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No famine has ever taken place in the history of the world in a functioning democracy.
-Nobel Prize winning Economist Amartya Sen

The Tax Office is combing through the transaction records of more than 3600 people suspected of using offshore credit cards to return money from tax havens, as part of a secret three-year investigation Tax Office to stamp out credit card rorts

Eye on Politics & Law Lords: Corporate Corruption
Recently former Tyco CEO Dennis Kozlowski was convicted for stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from the company.

It was his second go-round in court--the first one ended in a mistrial. You may remember Mr. Kozlowski from the original trial. A video of his lavish party on an Italian island, allegedly paid for with company funds, was last year's high profile corporate scandal. The retrial was a more low-key affair, but it served to remind us of how much business corruption there has been over the past few years.

• If You Have to Lie, Cheat, and Steal You're Just Not Doing it Right [Center for Democracy and Technology ; Making Sense of Disempowerment ; Parents without custody to be given bigger say ]
• · In Tom Wolfe's book, Bonfire of the Vanities, the wife of the central character tries to explain to her child what Daddy, a Wall Street bond trader, does: Just imagine that a bond is a slice of cake, and you didn't bake the cake, but every time you hand somebody a slice of the cake a tiny little bit comes off, like a little crumb, and you can keep that. If you pass around enough slices of cake, then pretty soon you have enough crumbs to make a gigantic cake Magpies get fat as pollies slice cake ; This is the model for the future Movement politics ; Political donations to candidates in council elections should be banned to ensure the community has confidence in local government Developers call for ban on donations
• · · Tim Bristow: It has all the ingredients of a uniquely Sydney soap opera: the dead underworld figure, his two lovers (one a glamorous tennis champion, the other a respected psychiatrist), a marriage of convenience, a love child who grew up to become an Olympic hopeful and a feud over an estate Trysts and turns of a Sydney identity ; Kerry Whelan Whelan nanny tells of Burrell visit
• · · · The Premier, Morris Iemma, has thrown out interstate parole arrangements, announcing that no convicted pedophiles from other states who are released on parole will be able to live in NSW Iemma's pedophile decree angers west ; Just how far can a good religious joke go?
• · · · · All the drama of housing prices boils down to a financial fantasy story Boom, crash: it's a property opera ; An open economy, a closed society
• · · · · · Grand rhetoric about democracy and freedom only resonates when it is supported by actual policy Why the US should ditch its tyrant friends ; A debt collection agency that caused people to be turned down for home loans because of old telephone bills that were in dispute, or not owed, will be made to reimburse consumers' legal costs and set up a complaint hotline Now debt collector may owe consumers

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The Media Center is offering 15 fellowships to enable independent, non-profit or academic participants from any country to attend We Media: Behold the Power of Us - A report on The Emergence of the Progressive Blogosphere 

The Blog, The Press, The Media: What Are the Bloggers of Oz thinking? Christopher Sheil of Back Pages is back and blogging as strongly as ever. His comeback via a highway might have been influenced by a old but fresh voice of Tim Dunlop who parked his surboard at Adelaide. Invade Road to Surfdom Aussie bloggers are even asking What is the state of blogging in Africa? Czech out Antony

The presence of readers writing back within the blogging medium has added a further declension to Gonzo, and the results can be sensational... If you fancy yourself with a keyboard, the challenge is irresistible. No publisher needed to be sold on my ideas. No editor stood in the way of my copy. There were no limits to my distribution. I could write to the world, before breakfast every day...

• Rich side of the blogosphere Following the proud highway [A good clue for your future Barista ; Shauny] • · [Rich side of the news Blame It on the New York Times; News Corp in talks to buy search engine ; Lunch with Jana Wendt Dame Elisabeth Murdoch • · · ABS building a 'Google for stats' ; Academia's quest for the ultimate search tool • · · · What was the Washington Post thinking? asks AJR editor ; Tradition of a people should count for more than traditional coverage Nicknames & Mascots: Complicity in Bigotry • · · · · The New Ernie Pyles: Sgtlizzie and 67cshdocs At least 200 active-duty soldiers have blogs ; Iraqi bloggers • · · · · · Just when academics were beginning to get to grips with blogging, along came podcasting ; Blog Search Engine Threatens Ban of Blogger Blogs CODA: The Blogday Buzz is spreading. Bloggers from around the world wrote about it and placed buttons in their blogs. Nir Ofir is the initiator of BlogDay 2005. Nir envisions that in one long moment In August 31st 2005, bloggers from all over the world will post a recommendation of 5 new blogs (at the same time) - preferably blogs different from their own in culture, point of view and attitude. On this day, all blog surfers will find themselves leaping and discovering new, unknown blogs, celebrating the discovery of new people and new bloggers.

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Television is a medium which permits millions of people to listen to the same joke at the same time and yet remain lonesome.
-TS Eliot

The coolest of the anchors. Why Jennings was put on earth - To be a father, he told Beliefnet A Faithful Journalist

Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: Look out for Cold Rivers and Icebergs
As a former iceberg member, with the lucky Bondi number 703, I am impressed with this thoughtful story filled with so many colou=rful questions. You can leave things out and the reader will still get them? It made no sense. Why writers need to remember the Titanic

If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water ... Because the power of a story comes from what's not in it

• Distilling a beer keg's worth of information into a perfume bottle What Lies Beneath: The Iceberg Theory of Writing [American society has rescued itself from what seemed to be terminal decline caused by family breakdown. Andrew Sullivan sees a lesson here for Britain. A loss of a sense of what matters — or worse, a deeply misplaced sense of what counts as real — can indeed lead to divorce It's a wonderful life; Have You Heard? Gossip Turns Out to Serve a Purpose]
• · Few public buildings, and no libraries, have ever received the sort of acclaim that Seattle's central library After Seattle ; Barbara Ehrenreich on the genre of business books Who Moved My Ability to Reason?
• · · Cinema Minima ; Emotional, not factual, ads win skeptical consumers ; Why some people can't control the betting urge In gambling's grip
• · · · Kids Count Data that uses data to measure child well-being in America ; Why I Am Still a Catholic
• · · · · Those who extol the virtues of laziness are actually terribly busy Summertime Blues ; As the fall season approaches, the book world is still searching for this year's great American novel Pickings thin for 2005 literary fiction
• · · · · · Peter Sis, author and artist, has a very nicely designed website ; All Cultures Are Not Equal

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Things I have learnt while aging:
You will always lose the ones you love the most
Those you hate Hang around ad infinitem
Taunting you for your failure to kick their arses years ago
Kill ants
Wear black
Eat red fruit
- The adorable Ms. Maccers

Hell isn't cold enough. The cold case for hiring biased book reviewers Fair Is Square

Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: Communitarianism According to Truth Tree
In 2001, Amitai Etzioni was named by Richard Posner as being among the top 100 American intellectuals as measured by academic citations. In 2002, he even linked to Media Dragon from his virtual reflections

Communitarianism is the documented socio-cultural rulebook that defines the new conduct rules and ethics for global citizenship. In other words, it is the human being’s official notice of enforced behaviors and beliefs. You do not have the right to your mind or to your opinions anymore – not without being detrimental to “your community.” In fact, your function as an individual in the world has been eliminated. You are now a pre-defined group entity. Hence, you are a community commodity, and absolutely nothing more

• Personal and communitarian reflections Amitai Etzioni [Ginger Meggs is not as good as Shakespeare, despite what the teacher says Why art is a dirty word ; Though art retains its mystery, a couple of books throw light on this and that Art smarts ; Different views of the world ]
• · Paul Maliszewski The pleasures of literary hoaxing ; Kim Woo-choong book review Literary crimes of the Daewoo chief
• · · I hate to sound like such a marketing geek, but we like to fish where the fish are: Listen to the podcast audio version of this story here, or sign up to get Slate’s free daily podcasts Literature for couch potatoes ; The letters section in The New York Review of Books has been required reading for students of insults for decades Disrespectfully yours ; Master marketer and innovator Seth Godin uses his blog to introduce a new wrinkle in the marketing of his forthcoming THE BIG MOO Will you help us? ; Barry Eisler - How to Package Your Book
• · · · Mum was right You will feel a whole lot better after a cuddle ; Goodnight, Vienna: Three books refract Sigmund Freud Shrink Raps ; Like much of the brain, the function of dreams is, for now at least, as shrouded as their meaning Dream scenarios
• · · · · If the US is so rich and smart, why aren't they more like the Finns? In Finland's Footsteps ; The inaugural issue of the Journal of Research Practice
• · · · · · The selection process contains as much drama and intrigue as the books themselves The literary Olympics: Brought to book ; Money can indeed buy you happiness, but if you want to stay happy it is a good idea to have relatively poor friends. Although both effects exist, the results showed that relative income is more important than absolute income in determining the happiness levels Me poor, you happy ; Happiness lies in being richer than your peers! Happiness is besting Joneses

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The take-up rate has slowed as more people opt for privately operated sites that charge between $35 and $149 for a basic return E-tax gives ATO run for its money

Eye on Politics & Law Lords: The Plot Thickens...
On power, corruption, lies... and his autobiography

Max Clifford's kiss-and-tell stories of politicians, pop stars and footballers are the lifeblood of many a tabloid newspaper. As he launches his own autobiography, the most powerful man in PR tells James Silver why it's not about settling scores

• Max Clifford: The dirt-disher comes clean [Blunt political opportunism, not fancy libertarian ideas, is most of what's left of the '94 revolution The Gingrich Legacy ; George Monbiot Let the People Rule the World ; The World Parliament Experiment]
• · Many of the guards who have greater access to the most sensitive offices in Parliament House than the Prime Minister do not have security clearances and many are casual staff Parliament security fear as guards escape check ; The Helios Airlines' plane was due to land at Athens international airport at 12:20 pm for a stopover before flying to Prague or Brno - There were about 80 children - No Sign Of Survivors In Greek Jet Crash Cypriot Helios Airways jet carrying 121 crashes
• · · Sydney property is too expensive and young home buyers would be better served by going somewhere more affordable Flee Sydney, it's too dear: Reserve chief ; Australians are notorious gamblers, so our reputation goes. We'll bet on "two flies crawling up a wall" and down tools for a horse race. But when it comes to property and land speculation, all bets are off Punted on land and lost? Tough
• · · · Do Try This at Home: Assess Your Area's Real Estate Bubble
• · · · · Workplace essentials: sink sludge, pervs and the rings of ding-a-lings What makes a real Australian workplace? ; Scaremongering ; With campaigning for the two Queensland by-elections entering the final week, it's high time they were promoted up the August By-Election Gazette's batting order
• · · · · · When John Howard was elected he sparked fear and loathing in the bureaucracy by dumping a third of the public service chiefs he inherited from the previous Labor governmentPM's war cabinet his tightest ship ; Rum and revolution have been associated together for centuries. Rum is “the global spirit with its warm beating heart in the Caribbean The Revolutionary Spirit

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Spin, spin, spin. It's everywhere, all the time, and unfortunately no-one has yet invented a machine to detect it. You just have to be constantly alert (and sometimes alarmed), as evidenced by Crikey stories

The Blog, The Press, The Media: Journalism's fear and loathing of blogs
Mainstream journalism is running scared. Who You Calling A Journalist?

It's watching its audience numbers decline and its public trust numbers drop. Newspapers, magazines, and network television news have been shaken by major scandals. The media have seen the future and it is blogging

• Can't beat that [Is journalism a profession, or more a craft or trade? The occupational status of journalists in this democratic society ; Web is finally becoming as fun and flexible as your favorite software. The next Web revolution ; Scientists say they have been able to monitor people's thoughts via scans of their brains 'Thoughts read' via brain scans ]
• · Phillip Knightley It spent money like water on investigative journalism ... The editor, Harold Evans, was unhappy if a libel writ had not arrived by Tuesday, because he felt that the paper had not been doing its job - defending people without power from those who wielded it unfairly, exposing corruption, making a difference to the lives of ordinary citizens Restoring citizen's respect for journalism: we are not without power ; You always know what's on the cards with an internet search ; The great part about the Internet of all the existing mediums from before is that it's the first one that is truly global, and its impact is massive ... The likes of Google and Yahoo draw to us more information in seconds than our ancestors had access to during their lifetimes - but with too few surprises. Were always making discoveries, by accident and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of Google AdSense
• · · For better or worse, the Internet is playing a larger role in editorial decisions about books Crossing weblines ; When Weblog Watch did an initial round-up of British bloggers' reactions to the London bomb attacks, we noted how Tim Worstall's words had generally been heeded in the immediate aftermath: Back to the fray
• · · · In August 1991, Sir Tim Berners-Lee created the first website. Fourteen years on, he tells BBC Newsnight's Mark Lawson how blogging is closer to his original idea about a read/write web Berners-Lee on the read/write web ; Slate's Jack Shafer on why he doesn't trust readers: Their credibility has fallen to an all-time low. Dear Slate reader ; Few scientists have caught on to the Internet's power of posting, commenting, and debating – where are the rest? The Power of the Blog
• · · · · Google profits from organising information on the web. If it does so, then it can't prevent those who use the web from doing the same Google must search within itself; Should we all be using this GoogleAnon bookmarklet to set our Google GUID to all zeros, in order to anonymize our searches? Is that a paranoid thing to do? Anonymizing Google's Cookie
• · · · · · Jenna Freedman of RR exclaims: ‘Hooray for Chicago Radical Reference volunteer Laura Crossett! Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) ; And The Overall Awards Go To The ramblings of Laura Crossett, The Medium is Not the Message

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The difficult part of love
Is being selfish enough,
Is having the blind persistence
To upset an existence
Just for your own sake.
What cheek it must take.

And then the unselfish side—
How can you be satisfied,
Putting someone else first
So that you come off worst?
My life is for me.
As well ignore gravity.

Still, vicious or virtuous,
Love suits most of us.
Only the bleeder found
Selfish this wrong way round
Is ever wholly rebuffed,
And he can get stuffed.
-Philip Larkin, Love

To be in love for 25 years is to risk appearing the fool ...

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In golf, euphoria is short lived, a bad shot lurking at any moment, so there is a state of sustained melancholy, thus leading to first-rate writing, and first-rate writers.
-Art Spander

An essay on why Truth Is Stronger Than Fiction. In a profile in the New York Times, V. S. Naipaul argues that nonfiction is better suited than fiction to capturing the complexities of today's world The Irascible Prophet

Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: The Real Me
Is it me? For a moment

Now the thing is, with a life like mine, not many live to tell the tale. Not only did I live, but I have been telling the tale in any variety of forms since I left the streets. Poetry, prose, painting, and collage. I have always felt the tremendous need to tell my tale. Not just a need, a mandate.

• Here I sit ready to tell another tale of me [The Taste of Memory ; Why Hollywood never seems to get tired of the Frankenstein myth The Monster That Wouldn’t Die]
• · Don't cross over if you have any intention of going back Politics and literature ; Surprised by Joy What is an act in the strict Lacanian sense of the term?
• · · Within Russia, the art-therapy method is one of the new technologies in humanistic psychiatry Art as Philosophy of Healing ; For two thousand years, moralities have rested upon a traditional metaphysical dichotomy, that between virtue and vice Vice
• · · · A youthful sensation doesn't always translate into a distinguished literary career When the very young write that first big book ; And sex and drugs and drink and food ... enough was never enough for William Leith My need for greed ; When it comes to young minds, art enriches them, expands them, and prepares them for life in useful and unexpected ways. Network for Good
• · · · · Why are we so freaked out by the idea of our mirror image? Clonophobia ; Much More Than Seven Stories ; Drugs, sex and Sydney's underbelly. All in a night's work
• · · · · · George Monbiot The new chauvinism ; Domestic strife hits an all-time absurdist high Till death do us part

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Live life to the point of tears.
-Albert Camus

Labor risks losing its strong inner-west seat of Marrickville New South Wales by-elections

Rebel Nationals senator Barnaby Joyce has further fuelled the row within the Coalition by leaving open a threat to block other Government bills unless the Prime Minister meets his conditions for the sale of Telstra Bill-blocking senator puts wind up PM

Eye on Politics & Law Lords: Barnaby Joyce all on Do-or-Die Constitutional Strategies
David Humphries: Barnaby Joyce refuses to be drawn into an exchange of insults

Much has been made of the loneliness of Barnaby Joyce, now the National Party senator for Queensland has been elevated to the status of a David doing battle with the Goliath of Howard Government self-interest. Certainly, after just two days of official Senate membership but months after his utterances forged his reputation for dissent, Senator Joyce is finding relations inside Parliament House more chilled than yesterday's light snow outside.

• Numbers and power: tackling a Senate majority Rebel sidesteps enforcer and sticks to principle [A prominent Labor MP has criticised NSW Government plans to reshape large tracts of land on Sydney's fringes, saying he can understand the suspicions of residents who believe favouritism to political mates has determined potentially lucrative zoning changes Changes in zoning are slapdash, says MP ; Obeid sues over article]
• · Personal tax cuts passed by Federal Parliament yesterday will boost the average family's take-home income by as much as $60 a week and coax tens of thousands of new people into the workforce Tax cut jackpot for hard workers ; Families in NSW are much more likely to be racking up debts than the rest of Australia and are much less interested in investing any spare cash in property The state we're in: happily in debt ; Benjamin Barber reviews books on political fear Fear's not just a factor, it's a major player
• · · A team of Chinese maths enthusiasts have thrown NSW's speed cameras system into disarray by cracking the technology used to store data about errant motorists Motorist wins case after maths whizzes break speed camera code ; Truth and Truthmakers ; Workplace relations reforms: a chronology of business, community and Government responses
• · · · Iraq Redux: How Things Looked Then and How They Look Now ; The Cold War ended over 10 years ago, but the world is still enmeshed in a nuclear arms race Men will always fight
• · · · · Michael Lind on how terrorists will change us They Will Change Us ; The world keeps producing more guns and bombs
• · · · · · What is ‘political asylum’? Klaus Neumann explores the history and meaning of the term Political asylum and the case of Chen Yonglin; Chen Yonglin on defection and delay ; China has penetrated Australia and Canada to a stunning degree. Lin Chong and Yang Xiaomei: Li Youyuang (an alias), a former Chinese consulate worker in Eastern Europe talked with The Epoch Times about his views on Chinese defector and former diplomat, Chen Yonglin, and the attitudes of workers inside Chinese consulates. Thousands of “Chen Yonglins” Are Waiting to Escape to Freedom Former Eastern European Chinese Consulate Worker Suggests that Chen Yonglin’s Defection Is Part of a Greater Trend

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What Makes a Great Place? We can reach out to each other. We can love ourselves and each other. We can revere all life and the generations to come. And we can make the government our partner in this great effort Let us begin

Art of City Living: Is Everbody happy? Art in the Village
How did an impoverished North Philadelphia community transform abandoned lots into whimsical sculpture gardens? How did six-story murals sprout on the sides of crumbling buildings?

Walking through the streets today, neighbors proudly call to point out to you the once–forsaken lots—more than 120 of them—that today display colorful murals. One of the murals is based on a painting of flowers first done by neighborhood children and then painted three stories high on the side of a building. Nearby a parade of angels representing the world’s faiths—Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, and others—guard a park and create a haven for performances.

• Cities For All [Links Compliments to Radical Reference Librarians - An Interview with Angela Glover Blackwell Policies that fight sprawl ; Extreme Makeover: Neighborhood Edition ]
• · It can happen in your town: Streetscapes blooming with wildflowers, industrial waterfronts transformed into parks The New City Beautiful ; Two Crises; One Solution
• · · Resource Guide for Just, Green, Beautiful Communities Sustainable design tools ; Seven Great Ideas for Movement Builders
• · · · Eurozine Review ; Sign and Sight
• · · · · To Build a Library ; All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way A review of books on happiness
• · · · · · The good people at Forbes produce an estimate of how much money a family needs to live a "comfortably affluent" lifestyle The Comfortable Life ; New game-like computer software is empowering ordinary citizens to help design better cities. Can the professionals and the public learn to play well together? Sim civics

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To Three Kind Rivers of My Life: I Was Wrong: My Eyes Made Me Do It
My eyes are still playing strange double vision games on me. I am grateful to my two girls for giving me the strength to keep this blog going.
This weekend is one of the most crucial weekends in my entire life so I feel like retelling a short story told by Ram Dass. There are two waves drifting along in the ocean, one a bit bigger than the other. The bigger wave suddenly becomes very sad and upset. The smaller wave asks what's wrong. "You don't want to know," the bigger wave says. "What is it?" the small wave asks. "No - really - it's too terrible. If you knew what I knew, you'd never be happy." The small wave persists. Finally the big wave explains: "You can't see it, but I can see that, not too far from here, all of the waves are crashing on the shore. We are going to disappear." The small wave says," I can make you happy with just six words, but you have to listen very carefully to them." The big wave doesn't believe it -- what does the small wave know that he doesn't -- but he's desperate. After a while of doubting and mocking the small wave, the big wave finally gives in, and asks the small wave to tell him. And so the small wave says: "You're not a wave, you're water."

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There are three wants which can never be satisfied: that of the rich, who wants something more; that of the sick, who wants something different; and that of the traveller, who says, 'Anywhere but here.'
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, Considerations by the Way

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The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.
The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference.
The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference.
And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.
-Elie Wiesel (US News & World Report 27 October 1986)

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Pray that your loneliness may spur you into finding something to live for, great enough to die for.
-Dag Hammarskjold.

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I watch them tearing a building down
Demolition men near our side of town
They can easily destroy in a day or two
What builders have taken years to do
And I ask myself as I go my way
Which of these roles have I tried to play
Am I a builder working with care
Measuring things with a rule and a square
Or am I a wrecker who walks the town
Content with the labor of tearing down
-via Steve

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If I were a slam poet
and, I'm not, by the way,
I'd breathe similes
into your nostrils
and give you life;
(w)rap metaphors
around your ears
like the garland wrapped
in Billie Holiday's hair;
I would not lull you
to sleep,
because my words
would be on fire,
shocking you
with
existential soliloquies,
like,
to be
or not to be;
making you
hear songs
in the key of life;
making you
hear rhapsodies
in the key of blue,
if I were a slam poet.
If I were a slam poet,
in three minutes or less,
I'd fire word darts
into your mind,
fire projectile missiles
of poetic wisdom,
like a sermon on the mount
in iambic pentameter;
spin romantic sonnets
that would have made
Shakespeare jealous;
from behind the mike,
my words
would spring forth
like an Ellington tune,
played by Miles Davis,
alongside John Coltrane,
backed by Thelonius Monk,
and Charles Mingus;
like your mama's voice,
when the hurt was so bad
and nobody else's words would do;
make you recall memories
you'd long forgotten;
recall memories
you wish you had;
makin' those three minutes,
a memory
that you will
never forget--
that is,
if I were a slam poet,
which,
I'm not.
-some unslam poet

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Ethicist once aptly stated: Attraction is a feeling. Love is a choice...

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To quote Staind: 'It's Been Awhile' since I have been given an opportunity to love a movie. Last night I watched a masterpiece. In About Schmidt we come across Warren Schmidt (Jack Nicholson) who has arrived at several of life's crossroads all at the same time. Everything in his world was both under control and about to go madly wrong and fall apart. About Schmidt is nothing more or less than the opportunity to spend some time with the kind of man that we often meet in real life’s crossroads, in real pubs, in real chaos clubs, but rarely view on screens. If you're not deeply touched by this movie, check your pulse as this story gave me emotional whiplash. Jack uses his specific acting talent not just to entertain us but to open our mind for the possibly deep emptiness of people who call somewhere in their life and recognize that they aren't as rich as they are supposed to be. This strangely simple/complex character, Schmidt, tries to convince the audience that a full life should be the goal instead of just living without being aware of their own role. This can give a very positive motivation for every age.

During this darkly painful odyssey, Warren details his adventures and shares his observations with an unexpected new friend and confessor -- Ndugu Umbo, a six-year-old Tanzanian orphan whom he sponsors for $22 a month through an organization that advertises on TV. From these long letters filled with a lifetime of things unsaid, Warren begins -- perhaps for the first time -- to glimpse himself and the life he has lived. Inside the metaphorical forrest of ‘About Schmidt’ words seem magical and tragic. One moment we are in almost blinding sunlight, the next pitched under a dark blanket where the temperature is ten degrees cooler.

The script has very edgy material...
When I was a kid I used to think that maybe I was special, that somehow destiny had tapped me to be a great man - not like Churchill or Walt Disney or somebody like that. But somebody, you know, at least semi-important.

We see his melancholy through his exaggerated drunken state:
I can't get over you guys. No drinking, no carousing, no carrying on at all. I thought you college kids - let me tell you something, and I want you to listen very hard. That test tomorrow is meaningless. The senselessness of it all is going to hit you someday like a ton of bricks.

Live life to the point of tears.
-Albert Camus

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Men like to barbecue. Men will cook if danger is involved
-Rita Rudner

In the snow-draped mountains near Jalalabad in November 2001, as the Taliban collapsed and al Qaeda lost its Afghan sanctuary, Osama bin Laden biographer Hamid Mir watched "every second al Qaeda member carrying a laptop computer along with a Kalashnikov" as they prepared to scatter into hiding and exile Terrorists Turn to the Web as Base of Operations

The Blog, The Press, The Media: Blog readers are sexy
Gawker sales people tell advertisers that the blog audience is young, rich and influential.

It's a reasonable assumption. Blog readers are early adopters, and one would assume that they would have a profile much like the early internet audience. We hoped that contention was true, because it's at the core of the pitch: that blogs can help marketers reach people, above all, young guys, who are abandoning network television, and never really got into the newspaper reading habit.

• Passionate communities [ Nearly A Third Of Online Americans Have Visited Blogs ; The New York Times and Fred at Union have funded Indeed to the tune of $5 million Indeed: New kid on the blog ]
• · As an edited collection of scholarly articles by experts and practitioners in their fields, Uses of Blogs offers a broad range of perspectives on current and emerging uses of blogs Uses of Blogs ; Mainstreamers have lost their way ; Our Blog is Growing Up – And So Has Our Index Yahoo Claims Larger Search Engine Index Than Google
• · · ID theft ring hits 50 banks ; Corporations Reluctant to Reveal Incidents of Cyberextortion The Rise of the Digital Thugs
• · · · Darren Rowse has compiled a great series titled 31 Days to Better Blogs Declaring War on Blogger Apathy - Complete Article ; Yahoo Bets On Citizen Journalism ; The Top 10 Things You Should Know Before You Blog
• · · · · Blog on for wit and wisdom, but don't expect the gospel truth ; Doc Waterman stands by daughter accused of plotting wife's murder Father torn by grief, loyalty
• · · · · · Word of mouth is where it’s at, so is that blogs are better? The first excerpt from John Battelle's new book, The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture, is available on his blog Battelle ; Facts and Figures About Your Community

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Looking back on how his generation covered up the crimes of communism in the 1930s, WH Auden explained that he and his friends weren't true communists but fellow travellers. At home they defended civil liberties and stood up for freedom of speech. Abroad, they tolerated atrocities precisely because they didn't impinge on them. The way the left made excuses for Stalin earlier with the way they now make excuses for islamofascists. I still fight oppression

Eye on Politics & Law Lords: Blackmail attempt
Rob Kerin has asked one of his MPs to respond to allegations concerning sexual behaviour in his electorate office

MARK Brindal is the Liberal MP who claims to have been blackmailed over his sexual relationship with a 24-year-old man. Mr Brindal, 57, told his wife Pam and four adult children he was bisexual after his ex-lover's foster carer allegedly demanded money in return for not going public.

• Extortion Claim Over Mp's Gay Liaison [Laurence Bernhard Marquet, 58 Parliamentary officer facing 55 charges ; Jawbreaker: a former CIA field commander who was on the ground at Tora Bora is confirming the strange thing, while trying to get the CIA to approve his forthcoming book - Newsweek reports that a CIA field commander says Osama bin Laden was allowed to get away at Tora Bora Exclusive: CIA Commander: We Let bin Laden Slip Away ]
• · Insider trading - some naive thoughts ; Reward your friends. Punish your enemies. Unify the party. Marginalize the opposition Republicans Run the Political Risk of Becoming Too Self-Reliant
• · · Robin Cook is dead; his warnings on Iraq will, if there is justice, haunt Bush, Blair and Howard ; Any hope of Labour returning to the Left died with Robin Cook ; But if one is being oneself, one needn't cultivate an image. If one is not being oneself, I suppose, then that's a different story Clinton Is Cultivating an Image as a Centrist ; Rich Liberals Vow to Fund Think Tanks
• · · · The most powerful backroom political job in NSW, chief of staff to the Premier, is to be split, as Morris Iemma is giving his current chief of staff, Tom Forrest, the job of senior policy and political adviser Premier set to split key advisory role ; Peter Anderson Frontline experience to count for more in police promotions
• · · · · CIA operative Valerie Plame Leak Investigation: An Oversight Issue? ; Who amongst us is unAustralian and why? What ARE are our shared values, Webdiarists?
• · · · · · Two of the Carr government's most significant planning decisions, on water supply and the location of Sydney's new suburbs and green belts, have unravelled as the new regime admits mistakes were made on where to build 160,000 homes Here come the burbs: Carr vision rendered ; Cherie Burton, Eric Roozendaal, Milton Orkopoulos: Three new faces as Iemma hails youth, experience