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Travel
India and Nepal
Introduction
In October 2012 we travelled to Nepal and South India. We had been to North India a couple of years ago and wanted to see more of this fascinating country; that will be the most populous country in the World within the next two decades.
In many ways India is like a federation of several countries; so different is one region from another. For my commentary on our trip to Northern India in 2009 Read here...
For that matter Nepal could well be part of India as it differs less from some regions of India than do some actual regions of India.
These regional differences range from climate and ethnicity to economic wellbeing and religious practice. Although poverty, resulting from inadequate education and over-population is commonplace throughout the sub-continent, it is much worse in some regions than in others.
Read more ...Fiction, Recollections & News
Merry Christmas
2020 is a year we are unlikely to soon forget. No travel after a very fortuitous cruise to PNG in February and March that we just got in before COVID-19 hit. Last year my German grandchildren were able to visit Australia with Emily their mother. Leander got to improve his English, and he and Tilda, now 3, got to enjoy an Australian beach. Thanks to WhatsApp we can still get together face-to-face and I can report that Tilda also understands English, in addition to her native German. Yet it's not quite like us being there or them being here.
As Tim Minchin sings in White Wine in the Sun [turn on your sound...] Christmas is a time for family. So the lyrics:
| And if my baby girl When you're twenty-one or thirty-one And Christmas comes around And you find yourself nine thousand miles from home You'll know what ever comes Your brothers and sisters and me and your mum Will be waiting for you in the sun When Christmas comes Your brothers and sisters, your aunts and your uncles Your grandparents, cousins and me and your mum We'll be waiting for you in the sun Drinking white wine in the sun Darling, whenever you come We'll be waiting for you in the sun Drinking white wine in the sun Waiting for you in the sun Darling, when Christmas comes We'll be waiting for you in the sun Waiting |
have a special meaning: I really like Christmas - It's sentimental, I know.
Those of you who read last year's message will find what follows familiar. Apart from acknowledging grandchildren: Billy and Vivienne for assistance in assembling (usefully) and now becoming the sole Christmas Tree decorators I haven't changed a word.
Read more ...Opinions and Philosophy
A Dismal Science
Thomas Carlyle coined this epithet in 1839 while criticising Malthus, who warned of what subsequently happened, exploding population.
According to Carlyle his economic theories: "are indeed sufficiently mournful. Dreary, stolid, dismal, without hope for this world or the next" and in 1894 he described economics as: 'quite abject and distressing... dismal science... led by the sacred cause of Black Emancipation.' The label has stuck ever since.
This 'dismal' reputation has not been helped by repeated economic recessions and a Great Depression, together with continuously erroneous forecasts and contradictory solutions fuelled by opposing theories.
This article reviews some of those competing paradigms and their effect on the economic progress of Australia.
Read more ...