The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.

A grey old day in Hobart today, but it is anything but grey in my heart! I thought after yesterday’s tale of poor parenting and the outrage that it prompted, I’d best switch on the positive vibe and look on the bright side of life. In order to do that, I felt it appropriate to post some lovely blossoms that I photographed right next to the bus stop this morning

Congratulations are in order for Paul Krugman, on his receipt of the Nobel Prize for Economics. Krugman will be a familiar name to many – even those not interested in the dismal science, but I will forever remember him for helping convince me of the positives that can emerge from the on the liberalisation of trade, and more generally to the multiplicity of impacts related to the globalisation of capital. His work on Mexico and the Philippines in the mid-1990s, in particular, helped me broaden my outlook considerably and helped lead to the reconstruction of a lad who at that point was a wholly unreconstructed social democrat, and for that, I owe a debt to the man.

More recently, Krugman has been surprisingly vocal on political issues, and (for mine) has one of the keenest minds on the interaction between the market, politics and public policy. A neo-Keynesian (of a fashion), he tipped both ENRON and the housing bubble well in advance. He’s also known for routinely having a read hot go at some of the poor choices of the present Bush administration. That said, I generally find him someone who tries to stress the positives. For that, he should also be congratulated.

He is also – unusual for an economist – eminently readable. If I were to recommend one work, I really couldn’t look past Peddling Prosperity: Economic Sense and Nonsense in an Age of Diminished Expectation, one of the best-written books on economics ever. I shall give any interested parties a link to his blog for you to explore at your leisure (and so I can cease prattling on about something as dreary as economics.

Don't worry people, I plan to post a photo of Henry and Ezra to cleanse you all later this evening.

Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral...

There was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong.

Here is a self portrait. I’m calling it Portrait of a lady in a dirty window . Shocking, isn’t it? However, it is apt! Samhain , Nos Galan Gaeaf , Hop-tu-Naa , All Saints , All Hallows , Hallowmas , Hallowe'en or HALLOWEEN . It’s Theme Thursday and we’re talking about the festivals traditionally held at the end of the harvest season. Huh? No wonder Australians have trouble with the concept of HALLOWEEN. For the record, in my thirty-two L O N G years on the planet, I can’t say I’ve ever seen ghosts ‘n goblins, trick ‘n treaters or Michael Myers stalking Tasmania’s streets at the end of October. [That said, I did once see a woman as pale as a ghost turning tricks that looked like Michael Myers in late November one time.] Despite the best efforts of Hollywood, sitcoms, and innumerable companies; it seems Australians are impervious to the [ahem] charms of a corporatized variant of a celebration of the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darke...

In dreams begin responsibilities.

A life at sea, that's for me, only I just don't have the BREAD. That's right, Theme Thursday yet again and I post a photo of a yacht dicking about in Bass Strait just off Wynyard. The problem is, I am yet again stuck at work, slogging away, because I knead need the dough . My understanding is that it is the dough that makes the BREAD. And it is the BREAD that buys the yacht. On my salary though, I will be lucky to have enough dough or BREAD for a half dozen dinner rolls. Happy Theme Thursday people, sorry for the rush.

This will hurt me...

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