Thursday, August 31, 2017

Almost Spring: Time for Andrew Boy Charlton Pool

Philosophy is the love of wisdom ... Via Tasha

Only those who are capable of silliness can be called truly intelligent.
— Christopher Isherwood, born on this date in 1904


Human life begins on the far side of despair.” Jean-Paul Sartre, Les Mouches ... read more


We have featured the amazing Tree hotel some time ago, since then they have added some new and unique treerooms to the spectacular retreat in Sweden. Located in the middle of unspoiled nature, with fantastic views of the Lule River valley, miles of forest and the powerful river, each treeroom is a unique creation by Scandinavia’s leading architects. Their latest edition is "the 7th room” a spectacular house that floats among the forest canopy of pine trees. The contemporary tree cabin hovers 33 feet above the snow-laden forest floor and features large windows, two bedrooms, a social lounge area, bathroom, and an outdoor netted terrace. The perfect getaway for hunting the aurora borealis. 


There is a lack of trust in institutions, and there is a large number of reasons for this, and they're very complex," he said. "It's going to take a long time ... for the trust in institutions to be rebuilt."

Honesty with staff vital as firms consider job cuts, says NAB's Thorburn


Department of Human Services conducting internal fraud probe

Adam and Lauren Cranston want bail changes

Trust in institutions eroded - Ken Henry

CEO pay trends in Australia are unjustifiable on any reasonable grounds

CEO pay has risen 90 times faster than average worker pay since the 1970s


Derrida dressed like a rakish ski instructor; Foucault and Imrich were fond of leather jackets. Caring about clothes isn’t mere vanity — it can signal intellectual commitment...Life Style 

Wellington’s Scottie Reeve, who founded Georgia's and Stories, two container cafes which offer employment to young people, won the Book category for 21-Elephants: Leaving Religion for the Reckless way of Jesus.
Ms Wylie says Scottie Reeve is only thirty-one, yet has lived a full life and had his share of troubles. His aim through this book and his way of life, is to make a difference.
“He rails against the unfulfilled promises of living in the Western world with its commercial emphasis and the rapaciousness of society yet somewhat ironically brings entrepreneurial skills to his spirituality. He runs social enterprises giving work to young people in need and has set up a community with people of like-mind who provide food and comfort for the less fortunate. It is a life after the style of St Francis of Assisi – personal denial for the greater good, a courageous way to live a sacred, spiritual life.
It was the worst of times, it was the worst of times.  Again.  That’s the thing about things.  They fall apart, always have, always will, it’s in their nature.

The nation breaks asunder
while mountains and rivers endure.


Sometimes When Your Editor Yells At You, He’s Entirely Right (No Matter How Much It Hurts)



Thomas Ricks labored over his new book, making it just so. When he was done, his editor hated the result, and harshly told him so. In completely rewriting it, Ricks discovered not only that his editor was right but that he could produce something much better…




No, Essays Right Now Are Too Self-Revelatory And Might Even Be Just Bad



One way is “all rhyme and no reason,” mannered and polished, filled with self-revelation; the other is “so circumspect in … claims to self-knowledge that a reader grown used to the personal essay’s relentless flash of exposure might wonder what kind of shy, self-effacing creature 
produced [it].” 
Premium mediocrity: “As a result, as another buddy Rob Salkowitz put it in our Facebook discussion, premium mediocrity is creating an aura of exclusivity without actually excluding anyone.”











A Fascinating Tale Of How This Book Might Have Bought Its Way Onto The NYT BestSeller List


“Nowadays, you can make the bestseller list with about 5,000 sales. That’s not the heights of publishing’s heyday but it’s still harder to get than you’d think. Some publishers spend thousands of dollars on 

advertising and blogger outreach to get that number. Everyone’s looking for the next big thing and that costs a lot of cash. For the past 25 weeks, that big book in the YA world has been The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, a searing politically charged drama about a young black girl who sees a police officer kill her friend, and the fallout it causes in her community.”


The Essay, Says Rebecca Solnit, Has Re-entered A Golden Age



Solnit, who has written many things, including the extremely viral “Men Explain Things to Me,” says the time is ripe. “When I started [Solnit is 56], the essay was belles-lettres, decorative. Essays by women, particularly, tended to be treated as memoir even when they were not. Now they’re seen as powerful and compelling again. “

“Know-how is more than knowledge. It puts knowledge to work in the real world. It is how scientific discoveries become routine medical treatments, and how inventions — like the Internet — become the products and services that change how we work and play.” “IF we can land a man on the moon, why can’t we ...?” has been a familiar, fill-in-your-pet-peeve lament about the state of the world since Neil Armstrong’s historic giant leap in 1969. It is a question that continues to engage innovators and scholars. All those thoughts I, Aiden, didn’t say in class about teaching ideals, but instead kept inside like dark, chocolatey secrets

Touching Death: The Turbulent Life of One of America’s Last Snake-Handling Preachers The Ringer

The media has become for the right what the Soviet Union was during the Cold War — a common, unifying adversary of overwhelming importance. Before the fall of the Berlin Wall, religious conservatives and libertarians could agree that, whatever their other differences, godless communism had to be resisted. This commitment was the glue of the GOP coalition, and the basic price of admission to conservatism. Now, a policy of containment, preferably rollback, of the mainstream media occupies that central role….To put it in terms of the famous Isaiah Berlin essay, the fox knows many things; the hedgehog knows one thing — CNN sucks.”


Choose the form of your destructor.

Can Marijuana Improve Workout? World’s First Cannabis Gym To Open In US International Business Times