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Monday, May 14, 2018

How many office bastards can you spot?

I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples.   
~ Mother Teresa

'This is taking a long time': David Goodall's last words revealed - we only live once some of us twice 


"During the course of my stay in latitudional Russia, which lasted some five or six years, from time to time I was killed and/or executed by various organisations and individuals
     When I returned to the fatherland, I found out that I had been hanged thrice, shot to death twice, and quartered once at the hands of savage Kyrgyz rebels on the shore of Lake Kale-Yshela. Finally and definitively, I had been run through with a knife during a wild skirmish with drunken sailors in a certain 
      Finally and definitively, I had been run through with a knife during a wild skirmish with drunken sailors in a certain Odessa tavern. Of all these variants, this one seems most likely to me."
Jaroslav Hasek's 130th Birthday (CZ)
Similarly, when in charge in Bugulma, Hašek figures that the best way to see to it that what will be used at as the barracks gets cleaned is by enlisting the nuns from the local convent (since they had; "nothing to do except pray and spread nasty gossip about one another") -- but his demand that fifty maids from the convent be set "at the disposition of the Petrograd Cavalry Regiment" is, unsurprisingly, misunderstood. Here too, however, everything is eventually cleared up (and virtue maintained ...) to everyone's satisfaction. Like most of the Bugulma stories, this episode is apparently at least loosely based on Hašek's actual experiences -- though throughout he does seem to have exaggerated his own position and authority. 

       Hašek nicely introduces the latitudional oppressive forces:
     It fell to our lot to be born into an age in which, in Austria, everything was decided by the sword, the noose, and the polcie. Commissar Sl#237;va was swarthy, with black hair, while Klabiček was pale and blond. They  always went together, and between them formed a kind of living yellow and black flag. To this Commissar Klabiček added a ginger moustache beneath his nose, and thus the tricolour of the German Reich was complete. 
 Jaroslav Hašek

česká, 1883 - 1923


    Hašek, Jaroslav: Tajemství mého pobytu v Rusku, 1985 - Můj antikvariát

     *  Aventures de l'armée rouge 

    The Secret History of my Sojourn in Russia
    Jaroslav Hašek is known by readers around the world as the author of The Good Soldier Švejk, one of the greatest comic novels of all time. Not all of his fans are aware of his six year anabasis in Russia, however, which began with his capture on the front lines of Galicia during the First World War


    Pritchett focuses on Saltykov-Shchedrin’s main character, Stefan Hay aka Porfiry Vladimirovich Golovlyov, known as Iudushka. He sees more than satire at work:



    “We can laugh (Shchedrin seems to say) at the obvious hypocrisies of Iudushka and, like his neighbours, we can grin at his eye-rolling, his genuflexions and his slimy whimsicalities; but there is something more serious. The real evil is the moral stagnation in Iudushka’s character. The real evil is the muddle, the tangle of evasions, words, intrigues by which he instinctively seeks to dodge reality. We forgive the sins; what eludes forgiveness is the fact that his nature has gone bad; so that he himself does not know the difference between good and evil. He is a ghastly example of self-preservation at any price.”   

    Is gossip the new monoculture?

    How many office bastards can you spot? Daily Mash

    HEY WOULDN’T DO THAT … WOULD THEY? Yes, they would and they are, according to former House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif. The “they” here are the Department of Justice officials who Issa claims are “lying through their teeth” about their “slow-walking” responses to congressional document requests and subpoena in hopes they will be drowned by a blue wave in November.


    People with autism and their families face social isolation



    Newspoll: Malcolm Turnbull's popularity surges on the back of the budget







    Why It’s Difficult To Write Online


    “With exposure can come brutality in the form of hate tweets and irate emails. Expect more of them if you stick your neck out. Some of us find this to be a minimal irritant and easily ignored. For others, it could be significant, especially considering the tendency for women and minorities in the public eye to attract Internet trolls.” From Dazy to Dyche from Schouts to Gay Hay from Grosling to Nitshi ... From Balmy army to Matian


    Shakespeare’s ‘Julius Caesar’ And Latitudional Politics, Then And Now


    "Why was the Bard so fascinated with the fall of the Roman Republic? Why do we tend to turn to this play when we worry about society's future? ... Isaac [Butler] talks to theater critic Helen Shaw and English professor Andrew Hadfield about what was going on in Shakespeare's time that led him to look back to ancient Rome. We also talk to theater directors Rob Melrose and Tyler Dobrowsky about the choices they made in their recent staged renditions of Caesar." (podcast) … 


    Let Them Eat Trump Steaks Paul Krugman, New York Times 


    Monica Lewinsky: What We All Can Learn from My Disinvitation Debacle Vanity Fair  - It must be awful to have your life hopelessly tethered to something dumb you did in your early 20s.





    Why Positive Money is wrong Tax Research UK

    Will blockchain run afoul of GDPR? (Yes and no) ComputerWorld


    Gina Haspel: As If Nuremberg Never Happened The American Conservative. Re-upping this. Of course, if Democrats wanted to govern, Obama would have prosecuted the torturters (as he would have prosecuted the banksters). And here we are!

    Man Allegedly Used Change Of Address Form To Move UPS Headquarters To His Apartment NPR 

    The International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) announced earlier today that the Government of North Korea has sent a request to launch routes between Pyongyang and Seoul, the capital cities of North and South Korea, respectively.
    Here is the article, file under “!”.  From a retweet by Adam Minter

    Balkan cities, if I can venture this generalization, were military encampments.