---

Although each man is born naked, he arrives with a vast inheritance, often in the form of baggage. Those of a mixed cultural background have a larger wardrobe with which to clothe their identity. The cultural choices they make are therefore rather more personal. First and foremost, I consider myself British. English, Arab, Swiss, and even European are all conflicting labels I can apply to myself in part. And in part is the problem with them—they are far too narrow and limiting. The word British on the other hand has notions of a civic model of inclusion. What holds society together is not common religion, race, ethnicity, language or even culture, but common attachment to the rule of law and to the idea that we are all rights-bearing equals. Admittedly it is a romantic idea used to get the Empire to pull together in two World Wars, but the idea is still there all the same.
- Yahya El-Droubie

I can’t think of a better way to spend a week night than catching up with colourful characters from the past. Tonight I caught up with Baden Appleyard. Baden is a Brissie born and bred pilot who also flies above the corridors of justice as a lawyer with experience in IT, Privacy and Tax law and cyberlaw. Back in the mid 90s Baden discussed the finer points of creative commons, MP3, and other concepts including how to sell wine without bottles with trailblazers such as Lawrence Lessig. There is no blogger who is not familiar with Lessig Blog. The fruits of Lessig labour are reflected on search engines looking for Creative Commons. How amazingly fortunate for Cold River to be right below The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World
Whether in Brissie or Sydneyrella, when you are having a communal meal with Baden you meet people from all different backgrounds, and all walks of life. I tend to also always, always, uncover some fascinating stories and people. There are many things to be appreciated about Maria full of ballet grace ;-D. What is it about individuals like Baden that one feels so engaged in a conversation and feels a sense of being appreciated for who we are?
This week seems to be filled with arrivals and departures of travellers who are invading Sydney not just from Brissie, Canberra and Prague, but also my former director of the Public Accounts Committee, Patricia Azarias, will swap New York for the village by the harbour. Patricia has been recently appointed as the Director of the Internal Audit Division at the United Nations. We were the Dream Team 1992-2000; small dedicated team producing 8 reports staging conferences, seminars, round tables

The Blog, The Press, The Media: Don't Fear the Double Dragon
Will somebody please help the Los Angeles Times' David Shaw get a grip? What do bloggers want? That’s a question Freud might have posted on his web site if he were alive today ... As bloggers we are learning to be less concerned about what people think of us. We are learning to be less reliant upon both the affirmation and the criticism of others. Running, like a river beneath and icy surface there is a deeper and truer virtual life waiting to be acknowledged ;-D

In yesterday's (March 27) Los Angeles Times, media reporter and critic David Shaw demonstrates Oscar Wilde's maxim that modern journalism is important—if only because it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.
Giving every indication that he's read a lot of stories about bloggers but not that many actual blogs, Shaw disparages the form as the error-filled rants of amateurs in his piece, "Do Bloggers Deserve Basic Journalistic Protections?" It's a "solipsistic, self-aggrandizing journalist-wannabe genre," Shaw writes.

Jack Shafer does a great job ripping apart David Shaw's sloppy, wrong-headed blogger-bashing column
• The Dragons of Expectation False Dichotomies: Laying the Newspaper Gently Down to Die [Hiding behind my sunglasses A Good Whacking — Jack Shafer whacks David Shaw ; Ansearch A new age of searching ]
• · Editor & Publisher reports that JimJeff GuckertGannon will be included in a panel to be held at the National Press Club on April 8th Meet the future of Journalism: Cannon-Cockert ; Often the coolest gadgets aren't the cheapest or most practical, they're the ones that make your tech-head friends green with envy, like Fossil's Wrist PDA. Watch this space: Liberty for wolves is death to the lambs
• · · Blog back in anger - the online sticky note ; A person who wants to lead the orchestra must be willing to face the music Publish and don't be damned - WAM!NET
• · · · So Liz Smith was having dinner with Nicole Kidman at New York's Four Seasons and it seems the actress really likes to pig out. In blog's era, is there room for Liz Smith? ; Ron Hogan, who writes a literary blog called Beatrice.com, recently began a second blog, Beatrix: A Book Review Review On the Internet, 2nd (and 3rd and . . . ) Opinions ; Beatrix ; A Book Review Review
• · · · · The truth about the tabloids ; Nora Paul: A decade after digital news trailblazers discussed the Internet's promise as a cutting-edge news vehicle, only some of those forecasts have become reality. 'New News' retrospective: Is online news reaching its potential?
• · · · · · We want this to be the place where a community of regional bloggers and their many interests can be found. Blogging in Southwest Virginia ; With an index of more than 370 million blog and news feed articles in seven languages, Bloglines is already one of the largest wells of dynamic web information. Popular online blog and news feed aggregator site Bloglines.com is one step closer to its goal of a universal inbox for dynamic Web content with the launch of a package tracking service Wednesday Bloglines

---

"Bach" is the German word for a little stream or brook. Of Johann Sebastian Bach, Ludwig van Beethoven said: "His name should not be Brook, it should be Ocean." [Schwarzenbach (black brook in Vrbov) Without History: Marta Chamilova]
-via Boyton on Bach’s Birthday

A NEW Book Club for Busy People Blog who know that a bad day writing is better than a good day in the office... Sometimes We Read

Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: Kiss Me Like a Stranger
Sexual-excess memoirs often have a spiritual-discovery aspect to them, as do illness memoirs. Spirit-of-place memoirs often shade into the ethnic-identity memoir, which can, in certain instances, merge with the food memoir ...

The memoir has been on the march for more than a decade now. Readers have long since gotten used to the idea that you do not have to be a statesman or a military commander - or, like Saint-Simon or Chateaubriand, a witness to great events - to commit your life to print. But the genre has become so inclusive that it's almost impossible to imagine which life experiences do not qualify as memoir material.

• Every Life's Worth A Story... (But Do You Have To Publish It?) [There is no such thing as Women's Writing. Just as there is no such thing as Left-Handed Writing, Red-Headed Writing, European Writing, Northern Hemisphere Writing, or Writing from the Planet Earth. All of these categories are so large as to be meaningless The Stupidity Of Women's Writing (Whatever That Is) ; Catherine Keenan meets Rick Gekoski, whose quest for ever more rare and wonderful books has led to the Booker prize The treasure hunter ]
• · A convicted murderer and prison escapee led a secret life as a Chicago-area poet for nearly two decades Chicago Poet Was Mass. Murderer ; Tasmanian Tiger ; The Dragon curve (the paperfolding sequence) was discovered by physicist John Heighway and described by Martin Gardner in 1978. It is defined as follows: we fold a sheet of paper in half, then fold in half again, and again, etc. and then unfold in such way that each crease created by the folding process is opened out into a 90-degree angle. The Crakow Cathedral still has surviving Romanesque fragments including the St.Leonard crypt. The massive prehistoric bones suspended by chains to the left of the entrance are supposedly the bones of Krakus' dragon legend has it that when they fall the end of the world will be at hand Hunting hidden dragon curves in Bratislava
• · · Once movies can be delivered directly into the home all the cheap popcorn and clean floors in the world won't matter Is The Movie-Going Experience Running Out Of Steam? ; The intimate details of Hitler's life - from his fear that his lavatory might be poisoned to his habit of scratching his neck until it bled - are obsessing Germans once again amid a huge revival of interest in the Nazi era Hitler books 'show new obsession gripping Germans' ; Czech Republic ranks second in Europe in Ecstasy use Ecstasy
• · · · Amazon.com Knows, Predicts Shopping Habits ; Of the 300 or so foreign books that are translated into English and published each year in the United States, it is not difficult to imagine why Bloomsbury's Children's Books chose to publish a translation of Valérie Zenatti's When I Was A Soldier The experience of an outsider "looking in" ; Bolsheviks at the Australian Academy of Ballet The Kirov Ballet owes its name to Jozef Stalin
• · · · · Unpredictable life: Crowded House drummer dead: Paul Hester; They say the blues is the devil's music: Byron Bay provides blues and roots with a few laughs along the way Charisma comes in all shapes
• · · · · · Narrators of first-person claptrap like this often greet the reader at the door with moist hugs and complaisant kisses. I won't. I will not endear myself. I won't put on airs. I am not that pleasant. The older I get the less pleasant I am / A way to get very rich very easily and speedily by taking full advantage of the infinite gullibility of homo sapiens: Round up of Weekend Book Reviews ; Many psychologists are traumatised by the stories of those they help Putting therapists on the couch

---

Antony Loewenstein is back from Sri Lanka, Czech his fearless ideas at AL: A Chance to Confront our Worst Social Ills

Digby gives us the latest version of "bluggers suck" and "journalists r000l" from the LA Times's David Shaw, who writes a column about why bluggers aren't high-minded journalists like him so they therefore don't deserve reporters' privilege Journalist, Heal Thyself

The Blog, The Press, The Media: Tories plan to beat ‘bias’ by bringing in bloggers
The Conservative Right is to turn to new American campaigning techniques and the internet to try to revive the party and overcome what it sees as opposition from the metropolitan Establishment.

Only weeks away from the general election, senior Conservatives will open a new front today in the battle for ideas by creating a website advocating “social conservatism”.
It will invite people to bypass the media and put forward their own views on how the party should evolve. The faction behind it denies that it is “rocking the boat” in the pre-election period and says that in the early weeks the website will be used to campaign for a Conservative victory. It wants people to use the increasingly popular practice of “blogging” — writing online diaries — to break the power of the broadcast media.

• The website — conservativehome.com — is being started today by Tim Montgomerie - via a provider of a snapshot of the latest online news and buzz across the political spectrum Memeorandum [Shelly Horton ; Elizabeth Spiers, editor-in-chief of mediabistro.com Coolest Blog]
• · Blog burnout spreading ; Dave Pollard says the blogging popularity curve's long tail shows that it is "just" a logarithmic curve and not a "power law" curve after all Wagging the long tail
• · · Bill Ives: Longest Running Bloggers Meeting: Montreal ; A-List: Female bloggers doing top-notch work in the mainstream poliblog format
• · · · The ethnic diversity to be found within the male bloggers of the activist, lefty political blogosphere should serve as an obvious lesson to all bloggers that it is indeed our actions that determine the diversity of our blogosphere, no matter what type of diversity we are discussing (gender, income, race, creed, ideology, etc) Diversity and the Two Lefty Blogospheres ; Garrett Graff Scott McClellan does not read blogs...if you were wondering; via Boyton: The Blog Cycle.
• · · · · Les Carlyon: Soon we'll have only 18 readers but they'll all be millionaires Words of wisdom come up against marketing strategies ; Dare we begin to believe? Hopeful signs on the road to defamation reform
• · · · · · Thomas Nelson Publishers Corporate Blogging Guidelines, Draft #2 ; TV reporter earned money from state via Jay Rosen

---

Stories remind us of who we are and from where we came. They mark the trajectories of our lives; they show us our loves; our hopes; our obsessions; our fears. Most of all, our fears. Children understand fear better than adults, perhaps because the fears of childhood are darker and more primitive. Fear of being abandoned, like Hansel and Gretel. Fear of loss. And fear of the beast - be it wolf, dragon, ogre - which is, of course, the fear of adulthood and, lurking inevitably behind, the fear of death... A significant, secret part of us still wants to believe in magic that can change lives; love that can save us; heroes and heroines who can overthrow the ogres of our fear.

The debate about The Da Vinci Code has generated a great deal of interest in the life of Christ and the origins of Christianity. The two men who changed the course of history are the focus of this documentary Jesus and Paul: the word and the witness

Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: Seeking Sister, Self, and the Spirit
I didn't expect it to become a book

It is not uncommon for someone to respond to the death of a loved one by attempting to understand that person's life better, or trying to find "God," or trying to find out more about one's self. In Julie Mars' A Month of Sundays: Searching for the Spirit and My Sister (Greycore Press, due out in mid-April), the author manages to do all three when, following the death of her beloved older sister from cancer, she embarks on a pilgrimage of going to Church every Sunday for 31 weeks.

In terms of writing, if not life, this was virgin territory for me. But the biggest challenge (and scariest problem) for me was cutting and editing. Cutting this text felt different than editing fiction -- more bloody and far more painful, but, in the end, I had to pick up my pen and go at it. After a while, I realized I was equating editing with lying, with making the story prettier or more hopeful than it really was, disrespecting the project I had assigned myself.
• Pilgrimage of spiritual equilibrium [Unwanted Memories of Aga's grave Ageless Aga ; It's not about drugs, definitely. The drugs are there but the story is about Maria and to show the people that this story can happen to anybody. It's so close to you that you don't even know Maria Full of Grace ]
• · A powerful, unflinching story that opens a window on an unknown aspect of a little-known war - the experiences of Chinese POWs held by Americans during the Korean conflict 'War Trash' Wins PEN/Faulkner Prize ; Nearly half of teachers have suffered from mental illness Stressful job
• · · Debutante balls are thrown by doting fathers who want to shore up their class-standing Rites of Passage; To be able to do something positive is a great motivator Risking Social Siberia.
• · · · We travel most ... when we stumble and we stumble most when we come to a place of poverty and need (like Haiti, perhaps, or Cambodia); and what we find in such confounding places, often, is that it is the sadness that makes the sunshine more involving or, as often, that it is the spirit and optimism of the place that makes the difficulties more haunting Sun After Dark: Flights into the Foreign ; Let him who is without sin cast the first stone A time to return to the true path
• · · · · Poverty can be hard to tackle if you can't define it Why poverty persists - even in the boom times ; Book Fairs: Show Off Promotion leading everyone into temptations
• · · · · · Dan Brown's once-humble life has been turned into a paperback circus Decoding Dan ; 19 Entertainment owns the format rights to Pop Idol, here known as American Idol, and pulls in an estimated $1 billion annually in merchandising, ad sales, sponsorships, etc." along with a simple personal message,"WOW! What's a hit worth?

---

It's a universal law of capitalism: when an industry faces a new and significant threat to its profits and powers it turns to the government for protection. Well, bloggers who write on current events are challenging the mainstream media (MSM), the most politically well-connected industry in America James Miller believes he sees a gathering storm for blogs ... The coming war on blogs? The Business of Blogging

The Blog, The Press, The Media: From Meet the Press to Be the Press
The Economist just said it: the "the traditional notion that the media play a special role in informing people is breaking down." Rising up: government as a "purely neutral" news provider, credible where a sinking press corps is not.

As Andy Card, the White House chief of staff, has put it, the administration does not think that the press has "a check-and-balance function". This is a fundamental change of attitude compared with previous administrations and makes this one's use of fake news different.
I agree: a fundamental change is afoot, and we have to try to understand it. The Economist zeroes in on why the "special interest" charge matters. Listen carefully-- they're catching on:
If there is nothing special about the press, then there is nothing special about what it does. News can be anything--including dressed-up government video footage. And anyone can provide it, including the White House, which, through local networks, can become a news distributor in its own right. Given the proliferation of media outlets and the eroding of boundaries between news, comment and punditry, someone will use government-provided information as news.

The President represented the people, the press represented the public.
Why two reps, why these two words? Because the same Americans who believe in popular sovereignty (election to office) believe too in public opinion (government by discussion.)
• Boundaries, Crosslines, De-certification [Reconciling conflicting objectives - New Open Source Journal on Freedom of Information Freedom of information and data protection ; The launch of a pioneering project, OurMedia provides free storage and free bandwidth for your videos, audio files, photos, text or software. Forever. No catches Open Source Project Offers Free Storage For Digital Media ]
• · New University of Florida Study Ranks States' Records Access Laws - The project's panel of experts, known as the Sunshine Review Board, compared the state laws for 30 categories of legal provisions related to records requests and ranked them on a Sunshine Index for openness Sunshine Week: Study Details Public Access to State Records ; Get Assistance from a Federal Depository Librarian: Government Information Online Pilot Project Gov't Sponsored Project Offers Expert Virtual Reference Services
• · · Experiences of a Street Car Conductor Digital History ; Digital reel explodes on Amazon
• · · · View your words constructed out of images selected pseudo-randomly from an Amazon Web site; Newcopia is a commenting system where people can come and discuss the latest additions in Bills and Research from Australian Parliament House. NewCopia; Sheila Lennon writes a story about a muscian. She writes it in an HTML editor so she can fill it with links. Not only that, she read it aloud in her first Podcast. Multi-Talented observers
• · · · · Steve Rubel has some great advice for bloggers: get on the Oprah Winfrey show. And writes an open letter to Oprah asking her to bring bloggers on board (and to start her own blog). How to become influential ; A9.com searches more than the web—we have a library of columns that you can add to your column list (the list of buttons you see on the right of search results). Amazon's search engine has lots of tricks
• · · · · · The State of the News Media 2005; Peek is AlterNet's blog of blogs, pointing out what's buzzing in the blogosphere. Peek: The Blog Of Blogs

---

Bruce Lowry of Novell told The Economist that he can imagine blogs "completely replacing press releases within 10 years." It's a bold thought; does it hold water? Will Blogs Replace Press Releases?

The Blog, The Press, The Media: It’s time to stand up for Google
Is Google bashing the new cool?

I could have easily substituted the opening quote as the headline here but I’d rather make a positive statement, despite some failings, Google is still one of the good guys, and it’s time to stand up for Google.
Many of you who don’t follow political blogs may be wondering what I’m talking about, well in short form here it is: Political blogs, in particular leading conservative blogs and bloggers has stirred up a storm in a tea cup over the inclusion of a “Nazi” website as a source for Google’s News service (since removed) mainly on the grounds that their blogs had not.

Never let the real facts get in the way of a good conspiracy story.
• Google is still one of the good guys, and it’s time to stand up for Google [ Dan Gillmor on Google ; Google testing new ad formats ; Principal claims she was harassed Web spy student ends up suspended ]
• · Petr Partyk criticized a city bureaucrat on a web discussion forum, and now faces prison over it. What’s more, he says the comments were written by someone else. It looks absurd, but according to a decision by the Prague 7 district court he could be in prison for 75 days for libel. Man goes to prison over website comments ; Judges Urged to Determine if Crime Occurred in Leak Case Media Groups Back Reporters In Court Filing
• · · Popular as the uncensored bastions of ideological chest-thumping, Web logs have emerged in the debate over Terri Schiavo's fate as something more mature: a place where people struggle to make sense of their complex and contradictory feelings. Rantings and ravings still rule the day in the blogosphere, as it's known, with plenty of political sniping. Blogs Become Sites for Soul-Searching on Life-and-Death Question ; Is linking really stealing?
• · · · The Role of Ethics In Weblogging ; Perish the thought: Fake name. Fake reporter. Fake news agency. And now this ... Fake Marine Plame & PropaG: NO Military Service for Gannon/Guckert
• · · · · The boundary between the mainstream media and the new online underground is increasingly porous Fourth estate 'second rate'; The documentary Touching the Void was a box-office hit, but before its success the written version had languished on bookshop shelves Tails, you win: Into Thin Air
• · · · · · How to Make a Living as a Poet ; Google: Family memories develop out of thin air

---

Easter is relevant to us today because it's all about hope rather than just The DaVinci Code ... In Easter - an irrational jolt to the complacent, winter-tired soul - we recount how God gives us life again and again where we believed there was only failure and death. Through Easter, we remember how Jesus, the original blogger, defined power: power based on sharing, on healing, on feeding, on giving, on including, on extending compassion, on blessing, and on reacting with dignity and non-violent resistance to external threats. The celebration of Easter reminds us that things could be, and should be, very different; that in the end, good always conquers evil, that love can prevail.
Calling the day of the Crucifixion ‘Good’ Friday is a designation that is peculiar to the English language. In German, for example, it is called Karfreitag. The Kar part is an obsolete word, the ancestor of the English word care in the sense of cares and woes, and it meant mourning. So in German, it is Mourning Friday. And that is what the disciples did on that day—they mourned. They thought all was lost. I think we call it Good Friday because, in pious retrospect, all that tragedy brought about the greatest good there could be. Why do we call it ‘Good’ Friday?

Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: Branches of Palm: Stations of the Cross
Any other day of the year, they are simply a war memorial, a homeless shelter and a jail. But this Good Friday, they'll become stops in a symbolic retracing of Christ's final steps and reminders of everyday suffering.

The modern observances are becoming more popular among religious leaders trying to make the lessons of a 2,000-year-old crucifixion relevant today.
"It's just to bring to the surface suffering," said Linda Zeorlin, associate director of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph's Peace & Justice Office. "It's to keep the awareness, keep it smack in the face."
In Kansas City, the stops on the Good Friday procession are varied, from the federal building to a business that typically offers one-day gigs for the unemployed.
Along the way, the prayers and testimonies from participants will touch on many issues - war, economic inequity, unemployment, the death penalty, homelessness and government wrongdoing.

It was where, of course, the ultimate cry of human longing ran headlong into the silence of God, and was left, the cry was left out there like a huge, red hook trying to reach up into the heavens, but nothing received it. It's a day of being touched by the void; it's the day of the abyss ...
• Way of the Cross [The challenge of Easter goes beyond the church Google on Pope at Easter ; Hoppy Easter ]
• · Sydney Eyes turn to rising Son ; Jesus behaved like any rebbelious blogger The radical new challenge of Easter
• · · The Slavic Easter Monday tradition involves women getting buckets of water thrown over them and, if that isn't enough, getting beaten with a stick made from willow (Vrbov). In return the women, no doubt grateful that the men had made them fresh again, give the men glasses of schnapps, chocolate, sweets, money and decorated eggs. Girls give Easter eggs to their "whippers ; There's more to Easter eating than leg of lamb and chocolate bunnies. There are other things like hard-boiled eggs, sunka (smoked ham), klobasy (smoked sausage), slanina (smoked bacon), cvikia s krenom (a mixture of grated beets, horseradish root, salt, and vinegar) Green Thursday; White Saturday; Wet Monday
• · · · God made the world or he didn't In Love With Death ; The Random Acts of Kindness
• · · · · A historical foundation stone may have to be reconsidered after the discovery of a 16th century German map that used the word "Australia" 259 years before the explorer Matthew Flinders bestowed the name on the continent he had just circumnavigated. Terra Australis or New Holland as Australia Nation's naming mystery ; The fondest dream of the information age is to create an archive of all knowledge. You might call it the Alexandrian fantasy, after the great library founded by Ptolemy I in 286 BC The Great Library of Amazonia
• · · · · · NSW parliament staff have in-house yoga classes to help them de-stress, and even midwives say there's evidence that prenatal yoga can help women cope with childbirth. Yoga ; Henry James isn't famed for making people laugh, but when he's guarding his turf an evil sense of humor can rear its toothy head. As promised, funny Henry James

---

Back in the early1970s during the Tatranka folkloric days and later at the horticultural college periods we used to spent quite a bit of summertime in Morava, one summer we even manage to invade East Germany. Ach, heavy google hitters on the web, I remember well those Morava and East German moments of causing teachers headaches with our ideas of western disco dress type of revolutions at night. However, during the day we headed to places along the Morava River where we explored the unusual labyrinth of underground passages and domes of Moravian caves and the Moravian beauties disguised as tourist guides. They told us all about the romantic caves “Nature's Temple" and the "Virgin Cave" . The underground spaces were richly decorated with stalactites and stalagmites.
As teenagers in East Germany, Dresden and Leipzig seemed to us such a huge contrast between the natural beauty of Morava and the industrial smog of the German city. It is hard to believe that an underground movement was born in Leipzig at the time since even to us bridges, main stations and restricted areas were a risk to photograph. Our very own Jozef Kein led a procession of Tatran boys though pubs filled with strange alcoholic and other temptations ;-D
In 2005, Reading rather than drinking fever hits Leipzig

Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: Neighbours with Sleeves Rolled Up
Economists are beginning to recognise that money really doesn't buy you happiness. Is depression and unhappiness already at boiling point at Point Piper, Bellevue Hill or Darling Point?

It is tough trying to work out if life is good. It is usually only when something goes wrong that you realise it used to be great. For many of us, peer comparison is a useful way to judge how we are travelling.
We check to see if our cars are in the same price bracket and if our children are on the same school waiting lists. If we have a similar quality of living to our mates, we reason, then we must be doing all right.
We also like to be reassured on an international level. It is with a warm, smug glow that we read a recent report from the human resources group Mercer telling us that Sydney is in the top 10 cities in the world for quality of living. It is one of the few times when just physically being somewhere can be made to feel like an achievement.

But governments are still holding on tightly to their belief that standard of living is the same as wellbeing ...
• Living in a wealthy, safe, stable city may be bad for your wellbeing [ Bohemian librarian, Casanova, the 18th-century lover who would breakfast on 50 oysters, has been vindicated by a study that proves they really are aphrodisiacs Pearly wisdom: oysters are an aphrodisiac ; A chewing gum which the makers say can help enhance the size, shape and tone of the breasts has proved to be a big hit in Japan Pueraria mirifica: Chewing gum can 'enhance breasts' ; My father used to keep Seven busy hives at our garden: Honey can be a strong ally in the fight against MRSA Antipodes: The healing power of honey bees ]
• · An advertisement for DirecTV recounts the baby boomer life cycle as a succession of instantly recognizable TV moments A Life in Reruns: Watch Out, the Ending Goes Quickly ; Advertising – old media, new media, internet or not – still sells goods by manipulating public attitudes about beauty and status. The New Pitch Under the Sun
• · · Relatives. We’ve all got them. And some are reviving the entrepreneural spirit in the former communist countries... While it takes a village to bring up a child, it takes a global village to make any family business tick and make them priceless. Family businesses are a time-honored tradition and my cousins continue the whole and retail exchange culture our grandfather Pekarcik (meaning baker rather than publican) created in the High Tatra region. M-I-M: Textrend: Mixing Business & Family; Troika: Maria, Ana and Helena, so Slovenskej Vsi (from Slovak Village), with the surname of Kiss keep up with the latest trends in the complex trade of textile and fabrics. Slovak Republic is lucky to have a successful and thriving businesses. Dovoz, velko a maloobchod s poahovmi látkami. Luxusné froté vrobky, dekorané vankúe, ozdobné prestierania, obrúsky, irok sortiment obrusov. A New Age Way of Doing Business in Bratislava: M.I.M., s.r.o. - Tupolevova 16
• · · · If you believe the truth is stranger than fiction and trust in the power of confession, then Letting Light in through the Cracks is for you; A book about a Friendswood dentist convicted of murder for running over her cheating husband is inaccurate and sensational, according to a defamation lawsuit filed Tuesday against the author and publisher Book about Clara Harris case draws lawsuit
• · · · · There are several forbidden topics for publishing in China, including politics, sex, the military and state secrets Leaks: Banning Cold Rivers In China (But Not Effectively) ; A sign of the times; it is now quite common for an ambitious writer to announce that they will prepare their new proposal and/or sample chapter in time for Frankfurt or London Who are you writing for?
• · · · · · The remixing metaphor applies to almost any area you can think of: music, politics, culture. Life Isn't Just as You Want It? Remix It! ; Are crime shows influencing real-life juries? The CSI Effect: Juries Want More

---

A blog is a bowl and we can pour pieces of our souls into it, as an offering to others, for whomever will hear. Julie Leung's eclectic garden

The Blog, The Press, The Media: Media, Politics & Sex
After first being blase about American Gigolo, I am now gaga over it ;-P Try to imagine Richard Gere in American Gigolo, and substitute Jeff in the gay version. He’s professional, he’s smooth, he’s never late, he’s not strung out, his appearance is immaculate. He provides perfect illusion and fantasy. As any pro will tell you, this is hard to maintain, because it is such an act, and so stressful.

Gannon has nothing to worry about unless his clients turn on him, like they did on Richard Gere in American Gigolo. Boy, was that upsetting! But that won’t happen as long as Jeff has something juicy on his admirers. When you think about it, Jeff Bulldog Gannon is in the Juice Business, the mother’s milk of journalism. I say, give the guy his press pass back, and let him go gonzo.

• via Barista: "Aggressive Verbal Dominant Top" Seeks Submissive Male Who Can Reinstate White House Press Pass [ZoomInfo: has a free search engine as well as fee-based services, provides users with search options New Search Engine Profiles 25 Million People ; Resume Data ; Reporters still anything but shy at news conferences ]
• · Digital memories: cheap to take, cheaper to lose ; Obtaining government data is becoming more difficult
• · · Comprehensive Blog Policy Statement How To Blog And Not Lose Your Job ; Blog-linked firings Prompt calls for better policies ;
• · · · Collecting news bias examples Slanted Journalism is Everywhere ; It's prime time for blogs on CNN's 'Inside Politics CNN's Woodruff was initially skeptical of segment on blogs
• · · · · The Seduction of Secrecy: Toward Better Access to Government Information on the Record "Where's the outrage?" asks AP chief at "Secrecy" panel ; People have long considered the press sensational, rude, pushy, and callous. But in the last 17 years, they have also come to see the press as less professional, less moral, more inaccurate, and less caring about the interests of the country Critic: Talking about "the media" is beginning to seem absurd
• · · · · · Someone has gone to a great deal of trouble to produce a document accusing journalist and activist William Arkin of serving as a spy for Saddam Hussein Fake cable accuses NBC journo Arkin of being a spy for Iraq ; Time Magazine: The Decency Police

---

Tina Brown: We are in the Eggshell Era

The Blog, The Press, The Media: We're not the Stasi. We're the people

We are in the Eggshell Era, in which everyone has to tiptoe around because there's a world of busybodies out there who are being paid to catch you out -- and a public that is slowly being trained to accept a culture of finks. We're always under surveillance; cameras watch us wherever we go; paparazzi make small fortunes snapping glamour goddesses picking their noses; everything is on tape, with transcripts available. No matter who you are, someone is ready and willing to rat you out. Even the rats themselves have to look over their shoulders, because some smaller rat is always waiting in the wings. Bloggers are the new Stasi. All the timidity this engenders, all this watching your mouth has started to feel positively un-American.

• Bloggers are the new Stasi Hungry Media Fill Up on Rice [ The Second Rule Of AdSense Is That You Can Now Talk About Earnings ; Google code-innovations ; Google AdSense ]
• · The federal government has set up a committee to pave the way for more Australians to live the telecommuter lifestyle. However the move won't go as far as recent legislation in the United States which requires government departments to support teleworkers Thou shalt telecommute ; It's crazy knowing you are part of this exchange of ideas with people all over the world. Xeni Jardin is one of four bloggers from around the world behind Boing Boing, last week voted the best overall weblog. All four of us are eccentric people, with odd sets of interests that mesh together - (Say that again Xeni ;-P) Boing - best of the blogs ; FEC Considers Restricting Online Political Activities
• · · Media bashing is still primarily a right wing phenomenon My Bias for Mainstream News ; Under the Federal Government's model it will be a judge rather than a jury who will decide whether an opinion is "reasonable". Defaming the dead ; Down in the depths of the netherworld: Requiem for the Gingrich Revolution — David Brooks drives a stake through the Class of '94's cheatin' heart. Masters of Sleaze
• · · · Should the FEC Regulate Political Blogging? ; Government Funds Color Press Group’s Objectivity Astroturf politics: If a political gaffe consists of inadvertently revealing the truth, then Sean Treglia, a former program officer for the Philadelphia-based Pew Charitable Trusts, has just ripped the curtain off of the "good government" groups that foisted the McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill on the country in 2002 John Fund's excellent piece today tells the story of how liberal foundations managed to slide under anemic media radar
• · · · · Michigan State Police warn: blogging could mean jail time ; Via Blog Herald ; Before it took up marketing, the labour movement held some considerable political assets in its organisational structures and the sense of belonging to a movement with a cause to promote that many Australians felt Politics and community-building online
• · · · · · A lot of commentary has pointed to the ability of the right to mobilise on a grassroots level as well as a more academic level with things like right-wing think tank Right-wing mobilisation and left-wing conscience raising ; Slaughter At The BBC BBC to axe nearly 4000 jobs

---

Memory remains, and the images I have created and still not molded in flesh. They will leave their harsh mark on me, it is true! But my heart is left me, and the same flesh and blood which Likewise can Love and suffer and desire and remember, and this is, after all, life. On voit le soleil! Well, good-bye, brother! Do not grieve for me Dostoevsky On Terri Schiavo

Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: Paranoia at Large: Athena of 'Stinging Sensation'
Nick O'Malley, Workplace Reporter, touches on what many of us have known for many years. There are Hitler’s little helpers in many management and leadership positions.

One in 10 Australian managers are deceitful, cold-hearted manipulators bent on attaining power for its own sake, new research shows. Devoid of empathy, they are reckless and leave a trail of wrecked careers, corporate destruction and a legacy of fear.
A psychotherapist with the consultancy Banks Management Group, Dr Glyn Brokensha, has coined the term "powerpath" to describe such managers to differentiate them from criminal psychopaths. He describes powerpathic behaviour as being on a continuum - all of us behave in such a manner occasionally, but powerpaths take it to an extreme.
Dr Brokensha said powerpaths, typically articulate, charming and confident, thrive in businesses with autocratic management cultures where they can curry favour with peers and superiors, while causing misery for those who report to them.
"You'll get senior management say, 'So-and-so is really good. He has cleared out all the deadwood, all the non-performers.' And then find three years later that the deadwood has not been cleared out. He has cleared out anybody who knew what he was, anyone who opposed him," he said. "He is actually a glib non-performer himself."

• Beware the office powerpath - the boss who leaves a trail of destruction [Mother of all mysteries: why she killed her family ; A Link Between Intelligence And Suicide? ]
• · The birth of Attention Deficit Trait. Think being busy and working harder is working smarter? Maybe, maybe not. You may just have ADT. I would venture to say all regular bloggers have this and according to this ComputerWorld article it is addictive. Attention Deficit Trait ; Google on ADT
• · · Programming junkies will plough through this story Send in the clones: Desperate programmers ; Audiences for America's evening newscasts has been declining for some time. It's not difficult to see why. Maybe it's time to try something different - a thinking person's news program? Looking For A Better TV News Model ; Oh, And Flickr Goes to Yahoo..
• · · · As one of the newest Saudi writers to make a buzz in literary world, Yousef Mohaimeed has quickly proven that he has both the talent and the incredibly good nose to stir things up Journey into Mystery: Saudi Censorship Starting To Crumble ; The Automatic Critic Who needs critics anymore? They're unreliable. The latest web services will do your cultural sorting for you. Describing or categorizing any new cultural product is taxing and time-consuming Connecting the Dots
• · · · · I've heard that 42 per cent of statistics are contrived to suit a purpose. I agree 100 per cent Lies, damn lies and statistics ; Al-Saadi Gaddafi, the elusive, jet-setting Chinese-food-loving son of Libya's Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, has been sighted here, there and everywhere since Spike reported last week that he had been spotted dining with his entourage at The Golden Century. But Soccer NSW is one group less than pleased to see him back. Scarlet Pimpernel
• · · · · · Maybe you pine for the sound of the pirate voice whispering: Tatoo. It began with people tattooing themselves. Then folk started sticking junk in their faces. Such measures were once the sole preserve of brawlers and sailers and creatures of the night, but today, every kid from Cranbrook to SCEGGS has a Tibetan dragon cuddling his bicep and a metallic booger swinging from his nose Out on a limb ; Australian Red Cross could only make 17th place on the table with total revenue of $374.5 million Charity sector worth $70b a year: report

---

Many mammals and birds are capable of altruism. But human beings extend their generosity far beyond immediate blood relatives Charity begins at Homo sapiens

Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: One Matchless Time
Meet the Faulkners:

Now I realise for the first time, looking back from the vantage point of his mid-fifties, "what an amazing gift I had: uneducated in every formal sense, without even very literate, let alone literary, companions, yet to have made the things I made. I don't know where it came from. I don't know why God or gods or whoever it was, selected me to be the vessel.

• The Making of William Faulkner [English vs. American Theatre Criticism - The great drama critics were not always fair but they were inevitably interesting. Today we have critics better at writing consumer guides than at engaging art. The Butcher of Broadway; Love of the strangest kinds Bloomsbury's final secret ]
• · A veteran of the vibrant 1960s poetry scene, Camille Paglia argues that critics can no longer read, poets can no longer write, and the unacknowledged legislators of our age are writing advertising jingles for peanuts Rhyme and reason; Your eyes probably hurt just thinking about it: Tens of thousands of Japanese cellphone owners are poring over full-length novels on their tiny screens Books on cellphones take off in Japan
• · · The Redeemer Baptist story began in 1974, when around 30 families broke away from the Castle Hill Baptist Church in Sydney’s west, reaching out to local bikie groups, street kids, and others in need, offering live-in support and care Unholy devotion ; arlier this year, British advertising tycoon Charles Saatchi declared that 2005 will be the Year of Painting and accordingly mounted an exhibition called, The Triumph of Painting (art critic John McDonald suggested it might just as easily be called The Triumph of Marketing!) The Art of illumination
• · · · Movies can do all kinds of things: make us laugh or cry or stir us up in ways we don't expect. But sometimes it's good to see a film that simply allows actors to strut their stuff Film: Being Julia ; Whatever happened to the age-old Christian precept, "Hate the sin and love the sinner."? Denial of funeral contradicts human dignity
• · · · · Who is your global or virtual neighbor? In an age where egocasting, dynamic ranking and global awareness is abundant, Preople will tell you, definitely and undeniable, what your place, your ranking and your relation to all the other people in the world is in one number: Preople Ranking; For a different view on book retailing, the San Jose Mercury News profiles the Tennessee-based Book Market chain: "no-frills deep-discount bookstores that pop up in vacant storefronts, remain open for just a few months, then close Opportunistic Book Market; Latest Books & Books
• · · · · · In a piece on Günter Grass, he writes that "literature today, left solely to its own devices, is no longer able to discover the truth." A voice from beyond ; I will visit a graveyard this week. will walk softly on the sacred ground to the place that marks a life. It's almost all that is left, all I can touch to remind me that once I had a brother. Life and death … and love and literature

---

Why, with eight million bloggers, does the MSM remain the one to define Blogs, Blogging, and Bloggers to the world? Can we not organize a presentation outside the hallowed halls of the sphere? Citizen Blogger

The Blog, The Press, The Media: Magnificent Obsession
I tell them why it is such a good quote, and exactly what it means to me and the book

Jonathan Harr, the author of A Civil Action, spent eight harrowing years plowing through a stack of legal documents as high as a three-story building, and nearly went broke in the process. Posing what he calls “the dumbest questions in the world,” Richard Ben Cramer conducted more than 1,000 interviews to research What It Takes: The Way to the White House. For Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc immersed herself in the love lives of drug dealers, while Ted Conover actually went to prison — as a guard — for Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing.

In fact, each writer’s sensibility — Michael Lewis’s ironic worldview, Eric Schlosser’s muckraking zeal, Alex Kotlowitz’s empathy for the unfortunate — is part of what he (or, in rare instances, she) is selling.
• New new journalism: Boynton [via Joi Ito Blogger denied entry by DHS - "Blogging ain't a job"; Michael Froomkin of Discourse.net has a real problem with the ledes in may news stories these days: Back in or on the way out?]
• · Journalists belong in the gutter becase that is where the ruling classes throw their guilty secrets. - Gerald Priestland, British broadcaster. BBC Radio, 19 May 1988 Tagging gutters: 'Folksonomies' to Organize the News ; Blogger moves on: In another case of a blogger getting to find her dream job, Jade Walker of 'Blog of Death' and more has taken a job on the AP's Web site Farewell, My Friends; Hello, AP
• · · Australia is to get its first monthly mass-market News and current affairs magazine; I was happily surprised by last year's blog reader survey. This year's survey continues the trajectory of happy surprises. As Trent Lott and Howell Raines learned, the blogosphere's numerous voices can capture and amplify ideas that are too complex or contrary for traditional organizations to see or speak Howard Dean, Dan Rather, George Bush, Eason Jordan and Jeff Gannon ; Blogging, Journalism and Credibility Jay Rosen
• · · · Her last marriage, to Mr Stokes, ended 10 years ago Media Billionaire's ex-wife earns $17 an hour as shop assistant ; Joel Achenbach has thoughtful things to say about women bloggers and journalists Women on the Op-Ed Page ; Blog Sisters ; Blog Misses: MS Magazine
• · · · · Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee block an investigation into how Gannon/Guckert got daily access to the White House Another pass for Gannon; Members of Congress wasted hours and hours by grabbing hold of a phony issue and refusing to let go Congress Invites Confusion to Its Session ; It's said, often and rightly, that reporters aren't big on good news. There’s something we hate even more: a Big Bad Trend that goes away, or worse, gets fixed. It's possible -- just possible -- that is precisely what's happening with the corporate crime wave that dominated financial news for the past four years. CEO Predators Tamed?;
• · · · · · via Doc Searls: So just as blogging transforms who is involved in journalism, might it not also transform who is involved in marketing? Today's paper is tomorrow's fishwrap ; LocalBrand Ambassador Blogger

---

Many mammals and birds are capable of altruism. But human beings extend their generosity far beyond immediate blood relatives Charity begins at Homo sapiens

Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: One Matchless Time
Meet the Faulkners:

Now I realise for the first time, looking back from the vantage point of his mid-fifties, "what an amazing gift I had: uneducated in every formal sense, without even very literate, let alone literary, companions, yet to have made the things I made. I don't know where it came from. I don't know why God or gods or whoever it was, selected me to be the vessel.

• The Making of William Faulkner [English vs. American Theatre Criticism - The great drama critics were not always fair but they were inevitably interesting. Today we have critics better at writing consumer guides than at engaging art. The Butcher of Broadway; Love of the strangest kinds Bloomsbury's final secret ]
• · A veteran of the vibrant 1960s poetry scene, Camille Paglia argues that critics can no longer read, poets can no longer write, and the unacknowledged legislators of our age are writing advertising jingles for peanuts Rhyme and reason; Your eyes probably hurt just thinking about it: Tens of thousands of Japanese cellphone owners are poring over full-length novels on their tiny screens Books on cellphones take off in Japan
• · · The Redeemer Baptist story began in 1974, when around 30 families broke away from the Castle Hill Baptist Church in Sydney’s west, reaching out to local bikie groups, street kids, and others in need, offering live-in support and care Unholy devotion ; arlier this year, British advertising tycoon Charles Saatchi declared that 2005 will be the Year of Painting and accordingly mounted an exhibition called, The Triumph of Painting (art critic John McDonald suggested it might just as easily be called The Triumph of Marketing!) The Art of illumination
• · · · Movies can do all kinds of things: make us laugh or cry or stir us up in ways we don't expect. But sometimes it's good to see a film that simply allows actors to strut their stuff Film: Being Julia ; Whatever happened to the age-old Christian precept, "Hate the sin and love the sinner."? Denial of funeral contradicts human dignity
• · · · · Who is your global or virtual neighbor? In an age where egocasting, dynamic ranking and global awareness is abundant, Preople will tell you, definitely and undeniable, what your place, your ranking and your relation to all the other people in the world is in one number: Preople Ranking; For a different view on book retailing, the San Jose Mercury News profiles the Tennessee-based Book Market chain: "no-frills deep-discount bookstores that pop up in vacant storefronts, remain open for just a few months, then close Opportunistic Book Market; Latest Books & Books
• · · · · · In a piece on Günter Grass, he writes that "literature today, left solely to its own devices, is no longer able to discover the truth." A voice from beyond ; I will visit a graveyard this week. will walk softly on the sacred ground to the place that marks a life. It's almost all that is left, all I can touch to remind me that once I had a brother. Life and death … and love and literature

---

Australia's longest-term detainees may soon be released into the community under a major change in Government policy being spearheaded by John Howard Howard set to free 120 detainees

Eye on Politics & Law Lords: Naked Eye: The Political Script
The script runs along these lines. On May 25, 2005, Bob Carr will become the longest, continuously serving NSW premier, breaking the record of his esteemed predecessor, Neville Wran.

Wran's unexpected announcement precipitated a power struggle at the conference, all in living colour on television. It was Labor's equivalent of the Tet offensive during the Vietnam war. And it meant the best candidate to succeed, Barrie Unsworth, enjoyed little honeymoon with the voters, courtesy of the raw conference manoeuvrings. Labor learned not to repeat this experience.
Bob Carr is unlikely to depart the premiership while a job remains to be done. He is unlikely to leave unless his government is comfortably on the ascent. He is unlikely to contemplate departing until he can see that the most pressing issues – in rail, health and policing, for example – are no longer in need of solutions. In Parliament, Carr remains dominant. In the polls, he remains preferred premier by the length of Maroubra beach. And there are two milestones that beckon. On March 1, 2007, Carr will beat James McGowen's record as NSW Labor leader. On January 18 of that year, he will eclipse Sir Henry Parkes' record (over five separate terms) as NSW premier.

• For Carr, a devoted historian, these dates may prove irresistible. Carr unlikely to relinquish reins - Stephen Loosley [Carr and Brogden in support slide ; Hand-held fingerprint devices, shoe-print databases, portable identikit equipment and scores of new crime scene investigators will all form part of the forensic science law enforcement package. It's a big investment, but it's an investment in smart policing Police get $26m scientific edge over criminals ; Debus set on ending lawyers' immunity ]
• · Precious cargo of democracy: Naked Eye of the Sun Herald fame, the invisible political torch, lists today how many days state MPs have sat this year (s(i)x days). Under the headline Carroff - again we learn that Premier is heading overseas next month, his eighth trip abrod since the March 2003 e(l)ection. (Parliamentary clerks are often referred to as Marco Polos or Pacific Islanders,) Minister exploring the universe under Greiner were called the Travelling Wilburys ...; Premier Bob Carr has been reminded of the election-winning health promise he gave exactly 10 years ago today to halve the State's hospital waiting lists or resign. He delivered the pledge on March 20, 1995, at the official launch of Labor's election campaign which resulted in a shock one-seat victory over the Coalition led by Premier John Fahey. What about your pledge on hospital waiting lists, Mr Premier ; Premier's new deal for young workers ; Premier Bob Carr has revealed he no longer plans to retire to New Zealand There's no place like home: Love Affair
• · · Senators line up for attack on Lightfoot ; Senate numbers behind PM's inaction: Labor ; Lightfoot's friendly gesture
• · · · Life or death battle, and death looks like winning: Two years after the invasion of Iraq the rate of US soldiers being killed is averaging 18 a week, almost double the rate in the first year after the war No time for rejoicing as Iraq toll keeps climbing ; Labor holds Latham's old seat
• · · · · He'll be known as the man who killed ATSIC, but Geoff Clark says he's made a difference for Aboriginal people. I walk through a crowd and somebody will throw something at me, somebody will spit on me, bump me, somebody will kiss me. That's what life dishes up. I don't think I'm different from anyone else Under the skin ; Each week as many as three Australian children are abducted by their parents and spirited away across international borders International abductions by parents on the rise
• · · · · · Hefty Tasmanian politician Dick Adams spent six minutes in Parliament last week extolling the virtues of the parliamentary librarian before sticking the boot into the cleaning service and the staff canteen Dirty politics
Jobs go as backpackers work for beds - National - www.smh.com.au Jobs go as backpackers work for beds ; Daily Terror exposes Aliens: 'Illegal' backpackers earn up to $800 a week

---

You're Never Fully Dressed Without A True Smile! Give the audience the truth, the actor's director and new head of NIDA tells Angela Bennie, and the magic of the theatre will be assured. Director of the boards

Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: The digirati: Daring Path Breakers
If Gutenberg's printing press heralded the age of mass reading, then the internet gave birth to the age of mass writing - every kind of writing imaginable, and a lot that couldn't be imagined.

Creative writing (poetry and short stories), articles, opinion pieces, political commentary, multimedia, blogs (web logs or diaries) and even longer works such as novels, are all there jostling for their own e-readership and, just possibly, instant fame.
If politics is your bag, however, consider contributing to crikey.com.au, a cheeky site claiming to be Australia's leading independent online news service which has been digging the dirt on Australian politicians, media barons, big business and high-flyers since it was established in 1999. Crikey even pays its contributors: $15 for items of up to 250 words (for the daily section) and $30 for items exceeding 500 words which are run on the public website (send articles to boss@crikey.com.au).
NewMatilda.com, a recently established site with similar goals, seeks writing that contributes to public debate. Some pieces are commissioned and paid for, but the site thanks writers for donating their work (both finished articles and ideas to enquiries@newmatilda.com).
Jacketmagazine is a poetry site run vy John Tranter who has also begun another website called Australian Literature Resources.
Another site worth visiting is dotlit, the online journal of creative writing established in 2000 by the Creative Industries Faculty at the Queensland University of Technology.
Other independent sites that accept contributions include AustralianReader.com, which claims to showcase "Australia's best new writing" and accepts unpublished material and works published by small and independent presses whether fiction, non-fiction, poetry or plays.
Another Australian site, Skive.com, has attracted some exciting new writing since it was established by Matthew work.

• The Literary Horizon Dilemma ; [Cracks appear in cage regime ; Harvard-Google Project Faces Copyright Woes Precious Cargo of Literature ]
• · +he Future Beautiful: 10 Lessons for First-time Documentary Filmmakers. ; As this society grows, it becomes more unequal: An essay concerning the origins, nature, extent and morality of this destructive force in free market economies. Definitions. Paradoxes and omissions ... Robert Reich points out that the superrich live in a parallel universe to the rest of the country
• · · Maestro J. Randy Taraborrelli: From the bestselling author of Jackie, Ethel, Joan: Women of Camelot and Madonna: An Intimate Biography comes the groundbreaking biography of the royal family of Monaco, full of triumphs and tragedies, romance and heartbreak Once Upon a Time; They stormed the barricades in Les Miserables and now many of our music theatre stars plan to protest at the demise of the annual Sydney Cabaret Convention, on the Town Hall steps Life's not a cabaret, old chum, in Moore's new city of villages ; As Byron Bay groans under the weight of tourists, Catharine Munro discovers that the conservation-minded coastal town's greatest problem is itself Byron Bay: Beauty and the Beast
• · · · To rival one of Dostoevsky's characters so narcissistic he cared more about an ounce of his own body fat than the lives of 100,000 of his own countrymen Best Read After St Patrick’s Day ; Gossip writer Ros Reines: Politics and Film Industry Mix Kidman's intimate date with Gaddafi
• · · · · Several times a day, for several days, you induce pain in someone. You control the pain with morphine until the final day of the experiment, when you replace the morphine with saline solution. Guess what? The saline takes the pain away. 13 things that do not make sense: The placebo effect ; In a world with millions of refugees, numerous war zones and huge areas devastated by natural disaster, aid agencies and militaries have long needed a way to quickly erect shelters on demand. Need a Building? Just Add Water
• · · · · · Australians go shopping for the thrill of the purchase rather than the pleasure of using the goods. Homes are stacked with CDs that have never been played, novels that have never been read, clothes that are rarely worn, and food that is thrown out at the end of the week: Out with the old, in with the takeaway - Danger of excess in our throwaway culture ; From kid in a candy store to thoughtful consumer A bulwark of the economy - consumer spending

---

Chatswood will never be the same Join The Party [The music may stop now and then, But the the strings will remain forever]

Life Begins @ 40: Many, Many, Happy Returns Minna;P
Ach it was not so long ago when I celebrated my 40th at the Iceberg Club among the Martins and the Lofties of this world ... Friend derives from a word meaning free. A friend is someone who allows us the space and freedom to be ...

Eric Partridge's book, Name Your Chil shows "Minnie from the German 'Minne', meaning love. A Scottish variant of this is Minna. And Mina is an English pet-form of Wilhelmina.
If every friend is a new door to a different world than in Minna’s world friends are like flowers in the garden of life. For years I have misspelled your name, but our families can never say that we misspent time with you and cheeky boys. The memories of Elizabeth Bay come flooding back with Steve and Leonsky taking over the balconies wherever you went. We cannot take it for granting that the most exciting time for my girls was to walk down the isle at St Marks as your flower girls. The images of them dancing at the Royal Boat Club will give godfather Steve a bargaining position at their 21st ;P.
Words can never express the joy we experienced by sharing simple meals at McKell Park, Nielson Park, Esplanade Park in Helsinki. How can this Bohemian and his family forget the Finnish baptism in properly stoked sauna or the risque crossing of that freezing lake peppered with ramshackle cottages referred to as the summer house. The lake was round like a circle it had no end, that is how long we hope to be your friends. Frienship not only makes the world go round, it makes the eating and drinking worthwhile. I recall well how the Finnish nights merged into days, but only the stars know why vodka starts to taste like voda (water) after a while ;D Especially, when uncle Yusi is around!

I still have no idea who polished all that wine during Steve’s 30th?! If Helina pleaded not guilty how does Lauren plead? Shared sorrow is half sorrow, shared joy is double joy:We cried until we had to laugh!
• Forgotten Lessons of Helsinki: Human Rights and Folklore: UnFinnished Identity: The Next Exciting Chapter of Gifts;D [Years ago, many Finns emigrated to the Americas and the Antipodes. Altogether some 30,000 Australians have Finnish blood in their veins: The Finns settled mainly in Sydney ; The world's consciousness of Findland are myriad and magical like friendship. Consider the Moominland stories of Tove Jansson, the building and furniture design of Alvar Aalto, the writing of Aleksis Kivi and the inspiring compositions of Jean Sibelius. And where else can you eat reindeer stew? Virtual Finland ; Land of Finns: ]
• · The Charter 77 & the Helsinki Effect: Charter 77 was based on the Helsinki Charter! True friendship is sitting together in silence and feeling like it was the best conversation you've ever had Literary strangers are just friends waiting to happen ; Best friends are like diamonds, precious and rare. False friends are like leaves, found everywhere
• · · A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out A friend is one who walks in when others walk out: Rinnemarket ; Backyard of Riverside Loop: Can’t Fool(er) Sugar and Spice
• · · · A friend is one who believes in you when you have ceased to believe in yourself: Caves Beach: HiStory ; Woman means business when she lowers her goggles on Caves Beach: Watch out Aleksi and Anton
• · · · · C. S. Lewis: Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like politics ...
It has no survival value; rather is one of those things that give value to survival - Minna Canth (1844-1897) was a Finnish playwright, novelist and essayist as well as an energetic fighter for women's rights and social justice Minna Canth's Spice Cake ; Friends are the most important ingredient in this recipe of life The Best of Finnish Cooking

---

W hat the recent Gannon/Guckert episode and the Williams/Gallagher/McManus payola scandals have in common are that both provide evidence of the Bush administration's willingness to subvert the traditional watchdog function of the media by just about any means available An Indecent Proposal

The Blog, The Press, The Media: Uncle Sam's blog
The Internet appears to be the medium through which future international political opinion will be influenced most significantly

The Bush administration's latest budget contains a significant increase in spending on ''public diplomacy" -- government-sponsored programs to communicate with the citizens of other countries through the media and cultural and educational exchanges. The increase has been met with a sigh of relief from foreign policy watchers who believe public diplomacy is an essential pillar of American ''soft power" and have watched that pillar slowly crumble since the end of the Cold War.
During the Cold War, the US Information Agency led America's public diplomacy assault, broadcasting Radio Free Europe to Soviet Bloc states, broadcasting the Voice of America throughout the world, and sponsoring numerous alternatives to state-sponsored media in nonfree countries. The agency was dissolved in 1999 and its programs absorbed into the State Department, where critics say long-term public diplomacy efforts have been starved for attention in a department culture that is focused on short-term solutions to immediate crises.

• Cold Voices : Joichi Ito, founder and CEO, Neoteny and Ethan Zuckerman, founder, Geekcorps: While we're building great new tools to build communities, we've done very little to ensure that people around the world have access to them Emergent Democracy Worldwide [How do you establish trust between between strangers on the Internet? Identity federation is one way to create a community of trust, but it relies on establishing the trust domains before the interaction Negotiating Trust ; Out of Many Blogs]
• · We want OpenSearch to do for search what RSS has done for content ; Google Hommage an OS X Google Google X Roses are red. Violets are blue. OS X rocks. Homage to you Googlex (dissappeared)
• · · Hackers foiled in attempt to plunder bank ; href="http://www.carlisle.army.mil/usawc/parameters/05spring/payne.htm ">The media, in the modern era, are indisputably an instrument of war ; Subscribers Only (The New Republic) This week's hysteria over kids and "new media" is just that: hysteria
• · · · Top award for bringing the war home Paul McGeough named the 2004 winner of the Graham Perkin Award ; As Dan Rather’s old-media world fades out, the future is beginning to look weirdly like the past Premodern Amerika ; Overnight Success? The enduring myth of the overnight success is as old as publishing itself
• · · · · People talk about stories that resonate but aside from audiobooks and author readings, novels are silent - People talk about stories that resonate but aside from audiobooks and author readings, novels are silent People talk about stories that resonate but aside from audiobooks and author readings, novels are silent ; Czech out Mark of ex-Troppo fame who has a new blog: Redrag is his Solodom Blog
• · · · · · Talk about blog of mouth, this one is travelling around the net like wildfire What does it mean to be a professional blogger? ; The answer to that question was once easy. Until Jozef Imrich left Parliament House ;P in 1990s AD What Is a Journalist? ; Playgirl Editor-in-Chief Outs Herself as Republican!