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Tuesday, November 05, 2019

A graveyard of taxing happiness: Are queens more warlike than kings?

Melbourne Cup winner the Chose One or Connected One?
Breeders’ Cup Set To Run Today Amidst Cloud Of 36 Horse Deaths Over The Past Year The Political Animal
There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven’t yet met”.
William  Butler Yeats – Irish poet

PM Jacinda Ardern’s ‘incredible’ two-minute video - MEdia Dragon

Luxury Investment Index -  Antique coins are a growing money business


 Societies change their minds faster than people do The Economist
The Queen has someone to wear in her shoes



Noteworthy story by Richard Brookhiser, Give Me Liberty: A History of America’s Exceptional Essays, a kind of companion volume.  Can you beat the title, especially given world trends today?


'He's lost everything': Bill Spedding sues NSW Police

McDonald’s Corp. said it had fired Chief Executive Steve Easterbrook because of his consensual relationship with an employee, injecting upheaval into a company struggling to rejuvenate sales at its U.S. restaurants.
The burger giant said Sunday that its board voted Friday to terminate Mr. Easterbrook after investigating his relationship with the unnamed employee. Mr. Easterbrook resigned from McDonald’s board as well. He said in an email to McDonald’s employees on Sunday that he had violated company policy on personal conduct.
“This was a mistake,” Mr. Easterbrook said in the email. “Given the values of the company, I agree with the board that it is time for me to move on.”
Young Lucian Freud delighted in shocking visitors. He maintained a grisly cast of mounted animals in his home, and stored two dead monkeys in his kitchen oven...  Freud  

 Regulatory Architecture To Enhance Democracy And Business Accountability


 LARGEST CHILD SACRIFICE GRAVEYARD STRIKES HUGE BLOW TO NATIVE AMERICAN INNOCENCE MYTH






Rowan Williams: How Poetry Clarifies Our Language

WORDS


As Auden says, poetry is “a way of happening”. It takes the passage of time, the reality of loss, the absorption in a sharpened kind of seeing or hearing, and makes all these into speech that can survive (as Auden also insists) and help others survive. Its task of “turning noise into music” is thus irreducibly political, a sustained resistance to commodified, generalised language and the appalling reductions of human possibility that this brings with it. Far from being a decorative adjunct to social or public life, it represents the possibilities to which all intelligent and humane social life should point. “Poetry saves the world every day.” – New Statesman

Dancing After 60: Peeling Back The Years


Of course, age creates physical limitations. But there is artistry in their dancing and musicality, in the way they hang a fraction behind the beat to create the lilting sensation of floating. It’s soulful. By the end of their sessions, which do involve breaks — cookies and coffee are essential for recharging the body — they seem to transform into lighter, younger versions of themselves. – The New York Times
Why Do Movies About Classic Authors Have To Be So Serious… So Dull?

Let us count the ways in which we’ve been force-fed dour, vitamin-deficient biopics of our favorite authors. Why. So. Serious. On top of being ponderous, such work bristles with the insecurity of filmmakers timidly making the case for long-dead writers; every hushed scene screams the anxious question: Will people take their work seriously if we don’t present them seriously? – New York Magazine

Are queens more warlike than kings?


Are states led by women less prone to conflict than states led by men? We answer this question by examining the effect of female rule on war among European polities over the 15th-20th centuries. We utilize gender of the first born and presence of a female sibling among previous monarchs as instruments for queenly rule. We find that polities led by queens were more likely to engage in war than polities led by kings. Moreover, the tendency of queens to engage as aggressors varied by marital status. Among unmarried monarchs, queens were more likely to be attacked than kings. Among married monarchs, queens were more likely to participate as attackers than kings, and, more likely to fight alongside allies. These results are consistent with an account in which marriages strengthened queenly reigns because married queens were more likely to secure alliances and enlist their spouses to help them rule. Married kings, in contrast, were less inclined to utilize a similar division of labor. These asymmetries, which reflected prevailing gender norms, ultimately enabled queens to pursue more aggressive war policies.

That is by Oeindrila Dube and S.P. Harish, here is the working paper version, here is the forthcoming in the JPE version.
AGING: Good news for older Americans: 70 is the new 60 (but not for everyone).

 
A Tale of Two Cities turns 160 this November, but though its first sentence – all 119 words of it – is by far and away its most celebrated feature, beginnings weren’t much dwelled upon when Dickens penned it.
What are the best first lines in fiction? BBC

Woolworths pay scandal: how the retail giant played hardball


Australia's biggest employer has been caught in the same wrongdoing as celebrity chefs and dodgy fruit picking firms. This is how the scandal unravelled.
WEIRDLY MY OBSERVATIONS IN HALF A CENTURY IN THIS WORLD HAVE BEEN OPPOSITE THIS, BUT FINE:  Narcissism may be the key to happiness, study finds.

 
Celebrating 45 years of the Australian Institute of Criminology library
BOOKS FOR SPOOKS: The Australian Institute of Criminology library is the library of choice for Home Affairs and other departments, academics and the general public, with its independent research being highly valued. 
Eastern Europe: populism with post-communist characteristics

Timothy Garton Ash, Professor of European Studies and Isaiah Berlin Professional Studies at Oxford University, has written an account of post-1989 Eastern Europe,  Time for a New Liberation, New York Review of Books. It’s a story of dashed hopes for a liberal era following the collapse of communism in Poland, East Germany, Hungary and the Czech Republic, as elections in these countries have seen the rise of authoritarian populists.

He explains this development along several dimensions. One is emigration – many of these countries have lost their best-educated people to other countries in the old “west”. Another is immigration – there has been a sudden surge of foreigners off a small or zero base, in countries with no tradition of multiculturalism. Another is the destruction of institutions under communism – elections are easy to hold, institutions take time to re-develop. Another is cronyism – the elites in the old communist system have often become the owners of the now privatised state businesses.

Above all, what has emerged is not the imagined model of capitalism contained in a strong society, but a ruthless, exploitative form of capitalism. Echoing the prophecy of Karl Polanyi, a Hungarian writing 75 years ago, he writes that “they have developed not just a market economy but a market society”.  That wasn’t how it was meant to turn out.

The West’s mistake after 1989 was not that we celebrated what happened in Berlin, Prague, Warsaw, and Budapest as a triumph of liberal, European, and Western values. It was all of that. Our mistake was to imagine that this was now the norm, the new normal, the way history was going.

The problem, Ash argues, is not just that the old Eastern Europe has become illiberal. It is also the model of capitalism that the old “west” has developed – hardly an attractive model.

Is liberal democracy a transient phenomenon in human history?

That’s a question posed by Crispin Hull in his article Anglospheric apoplexy a threat to us all.  The US, the UK and Australia have all seen a growth of tribalism and nationalism, disdain for international cooperation, erosion of the rule of law and the emergence of autocratic authority figures with contempt for democratic institutions.

These are dangerous times for liberal democracies and liberal democrats. We in Australia should be especially vigilant now because Britain and the US have for all of our existence been the prime examples to which we have looked up to and followed. If they lurch to autocracy we will have to be robust enough to say they are our examples no more.

Foreign policy lessons not learned: How Obama paved the way for Trump

Writing in Foreign Affairs, Peter Beinart  reviews three books  by people intimately involved with Obama’s foreign ventures – Susan Rice (ambassador to the UN), Samantha Power (she followed Rice as ambassador to the UN) and Ben Rhodes (Obama’s foreign policy speechwriter).

Each author traces his or her own transition from youthful idealism to a more realistic understanding of the possibilities in international diplomacy.



TOUGH WARNINGS

Breast implants should come with warnings on the box (the most serious type of caution used on a device or drug), along with a checklist for patients about the risks and benefits, and more information about the chemicals used. That was the message from the United States Food and Drug Administration last week when they announced new recommendations for manufacturers. Patient advocate Jamee Cook applauded the new guidance as a sign of growing awareness about the products’ safety risks.

U.S. SECRECY

U.S. states, such as Delaware and Nevada, have long been considered by transparency activists to be among the world’s worst tax havens. Currently, no states in America require owners to disclose their true ownership. But, a proposed new law that passed the House of Representatives last week could stop that. The Corporate Transparency Act, which is yet to be approved by the Senate, would require corporations to disclose a raft of information, including their true beneficial owners.

GHANAIAN TROUBLEMAKER

“Being a journalist, and a particularly hard-hitting journalist, in West Africa is a lonely world,” ICIJ member Emmanuel Dogbevi told us in this month’s Meet the Investigators. “Everyone sees you as a troublemaker.” Emmanuel is a no-nonsense reporter who founded Ghana Business News and worked with us most recently on West Africa Leaks. He spoke with us about the difficulties of being a dogged investigative reporter in the region, and shared lots of tips and insights, including from his investigation into e-waste, which has resonated around the world.
 

 

Exquisitely sad songs



Spinner magazine has a list of what it considers to be the 25 Most Exquisitely Sad Songs. The unfriendly web design means one has to click one's way through all 25. There appears to be no single list. However number one is a fine choice, though A Ride would be my choice from the same song writer when he wrote for The Scud Mountain Boys. Overall though, the most exquisitely sad has to be Red Apples by Smog. Joyously sad.

The kingdom of recurrence



Storytelling, there is nothing more worldly than you, nothing more just, my holy of holies. Storytelling, patron saint of long-range combat, my lady. Storytelling, most spacious of all vehicles, heavenly chariot. Eye of my story, reflect me, for you alone know me and appreciate me. Blue of heaven, descend into the plain, thanks to my storytelling. Storytelling, music of sympathy, forgive us, forgive and dedicate us. Story, give the letters another shake, blow through the word sequences, order yourself into script, and give us, through your particular pattern, our common pattern. Story, repeat, that is, renew, postpone, again and again, a decision that must not be. Blind windows and empty cow paths, be the incentive and hallmark of my story. Long live my storytelling! It must go on. May the sun of my storytelling stand forever over the Ninth Country, which can perish only with the last breath of life. Exiles from the land of story telling, come back from dismal Pontus. Descendent, when I am here no longer, you will reach me in the land of storytelling, the Ninth Country. Storyteller in your misshapen hut, you with the sense of locality, fall silent if you will, silent down through the centuries, harkening to the outside, delving into your own soul, but then, King, Child, get hold of yourself, sit up straight, prop yourself on your elbows, smile all around you, take a deep breath, and start all over again with your all-appeasing “And then ...”.
These are the final lines of Peter Handke's Repetition (1986), translated by Ralph Manheim.

 Now the final words of Gert Hofmann's Lichtenberg and the Little Flower Girl (1994):
And then?

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