Singapore academic Dr Thio Li-ann compares anal sex to "shoving a straw up your nose to drink".

She has a record as a fierce anti-gay rights campaigner in her country. After students and teachers at New York University, where she had been scheduled to teach human rights law this year, petitioned to have a “town-hall style“ meeting to discuss her appointment, she withdrew her involvement in the curriculum.

Enrolments in her courses were so low that, on top of the petition, Thio “pulled out” before consummating the relationship (the National University of Singapore has an exchange programme with NYU).

Agence France Presse reports:

Singapore's Straits Times said NYU students were outraged after learning that Thio had said in a parliamentary debate in 2007 that repealing a colonial-era law making sex between men a criminal offence "would subvert social morality, the common good and undermine our liberties."

More than 800 members of the NYU community signed a petition against Thio after gay rights activists circulated copies of her speech, it said.

NYU OUTLaw posted on its blog to make its position clear before the semester started, as it felt that the story had developed sufficient momentum that the administration should be starting to have concerns for the viability of Thio’s appointment.

Other GLBT websites picked up on the story and made their feelings known by selective quotation.

To explain how someone who's so against institutional oppression and human suffering could also be against extending rights to gays and lesbians, you'll have to understand Li-ann's position: "A moral wrong cannot be a human right."

She must be feeling slightly sheepish now, I would imagine, and was not available for comment when AFP tried to contact her. NYU OUTLaw never got a chance to face off with Thio, despite trying:

We still have questions for the administration, as we are sure many of you share, and the answers to which have implications for the entire NYU Law community: Were Dr. Thio's statements known to those responsible for the decision to hire her? How virulent must homophobic remarks be to disqualify a scholar from employment at NYU Law? Would the administration similarly hire a scholar who, in her capacity as a legislator, advocated for the imprisonment of those who engage in certain religious or cultural practices?

Accordingly, we have asked Dean Revesz to hold a town-hall style meeting, so that more voices can join the discussion and, hopefully, some of the important questions can get answered. Even though we realize it is difficult to schedule a meeting in the summer, we believe this matter is sufficiently pressing (it is getting national and international press coverage) that the discussion needs to happen as soon as possible, before the semester starts.

But for that, we need more support. First, we are asking groups, students, journals, alumni, faculty, staff, etc. to write Dean Revesz (richard.revesz@nyu.edu), urging him to hold such a meeting. Second, if such a meeting is to be successful by any standard, we need all those concerned to attend, to ensure the representativeness of the public.

In an email with Inside higher Ed. magazine, Thio condemned the students’ actions as “imperialist”.

"I think certain Americans have to realize the fact that there are a diversity of views on the subject and it is not a settled matter; there is no universal norm and it is nothing short of moral imperialism to suggest there is,” Thio wrote. “Correct me if I am wrong, but there is no consensus on this even within the U.S. Supreme Court and American society at large, even post Lawrence v. Texas."

A church that has an “inclusive Christian ministry to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities”, the Metropolitan Community Church, is behind Glasgow Gallery of Modern Art’s (GoMA) bible defacing scandal.

Wikipedia says the denomination was founded in 1968 to cater for this emerging demographic. The first congregation was founded in Los Angeles. The Edinburgh congregation, which in the past has lobbied for the right of gay couples to marry, “proposed” the exhibit at GoMA where visitors have an open invitation to write in a copy of the bible placed alongside a container of pens, according to a story on The Times website.

“If you feel you have been excluded from the Bible, please write your way back into it.”

The exhibit, Untitled 2009, was proposed by the Metropolitan Community Church, which said that the idea was to reclaim the Bible as a sacred text. But to the horror of many Christians, including the community church, visitors have daubed its pages with comments such as “This is all sexist pish, so disregard it all.” A contributor wrote on the first page of Genesis: “I am Bi, Female & Proud. I want no god who is disappointed in this.”

Whoops.

While church bodies in Europe have condemned the activity (“a Christian lawyers’ group said that the exhibition was symptomatic of a broken and lawless society”), The Punch journalist Leo Shanahan asks how the exhibit can be considered controversial and dares the artist to use a Koran instead of the Christian’s holy book.

But given the role and shape of Islam in the world at present, maybe it should be just as much a target of artistic critique in the west as Christianity often finds itself?

His reason for the suggestion is that the current art installation is, to put it bluntly, quite tame.

Another point to be made here is that exhibitions like this cater to a rather middle-class undergraduate sense of what it is to be shocked (“let’s like rip-up the Bible guys”), and if churches choose to handle these incidents with more maturity and tolerance themselves in can serve both as the best advert for their faith and best rebuttal to their critics.

It is possible that the Metropolitan Community Church of Edinburgh proposed the exhibit as a way of improving the size of its congregation, which has dwindled in recent years as a result of internal ructions.

News that a British scientist working, at the time, at Tidbinbilla in Australia, came up with the iconic line used by Neil Armstrong on stepping onto the moon in August 1969 appeared here first on the website of Melbourne’s Age newspaper, dated 5.44pm.

The story is by-lined AAP.

By 6.13pm the story had migrated to the website of Brisbane‘s The Courier-Mail, which neglected to by-line AAP making it look as thought they had generated the story themselves. This is more than slightly dodgy at first blush, although they may have an agreement with AAP to handle their stories in this way.

But the story itself is dynamite. Naturally a NASA spokesperson callowly denies there is any truth in it.

The scientist is named Gary Peach and he’s now retired in rural seclusion in England. According to Peach, he was asked by a Mr Monkton, who Peach describes as his boss on the Apollo project, to recommend something for the first astronaut who touched moondust to utter on the occasion.

“One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind,” replied Peach.

The words emerged almost unchanged from Armstrong’s lips when he planted his booted foot on the lunar surface.

A much longer story appears on the Times Online website, written by Simone Bruxelles. This is the original story. Calling Armstrong’s error “tautological” because ‘man’ and ‘mankind’ are synonyms, Bruxelles shows that Peach was right when he expressed concern about entrusting such important words to an ex-fighter pilot.

Armstrong fluffed the line.

Asked about the words for an oral history project, Armstrong demonstrated his fundamental inability to place together meaningfully more than three words at a time.

“I thought about it after landing and, because we had a lot of other things to do, it was not something that I really concentrated on but just something that was kind of passing around subliminally or in the background.

“But it, you know, was a pretty simple statement, talking about stepping off something. Why, it wasn’t a very complex thing. It was what it was.”

He added: “I didn’t think of it as being as important as others. I didn’t want to be dumb, but it was contrived in a way and I was guilty of that.”

He didn’t want to be dumb…

Peach says he gave the words to Monkton when the latter entered his lab one day asking if everything was OK.

“I replied no technical problems, but I am concerned about the historic moment when the first man sets foot upon the Moon. In the excitement, knowing the Yanks as I do, it’ll probably be something like ‘Holy chicken s**t look at all that f***ing dust’.

“I said I felt that would not be a suitable thing to be quoted in history books until eternity.

“He asked: ‘Well what would you say?’” Mr Peach, who had been mulling it over for several days, replied: “One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind”.

He says Mr Monkton said “we didn’t think of that” and left the room in a hurry.

Peach’s version sounds a lot more convincing than Armstrong’s, don’t you agree?

Review: Big Shots, Adam Shand (2007) ...

I didn't know what to expect when I bought this study by an old school mate. Was it going to be a grizzly, hard-bitten look at the Melbourne gangland killings? If I thought this I would have been disappointed. Big Shots is far more nuanced and less sensational.

Using the time-honoured literary journalistic technique of total immersion, and placing himself as a character in the drama, Shand uncovers a softer side of mafia-style life, where drug barons, hit men, standover men and the women in their lives attempt to maximise profits at the same time as minimising the likelihood of death. It's a sad world.

It's saddest when Shand is showing how his subjects strive to fight off the inevitable hit. Because the way they lead their lives makes such an outcome almost certain. Once a young man is drawn into the sexy arena of crime, quick money, fast friends and neverending suspicion - the land outside the law next to which ordinary citizens live their lives - it becomes a matter of when, not if, someone will try to kill them.

Shand's main players are Carl Williams and Andrew Veniamin, a couple of hard boys from Melbourne's Western suburbs who begin to make a lot of money by manufacturing and distributing amphetamines. In the process of chronicling their adventures Shand also comes into contact with dozens of other hard men on both sides of the law.

Possibly the high point on Shand's narrative occurs when he attends a funeral in the suburb of Sunshine. The setting is a Greek Orthodox church. The cast includes family members of Andrew Veniamin, who has just been killed, as well as friends and 'associates'. Sitting there in a pew, Shand notices that a lot of people are starting to give him some strange looks. Unnerved, he leaves the building. The drama continues outside, on the street.

Having engaged himself in the lives of the hard men, Shand has become a player, as this episode dramatically demonstrates. You can't just observe something without influencing it.

What we don't get a lot of - because these criminals don't choose to show Shand - is much detail on the processes involved in manufacturing and distributing drugs. Like Hunter S. Thompson in his famous expose of a California chapter of the Hell's Angels, we only see what the hard men choose to show Shand.

In this sense, the book is a disappointment. Nevertheless there is more here than just a bunch of unpleasant men and women badmouthing each other and killing. The killings are the easiest parts for Shand to describe: they're on the public record. What Shand does well that might not have been done well by a less-skilled reporter is show the internal dynamic of fear behind the bravado of the high-toned words we'd expect thugs and gangsters to use in their daily lives. There is a softer side to them and it's by way of this aspect of these individuals that we are allowed to sympathise with them.

Because they are more than just criminals. They are people who have aspirations and dreams, like Roberta Williams with her kids attending a private school and a sign on the door asking visitors to remove their shoes before entering the house.

Watching Japanese politics is as difficult as keeping track of a school of fish in a swiftly-moving stream. Thirty minutes after I started to search for definitive results of the Tokyo metropolitan assembly elections - and what these mean for controversial governor Shintaro Ishihara - I'm still puzzled. No two stories are the same and no journalist thinks it's important to concisely describe the political situation in the country's - and the world's - largest metropolis.

The best coverage comes from Taiwan, a major trading partner of Japan's. The Taiwan News reports that:

Out of the 127 seats, the DPJ snared 54 seats (up from 34), while the LDP dropped 10 seats to 38 seats and New Komeito boosted its delegation by one to 23 seats, while the JCP dropped five seats to eight with other smaller groups splitting the remaining slots.

This means that the main national threat to Taro Aso's LDP - which has ruled Japan almost uninterruptedly for the past 50 years - won the election but failed to win an outright majority. As a result it will have to rule in a coalition with other parties.

Ishihara, the governor of Tokyo, is elected in a separate poll, so his position will not be materially altered except inasmuch as the amount of heat emanating from his newly-elected assembly will increase. Nationalistic programs he launched, such as the 84-per-cent government-owned Shinginko Tokyo Ltd. (a bank) will probably be sold to private interests.

But there is no story anywhere about which coalition parties the DPJ will be working with in the new assembly. All eyes in the past week have been focused on whether and when Japan's prime minister Taro Aso would dissolve the lower house of the national Diet.

This happened today.

"I have decided to dissolve the lower house," Aso said at a cabinet meeting, according to Chief Cabinet Secretary Takeo Kawamura.

"Dissolution is necessary in order for us to gain more understanding and cooperation of the Japanese people," Aso said, Kawamura told reporters.

In risk- and conflict-averse Japan the DJP's victory on 12 July was a watershed that will have not only politicians but housewives and salarymen throughout the country scratching their heads. Pundits will predict dire consequences in the event of change.

The time has come, it seems, for a national cleansing. Some news stories describe the change of leadership in terms of the current party - the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) - "stepping aside" as though they were expected to perform ritual suicide (hara-kiri) in the face of an hysterical, angry populace.

As for Ishihara, we'll see. I expect that the infamous rightist will eventually fade into the obscurity that such characters deserve, with only a whiff of saltpetre and gunsmoke to usher him out the doors of power.

Is Queensland's government still too cosy with business?

A few days after former state health minister Gordon Nuttall was found guilty on 36 counts of receiving a corrupt commission, premier Bligh has questioned the ethicality of 'success fees' being received by ex-government employees working on behalf of business.

But that's not all. A couple of days ago a story ran in BrisbaneTimes.com.au detailing property speculation conducted by a company in which the wife of Ipswich-based federal member for Oxley Bernie Ripoll had made a quick and substantial profit dealing in land that was subject to state government zoning decisions.

Journalist Tony Moore reports:

A search of Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) records shows FFR Developments Pty Ltd was registered on March 28, 2008.

On April 1, 2008 FFR Developments bought two residential blocks of land in Bowen, one in Gregory Street for $269,000 and a second at Gordon Street for $230,000.

The State Government declared an Abbot Point State Development Area, on industrial land about 20 kilometres to the north of Bowen, on June 19, 2008.

Mr Ripoll said his wife's company had borrowed for the entire project and had put through a development application to build six units on the Gordon Street property.

That property is back on the market with a price tag of $395,000, after it was originally bought for $230,000. Mr Ripoll said there nothing untoward about the arrangement.

Ripoll bridled when questioned, saying that "it is a good idea and no-one should ever be excluded from doing that, if that is what they wanted to do". He suggested that the investors had not only employed a property expert but had consulted Google when making their decision.

Bowen is a regional town located halfway between Townsville and Mackay. It is situated near the Whitsunday Islands. Hayman Island and Hamilton Island are popular tourist resorts featuring high-end developments.

Ripoll insists that "anyone" who had done the same research as FFR Developments Pty Ltd would have come to the same conclusion.

According to the website of the Department of Infrastructure and Planning, state development areas are created under Section 77 of the State Development and Public Works Organisation Act 1971.

They are designed to:

• provide guidance and development certainty to industry
  
• control development in a way that is considerate of existing industry and surrounding development
  
• protect environmental values in the region
  
• ensure an effective development assessment process.
  

They "represent a significant investment by the government in the long term planning and development of strategic land assets". In other words, they represent an area - in the case of the one in Bowen measuring about 12km by 20km in size - that is set to benefit from high levels of funding for roads, sewerage, electricity, communications, power and other infrstructure.

In the case of Bowen, the SDA includes both industrial and residential areas adjacent to the existing Bowen town area.

Reporting on swine flu in Australia, where it is now winter, seems a little basic. More information is needed. In major metropolitan centres, where most of the country's broadsheets operate, stories have to compete for space and exposure against a large number of others.

In regional areas there may be more room for more details to emerge.

Thirty-one people have now died in Australia from swine flu. But information about the demographics of the death count is scant. We have been told repeatedly that younger people are more likely to contract the disease. There are also over 190 people in hospital, in Australia, after contracting swine flu.

These things we know. But what about those "underlying health conditions" that we're repeatedly told are a major factor contributing to deaths from swine flu? What kind of 'conditions' are we talking about? Why are we not getting more information?

Perhaps if someone died on the Sunshine Coast, where I now live, we'd get more details.

In a recent story that follows up on an earlier story about a swine flu case reported at a local childcare centre, we're told that staff were told "in a threatening manner ... not to say a word to parents about the swine flu case".

The story caused a storm here. The childcare centre, operated by ABC Learning, rejected the media claims. However, in today's story, the claims are reiterated by another staff member.

Rowan Webb, the chief executive officer of ABC Learning, said in a statement the company rejected claims made in yesterday’s Daily that staff at the centre had been barred from telling parents of the swine flu case.

However, another source came forward yesterday confirming the claims.

“We were told in a threatening manner by the director of our centre we were not to say a word to parents about the swine flu case,” she said.

“All of the staff were disgusted with the decision and when we tried to voice our concerns for the children in our care and their parents we were told the decision was final – that was the way it was.”

This kind of coverage is unusual. It is mostly found, I suggest, in regional areas where there is more room in the news agenda for in-depth reporting of serious incidents. A month ago, when I first moved here, there was the case of a staff member at a major local hospital having contracted the disease. Huge headlines blanketed the tabloid's front page as the news spread, and stayed there for many days.

If all news is local, a major national story hitting in a local area will be latched onto by the local press and dragged, kicking and screaming, onto the kitchen tables of the populace.

And I suggest that it's a good thing.

Today also saw another type of national scandal with a particular relation to the local press. A Sunshine Coast Daily story about a proposed hospital development, printed half a decade ago, caused the state leader to report misconduct to the relevant authorities. Their subsequent digging into the personal activities of the health minister resulted in his conviction of accepting illegal commissions from two Queensland businessmen. He will serve at least two and a half years in prison.

All due to dogged efforts to achieve accuracy and comprehensiveness by a regional journalist.

Review: Hell's Angels, Hunter S. Thompson (1966)

This book is not gonzo. I think it is important to state this at the outset as Hunter S. Thompson's reputation is stapled firmly to the label. In the recent documentary on his life, the filmmakers showed the erection of a giant gonzo symbol in the Colorado landscape: a fist clenched around an arcane symbol. The gonzo symbol is the product of Thompson's mature mind. In the beginning, things were very different.

If we think back to the film, we recall that Thompson, in the years leading up to the publication by Random House of Hell's Angels, was a struggling journalist. Eager to put food on the table for his family, the young Thompson found an ideal object of scrutiny. A confirmed news junkie, Thompson focussed his attention on a modern phenomenon, one that was partly a product of popular culture, and that arose in the years following demobilisation after the Second World War.

It is salutory to remember that Hell's Angels appeared in the same year as Turman Capote's In Cold Blood. Unlike Norman Mailer, who would model his aspirations in writing The Executioner's Song on Capote's success, Thompson was doing it off his own bat.

For Hell's Angels is a straight exemplum of the literary journalism genre. The freakish, unexpected and feather-ruffling hi-jinx of later, 'gonzo', pieces is just not to be found here, except in a rudimentary form. In this sense, the book can be considered an early example of gonzo, but it lacks the ethereal fire of true gonzo, the head-spinning, self-referential, blazing sallies of the later format.

The book takes a long look at the San Francisco area in the early 1960s and particularly that aspect of it that had the bikie gangs at its centre. The Oakland chapter of the Angels, headed by Sonny Barger, are a world away from the crim-minded, modern type of bikie gang. There was no money. There was no glory. There was only the membership, loyalty, unquestioning allegiance, and a dogged resistance to 'straight' social norms.

Clearly, these elements of the Angels appealed to Thompson the man. In fact, in the absence of similarity of purpose, the book would not have been written. There are a lot of things about what the Angels do that Thompson does not condone. But the fundamental likeness of tendency marking out the space between where the journalist stood in relation to his (willing) subjects is of salient interest to the modern reader.

Thompson displays an enormous ability to conquer large amounts of information as he sketches out where the Angels stood in relation to the law and general society. He also whoops it up (inside) as he accompanies the bikers on their forays into the California countryside. He treads uneasily and carefully around the clusters of Angels slumped over their beers. He yelps in amazement at their resilience and capacity for fun. He wallows in the same muck but there's a diffference: Thompson always has a pen in his hand, a recorder taping, a line emerging in his forebrain.

The book is a monument. It sits up there alongside The Origin of Species as an artefact that all people should acquaint themselves with. It stands as a marker on the road to gonzo. It stands for all time as a celebration of the individual against mass-mindedness.

Review: Kingdom of Fear, Hunter S. Thompson (2003)

Published two years before his death by suicide, this autobiography contains a series of sketches written in the author's trademark gonzo style. We'll have to wait for the earnest paper-shufflers out of the Iowa Writing School for run-of-the-mill versions, compendious autobiographies filled with reminiscences and footnotes, and designed to inform rather than entertain.

Subtitled 'Loathsome Secrets of A Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century', this autobiography can claim authenticity. It also contains a lot of facts. But chopped up as the narrative is into short sequences of related stories and anecdotes, these facts do not amount to much more than your average English undergraduate already knows.

What Thompson gives us, instead, is an honest self-appraisal. As to be expected, he doesn't regret much. But rather than self-congratulatory, he seems more puzzled and abashed by the seemingly relentless set of ungovernable escapades he has been involved in - and involved himself in - in his adult life as an acclaimed writer.

He does not go into much detail about himself before fame struck him, as we know it did in the wake of the publishing of his new journalistic expose, Hell's Angels. I bought this book today in a regional shopping centre. I paid for it. I did not pay for the Penguin copy of the autobiography. My mother paid for this. We bought it at the bookshop attached to the Queensland State Library in South Bank.

I think Thompson would have liked Brisbane, especially the way young people wear T-shirts in the dead of winter and the way office workers generally eschew the respectability of the full suit-and-tie in favour of the more wearable zipped jacket and open-collar shirt. He would have loved South Bank but no doubt would have had some unexpected adventure there involving the three-dimensional rendition of the culture precinct which is mounted on a stand in the library forecourt and a pair of Chinese university students. The kids corner of the Gallery of Modern Art - where you are invited to draw with paintbrushes and pots of water on a group of grey granite stones - would have had him in stitches.

But there you go. Thompson will never visit Queensland and we are deprived due to this manifest lack of meaningful engagement with an Australian cultural icon.

But we get plenty of other things, including a love story. In the final segment of the autobiography a girl he has picked up in California says he has "the soul of a teenage girl in the body of an elderly dope-fiend". I feel it's not quite fair to end on this note, as it could cast an unattractive light on the author, who is not meant to congratulate himself excessively.

Had he visited Queensland he may have had other ideas. Had he visited Queensland with the girl - whose name was Anita - he may have been celebrated. The premier and the chief executive officer of the state library would then have congratulated Queensland for bringing a cultural icon to Brisbane while - chuckle - New South Wales missed out.

I seem to recall that Thompson married Anita. Are there any English undergraduates who can help me out here? I seem to have lost my memory back on page 158.

It also rains on the Sunshine Coast. Not just the heavy downpours that fight for supremacy with intermittent bursts of steamy sunshine, where you can fill a cup with water if you place it on the roof of your car. But also the drizzling, cold, clammy rain that shuts up the rozellas and makes them take refuge in the dripping park's paperbark trees.

The horizon is shut in with cloud. Mount Coolum disappears behind a curtain of grey wetness. In fact, the entire two-thousand kilometre stretch of Queensland ceases to exist. Roads and houses, fields and forests, beaches and palm trees collapse, fragment, dwindle into nothing.

You dawdle and dither, trying to find something to do. The cold is not so bad. It's the absence of light that gets you, causes a struggle inside you. You've become accustomed to the light and the deep warmth of the sun streaming through the blinds from the north. You are quiet and lazy, waiting for something to spark you off.

You sit down and write a blog post. In two days you will be driving south away from the sun. Into the broad expanses of New South Wales where she is waiting.

Brisbane's CBD is not just a scaled-down version of Sydney, with its proximity to water, city gardens close by and classical Old Parliament House within walking distance. It's a far more usable city centre. And there are nowhere near as many dark, corporate-looking suits!

The old has survived much better here than in the southern capital. Massive post-modern skyscrapers sit comfortably beside buildings constructed 100 years ago. And because there are not so many tall buildings you can actually see the old buildings, which are not bookended amid towers of concrete and glass, as they are in Sydney.


The City Hall building, constructed in the mid 1920s, offers a curious blend of styles. Its stripped classical exterior is married with some proto-Deco elements. But it is the gothic architraves of the entrance hall that really knock you off your feet. You walk through the stone doorway and are confronted by three white vaults set with gold-painted hollows. It's an architectural dream, a folly, a fine statement of independence.


You can see more right here, than you can in Sydney. The Queen Street mall gives you plenty of opportunity to stand unmolested in the middle of the carriageway and gaze contentedly down surrounding streets. In the photo below, taken where the mall ends, you can see a gothic apartment building nestled against a heavy concrete building built within the last 30 years.


Across the river, to the south, lies a cultural precinct that is, I believe, unrivalled in Australia. The Queensland Art Gallery, built in the 1980s, is now partnered with the Queensland State Library and the Gallery of Modern Art - both completed in 2006. The precinct offers visitors a handy method of spending the day immersed in freewheeling relaxation without the necessity of moving from parking place to parking place, or walking from spot to spot, as is the case in Sydney. For $14 you can park all day here!


The Gallery of Modern Art sits serenely above the Brisbane River, a brown, sluggish stream often girded by banks of tall apartment buildings. New pedestrian bridges will enable future generations of Brisbanites and happy visitors to easily cross from the bustle of the CBD to the more relaxed environs of South Bank.


If you walk down Edward Street toward the river you pass through lovely, trendy streets - all named after queens - and eventually reach the City Gardens. Walk through here and you can see the modern collection of buildings that form the Queensland University of Technology. Mixed among them are the Old Parliament House building - a classical gem - and the imposing Parliament building - a Victorian pile of epic proportions.

If you pass along George Street in a northerly direction you reenter the CBD and have plenty of opportunity to sit down and sample a cup of Brisbane's fine coffee. This is an excellent way to finish your short tour of the Brisbane CBD!

It comes as a shocking realisation that journalists, who have heaped scorn on Facebook, have adopted Twitter as a long-lost familiar. Lisa Pryor in today's Sydney Morning Herald and Sally Jackson in The Australian today show how close journos have got to the Twitterverse, and how comfortable they feel in its noisy, chaotic surrounds.

Jackson's article, 'Journalists take to the Twitterverse', highlights the points of contact and solicits comment from media operators about corporate attitudes and policies. News group editorial director Campbell Reid says that the company is waiting to see if Twitter remains a fad, or whether it develops legs, before instituting a policy.

"It's our belief that journalists who work for us who have news to tell should do so through the vehicles they are employed to supply material for," he says. "We're very uncomfortable with staff tweeting in a professional sense under their own names, for a whole bunch of reasons, not the least of which is legal protection and concern about what is published."

Basically, they're concerned about the company's reputation should its journalists start making a name for themselves in the Twitterverse. Others go even further.

Seven Media's Pacific Magazines has banned staff from logging on to any social media websites at their desks.

"However, access to specific sites, such as Twitter and Facebook, is provided to staff who require use as part of their typical duties," a spokesman says. "All staff also have non-restricted access to computers in the staff canteen."

Fairfax and the ABC are currently developing policies. I wager none of these organisations have official policies to deal with Facebook use in the office.

Iran, Mumbai and other international news events underscored for journalists how important Twitter can be as an unfettered (though unreliable, in some cases) medium. Twitter visits in Australia increased by 518 per cent between August 2007 and January this year. Research firm eMarketer gauges a number around 12 million globally for Twitter by the end of 2009.

This is nowhere near as explosive as Facebook, which added about 50 million users over a period of six months last year to this. Poor press seems not to have damaged take-up by the rival social networking site, while Twitter struggles to get a twentieth of a way to match Facebook's current usage.

Facebook continues to demonstrate the benefits of server-side application hosting with a plan to enable finer control of postings through a new drop-down on a newly-renamed 'Publisher'. Online journal Read Write Web says "the move could lead to some of the most exciting developments we've seen yet from the world of social media" and goes on to raise the alarm over possible public postings of thought-to-be private messages.

Read Write Web's test run of the new interface was inconclusive. In reaction to the article, Facebook contacted the journal to clarify some points, including in its missive the advice that

Your Publisher Privacy will stay at whatever you have set as the default. In addition, the first time you try to share something with the privacy control set to "Everyone," you'll be asked to confirm that this is what you want to do. If it's not what you want to do, you'll be able to change your setting before publishing.

The first time you change the setting on the Publisher control, you'll be asked if you want to make the new setting your default, and you'll be given a chance to do this in-line. You can also change your default at any time by going to the Privacy Settings Page and clicking on Profile. From there, scroll down to "Publisher Control Default" and choose what you would like as your default privacy setting.

If this is the case, there seems to be less reason for alarm than the journal allocates to this new development. Nevertheless, it is clearly an attempt to outfox Twitter, which has been making inroads on Facebook's demographic by positioning itself as a public publisher.

Selecting the name 'publisher' for the 'What's on your mind?' field is canny and alerts us to the real fact that we are now all content creators.

But changes have been happening continuously. It was only a few days ago that Facebook added a set of 'Attach' icons to the publisher to allow you to post different things, such as photos, videos, and links. Previously, these icons appeared when the publisher fields was clicking on.

Read Write Web apologised in an update for raising the alarm but added that it felt more communication is warranted in the present case, as it was in the case of vanity URLs, which was rolled out a couple of weeks ago. The journal's overreaction is probably simply a case of a public vehicle wanting to be seen to go in hard against a powerful entity in the online sphere, for fear of being labelled out of touch. It's hard to blame them, considering the uproar that Facebook's News Feed created when it was introduced in 2006.

Not all comments were uniform in sentiment. Commenter JeanAnn says that she is "happy about Facebook opening up some" as she uses the site in her professional capacity. Angela Hursh asks how the change will affect those, like her, who post using mobile devices.

Presumably Facebook will introduce some sort of new interface element to cater for such cases. However it will be interesting to see if the outcry against this move will be as significant as it has been in the wake of past changes.

Certainly "it's hard to imagine there isn't going to be a backlash" as Read Write Web's Marshall Kirkpatrick writes. But how big? And isn't it time for Facebook to release updated membership figures so we can gauge how Twitter has impacted on its viability.

The queue of expectant travellers stretched down the entire length of the departure area, almost to the central court where the coffee stand sits. "Anyone going to Sydney?" asked an attendant dressed in fluorescent yellow. We made our way through the line of Melbourne-bound travellers and approached the desk, ticket receipt ready.

Then we had a coffee.

After a few minutes we parted and I left the air terminal into the darkness and rain. Outside, buses had started arriving. They formed a queue against the kerb. A few passengers from the cancelled flight JQ799 were getting on the buses. I assumed that the earlier queue had been for those passengers to collect sleepover vouchers from the airline - Jetstar - in preparation for staying overnight at a local hotel.

I wondered if there were enough vacant rooms locally to accomodate the whole queue of passengers.

The next morning I told mum about the waiting passengers. "Good story," she said. The story did not make the paper, however.

What kind of news can you make in a small town? It's an interesting question, and one I'll be forced to answer in coming months as I set up shop on the Sunshine Coast. If a cancelled flight is no cause for a story, why is a bird on a rock?

A motorist passing through Mooloolabah stops the car and parks, alights, and rushes back with a camera ready to snap shots of an osprey perched on a rock by the water's edge. They're great pictures, but I think a cancelled flight is more interesting. There are many issues. What kind of aircraft was it? Where was the last major service done? The weather - rainy for three days - is also a point of discussion of interest to local readers.

I see a story in The Sunshine Coast Daily - the local paper - about a flooded intersection, with a photo showing a car negotiating the flowing waters. Surely a cancelled flight would be news in a place where a flooded intersection is cause for a 200-word story?

All online activities stopped after I arrived in Queensland apart from a regular email check. I got the call while staying at a hotel in Glen Innes. It was from the Nambour General Hospital and I was told that mum had fallen over.

I'm not sure how long I'll stay here but I've made a commitment to relocate north, from Sydney. It's 1000 kilometres and a culture shift away, but I'm determined to proceed with the career change. I want to be a journalist.

The Sunshine Coast is a collection of linked towns situated about 90 minutes north of Brisbane. Until recently, the spot was determinedly rural, but tall towers full of gleaming apartments now dominate the skyline of Maroochydore, where I will live, and are encroaching in other areas. But the area continues to have a small-town feel, despite the influx of temporary visitors from the south.

You are encouraged to say 'hello' when saluted in the street. Shopowners chat easily and will become your friends without long preliminaries. There's a bustling shopping centre anchored by a Myer store and lined on all sides with small outlets selling tourists bric-a-brac and mementoes, tasteful of course. There is an Office Works and a Dick Smiths, strip malls with furniture shops, a courthouse and a capacious McDonalds. The RSL is large and well patronised.

It's close to a river. In fact, the apartment I'm currently living in is on the river and the sun sparkles from the direction of the windows in the early afternoon. It streams in the windows and makes you sleepy. I walk to the newsagents in the morning and buy four papers.

The local paper is a daily tabloid. Brisbane, close by, is represented by News Ltd's The Courier-Mail. I also buy The Australian and The Sydney Morning Herald. Interstate papers are not hard to find. You can even buy The Age. Southerners love the area.

For the moment, I'm busy looking after mum post-fall. It's the second fall she's had in two weeks, and it happened only a couple of weeks after she finally bit the bullet and put dad in permanent care. His new home was featured in the local paper yesterday morning. But mum's frail and almost 80 years old and needs some looking after. That's my job.

We can expect to see more frequent posts in future. I expect to move my possessions north in late July.

Opinion website The Punch has justified its existence by attracting a comment from Casey Whale, a journalist and resident of Shanghai. "As an Aussie journo living and working in Shanghai I’m used to censorship, but this is ridiculous," Whale says. Whale then points visitors, via a link, to website The Shanghaiist where footage is available to view that shows Chinese police blocking videoing by journalists at Tiananmen Square.

It is truly bizzarre. As the journalists circle around, the police interpose umbrellas between the camera and the journalist, who is trying to put together a few words on-screen in memory of the day. One policeman wears trousers made with cloth that has a pattern that matches the umbrella he is carrying. Bizarre is not the word!

A related video on the website shows that Chinese authorities have blocked several popular online services, including Twitter. This type of influence on the media is rare, the commentator says. The last time it was this bad was during the Tibet crisis of 2008, she says.

The Punch ran several stories on Tiananmen today, 4 June (the 20th anniversary of government suppression of pro-democracy rallies at the famous Beijing tourist locale). The one Whale commented on dealt with ex-prime minister Bob Hawke's silence in the run-up to the day of remembrance, despite repeated requests for an interview.

Robert JL Hawke and Associates has an office in Shanghai and Hawke apparently visits “five or six times a year”. In March Hawke noted improvements in China's methods of dealing with difficult issues.

Google's 'fair use' defense in aggregating news feeds from copyright holders such as News Ltd sites is manifestly inadequate as a defense against action from editorial owners.

Macquarie Equities media analyst Alex Pollak said Google's decision to sell ads on its Google News site in March triggered a new wave of anger from publishers, who are also aware Google paid $US125 million to settle a copyright dispute with book authors.

Journalist Jane Schulze also writes that

Google argues it does not breach copyright rules as it relies on the "fair use" principle where a small amount of original content can be reproduced without payment so long as there is attribution.

However even a cursory glance at the Wikipedia page on 'fair use' shows that Google is stretching the meaning of the term 'fair use', which is "for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research", according to the Copyright Act of 1976 (US).

"In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes."

Having placed ads on the news aggregator, Google is clearly in breach of this law.

But even in the absence of advertising, it may be argued that Google is extracting more value from its News site than any claim of 'fair use' can justify.

Aggregation creates value, but the burden of effort lies on the editorial side, in terms of value added. Without editorial, basically, Google News would not exist. There may be a legal argument to describe the type of thing I'm talking about, but my feeling is that Google's aggregating practice, while adding value itself, is not equal to countering the weight supplied by the other side.

Associated Press chief executive Tom Curley "wants a larger slice of the action" writes Schulze.

Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) lost my favorites (or ‘bookmarks’ as some may refer to them). Apparently it’s a problem others have encountered, as I discovered from a post in a Yahoo forum. The resolver suggests reverting back to IE7, saving the favorites, and reinstalling IE8.

But I’m not going to do that. I’m going to call Microsoft and use up support staffer time to get a resolution. I want the company to hear me, experience my frustration, understand how much they’ve inconvenienced me. So that it won’t happen again.

You wouldn’t imagine it would be so terrible - losing your favourites - but it is. It’s not just the favourite sites I’d placed in the favourites bar. No, it’s the whole kit and kaboodle - all of ‘em.

It’s terrible because suddenly you’re back in 2003 and using Google to get to news sites that you’ve visited a thousand times before.

Which may not be a bad thing, if you hold that being forced to take an alternative position for a while can enlarge your horizons.

Because without my favourites I feel as though it’s not even a browser. You get used to knowing that your preferred sites are just a menu nav away. You get complacent. You get lazy.

Naturally enough, many people don’t want to have to start surfing to find pages they usually just click and scroll to see.

But looking on the bright side it’s an opportunity to explore, to step outside the boundaries, to get your feet wet again. Because a folder full of favorites is like a set of stepping stones across the damp expanses of the web.

Internet Explorer 8: Review

When I was prompted to install IE8 I didn't hesitate a second. After all, if there had been a significant disadvantage to using the new version surely, I thought, someone would have made a noise in advance. Likewise I wasn't expecting any great improvement on IE7. It's just that I like to keep up-to-date when it comes to applications I use frequently, like my browser.

If things pan out as expected, the browser will become the main application for everything from word processing to spreadsheets. Cloud apps are on the horizon, as the success of Facebook attests.

I have tried Chrome and loved it. Not only does it seem faster, but the simplicity and uncluttered interface appealed to me. Unfortunately, Chrome is not supported by my bank, so it's a no-go option.

But IE8 takes a leaf out of Chrome's instruction manual, in the form of favourites that can be added to the favourites bar. This was an element of Chrome that sincerely attracted me. It means you can place a handy link to frequently-visited sites, right in front of you. No more browsing through a menu to access favourites.

Unlike in Chrome, however, you cannot rely entirely on the favicon to identify a site. IE8 does not allow you to delete all text associated with the favicon, as Chrome does. This means you cannot fit as many sites in the favourites bar, as you can with Chrome, where text is not requisite.

Another favourites bar item in IE8 is the 'web slice'. I installed a web slice at smh.com.au and use it infrequently. Having favourites in the favourites bar is far more useful. Web slices are slow: you need to wait until it refreshes if you haven't used it recently.

The whole point of web slices is that you can see some (underscore 'some') content from sliced pages in a menu thingy in your favourites bar, at the same time you are viewing another web page. This means you don't have to leave the current page to see content from a page that supports web slices. However, if you have that page set up as your home page or if a link to it is installed via the favourites bar, there's no great advantage here.

When you open a new tab in IE8 a pictorial Google menu appears. This is quite nice but, again, most of the pages you want to visit are already set up in your favourites bar. Nevertheless, this is quite a decent feature. It helps to remind you where you've been, and you may take the opportunity to revisit a page.

But the menu seems to slow down the process of opening a new tab. I've timed the lag and it can be as long as 20 seconds. That's a long time to wait for a new tab to open.

IE8 also offers a range of 'add-ons' which are small tools that integrate your browser in a variety of ways with popular websites. However, I haven't seen the point in these so I don't use them at all. I mean, if I want to post a story to LinkedIn I'll just go to that site and post it. I don't need an 'accelerator' to perform all the occasional actions that might occur to me.

Free online newspapers a thing of the past? Within 12 months News Ltd will charge readers for online content, says Rupert Murdoch. Readers would be charged a subscription "within the next 12 months", according to the AFP story today.

On 6 April it was reported that Australian-born editor of The Wall Street Journal, Robert Thomson, said:

"Google encourages promiscuity -- and shamelessly so -- and therefore a significant proportion of their users don't necessarily associate that content with the creator.

"It's certainly true that readers have been socialised -- wrongly I believe -- that much content should be free."

Murdoch has also contradicted group editorial director of The Australian, Campbell Reid, who said a couple of days ago that "newspapers" would be around in 50 years. But according to Murdoch:

"Instead of an analog paper printed on paper you may get it on a panel which would be mobile, which will receive the whole newspaper over the air, (and) be updated every hour or two," he said.

"I think it's two or three years away before they get introduced in a big way and then it will probably take 10 years or 15 years for the public to swing over."

So we're now facing an end to the happy days of promiscuous browsing of online newspapers. Bloggers beware! No longer will you be able to collect snippets of information to feed your appetite for news, and your habit of self-expression. Unless you pay for this pleasant privilege, that is.

Of course, given the downward trend in media profits due to lower rates of advertising, it might be the case that there will be more amalgamations. If so, we might see individual newspapers doing more in a smaller space. We might also see more types of feed beyond what is currently scheduled within the space. And in the case of companies like News Ltd which controls a broad stable of vehicles, we might see a more concentrated aggregation of feeds from more sources in the one place.

All these things might mitigate the dulling effects of paid content. But I, for one, will miss the freedom of being able to visit a large number of news sites during the day, picking out my favourite sections for viewing, and choosing at will the headlines I click on.

If Australians are famous early adopters of new technology, what does that say about people who know what they want but cannot find it? Are we sceptical wannados? Early procrastinators? Adaptive tolerators?

Based on Rod Easdown's smh.com.au survey of digital radios available in Perth, I'm not sure what category I fit in. But I do know that - given the high prices and my limited budget - I don't see much here that fits the bill.

Because I don't see much point in a standalone system, a box I put in my entertainment cabinet with a knob to change channels. I spend most of my time at my computer so what I want is a design that allows me to choose from the study what is playing in the living room. Given the technologies such as Bluetooth that are available, I don't see why that should be so difficult.

I can't think of anything worse than being forced to vacate my comfortable desk whenever I want to change channels. I'm fond of my living room, but not so fond that I want to view its many splendours several dozen times every day. I'm too busy checking Facebook, reading newspapers online and writing, to bother with those kind of shenanigans.

Is it too much to ask to be able to tune the radio from my computer screen? Surely there's at least one enterprising radio design team out there in technoland that sees things my way?

We'll see. In the meantime, I'm going to hang back on purchasing a digital radio until they start spruiking the features I desire in annoying banner ads on smh.com.au. By the time this happens the gadget will be priced within my budget and I'll be able to choose from among a number of competing brands. Vive ubiquity!

The 7.30 Report‘s feature on newspapers last night did not elicit the same level of access from the two main print media companies in Australia. It’s not surprising, given recent circulation figures, that News Ltd was more forthcoming, providing access to Campbell Reid, group editorial director, on camera. Fairfax refused the program’s request for access.

“Fairfax, in the last few days, have confirmed that those two newspapers (The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald) are barely making a profit,” says Crikey publisher (and former Fairfax editor) Eric Beecher.

Fairfax risks seeming out of touch with ABC viewers, who are likely to also read broadsheets.

Surely the viability of newspapers is an important element of the democratic process? As Eric beecher points out, like the arts in Australia generally, news could be the recipient of government funding. It already is, in the form of the national broadcaster - which broadcasts this program - the ABC.

The Australian saw circulation rise - again - “growing its average weekday sales by 3.6 per cent year-on-year to 138,765 and its weekend sales by 3.7 per cent to 316,194”, according to a 15 May story in the News Ltd flagship broadsheet.

“News Limited has a proprietor who loves newspapers and has worked in them all his life, and that's in stark contrast to Fairfax,” says Beecher.

Farifax’ “The Sydney Morning Herald experienced little change in its circulation” over the same period, according to the story in The Australian.

News Ltd’s The Daily Telegraph “fell 1.5 per cent on weekdays and 0.5 per cent on Saturdays” it went on.

The 7.30 Report program highlights US problems, too. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has relinquished a print version and is now solely an online vehicle. Two major US broadsheets - The Los Angeles Times and The Chicago Tribune - have either gone bankrupt or are in the throes of bankruptcy.

News is in a pickle globally. British national papers are suffering too, as are regional titles in the same country.

“I think people who think that the internet is responsible for the death of newspapers are searching around and blaming the wrong person,” says Reid. “Poor management, poor newspapers, I think are responsible for the death of some newspapers."

Will newspapers be around in 50 years? Reid thinks they will.

The launch of Hair, a sociological study of the cultural uses that hair has ben put to over the years, overflowed downstairs and onto the wharf. Held on the last day of the Sydney Writers' Fextival at Pier 4/5, organisers had failed to anticipate the level of interest among supporters of the editors and contributors.

We almost left. By the time we got in things were in full swing. We'd listened to the speeches from a PA box outside, next to the gently lapping waters of Darling Harbour. Inside, the noise level was enough to challenge a jet engine at full throttle. We mingled, looked, waited for drinks, signed up to buy a copy of the book, and left after a discrete interval.

Seems Melbourne's monde literaire is in a flap about Ben Naparstek, who is 23, taking the reigns of The Monthly as editor. Yesterday I started to notice a large number of hits to my blog from Melbourne. This morning, The Australian and The Age (but NOT The Sydney Morning Herald) ran stories about the appointment.

Which just goes to show how right the critics are. The Monthly is supposed to be an Australian magazine but people have complained to me that it is Melbourne-centric, always running the same writers, notably Alice Pung.

Naparstek's appointment is certainly a surprise. I blogged about him in detail because, in June 2006, age 20, he published an interview with the reclusive Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami. I thought this was exceptional, as I'd never heard of Naparstek before. Now he's scored another coup, landing one of the most coveted literature jobs in the country.

Although it has a fairly small circulation compared to The New Yorker or The Atlantic, The Monthly is distinctly Australian and does a fairly good job - pace the dissatisfied readers mentioned earlier - at reflecting what is important in this country.

It will certainly be interesting to see what happens with the magazine over the coming months and years. Nevertheless, given the cloud under which the previous editor left - not acting in a sufficiently consensual manner vis a vis Melbourne academic and magazine chairman Robert Manne - it may be valid to claim that Naparstek was appointed because the magazine's publisher thought he would be more tractable.

We'll see. And given Naparstek's international credentials - not only interviewing famous writers at their home seats but studying in Baltimore - perhaps the magazine will become less Melbourne-centric and more representative of the whole of this great land of ours.

Taiwan's rapprochement with the mainland received a boost this week when it was announced that a museum dedicated to the work of Taiwanese cartoonist Chu Teh-yung would be built in Hangzhou. The complex will also include animation studios, artists' workshops and hotels. Authorities have told Chu that he will have discretion in the museum's design.

Hangzhou is a provincial capital (Zhejiang province) located about halfway between Beijing and Taiwan. The province borders the sea.

A story published by Canada's CBC News says that Chu's cartoons, banned ten years ago, resonate with mainland readers because they depict stories they can relate to.

They portray family issues — not political ones — such as parental pressure and generational clashes, which have become more marked as China modernized and a new class of white-collar workers came to the fore.

"[The urban workers] see in my cartoons their own stories … people who are struggling with the same family and marriage problems as they themselves are," notes Chu.

In a China Post story we learn that Chu's cartoons have been made into Chinese stage shows or TV series and that "Chu has become a household name on the mainland".

A Taipei Times story notes that the deal was signed in late April.

"Audiences are not going to sit there and be handed tablets of stone," avers Chris Cramer, Reuters global editor for multimedia. But he also thinks that we live in a community of "continuous partial attention" where the "chatter, chaff and stuff available" drown out the media. To be successful nowadays "you have to create something that differentiates yourself from the crowd".

"Use new technology to make a brand," he advised the media students assembled to hear about becoming a journalist in the connected world. "Who needs the traditional media? Any of you can start to change the world yourselves."

Cramer (left in photo) was joined by Florian Westphal, head of media and PR at Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross. The talk was organised by the Centre for Independent Journalism at the University of Technology, Sydney.


Cramer has pretty strong views on what media must do to respond to consumer demand. The Reuters brand, he says, is almost unmatched in terms of trust, a shrinking quantity in today's world of "fake and breathless hysteria" where "everything is created to present fear and conflict". Cramer says that the level of trust in conventional media is at an all-time low. But things are not unmercifully dire, he predicts. "The whole world is a news gatherer" now, he says. Cramer recounts how, when the aircraft touched down in the Hudson River in New York last year he found himself at the window "rubbernecking like everyone else" instead of using his trusty handheld camera to capture footage.

"The most compelling images come from tourists," he says. There is the potential to access millions overnight. On the downside for companies like Reuters, most people think that news should be "absolutely free". Yet he thinks that people will continue to pay for the kinds of values that companies like Reuters add to their product. "Everything we do commercially enhances our reputation," he says.

But "a journalist is only as good as the news story he does tomorrow". Reuters has 2800 journalists working out of 196 bureaus and Cramer estimates that the audience for their product numbers a billion.

I asked Cramer why journalists are often very critical of social networking sites like Facebook. He had said that we live in a world where, given the ability of anyone to be a journalist, there is a danger of "electronic mob rule".

"Facebook? Big tick," says Cramer. "I personally am not down on any of this stuff." But some of his colleagues are "terrified" of it. "They twitter for a day, don't see the point and then leave."

The Taiwanese Film Festival was an intimate affair that showcased two films, 'The Shoe Fairy' by Robin Lee and 'Secret' by Jay Chou, that are indicators of a confident culture not so much in transition as pausing to reflect on past successes. Both are, as Sydney Talent Company director Jon-Claire Lee noted, chick flics. And although it's a slight stretch to contemplate just how "the lost samurai spirit of Japan" - a characteristic of Taiwan mentioned by Taiwan ambassador Dr Gary Lin - is evident in the films, they offer a more-than-cursory glimpse into what makes Taiwan such an interesting place.

I spoke with Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Australia director general Angela Lin about the irony of president Ma's rapprochement with mainland China (Ma is Kuomintang) and she said that "that was 60 years ago" and that it was not surprising. Taiwan is a liberal, tolerant society. In this formulation, what seems to go against logic may just be part of the routine dynamics of party politics (the KMT's predecessors, the DPP, had icy relations with China).

"Taiwanese people help each other," said Lee. In the first film, Dodo is a young woman with a dangerous shoe addiction. Married to handsome, forbearing dentist Dr Smiley, Dodo discovers that having one white sheep and one black sheep - her childhood mantra, garnered from the books her parents read to her when she was small - may not immediately seem a preposessing scenario. Working at Jack's Publishing, Dodo is often sent to pick up drawings from Big Cat, who turns out to be a mature woman who wears floaty dresses and lends a hand - she gives Dodo a kitten.

The kitten as a talisman of personal development has nothing, however, on the lady who runs the shoe shop. After Dodo's change of heart, she gives her shoes to the lady, who asks customers to give her children's books in exchange for them. The lady then donates the books to an orphanage.

But this is a mere schematic glance at 'The Shoe Fairy', which possesses a beauty and grace that is rare in films from any country. 'Secret' is a very different kind of film in that it is a kind of ghost story. Here, too, people help each other, most notably Jay (played by the director, an accomplished musician), who finds happiness in helping Rain, a schoolgirl who has discovered a way to travel in time.

The movie may not "reflect the cultural diversity of Taiwan", as Dr Lin suggested, but it does show a confident and mature culture able to look at itself with open eyes. As a school love story, it contains many elements we know from other films, including discipline, friendship, competitiveness, and bullying. Jay represents a kind of ideal: an accomplished piano player who not only befriends the oddball football players, but manages to navigate through the complex passages of schoolyard romance without losing his dignity or his equilibrium.

It is also an affecting tale, coaxing emotions in the audience - mixed but mostly ethnically Chinese - and causing not a few young women to shed an occasional tear.

In all it was a fun evening. The refreshments supplied by Din Tai Fung restaurant (based in World Square) made it possible to watch two longish movies without collapsing from exhaustion.

Seems Microsoft Support was too quick to blame pirate software for my Outlook problems. After four calls totalling at least six hours case number 1101 *** *** is finally closed. And the culprit? Too many emails in a single folder.

But it's certain that the fact I had a Chinese version of Office on my computer was the cause of the first problem - Chinese language folder names. Once that was fixed, Microsoft leapt to the conclusion that because it was pirated then the next problem (emails received after 27 July 2008 wouldn't import) was due to the same fact.

In actual fact, I would probably have had both problems even if the Office software had not been a pirated edition.

To fix the second problem we split past emails into 'by-year' folders and imported each year separately. Thus Outlook does not tolerate too many emails in one folder. Splitting them into years meant we stayed under the maximum per-folder limit, and the import was successful.

I only decided to get Outlook because my previous email client - Windows Mail - is not full-featured. As I noted in the earlier blog post about this issue it did not allow me to control the appearance of my signature on reply emails and forward emails.

Now I have total control.

smh.com.au, as part of the Fairfax stable, is in an organisation bleeding red. On the day after a multitude of cuts was announced in a budget aimed at shoring up a multitude of new expenditures, the website put up a terrifying ad for Macbooks that occupies the top of the page above the fold. Like the government - eager to generate revenues to fund losses elsewhere - smh.com.au has invaded my browser with an ad that is sure to cause thousands of toenails to curl.

With any luck it will be gone tomorrow. But deadly downturns in media revenues have caused highly popular websites to seek ad revenues by placing irritating and intrusive ads in places previously thought to be exempt from the annoying wallpaper of clickthrough-land.

Another egregious example was the BMW ad that occupied the side channels of the top page of smh.com.au. Not only was the regular square banner espousing high-end cars, the generous white space either side of the main copy that web users rely on to make reading online tolerable was taken up by zooming sedans with coloured wheels.

BMW is the last car I would ever consider, after this escapade. But the Apple takeover of smh.com.au's top page makes me nervous about where ad placement is travelling. It's not enough that I personally would be less likely, now, to buy a Mac. It's the high level of tolerance for such treatment among web users generally, that causes me most apprehension.

When you bring up the page it loads normally. But then the Apple ad intrudes, pushing the news stories and photos down a good 10cm, and much disappears below the fold. Normally, a horizontal row of photos sits just above the fold. Now, the main story's caption is obscured and you're forced to scroll down to see what normally is immediately legible above the fold.

As media ad receipts dwindle with the recession, we're likely to see more such treatment from news editors and the managers who decide how information is placed, and how advertisers are treated. Stuff the consumer. Make 'em scroll!

Natalie Tran, the feral YouTube comic who I wrote about in February, has raised her profile in an unexpected way. At the time she said she did not want to handle product endorsements on her posts and I applauded her for her fortitude and foresight. Now she has done a deal with The Sydney Morning Herald, one of Australia's major broadsheets, to provide content.

Having outrun the hordes of ravening marketing operatives eager to place promos for laptop computers and blockbuster movies on her vlog, Nat has teamed up with the Herald's Seamus Byrne on his Digital Life cast. The pairing started at the end of March with Nat as the 'Real World correspondent' playing comic against Byrne's straight guy while showing the ins and outs of set-top boxes.

And while the dynamic between the poe-faced Byrne and the fey Tran survives the transition to 'useful' video (as opposed to just 'entertaining'), there is a slight drop in interest. But only slight. Nat is still the golden girl of vlog comedy. The weekly cast on the Herald's website ensures that avid fans will have plenty of opportunity to view their favourite web caster.

And that's a good thing.

It wasn't the first video that caught my attention. I saw the promo still on the Herald's website for the most recent video, which treats GPS systems. I eagerly clicked through to view it and I wasn't disappointed. Nat is still on top of the material, giving us a rollicking introduction to a technology that offers a swathe of comedic angles.

The irony is thick. In a story about the National Liaison Committee of International Students and its poor relations with NSW universities, reporter Heath Gilmore demonstrates by an error that knowledge in the broader community about international students is poor. In talking about how international students are largely ignored by the press and the broader community, the main figure in the NLC, one Master Shang, refers to the death in Perth of Jiao Dan on 8 October 2007.

Jiao was attacked and raped with a bottle and left for dead. She died of pneumonia by the side of the road. A man, Daniel Adam Wright, was charged with and convicted of the murder.

But Gilmore gets it wrong. "In the wake of the tragic death of Jiao Dan [a Chinese student murdered two years ago in Sydney], we now know many more are dying or being seriously hurt," said Shang.

The girl who died in Sydney was Wei Liao, not Jiao Dan. Wei fell from the balcony of an apartment block in Waterloo after an intruder sexually assaulted her and others in the unit they were living in. At the time some suspected Wei committed suicide out of shame. She died on 26 October 2008.

There was no coverage in Eastern state media of the Jiao death, however people using the Internet could access stories published on Western Australian Web sites.

Gilmore is the Herald's education reporter and should not have confused the two stories, as both girls were international students. It's a shame.

I'm chastened and expectant, having undertaken rapid instruction in the dangers of pirate software. And it wasn't even mine. When my friend installed it on my computer I may have warned her but the deed was done anyway. Now I know better and I'll be more careful next time someone asks if they can install software in my home.

I did her a favour but her software did me none today. I decided this afternoon that I was desperate for new email software. I had been using Windows Mail, a poorly-appointed client that either came with the computer when I bought it in 2006 or arrived on the Vista CD a couple of years later. This bare-bones software did the job but when replying to emails it allows the signature's font to change. Sometimes it changes to Times and sometimes it changes to Ariel. My default font is Verdana, and having recently gone into business on a self-employed basis, I decided today that appearance was more important than it had been in the past.

When I got home with the box and installed the software, I discovered that all the folders for incoming and sent emails inside the software were labelled in Chinese. This was due to my friend's copy of Office - the pirated one - influencing language selection in Outlook, the new email client I was installing. I called Microsoft and the young man in Malaysia took control of my desktop in an effort to rectify the problem. I also asked him to help me import the messages stored in the old software. This he then did and, as the thousands of messages scrolled into the new client, I rang off.

Too soon, it turned out. The message import stopped at a message received in late July 2008 for an unknown reason. Because the Malaysian had given me a case number and assured me of continued support for 30 days, I called Microsoft back. This time I spoke with Roza, who once again took control of my desktop and addressed the problem.

It's still not fixed. I need to wait until Tuesday before she calls me back to finalise the issue. In the meantime I'm using the old email client because I don't have any choice. Choice is, however, something I will certainly exercise next time I'm asked to allow a new software program to be installed on a computer that I own. And probably I'll default to refusal. It's just too much trouble otherwise.

The PRIA’s debate tonight descended into hilarity as both sides - journalists and PR operatives - launched ridiculously loaded barbs at opposing camps. The topic ‘That PR and journalism are two sides of the same coin’ languished unattended as team members went for laughs instead of coherence or relevance. The only thing missing was a backbencher’s mocking dial amid the routine catcalling inside the House of Representatives.

It’s a debate we need to have. Health warnings on food are contained in dietary information printed on the side of the pack. Cigarette packets are now mostly taken up with pictures of illness. But news stories we read daily may - or may not - be sourced entirely - or largely - from media releases put out by PR operatives.

The evening started auspiciously with a 30-minute run-down of the state of research by Prof Jim Macnamara from UTS. Studies from the US go back to 1930, when researchers pointed to “information processing” in news. In Australia studies started in 1993, when Rod Tiffen found that 18 per cent of newspapers contained material sourced from PR feed.

1993 was also the year of Macnamara’s own first study. He sourced 800 media releases from PRIA members and found that this translated into 2500 stories. Of the stories, 38 per cent were wholly or substantially based on the PR material. In trade publications, he found, 70 per cent of the content is “PR supplied”.

More recently, a Cardiff University study found that 60 per cent of news was “entirely wire service copy”. Only 12 per cent of news was “independently researched and written”. A Washington University study found that 94 per cent of editors admitted using PR. Amanda Millar at UTS in 2008 uncovered what Macnamara called “close relationships” between journalists and PR operatives and he discussed what he called the “third person effect”. Journalists reclassify people over time so that they become “industry spokespeople” not PR workers. Along with this “acculturation” there remains the PR industry “out there that they don’t deal with”.

The PR industry thus becomes the ‘third person’ in the relationship between the journalist and the PR operative who they have come to trust. Such journalists, says Macnamara, “don’t deal with PR as an industry”.

But Macnamara warned the audience not to generalise and to “look within each sector”. Not all sectors of the media are the same, as the news story published in The Australian on Monday attests. The journalist’s source for the story was Macnamara.

Macnamara said the data showed 30-80 per cent of media content was sourced from, or significantly influenced by, PR practitioners, depending on the outlet, with estimates of 40-75 per cent common.

...

Using them most heavily were smaller outlets such as suburban and rural newspapers, some types of magazines, trade press and specialist publications.

The heaviest users of all were travel magazines, which in some cases were overwhelmingly dominated by handouts published with barely a word changed.

As to the debate itself? A few quotes taken out of context must suffice as the level of coherence was so dodgy that it was difficult to hear more than one sentence at a time. Speakers harped on in a barely coherent manner or vociferated explosively in their endless quest for audience approval.

Lukas “The Rising Star” Picton - for the Negative - for example said that “The objective of PR is to manipulate the public” (loud jeers). Public relations “should be renamed public manipulation” (more jeers).

Sophia Russell, for the Affirmative, noted that PR operatives and journalists often do the same degrees. She seemed to think that the debate was whether one side or the other was to blame for the poor public perception of both. “We’re both storytellers,” she went on, who try to deliver the same things to the public. “It’s all about talkability.”

But that didn’t get a big enough laugh so she had to up the ante. “Content can come straight from the PR person’s laptop.” More jeers, predictably, followed this small bomb launched into the boozy confines of The Laugh Garage.

Clint Dreiberg, for the Negative, countered by telling the majority of the audience that they did not belong to “a real profession”. PR is contemptible, he opined. “It’s not a real job.”

They laughed and they jeered and I left early due to a combination of a sneezing fit and the fact that my parking garage closed its doors at 9pm. So I missed the denouement and I missed an opportunity to ‘network’. “This networking event aims to reveal an insight into ‘if’ and ‘how’ these industries can harmoniously work together,” ran the email I received from the Public Relations Institute of Australia on registering for the event. But the tenor of debate made me regret the 70 dollars. And the seriousness of the issue made me regret even more the lack of discipline and accountability displayed by those involved.

A missed opportunity, I thought.

MetaxuCafe is dead. Finally the link, clicked, ends in a 404. It has been several years since I first found MetaxuCafe - a literature social community on the Web with lists of lit bloggers, a post facility, and threaded comments. But today the 'image missing' that had been indicated in my blog's right-hand column (reserved for favourite sites) was replaced by a blank space. No longer was the image just removed from the target server; the URL it was sitting on had completely disappeared.

I tidied up, removing the link to MetaxuCafe from my blog's Template page. I had been waiting for the 'This website is temporarily unavailable, please try again later.' message to change. It did, but instead of the site returning in full flower, the 404 appeared. MetaxuCafe is officially dead.

I had posted many times on MetaxuCafe. I posted in native mode and I posted links to posts on my blog. In this sense, MetaxuCafe was the first 'aggregator' I had used, a long time before Facebook came along. It must have been early in my blogging career, which started in January 2006. I didn't join Facebook until two years later. This is surmise (there's no record of when you joined in Facebook, and I never thought to make a note) but I guess it's pretty accurate.

Nevertheless, I stopped posting on MetaxuCafe outright some time in 2007. There wasn't enough action to satisfy my need for connection. I'd post a link and wait for comments which never came. I saw comments - trite I thought - on others' posts and scoffed inwardly. Where I once visited daily I stopped going altogether. Thus the world turns.

Literary blogging is a healthy but under-recognised segment of the blogosphere. There are even fewer culture blogs, but these seem to get more accliam than their purely literature-focused counterparts. This may have to do with the low profile - apart from the occasional blockbuster - that literature possesses in society generally. It's not just middle aged women who are interested in books, however.

MetaxuCafe may be thought to have been killed by Facebook, which is at the 200-million-plus mark in terms of membership. As one social site went downhill, the other rose supreme. And it seems that other social networking sites, like Twitter, are failing to keep up the pressure. "But Facebook is like sooooo January 2009" I heard tonight at writing class. "Why don't you write about Twitter instead?"

I cringed inwardly. I'd hate to think that my fellow lit blogger Reading Matters was right after all her intransigence. Having resisted the urge to sign up for Facebook, the blogger recently started tweeting, and posting the tweets on her blog.

My blog is completely separate from my web page but I often post links to it in Facebook. Occasionally one of these links will result in a click-through, but not often. I'm not too concerned. I blog because I enjoy it, am stimulated by the writing exercise and entertained by the clicks I get. I don't blog out of vanity, just as I don't use Facebook out of vanity. They serve different purposes but are both relevant to my personality and persona.

As for MetaxuCafe, it seems that it didn't serve enough purposes for enough people. It has gone to its grave quietly, like a slowmo projection of a sinking ship, and all passengers escaped in liferafts.

On the day the defence white paper - the first since 2000 - was released by the prime minister on board a navy ship docked at Garden Island, police raid a Kogarah, Sydney, apartment and find a huge stash of weapons including automatic guns, explosives, and bullet-proof vests. It’s an odd convergence of the national to the domestic. A man in his twenties was simultaneously arrested in the Sydney CBD over the find.

Considerable planning, time and funds had to have been expended to accumulate such a large cache of weaponry. The find has been linked to bikie gang activity. A recent spate of shootings and the now-infamous Sydney airport brawl - when dozens of bikies fought each other in the air terminal, resulting in the death of one of them - led to the establishment of Strike Force Raptor in the police. The police are focusing attention on this rogue element in society. In South Australia it is already a crime for bikies even to meet one another, under new illegal assembly laws.

On the national front, military spending by Australia will also concentrate on changed circumstances - geopolitical ones. While the white paper says that the US will remain the dominant regional power until 2030, plans are clearly being made to counteract the growing military stockpiles of Asian nations, particularly China.

China is not a rogue state - it’s not yet a bikie gang in the local community of nations - but largesse in the arms sphere over recent years has got its neighbours thinking about the possible necessity of a deterrent force. Australia will therefore concentrate on defending the ‘air-sea gap’ - the corridors leading to the continent from the north. Our southern approaches are defended by distance and the south pole.