The family cycled from Berlin to Tallinn this year, giving me an opportunity to see how Poland and the Baltics have fared after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990s. Some observations:
– Poland is doing well. Agriculture there is as organised and productive as in Germany, with the newest combine harvesters collecting flour for millions of bread rolls.
There is still, I think, not enough recognition by teachers of the fact that the desire to think – which is fundamentally a moral problem – must be induced before the power is developed.
If these kinds of things existed in my country, I wouldn’t need to be running for President to fix everything up.
Elizabeth Warren
The only thing that didn’t leave a nasty taste in my mouth last year was the food.
Barry the hypothetical troll from last year (He’s been debunked, defrocked, unfriended and univited this year)
Cross posted from the Mandarin
There is a huge catch 22 driving impact measurement in human services. A lot of the evaluation is done because governments seek it, but then it goes nowhere – and for good reason. NGOs and others hoping to ‘scale-up’ innovation can’t escape this without something like an Evaluator-General, writes Nicholas Gruen.
Here’s Phil Lowe reporting on the RBA’s failure to meet its performance targets and refusal to do anything about it:
This decision [to cut rates by 0.25%] was not in response to a deterioration in the economic outlook since the previous update was published in early May. Rather, it reflected a judgement that we could do better than the path we looked to be on.
Yesterday I was chatting online about Wednesday evening’s dreadful shooting massacre in Darwin (like many shocked people here). I posted a comment listing the various murder scenes, saying: “A fourth was murdered at 18 Gardens Hill Crescent (or Gardens Rd, not sure which).”
