Dual Loyalty: 06/01/2006

Friday, June 23, 2006

It's very easy to start a blog, but it takes a bit of practice to write an interesting enough blog that readers will want to come back again and again. There are many things bloggers -- both neophytes and veterans -- can do to improve their blog and themselves as writers:
Letters are built like people. Do I look fat in this paragraph? Good fonts come from good families. First Nations Histories: Bad things happen to good characters.

The Blog, The Press, The Media: My Blog, My Rules
When the blogosphere's leading lights gather for a two-day "unconference" on the art and science of blogs, you're sure to get one thing: lots of blog posts about blogging.

In fact, if you didn't make it onto the signup list for one of the freewheeling discussions at the fourth BloggerCon IV, you could watch a webcast or read all about it online, since participants scrambled Friday to post every salient detail as the event unfolded.

• BloggerCon Boosts the Blog Boom [ Bad things happen to good characters. Pop-up window with handy key strokes.; Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About Bicycling Dalmation ]
• · Carrying on their work from last year's groundbreaking invention of the worlds first single molecule car (bet that one's easy to park) chemists at Rice University, in Houston Texas, have now produced the first motorised version of this tiny nanocar Technology is always bringing us the 'next big thing' but will it be good for us? ; State lifts blog ban on one Web site, but publisher of another mulls lawsuit
• · · Everyone thinks they can be a writer; but there's a big difference between a writer and someone who writes. Good writers know how to capture an audience early, engage them throughout the piece, and keep them interested enough that they actually want to stick around until the end. Like music, there's a cadence and rhythm to the written word. This is what separates an aria from a cat choking on a chicken bone. From Slogger to Blogger: Tips for a Better Blog; I've come to realize that my ideals (let's not call them ideals...let's call them ideas, because they're far from ideal) are too radical even for fellow anarcho-capitalists Just a Stupid Personal Blog
• · · · Finding a Blog Worth Reading ; Citizen journalism agency launches blog sales service
• · · · · Schaeffer's Daily Market Blog Features DaimlerChrysler, General Motors, AMR, U.S. Airways, and Apple Computer ; Conservative bloggers seek a place on the political Web
• · · · · · This one is a little different. How We Blog: The Man Blog Bloggers ; Outdoors becomes high-tech with blog

In fact, if you didn't make it onto the signup list for one of the freewheeling discussions at the fourth BloggerCon IV, you could watch a webcast or read all about it online, since participants scrambled Friday to post every salient detail as the event unfolded.

Monday, June 19, 2006

No doubt there are all kinds of high and low; Cool and Hot; awards, since there seems to be nothing more popular than the handing out of prizes, a phenomenon first remarked by Lewis Carroll:
However, when they had been running half an hour or so, and were quite dry again, the Dodo suddenly called out “The race is over!” and they all crowded round it, panting, and asking, “But who has won?”
This question the Dodo could not answer without a great deal of thought, and it sat for a long time with one finger pressed upon its forehead (the position in which you usually see Shakespeare, in the pictures of him), while the rest waited in silence. At last the Dodo said, “EVERYBODY has won, and all must have prizes.”

Sooner or later the temptation to inflate the currency in one way or another becomes irresistible ;-) The cold, hard fact is that there are only two “prizes” worth having, short-term success and long-term acclaim, neither of which can be conveyed by any means other than the uncoerced consensus of the relevant public. Yet as self-evident as that might seem, there is some irresistible impulse built into the human psyche that makes us keep handing out awards anyway. Sixty-five percent of the members of the Jozef Imrich's fan club are women. The JI Journal notes ;-) Booksellers believe Bohemian writer Jozef Imrich may have tapped into the same audience that has devoured memoirs over the past seven months, a genre that in recent years has increasingly included more reality and suspense. They say the 9/11 terrorist attacks, coupled with the war in Iraq, have changed what women are willing to read Women Read Thrillers, Too: Am I kidding myself?

Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: Narrative Digest: I won't mind—much—if you rub Cold River in
The Nieman Program on Narrative Journalism at Harvard University runs a wonderful site for writers, the Nieman Narrative Digest.

The site is updated with new features about narrative journalism about every two weeks. Recent pieces include "Stories Are Everywhere" by author Adrian Nicole LeBlanc and "14 Tips for Building Character" by Rick Meyer, a narrative editor at the Los Angeles Times.

• Stories Are Everywhere [Cold River Stories Are Everywhere ; A collection of scores of examples of excellent narrative journalism. Notable Narratives]
• · If you want to create a bestseller in Australia, here is this year's formula: What makes a bestseller? ; I now know that if you describe things as better as they are, you are considered to be romantic; if you describe things as worse than they are, you are called a realist; and if you describe things exactly as they are, you are called a satirist. - Quentin Crisp, The Naked Civil Servant So far as it has merit, a Cold River is a fact, arbitrary and individual
• · · Reviewing 101: John Updike's rules John Updike’s six rules for book reviewing ; Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt Friendly skies
• · · · Art permits you to accept illogical immediacy, and in doing so releases you from chasing after the distant and the ideal. When this occurs, the effect is exalting The Water's Edge ; Cold comfort
• · · · · War cannot be negated. One must live it or die of it. So it is with the absurd: it is a question of breathing with it, of recognizing its lessons and recovering their flesh. In this regard the absurd joy par excellence is creation. 'Art and nothing but art,' said Nietzsche, 'we have art in order not to die of the truth. - Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus Gianna: Blog's not dead, it's only sleeping ; I can see why I am excited: If there is one writer whose name noir aficionados want to shout from the rooftops over and over (and over) again because not enough people have heard of him, dammit, then Daniel Woodrell is probably tops Sarah Weinman does it all for Media Dragon
• · · · · · I'm not sure where the balance tips into martyrdom or a lack of generosity. Use your websites to promote others. Stand by Me: How We Can Help Each Other ; Commiserate RIP, Mystery Circus, a great site that never did seem to find its audience, alas.

Saturday, June 17, 2006

Last night I had the good fortune to exchange sat sree akals and charge royal glasses with Dial and Bawa ;-) In person, we had the benefit of using all our senses and time capsules ... The first time capsules were found in temples in Egypt and Babylon. Those ancient time capsules were filed with small statues and scrolls as was their custom. At Bawa's place the albums and paintings on walls serve as a time capsule of Kenya, India, England - entire Asia. As I tasted Roti, I have been thinking of different smells and how easily I can be transported to a memory by certain smells. The smell of fresh bread baking takes me back to my days as a young boy. That was a wonderful time in my life, as my family made heaps of homemade bread!

Among my concerns is how little I bring to the blogging editorial sensibility. The magazine's market position is everything I am not: light, engaging, easy, original, sophisticated ... Context is crucial in online media, especially in weblogs. You never know where your online audience is coming from, and what background or context they have. More than 75,000 new blogs are launched each day. David Adams finds out who's talking - and who's listening Why bloggers blog: These Media Dragons seriously need a reality check

The Blog, The Press, The Media: Calculating the ROI of blogs – it’s not about the math
Media Dragon fuels Cold River distribution far and wide from Siberia to Kenya to Finland to Newt Ziland

One of the most frequently asked questions I get about blogs is how to justify them on a ROI basis. In many ways, blogs are like PR – you know there is a benefit but it can be tricky to quantify it. Unfortunately, all too many businesses won’t move forward until they “know the ROI of blogs”.

• Forrester analyst Charlene Li $1 million of revenue [An article from Intranets Today (see link below) by Martin White answers the question of ROI in the context of implementing content management, search solutions, etc. for corporate intranets. Opportunity Costs ; Bloggers are mostly saluting entrepreneur billionaire Mark Cuban for backing a new journalism site aimed at exposing securities fraud and corporate malfeasance Mark Cuban: Now that's investing in journalism ]
• · I just know in my case that we deliberately got all of our facts together, and then and only then did we go to the military We didn't rush to publish our Haditha story; From the Right" and "From the Left. David Broder's Friday afternoon chat: Mastio: "What was the last thing he wrote that really mattered?" (IO)
• · · DC report cites "multiple failures" in Rosenbaum case The fatal assault on New York Times reporter David E. Rosenbaum.; Jim Cramer has finally crossed the line from harmless entertainer to public embarrassment. Jim Cramer has become an embarrassment
• · · · William Powers complains that Ann Coulter has gotten endless coverage, "despite the fact that this is exactly the same show we've seen before, an ideological circus act indistinguishable from Michael Moore's and with exactly the same goal: cash. They're Easy: Where's the media outlet that's willling to ignore Coulter? ; I'm kind of obsessed with making advertising on the Internet more like content, JWT buys all the ad space on HuffPost home page for a week
• · · · · Sando: "A blog will expose a poor reporter more quickly" Using blogs to make newspaper reporters more relevant; Former DTH editor is W’s “blind scribe” "One Party Country" by Peter Wallsten and Tom Hamburger was ranked #513,432 on Amazon.com on Wednesday. After President Bush asked LATer Wallsten about his sunglasses, it moved to the 2,513th position. The book comes out next month. Wallsten's book climbs the charts after W's "shades" remark ; Bush Asks Peter Wallsten About Shades ; "When he got in your face about something, as he often did, his index finger jabbing at you for emphasis, you were on the receiving end of what my colleague Rem Rieder called 'the full Phil.' That was the passion talking, and Phil was passionate about a lot The untimely death of a towering figure
• · · · · · It's pretty hard for me to work up much sympathy for these whining Chandlers, although I certainly will support them for a Pulitzer Prize for Gall In the true spirit of the transparency that we all embrace, it's time for Neil Sedaka to issue a correction. Give Me a Break: It's pretty tacky for the Chandlers to start raising a ruckus ; The Trib's out with its fourth annual "50 Best Magazines" list. The Economist, which gets top ranking, is "in a class by itself as the best English-language newsweekly, with each issue unavoidably reminding readers of the weaknesses of Time, Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report." Vogue Knitting comes in at #50. The Trib says "the instructions are always reliable, and the designs are fabulous 50 BEST MAGAZINES ; AOL turns Netscape.com into a news aggregation site - Media Dragons at Netscape.com will link to news articles, then add original material to stories that are of most interest to the audience. Marrying the great editorial skill of humans and what systems and software ; "Many years ago, before anyone heard the term 'blog,' I came up with the idea of running multiple items in a single column." Not true, says Eric Zorn, who tells the Sun-Times scribe: "Rich, buddy, put away your horn. Let others do the tootin One observation for the price of one

Thursday, June 15, 2006

The Media Dragon blogger roams through films, web and culture, looking for prey ;-)

I think the Internet's been a tremendous tool in terms of breaking down the power structure of information and entertainment, particularly at a time when so much information and entertainment were in the hands of so few people, with multinationals owning everything.
-Dave Foley ( Stand-up comedy and poverty. Those were my two main endeavors. )

For many it's a dreaded time of the footbal era. Remember that inevitable sinking feeling as you go through the little you can blog about? Everyone's worried about whether Kewell will play. I am more worried about the other fans. Beyond our tickets to the Aussie matches, the market for swaps is fierce. First round matches for England are at least $1000 a ticket. At the budget end. ... The 2005 recipient of the FIFA World Player of Year award. Member of Barcelona FC, who won this year's Champions League. Next stop Germany and a possible sixth World Cup title for his national team Brazil. Regarding Ronaldinho

The Blog, The Press, The Media: Rogue Traders: The Time Traveller
When it's three o'clock in New York, it's still 1938 in London. - Bette Midler

Every day, experts bombard us with prognostications on Iraq, bird flu, Bolivian coca, global warming, and the fate of the Euro. Who checks their predictions?

• Are you a 'Dead Ringer'? How Accurate Are Your Pet Pundits? I'm so going to blog this... [Author and journalist Jack Marx rummages around in the world of current and not-so-current affairs, matters of cultural import and issues of no social consequence at all, strange thoughts, fringe theories and utterances commonly left unuttered. This goes all the way to the top; Place shifting in a 'new media landscape' ]
• · A few months ago, I signed up for an account with Text Link Ads. It took about 20 minutes. They sell small text ads on my site, split the revenue with me 50-50, and deposit my earnings directly into my PayPal account. This month I’ll make around $600 from them, possibly more if they sell some new ads during the month. And it’s totally passive. If I never tried this, I’d miss out on this easy extra income How to Make Money From Your Blog; How Selfish Are You?
• · · Create timeless content People still quote Aristotle today because his ideas have timeless value, even though he’s been dead for about 2300 years How to Build a High-Traffic Web Site (or Blog); Bugs in the anti-virus
• · · · Marketing reporter Julian Lee charts the latest tricks of the advertising trade. Start chanting the Blog mantra

Monday, June 12, 2006

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 ;-)

Sunday, June 11, 2006

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

Saturday, June 10, 2006

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

Friday, June 09, 2006

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

Thursday, June 08, 2006

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

Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Mal has a knack for discovering 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

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

The evil number is here 6/6/6 ... Have a safe 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

Monday, June 05, 2006

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

Sunday, June 04, 2006

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

Saturday, June 03, 2006

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

Friday, June 02, 2006

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

Thursday, June 01, 2006

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?

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