L.E. Modesitt’s The Mage-Fire War [Book 21 of the Saga of Recluce] was just published and I am waiting to get my hands on and read the last book of the trilogy that covers the story of these characters in the history of the World on which the Isle of Recluce exists.
Tuesday night [August 27, 2019] I found myself with a burning desire to read Modesitt’s ‘The Magic of Recluce’ which I have not reread in a decade or more. The book was the first Recluce novel written although, at this point in time, it is the second last book chronologically in the history of Recluce.
As happens to those of us the Universe amuses itself tormenting, I could not find any of the copies of The Magic of Recluce I own and so suffered the pain of the unrequited desire of a Reader for a book.
Milton friedman The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits The New York Times Magazine September 13, 1970
When I hear businessmen speak eloquently about the “social responsibilities of business in a free-enterprise system,” I am reminded of the wonderful line about the Frenchman who
discovered at the age of 70 that he had been speaking prose all his life. The businessmen believe that they are defending free enterprise when they declaim that business is not concerned “merely” with profit but also with promoting desirable “social” ends; that business has a “social conscience” and takes seriously its responsibilities for providing employment, eliminating discrimination, avoiding pollution and whatever else may be the catchwords of the contemporary crop of reformers. In fact they are–or would be if they or anyone else took them seriously–preaching pure and unadulterated socialism. Businessmen who talk this way
are unwitting puppets of the intellectual forces that have been undermining the basis of a free society these past decades.
My proportional representation voting package arrived the other day.
I will be voting NO as should everyone, including those who support proportional representation, because the process is so flawed that NO is the only option where there is any certainty as to the electoral process we are voting for.
With Media attention focused on the bottom line, cutting costs and survival and in light of the reality that the biggest, most pervasive lack of truthfulness by politicians is not commission [telling a lie] but omission [not speaking of something] a desirable quality of life for BC citizens is entirely in the hands of BC citizens themselves and dependent on citizens practicing caveat emptor, paying attention, being observant, diligent and investing time in thinking and doing their own homework.
Case in point: the NDP/Green stealth modus operandi to change the electoral system to proportional representation. The NDP/Green collaboration is so focused on the strategic advantages of a proportional representation electoral system in terms of forming the government and holding onto power [see Appendix A] that the other effects and consequences apparently do not matter to them.
The claim is made that proportional representation is ‘more fair’ than first past the post because proportional representation splits the seats according to the percentage of the vote each party wins.
