Clancy . . . overflow . . . the best bits . . . funnies

Based in Sydney, account manager Todd Stewart (right) will manage one of four Sydney city territories and southern NSW along with parts of the ACT. Complementing this is the appointment of Brisbane-based Sean Foggarty (left) as account manager, doubling Heidelberg's sales presence in QLD. Their boss, Glenn Plummer, HAN General Manager, Northern Region, knows he’s not turning tyros loose on the industry. "Many of our customer's will know Todd and Sean from previous roles within the graphic arts industry and as such their experience and knowledge will serve them, our customers and Heidelberg well in their new positions"

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Who says there is no money in software anymore? Last week Adobe announced its revenues for the second quarter (June 4) were US $410.1 million, up 28% compared to the $320.1 million it generated during fiscal Q2 of last year. Net income for the quarter was $109.4 million, up 70% from the $64.2 million seen in fiscal Q2 2003.

It seems the pirates are not having too much effect, after all.

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Australian catalogue volumes continued to go gangbusters in 2003 breaking through the billion-dollar paper/print barrier to $1,004,000,000. It cost $700 million to distribute them with direct mail addressed catalogues using $400 million of that. This involved 338, 000 tonnes of paper that cost $482 million in print. Overall the value of the catalogue sector increased last year by 5.7 per cent to an overall total of $1.67 billion.

And that ain’t junk mail.

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David Fuller of Focus Press is a bloke who likes to do things right and part of that is running one of the most environmentally responsible printing companies in the country – everything from soy ink to alcohol free presses. And he makes good money doing it too.
So it stand to reason that with NSW in severe draught other companies should pay heed when he says that his water saving program has resulted in water consumption being lowered by over 62.5% over the past three years while productivity has increased by 25%.

He makes the point that if Australia’s 6,788 printers performed as well as Focus Press, the collective national water savings would be around 16,970,000,000 litres of water per annum – enough water to sustain 66,289 family homes for a year.

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There’s a fairly awful joke that goes around about the little red spots in some Indonesian paper – that’s where the orangutan went through the shredder. But there is a real concern about some harvesting practices in the archipelago, especially in Sumatra. According to the Wall Street Journal the Indonesian branch of the World Wildlife Fund accused Asia Pulp & Paper (AAP) of using timber illegally taken from the protected Tesso Nilo forest to make pulp. This is a forest that houses wild elephants and it is under attack by illegal loggers.

AAP has denied the allegations in a letter to its customers. It’s a matter of great importance to the financially troubled company because of the threat of boycotts in the air. Earlier this year Office Depot in the US said it will not buy AAP paper following a dispute between the paper company and WWF Indonesia over environmental guidelines.

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And finally . . . here are some of the speculative thoughts that keep Astrid S thinking deeply.

I wonder how much deeper the ocean would be without sponges.

Despite the high cost of living, have you noticed how it remains so popular?

Nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool.

It is hard to understand how a cemetery raised its burial cost and blamed it on the cost of living.

The 50-50-90 rule: Any time you have a 50-50 chance of getting something right, there is a 90% probability that you will get it wrong.

If you lined up all the cars in the world, some jerk would try to pass them.

You can't have everything-where would you put it?

The things that come to those who wait may be the things that were left by those who got there first.

A fine is a tax for doing wrong. A tax is a fine for doing well.

Computers let you make more mistakes faster than any other invention in human history, with the possible exception of handguns and tequila.