Friday, December 14, 2018

Parliamentary Echo: Life is uncertain. Eat dessert first....

If God were small enough to be understood, He would not be big enough to be worshipped.
— Evelyn Underhill, born in 1875

Find a group of people who challenge and inspire you; spend a lot of time with them, and it will change your life ...
 A good friend is like a four-leaf clover; hard to find and lucky to have... 


  “Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It’s not something you learn in school. But if you haven’t learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven’t learned anything.” 
― Muhammad Ali


We must look to the novelist if we hope to understand.”

'If We Hope to Understand' 


“Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.” 
― Henry David Thoreau

One Idea;  Trojka MEdia Dragon; Five Tips


“I have made a lot of mistakes falling in love, and regretted most of them, but never the potatoes that went with them." -Nora Ephron

More than a century ago, writer Aldous Huxley proclaimed, “Civilization means food and literature all round.” (In a spirit of Denis Cortese) 

Escape the ordinary, lift off and don’t miss the boat for the five-course dining experience with culinary surprises smuggled in along the way.  Think lip-smacking tastes of Sydney hawker markets, heady delights in the corridors of power and sumptuous Antipodean treats.

Good Food and Best Company at Parliament House

MEMBERS’ PARLIAMENTARY DINING ROOM


 Camille Paglia: ‘Hillary wants Trump to win again’ | Spectator USA

I have been trying for decades to get my fellow Democrats to realize how unchecked bureaucracy, in government or academe, is inherently authoritarian and illiberal. A persistent characteristic of civilizations in decline throughout history has been their self-strangling by slow, swollen, and stupid bureaucracies. The current atrocity of crippling student debt in the US is a direct product of an unholy alliance between college administrations and federal bureaucrats — a scandal that ballooned over two decades with barely a word of protest from our putative academic leftists, lost in their post-structuralist fantasies. Political correctness was not created by administrators, but it is ever-expanding campus bureaucracies that have constructed and currently enforce the oppressively rule-ridden regime of college life.


 

 “Friendship is like standing on wet cement. The longer you stay, the harder it’s to leave, and you can never go without leaving your footprints behind.” 
– Moi

Loving your job the ‘secret to a happy life’, says Paul Grimes

Even as we increasingly embrace high tech, “people-to-people connections still remain so important”, says the Victorian Public Sector Commissioner




Hung parliament 2018 - continued




It is arguable that with the election of Kerryn Phelps at the recent Wentworth by-election, the Commonwealth Parliament has not become a hung parliament, but has simply been confirmed as one. Read more...



The 75 Best Book Covers of 2018 According to Book Cover Designers - Literary Hub: “2018 has been many things, but it certainly has not been lacking in great book cover design. Here at Lit Hub, we unpacked the biggest book cover trend of the yearcompared US covers to their UK counterparts, and remembered the best and worst covers of Lolita as well as Edward Gorey’s own cover designs. We gave you a brief visual history of Virginia Woolf’s book covers and treated you to 100 covers for One Hundred Years of Solitude.
We also featured great essays from designers themselves, reflecting on their work: Janet Hansen on Nico Walker’s CherryCharlotte Strick on Rachel Cusk’s Outline series, Sarah Wood on Joseph Cassara’s The House of Impossible Beauties, Kimberly Glyder on Gone With the Wind, Roman Muradov on Norah Lange’s People in the Room, and many more.
But it is December, and therefore I am inclined to ask: which book covers were the best? As I did last year and the year before that, I asked the experts: book designers. This year, I asked 27 designers to share their favorite book covers of the year, with a bit about why—and they came back with a whopping 75 different covers of note. But of course, some of them had similar ideas about the best of the best. Here are the stats…”