Saturday, December 30, 2017

Certain Times New Romans: Taxing Times

Indian weddings are the most colourful experiences ... Robin's family dig even deeper  into the old henna night rituals ... Harpreet's ceremony includes the groom to arrive on a New Zealand horse ;-) 

 New York Times interview: Trump insists there was no collusion with Russia ... sixteen times:


Donald Trump took a break from his busy golf schedule on Thursday to sit down with The New York Times and babble about—among other things—the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. And there’s one thing he wants to make perfectly clear:

there is absolutely no collusion … no collusion … no collusion … no collusion … absolutely no collusion … no collusion … no collusion … no collusion … no collusion … no collusion …  no collusion … no collusion … no collusion … no collusion … no collusion … no collusion
So there you have it. There was no collusion, and hey, even if there was, Trump added, “collusion is not a crime.” So apparently Robert Mueller can pack up his tent and go home. (And really, what’s the point of investigations and laws when Trump tells you “I have absolute right to do what I want to do with the Justice Department”?) And besides, Trump has plenty of proof to back up his claim, because Democrats, who he says all agree that there was no collusion, “walk around blinking at each other.” 
Of course it should be noted that Trump did agree there was plenty of collusion. (Wait, what?!? you ask?)
 I actually think it’s turning to the Democrats because there was collusion on behalf of the Democrats. There was collusion with the Russians and the Democrats. A lot of collusion …  tremendous collusion on behalf of the Russians and the Democrats …  tremendous collusion with the Russians and with the Democratic Party … 
Oh. Okay. And besides all that tremendous collusion:
They made the Russian story up as a hoax
According to Politico, "Bottom (sic) line? Trump is nuts."

Posted by at

Friday, December 29, 2017

Still Krasna: Carol King the Musical Success

Stale Krasna vecera at Made In Italy with Polish soulmates filled with stories about American Ms Klein ... (über delivered sourish driver from South Africa; strangely taxi provided sweetish colourful Bengali driver) 
On the morning of the second day, he opened his eyes and found himself lying in the most comfortable Slavic bed he had ever encountered. It was the kind of bed that a person would have to be bodily picked up and carried away from just in order to get up in the morning. But it paled in comparison to the pillows his head rested on, stuffed with down to such precisely-calibrated firmness that they could only have been the end-result of centuries of research. He was covered with crisply-laundered cotton sheets, topped by an old-fashioned quilt. He felt warm and safe and perfectly relaxed. Whatever else had happened to him, he had clearly fallen into the hands of people who took sleep seriously, and it was difficult to hate such people.
— from Europe in Autumn, by Dave Hutchinson

Beautiful small towns and villages dot Slovakia's countryside I © Dodo_Photos/Pixabay
Beautiful small villages dot Slovakia's countryside - memories of Katka Imrichova's cottage in Pilhov and Popradom bordering Polish based Zakopane

Fresh from a two year run in the West End and with the original production still going strong on Broadway, Beautiful – The Carole  King Musical arrived  in Sydney in September  in an affectionately told biography of Brooklyn teenager Carol Klein and how she became Carole King, one of the most successful singer-songwriters of the twentieth century.
Framed by King’s 1971 live concert at Carnegie Hall the audience are then transported back to where it all began, as sixteen-year-old Carole meets future songwriting partner and husband Gerry Goffin and culminates with the success of her Grammy-winning solo album Tapestry at age twenty-nine.
Beautiful‘s strength is its score, with a back catalogue including the likes of “I Feel The Earth Move,” “One Fine Day,” “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman,” “You’ve Got A Friend,” “On Broadway,” “Up on the Roof” — that drive the show, and serve as a reminder of the genius that was in the air at the time

 Having penned hits for groups such as The Drifters, The Shirelles and The Righteous Brothers there are recreations of their performances complete with glittering costumes and finger clicking choreography. It helps illustrate the vast range of tracks King and Goffin produced...

Beautiful: The Carole King Musical - Sydney Lyric Theatre




Beautiful: The Carole King Musical 

Beautiful - The Carole King Musical review (Sydney Lyric) | Daily Review: Film, stage and music reviews, interviews and more


Trailer: Beautiful: The Carole King Musical 



London's production of Beautiful tells the story of the early life and career of Carole King.

The Christmas Food Of Fiction

By itself, travel does produce epiphanies. But it also makes clear that the language of location is relative — everywhere is to the east of something and to the west of something else 



Does anything top the Christmas feast in James Joyce's short story "The Dead"? Well, maybe if you like Turkish Delight - or perhaps, as in Noel Streatfeild's Ballet Shoes, a Pavlova. …[Read More]

 Last month I was in Victoria British Columbia, talking to 50-60 entrepreneurs / freedom fighters from this beautiful Edge community. During a spirited Q&A, a bright young outlaw told me about the F*ckUp session he’d recently attended and asked what I thought about them. I explained my Tom Peters inspired ‘Fail Fast, Learn Fast, Fix Fast’ approach and that I believed the F*ckUp wasn’t the important takeaway; it was the learning and fixing that should be shared.

I also banged on about an underrated skill – the ability to learn from success and go to the next level from there (reference Steve Hansen and the All Blacks, and Pep Guardiola at Manchester City).

Robin Dyke – poet, philosopher and truth seeker was my host in Victoria, and this morning following an energetic early morning winter bike ride, he sent me the following which I thought was great advice to close out 2017 and start 2018 with eyes wide open.

To You of Little Faith (or Too Much), by Robin DykeAh, the words of faith, brought home for me recently at a service I attended at the invitation of a friend (a mentee actually, enacting the subtle role reversal so prevalent in such relationships).

Going in, I had no idea of the extent to which the belief god is angry with us, with me, is so prevalent. That impending sense of doom was half the message, the flip side being god is with us (Immanuel), perfection has arrived to save us. Delivered affirmation was the repetition, all taken in with much enthusiasm, the congregation enraptured, standing and swaying to the musically accompanied message. Who are these people I wondered of the youthful skewed audience, what is the appeal, the quest being answered?

In my thoughts I was reminded of my impressions of a recent F*ckUp session sponsored by our local Tech Association, where the attendees proselytized each other with glee over the confessions of errors and omissions of the f*ckees – now claimed a “world movement”, no less by this type of hype:

Everyone's favourite night. Nothing like watching accomplished, confident people share their still-raw, professional disasters with a crowd of 200+ colleagues who have been drinking beer. Better than crying. Cheaper than therapy. 

All in all, a “confident”, the-gods-aren’t angry-with-you tell it all, delivered to beer guzzling gawkers (learners might be a bit more charitable). Now, you might think, I am of too little faith. What is faith – possibly belief in who you are and what you offer. Belief in how you succeed, not how you f*ckup.

You may make it a practice to learn from your mistakes. Whether you do, or not, there are always those quick and willing to tell you how you screwed up and just how badly. Some of it actually useful! Engage with those ones, but why turn it into a staged production!

In the haste to celebrate mistakes (emphasis on others’), might we be missing the more significant opportunity - learning from our success (yes, we learn usefully from other success models, gain inspiration, but this also deflects from time and effort spent on self-understanding). Do you fathom what you did to bring about your last brilliant success or astute decision, or your very first of either for that matter? I’m asking, do you really understand what combination of capabilities you apply to succeed. This takes a lot of thought. Too quickly we bask in our success and the illusion of stability and miss the inherent meaning. Many, like athletes are prone to reply blandly, I was fortunate to score, etc. Of course there is always the possibility it was just plain luck! But this suggests one might want to fully understand the why of it all. Therein is your art.

Mandela has talked about the fear of our own success being the hurdle challenge to our humanness. That’s the fear in the closet, that faced more productively would cloth us in our own radiance. Sure, the fear of failure is important to overcome as a defensive maneuver, and the gambits like F*ckUp sessions can move us on. The danger is in the cult-ness of the confessionals that make us feel better about our deficits without understanding our true and unique capabilities. Perhaps rather than the misplaced apprehension that god is angry with us, our concern is better directed to appease his frustration - over our fear of our own potential. That’s what makes us squirm, or should

So, why not start with a tinniest of successes - understand what went in to it, what did you do, in what sequence, with what application. What did you bring, call on, to pull off what you did. Herein lies the gold of your unique capabilities and awareness of what you have or has potential for further development and dream accomplishment. Note the dream word, its at the heart of all who we really are and are capable of pulling off. Be angry with yourself if that is not your star. Have faith. Make it so! And BQ!

Jessica Falkholt: Director hails 'rising star' actress who is fighting for life after crash that killed her parents


The director of a film whose lead actress is fighting for life after a triple-fatal crash on the New South Wales south coast says she was "on her way to stardom".
Posted by at

The Perfect Imperfections: Does the cream always rise to the top?

None of us feels the true love of God till we realize how wicked we are. But you can't teach people that - they have to learn by experience.
Stressed New Yorkers Take to Kava, ‘Nature’s Xanax’ New York Times



UNLESS YOU  ARE RICH YOU CAN’T AFFORD IT:  Inside the glam world of illegal high-stakes poker.


IN THE MAIL: How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease









"You need to have a great deal of sadness inside you in order to mourn for other people, and not only yourself....
My breathing had grown regular again. But it was not nothing. I didn't know that it would ever be nothing — what person contemplates the details of her betrayal without feeling some combination of regret and humiliation, however far in the past?"  A Separation, by Katie Kitamura has very little story to it, it was told by an unreliable narrator who's also cold and distant, it transpires in Greece, and it's a meditative look at the dissolution of a marriage and its minutiae. 


It’s not about self-expression. The idea that everyone carries around a latent book awaiting optimal circumstances before entering the world accounts for much of the lousy writing that clogs the market. We know we will never compose a symphony or cast a life-size statue in bronze – too much equipment and specialized training and knowledge required. But any semi-literate twit can open a Word document and gush. Teachers abet this delusion, as do critics and publishers. Non-writers (in the professional sense) on rare occasions produce worthy books – think of Pepys, Dickinson, Yevgenia Ginzburg and J.A. Baker. But they are gloriously serendipitous freaks of nature, testimonies to human aspiration. The sentiment Bruce Bennett relates in “On Not Reading” (Just Another Day in Just Another Town: Poems New and Selected 2000-2016, 2017) both affirms the romantic notion of “Everyone’s a Writer!” and subverts it:   

“I used to read a lot:
that Russian crew;
Kafka, Cortazar, Borges;
Nabokov too.

“Now all I do is write.
I feel left out.
I miss not knowing what
life is about

“As brought to us in books
those masters penned.
But I’ve grown too aware
How it must end

Not to try on my own
to make it stay
through words that get it down
in my own way.”

The argument (the speaker’s, if not Bennett’s) recalls “A Study of Reading Habits” and its well-known, out-of-context closing line: “Books are a load of crap.” Few, of course, can write without first having read. Every sentence acknowledges a forbear, even if the writer remains blithely unaware of his debt. There is no novelty and if there were, we would probably close the book on it. I’ve always thought the most respectable reason for writing is the desire to make something we want to read but can’t find in the library. If I were to stop reading, I too would “feel left out,” as Bennett tells us. Books are life. In another poem, “Of Making Books, Yet Again,” he writes:

“Why else would we beat head and heart
and fists against a wall?
In vain we vainly love our art,
and Vanity is all.”



Tom Burton: benching talent brings worst of Washminster.
The sacking of Paul Grimes was another example of distinguished talent wasted on the grandstand of public life. Instead of learning from the best of Westminster and Washington, Australia has picked up the worst.

Be responsive and don’t be rude: Nicola Roxon’s advice to public servants.
Not being upfront, treating the minister as an idiot: “these are the sorts of things that sap confidence quickly,” Nicola Roxon told Public Sector Week.

Don’t assume integrity is innate, Fran Thorn reminds public servants.
Public servants must be alert to the possibility their colleagues are corrupt, says the former departmental secretary



Does the cream always rise to the top?


Or do we misallocate talent when it comes to innovation?  Here is a not so famous but very interesting paper by Murat Alp Celik: 
The misallocation of talent between routine production versus innovation activities has a fi rst-order impact on the welfare and growth prospects of an economy. Surname level empirical analysis employing micro-data on patents and inventors in the U.S. between 1975-2008 combined with census data from 1930 reveals new stylized facts: (i) people with “richer” surnames have a higher probability of becoming an inventor, however (ii) people with more “educated” surnames become more proli fic inventors. Motivated by this discrepancy, a heterogeneous agents model with production and innovation sectors is developed, where individuals can become inventors even if they are of mediocre talent by excessive spending on credentialing. This is individually rational but socially inefficient. The model is calibrated to match the new stylized facts and data moments from the U.S. economy, and is then used to measure the magnitude of the misallocation of talent in innovation. A thought experiment in which the credentialing spending channel is shut down reveals that the aggregate growth rate of the economy can be increased by 10% of its value through a reduction of the misallocation. Socially optimal progressive bequest taxes that alleviate the misallocation are calculated, which serve to increase the growth rate of the economy to 2.05% while increasing social welfare by 6.20% in consumption equivalent terms.
I am not so persuaded by the idea of buying your way into innovative circles with credentials, or the analysis of the inheritance tax, but nonetheless this should stimulate thought.

 Corporate PR Stunts Won’t Save the Working Class New York Magazine 

Zorba: Why do the young die? Why does anybody die?
Basil: I don’t know.
Zorba: What’s the use of all your damn books? If they don’t tell you that, what the hell do they tell you?
Basil: They tell me about the agony of men who can’t answer questions like yours.
Zorba: I spit on their agony.
—Michael Cacoyannis, screenplay for Zorba the Greek

Underlying any ascent in altitude is the dictatory mantra of “what is essential”. It seems that the Nepalese live by this principle, whether in the chaos of their urban environments or in the mountains. When you pause to reflect on this concept, it’s a cathartic moment. Trekking in the Everest landscape reinforces just what tiny cogs we are in this incredible universe.
It’s said that a stone placed in the crown of aDoryanthes will prompt it to flower. It can be four to six months until the crimson flower erupts from the tall stalk that has risen from the crown of the plant, and then the flower dies off. The large flower stalks, which can reach up to five metres tall, remain on the plant until they decay or are removed.

The illustration of the Doryanthes palmeri (giant spear lily) flower on the front cover of this issue of Landscape Architecture Australia, by botanical artist Mali Moir, beautifully captures ideas of time and change that are so central to designing with plants. The drawing is not a freeze-frame of some perfect full-bloom moment, but rather shows a beauty in both the life and death of the flower and asks us to accept one with the other.

Most-read articles of the year, few are about DT.


WHEN you work as an equity analyst at an investment bank, your task is clear. It is to comb all the statements made by corporate executives, to scour the industry trends and arrive at an accurate forecast of the company’s profits. Achieve this and your clients will be happy and your bonus cheque will have many digits.
But is all this effort worthwhile? Not as much as it used to be, according to Feng Gu and Baruch Lev, writing in a recent issue of Financial Analysts Journal*. The authors imagined that investors could perfectly forecast the next quarter’s earnings for all companies. They then assumed that investors bought all the stocks that they expected to meet or beat the consensus of analysts’ forecasts; and that investors could short (ie, bet on a declining price) the stocks of those that were predicted not to reach their estimates. They made their investment two months before the end of a quarterly reporting period and got out of their positions one month after the...Assets in the air

In holding  the powerful accountable or giving voice to the silenced, investigative journalism’s impact can be immediate as news breaks and reactions pour in. Occasionally, an exposé creates a domino effect so powerful and far-reaching that its full force only becomes clear months later, or even years.
While worldwide protests like the Women’s March gave momentum to discussions of gender equality, it can be said that Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey’s reporting on Harvey Weinstein’s decades of alleged sexual harassment — published in The New York Times on Oct. 5 — was the fuse that blew the doors off a larger movement.
According to Kantor, who broke the story after many months of investigating the allegations against Weinstein: “[The story] had this really bizarre quality ... half an open secret and half this hidden thing that people were terrified to talk about. That's also what made it tantalizing. That's also what made it seem really important to break."
In the following days and weeks, a slew of allegations from women — of harassment, abuse, and complicity by high-profile men, and of cover-ups by the corporations that employed them — led to a series of firings, dismissals, and resignations, from Congress and the media to Silicon Valley. Women and men united around the simple but powerful hashtag #metoo, sharing their experiences of abuse. The response demonstrated both the pervasiveness of harassment — and, as Kantor put it in an interview with CNN, “the magic of journalism.”
Posted by at
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)