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Hey the website Dictionary of Sydney is growing ...
So is the catalyst audience for speeches by characters like Professor Reese who has a knack of expressing his views on Peace with Justice. The Verandah of Martin Place fame attracts all kinds of Maladriannes ...

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It's a fine decade to be a film buff so Media Dragon will be crouching over the next few years ;-) Full dose of world cinema

For two weeks of cinematic bliss the Sydney Film Festival is bringing the world to Sydneysiders ...
Now in his second year as artistic director, Lynden Barber is showcasing strong Aussie works, a feast of Latin American, Hong Kong and Middle Eastern flicks and everything from short films to documentaries and film talks at the World Movies Festival Lounge.
Rolf de Heer's Ten Canoes opened the festival on Friday and Morgan O'Neill's Project Greenlight triumph Solo played for the second time on Sunday.
Gillian Armstrong's salute to Sydney wallpaper designer Florence Broadhurst, Unfolding Florence, is a must-see, as is United 93, a focus on the events of September 11.
Footy Chicks looks at the gals on the sidelines and the culture of sex and football, while Brazilian Teen Mothers examines the lives of four pregnant teens in living on the streets of Rio.
There's sexual tension, searing documentaries, a spotlight on Danish film, crime, politics and a special program focusing on Middle Eastern and North African film. Join the masses with their prepacked picnics and coffee thermoses for a full dose of world cinema.
Until June 25 at the State Theatre, Dendy Opera Quays and George Street Cinemas Sydney Film Festival pours Hot Water on Cold River ;-)

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Nothing corrupts a man so deeply as writing a book; the myriad temptations are overwhelming.
-Rex Stout, The Mother Hunt

Five million women have just been told that I’m a sex expert. Maybe this will be just enough to counter-balance my ex-wife’s opinion ;-) The Cold Truth of Love

Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: Take two for film funding: can’t-wait-to-do-it
Investing in the Australian film industry by private consumers is undergoing a revival, after having been on the outer for some years. It was a popular strategy in the 1980s, when its tax advantages outstripped those of horticultural schemes. However, the share of private investment has fallen to just 10% of the total $A61m spent by the industry on new films in 2004-05. This may soon change, with the Australian Government set to overhaul the tax incentive divisions 10B and 10BA of the Tax Act. Two investment vehicles are also being launched for private investors interested in the movie business, in the shape of Future Films Australia and The FLIC Company. FLIC is an acronym for the Film Licensed Investment Company licence granted by the Federal Government. Aspiring director Richard Gray says raising finance for a film is still hard work 

The first vehicle, Future Films Australia, is an investment fund seeking to finance $250 million worth of Australian films. Its minimum investment is $25,000. Twelve film projects are being considered, all of which must have a product ruling from the Australian Tax Office before investment.
Future Films Australia's 50-50 joint venture partner is British-based Future Film Group, which has invested pound stg. 1.8 billion ($4.4 billion) in successful films including Kill Bill 2, Hero, Princess Diaries 2, and Bend it like Beckham.

• Double Take on Dagon [ Mort Janklow is auctioning Ted Turner's memoir. As ever, the Post is bidding big. Big Times; French monks, footy groupies, televangelists, Gallipoli star Mark Lee's directing debut ... Sacha Molitorisz finds the best of the Sydney Film Festival. Flick picks - best of the fest ; The Greatest Generation fought and died for narcissist Baby Boomers with their “lifestyles.” Between them were the people who made a revolution. The in-betweeners ]
• · How does one mentally and emotionally deal with serious tragedies such as the loss of a loved one?  What about global tragedies like natural disasters, genocide, or famine?  Is it only human to feel down and depressed after such events, or is it possible to remain conscious and positive throughout?  Is there a deeper meaning behind these seemingly random and tragic experiences? Dealing With Tragedy and Loss ; Self Magazine Sex Article; Spike Milligan was clearly into surreal humour The world's funniest joke was written by Spike Milligan
• · · New research finds there are only three ways for singles to meet each other: by chance, by introduction or out on the singles scene. Lunch has a beginning; lunch has an end. It's kind of easy to say goodbye, there's no good-night kiss - it's just really easy! The New Meet Market - Who knew board games could be so sexy? ; Breaking up is hard to do. Especially when there's lemons, laundry and the dishes involved The Break-up ;
• · · · Communication is everything to you artists. You can't look at a landscape or a bowl of fruit without thinking how you will put it on a canvas so that somebody else will see it as your landscape or your bowl of fruit. That is the inescapable vulgarity of art A slight case of art ; Sir Tom Stoppard, “Clever Tom,” a master of the swirl and dazzle of language, celebrated for his rich ideas, and famous for running off with Felicity Kendall Even if, as in the case of Sir Tom Stoppard, they can't remember what it was like
• · · · · Self-defense, protecting those who need it, dread of the “undead,” fighting against the odds: these are the age-old themes of literature Self-defense ; The Da Vinci Code 6: Hell Hath No Fury had done very well – at 120 million in hardback, even better than The Virgin’s Carbuncle. And yet Dan Brown’s quest had not ended Closing the book on the lousiest story ever sold
• · · · · · I put on a Louis Armstrong record to warm myself up and beamed at the familiar sound of his sunny, gravel-choked voice: Boy, you the lucky guy. When you consider the highest bidder; Can’t buy the gleam in your eye, You the lucky guy. It's infallible ; Living off the other guy as an easy lifestyle choice. Too easy in Sweden, where the welfare state is falling apart under its own weight Swedish Models

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All relationships of men between themselves rest obviously on the fact that they know something about one another    
The future raises the two unsolvable problems of intelligence. One is predicting the future and the other is convincing policymakers of what they may not want to believe. While these problems are intensified by the proliferation of unbreakable systems of cryptography, they may be ameliorated by humankind’s greater reliance on facts and logic, its thirst for knowledge, and the tendency towards least effort, which intelligence aids. Intelligence is a mental phenomenon, and therefore so is its contrary, surprise. Though in a few cases people are surprised because they did not have enough information, more often they are surprised because they did not have enough time to make sense of the flood of facts. The clarity of hindsight proves this. 

A couple of lifetimes ago I might have become a movie reviewer Movie Reviewing: Job? Career? Calling?
SINCE all of us are deeply learned experts on the movies even when we don't know much about anything else, people wishing to make their mark as movie critics must either be able to express opinions like ours better than we can, or else they must be in charge of a big idea, preferably one that can be dignified by being called a theory How to Write About Film

Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: Ian Carnell: Trust and the Rule of Law
Truth is indeed “great and mighty above all things” — and in the often difficult world of intelligence, the smoke and mirrors make it a difficult thing indeed to discern. Yet it is that very capacity to ascertain the real amid the smoke and mirrors that is one of the great skills. Accountability is fundamental because only through proper accountability can agencies have the trust of the community.

In listing fundamentals we must include the need for community trust in agencies — and closely related to this is the importance of adherence to the rule of law. For it is only by having the trust of the community, of having acceptance that intelligence agencies are indeed trustworthy guardians of community safety and the rule of law, that the agencies will continue to be entrusted with significant powers and capabilities.

• Looking over the intelligence world [1. Cold River Milos Forman (2007) Guardian reveals top 50 film adaptations ; Don't Hold Your Breath at Powell's Cold River ; Iran Awakening: A Memoir of Revolution and Hope ]
• · Homeless blogger bags book deal; Determine how you want your customers to be treated and train your employees accordingly. This means that when someone comes into your business, they should be acknowledged immediately. Phone calls should be answered quickly and pleasantly. Transactions should be handled in an efficient, friendly manner. Ten Steps to Customer Happiness
• · · Performing Arts Encyclopedia ; Alan Ryan, in NYRB, reviews new books by Kwame Anthony Appiah, Amartya Sen, and Martha C. Nussbaum. It's a good read Cosmopolitans
• · · · Aquatics International magazine examined why so many children who are members of racial or ethnic minority groups drown, when compared to the number of white children who die in drowning accident When Children Drown ; Russell Crowe has revealed director Baz Luhrmann dumped him from an Australian-based film project before the Oscar-winning star had a chance to comment on a draft script. Dumped Crowe at a loss to explain the director's cut
• · · · · Internet affairs have replaced the office romance as a main cause of marriage break-ups. It can be anything from somebody putting a big toe in the water outside the marriage to see if the grass is in fact greener on the other side, to quite explicit nasty sexual practices with cameras on computers while their beloved is tucked up in bed in the room next door Marriages fall prey to cyber romance ; Your best mate is dating someone new. The first casualty? Your friendship. So how do you ensure that when your mate finds someone new, the friendship doesn't go astray? Mates before dates
• · · · · · Idol on the internet ; From the Usual to the Unconventional: Query Letters that Get Results

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Go and sip coffee anywhere in Sydney and you realise how tiny the village this divine city really is. In fact, Sydney tends to bring sipping stories from all kinds of antipodean spots. On the sipping lips is still the long running, on again off again saga, of Laurie Marquet whom I met on a number of occassions at a various parliamentary related conferences. For most, attending parliamentary conferences is a viable alternative to taking sleeping pills. We imagine it's like taking an Ambien and Valium cocktail, and diving under a doona in a very dark room. How wrong can some people be! While I have never been fond of the glorified parliamentary clerks, especially as opinionated Marquet, most conferences were rather interesting ;-)

Without any doubt Marquet used to be the star at the exclusive after dinner dos, as this Bohemian slave never developed sufficient taste for French champagne or Mercedeces or Marco Polo travel, ;-( at CPA - Commonwealth Parliamentary Association's conferences. Cahills, Cooksleys, Groves or Kellys have acquired that poshish style Another Surreal Parliamentary Story

Ach, the price of exclusive club friendship: Corruption fighter on corruption charge Talk About Corruption Watchdogs

BY the way, for the first time in Australia's history a woman has been appointed to the position of clerk of the Legislative Council. The Governor signed off on the appointment of 39-year-old Mia Betjeman

THE man who dobbed in Laurie Marquet to the Corruption and Crime Commission has revealed he feels traumatised at having to betray his boss. 'Dobber' grieves for boss

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Rain's only value, for Miss McGee, was that it reminded her how precious was good weather. She despised rain. But she knew that to the earth, rain was as necessary as sunshine. Could it be, she wondered, that the vice and barbarism abroad in the world served, like the rain, some purpose? Did the abominations in the Sunday paper mingle somehow with the goodness in the world and together, like the rain and sun feeding the ferns, did they nourish some kind of life she was unaware of?
-Jon Hassler, Staggerford

Now I published my Cold River, I am finding out the hard way that nobody needs it (smile). But another Bohemian with search engine 'wows' Google Where the Bohemian Ghetto meets the Sea...

The Blog, The Press, The Media: Street dancers dont wear dance shoes...
Adrian Holovaty gave the commencement speech at his j-school at Missouri. As one of the experts on what can be done with new media to enhance journalism, he's a great choice and hopefully an inspiration:

Graduates, the fire should be burning under each and every one of you. You should be yearning -- aching -- to bring this industry into a new age. Your generation -- our generation -- is going to be the one to do it.
You're going to be the people breaking the rules. You're going to be the people inventing new ones. You'll be the person who says, "Hey, let's try this new way of getting our journalism out to the public."

• On blogging, new media, and the news [ News Search portal, one of the 60 sites, links to every possible news search site ; Content is nothing on its own. It only exists as part of conversations ]
• · It’s not content until it’s linked. 'Links are the currency of the Web....' ; OhMyNews syndicates with IHT
• · · More Site Graphs Links ; Use links 54 ways: How to get traffic for your blog ; Blogs Hold Social Media Networks Together
• · · · BBC to broadcast World Cup over Internet ; Many marketers still not using new media
• · · · · The Biggest Mistakes You Can Make with Reporters; CROSS-WIRE OPEN New Matilda’s Group Blog
• · · · · · via Trevor Cook Measuring media relations; To sell antivirus software, first you must sell the fear. Fraidy Cat Marketing

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The figures are out, so now comes the hard part for NSW Treasurer Michael Costa - selling his pre-election budget - State promised investment in future: Australia's NSW State Forecasts Deficit, Borrows A$17.4 Bln Excuses, excuses: Costa's house of cards strategy
Debnam decries deficit - Betting the future on a dark horse - NSW plunges into the red What a gamble: Hark, the sound of chickens coming home to roost

Michael Sallah, Pulitzer Prize winner for work on Vietnam, discusses the parallels between the massacres at Haditha and My Lai. I Hope the Investigation Goes up the Food Chain
Mitch McConnell is the odds on favorite to become the next Senate Republican leader. Why? He's not Bill Frist. In The Wings

Eye on Politics & Law Lords: Tea with the FT: ‘That is not the issue’
Among the first things Vaclav Klaus, president of the Czech Republic, says to me when we sit down is: “That is not the issue.” It was his response to my first question, about the likely outcome of this weekend’s Czech parliamentary elections, and it sets the tone of the rest of the interview.

Vaclav Klaus, president of the Czech Republic, whose parliament goes to the polls this weekend, may have no small talk but he does have an answer for everything.

• Polls [Continuing high levels of support for Prime Minister John Howard and his government have confounded the Labor opposition, and are cause for triumphalism on the conservative side of politics. Coalitions for change: Building bridges in Howard’s Australia ; Poland takes a sharp right turn: Poland could be Europe's first red state. But Poland cuts against the grain ]
• · An interview with Madeleine Albright: "Iraq was a really badly planned operation With the US bogged down in Iraq and Iran defiant over its nuclear program, US foreign policy makers are faced with numerous challenges; Nova 969's Merrick and Rosso were forced to make an on-air apology this morning after a prostitute claimed she had "seen" a senior Labor politician. Prostitute names pollie on air
• · · Promina Group has received ATO approval to proceed with its planned capital return to shareholders of 15c an ordinary share about $156 million. Promina to return $156m ; Bertelsmann agrees £3bn buyback deal
• · · · Australian Financial Review, 29/05/2006, General News, page 5 By: Michaela Boland (no relation to Bruce Boland ;-) During his final year as federal minister for the arts, Rod Kemp plans to fix the film industry or at the very least give it every opportunity to fix itself. Unsurprisingly his ambition has generated plaudits from a sector struggling to keep pace with rocketing costs and rapid change. Review offers hope for filmmakers' funding fix ; Tax rort extraordinaire It's worth uncovering the secrets of the new super model. Shush money
• · · · · What makes the attack even more remarkable is that it was delivered not by a Liberal but by a Labor member of the NSW upper house who is in the same right-wing faction as Mr Punch Fraud, tax cheat and woman abuser: MP attacks Punch ; Vaclav Klaus, president of the Czech Republic, whose parliament goes to the polls this weekend, may have no small talk but he does have an answer for everything. Poland takes a sharp right turn: Poland could be Tea with the FT: ‘That is not the issue’
• · · · · · Interdependence between sexual debut and church attendance in Italy ; PDF version: Salaries of Members of Congress: A List of Payable Rates and Effective Dates, 1789-2006

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Mal has a knack for unearthing sweet romantic comedies. Why sweet comedies, God? Who wouldn’t like to stay in a $5000-a-night hotel room? Who wouldn’t want to order everything on the menu – and eat it all? Who wouldn’t want to go base jumping before they die? (Well, strike that last one. We can’t all be daredevils.) A word to the wise: If you're ever told you have three weeks to live, you should seriously consider liquidating your life savings and making tracks to the world's most outrageously luxurious five-star resort. A word to the even wiser: Make sure you take Queen Latifah along with you. "Last Holiday," Wayne Wang's energetic remake of the 1950 comedy starring Sir Alec Guinness, gets new life (literally) breathed into it by a wonderful, slightly toned down performance from Latifah. She's soft, bold and very funny, infusing this otherwise predictable movie with a contagious charm. The Czech backdrop is magical, and the effect of the snow and the glittering chandeliers and the plush decor is overwhelming: We feel like we're taking part in Georgia's fairy tale. Most MD readers will be inspired to book their next vacation to visit some of the absolutely gorgeous Czech Republic landscapes. In a remake of the 1950 Alec Guinness weepie, Georgia (Latifah) is, to quote Journey, just a small-town girl living in a lonely world. She's a shy cookware salesperson at a Wal-Mart-esque store, but she dreams of becoming a master chef and marrying the dude (LL Cool J) who works in the home appliances department. Lasting Holiday

Indeed, live every day as if it's your last Book of Possibilities: Grandhotel Pupp

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The evil number is here 6/6/6 ... Have a great google ranking day ;-)

The fearless are merely fearless.
People who act in spite of their fear are truly brave.
-James A. LaFond-Lewis

Countless websites, thousands of radio and TV channels, podcasts, plus an ocean of magazines and books. There’s media enough, but not enough time to pay attention. The Economics of Attention

The Blog, The Press, The Media: Are blogs campaign rallies?
In the spontaneous unfoldings of history Media Dragon was born ;-)

Like many political junkies, I get my news and opinion fixes from newspapers, television, and specialty newsletters. But I also rely increasingly on blogs, the Web pages that contain both interactive, hyperlinked reportage and commentary. Such information sources are no longer curiosities. For example, Daily Kos (http://www.dailykos.com) — started by Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, who served in the U.S. Army before going to college and law school — includes contributions from a giant group of leftist, liberal, and Democratic bloggers. The Nielsen//NetRatings service reported that in the single month of July 2005, Kos attracted 4.8 million separate visitors. The Kos audience is thus greater than the combined populations of Iowa, where the first presidential caucus takes place, and New Hampshire, site of the first primary, according to the current Democratic party schedule.

• Political Blogs: the New Iowa? [The "Creating Passionate Users" blog is now in the Technorati Top 100. The big question is... why? We're not the brightest crayons in the box, or the best writers, and we rarely participate in A-Lister topics... so it's got to be something else What makes a popular blog? ; Yellow Pages and Wasting Local Business Advertising Dollars is pretty self-explanatory People who sell FEAR like the Yellow Pages can not sell the Hope that the Local Internet delivers. MerchantCircle: Small Business Blog of the Day ]
• · The latest fashion accessory on the campaign beat, a must for any cutting-edge story or column, is something called "netroots. Invasion Of The Netroots; The Orcologist cites Robert Scoble who keeps revealing himself as he drives with wife and U-Hal truck from his mother's funeral in Montana to his home near Seattle. You have to trust him because he shows so much of himself. You have to trust him, Orcology speculates, even though this blog has something to do with that Microsoft Empire. Is Trust evolving
• · · Deborah Mathis, former White House and national correspondent for the Gannett News Service and author of Yet a Stranger: Why Black Americans Still Don't Feel at Home Threats to Press Freedom Focus of BEA Panel ; Peter Beinart wants a new vision to match the old Cold War liberals, men who were able to build a “narrative of national greatness How the Left Lost America
• · · · shel israel Bloggers Can Shield Sources, Court Rules ; This doesn't work well with my slow connection, but a fun idea: a collage of faces taken from blog pages, with links to the blogs. Blogs with a Face
• · · · · Blog from soldiers who've returned from Iraq and are posting their journal entries, thoughts, photos and opinions of the war Fight to Survive; 10 Must Have Desert Island Web sites for Private Investigators
• · · · · · Muckraked! a blog on investigative journalism ; 60 Sites in 60 Minutes for Private Investigators

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Alas, how miserable their good looks made him! The pain of watching beautiful young girls, the isolation of desire! They reminded him of the figures in one of those pictures by Watteau that are instinct with the beauty of the moment, the fugitive distress of hedonism, the sadness that falls like dew from pleasure, as they stand, fixed in the movement of the dance, beneath the elms, beneath the garlanded urn.
-Cyril Connolly, The Rock Pool

Taylor, the founding editor of Fast Company, and LaBarre, formerly a senior editor for Fast Company, discussed how small businesses can make their mark by out-thinking large business competitors and by not playing it safe. Most big organizations exist to play it safe, and that is not playing it smart Playing by a Different Set of Rules: Independent Booksellers as Mavericks

Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: The in-betweeners
The Greatest Generation fought and died for narcissist Baby Boomers with their “lifestyles.” Between them were the people who made a revolution

The injustice of it all. "I've seen the Stones many times," complained Joey Kramer, drummer for Aerosmith, a few years ago. "I don't feel they play as good as we do. You've got one hard-working guy out there and the rest of them are kind of doing their thing."

• They’re too old to be boomers [At what point does a regime, even if democratically elected, become illegitimate, as surely Hitler's was by the time T. S. Eliot wrote? Brave New World ; The story of Catholicism in America may be an open book, but the book reads very differently depending on who's doing the writing Subculture called vital for a Catholic resurgence ]
• · Hiring a federal employee might seem like a sure bet with the recommendation of a former boss. Bosses often tout bad apples as terrific employees just to get rid of them; And strange as it may seem, the idea that sex is a "private" act is only a couple of centuries old History of Single Life: Fun in numbers; Why are people world-wide seduced by McDonald’s, Hollywood shlock, SUVs? The very fact makes some of the seduced hate America all the more. Jozef Joffe explains Dissecting Anti-isms
• · · The National Review gets nearly everything wrong in their list of the 50 greatest conservative rock songs. They Got Fooled ; Life's a Party for New York Nightlife's Sober Hipsters: It's somewhere between 2 and 4 a.m. and everyone is wasted. It could be any night, any club, anywhere. But tonight, it's a freakishly cold March evening during the Winter Music Conference in Miami, at a club called the Pawn Shop. Beyond the main dancefloor, where hundreds of revelers groove, in the darkened corners of the gargantuan club, you can see people doing drugs. Iceberg: The Sober Bunch ; Despite the attack on the twin towers, plenty of skyscrapers are rising. They are taller and more daring than ever, but still mostly monuments to magnificence. Better than flying
• · · · It's easy to laugh off the fashion for PoMo, but harder to find a constructive solution. Australia’s wackiest postmodernists; ; PoMo's unteachable The gaps of suspicion in the wall ; and what is the difference between King Lear and Ginger Meggs? The real victims of PoMo are students who have never been introduced to the classics of Czech literature Cold River
• · · · · At what point does a regime, even if democratically elected, become illegitimate, as surely Hitler's was by the time T. S. Eliot wrote? New twist in 'hobbit' human story ; How Tom Wolfe became dull. Big, Bad Wolfe ; There is no shortage of inventive sadism in the pages of Candy Licker
• · · · · · There's a huge demand for metrics on the success or failure of popular-culture products: - Daniel Gross on why writers never reveal how many books their buddies have sold Book Clubbed ; A review of The "Vanity of the Philosopher": From Equality to Hierarchy in Post-Classical Economics That People are the Same and Different

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I am happy. Imagine that ;-)

I take it as axiomatic first that human existence is always to some extent unsatisfactory, and second by that most, or at least many, men desire transcendence in the sense that they want their lives to have some larger purpose than the flux of day-to-day existence. Shopping and going to the pub are all very well in their way, but for people of larger spirit they are not enough. When the Soviet Union de facto acknowledged that it had lost the Cold War, I thought that we had seen the end of ideological politics. Does your life lack meaning? Dig up a grave

Selecting a mate is the most important decision you’ll ever make. Why not get it right? For instance, sniff him first, then take the pill. Our appetite for a relationship fuels a billion-pound industry of matchmaking services Sexual attraction: the magic formula

Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: Europe's politics of victimology
Yes, immigrants have to adapt to new lands, says Flemming Rose. But Europe must get rid of its old ideas of blood and soil and take migrants for what they are: new Europeans

As one who once championed the utopian state of multicultural bliss, I think I know what I'm talking about. I was raised on the ideals of the 1960s, in the midst of the Cold War. I saw life through the lens of the countercultural turmoil, adopting both the hippie pose and the political superiority complex of my generation.

• The unreadable sign [Addiction? A myth promoted in 1822 by De Quincey in Confessions of an English Opium Eater. In fact, says Theodore Dalrymple, heroin doesn’t hook people: people hook heroin. Contrary to the orthodoxy, drug addiction is a matter of morals, which is why threats such as Mao's, and experiences such as religious conversion, are so often effective in "curing" addicts Poppycock; Scientists want to have normal lives like the rest of us: to date, to get married, have a family. But marriage can sink scientific careers Scientific Success: What’s Love Got to Do With It? ]
• · Search for happiness and you’ll never find it. Search for something else, and it may come your way. As for the notion that the government could supply it to you Why the 'politics of happiness' makes me mad ; With $300 million in the bank, Paris Hilton can have whatever her heart desires – so she goes out and buys cheap fame. It’s the fate of glamour ... Is Paris Hilton glamorous? She meets all the criteria. She's young, shiny, obscenely rich and reckless. She does precisely as she likes. She's an heiress. Old money! The allure of illusion; Boozy art openings The Proof Is on the Painting
• · · All academic knowledge about India”, Edward Said wrote in the introduction to his Orientalism, is “tinged and impressed with, violated by, the gross political fact” of Western colonialism Where Edward Said was wrong ; Anatole France said that “it is good to collect things, but it is better to go on walks.” He meant we should stop buying dumb travel souvenirs... Why We Buy Dumb Souvenirs; Why I called my boobs Simon & Garfunkel
• · · · When Macy’s went into book retailing, there were worries: clueless clerks, middlebrow tastes, and deals that ruined small shops. And that was 1869 Chain Reaction: Rebel Bookseller ; When you lose an [independent] bookstore, you don't just lose the place, Kaplan explains. You lose the people. Knowledgeable book people are being lost from book culture. 7/7: Truth about Freedom -Rebel Publishers ; The truth about 7/7: it was meaningless
• · · · · Buy the worst house in the best neighborhood – like you’ll be happy to come home to your dump amid mansions? But happiness. You're happy. Imagine that! ; The man who put 'critic' in 'criticism.' F.R. Leavis’s career raises a question he thought he’d definitively answered: was it a good idea to “professionalize” literary criticism? Dr. Leavis, I Presume? ; The Artistic Temperament The Unknown Masterpiece
• · · · · · The Brits often assume that Germans have no sense of humour. In truth, writes comedian Stewart Lee, it's a language problem. The peculiarities of German sentence construction simply rule out the lazy set-ups that British comics rely on ... Lost in translation ; Are we just a bunch of hypochondriacs? Are Yanks Sicker Than Brits? ; From Oliver Stone's JFK through The X Files to Ron Howard's The Da Vinci Code, Hollywood catapults ideas from the radical fringe into the cultural mainstream Dean Bertram: Cracking the conspiracy code ; They can play, but they can never win World Cup blues

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There was a time when the New World thought they understood class... Today, the Americas and Australias have gone a long way toward an appearance of classlessness - take Lamrock cafe or Macro shops ... Billy Joel - "We Didn't Start the Fire"

Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: The Fiction Behind the Truth
There is only beauty and no perversion in these temples

The Arts of India are the illustration of the religious life of the Hindus. Like their faith, the arts have been preserved for the past three thousand years, from change and decay, from foreign invasions, and from the fury of the nature. We owe its preservation to the future generations. For, it exemplifies how life can indeed revolve around the arts.

• Kamat's Potpourri: The Arts of India Timeless Theater Art [Ever wondered why there are sexually explicit sculptures in Indian temples ? Kamat on Kamasutra ; Without the Yoni, even the Lord cannot create, says a tantric prayer. Examples of female power worship. Females]
• · Muddy Waters: Can't Be Satisfied ; Princess Caraboo from the island of Javasu had invented a fictitious language out of imaginary and gypsy words and created an exotic character Top 10 Greatest Impostors in History ; Czech how to learn a lesson about Using Proper English History of the letter F
• · · SUE FEAR is dead; Lincoln Hall was left to perish; Christopher Harris has to sit the School Certificate this year. Any novelty in trying to climb Mount Everest is followed by hard adult lessons mixed with teenage normality for this 15-year-old Sydneysider Mortality tale for a teen still to hit his peak ; Amazing! 2000 hours with Photoshop
• · · · Screenwriter Jason Smilovic on Lucky Number Slevin Slevinth Heaven ; Editor Dana Glauberman believes in the power of images Reflections of a Puzzlemaker
• · · · · If You Build It, They Will Come— Hot in Publishing: Platforms! Empty Platforms ; Nicole Kidman is out and Heath Ledger and Rachel Weisz are in Philip Noyce's adaptation of Tim Winton's Dirt Music. Winton's coastal tale is not Kidman country
• · · · · · via Gwynne: In 1957,Hugh Everett (a physicist from Princeton University in the U.S.A.) gave a name to the moments in time where the course of an event may be changed.He called these windows of opportunity "choice points" In the moment between the breathing in - and the breathing out - is hidden all the mysteries ; A Cautionary Tale in One Act ; Growing up under the rule of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro meant a life of fear and repression for author Luis Garcia and his family. Cuban down under recounts life under fidel; What would Czech Sigmund Freud know? To the old psychoanalyst, sometimes a cigar was just a cigar. Cuba of Garcia

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I’m not sure where to start. Hmmmm. The passionate flames are gently licking at the window overlooking Tamarama Beach ... It's been awhile since Media Dragon last updated everybody about his Spanish club shenanigans ... Well, pull up a chair and fix yourself a cup of hot cocoa, because you're in for a treat. Actually, not really. But you should have learned not to expect too much from us by now ;-) It's a time to remember and give thanks for the quick witted bloggers like Liz ... No matter how much information we have at our fingertips, discovering bloggers who spread passion is very rewarding.

I could cry. I could crumble down and cry every time I see her.”
Love has so many forms, so many shapes and sizes. It can give so much, and it can fill in so many empty places. Love can turn the world into a glorious promise and fulfill it at the same time. Call it fate or luck: Queen of Sun Liz Strauss

The Blog, The Press, The Media: The revolution will not be televised
I’ve changed my mind about art more than once, and in so doing I’ve learned that I not infrequently start by disliking something and end up liking it

Not always—sometimes I decide on closer acquaintance that a novel or painting isn’t as good as I’d thought. More often, though, I realize that it was necessary for me to grow into a fuller understanding of a work of art to which my powers of comprehension were not at first equal.

• Money for nothing? The band Dire Straits promised me that years ago, but so far I've had no such luck. Blogging art [I love the infantry because they are the underdogs. They are the mud-rain-frost-and-wind boys. They have no comforts, and they even learn to live without the necessities. And in the end they are the guys that wars can't be won without Antlike ; There is no single Greek literary work of art as great as The Divine Comedy Good God almighty! That woman is a sewer! ]
• · It is no accident that technology commentator Bill Thompson believes that the web does a lot to promote chance discovery Serendipity casts a very wide net ; Marie Osmond Shocked By Daughters' Internet Sex Talk Marie Osmond Shocked By Internet Sex Talk
• · · Australian bloggers will no longer be a small voice in the world wide wilderness following the launch of a local search tool that aggregates the most current Australian blogs Gnoos - Aussie blog search tool launched; Gnoos
• · · · It is an uncomfortable conclusion from happiness research data perhaps - but multicultural communities tend to be less trusting and less happy Does diversity make us unhappy? ; 06/06/06 is coming - It is not enough to climb Everest or cross Iron Curtains any more. You must have a gimmick like Google and Media Dragon: Whether you're charged with preventing hacks, protecting assets, stopping fraud or defending trademarks, Google and other search engines present a new mix of risks for everybody in the security game. 5 Ways Google is Shaking the Security World
• · · · · This is an opinion piece. So take it as such. To all those who have asked me. This is why I think clickfraud FAR exceeds what is being published by search companies. Bad guys exist. Why I think ClickFraud is far greater than imagined. ; The past few months have not been fun. I feel like I've let you, my community of readers and conversants, down, and I've failed to do what I really love to do - think out loud about what all this really means. Why this mea culpa? On Searchblog, and Trying to Do Too Much
• · · · · · Wotif.com soars 66% in its first day of trade Accomodation website Wotif.com stormed onto the sharemarket on Friday, firmly focused on expansion Wotif.com soars 66% in its first day of trade ; 55 Ways og Fun. Philipp Lenssen has a website, Google Blogoscoped, that I read every day. Google Experiment Collapses "More" Links

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Culture is always something that was
Something pedants can measure
Skull of bard, thigh of chief
Depth of dried up river
Shall we be thus forever?

Last night, after dinner at Nippon Club it was great to invade the NSW Art Gallery where floods of wine drowned Capon’s speech about the Australia's greatest living painter ...

While tonight smiley Malchken introduced me again to her very own Academy cinema and instead of Tapas we Ate Western Thai of Five Ways fame ;-) The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada turned into a thing of musty beauty. Filmmakers continue to find usefulness and meaning in the mythology and iconography of that most American (and masculine) of self-critiques, the Western. Cold Rivers ...

Pink Floyd's the Wall is arguably one of the most intriguing and imaginative albums in the history of rock music. Every incident that causes Pink pain is yet another brick in his ever-growing wall: a fatherless childhood, a domineering mother, a country whose king signs his father's death certificate with a rubber stamp, the superficiality of stardom, an estranged marriage, even the very drugs he turns to in order to find release. Serendipity Introduction to The Wall

Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: Barista Says: SBS ruins your day?
SBS is going to run ads INSIDE the programs. They are going to cut the shows up just like the pests at Nine, Seven and Ten, vandalising the content of programs, and forcing their makers to shoot and cut for the breaks.

Here is a piece of news about which I am simply gasping with outrage. Compared to the suffering of people squashed beneath buildings, or millions facing starvation, it may seem to be a small thing, but it is important to us as a culture.

• There is no doubt that SBS is strapped for cash [Frank Sinatra, crooner, former teen idol, who started in the era of megaphones for vocal amplification and wax cylinder recordings, faught hard to remain relevant in the midst of the cultural shifts of the late 1960s Exquisitely Bored in Nacogdoches: Sinatra Jobim = transcendent ; Is love blind?]
• · It may even free you from credit card debt and the usurers at the local payday loan center. Disintermediation? A new Web site allows you to borrow money from strangers in cyberspace. It may even free you from credit card debt and the usurers at the local payday loan center. The virtual moneylender ; Average mortgage breaks through $300,000 • · · Landscapes of Crime: George G.J. Demko is a professor of geography at Dartmouth College and a devotee of the mystery genre. He is especially interested in the settings of mysteries-the geography, the locus operandi of crime fiction. Landscapes of Murder:The Locus Operandi of Crime Fiction ; Honey, can I go out tonight?
• · · · What would happen if we no longer used things like looks, age, sex and nationality to decide if we would try and become friends with a person? You meet strangers, without photos, and become friends ; Listen out for Sam on the Kyle and Jackie O Show Wednesday Morning!
• · · · · MJ FEATURE: To lose weight, drink from cold river ... Eat cheap tuna. More expensive canned albacore "white" tuna has been found to contain as much as three times the mercury of canned "light" tuna. Things You Didn't Know About Your Body ; FTC Father's Day Message
• · · · · · How long after you start dating someone new should you introduce them to your mates? They say timing is of the essence...but how soon is too soon? Too soon to meet their mates?; samantha.brett@gmail.com Singledom is back with a vengeance. Quirkyalones, un-marrieds and proud singletons are making a comeback with cocktails in their hands and stilettos on their feet. Yet in a society designed for two, do singles often find themselves being singled out? It's good to be... single