • · · · · · The suggestion that the best seller from Hornsby is based on former or current officers of the Crown is widly exaggerated ; Not a good look - Women keep looking in the 'wallpaper' and it is turning them off! Connecting the dots

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Book reviewers are questioning the terms of William Morrow’s new process for bloggers who want review copies. In the News: Reviewers Revolt, No Recall

And Czech out this digitized 1959 recording of Flannery O’Connor reading A Good Man like Jozef Imrich Is Hard to Find ;-)


When the world was young Sunlit memories - Telling the GREAT GLOBAL (American) story
Ah, the apple trees,
Sunlit memories,
Where the hammock swung,
On our backs we'd lie;
Looking at the sky,
Till the stars were strung,
When the world was young.
This moment, this minute,
And each second in it
Will leave a glow upon the sky,
And as time goes by,
It will never die.
-Johnny Mercer When the World Was Young
Via Carpe Libris – of when the parliamentary library world was young

"The fact that the rule of law was the only thing we had to hold this country in place morally I found an interesting story," Redford says. "This was an example of how the Constitution was rearranged to satisfy political interests at that time." The contemporary parallels are obvious but Redford invokes them anyway, pointing to the "constant threats" to the US Constitution through some "pretty big events in American history that were threats to the moral standing of our country", including McCarthyism, the John F. Kennedy assassination, Watergate and the Iran-Contra affair.You have these patterns that have repeated themselves over time. And it's usually the same people, the same mentality, the same personalities that threaten that. . I find that interesting because I suspect that if we as Americans had a better value of history we wouldn't be repeating these things but I think we have a short-term memory.

• My global business card states: I will disappoint you – Do not Bother Telling the GREAT GLOBAL (American) story ; [The Book Depository is not Amazon - although it was purchased by the latter, it remains an icon driven, illustrative and content rich site to explore and from which to discover new titles, inexpensive older ones, read reviews and share ratings, and learn about upcoming releases. This site sells books and e-books, and you can also watch "The Book Depository Live - Thousands of customers all over the world enjoying our free worldwide shipping." Users may: Set your default eBook reader and format (39 devices are listed), read the blog, use the advanced search options, or browse for titles by topic, read the site's wonderfully designed, direct and personal Twitter feed, and remain hopeful that the folks who run this book site maintain what still looks and feels like a magical little kingdom for bibliophiles all around the world The Book Depository is not Amazon ; The World Wide Web Foundation is very pleased to announce an exciting new initiative: the World Wide Web Index. We thank Google for a generous grant of US $1 million to the Foundation, which we are using to seed the creation of the Index...What is the Web Index? The Web Index will be the world’s first multi-dimensional measure of the Web and its impact on people in a large number of countries. It will be a composite index, incorporating political, economic, social, and developmental indicators, as well as indicators of Web connectivity and infrastructure ; Born in the Soviet Union, buried in Venice, a citizen of America, the poet Joseph Brodsky was a nowhere man – a universalist and a cosmopolitan Brodsky ]
• · With Greece and Ireland in economic shreds, while Portugal, Spain, and perhaps even Italy head south, only one nation can save Europe from financial Armageddon: a highly reluctant Germany. The ironies—like the fact that bankers from Düsseldorf were the ultimate patsies in Wall Street’s con game—pile up quickly as Michael Lewis investigates German attitudes toward money, excrement, and the country’s Nazi past, all of which help explain its peculiar new status It’s the Economy, Dummkopf! ; They’re the stories that you prefer to keep locked up in your chamber of secrets. These are hard stories to tell. But they need to come out. Not for the shock value or a good sob story. But because they’re important. Every story has the right to be heard
• · · Without it, the fact a B-list businessman was killed, butchered and burnt after a sordid sexual encounter would be almost forgotten by now. Rockefeller Sex, sleaze and secrets in revealing book ;Films about geniuses are so numerous that they almost constitute their own genre. One seems to pop up every few years, always with a few distinct markers. Genius Films About Genius (and Other Pretenders)
• · · · Assessing fall's crop of sitcoms about men who are unemployed, underemployed, or in desperate need of a makeover Primetime's Looming Male Identity Crisis ; As the list of politicos laid low by sexual scandal grows longer, history offers lessons on when the press should opt for exposure—and when it should leave well enough alone Sex and the Married Politician
• · · · · You can almost hear the clicks of barbecues firing up in unison around Australia. Whether it's sausages, steaks or prawns, there is nothing more quintessentially Australian than casual barbecuing affairs ; Wilhelm Imrich aka Reich, the father of the sexual revolution, started out as a star pupil of Sigmund Freud, the father of modern psychology. Breaking with religious teachings that the sole function of sex ought to be procreation and that any other erotic pursuit was sinful, Reich offered a new and defiantly humanist perspective, asserting that sexual pleasure was beneficial—indeed, necessary—to human flourishing, and that, when it came to orgasms, the more the merrier. Sex, that voyage of discovery for generation after generation. ; From seamstress to mistress to magnate, Coco Chanel never kept her little black dress on for very long.. Sleeping with the Enemy: Coco Chanel’s Secret War
• · · · · · T.S. Eliot was one of the world’s unhappiest people. His life was a nightmare of anxiety. But misery stirred creativity... ; Literature and the psychology lab A suggestion about how to read – treat it as an exercise in pretence Novelists are thought to be uniquely perceptive about human nature, but does reading fiction increase knowledge? Clarify emotions? Deepen sympathy? Literature and the mind ; In V.F.’s October issue, A. Scott Berg recounts the discovery of a literary treasure trove: a cache of Ernest Hemingway’s early correspondence, for decades kept hidden at the late novelist’s estate in Cuba. Here, in greater detail, are some of the letters Hemingway wrote as a young man Ernest Hemingway’s Early Life in Letters

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... Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world is full of
trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is, many persons
strive for high ideals; and everywhere life is full of heroism. ...”
- author unknown, 1692, Desiderata

All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs.
-Enoch Powell, Joseph Chamberlain

Film schools are trade schools playacting as art schools and moonlighting in business courses. Their value is dubious, but the demand is insatiable. If you want to be a filmmaker and you can’t afford film school, know that you don’t really learn anything in film school anyway. They can never teach you how to tell a story anyway, or all you’ll do is tell stories like everyone else. You learn to tell stories by telling stories. And you want to learn your own way of doing things. moonlighting

The Cinema is Dead. Long Live the Cinema! Life … at 24 frames per second
According to Nielsen BookScan, the publishing industry standard for book sales data, book sales are pretty healthy, with one significant proviso which I'll come to. Ten years ago in 2001, 162m books were sold in Britain. Ten years later – a decade in which the internet bloomed, online gaming exploded, television channels proliferated, digital piracy rampaged and, latterly, recession gloomed – 229m books sold. So, a 42% increase in the number of books sold over the last 10 years...For one thing, people are buying more and more books in Amazonia, and more and more of them are on Amazon's ebook platform the Kindle. In May this year, Amazon announced that, for the first time, it was selling more Kindle versions of books than paperback and hardbacks combined, and (here's the thing that doesn't get quoted so often) sales of print books were still increasing."

Like many industries over the last 30-plus years, cinema has had its share of setbacks. Technological advances, from the rise of VHS, the rental market, DVD subscription services, and most recently the threat of downloads (both legally via Video on Demand and illegally) together with the shortening of theatrical windows and digital conversion have led many to predict the demise of cinemas.

• Reele Life [If you’re looking for new ways to get around for fun or to work, or might be trying to live a greener lifestyle in 2012, why not try biking? New Biking Directions Legend on Google ; Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For "Fat paychecks, sweet perks, fun colleagues, and over 70,000 jobs ready to be filled -- these employers offer dream workplaces. Like Google, which reclaims the top spot this year to become a three-time champion. Meet this year's top 100; The National Archives is preserving government information published on the web by archiving UK Central Government Websites..The UK Government Web Archive has received more than a billion hits since it was launched by The National Archives in 2003 and is now one of the most-visited websites in government. UK Government Web Archive; fMRI’s and free will. Imagine a neuroscientist knowing what you’ll decide before you do. Is
consciousness a biochemical afterthought?...]
• · In today’s expanding cities, social skills are becoming ever more essential to economic growth. The history of human progress is intimately intertwined with that of cities. The Epic of Gilgamesh—perhaps the oldest known work of literature—closes with an awed description of the walls of the city of Uruk. Plato’s Republic—which envisioned an ideal city—was a product of the cultural and intellectual flowering of the earthly city of Athens, as well as a broadside against its politics. Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Brunelleschi, da Vinci, and Michelangelo all were born in or near the city of Florence. Great thinkers, artists, and entrepreneurs—what I call the creative class—rarely come out of nowhere. They cluster and thrive in places where the conversation and culture are the most stimulating. Where the Skills Are ; Tomorrow, the deadline for self-assessment tax filing, 20,000 HMRC staff are striking in call centres, protesting at the outsourcing of their jobs in trial areas, paying private employees £3,300 less Taxing wealth? The public mood still escapes the Tories ;
• · · HAVE YOU HEARD statements like this: Why don't they do something about it? I wish I wouldn't have to change? Why can't things be better? Why do salespeople suck? Why does operations screw up all the time? I wish we had better tools? We need a bigger budget? Why do the other guys have a better territory? ; PS on notice over social media use ; Internet preferred by engaging public ; The Australian Public Service Commission has updated its guide on the processes and requirements involved in terminating APS staff APSC updates guide on terminations
• · · · Groupthink or solitude which one offers the best work environment? The rise of the new groupthink ; integrity engagement and results should define public service professionals Preparing a commentary on a proposed PS Values Statement led Percy Allan to appreciate the importance of brevity and simplicity. Government work is god's work: ; The Government has warned federal bureaucrats against criticising politicians on Facebook and Twitter, saying ''unreasonable'' comments could result in disciplinary action. ; The internet has emerged as the preferred means of accessing Government services according to a study conducted by the Australian Government Information Management Office ; Once purely a Japanese phenomenon, 'karoshi' (death from overwork) is becoming an increasingly large issue for workplaces across Asia and even Australia Worked to death
• · · · · · Across the globe, drug trafficking and the organised crime behind it are placing increasing pressures on all legal and democratic systems. But countries emerging from conflict or violence are particularly susceptible to organised crime Trafficking is endangering the fragile democracies of this vulnerable region ; Tax crimes, especially those committed in connection with theft or other crimes, carry serious penalties - Nearly everyone recognizes that theft is a serious crime. However, many don't realize that most perpetrators also commit tax crimes when they fail to inform the federal government of their stolen profits. Tax Crimes Bring Incarceration and Financial Penalties; One of Britain's most high-profile football managers, Harry Redknapp, flew to Monaco to set up a secret offshore bank account named after his pet dog to receive bungs of nearly £200,000 and hide them from the taxman, a court heard yesterday How the dog with a Monaco bank account led police to Redknapp's secret 'bungs'
• · · · · · · UK Report: Serious Economic Crime Serious Economic Crime - A boardroom guide to prevention and compliance; THE Australian Tax office is pushing for more powers to investigate secret tax havens as well as increased penalties for offshore tax evasion New crackdown on offshore tax evasion ; The Vatican on Thursday threw its weight behind three international drives against drug trafficking, transnational organised crime and the funding of terrorism. First, the Holy See ratified the United Nations Convention Against the Illegal Trafficking of Narcotics and Psychotropic Substances, from December 1998, which it had already signed Holy See ratifies one Convention, joins two others

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Love is in the air 。。。 Now there's no love as true as the love that dies untold Malchkeon - From your Valentine

Valentine’s Day was not created to bring sadness. It is a day set aside to honor Saint Valentine by remembering the purpose for our existence: we were born to love. For as the Beatles once sang, the love you take is equal to the love you make New Year’s Eve was originally St. Sylvester’s - Valentine's Day through the ages

The digital age has not killed the endearing ritual of getting a Valentine's Day card。 Although the roots of St. Valentine’s Day date back to the Middle Ages, we are indebted to the Victorians for many of our most popular features of the celebration, including greeting cards, chocolate and other confectionary in heart-shaped boxes. Men and women today can still learn a great deal by reading Jane Austen and what she has to say on love, relationships, the battle of the sexes, hope, promiscuity, courtship, and happiness. Austen wrote some of the most powerful love stories in Western literature, and though 200 years have passed since her novels were published, they still have a remarkable ability to speak to the modern world. Her six novels continue to exert a profound influence on our culture.

Back in 1800 Names of men and women (equal numbers of each) were placed into two different containers. A lottery of sorts took place where one man's name was drawn and matched with a woman's name. The people called were called "Valentines," and the pairing was considered a good omen of these couples marrying later on. Since most of us have absolutely no idea who St. Valentine was, what can be wrong in celebrating love? On the contrary, we are commanded to love, the more the better (if perhaps not romantically). Omen For Men/Women - AMEN - Dear chocolate: Still love you madly

The language of royal love - Long before Camilla Parker Bowles became the Duchess of Cornwall, Freda Dudley Ward was the lover, confidante and companion of Prince Charles's immediate predecessor - the Prince of Wales who became the ill-fated Edward VIII. It was Edward, known to his intimate circle as David, who abdicated in 1936 to marry the American divorcee Wallis Simpson. In exile they became the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Illicit love gets an airing on Valentine's Day at the State Library Illicit love gets an airing on Valentine's Day at the State Library

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Wallace Stevens sold insurance, William Carlos Williams was a physician, T.S. Eliot was a banker, ‎ Steve Jobs distorted reality ， Jozef Imrich slaved in the NSW parliamentary library. If you like laws and sausages, you should never watch either one being made To hell with starving for your art

BYZANTINE SECTION NUMBERING
The Income Tax Assessment Acts (mainly ITAA 1936) and the Taxation Administration Act 1953 are replete with examples of what might be loosely called "creative" section numbering eg s 8AAZLE (treatment of payments etc and RBA surpluses), s 102AAZBA (Modified application of CGT - change of residence), s 159GZZZZG (Rebate election re tax-exempt infrastructure borrowings), etc.
In a December 2011 Federal Court decision ( DCT v Brilliant Homes Management Pty Ltd [2011] FCA 1539) involving the winding up of a company due to a running balance account (RBA) deficit debt (Part IIB of the Taxation Administration Act 1953 deals with RBA statements), Rares J lamented the use of convoluted section numbering as follows:
The unfortunate Byzantine modern tendency of Commonwealth Parliamentary drafters to include amendments to legislation that have a series of letters after them makes the explanation of these provisions more difficult and hard to comprehend. Re-enactment of legislation with appropriate renumbering of provisions such as s 8AAZJ would simplify the comprehensibility and explanation of legislation. The absurd use of such lettering was also found in the criminal cartel provisions in ss 44ZZRF and 47ZZRG of the Trade Practices Act 1974 (Cth) that was misleadingly retitled, but not comprehensibly structured, as the Consumer and Competition Act 2010 (Cth). These are the central provisions that will have to be explained to juries, using two numbers and four letters, each time the section is mentioned in argument either to the judge or jury Mildly amusing
Czech Out House of Lords Debate on Tax Avoidance

We are the 99% How most Media Dragons and Their readers can navigate the blogosphere
A born freelance. John Leonard’s prose--breezy, pun-filled, playful--was never ponderous or self-important. No one wrote cultural journalism quite like him. If you consider a collection of John Leonard’s essays and reviews as a lifelong accounting, you will have a good idea of what went on of significance in the latter half of the American twentieth century and the first years of the twenty-first. Though reviewing literary work was his calling, it did not box him in. He was a born freelance, going wherever that tenuous life led him, from the monuments of high culture that he was inspired to celebrate, to the commodities of the low, from which he would take gleanings where most of us would find none. It is difficult to understand how, with his immense reading and the sustenance his mind sought, he could have sat himself down year after year to examine the products of television. Yet there he was, considering what it meant when sitcom settings moved from the kitchen to the living room, and the family characters sitting on the living room couch, and presumably watching their television, seemed to be watching him.

Did not Eliot return to dead cultures, ancient languages, and the Legend of the Fisher King? Did not Yeats sustain himself on the Irish folklore? Did not Lawrence traipse across continents to Mexico, seeking the meaning of the Aztecs, the wisdom of primitive man?… Yours is a motel civilization…. Your art makes no sense and your music is too loud.”

• Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Reading John Leonard: A Tribute ; [The literary gatekeepers and fiction publishing. Marketing the boundaries: The fiction of Margo Lanagan; They’re a moral compass: testing our ethics, shaping our politics, spurring science, and piquing our curiosity... What’s the meaning of literary bmonsters? ; Social-science pugilist. The proudly politically incorrect Charles Murray is back, and he still can’t resist the urge to provoke. Cue the scholarly outrage Urge to provoke ; Orwell called them “disgusting tripe,” Camille Paglia considers them a “corrupt practice,” Stephen King winces at their “hyperbolic ecstasies” – Book blurbs have been a scandal since antiquity... I Greet You in the Middle of a Great Career: A Brief History of Blurbs ; Publishing with Double Dragon has been likened to marrying royalty—the honor is greater than the pleasure Double Dragon Publishing; ]
• · Books about poverty typically propose solutions or decry the problem. Katherine Boo is up to something else. She shows how poverty is lived She shows how poverty is lived: Poverty as Destiny ; His name is synonymous with brutality, and he had a penchant for rape and pillage, but is Attila the Hun unfairly maligned? flagellum Dei, the scourge of God Nice Things to Say About Attila the Hun
• · · The new censorship. Editors are no longer frightened of politicians but of Islamist violence, oligarchs, and CEO’s, says Nick Cohen. Ours is the age of bound and gagged journalism... Bound & Gagged; Vaclav Havel was keen to the limits of rationalism, and insistent that something stands above us, beyond our understanding. The Village Voice gives out theater awards called the Obies (for Off-Broadway), and during the 1980s the Voice’s theater department voted to bestow one of those prizes on the distinguished absurdist Václav Havel, who dwelled in the faraway absurdistan known as the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic... Democracy and the Human Heart
• · · · We all have many things to be grateful for and often we’re so busy in the chaos of daily life to take time and fully appreciate everything we have. For this reason gratitude is sometimes referred to as the Forgotten happiness ... ; The world is full of success stories – tales where the little guy takes a great idea and builds a thriving business, dominates an industry or takes over the world. But emulating such success is no easy task and can be daunting for even the most experienced person. So how do you become successful? Richard St John has eight secrets to share...
• · · · · The Penny Hoarder - Buying housing used to bestow multiple blessings, but their flow has now dried-up Housing fundamentalism fails
• · · · · · She was a flamboyant depressive; a woman who kept a revolver in the drawer and bullets in a tin of Pledge.” And you thought you had mommy issues Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? Elderschadenfreude, explains Sandra Tsing Loh, is the secret pleasure of hearing about aging parents who are even more impossible than yours. Prepare to experience it Daddy Issues

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When Stephen Harper, the Prime Minister, flies to Chongqing Saturday to wrap up a five-day tour of China, he may be walking into the middle of one of the biggest power struggles in recent Chinese history. His host, Bo Xilai, party secretary in the southwestern megacity, is a prominent “princeling” who has been tipped to join China’s powerful Politburo Standing Committee during a generational change of leadership in October. Chinese politician Wang Lijun mysteriously disappears amid rumours he tried to defect February 9, Wang Lijun, a former gang-busting policeman and now Vice Mayor of Central China’s Chongqing, requested a meeting at a U.S. consulate general, according to a U.S. official.

"Wang Lijun did request a meeting at the U.S. consulate general in Chengdu earlier this week," Victoria Nuland, spokeswoman of the United States Department of State, said on Wednesday. Chengdu and Chongqing are both cities in Sichuan province.

Nuland said the state department did not talk about issues related to those seeking refugee status or asylum. Responding to rumors that Wang was forced to leave the consulate, Nuland said: “[Wang] left of his own volition.... He walked out. It was his choice.” In a statement made after news of his visit to the U.S. consulate broke, the Chongqing government announced on Wednesday that Wang was receiving "vacation-style treatment" for stress. No other details were given. [Wang] left of his own volition.... He walked out. It was his choice.” ;

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... the earth is full of thy riches.
So is this great and wide sea,
wherein are things creeping
innumerable, both small and
great beasts. Psalms 104: 24-25

It is the path of least resistance that makes rivers and men crooked Time Waits for No Man

A Few snowflakes, appropriately, fell around the parish church of Portsea yesterday in Hampshire as hundreds gathered inside to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of its most famous son, Charles Dickens. Dickens turns 200 today on Tuesday 7 February 2012. There's no sense singing “Happy Birthday” since he died in 1870 and the song was written decades after that Do we really need to make such a fuss about Karol?‎; A global Dickens appreciation, and a modest proposal - It's part of a marathon celebration of Charles Dickens's 200th birthday – the Global Dickens Read-a-thon Google on Dickens ; Charles Dickens was one of our finest ever writers and it is right and proper that so many people worldwide have been paying homage to the great man this week on his 200th anniversary Dickens would have loved being on Twitter; What is the connection between the great 19th century English novelist and the best-loved Czech literary anti-hero? The answer is, surprisingly enough, that without Dickens we quite possibly wouldn’t have Švejk at all. David Vaughan looks at this and some other Czech links with Dickens in this week’s Czech Books. Dickens and the Good Soldier Švejk ; Karol Dickens was long fascinated by Australia and there is a Charles Dickens statue at Centennial Park, Sydney – Down Under Great southern expectations Dickens based many of his characters on real people and Dickens at 200: still the best we've got on being poor Imrich Not - Like Cold River, Dickens was always a struggle Demagogic politicians, uncaring business titans, cunning union leaders, persistent unemployment: What would Dickens, poet of poverty, make of our own hard times?...

A Tale of A Decade Old Media Dragon in the Year of the Dragon Because the truth needs to be told … Everything is but a dream within a dream
Does time exist? Is our perception of the world different from its true reality? Is our concept of time fundamentally flawed? These are the central questions raised by KILLING TIME, a provocative documentary that explores the nature of time.

The film centers on the work of Julian Barbour, a prominent Theoretical Physicist, who gained notoriety with the publication of his landmark book, "The End of Time" (1999). In it, Barbour presents the concept of time as a human construct, not as a separately existing dimension. In a series of interviews, using nothing more than a Polaroid to snap random pictures, Barbour illustrates the development of his radical theory. He explains that physics has always been grounded in Sir Isaac Newton's conception of time as an invisible river that exists and flows independently of the objects in the world.
However, through his work with collaborator Bruno Bertotti, and his own attempts to reconcile the conflict between Quantum Mechanics and Einstein's Theory of Relativity, Barbour came to the conclusion that Newton was wrong. Barbour posits that time is, in fact, an illusion - a measure imposed on the world by humanity. He explains this with the concept of a 'now', which he describes as a snapshot in time - a completely frozen, self-contained instant (much like a Polaroid photograph). Time is simply the measure of the space between two separate and unrelated 'nows.'

• Well, like this river, time seems to flow endlessly from one moment to the next. KILLING TIME ; The truth is the light and light is the truth in the River Town To blog or not to blog …; [As early pioneers in the knowing, that when you lose your reason, you attain highest perfect knowing /Philosophy/ ; There is something to be learned from a rainstorm. When meeting with a sudden shower, you try not to get wet and run quickly along the road. But doing such things as passing under the eaves of houses, you still get wet. When you are resolved from the beginning, you will not be perplexed, though you still get the same soaking. This understanding extends to everything. There’s Only Enough Room in the Blogosphere for the 144 Million of Us ; Top of the Blogs; Trends ; Social media has gone from being a pastime to a necessary component of any brand and business. Ten Media Dragons to follow in the year of the dragon ;]
• · Our home planet is about 4.5 billion (4,500 million) years old. how-it-works-amazing-answers-to-curious-questions ; The universe itself is expanding, but not in the way a balloon expands. The expansion is taking place throughout the universe, where space-time itself is being stretched outwards. Whereas a balloon pushes its edges out as it expands, the universe is also pushing its insides outwards as well, but there is no centre of the universe, so everything is moving away from everything else. It’s a bit like baking a ball of dough; the entire dough expands and grows, not just its edges. However, based on our knowledge of how old the universe is, roughly 14 billion years, we can observe a theoretical ‘edge’ of the visible universe about 14 billion light years away from us. howstuffworks.com It’s a bit like baking a ball of dough; the entire dough expand s and grows, not just its edges.
• · · I'm interested in bending the edges of the spectrum to make the abstract and the concrete hit one another more directly www.howitworksdaily.com ; The Frozen River, deals with the question, "Does time flow?" One of the key points in this chapter deals with special relativity. Observers moving relative to each other have different conceptions of what exists at a given moment, and hence they have different conceptions of reality. The conclusion is that time does not flow, as all things simultaneously exist at the same time The Frozen River; It is said that writers are people who, as children, did not receive sufficient rejection either from adults or peers and so are compelled to seek it relentlessly in later life. Dickens put Cold River on the literary map
• · · · True time would never be revealed by mere clocks--of this Newton was sure Time Waits for No Man; When I became convinced that the universe is natural, that all the ghosts and gods are myths, there entered into my brain, into my soul, into every drop of my blood the sense, the feeling, the joy of freedom. The walls of my prison crumbled and fell. The dungeon was flooded with light and all the bolts and bars and manacles became dust. I was no longer a servant, a serf, or a slave. There was for me no master in all the wide world, not even in infinite space. I was free--free to think, to express my thoughts--free to live my own ideal, free to live for myself and those I loved, free to use all my faculties, all my senses, free to spread imagination's wings, free to investigate, to guess and dream and hope, free to judge and determine for myself . . . I was free! Googopoly
• · · · · How does a newness come into the world? How is it born? Of what fusions, translations, conjoinings is it made? How does it survive, extreme and dangerous as it is? What compromises, what deals, what betrayals of its secret nature must it make to stave off the wrecking crew, the exterminating angel, the guillotine? Is birth always a fall? Do angels have wings? Blog lets readers interact with characters from book: Fallen Lake; Dickens wrote about social issues that still resonate today ... Now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup You put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle. You put water into a teapot, and it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash! Be water, my friend. Will Inequality Keep Getting Worse?
• · · · · · Everything is held together with stories. That is all that is holding us together, stories and compassion. Newton, forgive me;" Einstein wrote in his Autobiographical Notes ; The general idea for Michelson Morley type experiments is that it is faster to swim a return journey across a flowing river than it takes to swim an equivalent distance upstream and back. If you do the maths it is quite easy to verify this. We have to substitute the swimmer for light and the river for the aether, and then build our testing apparatus accordingly. Invisible river that flows uniformly for ever irrespective of how fast the boat is being rowed the ripples from the oars will travel across the water with the same speed
• · · · · · From The Atlantic - 150th Anniversary Edition - The Duty to Think "On the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, we present this commemorative issue featuring Atlantic stories by Mark Twain, Henry James, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Frederick Douglass, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Louisa May Alcott, and many more." James Bennet editor of The Atlantic: "It is possible, in these pages, to enter into both the humanity of figures consecrated or condemned by history and the uncertainty the writers must have felt during the rush of events...It seemed to us that these Atlantic pieces have a way of conversing across the decades. And so in this issue, one finds Garry Wills’s account from 1992 of how Lincoln used the Gettysburg Address to reinterpret the Constitution and thereby “revolutionized the Revolution, giving people a new past to live with that would change their future indefinitely.” And then, equipped with that explication of how Lincoln purified the nation’s meaning, and with President Obama’s summation of what that meaning is, the reader can then encounter, with fresh appreciation, Lowell’s epitaph for Lincoln: New birth of our new soil, the first American The Duty to Think ; This year the media will gather in Berlin from March 6th 2012, on the eve of ITB Berlin, as the world’s leading travel trade show devotes the day entirely to the sector for the first time. Duty To Meet with Journalists

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It’s been said that a biographer is a novelist under oath. A life story cannot be told with facts alone. It must be marshaled to maximum literary effect... In the Footsteps of Giants

Congratulations to Andrew Tink for his book on Lord Sydney, providing us with a fascinating biography of the person for whom our great city of Sydney was named

The former Chairman of the NSW Public Accounts Committee, Shadow Attorney General and Shadow Leader of the House in New South Wales Parliament, Andrew Tink will next week introduce his latest book, Lord Sydney: The Life and Times of Tommy Townshend at Willoughby City Library’s Talks@Willoughby at 12.30pm, Thursday 2 February at Chatswood Library, Lower Ground, The Concourse, 409 Victoria Avenue, Chatswood. Note also the extract of the book entitled Gamble at the birth of a nation Review in the SMH Father figure to the colony

Offering insight into the difficult political environment of late eighteenth-century Britain, Lord Sydney is a comprehensive biography of Thomas ‘Tommy’ Townshend. As Secretary of State for the Home Department, Lord Sydney was the minister responsible for recommending the adoption of a plan for a settlement in Australia and the man for whom the city of Sydney was named. Since his retirement from politics in 2006, Andrew has concentrated on two of his great passions – writing and history. His first political biography, William Charles Wentworth was awarded ‘The Nib’ CAL Waverley Award for Literature in 2010.

Bookings are essential for Talks@Willoughby, visit library website or phone 9777 7900 ; Andrew Tink speaking on February 13 William Charles Wentworth

SYDNEY WITH A WHY OR AN EYE? Good Lord, there's a story in our city's namesake
HE gave his name to our city. Yet there is no official statue or memorial here to commemorate Lord Sydney, the British home secretary who was instrumental in transporting convicts to NSW.
''I don't think there should be,'' said Andrew Tink, the former state politician turned biographer. ''But the life of the man whose decision it was to order the European settlement of Australia is worth a book.
''There has been no biography of Sydney. And I'm finding it very hard to understand why I'm having so much trouble getting this one published.''

Our book of the month is Andrew Tink's fine new biography of Lord Sydney, promoter of the 1788 settlement of New South Wales and the man for whom our city was named. Andrew Tink spent nineteen years in the New South Wales Parliament, including eleven as a Shadow Minister and three as Shadow Leader of the House. Had he stayed on he would now be in government of course, but he chose to step down in 2007 to concentrate on his writing. He is a politician who can write; and he understands history better than most. Politicians ought to be good at history (otherwise, as we know, they will be condemned to repeat it) but not that many are, and we think none in recent times has dug quite as deeply as Andrew.

The man who gave Sydney its name risked his career in choosing the penal settlement's site and governor. But he was lucky and wise, writes Andrew Tink in this extract from his new biography.
• Risk assessment in the justice system isn’t new; Nation built on second chances [Andrew Tink. Epping, NSW 2121. Central Northern Sydney, Sydney Northern Suburbs. p: 02 9877 0266. http://www.andrewtink.com.au ; Lord Sydney: The Life and Times of Tommy Townshend ; Andrew Tink's paper on the naming of Sydney ]
• · Andrew Moore speaks with Andrew Tink, author of a biography of Lord Sydney, Thomas Townshend. Tue, 06 Dec 2011 09:45:00. 2GB archived ; History: Andrew’s Story
• · · The little known part Charles II had in the naming of Sydney. Australia’s most populous city derives its name from Algernon Sidney, a British politician executed in 1683 for treason, following the 1784 decision by his nephew Tommy Townshend, as Britain’s home secretary, to establish a penal colony in its distant territory. ;Andrew Tink, the former MP, fresh from his prizewinning William Charles Wentworth, decided to fill this gap. It was not easy. Most of Sydney’s personal papers are in the Clements Library in Michigan. The records of his role in dealing with George III’s madness are with the Royal College of Physicians in London. Yet when Tink had finished his manuscript, Australian publishers showed little interest. Peter Coleman on Sydney
• · · · It’s taken Andrew Tink 7 years to find a publisher but after the success of his award winning biography of the great explorer William Charles Wentworth Ascension Press have now published Lord Sydney, The Life and Times of Tommy Townshen.; When Lady Frances Sidney ran foul of Queen Elizabeth I, she adopted a family motto which the much-maligned organisers of Sydney's 2000 Olympics might well have copied: God preserve me from calumny! Lady Sidney was born in 1531, the daughter of Sir William Sidney of Penshurst, Kent and the aunt of the poet Sir Philip Sidney. In 1555 she became the second wife of Thomas Radcliffe, who in 1557 succeeded his father as Earl of Sussex. Like her husband, Lady Frances was a trusted courtier, serving as one of Queen Elizabeth's Ladies of the Bedchamber. After the Earl's death in 1583, Lady Frances incurred the Queen's displeasure, as a result of slanders about her treatment of her late husband, so she adopted the motto Dieu me garde de calomnie
• · · · · Premier O'Farrell was accompanied by his colleague Andrew Tink—another veteran of that era-who left politics a few years back and has published a couple of very well received biographies on William Charles Wentworth and Lord Sydney since that time. It was terrific to see him in good fettle this week as he has suffered from ill health in recent times. In Uncharted Waters; What If …
• · · · · · When John Brogden was forced to quit as Leader of the NSW Liberal Party in 2005, John Howard apparently wanted Andrew Tink to run for the position. Tink chose not to and, the following year, announced that he would not recontest his seat at the 2007 State Election, thus ending a 19 year parliamentary career. On quitting politics, Tink commented that ‘I've got a fascination for historical biography and (I) really want to devote a bit of time into getting stuck into that as something totally different, but something that is nevertheless intellectually challenging'; Wentworth, politics and fighting cancer ; Andrew Tink, 52, one of the best performers
• · · · · · · · Risk assessment in the justice system isn’t new - A statistics professor says he can predict crime before it occurs Drawing from criminal databases dating to the 1960s, Berk initially modeled the Philadelphia algorithm on more than 100,000 old cases, relying on three dozen predictors, including the perpetrator’s age, gender, neighborhood, and number of prior crimes. Misfortune Teller; Media Dragon predicted the birth of this book by Andrew on Lord Sydney back in 2006 Fortunate Teller