It was her ankle
Caught my eye. I never dared
Look up at her face.
“I feel as if I’m trapped in a Top Forty by the Carpenters.”
Imrich Mraz: Nelson Mandela of Communist Czechoslovakia
Our Days are numbered ...
Imrich Power Ball Goes to $100 Million
More Sydney building defects brought to light
The senior bureaucrat who reviewed building regulation for the New South Wales government has condemned the lack of action on his 2015 report, warning the defects in the Opal Tower at Sydney’s Olympic Park “are likely just the tip of the iceberg”.
Michael Lambert, the former secretary of NSW Treasury, was commissioned by the government to look into the failings of building regulation in NSW, after a fire in a building in Bankstown in 2012 revealed shocking breaches of the building code. Michael Lambert a face that faced Members of NSW PAC in the 90s
Mathias Cormann from Cuban cigars to flying solo
Seeking pun-ters for Canberra’s pun competition, Capital Punishment
Seeking pun-ters for Canberra’s pun competition, Capital Punishment
Alex Polizzi embarks on a voyage of discovery back to her roots, taking in the colourful regions of Italy, from the cities and lakes of the North to the unmistakably Mediterranean South. Alex’s journey will see her revisiting some of her fondest memories, from her honeymoon tour to the humble hillside village that her grandfather came from and Rome, the city that she lived in during her twenties.
Alex Polizzi's Secret Italy | Documentary | via ABC - SBS On Demand
Alex Polizzi's Secret Italy - YouTube
12 Secret Towns in Italy You Need to Visit Before They're Overrun by Tourists
Alex Polizzi's Secret Italy: Episodes - Lifestyle
The New York Times: “Technology companies like to promote artificial intelligence’s potential for solving some of the world’s toughest problems, like reducing automobile deaths and helping doctors diagnose diseases. A company started by three former Google employees is pitching A.I. as the answer to a more common problem: being happier at work. The start-up, Humu, is based in Google’s hometown, and it builds on some of the so-called people-analytics programs pioneered by the internet giant, which has studied things like the traits that define great managers and how to foster better teamwork. Humu wants to bring similar data-driven insights to other companies. It digs through employee surveys using artificial intelligence to identify one or two behavioral changes that are likely to make the biggest impact on elevating a work force’s happiness. Then it uses emails and text messages to “nudge” individual employees into small actions that advance the larger goal…”
The Wall Street Journal has published this wonderful editorial each Christmas since 1949, In Hoc Anno Domini:
When Saul of Tarsus set out on his journey to Damascus the whole of the known world lay in bondage. There was one state, and it was Rome. There was one master for it all, and he was Tiberius Caesar.
Everywhere there was civil order, for the arm of the Roman law was long. Everywhere there was stability, in government and in society, for the centurions saw that it was so.
But everywhere there was something else, too. There was oppression -- for those who were not the friends of Tiberius Caesar. There was the tax gatherer to take the grain from the fields and the flax from the spindle to feed the legions or to fill the hungry treasury from which divine Caesar gave largess to the people. There was the impressor to find recruits for the circuses. There were executioners to quiet those whom the Emperor proscribed. What was a man for but to serve Caesar?
There was the persecution of men who dared think differently, who heard strange voices or read strange manuscripts. There was enslavement of men whose tribes came not from Rome, disdain for those who did not have the familiar visage. And most of all, there was everywhere a contempt for human life. What, to the strong, was one man more or less in a crowded world?
Then, of a sudden, there was a light in the world, and a man from Galilee saying, Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's.
Pride, commitment, and teamwork are words they use to get you to work for free...