Aug 23

The Ashes UrnWhen Straussy goes back with the urn, the urn;
Freddie, Swanny, and Harmy return, return;
The welkin will ring loud,
The great crowd will feel proud,
Seeing Broad and Bell with the urn, the urn;
And the rest coming home with the urn.

Jan 03

2001adIf the last 50,000 years of man’s existence were divided into lifetimes of approximately 62 years each, there have been about 800. Of these 800, fully 650 were spent in caves. Only during the last 70 has it been possible to communicate effectively from one life time to another – as writing made it possible to do. Only during the last 6 lifetimes did masses of men ever see a printed word. Only during the last 4 has it been possible to measure time with any precision. Only during the last 2 has anyone anywhere ever used an electric motor. And the overwhelming majority of all the material goods we use in daily life have been developed within the present 800th lifetime.
[Alvin Toffler - 1970]
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Jan 12

I’ve decided I’m going to create the world’s first truly global empire. An empire created primarily without the military, through economics. We will work many different ways, but perhaps the most common is that we will identify a third world country that has resources our corporations covet, like oil, and then arrange a huge loan to that country from the world bank or one of its sister organisations. But the money never actually goes to the country. Instead it goes to our own corporations to build big infrastructure projects in that country. Things like power plants and industrial parks and highways that benefit a few wealthy families in that country as well as our own corporations, but don’t help the majority of people. The whole country is left holding this huge debt. And it’s such a big debt that they cannot repay it.
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Jan 04

GrouchHow happy is Today going to be?

Nuannar-poq: Inuit for ‘taking extravagant pleasure in being alive’

Is happiness a goal to be achieved. Is the purpose of life to be happy? Is it a state of mind to take on?

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony. – Mohandas K. Gandhi

There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different from the things we do. – Freys Stark

There is a wonderful mythical law of nature that the three things we crave most in life -happiness, freedom, and peace of mind – are always attained by giving them to someone else. – Peyton Conway March

How happy is the homeless person who finds a fifty pound note? Should we be sleeping rough?

people have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose. – Helen Keller

Not one shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious. – Brendan Gill
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Aug 09

arrowsGDP = value of all goods and services produced within a country’s borders in a given year.

GDP is not the figure we should focus on. We should be looking at the Gross Net Product. What are our costs, imports & subsidies – what are our gross operating profits?

To fully appreciate what a zero inflation target – i.e. stable zero growth – would mean we need to understand:

  • threats of downward cycles
  • ability to stay comfortably liquid
  • risk of irreversible decline
  • psychology of momentum – cycles – sense of advancement – desire to progress
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Feb 08

Lyric from Disposable Heroes of Hip-Hop:

One nation
under God
has turned into
one nation under the influence of one drug
Television the drug of the Nation
Breeding ignorance and feeding radiation
T.V. is
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