Moment of Truth in Victoria

Counting at the Victorian election is still not finished, but one betting agency Sportsbet says it's done and dusted... Labour claims sweetest Victory  for Daniel Andrews ... Jeff Kennett is looking for cricket bats  - Denis Napthine miscalculated the reaction to the sale of family silvers such as The Land Title Office

Moment of truth for party leaders

VICTORIAN voters have been delivering their verdict on the Napthine government with Labor’s Daniel Andrews predicted to win. LIVE UPDATES.

Erecting trends during Victorian Election

BILL Shorten is there. Julie Bishop is there. Even John Howard has got the call-up. But Tony Abbott is conspicuously missing from the final day of campaigning for the Victorian election.
One prominent liberal not welcome on Victorian campaign

Post script on Sunday morning:

VICTORIAN Labor has stormed to power after one term in the wilderness as at least one Greens MP looks set for the lower house. Hung Parliament in the upper house will test Daniel Andrews negotiation skills ....

CODA: He has been 'out' to parents, friends and work colleagues for almost 20 years. Senior NSW Liberal MP Don Harwin has revealed he is gay in a speech to the NSW Legislative Council, crediting his private struggles with giving him the determination needed to succeed in Parliament.

The president of the upper house made the revelation in a Christmas message on the last sitting day of Parliament for the year on Thursday. He joins just a handful of openly gay NSW MPs, including Labor's Penny Sharpe and Helen Westwood, Liberal Bruce Notley-Smith and independent Alex Greenwich Coming Out the Upper House Don Harwin

Foreigners guzzle Melbourne apartments

Foreigners guzzle Melbourne apartments Macrobusiness

Australia has slipped outside the top 10  "clean" countries in an annual global corruption index, prompting calls for a federal body with a broader reach than the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption Transparency global corruption ranking

Brain’s dementia weak spot identified BBC 

Making resistance futile: A new way to fight bacterial infections Economist 

Why Open Leadership Has Become Essential Forbes 

Senate Report: Scale of Wall Street Holdings “Unprecedented in U.S. History” Pam Martens

Private equity’s false argument for confidentiality Dan Primack, Fortune. EA: “Even Dan Primack says no secret sauce in LPAs.”

From the Notebook: How CalPERS’ board pays itself Jon Ortiz, Sacramento Bee

What If We’re Wrong About Gold or Depression

Nation Doesn’t Know If It Can Take Another Bullshit Speech About Healing Onion 

What If We’re Wrong About Depression? New York Times, because it’s that time of year! Here’s the original paper. Way, way cool. If correct, major paradigm shift (in the formal, Kuhnian sense of the word).

Dutch move 122 tons of gold out of US AP 

What the hell Uber? Uncool bro. Joe’s Security Blog. Losing patience with bros, but interesting exegesis of the code

The Creepy New Wave of the Internet New York Review of Books

When People Looked Forward to Eating Airport Food City Labs

United Nations Calls for an End to Industrialized Farming Truthout

Taxing across Borders

• There's a telephone scam going around that's gotten so bad that North Carolina's Attorney General and the US Attorney are warning the public. It involves people posing as tax collectors.
  The way it works is your phone rings, it's someone saying they're from the IRS or the US Treasury and claims you owe money and if you don't pay via prepaid debit card on that phone call they'll issue a warrant for your arrest.
  Scammers Across the Globe
• 
  
• Taxing across Borders: Tracking Personal Wealth and Corporate Profits (21 Nov 2014

Tax-fraud ring costs Brazilian treasury $400 mn  (25 Nov 2014

Scrap dealer's £5m tax dodge unveiled in HMRC 'name and shame' list  (21 Nov 2014

American-born London Mayor Boris Johnson refuses to pay hefty US taxbill  (20 Nov 2014

Seven of the 30 largest corporations in US paid more to their CEOs than they did in taxes  (19 Nov 2014) 

Boeing, Ford Among Firms Where CEO Pay Tops Taxes, Study Shows  (19 Nov 2014)

Back to the future

ATO’s new man Andrew Mills is gunning

Nassim Khadem 

Tax Office Second Commissioner Andrew Mills says those looking to profit from the departments staff cuts are in for a rude shock.  Getty Images/Craig Sillitoe

Andrew Mills

The creative classes

The creative class is not screwed: Here’s how the Internet helps artists make a living Cory Doctorow, Salon

 Love Songs: The Hidden History.

Myths of Note

Behind the scenes of a ‘shocking’ new study on human altruism Guardian

Tech Worker Shortage Doesn’t Exist BusinessWeek (John C)

Fed “Mystified” Why Millennials Still Live at Home; My Answer May Surprise You (It Isn’t Jobs, Student Debt, or Housing)Michael Shedlock

Has language got the power to disarm the concerned citizens Guardian. TTIP.

The Warrior Ethos at Risk: H.R. McMaster’s Remarkable Veterans Day Speech CFR. Sounds like factional infighting 

Yes, bankers lie more than the rest of us. Wall Street reforms aren’t likely to change that culture WaPo

Corruption behind closed doors  (25 Nov 2014

Analysts support increased transparency to fight tax havens  (25 Nov 2014)

Digging Opals in Sydney

• Bankers Are Cheating Cheaters Who Cheat  

There's an Opal Card rebellion going on in Sydney. A group of dedicated skinflints are using hacks on the new transport card system to save themselves $20 a week. Yep. It has come to this. It all began when the NSW Transport Minister Gladys Berejiklian dared Sydneysiders to try and hack the system Hacking Opals

Carlsen’s chess victory a triumph for man over supercomputer Financial Time
Stop Trying to Save the World: Big ideas are destroying international development New Republic

Can you ‘hear yourself happy’? Sandals that sound different with each footstep could make you feel slimmer and more radiant Daily Mail

ABC of Moving Political Lips - A story of Lucy

Prime Minister Tony Abbott has denied he has broken a pledge not to cut funding to the ABC and SBS, telling Parliament his government had "fundamentally kept faith with the Australian people". The comments were Mr Abbott's first on budget changes to the ABC since a $254 million reduction was announced by Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull last week. ABC breaking up is hard to do - promises worth the moving lips

“Feeling really lucky,” Donald Johanson wrote in his diary the morning of 24 November 1974, while staying at a remote camp in northern Ethiopia’s Afar region. Hours later, the palaeoanthropologist, now at Arizona State University in Tempe, happened upon the 3.2-million-year-old remains of a small-bodied early human, possibly on the lineage that gave rise to Homo sapiens. He and his collaborators named itAustralopithecus afarensis, and the skeleton became known to the world as Lucy. Forty years on, Johanson, now 71, talks about the discovery and Lucy’s enduring importance and appeal.What researchers have learned about human evolution 40 years since Lucy

Barry O'Farrell aka O'Barrell rolling out: Leggy Iggy Azalea rules Down Under

Former New South Wales premier Barry O'Farrell has confirmed he will not recontest his seat in the state election in March. Mr O'Farrell resigned as NSW premier in April after blaming a "massive memory fail" for giving incorrect evidence at an Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) hearing Retired at 55; Timeline as Barry bows our

NSW Police Deputy Commissioner Nick Kaldas met privately with a state MP to ask for his help in relation to a secret Ombudsman’s inquiry just days before the politician set up a parliamentary select committee to investigate the Ombudsman’s work.

The committee, chaired by the same NSW MP, Robert Borsak, was established this week following concerns the Ombudsman’s inquiry had been derailed and was unfairly targeting whistleblowers rather than alleged corruption within the state’s police State Politics deputy police chief meets MP re secret inquiry

Queen of the night: Iggy Azalea performs at the 2014 American Music Awards
Villawood/Hollywood life Iggy Azalea

Tall Poppies Obeid Palmer

It is a well-known phenomenon in TV world. The interviewer simply has to know what pin to use, and where on the belly of the balloon to use it. Matters legal and accusatory will usually do it.

Clive palmer etc art of pricking the balloons of oversized egos

Prosecution of Eddie Obeid and Ian Macdonald hands Mike Baird an early Christmas gift

Eddie Obeid to be prosecuted for alleged misconduct in public office, ICAC says

ICAC: Former NSW ministers Eddie Obeid and Ian Macdonald to be prosecuted after corruption findings

ATO chasing profits from sale ofObeid house

The Australian Taxation Office has intervened in the sale of an Obeidfamily home

Catalogue of Surreal Moments During Taxing Times

Tax attorney used IDs of dead children to avoid taxes  (18 Nov 2014)

Tax officials wrongly calculated their own performance to make it look as if they had recouped nearly £2bn more in unpaid taxes than they actually had, MPs have revealed in a highly critical report into HM Revenue & Customs.

The spectacular blunder meant HMRC’s performance was massively overstated in its 2011-12 and 2012-13 annual reports, and as recently as May this year in a separate publication about its achievements, the Public Accounts Committee has disclosed.

MPs slam the taxman blunder & catalogue failures

Only a fraction of tax arrangements by large business were successfully litigated because companies such as Chevron were able to devote resources to fighting the ATO. In comparison smaller taxpayers could not Unequal treatment of small businesses / lack of level playing fields

UK House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts Report: HMRC’s progress in improving tax compliance and preventing tax avoidance (18 Nov 2014)

G20 takes first step to tackle anonymous company ownership  (17 Nov 2014)

Tax traffic lights 2014: Country rating system on tax (17 Nov 2014)

HSBC's private banking arm accused of tax fraud by Belgium  (17 Nov 2014)

Tech hub: France becomes new tax haven for R&D firms  (18 Nov 2014)

How can Scandinavians tax so much?

Henrik Jacobsen Kleven has a new JEP piece on that question., here is one short excerpt:

…these countries also spend relatively large amounts on the public provision and subsidization of goods that are complementary to working, including child care, elderly care, and transportation. Such policies represent subsidies to the costs of market work, which encourage labor supply and make taxes less distortionary…Furthermore, Scandinavian countries spend heavily on education, which is complementary to long-run labor supply and potentially offsets some of the distortionary effects of taxation…

The paper makes numerous other good points.

By Besley and Persson, here is a related JEP piece on why developing economies tax so little.  And here is a recent piece on whether Sweden can become a fully cashless society.  By the way, the full issue of JEP is here.

Losing to Win

Five year old passes Microsoft

 Dutchman has bitcoin wallet inserted in hands to ease transactions

Data on how female CEOs actually get to the top.

That is the title of a paper from Kai Steverson, who is on the job market from Princeton this year:

Abstract: We study an infinite horizon model of political competition where parties face a trade-off between winning today and winning tomorrow. Parties choose between nominating moderates, who are more viable, or partisans, who can energize the base and draw in new voters which helps win future elections. Only moderates can win in equilibrium and so the winning party fails to invest in its base and has a weaker future. Hence the longer a party is in power the more likely they are to lose, a pattern that finds strong support in the data. This dynamic also creates an electoral cycle where parties regularly take turns in power.

The paper is here (pdf), Kai’s job market paper on Tiebout competition and minorities is here (pdf), it covers how mobility can lead to a race to the bottom when it comes to protecting the rights of minority workers.

Recession Stories

Definition of recession is when your neighbour loses a job / depression starts when you lose a job ...

The depression of George Scialabba.

When was the greatest Finnish Great Depression?

The model also predicts that recessions accelerate the decline in routine occupations—firms prefer to destroy routine jobs during a downturn, when the opportunity cost of restructuring is low. This acceleration can account for recent cyclical changes of the labor market: routine job losses are concentrated in recessions and the ensuing recoveries are jobless.

That is from Miguel Morin, a recent Columbia Ph.d.  The entire paper is of interest.  And here is a relevant blog post by Scott Sumner on “near recessions.”

The Habsburg Empire was OK for trust

Worm brain installed in robot

Toward an insider trading theory of foreign policy? (Putin hoards gold)

Diagnosing hundreds of diseases from a single drop of blood?

Heat your house with someone else’s computer

I, too, am enjoying Serial.

5. When was the greatest Finnish Great Depression?

Lobbying Used to Be a Crime

How leading Tor developers and advocates tried to smear me after I reported their US Government ties Pando Daily. Mechanical typewriters. Cloth ribbons. It’s the only way.

If there’s one way to summarize Zephyr Teachout’s extraordinary book Corruption in America: From Benjamin Franklin’s Snuff Box to Citizens United, it is that today we are living in Benjamin Franklin’s dystopia. Her basic contention, which is not unfamiliar to most of us in sentiment if not in detail, is that the modern Supreme Court has engaged in a revolutionary reinterpretation of corruption and therefore in American political life. This outlook, written by Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy in the famous Citizens United case, understands and celebrates America as a brutal and Hobbesian competitive struggle among self-interested actors attempting to use money to gain personal benefits in the public sphere.

What makes the book so remarkable is its scope and ability to link current debates to our rich and forgotten history. Perhaps this has been done before, but if it has, I have never seen it. Liberals tend to think that questions about electoral and political corruption started in the 1970s, in the Watergate era. What Teachout shows is that these questions were foundational in the American Revolution itself, and every epoch since. They are in fact questions fundamental to the design of democracy.

Teachout starts her book by telling the story of a set of debates that took place even before the Constitution was ratified — whether American officials could take gifts from foreign kings. The French King, as a matter of diplomatic process, routinely gave diamond-encrusted snuff boxes to foreign ambassadors. Americans, adopting a radical Dutch provision banning such gifts, wrestled with the question of temptation to individual public servants versus international diplomatic norms. The gifts ban, she argues, was evidence of a particular demanding notion of corruption at the heart of American legal history. These rules, ‘bright-line’ rules versus ‘corrupt-intent’ rules, govern temptation and structure. They cover innocent and illicit activity, as opposed to bribery rules which are organized solely around quid pro quo corruption.

81% of Tor users can be de-anonymised by analysing router information, research indicates The Stack

Novel Life

It’s OK to say, “I’m working on a novel”; it’s inadvisable to say, “I’m working on my novel.” The distinction interesting, but is it an art project? NSW Parliamentary Stories;

Smile, You’re Speaking Emoji: The Rapid Evolution of a Wordless Tongue

Emotional Symbols emojis rapid evolution

E.O. Wilson has tried to explain everything: racism, overpopulation, cooperation, religion. Now he’s taking on the meaning of life Meaning of Stories

anonymised by analysing router information, research indicates The Stack

Few things are as melancholy, as bittersweet, as freighted with mortality as an inscription in an old book no longer owned by the dedicatee Morality

This time a month ago on the Reading group, we were hunting for the meaning of “Kafkaesque”. We were marvelling at its many applications and at just how often - and with how many subtle and not so subtle variations – the term is used and abused. But now that George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four is our subject, I realise that musing over the meaning of “Kafkaesque” is little more than wandering in the foothills. It is a diversion for amateurs. It is a dipping of toes into shallow waters compared to the deep black plunge that is attempting to define “Orwellian” Orwellian

If beheadings in 2014 seem shocking in their cruelty and theater, that is exactly the point, suggests anthropologist Frances Larson. Larson has researched the meaning of beheadings for a new book, “Severed: A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found.” The book addresses the political and cultural meaning of human heads—which she says are, upsettingly, “simultaneously a person and a thing”—and how, throughout history, they have been displayed as tokens of power and even collected. Though “Severed” was finished before the ISIS beheadings began, it is, unfortunately, newly relevant now. “Decapitation is the ultimate tyranny,” she writes Beheading is ultimate tyranny

Man Singh

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi today presented the Man Singh Trophy, a prized possession of Sikh regiment battalions, to his Australian counterpart Tony Abbott at the War Memorial here to commemorate his visit.

In his first engagement in the Australian capital, Modi, accompanied by Abbott, arrived at the War Memorial early morning  

The trophy originally in silver was presented to the Officers’ Mess 14 (King George’s own) Sikhs in the year 1919.

The officers of the battalion, who served in the unit during the First World War in Egypt, Gallipoli, Sinai and Mesopotamia from October 1914 to May 1917, had made it in commemoration of the gallant actions of their soldiers during the First World War.

The Trophy is named after Man Singh who was recognised as a great soldier for his qualities of character, professional skill, sheer physical prowess and agility.

Approximately 6 feet and 4 inches tall, Singh was said to be so strong of limbs that he was able to jump over high wire obstacles and broad ditches comfortably.

Man Singh trophy war memorial

A watchman stands next to heaps of sacks filled with paddy at a wholesale grain market in the northern Indian city of Chandigarh, Saturday. India's inflation dropped to a new multi-year low in October, helped by slower annual rises in food and fuel prices, intensifying pressure on the central bank to cut interest rates to encourage spending and investment needed to boost growth.


Once upon a time historical biographies were written by men and were mostly about (‘Great’) men: from Plutarch and Suetonius on the grandees of the ancient world, to Vasari on the artists of Renaissance Italy, Boswell on Johnson, Aubrey’s Brief Lives, Carlyle on Frederick the Great, Morley on Gladstone, Trevelyan on Garibaldi and Churchill on Marlborough. Many still are. I think of Ian Kershaw’s authoritative life of Hitler or Simon Sebag Montefiore’s Stalin, for example, or Jonathan Steinberg’s Bismarck and several recent (or imminent) books about Napoleon and various US presidents (not to mention the many biographies of leading cultural figures by Michael Holroyd, Richard Holmes, A.N. Wilson, Peter Ackroyd and others). No doubt the trend has been boosted by this year’s First World War centenary and the appearance of new studies of men associated with it: Guy Cuthbertson’s Wilfred Owen or the third and final volume of John Röhl’s biography of Kaiser Wilhelm.  Historical biography

Longevity is a function of lifestyle

Researchers Got A Big Surprise When They Sequenced The Genomes Of The Longest Lived People Business Insider (David L). No magic gene, which suggests for a lot of people that longevity is a function of lifestyle.

This Is the Left’s Confidential $100 Million Plan to Win Back the States Mother Jones. The $50 million it spent in 2014 looks to have been wildly ineffective, so why should throwing more money at this strategy produce better results? Plus I hate exaggeration: “largely unknown” does not equal “confidential”.

Tragic Stories

Dusk, that most beautiful moment
With no pattern.
Millions of images appear and disappear.
Beloved people.
How unbearable to die in the sky.
~   Creating kamikaze

That's a prerequisite of the disaster movie: someone to hate. There has to be a character on whom we can unload all our animosity and accusation, the Designated Arsehole (DA for short), because disaster movies are about the best and worst of human nature.

In Airport, it's not the bomber played by Van Heflin but Rathbone, the cranky passenger from Hell played by Peter Turgeon. When stewardess Jacqueline Bisset wrests the bomb off Heflin's lap, Turgeon interferes and gives it back, enabling him to detonate the bomb Tragic Stories

William McPherson has a Pulitzer Prize and no money. He isn’t wretched-of-the-earth poor, but he’s poor. Here’s how he reached that status... Paupers

Whatever the reason – Twitter trolls, libel laws, political correctness – the literary feudis in decline. And the culture is worse off for that... Agree to agree

In the early 50s, German-Jewish philosophers began returning to Frankfurt, Munich, Berlin, Heidelberg. Jürgen Habermaswas a young man at the time. He remembers it well... German

The narrowing of history. Ever more scholars shed light on an ever more obscure past. When did historiography become an esoteric art?... Standpoint

G20 Stories Putin Siberian Isolation

Why is reason important? Leon Wieseltier explains: “We need not be a nation of intellectuals, but we must not be a nation of Idiots

Over the more than four centuries from the time of Ivan the Terrible, Russia expanded an average of fifty square miles per day.

That is from the extraordinary new Stephen Kotkin biography of Stalin, titled Stalin.  The first volume of 949 pp. brings the reader up only until 1928.  A lot still happened after that. Now it is India's and China's turn to take over the land down under - Australia as naive in 21st century as some of the Mittleuropean clans in 1st century ;-) soil is everything!

Putin stands far away from Abbott in this group photo

G20 leaders line up for group photo. ( Russia enacts ‘draconian’ law for bloggers and online media BBC) 

World leaders have wrapped up the first day of the G 20  summit with a working dinner and performance at Brisbane's Gallery of Modern Art.
Earlier, US president Barack Obama used his address University of Queensland students to pledge a contribution of $3 billion to the Green Climate Fund to help developing nations deal with climate change.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott has urged world leaders to speak from the heart, rather than a script, at this weekend's summit

Thousands of delegates and helpers are fitting in nicely with the Aussie drinking culture, cooling down with beers in hand.

 G 20 Stories

For Australians it's not so bad - most of the time - to be so far away, so overlooked, so seemingly insignificant as to almost never factor in major international news. The lifestyle makes up for it.

But occasionally, there's an awkward, pimply youth moment so embarrassing that it does sting. Like when 19 of the world's most important leaders visit for a global summit and Prime Minister Tony Abbott opens their retreat Saturday with a whinge (Aussie for whine) about his doomed efforts to get his fellow Australians to pay $7 to see a doctor.

And then he throws in a boast that his government repealed the country's carbon tax, standing out among Western nations as the one willing to reverse progress on climate change - just days after the United States and China reached a landmark climate change deal Observations

The Path to Power WSJ. 150th anniversary of Sherman’s march through Georgia

Students outsource essay writing: Judges Cooking Up a Storm

NSW universities are in damage control following a Fairfax Media investigation that revealed hundreds of students across the state were engaging the services of an online essay writing business.
On Wednesday, the Herald exposed an online business called MyMaster, run out of Sydney's Chinatown, that had provided more than 900 assignments to students from almost every university in NSW, turning over at least $160,000 in 2014 Universities in damage control after widespread cheating revealed

Notes from kids-

We Need Someone to Judge the Judges

The process for investigating federal judges is opaque, secretive, and incredibly hard to set in motion, with 99 percent of complaints dismissed.

Extreme Wealth Is Bad for Everyone-Especially the Wealthy

Extreme Wealth Is Bad for Everyone-Especially the WealthyMichael Lewis, New Republic. We said this before inequality was a hot topic: Income inequality is bad for rich people too

Exclusive: As cities struggle, Scranton in Pennsylvania to triple a local tax Reuters 

The Romantics feared the cold rationality of scientists –what would become of wonder? Their fears were Misplaced ...

Mind-control device lets people alter genes in mice through power of thought Guardian. Lambert: “Note last para, the real point….”

Walmart Memo Orders Stores to Improve Grocery PerformanceNew York Times. Lambert” “Soviet style shopping"

In praise of Information Sharing at Water Coolers: Prescient Prophecies

“Yes, there is an inevitable darkening, or sobering, that comes with the increasing realization that life is a tragedy, which entails, however, no need to banish gaiety. Painters know that there is nothing like black to bring out the best in other colors—the pinks and whites and oranges. It makes them dance.”

~ Peter De Vries, quoted in Douglas M. Davis, “An Interview with Peter De Vries” (College English, April 1967)

In praise of gossip. Behind-the-back chitchat and the exchange of juicy tidbits are what makes society possible. Stories like 'when will he stop having affairs in the office' are priceless. Information Sharing Session

Whether tapered, snout-like, or hooked, the Jewish nosedisplays a remarkably diverse history in Christian art... The Nose

“There lurks perhaps in every human heart a desire of distinction, which inclines every man to hope and then to believe that nature has given him something peculiar to himself. This vanity makes one mind nurse aversions and another actuate desires till they rise by art much above their original state of power and as affectation in time improves to habit, they at last tyrannise over him who at first encouraged them only for show.” How numbers on facebook change our behaviour

Steve Jobs and Elon Musk Are Silicon Valley’s Most Inspiring Figures

Formidably erudite, faintly manic, and impossible to shut up, Slavoj Žižek is a cult figure. At least he’s self-aware enough to send-up that Status

Fact and fiction blur in tales of tax avoidance  (10 Nov 2014)

Whistleblower accuses several Irish politicians of tax evasion  (10 Nov 2014)

“I’ve waited my whole life for this moment.” Twitter

Hearing criticisms of your own beliefs is essential to form a considered opinion. The right to be offended is a vital right – and it’s under threat... Folk

The November issue of Words without Borders is now up, with a focus on: Contemporary Czech Prose, as well as some 'Writers on Education'. 

Poor Hans Kafka. Everything he wrote, including a story about a beetle and a man, was overshadowed by the work of his neighbor Franz... Hans Kafka

I’m not sure how much of a write-up I can give you of Kathryn Schulz’s marvelous book Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error since, if you recall, I borrowed it as an ebook from my library and was reading it on my Kindle when it decided to no longer highlight things

Mafia Restaurants

A new chain of themed restaurants catches on in Spain.

Absolving human nature: Writing Like a Man

 “Nobody will ever induce me to absolve human nature  because I know myself.” Johnson’s vision is binocular. Without neglecting the commonplace and close-at-hand, he sees things sub specie aeternitatis. Consider The Rambler #68, published on this date, Nov. 10, in 1750:

“The main of life is, indeed, composed of small incidents, and petty occurrences; of wishes for objects not remote, and grief for disappointments of no fatal consequence; of insect vexations which sting us and fly away, impertinencies which buzz a while about us, and are heard no more; of meteorous pleasures which dance before us and are dissipated; of compliments which glide off the soul like other musick, and are forgotten by him that gave and him that received them.” 

Humor shrivels, dries up and blows away like a mushroom in a drought. Few human gifts are so time-and-place-dependent. Much of Mark Twain is heavy going and Rabelais has never made me laugh. The same is true for other renowned jokesters. The first bookish genre I felt enthusiasm for while crossing the border from children’s books into adult fare was humor, the twentieth-century American variety, especially Thurber, Perelman and Benchley, all associated with The New Yorker. The wittiest writer ever to work for that magazine was A.J. Liebling, a mere journalist. In contrast, the putative humorists have aged poorly. Growing Young Again

“Our past already had such distances! Already in that fragrance we could sense
the end of childhood, where remembrance stands.” If only recollection could cohere cold rivers

“A writer should know that only a few of those who look at him will actually see him.” 

Few look at Nicolás Gómez Dávila – Don Colacho -- and fewer see him. Among the latter is a young writer new to me, Chris R. Morgan, who has written a stylish tribute to the Colombian master aphorist (1913-1994). How pleasing to see a young writer with sufficient maturity to recognize Don Colacho’s worth: “On the surface, these aphorisms seem like throwaways. Yet Gómez Dávila’s mind was not wired for frivolity. In spite of their brevity, each escolio has a sculpted composition, fashioned to conform to an overriding vision that is as rigid in its consistency as it was free from ideological conventions.”  The side that has already lost

Floral jewels

Craftsmen have long been captivated by the botanical world. Carol Woolton picks the world’s most beautiful blooms

Taxing the Internet Is a Bad Idea

TaxGrrrl, IRS Warns Taxpayers To Be Diligent As Identity Thieves Add New Twist To Phone Scam

Career Corner. Gentlemen, If Your Firm Offers Paternity Leave, Take All Of It (Caleb Newquist, Going Concern). Yes, it gives you lots of time to interview for that new job you’ll be needing.

Home sweet homestead. Illinois County Uncovers $9.4 Million in Fraud Revenue with Analytics (Govtech.com). Using data mining techniques, a contractor helped Cook County identify improper property tax homestead exemption claims.

Brunori, Taxing the Internet Is a Bad Idea – As the Hungarians Learned (Tax Analysts

Banks fight stores on cyber-attack bills

Banks fight stores on cyber-attack bills Financial Times

UBS to settle allegations over precious metals trading Financial Times. Brian C: “Interesting that an actual named banker is in the hot seat for this criminal ‘settlement’ round.”

The great financial crisis: The guilty men Economist. As Lambert points out, predictably, no mention of fraud

Bitcoin Firm Head Charged in First-of-Kind Ponzi Case Bloomberg

Improving Tax Collection by Public Shaming: Evidence from Slovenia, at UC-Berkeley today as part of the Robert D. Burch Center for Tax Policy and Public Finance Seminar:

Cory Doctorow: Information Doesn’t Want To Be FreeTechCrunch

Medical Records: Top Secret New York Times

 Why Innocent People Plead Guilty Jed Rakoff, New York Review of Books. Today’s must read

The hidden truth about job growth, lost amidst the statistical noise & optimists’ hopes Fabius Maximus. This is a great chart series. Circulate widely.