REVIEWS, Global – Here’s some quick questions.
Have a book addiction?
Need to get a textbook for school?
Want to sell read fiction or used textbooks?
Want to opt-out of consuming and then shelving books?

The BookMooch website (www.bookmooch.com) allows you to do these things.
How BookMooch works basically
Simply register, make a list of books you’d like to send, and a list of books you’d like to receive.
You get points for everyone you send, and use points for everyone you receive. You can also use points for charities.
The only money you pay is postage for books …

YOUR SAY, Europe — This March and April I will be going on a Global Innovation Tour. From mid-march I will be touring European cities. Some cities I will be seeing for the first time, other cities visiting, like Vienna, many times.
I represent 2thinknow, and we are dedicated to global positive social change in areas like environmental friendly transport, food supply, artistic city cultures, small-scale farming, regional produce, increased small business, economic moderation, regulation of industry and many other global issues.
Be Involved, Help Create Positive Global Change
This is the very …

Cubicle non-comformity. Distracting? Or empowering fun? I guess that depends if you’re reading this at work…

COMMENT, Global, Easter — As we sit down and eat our chocolate eggs, and hot cross buns, there is much to be said about Easter and Christianity.
At this time of year, with also various Jewish and Muslim festivals, it seems natural to question one’s faith.

Yet tolerant Christianity is so central to our civilized Western world, as to be indivisible from it.
We forget the Western World is laid of Christian stone…
Laws are a substitute for basic Christian values, in a society of solid values, laws are needed less. For values, not …

VIDEOS, Youtube — From the Anglican Bishop of Ballarat, a regional centre of Victoria, Australia, not far from Melbourne.
Although I am not Anglican, this is a very accessible Easter message.
It is the sense of ethics, of Judeo-Christian ethics some say, that is missing to various degrees from around this commercial world.
And this well-spoken, accessible, message reminds us of how much Christian ethics are fundamental to the function of a society. And how, long-term deviation from ethics results in the inevitable decline of given societies.
It is ethics that make, build and …

COMMENT, EU, USA — Most of the focus in the recent crisis has been on the USA and Federal Reserve.
But the banking crisis is far broader than the USA. The German economy in Europe is in a few key ways closest to the US model. And German investment banks are close to collapse, according to De Spiegel.
“(Dusseldorf bank) IKB was on the verge of bankruptcy, with its supposed wonderful US investments worth little more than the paper it was printed on.”
De Spiegel International, 20th February 2008

German bank CEOs are not …

ANALYSIS, Sydney — Property prices in Sydney (and other Australian capitals) are more expensive than almost any city in the world.

New York? Paris? Boston? Vienna?
In general, better value than Sydney, as has been reported in numerous media stories today. Property prices are at 7.5 average median earnings.
And we’re not talking Park Avenue property here, more like Queens.
Sydney suburban Bondi is a sleazy second rate suburb, not comparable to Park Avenue. Yet property is priced in the millions of dollars.
There seems little doubt that Australian capitals of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and …

COMMENT, Australia — Call centre workers are an unloved occupation. But industry practise, and individual behavior are at least partly responsible.
The reality is basic infrastructure and services no longer work in Australia, which by Western standards has approaching the worst service ethics of any English-speaking country. Even worse than England, and that is saying something.

I still remember the Telstra monopoly float, wasn’t that supposed to improve telecommunication industry service?
Now to the latest debacle…
Primus Telecommunications: a herd of slovenly telecommunication cows wandering across the ‘fibre-optic’ dirt-track of Australia
To connect a single …

ANALYSIS, USA — Wealthy white people with academic economic dogma are a plague on all our wallets, let alone houses.

The economics brains trust of our last 8 years or so of US (and British & Australian) economic policy have been a few rich white guys, right-wing academic economists from big universities like Harvard. These folks theories are to blame for severity of the coming US recession.
Why?
Most universities (like Harvard) have a fair mix of dissent; but the current US administration selected all economists (and think-tanks) with far-Right free market views.
Clinton, …

REVIEW, Melbourne — Who said theatre was dead?

Last night, in Melbourne, my wife and I sat in the Royal Botanic Gardens with between 500-800 people (a quick approximate headcount) to enjoy Shakespeare.
What struck me was the size and average age of the gathering.
50% or more of the people there were under 25. Most were under 35.
At least 10% were school age children, mostly pre-teens.
Sitting next to us was a group of around 25 10-13 year olds. Who rambunctiously enjoyed the performance with a few bags of Doritos, some bottled water …

Food, real food. We take it for granted – yet more often than not what Westerners are eating is not ‘food’, but produced artificially in labs. As Felicity Lawrence, Peter Singer, Jim Mason and Greg Critser (among others), have argued the time has for consumers come to demand and purchase only real food, and not ’substitutes’. This flight to food is fundamental to human health and wellbeing, now and in the future.

COMMENT, USA, Australia – Let’s start with the USA economy.
US sliding into a chasm
The debate on whether the US economy is in recession or not seems to be over.
The bear is among us.

For months people have been standing up that the US economy is not as bad as first believed. The US recession was predicted by 2thinknow in December 2007, using our innovation models.
Before Christmas, many were sitting on the fence. I called this recession, in this journal, in straightforward terms before Goldman Sachs, or UN made their announcements.
Of course …