Tuesday, September 19, 2017

'1917 – a time of tragedy and triumph' The Hon Brendan Nelson AO

Courage is never to let your actions be influenced by your fears.
— Arthur Koestler, born in 1905
"'That which does not kill us makes us stronger.'- Friedrich Nietzsche (and Kelly Clarkson)."
This is the opening line of "Showing Up" , the first chapter of What Happened, Hillary Clinton's new book on the election. Here are 42 reviews of this line.
Fun with fact patterns: That Awkward Moment When Your Twin Brother Is A U.S. Citizen At Birth, But You’re Not


The Hon Brendan Nelson AO

Director of the Australian War Memorial



A HERO:  Stanislav Petrov, Soviet soldier credited with saving world from nuclear war, dies at 77. “Petrov, thinking that any U.S. attack should have involved even more missiles to limit the chance of Soviet retaliation, told his Kremlin bosses the alert must have been caused by a malfunction. He persuaded Moscow not to shoot back. It was later determined that Russian satellites must have mistaken sunlight reflecting off clouds for nuclear missiles.”
And, inevitably: “Petrov’s reward? He was chastised for failing to provide proper paperwork, he said.”

Talks The Talk: Who Will Walk The Walk? Social Europe

The current state of the country and the current state  of political and intellectual conversation depresses me  in a way that it never has before. You have to  understand — I’m never happy with the state of the  country — that’s the inevitable fate of holding an  ideological position that rarely gets any traction — I’m  a classical liberal who’d like government to be  dramatically smaller than it is now. 

 This Week in Popular: Top 25 Photos on 500px This Week (47)

But the world today feels different. Everything feels angrier. . . .
Maybe it’s paranoia but it’s been a long time since I felt the thinness of the veneer of civilization and our vulnerability to a sequence of events that might threaten not just the policy positions I might favor but the very existence of the American experiment.

Looking for the new intelligence czar
Canberra is on the hunt for an intelligence chief to head up the new Office of National Intelligence. As the person who will get the first call from the Prime Minister, it is a critical new role. What makes a good intelligence czar?