voyage

I buy books by the kilogram and some people give me theirs. I have had this book for a while but had not really gone into it for being too busy... (my excuse for being lazy)... The dedication at top: To all Esq., with the author's kind regards signed: Emile Wenz fils.

This was my introduction to a quiet family that has had some unsung influences on the way things are... Let's start with Paul Wenz, Émile's brother...

musing...

Peta’s musings (above) in the Sunday Telegraph (21/3/2021) ring hollow… She was in charge of keeping the most misogynist Prime Minister of Australia ever, on the throne: Tony Abbott. Her pedigree is rightwing and that’s it. For her, anything left of Genghis Khan is a commie plot of weeds. 

giles

In late February last year, Rebekah Giles, one of Australia’s rising stars of the law, threw a party at Reign, the champagne parlour and bar in Sydney’s landmark Queen Victoria Building.

The occasion celebrated the launch of her boutique law firm, Company (Giles). Author Kathy Lette formally opened the evening as corks popped and toasts were made to Giles, who has overcome extraordinary personal odds, to join the top ranks of the nation’s legal fraternity.

hiding

The organisers of Monday’s women’s rally outside Parliament House have hit back at a Liberal MP’s claim that Prime Minister Scott Morrison couldn’t attend the march because of security issues.

On Saturday Liberal MP Jason Falinski told the ABC that Scott Morrison couldn’t hoin the March 4 Justice for security reasons.

“He is the Prime Minister of the country and there are security issues around those sorts of issues, about him going into big crowds,” Mr Falinski said.

foreign votes

A new report from the US National Intelligence Council assesses that most of the governments the US-centralized empire has targeted for destruction are guilty of seeking to interfere in the nation’s 2020 election.

Ahem.

wapo

If you're like Gus and pay attention to (accidental) details you could be amazed at the amount of delicate transformations that is used by media to first tell you lies, half-truths and also tell you nothing... But then when one media supporting something finds faults in the others, all hell breaks loose...

This from the "other" Post (New York Post):

jen

NATO is looking to the future.

clowns

Should Russia take US clowning seriously?

Putin's official spokesman Dmitry Peskov called White House spokesman Josh Earnest's remarks about the Russian president "outrageous and offensive." In a recent press conference, Earnest stated that the US administration was sharing the view about Putin's corruptness.

Dmitry Sudakov

29.01.2016

"We hope that our American colleagues will give us some explanations on that," Peskov said.

"Such insults in the address of the head of state, such obviously unfounded insults, are hard to analyze. For us, it is even impossible to imagine. I would be honest with you, if I said something like this about the US president, I would be fired," Peskov said.

weather

Humanity relies on two main streams of existence in a specific environment. This has been defined in the past as nature and nurture. In more explicit terms, our DNA dictates who we physically are and our social constructs influence the stylistic understanding of our relationships. 

app...

A proposal by one of Australia's top police officers to use phone apps to record sexual consent has been branded "naive".

Key points:

• Reports of sexual assault rose by 10 per cent in NSW last year
• The NSW Police Commissioner says the app would ensure consent is no longer implied
• Denmark launched a similar app last month but it's only been downloaded 5,000 times

NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller said the country needed to modernise ideas around "positive consent" where consent is "active and ongoing throughout a sexual encounter".

slavery

Adam Smith was somewhat ambiguous about slavery… He did not like it, not so much on a moral point of view but in economic relative sense. So a brave Kevin Donnelly goes on to bat against the woke movement that is trying to point the “sins” (I don’t believe in sin — mistakes) of the system devised by economists such as Smith.

“It is essential to get history right and to stop interpreting the past through political correctness”… Says Donnelly. He is correct, but we all know (we all should) that history has been viewed through many lenses, often to the advantage of particular classes, especially kings, emperors and powerful families. 

women

Scott Morrison likes to present as a man with a plan. Whether it's dealing with asylum seekers, climate change or a pandemic, the Prime Minister typically has a strategy or a roadmap, quite often printed in a glossy brochure, to demonstrate he can tackle even the trickiest of problems. 

The plans don't always work, mind you, but the point of them is to inspire confidence that Morrison has at least chosen a course, knows what he's doing and is getting on with it. 

burling

Team New Zealand helmsman Peter Burling is often a man of just a few measured words and defending the America’s Cup wasn't going to change that.

sand storm

Despite a small industrial reduction in emissions due to Covid-19, There is still enough EXTRA CO2 in the atmosphere to increase average global temperatures by 6 degrees Celsius by 2150. Any EXTRA emissions of CO2, methane and NOxs gases ADDED till 2050 (or when the countries of the world manage ZERO emissions) will compound the temperature rise of the atmosphere and the rise of sea levels, which by 2150 could be 6 metres above present levels.

Despite present apparent cooling of the temperate regions, due to an expanding weaker warming polar vortex in the northern hemisphere and a cooler than average summer in the southern hemisphere due to La Niña, under he influence of a melting Antarctica, the total processes of planetary warming are still on.

hollow