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When a law enforcement officer looks at a company, one of the first questions he or she asks him or herself will be: Are these people good guys or bad guys?

Eye on Politics & Law Lords: We're So Good We'll Be Fine
Can you ever think too much about leadership? Not in my book.

But then, I'm firmly in the camp of people make history rather than history makes people. EBay also did one thing Mr. Omidyar was not thinking about 10 years ago: it proved that even in these daunting times, one person with a good idea can still change the world.
In law-firm-land, think of what Marty Lipton built at Wachtel, the development of the Socratic/case method of instruction by Christopher Columbus Langdell at Harvard Law in the 1800's, or even the invention of the "Cravath model" here in the early 1900's. Do individuals make a difference? You bet

• And Other Fairy Tales [Maybe we are crazy. Maybe we will change the world; Morris Iemma and Peter Debnam face their first electoral test as Premier and Opposition Leader Tripple MaMaMa byelections. It is all about the state of the State economy, stupid - Bread and the Ballot: Byelections test mettle of leaders You cannot go past the poll bludger for a comprehensive coverage of the triple-M by-election seats NSW by-elections ; The annual allowance for senators and members Recent Parliamentary Library papers ;]
• · They might not know it, but the politicians of NSW have some new neighbours... Just near the Parliament building, a small community of homeless men has sprung up, drawn by the protection it offers from swirling winds. Out of Mind ; Mind games: Without shame, we thrash out marriage difficulties before relationship therapists. Parents pack their teenagers off to psychotherapy when exam pressure threatens to overwhelm. Trauma counsellors swarm over crime scenes as naturally as police From the couch to the bedroom
• · · Proposed laws on strikes and lockouts tip the playing field further against employees Secret ballot or secret war? ; Betting & Polls
• · · · Anti-money laundering update ; Scott Parkin Our very own political prisoner ; Murdoch fears Latham gets more than enough rope
• · · · · The eloquence of America's politicians. My uncle, Richard Podrasky. Representing the cousins, my cousin, Jeannie Podrasky Polished Pollies ; Beyond Right and Left
• · · · · · An eastern German report card 16 years after reunification The Price of a Failed Reunification ; Here comes the rent rise, and it may top 30%

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Catholic bishops have decried the nation's culture of waste and busyness, warning that Australians are victims of the disease of affluence Affluenza is wasting us away

Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: Hollywood Follows the Reader
When Filmmakers Go by the Book, Should Filmgoers Go Buy It Too?

"What! Another of those damned, fat, square, thick books!" an exasperated Duke of Gloucester is supposed to have said to Edward Gibbon upon being presented Volume 2 of "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." "Always scribble, scribble, scribble, eh, Mr. Gibbon!" And all these years later, it's the same thing: Damned, square, thick books, scribbled by little Johnny Writer types, then turned into movies, and this fall appears to feature a shelfful of them. It's not even a trend, it's a simple reality. Just look: "Shopgirl," "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," "Memoirs of a Geisha," "Pride and Prejudice," "Everything Is Illuminated," "Harry Potter and the Flagon of Iced Gin," all due in the coming months. And there's at least a half-dozen more before Christmas. Good heavens, sirs, will you make a movie of anything ? Have you no pride?

• The deepest truth of the book into the movie There is no God if everyone dies alone [ Why Donnie Darko is a favorite film on college campuses ; World’s literature is diversifying, and a new, bolder generation of readers is taking shape Sink or Swim; Dreams & Words without Borders ]
• · We atheists have to accept that most believers are better human beings Faith does breed charity ; 8 Principles for Learning 50 Reasons Why We Can't Change
• · · They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it Thieves respect property ; Rabbi Aron Moss Is It Immoral to be Overweight? ; Sydney's underworld of the '80s is getting a fresh airing A life of crime brought to book
• · · · The media were among the first on the scene in New Orleans and often lent a hand, but Network Nine gilded the lily of their "media rescue" to match their rivals at Seven. Media Heros? ; The Angel of Forgetfulness Encouraging Morning ; Australians are finding it harder to get away from it all due to working longer and more erratic hours to pay off ballooning debts Have a good weekend - if you can afford to take the time
• · · · · Chapters Bookstore Celebrates Its 20th, but 21 May Be a Cliffhanger ; Save Kepler's: the Blog
• · · · · · Wisteria? Dividend? Freedom? Sleep? Here's your chance to tell the world about your favorite word ; One sign of a mature, argumentative democracy is that it expects its bright young talents to carp at their own culture. Bedevilled by a lack of detail Trashing own backyards

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My youngest daughter, Gabriella, a.k.a. Gabrielle, Bella, Vella, Wella, began blogging this week A debut worthy of MJ Rose ;-)

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Leaders are people who leave their footprints in their areas of passion.
-Jonathan Byrnes

There should be a continued discussion well beyond the trivialities of parliamentary question time and the revolving news cycles. I hope this book will help concentration on what might really be going wrong with Australia and how, as it turned out after the mid-sixties and the mid-seventies, we might again get the chance to set things right. Looking for Leadership: Have Australians become more conservative over the past decade? Australia in the Howard years

Eye on Politics & Law Lords:
Australia is one of the easiest countries in which to start and run a business, a new World Bank report has found.

The Doing Business report ranks Australia as the sixth most business-friendly country of the 155 studied, based on assessments of a range of regulatory benchmarks related to business operations, including start-up, paying taxes and access to credit.

• World Bank says Australia a top place to run a business [Doing Business ; Mobile phone retailer John Ilhan of Crazy John's still heads Australia's wealthiest young entrepreneurs, entertainers and sports people, with a fortune of $300 million What's it like to be crazy rich? ; Maybe we are crazy. Maybe we will change the world You are Different. So is Jozef Imrich ]
• · In a hot summer's night in December 1964 I was about to write the last chapter of a book on Australia. The opening sentence of this last chapter was: 'Australia is a lucky country, run by second-rate people who share its luck.' The great irony: How ironic then that Horne's irony was totally overlooked! ; Horne's irony was lost on Australia
• · · Tim Dunlop: The biggest signal of an extremist government isn't the policies they put forward, it's the way that they try to implement them. Sunrise, sunset ; When John Howard speaks from the Australian heartland - rather than to it - the competition finds it hard to get a word in edgewise Relaxed and comfortable ; Should housing provide a tax haven or a haven for people? The real purpose of housing
• · · · The Premier, Morris Iemma, has refused to rule out raising taxes to help rid the State Government of its growing budget deficit Deficit rings the tax rise alarm ; Do we have the technology to build a better legal system?; John Braithwaite Markets in Vice, Markets in Virtue Sydney: Too much talk about tax reform in Australia focuses on just one small headline-grabbing aspect: the cutting of personal tax rates. What about the on-going and increasingly abusive tax avoidance and evasion that is undermining of the integrity of the tax system Avoiding the issue: countering the termites in the Australian tax system
• · · · · A dirty joke inside the government The Aristobureaucrats ; Just Following the Law ; The organisational culture within Australia’s Department of Immigration appears to have little regard for human rights. Tom Davis, an ex-insider, says it didn't have to be that way Why I quit the department
• · · · · · Former Labor leader Mark Latham says he doesn't plan to ever speak again to his political mentor Gough Whitlam Enough Rope ; Mark Latham's habit of projecting his own bad motives onto others is about to unfold spectacularly Mark Latham: Bitter loser or brave tell-all?; A case for political maturity

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Jay Rosen: Spine is always good, rage is sometimes needed, and empathy can often reveal the story. But there's no substitute for being able to think. What is the difference between a “blame game” and real accountability? If you’ve never really thought it about it, your outrage can easily misfire. Amidst the horror, American broadcast journalism just might have grown its spine back, thanks to Katrina ... From Deference to Outrage: Katrina and the Press

The Blog, The Press, The Media: Research Problem
Doing Legal, Political, and Historical Research on the Internet: Using Blog Forums, Open Source Dictionaries, and More

Neither Google nor Yahoo searches produced results. Nor did searches of the various subscription databases to which I have access as a visiting scholar at the University of Southern California. After several days of browsing to look for the answer on and off, when I was not working on other matters, I realized the whole search was taking entirely too much time. That is when I had a thought.

• Using Open Source Information [ 10 Reasons for Reading a News Site ; Journalism by Every Means Necessary ]
• · Rupert's in hot pursuit of those migrating ads Murdoch has fresh go at mastering the web ; What Journalism Could Learn from Advertising
• · · eBay to acquire Skype; How Google Got Its Groove On; With a billion users and counting, the Internet hardly seems to need an evangelist. Yet "chief Internet evangelist" is precisely the title chosen by Vinton G. Cerf for his new job at Google; Tasmania powers up 12Mbps broadband
• · · · Journalists' Report Documents Challenges To Obtaining Government Data ; Public Eye's most fundamental mission is to bring unprecedented transparency to the editorial operations of CBS News. Show Me Angry
• · · · · Every citizen is a reporter. Journalists aren't some exotic species, they're everyone who seeks to take new developments, put them into writing, and share them with others OhmyNews and 21st Century Journalism ; Hiding Information from the People Who Paid for It
• · · · · · So, You Wanna Fund a Startup? ; Media ownership and convergence, Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, Speech by Graeme Samuel, in an address to the Melbourne Press Club Journalism 2005 Conference Media ownership and convergence,

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Literary bloggers have become the new darlings of the publishing industry Book blogs' buzz grows louder

Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: Little Fish
Little Fish will, quite simply, knock your socks off.

Little Fish may turn out to be the most important film in a year that's looking like a dramatic turnaround for Australian movies. Local film production is still mortally crippled by under-investment, the legacy of years of deliberate political neglect. But films are being made and many are capitalising on the international success of Australian and New Zealand actors.

• Shakespearean story of Tracy Heart [The struggle to get ahead in the suburbs makes for a memorable Australian movie Sink or swim ; September smatterings ; Nancy Drew and the mystery of the mean girls ]
• · A series of article on the seven deadly sins, and why they're not always so bad! ; Cities of the Future Today’s “Mega-cities” are Overcrowded and Environmentally Stressed ; Kurt Vonnegut doesn't want any part of contemporary culture
• · · Men are more likely than women to be authors of journal articles and influential textbooks in political science. Why? Gender Gap in Publishing ; About 90% of all writers are desperate. Especially with the first few books. And no wonder. There are over 10,000 novels published a year and each imprint only anoints three to four books every season The attention game: A crisis of confidence and sets up a neurotic condition
• · · · A dismayingly bad book What irony: reviewer ousts author ; Oxford University Press is one of the first major publishers (that I've seen, at any rate) to blog Blue Background Makes Nifty Visual Pun
• · · · · Manorama Online reports that Literary figures making false forays into performing arts. ; The True Classic of Terrorism
• · · · · · Self-help gurus might be fakes - but why do so many people fall for them? ; In an age of blogging, reflexive ironizing and ceaseless celebrity worship, two small literary-intellectual magazines try to make a different kind of big noise Among the Believers ; Novels can accommodate those subtleties of the human condition that leave us shaking our heads in perplexity Victory parades should be times of mourning

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John Allen Paulos, professor of mathematics at Temple University, argues that life is too complex for evolution to explain, say supporters of intelligent design. Yet they insist market forces will suffice for the economy The mousetrap

Eye on Politics & Law Lords: How the Free Market Killed New Orleans
The free market played a crucial role in the destruction of New Orleans and the death of thousands of its residents.

Forewarned that a momentous (force 5) hurricane was going to hit that city and surrounding areas, what did officials do? They played the free market. They announced that everyone should evacuate. Everyone was expected to devise their own way out of the disaster area by private means, just like people do when disaster hits free-market Third World countries.
It is a beautiful thing this free market in which every individual pursues his or her own personal interests and thereby effects an optimal outcome for the entire society. Thus does the invisible hand work its wonders in mysterious ways.

• Bush is trying to save the world when he can’t even Take care of his own people here at home [Book Relief and a Curious Coincidence ; Remove the elementary staples of organised, civilised life - food, shelter, drinkable water, minimal personal security - and we go back within hours to a Hobbesian state of nature, a war of all against all Decivilisation is not as far away as we like to think ; Tom Engelhardt on the parallels between the Iraq War and the Katrina crisis At the Front of Nowhere at All ]
• · David Rieff on why the ideological battle against Islamists is nothing like the struggle against communism Their Hearts and Minds? ; Why German writers should speak their minds in the current election campaign. Writers! Break free of your routine!
• · · The era of small government is over. Sept. 11 challenged it. Katrina killed it. Small-Government Rhetoric Gets Filed Away; Why judicial philosophies matter The Real World
• · · · The Conservatives toy with a politically risky idea A dip in the middle: The flat tax ; Scrapping tax breaks for company cars, increasing the cost of four-wheel-drives, boosting bicycle use and topping up the first home buyers' grant for people who buy greener homes must be considered to make cities liveable Tax drivers and reward green homes
• · · · · Mr Brogden's staff argue a three-month redundancy package was made available to staff of the previous leader Kerry Chikarovski Liberals to fund Brogden staff payouts ; Iemma and Debnam face off in Parliament
• · · · · · Telecommunications problems, power outages, and slowness to update the department Web site contributed to delays getting aid to people who needed it Homeland Security's CTO Says Katrina Was A 'Failure' Of Incident Response ; Iemma and Debnam both need an impressive start in Parliament A new game of follow the leader but the knives remain sharpened

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Online study doesn't mean a second-rate degree when it comes to earning an M.B.A Click And Learn

The Blog, The Press, The Media: Build a kick ass company
How We Find Companies to Profile

We find new companies primarily in three ways. First, we scour hundreds of blog and news feeds daily to see what’s new. Second, we get a number of tips (often anonymously) about new stuff – usually these are the most interesting new products. The third way is a direct request from the company itself.

• Top Ten Things You Can Do To Get Blogged [Yes Virginia, There Are Still "Communicators" Who Don't Know What a Blog Is Blogs: Collective Wisdom of Crowds ; Darren Rowse became a celebrity in the blogosphere earlier this year by saying, "I expect that this year my blogging will generate a six-figure income." Blogging-for-profit course attracts 800 ; Radio National interview on blogging and PR Trevor Cook;]
• · Blogging has essentially developed in waves or generations, each of which was notable for the backgrounds of the majority of people entering the blogosphere at each point The demise of the geek bloggers ; When bloggers talk about your company, knowing how to respond - if at all - is key Is "free" all it's cracked up to be? ; Should PR ignore the long-tail?; You can't ignore blogger 'fact checkers' even if they are sometimes cruel, because often they are also right Women and blogging
• · · Instead of a party, healing and revelation Reporter finds his 'good heart'; Media Ownership Regulation in Australia
• · · · Project Censored presents the 10 biggest stories the mainstream media ignored over the past yea Censored!
• · · · · You may think Google is powerful today, but it's still only using 5% of its brain. Search Lite ; And the race is on to become the Google of blogs New Search Engines: Help Users Find Blogs ; SAPO Already Does IT!
• · · · · · Tajikistan: Crisis Of Independent Media Sparks International Criticism Over the past year, Tajikistan’s independent media have suffered one setback after another. All the major opposition newspapers have been shut down, and recently the editor of one of those newspapers was jailed on what many say are politically motivated charges. In the last week, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has expressed concerns about Tajikistan’s media environment. Crisis Of Independent Media Sparks International Criticism ; The Power of the Internet "Movement" News ; Study Links Broadcast Indecency To Ownership Consolidation ; Indecent Proposal

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Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, But beautiful old people are works of art
-Eleanor Roosevelt

When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished by how much he'd learned in seven years.
-Mark Twain

Thoreau deplored the supremacy of work in this way: "It would be glorious to see mankind at leisure for once. It is nothing but work, work, work." And this is all that my wife is slaving 7 days a week and she will even miss on Alex’s birthday party due to some IT migration issues. Strange world we are living in ...
We often forget that going to work every day is often more a chore than a pleasure Working Hard at Nothing All Day
Nettle suggests that we would all probably be happier by trading income or material goods for time with people or hobbies. But most people do not do so. My enemies should never enjoy such a book! The Science behind Your Smile

Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: What Women Want
Why do the poor have children out of wedlock? It's not just a matter of money

When it comes to single-parent families, Everybody's Doing It. That, it seems, is the received wisdom--but it's not true. As Charles Murray noticed decades ago and demographers have known for some time, the structure of families has diverged drastically by social class. The out-of-wedlock birth rate among women with no more than a high-school education has skyrocketed since the 1960s but remains very low among college graduates. Divorce has declined among the well-off but is climbing among the unskilled. Although almost all college graduates still marry eventually, marriage rates are dropping steadily among those without a high-school degree.

• Times of Me Me Me [It's time to recognize that America's poor need more help than we're giving them Castaways And Cuts; Pro-lifers branch out to poverty, health care—and war ]
• · If you want to finish your dissertation, it’s time to stop worrying about greatness and to start focusing on good enough Words on Paper ; What these firing-squad lists declare is not only what we should be reading but, of course, what we should not be reading Classics, literary canons of "great" works, prize short-lists and long-lists, certainly are exclusive ; Literary letters, lost in cyberspace Wilson: the search for love that fed a career in letters
• · · The struggle to get ahead in the suburbs makes for a memorable Australian movie Sink or swim ; NYT science writer Dean's evolution coverage wins praise: Cornelia Dean "presents a leading example of how not only to report on but also how to contextualize the intelligent-design strategy," write Chris Mooney and Matthew C. Nisbet. They note that the Topeka Capital-Journal appears reluctant to go beyond publishing letters on the evolution debate, running only two guest op-eds (both in support of evolution) and no in-house editorials or columns. "Silence is no way for an editorial page to respond to an evolution controversy in its backyard." Undoing Darwin
• · · · Podcasting for Readers ; Those weighty collections of reference books are making way for fast online version Give us the facts
• · · · · A book a day keeps the doctor away" is the theme of this week's Nonfiction Chart, with You: The Owner's Manual, by Michael F. Roizen, M.D., and Mehmet Oz, M.D., at No. 1; When Mehmet Oz was on Oprah on May 3 of this year, he made quite an impression with frank talk of a...personal nature: the ideal bowel movement. "It should hit the water like a diver from Acapulco hits the water," he said on the show. "It should be an S shape." An Insiders Guide to the Body that Will Make You Healthier and Younger ; In defence of advertising
• · · · · · Regents ask, 'What's in a name?' ; An elementary look at what may have happened if pioneer pop stars had ditched sex, drugs & rock ’n’ roll Rock vs. School: Because a waste is a terrible thing to mind ; The Sound of Music is a seriously religious film, its plot a fairytale version of modern Christian history Hegel with songs

Mis Quince Anos, Alexandra Imrichova 2005

Mis Quince Anos, Alexandra Imrichova 2005
Originally uploaded by jozefimrich.

Happy Birthday, Daughter of the Velvet Revolution, Alexandra Imrichova ;-)

I love you past the sky and past the oceans ;-)

In Latino culture, a girl's fifteenth birthday party is a religious and social occasion that ushers her into womanhood. Learn the traditions of this Coming-of-Age Celebration: Quinceanera Celebrations

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Bush and Blair - and Howard! - are spreading "freedom" everywhere, they're making the savage and the heathen in the darker continents familiar with our brand "democracy" and they're fighting a war against "terror" at home and abroad that will enable a great many of their people to live on the edge of misery - and on the edge of "terror" about what the future might hold James Cumes

Eye on Politics & Law Lords: Pollies and their journo friends
Everybody's getting their quid's worth in the wake of John Brogden's travails this week

The media loves nothing more than self-analysis and it will no doubt begin in earnest following John Brogden's downfall and subsequent sad suicide attempt this week, Mark Latham's former press secretary Glenn Byers writes in The Australian today. Byers has a particular beef with how the meeja reported the story about his old boss and that video

• Never trust a journalist [Gross domestic product calculations put too much spin on society's progress A measure, not of wellbeing ; Wasn't it Hall of Famer Wayne Gretzky who said you shouldn't skate to where the puck is but to where the puck will be? A true idiot will miss the metaphor ]
• · Catholic World Youth Day Politics and religion in Australia; Wouldn’t recommend this Telco to my mum! You're a disgrace, PM tells Telstra
• · · Have civil liberties in Queensland slunk back to the dark old days? Are Queensland's police out of control? ; The Liberal Party is a broad church, it's got a lot of views … David Clarke Hockey kicks along Libs' rolling brawl ; Dancing on the graves of the moderates; Lateline of political life line
• · · · Mum v Mum: the new custody battle ; 'Born bad' NZ millionaire jailed indefinitely
• · · · · A debate about the role of the state in light of these tragic events Thoughts On New Orleans And What It Means ; Beyond New Orleans, Katrina Destroys Music History Too
• · · · · · What to do when the boss is a jerk? According to Forbes, managing a stupid boss is about idiot engineering When the boss is an idiot ; My boss follows me around the building if I am out of my chair for more than ten minutes. The funny thing is, he thinks I don't notice! Coping with a toxic boss or a lousy job can take a severe toll on your productivity - and your life

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September 8th World Literacy Day: International Literacy Day is a grassroots event

I'm a clear-cut case of a condition which is called exile. Like literature, exile invents its own rules. ‘There is a reason why the language we inherit at birth is called our mother tongue,’ writes Mukherjee. ‘It is our mother, forgiving, embracing, naming the world and all its emotions...’ Yet exile teaches us to embrace our adopted mother with real passion. Today marks the quarter of the century of those special goose bumps one gets when we focus our eyes on our new adopted mother country. My Lucky Country ... What is that impresses most when we finally spot the sanctuary of Sydney Harbour ... peering through the 707 tiny windows? Its sheer size? The way antipodean sunrays pull the trigger reflections out of self-interest? No. Nothing makes an impact like those dark reflections, impenetrable emerald eyes. Those chipped emerald mirrors rival literature, geography and even history and just like mother’s breasts they shout: Ach, drink me up!
Sydney is the mother of exiles. If you were a political refugee in Sydney in 1980 all roads led to our new homes based at Villawood or Coogee Hostels. For me, Villawood became my Hollywood and the script written in English come to me in strange frustrated waves. Driving from the airport on the wrong side of the road is one thing. But not being able to spot any red ferns at Redfern was another. No one could explain to me what could possibly be new about Newtown? Those strange descriptions and words rolled over me, and though they almost smothered me with hard to express sentences, the sentences left me with a unique accent and unique expressions ... But it is the unique kindness of strangers that I will rembember most on my deathbed. Endless mentors: From Dr Dorman to Dr Cope; Soulmates: from Mary to Lauren; Strangers who became friends and then Godfathers to the Daughters of the Velvet Revolution: Christopher & Steve; Adopted family: From June to Minna; Greatest Treasures: Alexandra & Gabriella; Adopted homes: From Villawood to Darling Point to Bellevue Hill to Scaborough to the Shire and only destiny knows where else ... [Lest we forget: Donald Horne's irony was lost on Australia ]

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For me, it's a really, really big responsibility that Webdiary works, because if it works, other journalists will join the independent media movement.... Webdiary movement doesn't just have legs, it has tentacles Webdiary's offer to journalists: journalism bringing more passion to the table ; Confronting ethics in the netherworld between politics and the media

The Blog, The Press, The Media: Losing the next generation of idealists
Edward Wasserman says young people want to do something "active" -- to make things happen instead of reacting to events the way they do in newsrooms. "Students come back from summer PR internships with exciting tales of scanning the next day's papers for stories they helped bring about," he writes.

Journalists have enough worries: cutbacks, bloggers, a geriatric audience. But here's one more: They should worry that bright young people who might once have been heading into newsrooms are going into public relations instead. Worse, these people aren't going just for the money. Journalism -- assailed by self-doubt and public mistrust -- is in danger of losing its next generation of idealists to PR.

• Is journalism in danger of losing its young idealists to PR? [Use it as a guide, not a crutch: Jeff Jarvis: The goal is to be ready — God help us Recovery 2.0: A call to convene ; Who is the one person you would not want to read what you have just written? Heather Armstrong ]
• · Microsoft CEO: 'I'm going to f---ing kill Google' ; New Haven has a new online daily newspaper: New Haven Independent
• · · The American blogosphere has been criticised for its lack of reponse to the media's portrayal of those devastated by Hurricane Katrina since it hit New Orleans last week American Bloggers Come Under Fire ; Online campaign begins for Bill of Rights
• · · · Vega 91.5, the much anticipated brainchild of DMG has kicked off its first day of programming this morning A New Boomer in Town ; Affiliate site to sell for $1.3 billion dollars (via Blog Herald) Empire Poker
• · · · · Blog Herald: Blogs starting to make an impression in German Elections ; The future will make liars out of many current Political Masters WH to press: The time for bickering, blame-gaming is later
• · · · · · That's one question from today's Howard Kurtz chat. His answer: We don't have to deal with bureaucracies, just editors. We just get up and go How did journalists beat relief workers to New Orleans? ; A Gathering Storm for the Media: Misreporting on hurricane further eroding public's trust of media Ham blasts "putrid reporting" of Katrina by the mainstream media ; Search Engines Indexes Sites With Info on Hurricane Survivors and Missing Katrina Missing Persons Site; Do You Know What It Means to Lose New Orleans? Drowning New Orleans

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The fault I find with our journalism is that it forces us to take an interest in some fresh triviality or other every day, whereas only three or four books in a lifetime give us anything that is of real importance.’

We act recklessly and pretend we can order nature around, and are shocked when nature overwhelms us. We fail to plan for the worst and then act shocked when eminently predictable crises occur. Usually we can spend or rebuild our way out of them, but shouldn't we at least ask whether it's a good idea to do so? Why Isn't House Speaker's Question On the Table?

Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: Bad Vibrations
Modern social science has banished concepts of good and evil. But, argues Amos Oz, literature, from Shakespeare and Goethe to Grass and Böll, gives us truer insights into human nature

Job's Satan, like Faust's Satan, enters upon a wager. His big prize is neither a hidden treasure, nor the heart of a beautiful woman, and not even a promotion to a higher position in the heavenly hierarchy. No: Satan enters a gamble out of some kind of didactic urge. He wishes to make a point. To prove something, and to refute something else. With enormous argumentative zeal, the biblical Satan and the Aufklärung Satan try to show God and his angels that man, when given the choice, will always opt for evil. He will choose bad over good, willingly and consciously.

• The devil's progress [Spielberg? Hitchcock? Ed Wood? Kevin Smith? Who should be given the task to direct the film of your life story? Based on action/romance, comedy/drama, complex story, and financial budget requirements, this test will select the most appropriate of 24 selected film directors to commit to celluloid the story of your life ; The fastness of friendship; the treachery of one's nearest; the destruction of good by good. Passion which overrides reason VIOLENT AND PROUD DEATH! ; I'm delighted to report that Cold River mania continues to spread, slowly but surely, through the web: Ralph Kaiser writes: 'It's hard to read this work and not shout, Bloody Hell!' Experimental River ]
• · Does allowing a man to open a car door or to slide out a chair at a restaurant perpetuate sexism? A Feminist’s Dilemma ; Sierra Club at a Crossroads; Fiction and Memoir ; The gift of the perfect sentence
• · · There's no place like ancient Rome—except for sweltering modern-day New York City All hail the "monstrous city"; "Teledildonics," quick and easy cybersex is becoming an option for anyone with a mouse Single, white with dildo ; Is monogamy dead? ; The saddest thing about the whole rather sad story of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa is the publication of his one, world-famous novel, The Leopard, because it could be said that it was the only extraordinary thing to have happened in his life, although it happened, in fact, in death, sixteen months after he had departed this world How To Be Bored
• · · · Once it was a secret; then it was a "right"; now it is a duty Good Vibrations ; If size really matters, pornography now ranks as one of America’s most prominent industries How Pornography Is Transforming Our Lives
• · · · · Image is (almost) everything ; Local communities in a big, tough world ; Authors, Librarians Unite
• · · · · · Increasingly, I'm interested either in forgotten greats of world literature or modern marginal stuff (mostly, but not exclusively, in translation) Odds and Ends ; Ready Steady Blog ; Polish poetry and history

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Happy Birthday Lauren ...
'Love means loving the unlovable - or it is no virtue at all ...'
-G. K. Chesterton
I am soooo unlovable!

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There'll always be some people at the fringe playing political games, but the rest of us are getting on with the job Debnam unveils frontbench team

Eye on Politics & Law Lords: Timing is everything
I 'm having trouble articulating just how angry I am at pundits, writes Nic White, both in the media and the blogosphere, who are capitalising on this disaster to score political or ideological points:

Stop right there. First of all, "politics" mandates nothing. It's an abstract noun. It's like beginning a sentence "Morality dictates that..." Morality dictates nothing. It's how people interpret morality, and how they apply it in certain situations which evolve over time. Politics are people, and what they make of their political situation, and when the realities of their lives demand that the political and economic circumstances of their lives change. It isn't something to put on a shelf and used only when the climate of opinion permits

• James Wolcott [Two men in Villawood detention centre have not eaten for 14 days and say they will continue the hunger strike until they die Detainees vow to starve themselves to death ; Antony Loewenstein on Labor MP Michael Danby Saga goes mainstream; Records show misuse of town credit cards
• · Democracy the Worst Form of Government Ever Tried ; Home Ownership Riskier with New Bankruptcy Law
• · · In the Spring of 2005, workers' votes in France and the Netherlands made the difference in defeating the draft European constitution and ending socialist party control of the German state of Baden-Wurttemberg Europe, Capitalism, and Socialism ; The Russian Revolution and the unresolved historical problems of the 20th century
• · · · And Moisés Naím on how John Bolton and Robert Mugabe might be the two best things to ever happen to the UN The Bad Boys of Global Politics ; John Quiggin Simplifying taxes
• · · · · His bestselling The Purpose-Driven Life has made him a superstar, but is mega-pastor Rick Warren's true purpose strictly political? Rick Warren, 'America's Pastor' ; Accusing one’s political enemies of lying is certainly an old tactic, and often enough an effective one Seized by the Political Spirit ; The Struggle for Civil Rights for People with Disabilities Able to Fight
• · · · · · Abbott leaves 'sorry' message for Brogden ; Brogden sex claim branded a lie ; The Tele's sordid shame ; Mark Coulton has a colourful history in importing Fined $2m, tobacco smuggler could now face 10 years in prison