26 November 2018 – 28 February 2019
Ask yourself … what imprint will you leave in the sands of history? Did we take risks? Did we dare to defy expectations? Did we challenge accepted wisdom and take on established systems? … Or did we just go along with convention, swim down-stream so easily with the current and just give in because it was the easy way, it was the traditional way or it was the accepted way? Remember this: nothing worth doing ever, ever, ever came easy. Following your convictions means you must be willing to face criticism from those who lack the same courage to do what is right. And they know what is right, but they don’t have the courage or the guts or the stamina to take it and to do it. It’s called the road less travelled.
… In my short time in Washington I’ve seen firsthand how the system is broken. A small group of failed voices who think they know everything and understand everyone want to tell everybody else how to live and what to do and how to think. But you aren’t going to let other people tell you what you believe, … The fact is, no one has ever achieved anything significant without a chorus of critics standing on the sidelines explaining why it can’t be done. Nothing is easier or more pathetic than being a critic, because they’re people that can’t get the job done. But the future belongs to the dreamers, not to the critics. The future belongs to the people who follow their heart no matter what the critics say, because they truly believe in their vision.
… Relish the opportunity to be an outsider … Embrace that label … because it’s the outsiders who change the world and who make a real and lasting difference. The more that a broken system tells you that you’re wrong, the more certain you should be that you must keep pushing ahead.
President Donald J. Trump
Commencement Speech, Liberty University (13 May 2017)
Man-Made or Natural “Climate Change”
– or Merely Extreme Weather?
On 3 October 2017, Australia’s largest insurer, QBE Group Ltd, warned that 2017 could be “the costliest year in the history of the global insurance industry.” Further, “extreme global catastrophe” losses during the year would push its results firmly into the red. (In January 2018 it estimated that loss could reach a record $US1.2 billion; the actual figure, announced in February, was $US1.25 billion.) Also in October 2017, a leading global reinsurer, MunichRe, reckoned that global insured losses in 2017 would likely exceed $US170 billion (it subsequently revised this figure to $144 billion). At its AGM on 2 May 2018, QBE confirmed that “this level of insured catastrophe losses was, by a small margin, the highest ever recorded.” Losses in 2017 were approximately three times the annual average ($US53 billion) since 2000.
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