Saturday, March 26, 2016

All that is forbidden



'We do not stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing!'
JP

Last night I visited a club in Montparnasse where the men dress as women and the women as men. Papa would have loved it. And Mama’s face would have crinkled in that special smile she has for Papa’s passion for everything French. The place is called the Chameleon Club. It’s a few steps down from the street. You need a password to get in. The password is: Police! Open up! The customers find it amusing...
~ Bathroom Quote

“There really is a very positive feel out there at the moment. I never did believe that e-books were the iPod moment for printed books; you really can’t beat the feel of a good book.”
The Bookseller

Just because you showed up drunk for jury duty, it doesn’t mean you should have to go to jail for it — at least according to the Florida Supreme Court. [Daily Business Review]

And from February: “former Los Angeles sheriff Lee Baca announced that he would plead guilty to criminal charges related to systemic misconduct in his department, specifically to a charge of lying to investigators in an effort to cover up that wrongdoing.” [Kevin Williamson]

Bernard Harcourt’s Exposed is a deeply insightful analysis of data collection, analysis, and use by powerful commercial and governmental actors. Cheryl take note as Bernard helps us understand why evermore of daily life is organized around the demands of what Shoshanna Zuboff calls“surveillance capitalism:” intimate monitoring of our daily lives to maximize our productivity as consumers and workers 
A Social Theory of Surveillance Concurring Opinions 

Amid multiple scandals, why won’t office of Orange County, Calif. District Attorney Tony Rackauckas confirm name of county investigator alleged to have beaten defense attorney in courtroom hallway? [R. Scott Moxley/OC Weekly via Radley Balko, Voice of OC]

Judge throws out mountain of tickets from Chicago traffic and speed cameras” [TimeOut,Timothy Geigner/TechDirt,earlier]

Pope washes feet of Muslim migrants, says ‘We are brothers Associated Press 

Jeff Gramm’s Dear Chairman: Boardroom Battles and the Rise of Shareholder Activism is a very useful and well-researched book, focusing on shareholder rights and control issues in the earlier history of corporate America

Gawker Media published a sex tape it had obtained of a famous wrestler, then refused to take it down when a judge ordered it to do so. Now a Florida jury has hit it with a $115 million verdict. [Ars Technica] While at some point a civil litigant was bound to catch up with the notoriously scurrilous media outfit, the question now is whether other, better media outfits need to worry too. On appeal, the defendant will press its contention that the contents of the tape were newsworthy, a category that allows broader use of material that otherwise would invade privacy. Comparisons are already off and running between this and the $55 million Erin Andrews invasion of privacy verdict against defendants including Marriott...


7 Things You Didn’t Know About the Ultra Rich Inequality.org


Life Is Complexicated The Mulitiverse According to Ben. 2015, still interesting.

In her splendid essay “The Costs of Tragedy”, Martha Nussbaum relates a story from her days as a young professor at Harvard

Until that elite – the 1% as it is called – realise just how strong this distrust is then they will not realise the risk that we face, and the backlash that they might unleash.
I do not want Trump.
I do not want Brexit.
I would like wise heads to prevail.
I would like democracy to be restored to its rightful place.
I want freedom of speech.
I want government that genuinely seeks to act in the interests of all people, and most especially those in need.
But we are not getting that type of government. We are getting small minded, oppressive, indifferent government in the interests of a few who aren’t even wise enough to see the risk in doing that

A message to the elite Richard Murphy

We’ve Been Measuring Inequality Wrong The New Republic. “Our study focuses on lifetime spending inequality because economic well being depends not just on what we spend this minute, hour, week or even year. It depends on what we can expect to spend through the rest of our lives.” Hmm. Wealth implies political power. Spending does not

Globalization, Skills & Inequality IMFDirect
‘Chilling Effect’ of Mass Surveillance Is Silencing Dissent Online, Study Says Motherboard 

This is Why Putin is the Most Unpredictable Politician in the World Sputnik News 


Initially, Justice Antonin Scalia supported the doctrine (Auer/Seminole Rock) by which courts defer to administrative agencies in interpreting the scope of their regulations. Toward the end of his life, however, he changed his mind. And in that change lies a lesson about the tension between the dangers of arbitrariness and abdication in the judiciary, and how the Constitution goes about addressing that tension [Evan Bernickearlier]

Jan Gross forced Poland to reckon with its complicity in the Holocaust. Now an effort is underway to undermine the historian and sanitize the past ...

Donald Trump starts naming names
After saying last week that he mostly consults himself on international affairs, Donald Trump has opened up and actually given the media a glimpse of what a Donald Trump presidential team would look like. In an interview with the Washington Post, the Republican front runner unveiled a partial list of his foreign policy advisers

Attorney Paul Hansmeier has sued more than 100 small businesses in Minnesota charging lack of handicap accessibility, sometimes “on behalf of the Disability Support Alliance, a nonprofit group that finds non-compliant businesses. A 5 Eyewitness News report from last summer found Hansmeier sought quick settlements from businesses for thousands of dollars and made little effort to ensure the buildings were brought into compliance.” 

Israel loses its grip on democracy Le Monde Diplomatique