New expanded Where to Eat and Where to Stay sections covering all of Australia

We just released an update to the Explore Australia online Travel Guide,
featuring brand new detailed Where to Stay and Where to Go Sections

A few examples:

Byron Bay, NSW - Where to Stay

Broome, WA - Where to Eat

Happy Travels!

New Releases from Explore Australia

Culture Dump: Cheaper or Better Books?

I have been following the ongoing discussion about the Productivity Commission's inquiry into the price of book and I really feel it's another case of don't let accountants make policy.

Books are great, I love them. It's like music, I always prefer to buy a CD from a local band at one of their own gig's, because, I know that the musicians are getting a decent slice of the purchase price.

The one argument, out of them all on this issue, with which I really agree with is about remainder dumping in Australia. This is when a overseas publisher has excess stock and 'dumps' it cheaply.

That sucks because the problem when you buy a copy from a big chain bookseller who has imported remainders, apparently the author (and local publisher) then get paid nothing.

All depends on the contracts I guess, but the point is,

1. when you buy something of a cultural nature,
2. your actually voting with you wallet,
3. saying I like this artists work,
4. and thus saying, I'd like to support their efforts.

Obviously it's a donkey vote, if the artist isn't getting paid???

Peter Garrett recently launched a policy about residuals for artists on resale of their work. If that issue with remainders could be addressed in a similar way, we'd be getting somewhere.

It's a nice solution, we don't want to become the publishing wasteland than NZ has become.

Back on the accountants making policy...Is it better to make our artists poorer through cheaper books? Or is it more productive, to make our artists better paid and thus able to produce more content, which thru increased sales would become cheaper?

Alan Fels always cites the music industry as a similar case, but there's one important fact he seems to have ignored:

Most musicians I've met over the years, including quite a few successful ones over, make most of their money by playing gigs, not the scratchings they get from CD sales.

I'd vote for better books myself. There's more to culture than $$$$$..

Disclaimer: I work as a IT Consultant in the publishing industry, these are just my own opinions and musings

Sideways: Travels With Kafka, Hunter S. And Kerouac

After the pleasure of attending this book's launch last week, I'm chomping at the bit to read it!

I'm actually going to wait for a few relaxed hours to really enjoy the book and potentially read the entire book in one sitting :) Otherwise despite my speed reading, I'll end up staying up very very late reading..

From Rainbow Serpent 2006

I love the title, having first met Patrick on the renegade Cairns floor at the end of Rainbow Serpent in 2006 (as seen above in full flight), I have no doubt he's conjured up what is going to be a highly entertaining read.

Having not read the book, I'd suggest jumping over to the Patrick's site and having a read about both the author and his drug fuelled adventures around the world.

You can buy it online at Boomerang Books or if your in Melbourne, I know that Readings had some copies last week!

I'll follow up with a review

When Nietzsche Wept: A Novel of Obsession

My dad put me onto this book, it's another one of my all time favourites.

Written by Irvin D. Yalom, M.D a psychotherapist, this is his first book. A work of fiction, it's places Josef Breuer, Sigmund Freud and Friedrich Nietzsche together in Vienna in 1882.

This book like all his subsequent books is simply fantastic. Irvin draws upon his insights into therapy and constructs a journey into the mind of both patient and therapist.

I am loathe to talk too much about the content of this book as it simply has to be read. Towards the end of the book, there is a chapter that is simply the most insightful exploration of the male psyche and obsession that I have ever read.

Amazon link - When Nietzsche Wept: A Novel of Obsession

The Cosmic Serpent - DNA and the Origins of Knowledge

This is a great book which was given to me for my birthday a few years ago by Wolfgang Kundris.

It's a book by Jeremy Narby who is an anthropologist who was in South America and visited a Sharman and experienced what he described as Forest Television.

Being a scientist, he then undertook a 7 year journey through the history and cultures of the world to find a scientific explanation of what he experienced.

It's a fantastic read, good food for thought. Good for the scientifically minded and the not so scientifically minded alike.

The way Jeremy draws the link between the Australian Aboriginal's cave paintings of the Rainbow Serpent with chromosomes and the DNA's spiral helix of DNA was suprising.

As a white Australian who loves science, I had seen this image throughout my life and had never seen what is such an obvious connection.

Here's the amazon link - The Cosmic Serpent