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He has endured 12 premiers, eight speakers and sat through countless debates - and scandals - in the bearpit in Australia's oldest parliament. After 21 years, the reign of the longest-serving Clerk of the Legislative Assembly, Russell Grove, will come to an end when he retires on November 4. Russell Grove has been Clerk of the Legislative Assembly since 1990, having entered Parliamentary Service in 1971.

I've enjoyed every single day of my working life. I'm very fortunate in that regard.

Reflecting on how the parliament has changed in the four decades he has worked there, Mr Grove said there was ''probably more camaraderie 40 years ago. Civility is a big issue in politics internationally. But there is also more pressure on MPs''.
In the public gallery during the tributes were Mr Grove's wife, Frances, and daughter, Sarah-Jane.

Afterwards MPs joined Mr Grove for morning tea in the Speaker's Garden and he received a standing ovation at the end of question time. Mr Grove said he would tackle a pile of political biographies, but has no plans for a tell-all book of his own. On what makes a good clerk, he said: You just need to keep your mouth closed

It has been a great honour for me to have Russell Grove and his wife, Frances, as my constituents. From their location in Springfield Avenue in the heart of Kings Cross they have given me feedback about the night-time activities in Central Plaza. We also have a common interest in the Pearl Beach area. I know that although Russell is retiring I will still see Russell, Frances and Sarah-Jane.

Over this long period there have been great challenges and many changes. Throughout these times I have come to the view that only by having confidence in itself, and an ability to adapt to the new challenges while respecting the value of past practices, can the House survive as the sovereign body of our State. Unwarranted and unfounded criticism from whatever quarter should not deflect Members from their important duties and responsibility as representatives of the people of New South Wales ... To some extent we are honouring today the man who was not there. The fact is that the officials who sit at the table of Parliaments like ours in the place are invisible. Parliamentary Marco Polo

CODA: The Ghost of Grahame Cooksley is haunting Homer's Springfield...

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Always make the audience suffer as much as possible.
-Alfred Hitchcock

The 19th-century social network. To enjoy the crowd, Baudelaire told us, one must have masks. His love of observing was at war with his fear of being seen...

We live in a world where information is potentially unlimited. Information is cheap, but meaning is expensive. Where is the meaning?

Pinker the Prophet The Better Angels of Our Nature
Hitler, Stalin, Mao – three reasons to question moral progress. But has cynicism blinded us to a worldwide decline in belligerency?

WITH THE United States fighting two wars, countries from Tunisia to Syria either in or on the brink of intrastate conflicts, bloodshed continuing in Sudan and reports that suicide bombers might foil airport security by planting explosives within their bodies, it is hard to be cheerful. But Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker tells us that we should be, that we are living in the least violent era ever. What’s more, he makes a case that will be hard to refute. The trends are not subtle—many of the changes involve an order of magnitude or more. Even when his explanations do not fully convince, they are serious and well-grounded.

• Why Violence Has Declined [ Showmanship and luck, but also a taste for secrecy and controversy. Most of all, be a blank slate: What makes a good prophet? ; The Alice books have been interpreted to death: an allegory of Darwinism, a tale of toilet training, a story of sexual desire. All miss the point. Tolstoy of the nursery.; Politics of personality. How to explain William F. Buckley? He had ideas, of course – 50-some books. But what mattered was his charm]
• · . The Jewish wit and the morose anti-Semite shared a friendship and a compulsion: extreme frankness. When Groucho Marx met T.S. Eliot; For Philip Larkin, letters were a crucible in which to refine his poetry. They were also the venue for airing regrets... I’m sorry that our lovemaking fizzled out
• · · Politics between the sheets. Revolutionaries must be monomaniacal, it’s said. But what is a revolution without sex? Without art? failure ; My brain made me do it. Can neuroscience distinguish between an automatic impulse and a self-directed action? Mike Gazzaniga chooses to weigh the evidence Decoding the Brain’s Cacophony
• · · · Take a clear-eyed look at the book biz. Only two major players, Amazon and Google, are still standing. Everyone else is looking for the best way to go bankrupt..; The great illumination. Streetlights changed everything, a fact not lost on those who prefer the dark: thieves, prostitutes, drunks, students...
• · · · · Hemingway’s later years: Ill health, night terrors. Forgive him anything. He writes like an angel ; Why do we exist? asks Richard Dawkins. Why are we here? For the 70-year-old biologist, a compelling answer: to continue deft battle withm intolerably conventional wisdom
• · · · · · Learn. Unlearn. Relearn. The Internet makes it hard to concentrate. Good, says Cathy Davidson. Disruption and distraction spark innovation and creativity ; Fashion, Kant wrote, belongs “under the heading of folly.” But men, it seems, have always been bemused by catwalk-gazing fashionistas
• · · · · · · Ours is a culture of whateverness: Disbelief trumps belief; opinions, buildings, behavior are trivial curiosities. Enthralled by ephemera, we’ve become idea surfers... ; When Ariel Dorfman fled Chile, he left his library behind. His years of roving were shaped by the books he could not read... Exile and identity

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After two hundred twenty days or seven months around the world, from NY to Mexico Argentina, Bohemian Czech land of Prague, Spain and much much more Gabbie is back to swim the Sydney beaches ;-)

The Power of a mistake
Note from NZ When I started my career at Mary Quant in the 60s I was schooled in the fail fast, learn fast, fix fast, mantra. Lines went from conception to launch to discontinuation at lightning speed; it was a great place to discover the power of a mistake as a way of learning and improving.

In a similar vein Nobel Prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman says he learns more about the human mind when it makes mistakes than he does when everything is working perfectly. Kahneman has been studying intuitive thinking for 40 years, and said this at the start of a recent master class on the science of human nature:
If you want to characterize how something is done, then one of the most powerful ways of characterizing the way the mind does anything is by looking at the errors that the mind produces while it's doing it because the errors tell you what it is doing. Correct performance tells you much less about the procedure than the errors do.
We focused on errors. We became completely identified with the idea that people are generally wrong. We became like prophets of irrationality. We demonstrated that people are not rational. The Power of Failure

Sitting with my gin or whisky afterwards I would often manage to get into conversation with some lonely man or other--usually an exile like myself--and the talk would be about the world, air-routes and shipping-lines, drinking-places thousands of miles away. Then I felt happy, felt I had come home, because home to people like me is not a place but all places, all places except the one we happen to be in at the moment.
Anthony Burgess, The Right to ...

Steve Jobs, Bohemian Revolutionary

He personified his industry in a way few people do today. Not even Bill Gates has the star power of Jobs. Gates is more of a pure businessman (and now philanthrophist), while Jobs always seemed to be the innovator, the rock-star genius revolutionary. Who is the universally recognized person at the head of the American automobile industry? I guess you could say Rex Tillerson at Exxon-Mobil personifies the oil industry, and of course Warren Buffett is ultimate investor. But by and large, corporations and entire industries are faceless, ruled by come-and-go CEOs Tribute to to a guy who created home for many of us - Steve Jobs

Now we know that the presentation was taking place while the company's co-founder, the man who was the inspiration for everything that Apple did, was in his final hours. As the noted blogger Robert Scoble wrote, apologising for his own harsh words about Tuesday's event, that fact must have been known to Tim Cook and his closest colleagues. Think different and follow Robert Scoble admit to mistakes

Steve Dared to Think Different

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The image of Sydney is similar to New York it is a city of a giant switchboard. It is very social in Sydney among the Japanese Canadian Polish friends who stage parties and friends keep introducing you to other friends …
AussieScan is a small Australian company that focuses on nothing but scanning photos, slides and negatives. We can scan 35mm, medium format and large format negatives and transparencies Jeff

The Grief of Others The Art of Struggle - A Short Life and Its Consequences
There is only one sin, only one. And that is theft. Every other sin is a variation of theft - The Kite Runner

Even at their moments of most intense grief, Cohen does not allow her characters to plunge into self-pity. She has faith in their resilience; or rather, she finds the bedrock of resilience beneath swampier emotions. Sometimes the very sources of guilt and shame — acts the individual would wish undone — are the means of building a bridge back to the trust and affection that have always lain under sadness. For all its deep-seated sorrows, this is a hopeful book, a series of striking vignettes illuminating the humanity of these. fully realized characters

• Sometimes i can hear my bones straining under the weight of all of the lives i'm not living - 7 Revolting Things About American Culture Amerika [The mainstream media is still the high culture of intellectuals: writers, readers, editors, librarians, professors, artists, art critics, poets, novelists, and people who think. They are the mainstream culture, even though you may be the dominant culture\The Wrong Side ; The poems are transparent (they need no mediation), yet they tantalise the reader with glimpses of an impenetrable self: so much yearning, so much debility; an eros that self-thwarts and self-finesses ]
• · And into the brown paper bag of my heart, Eddy slipped a smile. - from The River Why by David James Duncan. The book weighs profit and loss in terms of past and present, social and political developments. But its emotional core is in 'private grief / or private fears,' its struggle to reconcile an inner life with external pressures. Profit and Loss - private grief / or private fears ; You can still rely on Media Dragons for a reality check Cold River invented a poetry for its tale ; "You gotta look beyond, beyond the border to understand the history of your country Interview with CS Giscombe
• · · Women fall in love when they get to know you. Men are the opposite. When they finally know you they're ready to leave - J Salter - Such is the danger of first books, and the first poems therein: high expectations. Onward John Beer! Leave these barren fields, cropped and rotated to extinction. There are verdancies ahead that you and we have yet undreamt of. I can see a forest for Some Trees ; Stopping everything is something. Stopping everything and stopping all of that thing is something. Stopping everything and then doing nothing in stopping everything is something
• · · · So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselesly into the past - The Great Gatsby,Nick on resilience = I do not write memoirs. I do not write novels. I do not write short stories. I do not write plays. I do not write poems. I do not write mysteries. I do not write science fiction. I write fragments. I do not tell stories from things I’ve read or movies I’ve seen, I describe impressions, I make judgments. The modern man I sing - When I Look at a Strawberry, I Think of a Tongue; D]espite a love for teaching his students, their generation is not living up to the radical attitude his own almost took for granted. But nevertheless, there is a feeling of bathos. Of sorts an ode to possibility, The Poetry Lesson unfortunately leaves the reader feeling a little deflated. Entertained, yes, and wiser, for sure. But not exactly inspired
• · · · · "[Vasko] Popa thus offers us poetry that does something, that believes in an active language whose intention derives not from an author but from the power of words themselves, simultaneously avowed and disavowed in the impossible exactitude of the curse: ‘God give you a gold coin weighing a ton, so you can’t carry it or spend it, but have to sit beside it begging The Golden Apple: A Round of Stories, Songs, Spells, Proverbs and Riddles ; "[In L.A.] it felt like all the waiters and waitresses were on stage, waiting to be discovered—the smiles were megawatt but skin deep, and attempts at conversation often swayed very swiftly to auditions A Trunk Full of Random T-Shirts
• · · · · · "Freedom is what [Álvaro de] Campos seeks: ‘No! All I want is freedom!/ Love, glory, money – they’re prisons’, he exclaims in an untitled poem from 1930; and freedom is also what the heteronym bestows on [Fernando] Pessoa himself." Unlike a pseudonym, or an anonym, the heteronym is a wholly fabricated persona ; One has the sense of [Arthur] Rimbaud stringing together some of his favorite words to create in a breath a sense of rapturous identity. How does one become a genie? By making love to one.

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Happy Birthday Ruby

Although our hearts ache that we no longer experience the daily joy of living in the same house with our kids, we are comforted by Ecclesiastes 3:1:
There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven.

Gabriella is in Praha - Prague - this week with my sisters and the rest of the family and my army days come back to haunt me as I was 19 like Gabbie when I was forced to serve 2 years of compulsory service. Many thanks to Janka, Lydka, Gitka and one and all at the good old Czechoslovakia for looking after my muse ;-)

Memories of Cold River Flows Prague’s Bad Dream
THE WEB SITE FOR Prague’s Museum of Communism instructs visitors to make their way to No. 10 on Na Prikope in the heart of the city:

We are above the McDonalds and next to the Casino.” Against these flashy consequences of the Velvet Revolution, the museum itself has a cramped, grubby feeling appropriate to the four decades of Czech life that it memorializes. During my Sunday-afternoon visit, I need to crane my neck over someone’s shoulder to read the display panels, and have to wait in a slow-moving line to reach the de rigueur piece of the Berlin Wall at the exhibit’s end. If for example, a girl received 20 dollars from a foreigner for a night of love-making, she could exchange it in the state bank for about one hundred and sixty Tuzex crowns, which she could sell on the black market for 800 Czechoslovak crowns, which equaled the monthly wages of a shop assistant

Bizarre story from Gabbie from Berlin where the police and British consul staff are trying to identify an English-speaking teenager who says he lived in German woods with his father for five years
• Postcard from an awakened city ...; [Lloyd Evans Tara FitzGerald’s beauty is fabulous. Literally, there’s something unworldly about the surfaces and contours of her face. It’s as if the codes of her biology had been transmitted to earth Out of this world; The brilliant foreignness of Australian crime fiction. It is a rare crime novel that doesn’t seem better in the first part, when we are still trying to find our bearings. Perhaps we want to feel the way we did as children, when the genre was so much more thrilling for being slightly over our heads. This is the good thing about Australian crime fiction: as an American, you are never completely at home in it. True, the suburban backdrops appear very familiar, and on the printed page the Australian variant of English is almost identical to our own. But the characters in these novels behave much more differently from Americans than do the Swedes in those Stieg Larsson books, and this never stops feeling odd. Among male friends an intensity of joshing camaraderie is in evidence that even our frat boys would find stifling. At first I chalked this up to over-imitation of Hollywood films, only to read in The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature that the Sunburnt Country has a true-life tradition of especially tight-knit “mateship.” Not for nothing did Australian prisoners in Japanese POW camps survive at a higher rate than American ones. Most other characters in these novels interact with a reflexive prickliness, and that includes husbands and wives; there is a constant effect of chips on shoulders. Stephen Knight, the leading expert on his country’s crime fiction, talks of “drily aggressive wit” without explaining the aggression itself. Down Underworld]
• · Our obsession with musical nostalgia is strangling pop. Nostalgia is now thoroughly entwined with the consumer-entertainment complex. We feel pangs for the products of yesteryear, the novelties and distractions that filled up our youth … The passage of our time has become indexed to the procession of rapidly obsolescing fads, fashions, celebrity careers et al. Has pop culture, uh, stopped? Why do the major musical developments of the past decade include Guitar Hero, reunion tours, hip karaoke, the rise of the tribute band, pop stars made entirely from bits of other pop stars, and Van Morrison re-performing Astral Weeks? Lady Gaga, bless her radical retro soul, is Cher after three weeks in Warhol’s Factory. Cee Lo is Motown with swearing. This month, even as Roger Waters breaks temporarily from his transglobal plod-through of Pink Floyd’s 32-year-old rock opera, The Wall, Roger Daltrey sallies forth with a production of The Who’s 42-year-old rock opera, Tommy. One salutes the unkillability of these gentlemen, one reveres their work, but, honestly. And wherefore this pile of rock docs and rock bios, these waves of compulsive historicization? The Making of Frampton Comes Alive! … The Making of The Making of Frampton Comes Alive! … The Making of The Making of The Making of Frampton Comes Alive! … Everything Old; Evil and us. Sloppy historical analogies, amateurish psychological speculations, oversimplifications, tired moral platitudes – we’ve gotten evil all wrong Evildoers and Us: The open secret: Everyone does something illegal
• · · Marvellous mashup - great literature and 80’s pop music! Long live the 80’s ; Klassikal Kozak of my Czechosloval Army days Alexander Lebedev, Russian owner of the Independent, lashes out at property tycoon Sergei Polonsky ; Marx was wrong: Capitalism, not communism, killed the bourgeoisie. Now there’s no escaping the mercurial market forces. Prepare for further upheaval A Point of View: The revolution of capitalism

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Compassion is something individual and voluntary. You cannot compel somebody to be compassionate; nor can you be vicariously compassionate by compelling somebody else. The Good Samaritan would have lost all merit if a Roman soldier were standing by the road with a drawn sword, telling him to get on with it and look after the injured stranger.
-Enoch Powell, Still to Decide

Outback Australia: “if you know Bourke, you know Australia” so wrote the famous Australian poet Henry Lawson in 1882. Art has a privileged status in the production of symbols of national identity even at Bondi Iceberg... A number of artists today look at the outback country and the life of the small inland town(s) with an entirely new eye. Behind their pictorial observations on the drovers, the rabbiters and the small selectors of the drought-stricken areas of the west is a seriousness of purpose that has brought home to us for the first time in paint a side of our country and people that unfortunately is too little understood and realised by the town dwellers, and up to now was not thought worthy of being put on canvas. Belinda Williams (not related to RM Williams) is one of the rare artists who is able to transport us back to Kakadu; Katherine, Kings Canyon corner of those breathtaking antipodean landscape Not so long ago, about the time Media Dragon invaded The Lake Eyre, Belinda was involved in a wonderful Australian project, Utes in the Paddock. “Utes in the Paddock” is the brainchild of Graham and Jana Pickles, graziers whose passion for the outback led them to start a Dorper Sheep Stud on their historic cattle station Burrawang West at Ootha near Condobilin. Each artist was presented with a Holden ute as our canvas, and Belinda created DrizAkubra. The outback is a never ending source of inspiration which continues to feed my desire to portray this element of the Australian countryside and community.
-Those who love Australia and the Antipodeans such as Media Dragon and Mal find their feelings reflected in the bold, sincere and deeply human records Bel has made of the landscape and its inhabitants, black and white.

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Happy Birthday Olek - Every culture has its coming-of-age rituals. A child is inducted into the adult realm through a transformative experience, whether it's becoming more steeped in religion or killing a deer or having a vision Coming of Age at Sweet 16

Anyone with a Blogger account and an interesting angle has the capacity to generate content and cultivate a sizeable following. As a result of this trend in developing personal digital brands through blogs and social media sites, there has been a shift in the types of new authors that publishing companies are seeking. No longer is the sole requisite for garnering a book deal simply a unique idea; individuals must bring their own leverageable audience to the table, whether through a social media fanbase on Twitter of Facebook, or through followers of a content site like a personal blog. This has had the effect of both widening and narrowing the types of individuals able to successfully attract publishing agencies.... Books will always be great branding tools, positioning an expert with potential to be a household name, but the rules have changed and a new marketing paradigm is taking precedent; social media experts with high volume platforms are fueling book deals How Successful New Authors Are Branding Themselves Through MEdia Dragons and Social Media

Cirque du Soleil’s Zarkana, which recently opened at Radio City Music Hall June 29, offered a “blogger” performance on July 20. The creative team is looking for “trend-setting bloggers who like theater, entertainment and/or New York cultural events” to attend a special performance of the new acrobatic spectacle A Spoonful of Sugar Helps the Medicine Go Down

TIMOTHY GARTON ASH
Mass murder and the Internet
You can ignore jihad, but you cannot avoid the consequences of ignoring jihad. That was the first reaction of American anti-Islam blogger Pamela Geller to news of the terror attacks in Norway. When it turned out the mass murderer was an anti-Islamic terrorist, whose 1,500-page online manifesto was replete with material from anti-Islam writers such as her, she shrugged: “He’s a bloody murderer. Period. He is responsible for his actions. He and only he. There was no ‘ideology’ here.”

Bruce Bawer, the Oslo-based American author of a jeremiad about the Muslim takeover of Europe, was more thoughtful. Noting that Mr. Breivik, in his manifesto, quotes approvingly and at length from my work, mentioning my name 22 times, Mr. Bawer reflects, with decent dismay: It is chilling to think that blog entries that I composed in my home in west Oslo over the last couple of years were being read and copied out by this future mass murderer in his home in west Oslo.

• Online, you can easily find the thousand other people who share your perverted views ; [Yale's 'World Fellows' program a melting pot of elites. A Tunisian cyberdissident and a Russian blogger may not appear to have much in common, but they were brought together at Yale University in a program drawing elites from around the globe ; The agony of originality. Four thousand years ago, an Egyptian writer lamented his stale prose: “Would I had phrases that are not known.” If he was late to the party, what about us Heart Like a Wheel -The agony of originality; Nothing takes the heart out of a man more than the expectation of failure. - Robin Hobb, Assassin's Apprentice Blogger discovers whole fake Apple Stores in China ]
• · Blogger who chronicles every outfit becomes internet sensation - Poppy Dinsey sports everything from designer dresses to bikinis and pyjamas and now has so many clothes that her bedroom looks ‘more like a warehouse’ What I wore today ; Style Wax Poetic is a Los Angeles based blog written by Kristen Cohahan, which covers the latest in trends, fashion and music. According to her site, Style Wax Poetic was inspired to exist from the romanticized notion of fashion being a true art form of expression Style Wax Poetic
• · · Is it possible for a play to be so well known that there's no longer anything new to do with it or say about it? Yeah, sure. The plague of publishing these days is to mistake ubiquity for significance Knotted: How the Necktie Changed the World ; Big rejection numbers in publishing are not important. Big numbers in general are not important. No, the number to worry about is one. One. That's how many sentences you have to impress an agent or editor. Step aside, Dale Peck. When it comes to sheer brutishness, no book critic compares to John Wilson Croker, who wrote the review that killed John Keats. I've found out why people laugh. They laugh 'cause it hurts... 'cause it's only thing that'll make it stop hurting
• · · · The patent war. Nathan Myhrvold is a polymath with a knack for making money. Is his latest venture a shakedown of Silicon Valley?.. When Patents Attack; The politics of yuck. Sewage on a hot day is simply gross. Disgust, however, is actually quite complex. In fact, it’s dangerous... The politics of yuck
• · · · · "What a treacherous thing to believe that a person is more than a person." — John Green (Paper Towns) ;. We spend billions to live longer, yet give little thought to how to live longer, better. Here comes the silver tsunami.. Aging and innovation
• · · · · · The fields were fruitful, and starving men moved on the roads. — John Steinbeck (The Grapes of Wrath) Umberto Eco is fascinated by fallibility. His vast personal library includes the works of the errant Ptolemy, not the accurate Galileo Open Book: This is Not the End of the Book ; Teachers in Central Bucks schools could face strict new rules about what they can, and cannot, post online. The proposed policy comes after one teacher made national headlines for posting very controversial comments about her students. District looks at social media policy in wake of blogging teacher scandal

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Happy Birthday Sasha ...

Not Just another Birthday,
But quite a grand event,
And here, to greet you, Twenty-One,
These wishes are now sent..
May happiness go with you,
May all your hopes come true,
And in the most delightful ways
May life be good to you!
Happy 21st!!

21st birthday celebrations

When we remember that we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.
- Mark Twain, the New Shelton wet/dry

Let’s speak frankly, says Slavoj Žižek. The left hates me even though I am supposed to be one of the leading communist intellectuals A life in writing: Slavoj Žižek

The Spirit Is Willing, and So Is the Flesh The politics of self-immolation
Mohamed Bouazizi, Thích Quảng Đức, Jan Palach: Their willingness to die offers a repulsive and fascinating lesson in how to live

ORDINARILY, POLITICS is very much about living bodies—bodies assembled or scattered, hungry or well-fed, bodies migrating or accommodated. In a world without bodies, there would be no politics, and no need for them. Under extraordinary circumstances, however, a dying body comes to perform political functions that a living one cannot even dream of. In such cases, the sheer act of dying can generate among those who witness it an uncanny mix of awe, repulsion, and fascination, which could be best described as a form of power. A naked readiness to die—that’s something that defies human understanding, as well as our basic instincts. Thanks to the voluntary nature of their death, to their commitment to doing something that only very few of us would do, the performers of such acts somehow envelope themselves in an aura of election and transcendence. These people gladly trample on whatever makes human life possible: survival instincts, self-protection impulses, and fear of death. In so doing, the performers of voluntary death come to inhabit a territory where other rules apply and a different logic operates. And it is from there that some of them, like the Tunisian self-immolator Mohamed Bouazizi, come to dominate our imagination, win over our hearts, and, sometimes, even shape our lives.

• A Light for the Future: On the Political Uses of a Dying Body; [Inside the vision for the largest library in history A bookshelf the size of the world ; He lives every moment of his life to the fullest, so overusing the word ‘literally’ seemed like a Good character fit ]
• · arlier this month a blog post called 'Why I quit my job' written by CTV reporter Kai Nagata went viral. That blog was much more gracious than the one written by the Whole Foods employee, but it still touched some sore spots. In it, Mr. Nagata criticizes the state of Canadian TV journalism, including Sun TV and Conservative politics. He expresses his frustration with the fact that he wasn't allowed to express personal opinions as a reporter and said he now wants his opinions back. He ends it with writing: I'm broke, and yet I know I'm rich in love. I'm unemployed and homeless, but I've never been more free. Everything is possible. To quit your job with maximum drama, blog about it How the age of Google has accelerated the assault on the public sphere - It's rare that anything of substance comes out of the Aspen Ideas Festival, that annual orgy of techno-triumphalism and political self-seriousness, the bastard child of Davos and TED. But something odd happened when Eric Schmidt, until recently the CEO of Google, appeared at the high-powered mogul gathering in 2009 to speak about Google and the future of the American economy Search and Destroy The Googlization of Everything (and Why We Should Worry) ; White collar crime will be on the rise thanks to M Thru F and legal loopholes
• · · Drugs, sex, exercise – all tickle the brain’s pleasure circuits What doesn’t? ; What do their books reveal about feminism today What is feminism? "Simply the belief that women should be as free as men . . . Are you a feminist? Hahaha. Of course you are
• · · · Adventures in fandom. Opera is too often dismissed as out of touch, an elitist obsession of the wealthy. It’s that, of course, and so much more.. The Sopranos ; The old cliché is true: One person’s trash may be another person’s treasure. But let’s be serious: Thomas Kinkade’s cloying, dew-kissed paintings are, quite unambiguously, trash Thomas Kinkade: The Artist in the Mall ; Blog for the RepRap project at www.reprap.org - a project to create an open-source self- copying 3D printer
• · · · ·Dan Savage is out to save marriage. His pitch: Monogamy destroys families; infidelity can save them ; Married, With Infidelities ; What happens in the brain when we experience a panic attack?; In both "Friends With Benefits" (currently playing) and the previously released "No Strings Attached," casual sex is anything but casual Casual Sex: Is It Worth It? ; Ski resorts around the globe are a seething pit of sex, love and lies, and that's just the seasonal staff at ski school. Seasonal workers are a sure-fire way to get your heart broken, as the snow melts they're on their way with a "I love you but the season's over" line that's worn around the edges Sex, lies and love at the snow
• · · · · · Looking for love? There is powerful software for that ; After this memory I thought, “I don't want to be loved because I'm rich and famous. I just want to be loved.” I realized that if people only loved me ... Almost Famous: Re-thinking Being a Famous ADHDer, Part I

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Media Dragon have been married four years today. Time flies fast and if we think of it, as it still feels like we still deserve Just Married ... stickers
Traditionally the fourth year wedding anniversary is signified by fruits or flowers. They are meant to symbolize a blossoming and fruitful relationship. For the fourth wedding anniversary, the traditional anniversary gift symbols are fruits and flowers

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Based in Katherine in the Northern Territory since 2000 Top Didj holds something for everyone. FiDj stocks an extensive selection of Aboriginal paintings from the wider regions of Katherine and beyond. We were impressed with the Cultural Experience in its two-hour activities. We loved the way Manuel and Adriene both are part of Desert and Top End Aboriginal culture and we were able to ask questions about their culture whilst being educated on the significance of their painting depictions, weapons used and how they lived off the land. The highlight of the Cultural Experience and what sets it apart from other cultural experiences, is the painting styles which are demonstrated by the Aboriginal artists. We had the opportunity to complete a painting of our own. The artists, Manuel and Adriene, taught us how to paint such styles as cross-hatching and dot painting, which are famous in the Northern Territory. Manuel signed our dijireedoo Top Didj







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Aboriginal Art - The Time Traveller Nitmiluk aka (Katherine Gorge)
There's nothing like immersing yourself in the tranquility of such a wonderful place, and taking in the reflections and ambiance after a refreshing swim.

This entry is also a way of expressing Media Dragon's appreciation for the service and accommodations we received at Nitmiluk on 10 and 11 August 2011.
We have traveled extensively throughout the NSW. Queensland and Northern Territory...
Comparing to some of the accommodation in other states everything at the Nitmiluk was excellent! The staff at the front desk were warm, as well as courteous, responsive and helpful.



The dinner cruise was outstanding - all staff greeted and treated us on a personal basis and were prompt, courteous, and helpful; especially when they managed to deliver burrumundi in order to meet Mal's special requirements as slamon is something she cannot eat ... Rocky was on a day off but jumped on a boat and delivered a wonderful feast to the first Katherine Gorge where we were watching the sunset ... Housekeeping at the lodge and chalets were just above our expectations as we have stayed in the past at luxury accommodation be it nunneries, manors,headmistress cotages and we have never come across such happy and easy going staff ...

• One of the main Australia tourist attractions is of course the Australian Outback itself. But the Outback is a huge place. Most of the Australian continent could be classified as Outback. If you want to see "the great Australian Outback" you will have to focus on one part of it, you can't see it all... Endless Appreciation ; [Images of Art ;Dine under the stars in the tranquil surroundings of Katherine Museum. Watch the wallabies and hear the local wildlife in the surroundings reminiscent of an outback stockman's camp Camp Tucker ]
• · It is a loooong drive from Sydney to Darwin. We foud the drive itself attractive: the endless horizon, the sense of space and freedom, the everchanging landscape, the slow change from red desert interior to lush, green tropics... But not everybody agrees. It is a long drive, and there is not much on the way in terms of fauna and flora and storytelling ... Nothing compares to the thrill and adventure which is experienced meeting this hulk of the horizon which is so lone and impressive at Tatranka - also known as Mataranka where you will bathe in hot springs, and from there it's only 105 km to Katherine and one of my favourite attractions in Australia: Katherine Gorge. Northern Territory is recognized as real Australia ;To all croc and eagle seekers! If you want to see guaranteed crocodiles, the place to head is Yellow Waters and Ubir. Walkabout with Natasha - Bill's Ganddaughter
• · · Outback, mountains, jungle and scrubby outback-Australia is flat, it's vertical, it's soaking wet and bone dry. Choose the mainland or sail between any of 12,000 islands. ; Many of Australia's journeys bring you closer to the world's oldest culture. Having read a few books related to Aboriginal people and their culture-and having been highly fascinated, I was curious to interact with the native people. It's estimated that their culture and way of life has existed without outside influence for anywhere from 10,000 to 60,000 years, depending on different expert speculation. That blows me away, especially in this day and age. Arrival of the Europeans, especially the British colonists, in the late 1700's wrought havoc and decimation to a great number of Aboriginals. Who says all humans need to be brought into the 21st century? I find their culture beautiful and extremely harmonious with the flow of the natural world. Modern society has a lot to learn from many of their ways. Unfortunately, our superior attitude and lack of respect for those different from us stunts our ability to grasp the messages others are here to teach us. Australia's Red Center
• · · · From deserted islands to actual deserts, you'll find the perfect backdrop for romance in Australia.; DREAMTIME
• · · · · Waterfalls and Crocodiles! ; The seasons in Australia’s “Top End” come in two distinct flavors: torrential wet and mud-cracking dry. Teeming with wildlife, you’ll find 60 species of mammals including kangaroos, wombats, dingoes, possum, bats and dusky rats. The Park is also famous for its reptiles like the awesome and dangerous Australian Saltwater crocodiles (salties) that patrol many of the Park’s waterways. Watch for large monitor lizards (goannas) and colorful frill-necked lizards, too. ; Healing the past will not be achieved by alienating others. Invasion or arrival?; THE COW STARES AT ME AND I STARE BACK. Finally this huge example of a Brahman decides to move, and I'm grateful. Grateful that it's going to amble off the road and grateful that I didn't hit its bovine bulk at 100km/h. On this remote far north Queensland road, the results could have been catastrophic. Fortunately I've been warned, as graphic road signs alert me to the dangers of cars meeting cows head-on. On this part of the Savannah Way between Cairns and Karumba, the main dangers are cattle, kangaroos and the 50-metre-long road trains. NRMA Inspires Many People







Bill's Granddaghter, Natasha, who has some Scandinavian background:

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Australia: Red in the centre, blue on the outside with a ribbon of gold in between. And enough thrills and spills to turn any experience into a blockbuster. Whether that be trekking through the rugged heart of the Outback or exploring its never-ending coastline.
No adventure to the Red Centre is complete without a self-drive trek to the most famous rock in the world. Known to you and I as Ayers Rock, the legend of Uluru dates back 20,000 years, and what better way to go around it than on a camel? It’s most beautiful at dawn, but dinner at Uluru accompanied by the rock’s spectacular light show is simply awe-inspiring Epic adventures in high definition ; Wet, wild, wonderful ; Show-off croc likes to pig out

Wet, Wild, Wonderful FEAST FOR THE SENSES
Featuring running waterholes , rainforest canopies and exotic wildlife, the second day takes the agents to Australia's largest National Park - Kakadu. As some agents quiz Ted on the meaning of the Aboriginal art enshrined on the passing rock faces, others venture towards the Ubirr lookout to prepare for another glorious sunset. As the day draws to a close at the Gagadju Crocodile Holiday Inn - the only resort in the area - the agents exchange photographs before indulging in another feast of local produce and retiring to their cosy apartments to recharge for a final day of sightseeing in the Katherine Gorge.

As the agents wipe the sleep from their eyes for the early morning start, Ted explains how each Inspiring Journeys adventure is based on the four pillars of discovery, exploration, learning and relaxation. As the coach ploughs across the floodplains en route to our final destination, the agents agree they've explored and learned, and have no doubt the relaxation element is well and truly covered. The discovery element becomes apparent as we arrive at the Edith Falls shortly afterwards. Some agents opt for a short wander among the greenery, while others make the most of a final opportunity to have quick dip before the finale to the trip - a sunset dinner cruise along Katherine Gorge. As the boat gently chugs through crocodile infested waters, past towering sandstone cliffs, agents chuckle among their newfound friends and another delicious meal makes its way to the table. Cradling glasses of chilled wine, they share their experiences of the short journey and the tales they will choose to share with their clients. The general consensus was that the scenery, wildlife and dazzling sunsets were worthy of a mention, along with Ted's tantalising tales and broad grin. All of these, it was agreed, would whet the appetite of their clients.
Whatever the verdict, the agents were convinced Ted's warm character would continue to entertain many more travellers into the future as he leads from the front seat of the Inspiring Journeys bus.

• Inspiring Journeys ; [ NT Holidays: ; The Territory.com.au: ; Tourism Top End: ; Darwin City Council: ; Northern Territory Holidays: ]
• · It has been a cold and frosty start to the day across much of southern Queensland, with the mercury plummeting to almost minus 4 degrees Celsius in Roma and minus 3 degrees in Dalby and Oakey Charleville ; Roma ; Shivers

• · · At a fabulous party at the Aviation Institute last night, Festival Artistic Director Jo Duffy launched a fascinatingly diverse Darwin Festival program 11 – 28 August Festival ; This year’s program sets the scene for a sensational dry season of arts and culture with Jessica Mauboy in her first ever solo show in her hometown, the return of the wonderfully seductive Meow Meow, lively, feel good pop-rockers Little Red, dark, funny, risqué circus treats from Strut & Fret’s Cantina, US funny man Arj Barker, the simply stunning Drags Aloud with the Sistagirls, ultimate organ salesman and showman Barry Morgan, Jason De Santis’ mischievous and inventive pantomime Wulamanayuwi and the Seven Pamanui and auditory delights from ACO2’s Bach and Schubert ; Darwin is arguably Australia's most cosmopolitan city, boasting a population made up of people from more than 60 nationalities and 70 different ethnic backgrounds. Darwin's traditional owners, the Larrakia people, are prominent and active members of the community, and many still adhere closely to their traditional beliefs and customs Visiting Darwin ; On the job compo taken to new level: worker hurt during sex in hotel -An Australian government employee injured while having sex during a work trip has taken her fight for worker's compensation to the Federal CourT. The lawyer representing a woman who was injured while she was having sex in a hotel room during a work trip in rural NSW says his client was undertaking "normal behaviour" akin to bathing or sleeping and is entitled to compensation On the job compo taken to new level: worker hurt during sex in hotel‎
• · · · Eremita's Great Adventure Mataranka is a one-street town with a population of 400. The biggest attraction is the Mataranka Hot Springs Hot Springs in Mataranka ; Fran of Fran’s Devonshire Teahouse/defunct police station & jail renown (needless to say there was no such listing and all my entreaties to the operator that in a town of two residences and 6 - 8 people – she could not be too hard to locate, unfortunately went unheeded) Fran

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Steve on socializing banking - The book serves as a guide to executing innovation and reinvigorating the business of banking.

As social media use has become ubiquitous, industries have been hard at work determining how to best take advantage of the often-frequented social network communities. With Facebook at over 500 million active users, Twitter processing over 155 million tweets per day and LinkedIn with over 100 million registered professionals, it is no wonder organizations are looking for ways to leverage what social networks bring - people.

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Theatre is like politics; it's the theatre of the possible.
-Media Dragon

My hallmark as a writer has always been Faulkner's statement, from his Nobel Prize speech, where he said, 'the human heart in conflict with itself is the only thing worth writing about:

The gender stuff is just furniture. You can have a science fiction story with aliens and starships, you can have a mystery story about a private eye walking the mean streets, you can have a fantasy story with dragons and kings and sword fights, but ultimately any of these genres or the other genres are all about the human heart in conflict with itself. That's what makes fiction worth reading.
Time magazine said watching Game of Thrones ''is like falling into a gorgeous, stained tapestry … [that] takes our preconceptions of chivalry, nobility and magic and gets mediaeval on them.'' Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times's Mary McNamara wrote that the series ''finds that rare alchemy of action, motivation and explanation, proving, once again, that the epic mythology remains the Holy Grail of almost any medium''. McNamara has since qualified her enthusiasm with a call for the show's producers to ''tone down the tits'', feeling that much of the nudity in Thrones was becoming gratuitous.

None of it is gratuitous in Martin's eyes. Asked if Thrones and its companion novels are significantly darker than most fantasy, which trends as a genre towards wish fulfilment, he turns to the classics. ''If you go back and look at Tolkien, the master of them all, there's definite darkness in Lord of the Rings,'' he says. ''There's a sadness to it, the passing of an age, the elves are leaving, magic is dying, these kingdoms of men are fading. There's a sort of twilight sensibility … It's not all happiness and dancing in the moonlight. Things have been lost … I responded to those elements, even when I read it at 13.''

The author, who has been famously cursed with the title of the American Tolkien, has an instinctual distrust of conventional happy endings, and the banality of black-and-white characters.

''All fiction, if it's successful, is going to appeal to the emotions. I don't think I'm a misanthrope, or gloomy. I think love and friendship are very important parts of what make life worth living. There is room for happiness.

''But that having been said, there are some basic truths. One of them is that death waits for all of us at the end … Another is the existential loneliness that we all suffer. While we interact with other human beings, we can never really know them.
''I think these things, that we feel on some deep instinctual level, make us feel the resonances in fiction.'' hese are not mere words. Martin is hard on his characters and his readers. His books are a dangerous world where nobody, not even your favourite hero, is safe. The tragic looms constantly in his work and millions of viewers, unfamiliar with the books, have now been subjected to those signature George Martin moments when watching Game of Thrones, the moment when that character you have come to love and cannot possibly imagine being lost, dies horribly, screaming.
Tragedy, he says, has always got more respect than comedy