Andrew Gradman

“Finally, we can contrast ‘resilience’ to ‘optimisation’ of the tax system. A key observation of resilience thinking is that fully optimising a system may make it less resilient. To achieve resilience, a system requires some redundancy, and this implies some multiplicity, inefficiency or overlap of methods or components. We should expect that we cannot fully optimise the tax system, in part because we cannot predict which elements may collapse or fail. Tax system maintenance is a dynamic and continual social and economic process – the maintenance of the tax state itself.”
― Miranda Stewart, Tax and Government in the 21st Century

“In his spare moments, when he was not engaged in social work, Master Oh carried out research of another kind: it was he, for example, who invented the method of locating—at great distances—planets occupied by intelligent life. This is the method of the “a posteriori clue,” incredibly simple, as are all ideas of genius. The flaring up of a new star in the firmament, where there have been no stars before, testifies to the recent disintegration of a planet whose former inhabitants had achieved a high level of civilization and discovered the means of releasing atomic energy.”
― Stanisław Lem, The Star Diaries: Further Reminiscences of Ijon Tichy

“This new surge in morale had nothing to do with Churchill’s speech and everything to do with his gift for understanding how simple gestures could generate huge effects. What had infuriated Londoners was that during these night raids the Luftwaffe seemed free to come and go as it wished, without interference from the night-blind RAF and the city’s strangely quiescent anti-aircraft guns. Gun crews were under orders to conserve ammunition and fire only when aircraft were sighted overhead and, as a consequence, did little firing at all. On Churchill’s orders, more guns were brought to the city, boosting the total to nearly two hundred, from ninety-two. More importantly, Churchill now directed their crews to fire with abandon, despite his knowing full well that guns only rarely brought down aircraft. The orders took effect that Wednesday night, September 11. The impact on civic morale was striking and immediate. Crews blasted away; one official described it as “largely wild and uncontrolled shooting.” Searchlights swept the sky. Shells burst over Trafalgar Square and Westminster like fireworks, sending a steady rain of shrapnel onto the streets below, much to the delight of London’s residents. The guns raised “a momentous sound that sent a chattering, smashing, blinding thrill through the London heart,” wrote novelist William Sansom. Churchill himself loved the sound of the guns; instead of seeking shelter, he would race to the nearest gun emplacement and watch. The new cacophony had “an immense effect on people’s morale,” wrote private secretary John Martin. “Tails are up and, after the fifth sleepless night, everyone looks quite different this morning—cheerful and confident. It was a curious bit of mass psychology—the relief of hitting back.” The next day’s Home Intelligence reports confirmed the effect. “The dominating topic of conversation today is the anti-aircraft barrage of last night. This greatly stimulated morale: in public shelters people cheered and conversation shows that the noise brought a shock of positive pleasure.”
― Erik Larson, The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz

“At the age of six, Mahler accepted paid commissions as a composer, something he was never to do in later life, his mother having promised him two kreuzers on condition that he did not make any ink blots on the expensive music manuscript paper.”
― Jens Malte Fischer, Gustav Mahler