Wednesday, July 01, 2015

Into Unknown We Go Under: How do we measure Leadership Styles ...

June 2015 the hottest June since record-keeping began in 1880. 2015 on track to be the hottest yr ever

Voters deserve to know that their candidates have at least reached a minimum level of political competence, for example, whether Joe Hockey's or Tony Abbott's gaffes are examples of incompetence or just human error. 
Leading organisational psychologists have called for psychological assessments to form part of the pre-selection processes for political candidates in Australia.
Chairman of the Australian Human Resources Institute, Peter Wilson, said a range of objective assessments, similar to those used by corporations to appoint senior executives, would help political parties choose more competent candidates and leaders.
Politicians should be psychologically assessed, says HR expert 
 Voters deserve to know that their candidates have at least reached a minimum level of political competence, for example, whether Joe Hockey's or Tony Abbott's gaffes are examples of incompetence or just human error.



... Part of the reason for the anger, is that the ATO suffered very similar problems last year. A technical issue stopped people lodging their tax returns in 2014, and the ATO apologised.
This time around an ATO spokesman says as of now, the systems are up and running, but are going slow. The spokesperson says that 24,000 people have already lodged their tax returns, and if the trouble persists, taxpayers should try waiting another 24 hours.
myTax issues

Travellers in Sydney were worst hit by strikes at Australia's major airports Sydney worst hit by Aust airport strikes
Using the minimum wage to stimulate the economy “like trying to get rich by picking your own pocket” [Megan McArdle]

SA train drivers to strike

One of the functions of Nazism was social advancement, and few Nazis were as opportunistic as Joseph Goebbels. He embraced barbarism, but that was hardly unusual ....

Bizarre love triangle: under Hitler’s watchful eye, Goebbels weds Magda, 19 December 1931, on the estate of her first husband in Severin, Mecklenburg. Photo: Ullstein Bild via Getty Images

New York Times, The Bad Behavior of Visionary Leaders:
As I was reading Ashlee Vance’s Elon Musk: Tesla, Space X and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, I was alternately awed and disheartened, almost exactly the same ambivalence I felt after reading Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs and Brad Stone’s The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon.

The three leaders are arguably the most extraordinary business visionaries of our times. Each of them has introduced unique products that changed – or in Mr. Musk’s case, have huge potential to change – the way we live.

Judge lifts gag order against Reason magazine in commenter subpoena case, and U.S. Attorney’s Office for Manhattan is shown to have behaved even more outrageously than had been thought [Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch, Ken White/Popehat(magistrate’s approval of gag order looks an awful lot like rubber stamp; AUSA directly contacted represented party),Paul Alan Levy (when bloggers push back, gag orders tend to get lifted), Matt Welch again with coverage roundup]

From prison camp escapes to the Underground Railroad, popular culture is rife with stories of prisoners escaping their captors. For the most part, however, those prisoners are the good guys.

Victorian Era Prison Riot

Tensions high in NSW prison re smoking ban

Yemen 1200 escape from prison

Why are we so fascinated with escape

Political Wheel of Violence