For many years, I worked in professional kitchens where the Robot-Coupe, a big red and white plastic monster of a food processor, was always ready at hand.

FORBES: Still Made by Hand: The Original Food Processor

So in late 1997, when the navy began dredging 9m cubic yards of sand from San Diego harbour, a ready-made solution seemed at hand: the dredgings would more than replace the beach sand lost over the past decade.

ECONOMIST: California��s beaches

But with a reminder of his achievements and a warning of what may happen without his hand at the tiller, Mahathir is getting the voters ready.

CNN: LEADING INDICATORS

And so, seated at my Jerusalem window last year, ready to at last look back and write, I was familiar with the task at hand, the need to gather information and to then look for patterns in it.

CNN: Is our suffering God's will?

But with the calls for excluding even large depositors from bail-ins, it also underscores how governments aren't quite ready to hand off control over how to protect their voters' savings, even if it comes at the expense of these voters' taxes.

WSJ: Brussels Beat: Another European Divide: Protecting the Depositors