Sunday, November 01, 2015

There will come a Day ... Ruby's Day (R Day)

Someone has a great fire in his soul and nobody ever comes to warm themselves at it, and passers-by see nothing but a little smoke at the top of the chimney,” young Vincent van Gogh despaired in a letter to his brother as he floundered for a calling John Dewey

Borrowing from Pere Jean in the 1987 French film, Goodbye, children!, We offer our own Au revoir, mes amis! À bientôt! [Goodbye, my friends! See you soon!]

A Nudge Too Far Foreign Affairs. On behavioral economics.

According to Mashable Australia, the institute surveyed 19,000 people from G8 countries and  Sydney still rocks as it has few leftovers of the past left. However, looks like in two decades it will be another concrete jungle like Hong Kong ... The overdevelopment is like. Tsunami no community can stop the inevitable decline of Antippdean Empire ... The can of worms has been opened ...

Czech-French writer Milan Kunderaexamines our ambivalent amble through life with unparalleled grace and poetic precision in his 1984 novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being (public library) — one of the most beloved and enduringly rewarding books of the past century.
Because love heightens all of our senses and amplifies our existing preoccupations, it is perhaps in love that life’s central ambivalences grow most disorienting — something the novel’s protagonist, Tomáš, tussles with as he finds himself consumed with the idea of a lover he barely knows:
He had come to feel an inexplicable love for this all but complete stranger.
[…]
But was it love? … Was it simply the hysteria of a man who, aware deep down of his inaptitude for love, felt the self-deluding need to simulate it? … Looking out over the courtyard at the dirty walls, he realized he had no idea whether it was hysteria or love. Reincarnation ...

U.S. Court Rules Whistleblowers Can Sue Board Members  WSJ


Buzz Day! Robert D. Flach rounds up interesting tax stuff from all over.


Third, the supposed dark magic of Oz spinmeister Lynton Crosby did Harper no good. If anything, Crosby’s dog whistle strategy motivated the majority to vote strategically against Harper. But I suspect that people like Crosby are better at selling themselves to politicians than at selling politicians to the public. Canadian election with antipodean twist ...

Colourful donkey Keeping a watch over snakes at Capertee Valley
“In the middle of the journey of our life I found myself within a dark woods where the straight way was lost.”
~ Gustave Doré’s Hauntingly Beautiful Illustrations for Dante’s Inferno

24/7 Wall Street: “The global population is aging rapidly. Today, there are roughly 868 million people who are at least 60 years old globally, or about 12% of the world’s population. By 2050, more than 2 billion people will be 60 or older, or 21% of the projected global population. In the United States, 27% of all Americans will be at least 60 years old. HelpAge International’s “Global AgeWatch 2014 Index” ranked the social and economic well-being of older residents in 96 countries. The report rated each country on four broad factors important to an aging population: supporting income security, fostering good health, employment and education, and the overall environment for older residents.. Norway was rated as the best country for older people to live in, bypassing Sweden, last year’s top-rated country. Meanwhile, Afghanistan was rated the worst country for older people for the second consecutive year.