Sunday, December 30, 2018

Rumours: musically obsessed to the just plain curious


I am ready to meet my Maker.
Whether my Maker is prepared for the great
ordeal of meeting me is another matter.


By Winston Churchill - most of my bosses could not disagree less with Winnie aka British Bulldog

Latitude rumours are like lightning on summer tinder, producing flames that dance in flickering brilliance from person to person, sometimes flaring in great conflagrations of exaggeration before finally extinguishing themselves in the cold waters of fact.




Der Spiegel journalist messed with the wrong small town Medium




In the Valley of Fear London Review of Books



Meet Rooster Girl, the rooster-crowing magpie who has won the hearts of rescue volunteers. Magpiesare known and loved for their flute-like sounds, but not Rooster Girl — the rescued magpie prefers to crow like a rooster, hence the name.




If just if... If we’re not happy with the new path we’re being walked down, it is up to us to let our councils know what we think about it.
Joseph O’Donoghue is head of memberships at Keep Sydney Open.
'It's complicated': how your NYE celebrations are being privatised

Four months after losing the leadership spill he instigated, Peter Dutton has broken his silence in an extraordinary spray at Malcolm Turnbull.
Political Revenge Served Cold?



We Are Living in a Time of Hate







 Some of y’all disappoint me. If you watched the video, as I strongly suspect some commenters didn’t, it’s about loneliness, not really about sex at all.


'He ruled it like a cult': inside drug crop enforcer's brutal regime

The Dollar Store Backlash Has Begun Citylab.com

The Chart That Broke Our Brains Data for Progress (UserFriendly)


Should poetry be political? For the longest time, the answer was no. Then came 9/11, and a change in the artistic psyche  


Although he played up his eccentricities in public, Edward Gorey was a shy, private man who took perverse pride in the dullness of his own existence  Gorey  








The Problem With Trying To Be Morally Perfect



Can the moral saint, if perfect, ‘waste’ time watching films and television? How about spending any money on fine food or travel? Or expending energy on sport rather than seriously important causes? Or going birdwatching or hiking? No time either for theatre or the pleasures of curling up with a good book. The problem with extreme altruism, as Oscar Wilde is reported to have said about socialism, is that it takes up too many evenings.  Aeon



Pleasure and expertise. Those who play tennis well or cook well experience a kind of pleasure unavailable to others. Is the same true for those who read well? Well Who Knew?


The shackles of moral perfection. Both utilitarianism and rationalism, embraced fully, create servants. The nonmoral parts of life make us who we are Who Are We  

       International books-of-the-year lists 

       Among international books-of-the-year lists we now also have:




21ST CENTURY PROBLEMS, LOW LIBIDO EDITION: “This is a sexual state of emergency.”

Puns about German sausage are generally considered the worst.” A new philosophical study of comedy is not immune to punmanship...  Yammer of Puns