Saturday, August 07, 2021

Why Do We Go To War? It’s Quite Simple, Really

 If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand.

— Milton Friedman, born in 1912


Going Nuts: Murray Darling’s “unbelievably beautiful story” for investors a nightmare for farmers, environment



       Age Book of the Year shortlist 

       The Australian Age Book of the Year has been 'on hiatus' for nine years, but it's back this year, and they've now announced the shortlist -- and, as Jason Steger (one of the judges) reports in The AgeTasmanian authors dominate line up for Age Book of the Year award
       The winner will be announced 3 September. 


Kalaful Kitchens



1 Out Of Every 153 American Workers Is An Amazon Employee


How Conspiracy Theorists Learn To Believe Their Own Fake News

When online surveyor YouGov conducted a survey asking over 8,000 US adults, “Do you believe that the Earth is round or flat?,” only 84 percent of respondents felt certain that the Earth is round. - LitHub


Why Do We Go To War? It’s Quite Simple, Really

There are only three such impulses: greed, self-defense, and ideas or emotions. - The Nation


How A Newspaper Gardening Column Became A Chronicle Of Climate Change

When Jeff Lowenfels began writing for the Anchorage Daily News in 1976, he had not expected that one day one of his readers would grow okra there. (The pod is native to Africa.) - The New York Times Magazine



Selling Out? When I Wrote Just For Money

"This was a question I also grappled with: could my creative prostitution involve high art, be the literary equivalent of Belle de Jour (1967), stylish and sexy, or would I have to roil in whorish filth, using cheap metaphors and knocked-off cliches?" - Aeon


There is so much to be grateful for, words are poor things.
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Marilynne Robinson

The irony of this quote is that celebrated novelist Marilynne Robinson is known precisely for her ability to capture the human experience in graceful prose. Still, if words are poor things, perhaps it is because Robinson has so much to be grateful for. Since the 1980 publication of her debut novel “Housekeeping” (which won the PEN Award for Best First Novel), Robinson has gone on to write a dozen books and collect numerous awards including the Pulitzer Prize (for 2004's "Gilead"), the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, and the National Humanities Medal for her “grace and intelligence in writing.” This quote is a beautiful reminder for the rest of us, too: Taking time to appreciate all we have can be a powerful feeling.