Monday, December 24, 2012

Good Riddance: Goodbye, Farewell, Adieu ( Michael D'Ascenzo )

Before I drop one of many balls in the air, I have to make a decision. There are so many good financial blogs and taxing writers with so many authentic voices. I read their words and I wonder where they come from ... It was destined to start blogging. Yes nothing but destiny could do that, knowing how averse to numbers I am ;-)When I started in 2002, a decade ago, there were no Murphys nor Carons, however, in 2013 we are all served well by many scholars, gentlemen and gentlewomen AMEN!

Czech our Dearest Treaure Island on the web Richard Murphy The bankers’ 12 days of Christmas and research by accounting site on matter sucha s tax employees ... An HMRC INSIDER has been jailed along with 14 others after he diverted £1.2m of tax payments into the accounts of his co-defendants ; Tax-Dodging Celebrities: Rich And Famous Move To Tax Havens

Speech by Commissioner of Taxation Michael D'Ascenzo at his farewell dinner, 29 November 2012 'It has been great and I have been fortunate'

What I leaned in NSW Parliament courtesy of Dr Cope: Governor Lachlan Macquarie created a new currency 199 years ago. To ease a shortage of fiat money in the fledgling NSW colony, he imported 40,000 Spanish dollars (£10,000 worth at the time) and cut the centres out of them to create the “holey dollar” worth five shillings and the “dump” worth 15 pence (1 shilling, 3 pence). Two centuries after Macquarie’s out-of-the-vault thinking, not just physical currencies but the payment systems that have evolved from them, such as cheques and even credit cards, are facing an existential challenge from new virtual currencies that have their origins in online worlds and social media but are now marching into reality...

CODA: SOURCES for serious readers on taxing times and other matters of concerns as the price of real civilisation is taxation: http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/ Richard Murphy ; Paul Caron is an Associate Dean of Faculty at University of Cincinnati College of Law, as well as a noted expert in tax law. Paul is a real intellectual with a great sense of humour just ingno his serious looking photo ;-) TaxProf Blog; From Taxing times to Paul Krugman to Freakonomics to the Consumerist, we compiled a list of the most influential (and useful) finance blogs out there and then asked some of the best-known bloggers to review one another's work Financial Blogs 25 Best

Almost everyone's pensions and savings now pass through the offshore havens that have sprung up over the last 50 years or so. These offshore havens are highly secretive and encourage wealthy individuals and transnational corporations to avoid paying taxes in the countries in which they operate Offshore watch

Law blogs, also known as blawgs, are plentiful these days. In fact, there are probably thousands to choose from and more appear each week. Taxing Times never reached the hights of the following blogs but gee we leaned lots of lessons from them :-) Top Dogs: All Legal and Taxing Eagles

On the first day of Xmas the Bankers gave to me sovereign debt and forced austerity,
On the 2nd day of Xmas the Bankers gave to me money laundering
On the 3rd day of Xmas the Bankers gave to me tax ha-vens
On the 4th day of Xmas the Bankers gave to me corruption served
On the 5th day of Xmas the Bankers gave to me gross lobbying
On the 6th day of Xmas the Bankers gave to me cheats that are lying
On the 7th day of Xmas the Bankers gave to me libor a rigging
On the 8th day of Xmas the Bankers gave to me bonuses milking
On the 9th day of Xmas the Bankers gave to me huge tax avoidance
On the 10th day of Xmas the Bankers gave to me interest payments taken
On the 11th day of Xmas the Bankers gave to me house price inflation
On the 12th day of Xmas the Bankers gave to me debt money creation
The bankers’ 12 days of Christmas

Saturday, August 25, 2012

Apple: Oranges are not the only fruit

Great business turns on a little pin.
If anyone had any question what hard core irony is exactly, consider this: Today is the one-year anniversary of the day Steve Jobs stepped down from his job as the charismatic and legendary leader of Apple, as well as the very moment that the company he co-founded has largely won an epic legal battle with Samsung over patent infringement ...

In a quote by Steve Jobs from Walter Isaacson’s biography of him, he famously said:

I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong. I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this. (Every bohemian Media Dragon has to read this book twice or else ;-)]

Apple's victory in a San Jose court gives it an upper hand in a global negotiation and being conducted via litigation - Apple got the best of Samsung in the first of their many patent trials to go to a U.S. jury. A nine-person panel came back to the federal courtroom in San Jose, Calif., Friday afternoon, after only three days of deliberation, and announced that the Korean electronics giant had infringed six of the seven patents for Apple mobile devices that were at issue in the trial. The verdict came with a $1.05 billion price tag, less than half of what Apple was looking for, but not too shabby, all the same. New blood at Apple are taking lots of leaves out of the pages of former role models such as Ken Segall who took the capital I from Imrich as they continue to cross the treacherous waters of Iron Curtains surrounding the industrial espionage and the digital Cold War Apple Gets $1 Billion From Samsung—Nothing Changes

I am grateful to many characters who created virtual space for my story of Cold River. The tale of escape across the Iron Curtain continues to flow in the digital currents because Michael Schaefer, Steve Jobs, Rober Scoble and Shel Israel cared to give me oxygen Deep One Degree of Separation Among Bloggers

Media Dragon Exclusive Scoop: As from XXV of VIII of MMXII there is no more question mark whether Apple will compare Oranges with other Sponsors ;-) UK's Orange Prize For Fiction Soon To Become Apple Prize For Fiction!

My daughters, Gabbie and Sasha, the Children of the Velvet Revolution are rather blessed as they have a role model like no other in Julia Gillard who is 27th most powerful woman in the whole world. With two year under her belt as the first female prime minister of Australia, Julia Gillard oversees a population of 22 million and a GDP of $926 billion. Julia Gillard (symbolic two sevens) I escaped on 7 of 7 so 2 sevens are a nice touch by the investigative Forbes ;-) And another Aussie Gail Kelly of Westpac fame is at number 60. Almost as powerful as Malchkeon who is numero 1 (ikk) ;-)

CODA It’s with you every moment of every day. It reminds you of little things that you sometimes forget, like calling friends on their birthdays and picking up the dry cleaning. It sleeps by your side, resting when you rest and working when you work. It even talks back once in a while. Ako Dobre poznas Tvoj ifone? But how well do you really know your iPhone?

Private equity firms claim they help create jobs and improve businesses, but that is not the whole truth How To Succeed in Business Without Adding Value

Saturday, June 30, 2012


A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step, so watch your step …

It is hard to believe that in June 2012 the Media Dragon turned Ten (10) a decade aka X It's also not difficult to argue that blogging has done more to spread knowledge and ideas than any other publishing innovation since the printing press. Here's a look at the most popular blogging platforms to help you get your ideas out there. It is all about picking bohemian culture's collective brain for bright ideas across art, media, technology, politics, science, sustainability, music and more: X - Stay-ay-ay just a little bit longer


There is an old Slavic YakcM saying – ‘Don’t approach a goat from the front, a horse from the back, or a fool from any side.’ Fools are plentiful around the world. Get your own free Blogoversary button!

Oscar Wilde famously once said, “There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.” LiteraryMinded was five in May

Be Fearless even at times of Controversial Confrontations Danger Room @ Media Dragon – Too Good To Be True

Everything you (n)ever wanted to know about the aftermath of cold war partying, and then some The past ten years have brought us many, many memories, some joy and some heartache, the move from Brissie back to Sydney. Everything that we have been through has caused us to grow into who we are today and I would not change anything … a difficult, middle-aged break up. My world was shattered, but not all was lost. You see, we can honestly say we are grateful for this experience as life has a way of surprising us with amazing grace and blessings ;-)

It is a curious aspect of human existence that tribes of people reserve their greatest hatred not for a truly foreign foe, living a great distance away. No – the nastiest contests are with your immediate neighbour, the bully at school or at work you really detest. You are likely to experience more of that in a big company than a smaller, founder-owned one. So one compelling reason why entrepreneurs win is that they are more efficient, wasting less energy on office politics. Like Kevin, we are big believers that having the focus to see beyond your fears can instigate change. When you take risks, embrace the unknown, and 'go for it', that is often when you get the breakthrough you've been looking for. Laugh at the theatre of the absurd performed by the truly rich and mad ;-) In a sane and truly fair-and-balanced, no-spin world, apologies combined with admissions of idiocy by Gina Rinehart would be a nickel a dozen. But, media-wise, we've got what we've got. A world in which Kerry Stokes’ son Ryan becomes in charge of the national library ...

Knowledge itself … turns out to be not only the source of the highest-quality power, but also the most important ingredient of force and wealth. Put differently, knowledge has gone from being an adjunct of money power and muscle power, to being their very essence. It is, in fact, the ultimate amplifier. This is the key to the powershift that lies ahead, and it explains why the battle for control of knowledge and the means of communication is heating up all over the world.

• Media Dragon is obsessed with Trivia - A mixture of news, analysis, rumour and links This blogger's mantra: Try eveything, even oysters at the Oyster Bar‎ ; Instances of instability are hard to predict, and carry with them the risk of becoming a self-fullfilling prophecy. However, the general characteristics described above and the indicators given at the end of this report can provide analysts with a better understanding of civil unrest and a solid framework through which the risk of instability can be incorporated into risk rating models Why people rebel: Analyzing the risk of political instability [ At the Huffington Post, Jason Linkins focuses like a laserbeam on the really important story; This is not HiaisPPPPenis]

• · This was the 23rd anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown. “The censors were in full whack-a-mole mode Blacking Out 180,000 Candles; sparks - alchemy of ideas • · · The "big picture" blog showcases the best in visual storytelling from events around the world and has had more than 10 million page views. The most popular post? "Japan marks 6 months since earthquake, tsunami." Sacbee celebrates 4th anniversary of The Frame photo blog It’s a global village out there. Whether in New York or Mumbai, London or Bangkok, people are being exposed to the same news, music, movies, and products regardless of geography. Our increasingly globalize culture has sparked a counter change in behavior - people are choosing local, unique experiences over the Hiltons and Big Macs They shop at street markets, enjoy food at local restaurants and stay at independently run hotels. Staying With Local Media Dragons ; There's something about the future that makes people shudder. It's daunting, unpredictable and coming at us at warp speed. art beat

• · · · The slow motion train wreck that is the Euro is grinding relentlessly on. Commentators are smugly, if not gleefully, announcing the currency’s imminent demise, enjoying their triumphant occupancy of the moral high ground; Yet Bachelorette falls in love in Prague

a • · · · · Ever wonder what sorrow tastes like? How about happiness, anger or even a sneeze? The people at Hoxton Street Monster Supplies of London have created a unique range of seasoning salts collected from none other than human tears. Each of the five salts have a distinctly different flavour... The Taste of Media Dragon Emotions; Language is a labyrinth of paths. You approach from one side and know your way about; you approach the same place from another side and no longer know your way about. In the actual use of expressions we make detours, we go by side-roads. We see the straight highway before us, but of course we cannot use it, because it is permanently closed. More speeches than you can imagine are doomed to fail by bad introductions...Instead of kindling fires of enthusiasm within the audience, the introductions lead to an epidemic outbreak of brain freeze.

Saturday, June 09, 2012

Kapital for Kommunism


While such behaviour by global corporations is perfectly legal, it is clear that they are also economically indefensible assignment of profits to subsidiaries in low-tax jurisdictions. Whenever people agree with me, I always feel I must be wrong

Australia and authoritarian China In the end, it appears money rules the world

Australia is doing well from its relationship with China, and seems to have few qualms about how its wealth is generated.

It is five years since Rudd promised to stop Australia becoming a quarry to Asia, yet Labor now urges more Chinese to come here as workers, students, and even rich investors. I suppose it is the logical move for Labor, a party that now specialises in promising much but doing little. At least such policies will add economic growth and revenue to help perpetuate its claim to economic expertise. China is indeed the easy way of obtaining wealth. In the end, money, money, money makes the world go around.

Kapital; [ China dilemma: Interview with Prof Zhiqun Zhu ; Tackling food insecurity ] • · Young “knowledge economy” workers moving to Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Detroit. It’s not just the cheap housing. Gritty Rust Belt cities, once left for dead, are on the rise -- thanks to young people priced out of cooler locales It’s a demand for decay. ; Next week, when I land in Kraków, in a country I have never visited, where people speak a language alien to mine, it’s their faces I’ll read, hoping they’re composed in a dialect of Esperanto I understand. Adam Zagajewski, a poet who has spent much of his life in Kraków, writes in “Faces” (Unseen Hand, 2011):

• · · · Now Anyone Can Publish A Book (And Traditional Publishers Struggle To Catch Up) "Publishers want to know what to publish. Readers want to know what to read. The traditional models are being smashed." What pushes your buttons?; One, we have choices now that we didn't have before, now that industry gatekeepers no longer control the sole means of distributing books in the digital-forward era. Two, publishing is a business, not an ideology," and as such, innovation shouldn't be frozen in place to keep brick-and-mortar booksellers afloat. And three, Amazon is not the great Satan Books: What's good for Amazon is good for writers, readers

• · · · · "Third only to the USA and Britain, it's set to become the biggest in the world as India's middle class continues to expand rapidly over the next 10 years. Keen to get a piece of the action, international publishers are flocking to set up offices in India, while many canny Indian publishers have already been reaping big rewards from backing emerging homegrown talent." Publishers Flock To India's Growing Book Market ; "The digital age has transformed the physical act of reading and will alter journalistic literary criticism as well. ... The full effect of these changes will have on book reviews isn't clear, but they're already shifting in ways that would both please and alarm Orwell." Could The Internet Save Book Reviews? (Of Course!)

dears — blithering uncles, drugged-out siblings, warring couples — posing for a painting, though they do not know it.

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Shadow Empires


Cold River: This book which you have been slaving away at for so long is also what has been keeping you going.

Nothing delights me more than seeing the thin veneer of literary civility collapse into mob hostility during the Q and A sessions. For many festival-goers, the overflow or viewing room may as well be called the groaning room, for the difficulty it presented older patrons getting in and out of the ground-hugging deckchairs. Some had given up trying to get out, preferring to rest their eyes before tackling the next book ... According to Andrew Tink this year more than 80,000 visitors attended one of the festival's 300 events, showcasing the works of 400 authors, including 50 international writers. Former Bulletin's editor, Peter Coleman seemed to be everywhere. Antony Loewenstein renewed, refreshed and revitalised audiences with a topic few pay much attention now Afganistan The Sydney Writers Festival

What happens when you finish a book, or a symphony, or the last painting in an exhibition, or any major project you have been working on for two or three years? Do you feel relieved, triumphant, blessed with great expanses of free time? Or is the blessing a mixed one, tinged with other feelings – of loss, regret, even sadness?

Perhaps the most famous description of finishing a book comes in Memoirs of My Life, the autobiography of Edward Gibbon, author of the six-volume History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. “It was on the day, or rather the night, of the 27th June, 1787, between the hours of eleven and twelve, that I wrote the last lines of the last page in a summer-house in my garden,” Gibbon tells us, before describing his feelings: “I will not dissemble the first emotions of joy on the recovery of my freedom, and perhaps the establishment of my fame. But my pride was soon humbled, and a sober melancholy was spread over my mind by the idea that I had taken my everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion, and that, whatsoever might be the future date of my history, the life of the historian must be short and precarious.” The passage is made memorable by the extraordinary precision of time and place. We are given some details; imagination supplies others ; Harry Eyres All of us can recite a few one-liners from famous movies, but what is more surprising is that many of us recall the same quotes. What makes a particular movie line memorable? Here’s Looking at You, Kid

Developments in British phone-hacking scandal The notion of 'a new low' is in fact bottomless: Watson book calls Murdoch empire a "shadow state"

The phone hacking scandal that has engulfed Rupert Murdoch’s British publications has thrown light on the methods used by some journalists to get stories, and raised important questions about what redress citizens (and even politicians) have when they are spied upon by the media. While the Leveson inquiry is likely to make findings on the extent of the phone hacking, and to recommend sanctions, how should Australian journalism deal with the issues of what’s fair in the pursuit of news? Mark Colvin, Robert Manne and David McKnight explore the options. They talked to Mark Colvin and Mark asked his own questions as Radio National’s Richard Aedy was sick. - Mary Ellen Field - Elle McPherson

Former Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell has told the Leveson Inquiry how having her phone hacked made her feel as if she was going "slightly mad". The phone-hacking scandal that shook Rupert Murdoch's global media empire and hit the heart of the British government began quietly on a Monday in 2005, when aides to the British royal family gathered in a palace office to air suspicions that their voicemail messages had been intercepted. Seven years and dozens of arrests later, the day after the latest criminal charges were brought, information from the police, prosecutors and investigators indicated on Wednesday that the investigations are likely to go on for years, with no obvious end in sight. Rupert Murdoch sowed the seeds of the phone hacking scandal that has tarnished his reputation by forcing Britain's most respected newspapers into "a Faustian bargain" … Perhaps the central revelation of the phone-hacking scandal is that, when it come to News Corp., the notion of 'a new low' is in fact bottomless

• Murdoch's Black Widow The Princess of Darknes ; News Corp runs like a medieval court, with princes falling in and out favour [Rocky' producer to make Rebekah Brooks film about the famed news exec's downfall Rebekah Brooks née Wade; born 27 May 1968 ; The revelation of close ties between Mr Straw and Mrs Brooks came a day after the latter, the former chief executive of News International, was charged with perverting the course of justice for allegedly conspiring to conceal evidence from police investigating phone hacking and corruption of public officials by journalists. Straw swapped regular ‘gossip’ with Brooks ; David Cameron is a good ally to have in a tight spot: that is one obvious conclusion to be drawn from his performance over the last 50 minutes in the House of Commons. The relationship between politicians and the media has been too close for decades…look for one moment at the number of meetings that Tony Blair and Gordon Brown had with Rupert Murdoch when they were prime minister The relationship between politicians and the media ; ; Developments in British phone-hacking scandal]

• · Dial M For Murdoch: News Corporation and the Corruption of Britain" is among the more provocatively titled books about Rupert Murdoch, the controversial head of global news conglomerate News Corp, owner of FOX News, the Wall Street Journal and other media brands. Dial M For Murdoch:; Phone hacking scandal reference lists ; Four private investigators jailed for 'blagging' - ; In April 1987, Rees was arrested on suspicion of the murder of Daniel Morgan but was released without charge. Jonathan Rees

• · · you Must Have Something To Hide

The Sydney Writers Festival starts in earnest today, so I thought I’d do a bit of a preview. Earnest is a good word because the festival’s artistic director, Chip Rolley, is a man interested in the Serious Issues Sydney Writers Festival; for those who unironically believe in feelings and stuff and are willing to put in a bit of time, such fine ladies and gentlemen are directed to proceed to Poetry in Cathedral Cave

• · · · In the vast universe of blogs, only a select few can be named the best. And that decision is now up to you. The original Weblog Awards are now in their twelfth year, and it's time to decide who is Bloggie-winning material. Who will your vote go to? The Rise and Rise of the Bohemian Blogger; Promise. The key differences between 2011 and 2012 are: – Consumers have fallen out of love with brands! There is a strong ‘us vs. them’ mentality

– Facebook and Twitter find their places in our lives – the relationships settle, cement and rebalance

– Technology dominates the dialogue – this is the first place that people go to talk about change. Expectations are sky high

– Tablets and smart phones tip into mass, mainstream use (although there is a heavy city bias here)

– People are desperately looking to fill gaps in their day. Free time is no longer a commodity, it is a vacuum The Key Insights for 2012: What do your customers think the year ahead is going to hold?

• · · · · You probably don't know as much as you think you do. When put to the test, most people find they can't explain the workings of everyday things they think they understand. Don't believe me? Find an object you use daily (a zipper, a toilet, a stereo speaker) and try to describe the particulars of how it works. You're likely to discover unexpected gaps in your knowledge. In psychology, we call this cognitive barrier the illusion of explanatory depth. It means you think you fully understand something that you actually don't Do You Know What You Don't Know? ; The report has a US military focus but includes some chapters around security issues that may be of interest. 2012 Global Forecast: Risk, Opportunity and the Next Administration

• · · · · · The moral to the story – its really hard to do. How to delete yourself from the Internet; The distance between any two people is shrinking as the number of network connections continues to proliferate. I’m sure you’ve heard at one point or another, that the distance between two people in an offline world is six degrees. It’s a Small World After All: The Top Global Web Trends ; One way to dig up details on a rival is to mine its link-building strategy. You want to look at inbound links, which are links coming to that website directly from outside sources. NB: You can do the same kind of thing using Google. A Clever Way to Spy on Your Competitors

Thursday, March 15, 2012



Sometime in 1979 or 1980, a new phrase entered the Australian lexicon. Originating somewhere in the fertile imaginations of the Sydney legal or accounting professions, the evocative expression bottom of the harbour became known first in business circles, and then in the broader community, as a jocular euphemism for what later was determined to be the most formidable series of frauds committed in Australia in recent years. Twenty years later another phrase invaded the lexicon packed in Packer's Lunch tale . The Wickenby brand has been increased in the light of the Judge Bruce Lander founding that ANZ Vanuatu's customer information was transmitted to the parent bank's digital database in Australia, known as the global information warehouse (GIW). Therefore, the two notices to produce information sent to ANZ under s264 of the Income Tax Assessment Act sovereignty did not infringe Vanuatu's ; Two recent Project Wickenby-related court cases have reinforced community expectations that serious tax fraud should be treated sternly and appropriately, Tax Commissioner Michael D'Ascenzo said today. "Two appeal cases last week in the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal have resulted in successful outcomes for Project Wickenby, with even tougher sentences imposed and reaffirming the seriousness of tax fraud and evasion"

Over the barrel Media Dragons Under Fire
Bloggers Under Fire "tracks instances of bloggers , Internet users being threatened, arrested, harassed, harmed Bloggers Under Fire: "As activists and ordinary citizens around the world are increasingly making use of the Internet to express their opinions and connect with others, many governments are increasing their surveillance and censorship capabilities and taking legal or extrajudicial actions against bloggers and social media users. The threats to netizens are increasing. The Committee to Protect Journalists found in 2008 that 45% of all imprisoned journalists were arrested for activities conducted online. In their 2012 press freedom barometer, Reporters Without Borders cited 123 incidents of imprisoned "netizens" in twelve countries. Though the motivations of governments vary from country to country, the goal—to silence "threatening" voices—is the same.

EFF supports the principles of free expression laid out in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and believes that those principles must extend online. While our domestic work focuses on helping bloggers in the United States understand their legal rights, our international work focuses on the legal and bodily threats to Internet users in countries around the world. To that end, we have partnered with Global Voices Online's Threatened Voices project, which tracks individual cases of bloggers under threat or detention, to help shed light on this global phenomenon."


Apart whilst still a part ; Writing, offered a form of therapy [Am I crazy? Perhaps.
However, three things generally happen as a result of their questions:
1. I learn in the process, usually in the pursuit of the correct answer
2. My perspective shifts and changes
3. We both end up with more questions, built on a rich set of shared experiences.
Three reasons why asking risky questions reduces risk ; The Oxford University undergraduate can currently speak 11 languages - English, Greek, German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Afrikaans, French, Hebrew, Catalan and Italian It's not all Greek to this student ; In contemporary media's never-ending mission to remind us how unexceptional our own children are, BBC News recently introduced us to a personable young super achiever named Alex Rawlings; Claims that it's all Greek to minister George Souris ]
• · Zeljko Ranogajec annually bets $1billion Secrecy surrounds his global operation He says his wealth a big exaggeration ; In 2007, Punting Ace.com estimated he outlaid $500 million on Australian racing every year, and accounted for nearly 5 per cent of total tote turnover across the country. ''That gives Zelyko essential control of tote prices in this country … he plays percentages and find [or creates] value. He is a numbers man, through and through.'' And he thrives on rebates ; Certainly they lived up to a personal interpretation of the title that came to pass at the Bondi Icebergs, the pool of turf wisdom. Warwick, Timmy and Lofty are life members of the Punt-Drunks Protective Association and Neil, the Betfair player, is perhaps more cerebral without the pokies bent
• · · We've all been there: trapped in pointless meetings where participants are afraid to speak honestly. We twiddle our thumbs through diplomatic PowerPoint presentations, waiting for the meeting to end so that the real conversations-which usually happen in private-can begin. 3 techniques to help coworkers at all levels interact more directly: break meetings into smaller groups; designate a 'Yoda'; teach 'caring criticism' Candor criticism teamwork ; By breaking down a meeting into its component parts and applying one of management's most recognized models, the author turns the art of a meeting into a science and offers constructive steps for that will turn any meeting into a true, value-creating exercise Smart workplace conversation: the knowledge economy's (new) organizational value chain ; The relentless "always on" work culture created by modern technology and job insecurity mean that most people (80%) continue to work despite being ill, with damaging effects on productivity and health Technology encourages work presenteeism claims research
• · · · The sum of virtues, values and traits equals good character, which, in addition to competence and commitment, is one of the 3 ingredients that make a leader effective and respected Developing leadership character ; Every leader needs to have smooth, productive relationships with those around him or her. But what makes for a rewarding relationship - and its opposite - has long been unclear or unknown until now. Neuroscience and the link between inspirational leadership and resonant relationships ; Specific skills executives should cultivate to tackle the challenges of the diversity of employee groups, technology and collaborative organisational structures: code switching between cultures; wielding digital influence; dividing attention deliberately 3 skills every 21st century manager needs
• · · · · Technology is shaping the way we live and interact with each other, but as it becomes an increasing central in daily life, researchers have begun to wonder about the affect it has on the happiness and emotional development of the next generation. Unfortunately, according to a recent study from Stanford University, it's not looking good... they're less happy and socially comfortable than their less connected peers ; IT'S a clock so accurate you need only reset it once every 14 billion years ; Days away from being billionaires, Gina Rinehart locks trust
for half a century
• · · · · · Judith Lucy is always glad when the new year starts. For many reasons, the festive season is, as she says, ''as enjoyable as an incontinent relative''. On a purely physical level, she might have one or two alcoholic drinks, so there are the hangovers to contend with. Life as a Bondi Beach babe; Judith Lucy ; What’s the meaning of monsters? They’re a moral compass: testing our ethics, shaping our politics, spurring science, and piquing our curiosity... Moral compass

Wednesday, January 11, 2012



From Paul Krugman to Freakonomics to the Consumerist, we compiled a list of the most influential (and useful) finance blogs out there and then asked some of the best-known bloggers to review one another's work The 25 Best Financial Blogs

Where can you find the smartest, savviest takes on the markets and the economy? Financial Blogs: Still The Best of the Bunch

Today, I’d like to share with everyone blogs that I read and think you should check out. For each blog, I will provide details on what is great about it so that you can understand better which blogs might be best for you. Best Economic & Financial Insight Blog

Monday, January 09, 2012



Dragon years in the 12-year Chinese zodiac are typically popular for births because the icon of China's emperors symbolizes power and wealth …

This is my personal blog. It does not reflect the views of any organisation I work for, have previously worked for, or may work for in the future. In my day job I put crumbs of bread on the table. Here I comment on the bread and the table. Most people understand that difference… This year is the year of the Media Dragon and it is not difficult to argue that blogging has done more to spread scary knowledge and even scarier ideas than any other publishing innovation since the printing press. Printer and photocopier salesmen of the late 20th century frequently peddled their wares with the pitch that a personal printing device could turn anyone—schools, neighborhood associations, churches, individuals with a message to get out—into small time publishers. Yet the revolution they hinted at didn't come about on their watch

A brilliant article in Quarterly Conversation offers a fresh take on Lev Loseff‘s much-discussed Joseph Brodsky: A Literary Life. Marbled with impressive insights, it represents the finest standards of literary journalism, and should establish a new highpoint for the rapidly disappearing genre … let me dissemble no further, dear reader, I myself wrote the review ; Joseph Brodsky

Watch Out: Year after year, these literary gems and websites deliver the goods Feeling rejected? Read these
Take heart, rejected writers everywhere!
This is too delicious to pass up: Flavorwire has 10 nasty rejection letters to eminent writers. (We wrote about famous rejection letters some time ago here.)
Here’s a 1912 rejection for Gertrude Stein by publisher A.C. Fifield:
Dear Madam,
I am only one, only one, only one. Only one being, one at the same time. Not two, not three, only one. Only one life to live, only sixty minutes in one hour. Only one pair of eyes. Only one brain. Only one being. Being only one, having only one pair of eyes, having only one time, having only one life, I cannot read your M.S. three or four times. Not even one time. Only one look, only one look is enough. Hardly one copy would sell here. Hardly one. Hardly one.”
Sincerely Yours,
A.C. Fifield
Here’s another for the manuscript that eventually became Nobel laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer‘s The Estate and The Manor, rejected by Knopf editor Herb Weinstock in 1959:
It’s Poland and the rich Jews again.
With endless editorial work and endless serpentine dealings with Moshe Spiegel, the willing translator-adapter, this might be turned into an English novel nearly as good and nearly as salable as The Family Moskat. I honestly do not think it worth Knopf’s time and effort … Personally, I’d reject.
"You are scum."
Have to agree with the Guardian Books Blog on this one, which isn’t technically a rejection letter. It’s Hunter S. Thompson‘s letter to his biographer, William McKeen, following the biography’s publication in 1991. It opens: “McKeen, you shit-eating freak.”



• The Guardian blog noted that McKeen now has the letter, framed, on his wall: That’s one way to deal with rejection [It’s January 6th – the epiphany. According to folklore, La Befana visited all the little children in Italy last night, bringing toys and candy to the good ones, and lumps of coal to the bad ones. (Yeah, I know. We get a kindly fat man dressed in red, and Italian kids literally get an old hag. On the plus side, they get to live in Italy, so don’t feel too sorry for them). While I search my home for some lumps of black carbon (surely she wouldn’t forget Italian Americans, right?), you enjoy these links. According to Italian folklore, ; Good King Wenceslas In Prague, Father Christmas is known as Mikulas and he’s usually flanked by the devilish Cert and an angel. According to Czech folklore]
• · One of the best blogs out there on white-collar crime is the White Collar Crime Prof Blog ; Annual blog extravaganza features 25 fresh picks, from politics and pop culture to travel, tech and beyond The Time ; Some tech blogs are fueled mostly by snark and rumor. AllThingsD, by contrast, is powered by old-fashioned hard work. A Web-based spin-off of the Wall Street Journal's swanky annual conference, it features Journal tech columnist Walt Mossberg, ace investigative reporter Kara Swisher and a growing lineup of writers who specialize in meaty, dependable coverage of consumer gear, Web trends, mobile communications, business computing and more The Best Blogs of 2011
• · · This is not good enough Media Dragon Seen As too Bohemian rather than Antipoedian ; Kim's writing is insightful, informed and topical. She also has an acerbic wit and is not afraid to criticise the media in Australia The news with nipples
• · · · The mainstream media isn’t giving us the information we need. It is giving us what they think is good enough for people like us, gathered by people that mainstream media organisations regard as competent; but this is not the same thing at all. George Megalogenis; Kevin Donnelly has written for ABC’s The Drum for the last two years, regularly warning us of the dangers posed by: the Gillard government, poor people, Islam and textspeak. He’s a former teacher as well as serving as senior Liberal Kevin Andrew’s chief of staff. Most of the time he’s inspired derisive snerking from me. Occasionally he’ll draw a ‘yoooou idiot’ (articulate, I know) from a piece. Usually, however, I’m content to leave him alone. That is until today’s piece, in which he advocates that the Bible be included in the National Curriculum. It is so bone-headed, wilfully ignorant and petulant that I just had to say something.; THE competition watchdog has banned imported biscuits which use logos featuring a koala, gum leaves and an Australian flag to disguise their Indian origin Ozdownunder Super Sandwich Cream Cookies ; The land of surfing, barbies... and dope ;
• · · · · Alexa Global Traffic Rank, and U.S. Traffic Rank from both Compete and Quantcast."*#*" ; E leventh Annual Weblog Awards
• · · · · · thebattleoftheblogs ; Sara Shaw and Sam Jewler met while living at Occupy D.C. in McPherson Square. They have been dating for six weeks and even moved in together, sharing a tent on the north side of the park 99% of Love; Collection

Friday, January 06, 2012

"The doers cut a path through the jungle, the managers are behind them sharpening the machetes. The leaders find time to think, climb the nearest tree, and shout 'Wrong jungle!' Find time to climb the trees."
-Peter Maxwell, director of the Leadership Trust, writing in the "Guardian", 6 October 1999

Now it's time for real cultural, ethical, governance and management reform at HMRC
Dec 162011
A little over a year ago UK Uncut began its protests, and the world looked on, bemused. Unsurprisingly, I wasn’t: I knew they’d hit the zeitgeist, although they and Occupy have done so in ways I could never have imagined. It’s been my pleasure to support both movements in the last year.

Tomorrow is a mass day of action by UK Uncut. Vodafone remains a rightful target. And the pressure is working. As the Mail reports:

Deals struck with the tax authorities to wipe billions of pounds off company bills are to be investigated by a former high court judge.

Sir Andrew Park will scrutinise the tax settlements of ten companies – including Vodafone and Goldman Sachs – following allegations that agreements were made between the firms and Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to write off unpaid tax bills.

That’s the good news.
And it’s the right news we need to hear.
But we need do more than that. I’ve been interviewed a number of times this week on this them and my message is always the same. HMRC has been corrupted from the top down.

It’s been corrupted by neoliberal corporate thinking. It’s been corrupted into thinking taxpayers are customers. They’re not.

It’s been corrupted as a result into thinking that tax law is just a contract for services. It’s not.
It’s been corrupted into thinking that a contract can be varied by consent of the parties, so the operation of tax law is optional at its whim. It’s not.

It’s been corrupted by people who do not know about tax but do come, especially in the case of some non-execs, from environments where tax abuse is normal, and even rewarded.

It’s been corrupted by a cult of personality around Hartnett, that he came to believe.
It’s been corrupted by cowardly politicians who do not believe in the state and its right to tax.
And it has to be reclaimed, from the top down for the people of this country so it does its job properly.
So that it collects as much as possible of the missing £95 billions that could pay for the services we need.
So that it creates a level playing field so that all businesses can compete in this country knowing their competition can be expected to pay tax and not undercut them by tax abusing, unlike now where a deliberate competitive advantage is given to the tax cheats.

So that it is seen to offer fair play, and have enough staff to ensure that this is seen to be done in the communities it serves and supports.

So that never again is it captured by big business in its interests.
So that never again does it try to avoid its duty to parliament.
So that never again does it serve the interests of its board.
This can be done.
The question is – will it be done?
The answer is key to our economic, social and cultural future in this country.
It’s a choice between prosperity, ethics and fairness and living in a criminogenic state

Friday, July 29, 2011



They both seemed to have arrived there with an extraordinary innocence as though a series of pure accidents had driven them together, so many accidents that at last they were forced to conclude that they were for each other. They had arrived with clean hands, or so it seemed, after no traffic with the merely curious and clandestine.
-Tender is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald (Book Cover Love)



Does Facebook spell the end of human interaction as we know it? Or is it just bad news for psychics, dating services, and women’s magazines? Henry Alford hopes some of Mark Zuckerberg’s romance-spotting superpower will rub off on the rest of us.

Get Outta River 'Where the River and Dogs Runs
It is no exaggeration to say that Trixie was the hand of God for Koontz. He recounts his difficult childhood, his dysfunctional father, and the many challenges that he had to overcome on the road to becoming a world-famous novelist. But with that fame came commercial caution: telling stories in the same old familiar way and a consequent dulling of his creativity.

Like all great writers, Koontz has the ability to transform the ordinary--his daily life with Trixie--into the funny, the moving, and the sublime. Trixie’s accidentally gashing him while they play fetch turns into one of the great set pieces of medical comedy as Koontz ends up in the emergency room with a lacerated hand. On another occasion Trixie’s saying “baw” for “ball”--straining to say it, but saying it nonetheless--becomes a memorable recounting of all of our attempts to communicate with beings from another species. And Koontz’s simply watching Trixie move, her lithe golden body shimmering and flashing in the sun, takes on the quality of the divine as he expresses what so many of us have subconsciously thought about our own dogs: “The more I watched her, the more she seemed to be an embodiment of that greatest of all graces we now and then glimpse, from which we intuitively infer the hand of God.”
Then came Trixie. With “baws” and balls, with warning him of fires and intruders in the house, with humor, with stoicism, and with unflinching love, she restored his diminished sense of wonder and impelled him toward taking new risks with narratives, themes, and characters, the very ones millions of us now enjoy.“Some dog, huh?” he says. “Some dog, yes,” we must agree, also concurring when he adds, “The only significant measure of your life is the positive effect you have on others.” For all of us who have had our lives made better by our dogs, or for that matter by any loving being, A Big Little Life is a welcome reminder of the power of love to turn our hearts into mirrors, reflecting compassion back into the universe--as Trixie most surely did for Koontz and Koontz now does for us.


Trixie ; [Like Bessie of Cold River fame, Trixie is unique. She is a literary dog Two Girls ; Cold River tells the oldest story in the world, a story familiar to anyone who has read the Old Testament, Greek myths, or Shakespeare's tragedies. It's the story of full-force collision between an older generation's best intentions and a younger generation's intractable resistance ]
• · Faye Dunaway had a great line in the movie Chinatown. She said:
I don’t get tough. My lawyers do ; The economic blog Naked Capitalism has a fascinating post looking at some breathtakingly murky company business, in an investigation, via Panama, of New Zealand. We have known about New Zealand's role as a secrecy jurisdiction for some time, but have not yet researched it in any detail. That time will be coming soon enough. Before reading that post, take a look at this company registered at 9/22 Curran Street (pictured): Trillion Private Wealth Management Ltd. What does it offer? Well, for one thing, "protecting" your assets
• · · 10 Worst Horrible Movie bosses!; The death of News of the World is Rupert Murdoch’s current big trouble — but just the latest in decades of big trouble that haven’t noticeably harmed him. While his current scrape may look bad at first glance, chances are good he’ll escape unscathed yet again It's like Al Capone getting caught for extortion instead of tax fraud Welcome to the world of Nineteen Eighty Four: The U.K. scandal and Australia Is an independent inquiry and an independent regulator needed in Australia? In his brilliant novel Nineteen Eighty Four, George Orwell depicts a nightmare world of the future. The State is all-powerful
• · · · Simon Johnson, a leading U.S.-based intellectual, has written an excellent piece in the New York Times with the above headline. It concerns an issue we've written about several times in the past: that the tax system in many countries has encouraged a bias towards debt, rather than equity financing. The resulting indebtedness made the financial system more dangerous, and we are now finding out the consequences of this. The simple reason is that borrowing is, in many cases, tax-deductible, whereas equity financing is not. So instead of raising money through the stock market, say, they borrow it. And banks, of course, are among those over-borrowers. And this creates risks to society - a form of economic pollution. Johnson notes:
It is also ironic — perhaps even bizarre — that while we try to constrain how much banks borrow through regulation, we give them strong incentives to borrow more through the tax code ; What is your local or regional council doing?
• · · · · Inspiration ; Gooogle Loove ; Ah
• · · · · · I don’t know of any history of pulp fiction publishing in Australia in the sixties and early seventies 80s yes; The planet's booming population is a mega trend reshaping everything. Over coming decades our growing presence and rampant appetite for resources will shake up every form of life on earth. Writing for The Guardian, Robert Engelman paints a grim picture of what population acceleration means for the planet... Population Acceleration

Monday, April 11, 2011



I used to be an atheist until I realized I am God

Now he discovered that secret from which one never quite recovers, that even in the most perfect love one person loves less profoundly than the other
-Thornton Wilder, The Bridge of San Luis Rey

Precise in focus yet epic in scope and ambition , Mr. Bezmozgis’s novel takes place over the half-year the members of the Krasnansky family spend in limbo outside Rome, awaiting visas that will permit their passage to North America. The temporary Italian setting has been appropriately chosen, for it represents a passage between two worlds, much like the state of the Krasnanskys themselves, who have left their status as outsiders in one land to become outsiders in another. And in representing three generations of this family, Mr. Bezmozgis is able to condense more than a half-century of the pre-glasnost Jewish experience. an oasis of culture ;

Lives of Others We're all spies now: Life's voyeuristic twist
Surveillance is now a multibillion-dollar global industry, and an increasingly pervasive part of our daily lives.


IN THE late 1940s, George Orwell wrote his nightmarish novel 1984, depicting a future world where an all-seeing but unseen tyrant, Big Brother, ruled over his citizens by watching their every move. In this paranoid dystopia, surveillance was purely a ''top-down'' affair, a government tool for controlling the hapless masses: privacy was a crime, the Thought Police punished dissent and history was rewritten daily for political ends.
More than half a century later, it is worth considering how Orwell's fictional prediction weighs up against reality. If Big Brother's gaze dominated that imagined future, who's watching over us now?


Bezpecnost KGB and Stasi of the Modern Ages [ Bond Stories; Thesis ]
• · Readers Digest; Congratulations! Your richly imagined novel – or memoir, or vampire trilogy – is about to be published. But here’s some tough love: Don’t expect glory, or even respect. You’ll get none A Sea of Words - Cold River Words; Grief is a lonely yet enticing place. Burrow in too far, however, and sorrow becomes all you know. Write about it and risk being branded a solipsist The Solitude of Grief
• · · MOST STORIES ABOUT inequality in America miss an important point: rising disparities are not just about investment bankers versus auto workers. They’re about entire communities of “winners” and “losers.” And as these communities continue to diverge, the idea of “an American economy” looks more and more like an anachronism How income inequality is fracturing our economic landscape ; An ambitious study, detailed here for the first time, finds that the super-wealthy—of all people—are isolated, unhappy, and brimming with anxieties. Why Secret Fears of the Super-Rich
• · · · We know all the old arguments about the faults of the new media. But as coverage of the Egyptian uprising shows, the digital landscape is also alive with possibilities. We should make our peace with it now–while we have a choice. Learning to Love the (Shallow, Divisive, Unreliable) New Media ; Those who talked loudest about the ideals of the “new” organization, as it turned out, had the least love in their hearts. How many tons of pig iron bars can a worker load onto a rail car in the course of a working day?
• · · · · Our motto: "I'm okay, you're okay—in small doses." Hell is other people at breakfas ; Unhappiness, in other words, may be a bit like second-hand smoke The Poison of Unhappiness
• · · · · · But literary journals — a long-tail publishing phenomenon before the Internet made other niche offerings accessible — are thriving. Literary Journals Thrive, on Paper and Otherwise; Maybe a rising tide does lift all boats. Or maybe you’re a heartless crank for thinking so. Joseph Stiglitz v-v Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%

Monday, February 28, 2011



Life's meaning has always eluded me and I guess it always will. But I love it just the same.
-E.B. White, letter to Mary Virginia Parris

Wikileaks can't ethically dump anything it feels like, as a publisher there are constraints and limits There is nothing to do today except bow our heads and hope and pray and send our love These three books are essential reading for anyone who really wants to understand the WikiLeaks phenomenon: Rate Inside WikiLeaks; Underground; Inside Julian Assange's war on secrecy: Inside WikiLeaks

Throwing the book at the WikiLeaks story

-Has WikiLeaks information served humanity?

Galaxy: Anna Bligh approval up 35 per cent Exotic Delights- By a Nose
To expand the mindset, Kevin Roberts keeps a look out for anything far out on the edge, thoughts that run a mile from the ordinary and thoughts that look to the brighter side of life and was quite taken by Encyclopedia of the Exquisite – An Anecdotal History of Elegant Delights for its many gems

Running a global creative enterprise throws out challenges that travel across strategy, innovation, imagination, operation and execution (on a slow day!).

The most satisfying work is voracious for unconventional blends of insight and ingenuity. To expand the mindset, I keep a look out for anything far out on the edge, thoughts that run a mile from the ordinary, thoughts that can connect disparate strands, and thoughts that look to the brighter side of life.

Literary morsels are good for this, and I was quite taken by Encyclopedia of the Exquisite – An Anecdotal History of Elegant Delights by Jessica Kerwin Jenkins. This delectable compendium weaves curiosity, obscurity, luxury and story to uncover small pleasures down through time.


Subjects range extraordinarily; Ach Anka Captain Bligh [The strong feeling in NSW is that any change will do - we want people to think about what kind of change they want Real change but little difference in campaign slogans ; Reports that public service jobs will be at risk if the coalition wins government at the NSW election in March are "rubbish", an opposition spokesman says. "(NSW Opposition Leader Barry O'Farrell) has said we will need more public servants, not less, to fix NSW so the report is rubbish," the spokesman said on Sunday. But the man behind the sacking of more than 50,000 public servants during the Greiner and Fahey Liberal state governments, Garry Sturgess, and the head of former prime minister John Howard's department, Max "the Axe" Moore-Wilton, are both advising Mr O'Farrell, Fairfax media claimed on Sunday. NSW opposition denies it would cut jobs ; Opinions flow from his tongue in torrents, aided and abetted by a pair of hands in constant movement. Lunch with ... Mark Textor, strategist ; O'Farrell is now like a bloke on a bicycle at the top of the last hill before the finish line. He does not need to pedal much, just grip the handlebars, refrain from lairish behaviour and ignore cheers or taunts from the kerb. O'Farrell will be made to earn it ; Political strategists Bruce Hawker and Grahame Morris, along with program host (and politics wonk) Janine Perrett, will try to answer some of these questions in Sky's newest offering, So, You Want to Be a Politician? Reality show to revel in political dark arts ]
• · The NSW Liberals kicked off their election campaign while angry protesters screamed their concerns over party plans. THE Coalition's $400 million household energy rebate plan was quickly derided by Labor yesterday as 'Fairness for Families-lite ; Forget the vision, just smell the pork
• · · "We don't renegotiate our commitments, we deliver on them," said Mr Albanese, adding that Mr O'Farrell might have a change of heart. NSW Labor election strategy 'destroyed': Opposition; The time will come very shortly where the leader of the opposition and the Liberal Party will have to make a decision whether they are going to simply continue to oppose every health reform that we deliver for patients or whether they will act in the national interest to back this plan Despite talk of renewal, unions maintain stranglehold on NSW Labor
• · · · No devil dealing with the Greens in NSW election - Barry O'Farrell ; Labor's plan: let's just make it all up
• · · · · In terms of national success honesty and transparency do not necessarily bring reward Corruption and economic success can cohabit; Many on the move are young, smart and searching for a dream that has evaporated. In Southern Europe, A whole generation - the best educated in the history of the Mediterranean - is fearing for their future. Says one young jobless women with a law degree, a masters, and fluency in five languages: I have everything except a death certificate...
• · · · · · When speeding laws say one thing and a large majority of people demonstrate they have a different view, it’s time to recalibrate Let the people decide how much; This year the first of the baby boomers will hit retirement. They’re the wealthiest generation in history, the first mass market, and in many ways the main shapers of the world as we know it. The Media Dragon Generation is coming of age

Monday, February 07, 2011



Only one man in a thousand is a leader of men -- the other 999 follow women.
-Groucho Marx

The NSW state elections are on the 26th March. If you believe in the old two party paradigm you have the choice of total incompetence on one side and no policies on the other. A salutory reminder that there are other options, greens independents etc. Multi party governments work quite successfully in other parts of the globe. For instance Swedens multi party government has given rise to the most social and economic success story in Europe.
‘Politicians are the same all over – they promise to build a bridge where there is no river’ Time to get political...

NSW Legislative Assembly speaker Richard Torbay backs the People's Parliament NSW People's Parliament Initiative

A tale is told of a man in Paris during the upheaval in 1948, who saw a friend marching after a crowd toward the barricades. Warning him that these could not be held against the troops, that he had better keep way, he received this reply, " I must follow them. I am their leader."
-A Lawrence Lowell, 1856-1943, President of Harvard University,Conflicts of Principle
Whither the revolution?

New Year, same politics? Stopping that sinking feeling Quick Sand: You can't explain real estate bubbles by zoning controls
The Age reports that Wendell Cox’s Demographia has released a study showing Melbourne to be 321st on a list of 325 most affordable world property markets. Decreasing land taxes is the real villain creating land and housing bubbles …

In other words, we’re almost the world’s most unaffordable market: almost the world’s dearest city. Incredibly, London, with a population of 7.6 million is said to be cheaper than the city of Geelong which is home to a population of only 200,000 souls. Amongst more important things I’ll mention later, it could be argued that homes and sites in Geelong are generally larger than those in London, but that’s not mentioned by Cox. Instead, he shoehorns Melbourne’s astronomical residential property prices to square with the extraordinary claim that they're a result of its zoning regulations. Perhaps this means Melbourne also has the 321st worst residential zoning regulations in the world?


The Ship is Sinking: Leaders and the Tough Decisions [Malcolm Mackerras who unlike Anthony Green tends to get the pendulum right All the signs continue to point to a historic rout for Labor in March ; WHEN Julia Gillard announced on Monday her chief of staff, Amanda Lampe, was leaving her job at the end of March there was plenty of talk in the national capital about her role in the Government and what her departure might mean PARTY GAMES: Wisdom in short supply ; In the eyes of many foreign journalists, India is a nation of Gatsbys and Babbitts engaged in a manic quest for status and wealth Time for a reality check ]
• · Speaking to Lindsay Tanner at this Wheeler Centre event, George Megalogenis considers what has happened to political leadership in Australia. In a brilliant analysis, ( Quarterly Essay "Trivial Pursuit: Leadership and the End of the Reform Era" ) Megalogenis dissects the cycle of polls, focus groups and presidential politics and explores what it has done to the prospect of serious, difficult reform and the style of our leaders. He argues that politics-as-usual has become a self-defeating game and mounts a persuasive case for a different model of leadership. He shows clearly why and how politicians are losing, or have lost, their will to reform due to incessant polling and the 24 hour news cycle. It touches on the Green vote at the last election, and the creeping dichotomy of red states and blue states in Australia. Talk-back radio in the 90's, and how this encouraged newspapers to "shout" more ; They also cover how the shift of the medium of the media affects the pre-existing quality of journalism and coverage on issues. For example, the shift of evening newspapers to the 6 o'clock news. Talk-back radio in the 90's, and how this encouraged newspapers to "shout" more. And of course, the rise of the internet.; It is not a new criticism that today’s poll-driven politics is not delivering policies in Australia’s long term national interest. However, George Megalogenis argues that the hung Parliament resulting from the 2010 Federal Election should be a wake up call to politicians: the current model is not serving the interests of Australia’s major political parties either.
• · · The WikiLeaks cables read like good literature. Both diplomacy and fiction, after all, feature plots, moral ambiguity, and casual deception ; The Czech political funding system is so opaque, it would be amazing if it were not corrupt. Behind the Curtain
• · · · The real story of a biographer in a celebrity culture of public denials, media timidity, and legal threats Unauthorized, But Not Untrue: Opraholics” and “Winfreaks” ; Sadly, mentally ill IBRAHIM Siddiq-Conlon has a message for Australians, whether they want to hear it or not. Full-bred Aussie with a longing for sharia law
• · · · · Leaders in a revolving door... state governments falling... the machinations of the machine men... politics over policy - and the opinion polls holding up score cards like judges at a diving contest so we can all keep track ; Blaming Palin will not help the healing in Tucson
• · · · · · GRAHAM Young is the founding editor of a well-regarded e-journal called On Line Opinion, and is a regular contributor to The Australian. I'd describe him as belonging in the centre of the political spectrum, perhaps tending to mild conservatism. Oversensitivity can only compromise debate ; The removal of our advertising should not be viewed as a violation of free speech; it's simply that we choose not to advertise on blogs that do not align to our organisational values Troppo bullied by corporate thugs; Wanted - new financial backers

Monday, January 03, 2011



I wish for all of you the happiest and most hopeful of new years. May you laugh often, cry only when you want to, and never be bored in MMXI! Happiness seems an unintended side effect, like hives or a dry cough, the occasional byproduct of right living ;-)
And men go about to wonder at the heights of the mountains, and the mighty waves of the sea, and the wide sweep of rivers, and the circuit of the ocean, and the revolution of the stars, but themselves they consider not…
Is happiness ever unmixed, a pure state like pain or terror? And doesn’t it tend to evaporate as we become conscious of its presence? It’s not synonymous with pleasure, though like some pleasures it seems dependent on self-forgetting. Aquinas says happiness is rooted in "goods of the soul." Davis’ idea that being in a Haydn symphony may constitute uncomplicated happiness is suggestive. Being in implies not passive hearing but engaged listening – but listening to what? Music that is elegant, ordered, intelligent and spirited, with an impression of unlikely inevitability. Davis’ friend Edgar Bowers put it like this in From J. Haydn to Constanze Mozart (1791):
I carry one small memory of his form
Aslant at his clavier, with careful ease,
To bring one last enigma to the norm,
Intelligence perfecting the mute keys.
Many ideas we once thought were true turned out to be hard to unlearn...
History should never be used to inculcate virtuous citizenship. Yet it offers the richest imaginable source of moral examples – The essence of great fiction, drama, and life itself

The old year passeth Earlier the roadside dust was sweet. The fermented fruit, the brandy, is sweeter still, carried into the world on the walker’s boot
This has been quite a year for Mrs. MD and me, in some ways challenging, in others gratifying.

We've seen a hundred movies, dozen of plays, read every Vanity Fair magazine (the Spectator or the Financial Times if time permitted,) taken a full-fledged vacation, driven up to Kings Canyon and Uluru, spent a wonderful month in the red center reading books and more books ....
What Mrs. MD and I won't do is take our good fortune for granted, starting with the astonishing fact of our being together. It is, I suspect, exceedingly rare for two people in the middle of life to make a marriage as close as this one has become. When you survive Iron Curtain, every day is a surprise and a blessing. Like Theodore Dalrymple we have never been a one-book reader, devoting attention to a single volume at a time:
Often I read more than one book at a time. When I tire of one I fly to another. This is because the world has always seemed to me so various and so interesting in all its aspects that I have not been able to confine my mind to a single subject or object for very long; therefore I am not, never have been, and never will be the scholar of anything. My mind is magpie-like, attracted by what shines for a moment; I try to persuade myself that this quality of superficiality has its compensations, in breadth of interest, for example
Like Dalrymple, we are no scholars of anything but enjoy learning something about almost everything. Shakespeare was the keenest of cullers, and in that we also recognize ourselves. To cull is to select with discernment, whether the sweetest blueberry or the tartest book.
No one doubts that an ordinary man can get on with this world: but we demand not strength enough to get on with it, but strength enough to get it on. Can he hate it enough to change it, and yet love it enough to think it worth changing? Can he look up at its colossal good without once feeling acquiescence? Can he look up at its colossal evil without once feeling despair? Can he, in short, be at once not only a pessimist and an optimist, but a fanatical pessimist and a fanatical optimist?
-G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (May John Hatton Movement rocks in 2011)


... Turn the clock to zero, honey [How AK-47, more than A-bomb, changed history: If somebody were to tell you that the long tragedy of human warfare entered a new and deadly phase in the fifth decade of the 20th century, the historically literate mind almost certainly would jump to the invention of the atomic bomb, which ushered in an age of anxiety and the long balance of terror between the United States and the Soviet Union. Avtomat Kalashnikova - How the rifle I used in Czech Army change the history of the world ; The man of science, like the man of letters, is too apt to view mankind only in the abstract, selecting in his consideration only a single side of our complex and many-sided being. Hopes for 2011]
• · Father Dionigi recognized in his charge’s spirit a state similar to that of St. Augustine in his youth. He gave Petrarch a pocket copy of the Confessions, which the poet had not read. The book was Petrarch’s cherished companion for forty years. It journeyed with him to a mountain top, and once, in its owner’s pocket, it was near drowning with him in the sea. The Nativity of Our Common Adam; As Much as Can Be Made of Life Here’s a profound hole, yet no deeper than a coffin
• · · “To light a fire is the instinctive and resistant act of men when, at the winter ingress, the curfew is sounded throughout nature. It indicates a spontaneous, Promethean rebelliousness against the fiat that this recurrent season shall bring foul times, cold darkness, misery and death. Black chaos comes, and the fettered gods of the earth say, ‘Let there be light.’” Voltaire possessed an endless appetite for putting himself in harm’s way: duels, insults to nobility ; We would be worse than we are without the good books we have read, more conformist, not as restless, more submissive, and the critical spirit, the engine of progress, would not even exist. Like writing, reading is a protest against the insufficiencies of life. When we look in fiction for what is missing in life, we are saying, with no need to say it or even to know it, that life as it is does not satisfy our thirst for the absolute -- the foundation of the human condition -- and should be better. What makes music sad
• · · · Art as Empathy,” David Foster Wallace noted in the margins of a Tolstoy essay. Wallace’s archive shows he was not such an abstruse postmodernist…While many children are capable of conjuring imaginative tales, the grade-school Wallace has an unusual empathy for the adult double-bind of finding purpose in a job that also brings misery Art as Empathy ; On the eve of a pivotal academic year in Vishal Singh’s life, he faces a stark choice on his bedroom desk: book or computer? Cold River or computer?
• · · · · With Amazon, publishing is now beholden to one profit-obsessed company. What happens when you sell a book like it’s a can of soup?...Where once a publisher had to worry about competing for shelf space, now its entire list of books could be available to customers. Amazon; Depressing Russian Literature
• · · · · · Describing the paintings in words risks sentimentality or banality, which they never possess And thus abstract art is brought to shame, Even if we do not deserve any other; Ever dream of quitting your job and moving to a farm? This book will make you rethink that dream. The Dirty Life: On Farming, Food, and Love

Saturday, May 29, 2010



You do something wrong, FATCA shoots your neighbor
- As Seen on Google

Google has grown from an idea generated by two students at Stanford University in 1998 to one of the world’s most well known and successful companies. Liane Hornsey, Director of People Operations for Europe, the Middle East and Africa says that the company would not have been able to innovate as quickly as it has, nor create the products it has in such a short space of time without highly valuing employee engagement ;
- The Wikileak video spread like wildfire across the internet and what next this week?
I'm not a wealthy man, but I'm rich in my convictions The West Needs a Good Dose of Perestroika -‎ Nothing Beats Helen Womack ‘s Analysis
During the Cold War, oppressed political dissidents around the world often had an easier time getting human-rights groups to advocate for their freedom. Today, however, it seems that dissidents often fail to garner the international spotlight they previously held. The reasons are manifold--ranging from the politicization of human rights to economic globalization to moral relativism.
Launching the Labour manifesto for the recent British election, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown stood against the backdrop of a golden cornfield and promised a future fair for all. As I watched, I was struck by a powerful sense of deja vu. Where had I seen and heard all that before? Yes, of course, the Soviet Union circa 1980 — the old propaganda that spoke of bumper harvests and five-year plans fulfilled and overfulfilled.

A fresh page was turned in Prague on April 8 when Medvedev and the US President, Barack Obama, signed a treaty to reduce Russian and American stockpiles of strategic nuclear weapons. Before that, Obama had cancelled a Bush-era plan to deploy ballistic missile defence systems in Poland and the Czech Republic, a prospect that had unsettled Moscow. The treaty was seen by some defence experts as a "one up" to Russia, but others saw wider benefits for the West in the politics of win-win and the new goodwill wafting from the Kremlin.


Back in the CCCP - USSR ; Moscow Times [It was the greedy free market, supposedly, that created both the housing bubble and the housing bust and led, inevitably, to the “great recession.” Capitalism, according to most liberal pundits (and even Alan Greenspan in a bad mood), is an inherently risky and unstable system that requires government regulation to correct its flaws and moderate its excesses. Crony Capitalism Is NOT Capitalism ; Faking It Won't Make It ]
• · Nothing beats a quiet Sunday afternoon in the traditional book store. Last week I whiled away a couple of hours at two of my favorites – Daunts and Hatchards. Daunts is the best travel bookshop on earth, while Hatchards has five floors of imaginative, beautifully selected, beautifully laid-out books... Nothing Beats Book Stores ; George Clooney and Up in the Air have a lot to tell the employers about the downside of reducing face-to-face contact. Efficiency and savings are often illusory when it comes to computerizing and centralizing businesses. Sydney Expo and Up in the Air ; You thought only conservatives got mad about taxes? Tea partiers, eat your hearts out: A group of liberals got together Tuesday and proved that they, too, can have a tax rebellion. But theirs is a little bit different: They want to pay more taxes. ; Law students and the consumers of legal services like to think that professors are hired by law schools on the basis of pure intellectual ability and achievement. No doubt, individual intellectual ability and achievement play significant roles in law school faculty hiring. However, another important dynamic is overlooked, wealth
• · · Chris Masters in the Telegraph writes about gang violence in Melbourne and Sydney in a story headlined 'Why Sydney's hitmen are deadlier'. Under the usual pictures of the Ibrahims, Morans and the late Michael McGurk, he explains various motives behind the violence and deaths, including the practice of an underling serving jail time for a superior but not being properly rewarded after release. ; hitmen Underbelly 3 - The Golden Mile, set in Kings Cross, debuts this Sunday, Channel 9 8.30. It gets a rave review plus some great site Kings Cross footage on The Australian
• · · · THE Sydney underworld's war without end, the ongoing battle for temporary supremacy, has in recent years featured the most visible members, bikies. The clearest evidence that the jungle rule book of old has been torn up comes from the prisons. Chis Master; Hell on Wheels; Underbelly; I HAVE a particular affection for my Australian friends of Middle Eastern background - they seem imbued with a special generosity and. zest for life
• · · · · The reframe is powerful; arguing in favour of envy would appear as difficult as opposing hope, faith or charity The politics of envy ; Planning laws and lobbying NSW Inc
• · · · · · Founded on a growing evidence base that working is good for health Arbeighcht; It is a fitting coincidence that this new chapter in our tax history coincides with our centenary and in preparing ourselves for entering our new century of tax and superannuation administration! tax history ; Well, it's a good thing I'm rich and famous on google