Love is blind, marriage is an eye-opener ;-)
Retail’s new niche: Aging baby boomers The Oregonian
Religious competition was to blame for Europe’s witch hunts The Economist. And they didn’t even have social media!
Politics 'about the lure of authority and privileges': Bishop
The former foreign minister says she has witnessed behaviour in Canberra she never would have accepted while running a major law firm 20 years ago, and the public are justified in feeling "contempt" for politicians
Following up on my previous post, New York Times, Corruption Gutted South Africa’s Tax Agency. Now The Nation Is Paying The Price.: New York Times, Boston Firm Admits ‘Massive Failure’ in Plan to Aid South Africa Tax Agency:
The Boston consulting firm Bain and Company, which usually gets top dollar for its meticulously researched advice, charged $11 million on a contract in 2015 to advise South Africa’s tax agency on an ambitious restructuring plan.
Now, the firm has acknowledged that its work on a “diagnostic report” on the agency had been shoddy. It did not meet with senior officials involved in the tax agency’s modernization. It was ignorant of basic facts about the institution. And it did not even ask why the agency needed restructuring in the first place.
Buying fake honey as simple as a Google search
If you think it’s hard to pass fake honey off as the real thing, try typing “rice syrup pass” into Google and the results will shock you.
The California Endowment's Life Expectancy comparison is based on a data set provided by the Center on Society ...
50 Ways to See the Middle Ages
Our tireless staff of thousands is often asked to review all sorts of books, and from time to time one or another seems worth noting. This one, for example, by Elina Gertsman
Transcript: phone call between President Trump and journalist Bob Woodward
An extraordinary conversation between Trump and author Bob Woodward reveals how difficult it was to get a request to the President
In China, Some Sold-Out Hit Movies Are Really Seen By Very Few People
Many investors reportedly put money into films as a stock-market manipulation scheme, buying up blocks of unsold tickets and even entire screenings so that the perception of success will push up a company's share price. Film production is also used as a way to evade capital-flight controls and transfer large sums of money out of the country. … [Read More]
Against the Illusion of Separateness: Pablo Neruda’s Beautiful and Humanistic Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech
"I wish to say to the people of good will, to the workers, to the poets, that the whole future has been expressed in this line by Rimbaud: only with a burning patience can we conquer the splendid City which will give light, justice and dignity to all mankind.
In this way the song will not have been sung in vain."
“There is no insurmountable solitude. All paths lead to the same goal: to convey to others what we are. And we must pass through solitude and difficulty, isolation and silence in order to reach forth to the enchanted place where we can dance our clumsy dance…”
Our original guiding stars are struggle and hope. But there is no such thing as a lone struggle, no such thing as a lone hope. In every human being are combined the most distant epochs, passivity, mistakes, sufferings, the pressing urgencies of our own time, the pace of history
J.M. Coetzee, Disgrace
“For a man of his age, fifty-two, divorced, he has, to his mind, solved the problem of sex rather well. On Thursday afternoons he drives to Green Point. Punctually at two p.m. he presses the buzzer at the entrance to Windsor Mansions, speaks his name, and enters. Waiting for him at the door of No. 113 is Soraya. He goes straight through to the bedroom, which is pleasant-smelling and softly lit, and undresses. Soraya emerges from the bathroom, drops her robe, slides into bed beside him. `Have you missed me?’ she asks. `I miss you all the time,’ he replies. He strokes her honey-brown body, unmarked by the sun; he stretches her out, kisses her breasts; they make love.”
Fertility doc inseminated dozens of women with own sperm, DNA sites find Ars Technica
Fertility doc inseminated dozens of women with own sperm, DNA sites find Ars Technica
Orhan Pamuk, My Name is Red
“I am nothing but a corpse now, a body at the bottom of a well. Although I drew my last breath long ago and my heart has stopped beating, no one, apart from that vile murderer, knows what’s happened to me. As for that wretch, he felt for my pulse and listened for my breath to be sure I was dead, then kicked me in the midriff, carried me to the edge of the well, raised me up and dropped me below. As I fell, my head, which he had smashed with a stone, broke apart; my face, my forehead and cheeks, were crushed; my bones shattered, and my mouth filled with blood.”
Should
Australian officials be worried about Steve Bannon?
4 CORNERS: Donald Trump is yet to appoint a top representative to Australia, and won't be making that visit in November, but perhaps we're getting the next best thing: his former chief strategist. He's taking aim at Australia's ties with China.
4 CORNERS: Donald Trump is yet to appoint a top representative to Australia, and won't be making that visit in November, but perhaps we're getting the next best thing: his former chief strategist. He's taking aim at Australia's ties with China.
Victoria's Single Digital Presence:
'Like a startup within government'
DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION: There's no point in government agencies having their own branded websites if they don't make sense to the public, argues Vic DPC digital engagement director Jithma Beneragama
DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION: There's no point in government agencies having their own branded websites if they don't make sense to the public, argues Vic DPC digital engagement director Jithma Beneragama
Marshall
plans to axe thousands of public servants, cut entire programs
SA BUDGET: The Marshall government plans to cull several thousand public service jobs over the forward estimates, according to early reporting on the contents of its first budget.
Christian Gillitzer, Mathias Sinning, Nudging businesses to pay
their taxes; Does timing matter?
SA BUDGET: The Marshall government plans to cull several thousand public service jobs over the forward estimates, according to early reporting on the contents of its first budget.
Explore Leonardo da Vinci’s notebook: Codex Forster I – “Famous worldwide as the painter of such masterpieces as the Mona Lisa, Leonardo da Vinci (1452 – 1519) is also renowned for his notebooks in which he recorded his thoughts and inventions. Five of these fascinating notebooks, bound into three small volumes, have been in our collection since 1876 when they were bequeathed to the Museum by John Forster. Collectively known as Codex Forster, they date from about 1487 to 1505 and reflect Leonardo’s highly inquisitive mind. Codex Forster I contains both the earliest notebook we hold (from folio 41, about 1487 – 90, Milan) and the latest (up to folio 40, 1505, Florence). Written in Leonardo’s famous ‘mirror-writing’, the subjects explored within range from hydraulic engineering to a treatise on measuring solids…”
See also Leonardo da Vinci’s Earliest Notebooks Now Digitized and Made Free Online: Explore His Ingenious Drawings, Diagrams, Mirror Writing & More