Kissinger the scholar studied power. Kissinger the statesman acquired power, guarded it, and wielded it.
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On the whole, I love my job writing holiday gift guides. I get to curate beautiful lists designed to help you, the consumer, bring joy to your loved ones. According to data from my affiliate links, you have been receptive to most of my suggestions, from cashmere gloves to fancy olive oil. That’s great and all, but I don’t feel satisfied. When will you slobs get on board and start buying backgammon sets?
A good backgammon set is the perfect gift, which is why they keep showing up on my gift guide lists year after year, no matter how rarely they actually get purchased. As long as the gift recipient has an entire extra room in their house with a game table (preferably hand-carved, and seventy-four centimeters in height) that isn’t occupied by any other objects, then a backgammon set will fit seamlessly into their life. Any reasonable person would be delighted to receive a backgammon set and would surely take the time to learn the rules, find a willing opponent, and set aside weekly, if not daily, time to enjoy this new hobby. The only question is, which color set to buy them…? (The answer is black and teal. Always black and teal.)
After WWII, a good many people wondered why nobody had put a stop to either Hitler or Stalin, the two greatest butchers of history prior to the modern era, before they could accomplish their wicked designs. At Doha in 2023, the petrostates and corporations gathered with the clear intent of deploying their own ‘weapons of Continue reading »
The Global Stocktake, the report card on climate action for parties (countries), is shaping up to be the fight of COP28. What might look like a technical exercise: either we are, or we are not consistent with 1.5, is anything but. Instead, the assessment must go through the conference floor to be accepted and agreed Continue reading »
Mainstream media outlets repeat, ‘Hamas, a terrorist organisation designated by the US and other western governments.’ Tagged to that description is a daily reminder of the brutality of Hamas’ attack on October 7 and the taking of over 200 hostages. Intimidated journalists and ill-informed politicians then promote the Israeli message that Hamas is a monster Continue reading »
In April, National Cabinet agreed to hold a dedicated meeting on health reform by the end of the year. Based on media coverage this week, it might be a battle about NDIS and GST funding instead. Who pays for what is important, but it will be a missed opportunity if a funding fight displaces discussion Continue reading »
Peter Dutton’s border protection rhetoric has contributed to a remarkable improvement in the Coalition’s public polling. He will ride that rhetoric to the next Election. But few Australians would be aware of Dutton’s appalling record on border protection. As Minister for Home Affairs, he allowed the unscrupulous to run riot with Australia’s visa system in Continue reading »
On 1 November 2023 the Minister for the Public Service, Senator Gallagher said “in the next stage of reforms” to the public service the government would introduce “requirements for the Prime Minister and Cabinet Secretary to conduct merit-based appointment processes for Secretary roles to build rigor into the advice provided to the Prime Minister on Continue reading »
Women of colour continue to be mistaken for one another in the media and beyond. Whether it’s in social settings, the workplace, online or in the media, women of colour are sadly mistaken for one another all the time. The Australian newspaper has been criticised after an incorrect image was used in an article about Continue reading »
In Ontario, Canada:
Across all ages, admissions are 6 standard deviations above the seasonal average. But we've grown accustomed to disease, to living our lives with complete disregard for reality and for what living in society means, at the most rudimentary level. https://t.co/h0aTP8xAeg pic.twitter.com/zEsOtBuaal
— Diego Bassani, PhD (@DGBassani) December 1, 2023
Why don't subtitles match dubbing?
Welcome to the party, pals The Atlantic this morning delivers a full spread of articles announcing the imminent demise of the Late Great United States of America, all part of its “If Trump Wins” series. There is growing alarm about another Trump presidency and reason for it. But it’s not as if Robert Kagan’s, “A Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable. We should stop pretending.” just last week did not give many of us sleepless nights already. Conventional wisdom has finally caught up with what Ruth Ben-Ghiat (“Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present“) and Timothy Snyder (“On Tyranny“) have warned about for years. This Trump guy whom sane people treated as an ignorant, loudmouth jerk, and his red-hatted band of equally loudmouth sycophants and Beltway collaborators, are a genuine threat to the country’s existence. Have you heard? They ransacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. There’s video. Trump is out for revenge, writes David Frum. He will dump NATO, warns Anne Applebaum. His second term will be all loyalists, lapdogs and cronies, explains McKay Coppins.
. Yours truly has for several years been conducting a doctoral course in statistics for students in educational science where SPSS has been used. Unfortunately, Bayesian analysis has not been available in that program. With version 29 of SPSS, things have changed. So, next year, there will be a new addition to the course!
That’s one explanation That Statista chart is from May 10, 2022. A followup from Oct 18, 2023 reports the market has cooled somewhat since last year. Nevertheless: While house prices have continuously grown in recent years, incomes have not followed at the same pace. That means that for aspiring homeowners, purchasing a home has become increasingly unaffordable. In a survey among people actively looking to buy a home, one in three millennials cited the high house prices as the main barrier to homeownership. Meanwhile, inflation is on the rise and has forced the Federal Reserve to introduce a gradual increase in interest rates, leading to a double increase in the cost of borrowing. As a result, homebuyer sentiment plummeted, Americans across all age groups agreeing that the current time was not a good time to buy a home. Home ownership is still one of the main ways Americans build wealth. If I were Gen Z, I’d be pissed too. The Redfin chart above is also from summer 2022.
To help celebrate our twenty-fifth year of being on the information superhighway, we have reached out to some of our former columnists for check-ins and updates. Today’s featured columnist, Susan Schorn, is a former Column Contest winner. She wrote sixty-one essays of Bitchslap, her column about women’s rights and self-defense, from 2009 to 2015. We’re pleased to have her back on our pages with her sixty-second installment.
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Bitchslap debuted in 2009 as “a column about women and fighting,” because they say write what you know, and what I knew was that I always seemed to be fighting—for safety, or autonomy, or simply to not be pushed around—and most of those fights were related to my identity as a woman. The column’s premise was apparently novel enough to sustain an audience: that fighting is not without its costs, but it works surprisingly well against bullies, and even when it doesn’t work, it’s preferable to helplessness. Sometimes it’s even fun.
When the narrative is dominated by people who look different and don't share ethnic minority experiences, the system will continue to fail, writes Ramandeep Kaur
1. “Go back to sleep, let me drive, let me think, let me figure it out.”
2. “I can’t get around the river in front of me.”
3. “I don’t know, the cookies make me nervous.”
4. “I’m so sorry, but the motorcade will have to go around me this time.”
5. “Why did you listen to that man? That man’s a balloon.”
6. “Karen, I know where we are and where we’re going to be. How can you trust this stupid app more than you can trust me?”
7. “I’d rather walk all the way home right now than to spend one more second in this place.”
8. “So blame it on me. I really don’t care.”
9. “Turn off the light. I don’t want to die tonight.”
10. “It’s half your fault so half forgive me.”
11. “Stop backseat driving for once in your life.”
12. “I used to be carried in the arms of cheerleaders.”
13. “Can’t you find a way? You are in this too.”
In today's BCTV Daily Dispatch: Rick and Morty, FOX "News"/Greg Gutfeld, Doctor Who, The Powerpuff Girls, Supernatural/Mark Sheppard & more!