Saturday, February 27, 2016

I Want to Break Free ... Like Bob Stark ;-)

“My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humour, and some style.” – Maya Angelou (Pinched from Dicyish J-P)

“Homo Ludens with a book is free… free — and no other hobby can promise this — to eavesdrop on Montaigne’s arguments or take a quick dip in the Mesozoic National geographic built an online photo community



This is a deja vu moment for Malchken whose Kenya's safari experiences still pepper campfires in van dierman lands. The moment a rhino charged a car full of tourists has been captured on camera at a national park in Namibia. According to the UK’s Telegraph the rhino just wanted to be free to roam any roads ....


Media Dragons differs from other animals in one very important respect, and that is that he has some desires which are, so to speak, infinite, which can never be fully gratified, and which would keep him restless even in Paradise. The boa constrictor, when he has had an adequate meal, goes to sleep, and does not wake until he needs another meal. Human beings, for the most part, are not like this.

Tatranka Boys and Girls The High Tatra Mountains Soccer with MEdia Dragons circa 1970
The image goes with Bawa's Liverpool as we fixed broken rooms ...
Shark Trying to break free from  a Man Mad on taking Selfies  
Gossipping about MEdia Dragon is good for one and all ;-) Gossip is a social skill – not a character flaw
"There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about." - Oscar Wilde   
Have You Heard? Gossip Is Actually Good and Useful

I want to lower my taxes. It’s one of my dreams, along with becoming taller. And younger. And much, much richer.

Seven years and more than 1,000 photos ago, Mike Melnotte shared his first image with National Geographic's Your Shot. The image featured a striped, contorting caterpillar.

Kay Bell (Don't Mess With Taxes), Millennials Fear Tax Filing More Than Do Older Taxpayers

Why Lawyers (And Law Professors) Eat Last: A Workshop On Selfless Service

Sydney Men and Women - Amen




Illustration by Alice and Martin Provensen from ‘Homer for Young Readers,’ 1965. Click image for more.
...to be a hero, you only had to be brave for a moment … but to be a coward was to embark on a career that lasted a lifetime. You couldn’t ever relax. You had to anticipate the next occasion when you would have to make excuses for yourself, dither, cringe, reacquaint yourself with the taste of rubber boots and the state of your own fallen, abject character.

Hunter S. Thompson was a man whose reputation preceded him. Let’s honor his legacy the way he probably would have wanted–by taking a look back at a list of the crimes he committed in the Big Apple. If you don’t know anything about Hunter S. Thompson, this job application that he sent to theVancouver Sun in 1958 should get you started.


In April, the world’s governments will meet in New York for a special assembly at the United Nations to discuss how to solve the drug problem. Don’t hold your breath: Since the previous such gathering nearly two decades ago, the narcotics industry has done better than ever.
Excellent Tom Wainwright piece on how economists would approach the problem of addictive drugs

TJN in New York Review of Books: Missing Trillions

 HMRC survey finds that people think that tax avoidance is unacceptable 

HMRC Survey: Exploring public attitudes to tax Tax Avoidance in 2015 



Start-up success stories Atlassian, Canva and Nitro all had cracking years while venture capitalists, entrepreneurs and corporate executives all focused their efforts on innovation at a scale that had never been seen. But that was last year; what does 2016 hold? Here are some predictions from some of Australia’s start-up leaders and trailblazers  Start-up predictions for 2016

To help dispel fact from fiction, London-based data journalist and information designer David McCandless created a handy infographic called Common MythConceptions




This report, written for the CIPD by the Behavioural Insights Team, outlines ways in which harnessing knowledge about how we actually behave can help those engaged in recruitment to improve outcomes for organisations  A head for hiring: the behavioural science of recruitment and selection


Imperva has made five predictions for what the main 2016 information security trends will be. The predictions come from an analysis of the data collected by its products in installations around the world, as well as from working closely with over 3,500 customers from across many verticals The top issues for cyber security in 2016

Spy agencies might begin hacking into Internet-connected consumer products to collect information about suspects, the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told the Senate last week. This
troubled civil liberties advocates who argue that surveillance laws have not kept up with the rapid pace of technological change. Intelligence for identification ;  His statements echo a report released this month from Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society that describes how spying on Internet-connected devices could allow intelligence officials to get the information they need, as opposed to cracking through encrypted communications sent via a more secure device, like a smartphone. Surveillance


The govt is reading what you post online
The net is tightening for all Australians. Last week the government proudly announced that it was monitoring social media websites, including Facebook, to crack down on welfare fraud. Centrelink is trawling not just Facebook but Twitter accounts and eBay.


Kirsty Keep battles Lupus after being bitten by tick  Swiss suicide clinic 


Sharing Economy has Strong CSR Potential
ProBono Australia, 10/2/16. People are participating often as individual contractors and taking all of the risk of employment on themselves, so they have the risks the same as a contractor would have in the traditional economy but perhaps even more so because there’s not a clear regulatory regime around the sharing economy.
*Mentions -
NSW Government Releases Collaborative Economy Position Paper


Click and collect your groceries from train stations
Sydney Trains and Woolworths began a ‘click and collect’ trial to place shopping ordered by customers online into specially designed lockers at Bondi Junction station.


This is Why People Fear the ‘Internet of Things’ Krebs on Security. Even Orwell’s telescreens didn’t broadcast your whole life to the entire world. I exaggerate. But not much.

“Nothing in the world is more exciting than a moment of sudden discovery or invention, and many more people are capable of experiencing such moments than is sometimes thought.”


Bertrand Russell (May 18, 1872–February 2, 1970) endures as one of humanity’s most lucid and luminous minds — an oracle of timeless wisdom on everything fromwhat “the good life” really means to why “fruitful monotony” is essential for happiness to love, sex, and our moral superstitions. In 1950, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for “his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought.” On December 11 of that year, 78-year-old Russell took the podium in Stockholm to receive the grand accolade.
Later included in Nobel Writers on Writing (public library) — which also gave us Pearl S. Buck, the youngest woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, on art, writing, and the nature of creativity — his acceptance speech is one of the finest packets of human thought ever delivered from a stage.