Asimov what he'd do it he knew this would be the last day of his life: Type faster."
“Ah! the books that one will never read again. They gave delight, perchance something more; they left a perfume in the memory; but life has passed them by for ever. I have but to muse, and one after another they rise before me. Books gentle and quieting; books noble and inspiring; books that well merit to be pored over, not once but many a time. Yet never again shall I hold them in my hand; the years fly too quickly, and are too few. Perhaps when I lie waiting for the end, some of those lost books will come into my wandering thoughts, and I shall remember them as friends to whom I owed a kindness—friends passed upon the way. What regret in that last farewell!
~ George Gissing, The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft (courtesy of Levi Stahl)
THE WASTE LAND: It’s National Poetry Day, but these days, The Noble Art Is Not So Noble, David Solway writes, discussing that artform’s long slow painful slide into PC irrelevance.
Is a Leading Suicide Prevention Organization a Front for Big Pharma? Alternet
The Sydney music community came together today with one clear message … Keep Sydney Open Thousands flock to keep Sydney open
The pill is linked to depression – and doctors can no longer ignore it Guardian
Dragontail launches $6m IPO
A Desert Full of Tomatoes, Thanks to Solar Power and Seawater MIT Technology Review
WHEN Marco Polo travelled to China in the 13th century, he found that among its wonders was “the secret of the alchemists”. Its imperial court could turn mulberry bark into money. It simply printed paper notes, decreed that people must accept them and killed counterfeiters. For a Venetian used to gold coins, the world’s first fiat currency was a marvel. Its value derived not from precious metal but from the credibility of the regime issuing it. This month China achieved another kind of monetary alchemy: to fashion a global reserve currency out of one that, by a range of criteria, does not yet merit such status. On October 1st the yuan became the fifth entrant in the basket of currencies that forms the Special Drawing Right, a reserve asset created by the IMF. Immediate implications are limited. SDRs are a unit of account, not a real currency; inclusion in the basket does not force anyone to
acquire the yuan. Symbolically, though, it is a big deal: the IMF’s seal of approval for China’s monetary system. It has deemed it safe for central banks around the world to add the yuan to their reserves. Dozens of central banks in fact already do so,...Continue reading
In second debate -Donald Trump takes fight to moderators too
~ George Gissing, The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft (courtesy of Levi Stahl)
THE WASTE LAND: It’s National Poetry Day, but these days, The Noble Art Is Not So Noble, David Solway writes, discussing that artform’s long slow painful slide into PC irrelevance.
Is a Leading Suicide Prevention Organization a Front for Big Pharma? Alternet
The Sydney music community came together today with one clear message … Keep Sydney Open Thousands flock to keep Sydney open
The pill is linked to depression – and doctors can no longer ignore it Guardian
Dragontail launches $6m IPO
A Desert Full of Tomatoes, Thanks to Solar Power and Seawater MIT Technology Review
WHEN Marco Polo travelled to China in the 13th century, he found that among its wonders was “the secret of the alchemists”. Its imperial court could turn mulberry bark into money. It simply printed paper notes, decreed that people must accept them and killed counterfeiters. For a Venetian used to gold coins, the world’s first fiat currency was a marvel. Its value derived not from precious metal but from the credibility of the regime issuing it. This month China achieved another kind of monetary alchemy: to fashion a global reserve currency out of one that, by a range of criteria, does not yet merit such status. On October 1st the yuan became the fifth entrant in the basket of currencies that forms the Special Drawing Right, a reserve asset created by the IMF. Immediate implications are limited. SDRs are a unit of account, not a real currency; inclusion in the basket does not force anyone to
acquire the yuan. Symbolically, though, it is a big deal: the IMF’s seal of approval for China’s monetary system. It has deemed it safe for central banks around the world to add the yuan to their reserves. Dozens of central banks in fact already do so,...Continue reading
In second debate -Donald Trump takes fight to moderators too
Few acts of creative courage are more vulnerable-making than sharing our labors of love with others, but especially with our heroes — those whom we admires as masters of our chosen craft and whose opinions we reverence as a supreme metric of merit. The terror at the prospect of disappointing those mentors and role models, of having them perceive mediocrity where we have aimed for greatness, is a singular terror familiar to all who have devoted their lives to bringing something new and beautiful and significant into the world, be they scientists or artists.
Two centuries before artist Ann Truitt’s beautiful reflection on the parallels between being an artist and being a parent, one of humanity’s greatest artists, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (January 27, 1756–December 5, 1791), conjured the same metaphor as he confronted that peculiar terror in entrusting his labor of love in the hands of his dear friend and mentor Joseph Haydn.
The two composers, a generation apart, met in Vienna around Christmas of 1783. After sensing a great kinship of spirit, they moved quickly acrossthe concentric circles of platonic relationships and arrived at the center of a deep friendship. Having already admired Haydn for years and even considered him his teacher, Mozart composed six string quartets dedicated to his friend and hero. In the late summer of 1785, he presented them to Haydn in a beautiful letter included in The Norton Book of Friendship (public library) — that forgotten 1991 treasure edited by Eudora Welty, which gave us Welty’s warm wisdom on friendship as an evolutionary mechanism for language and Albert Camus and Boris Pasternak’s beam of kinship and mutual appreciation across the Iron Curtain.
CONOR MCGREGOR, an Irishman who is perhaps the world’s most famous mixed-martial arts (MMA) fighter, is as famous for his mouth as for his quick feet and hands. He boasts about how much more money he makes than his opponents. He has referred to other fighters as “twerp” and “snake”. The co-founder of ONE Championship—an MMA league stealing a march in Asia on Mr McGregor’s American-based league, Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC)—is disdainful of such behaviour. Martial arts, insists its founder, Chatri Sityodtong, who is Thai-American, is about discipline and humility, not brashness. Most of a fighter’s work, after all, takes place outside the ring. Promotional videos for ONE’s fighters tend to depict them training rather than fighting. The point, says Mr Sityodtong, is to inspire viewers to achieve their dreams in their own lives, rather than just getting them to cheer the biggest bully on the block. ONE has pursued a policy that might be described as “hyperlocalism”. Western sports properties, such as the English Premier League (EPL), a football championship,...Continue reading
The ABC wants eight staff to become Black Belts in the art of Lean Six Sigma, which emphasises cutting waste, consistent output and continuous improvement Guthrie’s Lean machine: ABC executives to get black belts
Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong detained in Thailand ‘at China’s request’ – reports Guardian (furzy). But Twitter says he has landed in Hong Kong.
‘His criminality was astounding’: An osteopathic doctor, a motorcycle gang and $5 million in prescription pills
By Day 28 of fashion month, most of us can barely find time for lunch, but Ikram Goldman, the force of nature and founder of the 15-year-old Chicago store Ikram, was gigging with Pink Martini at Paris’s famous L’Olympia theater. On Tuesday night her designer friends Olivier Theyskens and Duro Olowu, and at least a dozen other fashion insiders, were in the crowd. “I was nervous as hell, but it felt right,” says Goldman, who wore Olowu and Céline for her Paris debut. “I told myself, ‘let’s do this, let’s belt this out and get it done.’ Pink Martini