I just came back from a conference on business ethics. The panel was quite distinguished and spoke very well of the need for more ethical conduct in business. The conference was organized by AmCham Serbia, presided over by the rapier tongue of Yugoslav Cosic, and included panelists from abroad, from the business community, and from the government. Many good points were made. Many heads in the audience nodded. But, sadly, we do not have these conferences because we are highly ethical beings and market participants.

We have them because we are, generally speaking, stinking liars and crooks.

So this is goodbye.

Chances are that the world will have ended by the time I finish this sentence. No? Ok, I can probably get a few more paragraphs in before the cataclysm and what St. Matthew calls the time of "great tribulation" (clearly a biblical Star Trek reference, indicating how well he could see the future).

The big question must be HOW the world is going to be ended.

Just to show how really short-sighted it is possible to be, civic activist Filip Vukša was fined nearly €500 for repairing a dilapidated bus stop in Belgrade.

!!!

Is it possible to have an opinion with joining a Cause?

Case Study: Same-sex Marriage. It is not acceptable anymore to merely accept this and generally agree with it. The Socially Acceptable Model is to "celebrate" it. We must loudly proclaim our most underscored, emphatic, and rainbow-painted glee. We must show Vindication and Exaltation. Otherwise, we might be mistaken for a Scalia-style dissenter.

And God forbid we actually do dissent...

The Pilgrims, at Thanksgiving 1.0, were outnumbered almost two to one.

After washing up on Plymouth Rock in December of 1620, the 102 passengers of the Mayflower set about the task of conquering North America in the name of Puritanism. Religious fanaticism not being sufficient protection against Cold and Hunger, 46 of the original sinners died in the first winter.

Deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister Ivica Dačić is a time traveler. Few people know this.

Speaking at Takovo, celebrating the 2nd Serbian Uprising (where they actually managed a good slap at Ali Pasha, leaving the Ottoman Turks to slowly lose interest and drift home 63 years later), the Deputy Prime Minister said:

I have had just about enough.

We have now drifted into the third year of GFC (that is the Global Financial Crisis and specifically NOT Going For Coffee) and everyone is STILL nay-saying the economy and waxing gloomy about the prospects for this year.

What do you think for this year? Do you see any signs of improvement? Do you think we are out of it? Do you think it will continue? In the questions we should see the answers. The point is that nobody really knows, and everyone seems to be turning to friend, neighbor, family member, and random guy on the street waiting for the light to change to see if the light will really be changing or not.

Nothing, one finds, hones the sense of appreciation of food more than its denial.

Having just undergone a couple of weeks of more or less severe and more or less unappealing stomach flu, I am currently on what is called a Restrictive Diet. This means Boring Food Only.

We lose time when we sit and wait for the phone to ring. We lose time when watching the water boil for coffee and tea, looking for the keys, standing in queues. This blog will take me an hour to write - and where will that hour be tomorrow when I wake up and find that we have moved into summer time?

In the fall, when we gain an hour moving back into normal time, most of us use it to sleep. Either that, or we get up artificially early and say to ourselves that we have a much longer day in which to be Productive! But the change usually happens on Sunday so the extra hour is generally used in idleness...

If it is nowhere to be found, conventional wisdom tells us, then it may not exist. Conventional wisdom used to tell us that if it is nowhere to be found it might be at the flea market. I think this is no longer true.

I just spent three days and nights billeted at Buvljak, the flea market next to Vero in New Belgrade, and I have come away with the following inventory:  One t-shirt, a plastic box with no apparent function, one cd of dubious and unnamable origin, a bread box, four unassorted pillows, a toilet seat, and a hub cap. None of these items, of course are on my list. And none of the items on my list are checked as being obtained.