The austerity delusion

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theguardian.com/business/ng-interactive/2015/apr/29/the-austerity-delusion
Excellent Guardian article by Paul Krugman

May 2010, as Britain headed into its last general election, elites all across the western world were gripped by austerity fever, a strange malady that combined extravagant fear with blithe optimism. Every country running significant budget deficits – as nearly all were in the aftermath of the financial crisis – was deemed at imminent risk of becoming another Greece unless it immediately began cutting spending and raising taxes. Concerns that imposing such austerity in already depressed economies would deepen their depression and delay recovery were airily dismissed; fiscal probity, we were assured, would inspire business-boosting confidence, and all would be well.

People holding these beliefs came to be widely known in economic circles as “austerians” – a term coined by the economist Rob Parenteau – and for a while the austerian ideology swept all before it.
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What defines a generation?

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What defines a generation? Born in the same time bracket? But what if your parents got you really young, but your friend’s parents got their kids late? So you &  your mate might be 15 years apart, but you were both raised by people from the same generation/same time bracket/same historic background…so you are both confronted with same influences, but have different timelines and subliminal hums in your background…

So, what makes the fine grain? There are generations between generations, and types between categories, yet where does natural empathy and true understanding end?

 

Jobs of tomorrow

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Preparing for the jobs of tomorrow

Apr 25, 2014 - LinkedIn article by James Arvanitakis
Professor of Social & Cultural Analysis· University of Western Sydney

It is obvious that the Australian economy is facing a number of adjustments. The closure of Ford and Holden, as well as the recent announcement of Qantas, highlights that the opportunities that once existed, no longer exist.
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Reason above all else

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About Ayn Rand

While in high school, she determined that she was an atheist and that she valued reason above any other human virtue.

Ayn RandAyn called her philosophy “Objectivism”, describing its essence as “the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.” She considered Objectivism a systematic philosophy and laid out positions on metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, political philosophy and aesthetics.

What an utterly inspiring woman.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayn_Rand

Zur Farbenlehre

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Good old Goethe – His Theory of Colours by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is a book about the poet’s views on the nature of colours and how these are perceived by humans. Published in 1810, it contains detailed descriptions of phenomena such as coloured shadows, refraction, and chromatic aberration.

Goethe_Farbenkreis_zur_Symbolisierung_des_menschlichen_Geistes-_und_Seelenlebens The Theory of Colours stands as an absorbing account of the philosophy and artistic experience of colour, bridging the intuitive and the visceral in a way that, more than two hundred years later, continues to intrigue.

On Wikipedia is more about it, a quite interesting read

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_Colours

Philipp Otto Runge was a Romantic German romantic painter and draughtsman. In 1803, on a visit to Weimar, Runge unexpectedly met Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and the two formed a friendship based on their common interests in color and art. Runge’s interest in color was the natural result of his work as a painter and of having an enquiring mind.

He arrived at the concept of the color sphere sometime in 1807 by expanding the hue circle into a sphere, with white and black forming the two opposing poles.RungeKugel

Elders

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From 'Elders' with Andrew Denton and Rosalie Kunoth-Monks 
 http://www.abc.net.au/tv/elders/transcripts/s2757492.htm

ANDREW DENTON V/O: Rosalie was born in 1937, by a creek bed at Utopia Station, in the Central Australian desert. Her mother was a traditional tribal woman. Her father was of mixed heritage or in her words “three quarter German.” Two vastly different backgrounds, coming together, right from the start. She lived with her mother’s people for her first years; it was the place she felt she belonged.

ANDREW DENTON: What strengths do you think you inherited from your mum and dad?

ROSALIE KUNOTH-MONKS: Specially from Mum I think I inherited the stability and the capability of loving without smothering.

ANDREW DENTON: Mmm. 

ROSALIE KUNOTH-MONKS: Mmm.

ANDREW DENTON: And your dad?

ROSALIE KUNOTH-MONKS: From Dad, I guess it was more the European things, I mean I remember he told us in language that we were going to a place called “school” and he picked up a book and he said “You will be able to talk from this book, you will read”. We looked at each other, my brothers and I, “What is ‘read’?” New word. And he said “From now on, for the next three or four weeks, you going to talk English, I’m not going to talk language to you, crash course in English”. Of course we went silent, we didn’t know very many words in English.

ANDREW DENTON V/O: Another key influence was Rosalie’s grandmother, Amelia. The matriarch of the family on her fathers’ side, Amelia had married a white man.

ROSALIE KUNOTH-MONKS: She experienced tremendous amounts of racism from her husband’s side of the family and she’d walked straight and tall, right in the midst of that in a small town such as Alice Springs. And I guess a lot of who I am today is due to my grandmother on my father’s side and also with my mother and her people out at Utopia. 

ANDREW DENTON V/O: When Rosalie was 10, Amelia decided it was time for St Mary’s boarding school.

ROSALIE KUNOTH-MONKS: St Mary’s as a whole was to me foreign simply because I hadn’t seen so many children in one spot and the other thing was that they were all Aboriginal – black kids. And the other thing I think that struck me was that I had been told that prior to going to a place called “school” that I had to be boiled, to make me lighter or more white. So I thought, they’re going to boil all these kids plus my brothers and I and it was a very real feeling and it stuck with me for many years because, um, somehow right at the beginning my colour was not acceptable. 

ANDREW DENTON: You must have been terrified.

ROSALIE KUNOTH-MONKS: I was, I was, yeah.

 

Read the complete transcript and watch the video here