Big company CEOs earned 275X the typical employee.

That’s a huge difference.  And it’s not the difference between the top and the bottom, it’s the difference between the average and the average of the bosses.  According to a report in The New Yorker, in 1965 big company CEOs earned 20X the typical employee; today it’s 275X.  In terms of productivity and value added, …
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Tweedle Dee Tweedle Dum

It was difficult to decipher the actual lyrics when we were children singing along at the top of our voices to the scratchy single on the little record player.  But maybe the chorus line influenced the idea that fighting is not a good idea. If you knew the reason for their fighting you would never …
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The Commonwealth Charter – a good idea

Charter of the Commonwealth We the people of the Commonwealth: Recognising that in an era of changing economic circumstances and uncertainty, new trade and economic patterns, unprecedented threats to peace and security, and a surge in popular demands for democracy, human rights and broadened economic opportunities, the potential of and need for the Commonwealth – …
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Thousands of Gaza residents poured on to the streets to celebrate.

Ceasefire. Egypt to receive assurances from both sides that they will abide by the deal, and will follow up any reports it has been broken. Does not everyone wish for peace? So, let us make it so.   BBC: Gaza crisis: Israel-Hamas ceasefire agreement holds

Is a vegetative brain alive?

It looks like some medical books will be redrafted.  A patient who woke from a coma a decade ago and has been vegetative ever since, has now communicated with carers through brain imaging.  It’s the first time an uncommunicative, severely brain-injured patient has been able to give “answers” clinically relevant to their care. It will …
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The Old Lie: dulce et decorum est pro patria mori

The lie that inspires people to kill, and to die.  Don’t forget.  Remember the shame of war.  Remember the cost of war, which honour and glory can not repay. Dulce Est Decorum Est Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we turned …
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Peace on earth. Can it happen again?

Chuck Lorre Vanity Card #392 From what little I know of prehistory, man roamed the Earth for hundreds of thousands of years in small tribes — probably no more than two hundred people per group. During this time all wisdom was passed along according to the oral tradition. Everything you needed to know in order …
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