Fool's Day

“The more one suffers, the more, I believe, has one a sense for the comic. It is only by the deepest suffering that one acquires true authority in the use of the comic, an authority which by one word transforms as by magic the reasonable creature one calls man into a caricature.”
~ Søren Kierkegaard, Stages on Life’s Way At Three Williams
 
It's April Fool's Day this week, but some tricks are nastier than others. Money shows you how to protect yourself from financial fraud. Fools and His Money Do Part

Economics Professor Stephen Barrows (Aquinas College) has a strict cell phone policy:  if a student's phone rings in class, the student must answer on the speaker. 

Man loses leg shooting rifle at lawn mower packed with explosives Washington Post. Dr. Kevin: “Most recent candidate for the Darwin Awards.” 

“Rationally, said Mr. Irwin, “It’s too late to get upset about China.”” (NYT link here).

Watch a Local News Reporter Get Arrested While Requesting Public Records Gawker

Vansteenkiste says: “In former days, we had fake champagne, vodka, Johnnie Walker whisky. What we see now is day-to-day consumer goods, [things like] tomato juice and orange juice. You wouldn’t expect it for a low-priced item like tomato juice — for God’s sake, why would they fake it? The answer is people don’t expect it to be cheated, and the profit is very low, but people drink more tomato juice than champagne.”
Tomato juice is usually adulterated by diluting a famous brand name with a cheaper product. Chocolate, coffee and cookies are also targets, says Vansteenkiste.

One reddit user has sparked a chorus of criticism online after posting a ticket purchased via Ticketek for an event in Melbourne last night.

Despite the ticket costing just $25, Ticketek collected a “handling fee” of more than 30 per cent by charging an extra $8.75, even though the ticket was nothing more than an e-mail. The customer posted an image of the receipt to Imgur with some disparaging words for Ticketek. “$9.15 fees on a $25 ticket,” they lamented.

The post prompted a large debate, attracting over 240 comments on reddit

A private college that allegedly recruited illiterate, disabled students into thousands of dollars worth of debt is being pursued in the Federal Court for $210 million in taxpayer funding by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission AIPE: Sydney private college to be pursued for $210 million in federal court  

T.S. Eliot believed that to understand a writer requires reading her complete works. He overlooked the advantages of ignorance... more on the bliss  

That is from an excellent Natalie Whittle feature article at the FT

Via Bank for International Settlements – Updated 18 March 2016 – “The detailed data set of nominal residential property prices consists of around 300 series from 58 countries, collected from national central banks. The data set is updated monthly. Our data

Audit of fastfood outlets finds half exploit their ethnic workers

Sydneyasia story. Most migrants are from Asia and Middle East. Few French Frogs Few Bazilian Dancers ans some fro Zimbabwe. Nepalese-born Australians were the fastest-growing overseas-born community. Their numbers have swelled more than 11-fold over the past 10 years, from just over 3800 people in 2005 to more than 43,500 in 2015.
Overseas born Australians reach highest level since 1895

“There’s a lot of things that’s wrong with the whole thing,” says Dick, from Watford, in explicit and shocking British documentary Chemsex, screening around Australia next month.

“The World Happiness Report is a landmark survey of the state of global happiness. The first report was published in 2012, the second in 2013, and the third in 2015. TheWorld Happiness Report 2016 Update, which ranks 156 countries by their happiness levels, was released today in Rome in advance of UN World Happiness Day, March 20th. Leading experts across fields – economics, psychology, survey analysis, national statistics, health, public policy and more – describe how measurements of well-being can be used effectively to assess the progress of nations. The reports review the state of happiness in the world today and show how the new science of happiness explains personal and national variations in happiness. They reflect a new worldwide demand for more attention to happiness as a criteria for government policy.”

Mocked and forgotten: who will speak for the American white working class? Guardian. Lambert featured this in Water Cooler yesterday but consider DO’s observation: “Private equity is responsible for this too.”

Border Force deports co-founder of $1m start-up Disrupt

America to Establishment: Who the hell are you people ? McClatchy

Clinton Asks For $353K To Sit With The Clooneys Politico 


To be Shaw to be Shaw: Peta Credlin has joined sky news here is the email she sent to all staff this morning

Triple M’s Grill Team terrified by April Fool’s prank The hosts of Triple M’s Grill Team were on the receiving end of a great April Fool’s Day prank this morning. Gus Worland, Matty Johns and Mark Geyer were caught off guard before 6am as they were preparing for their Sydney breakfast radio show. For four years there’s been a bronze statue of Mark Geyer sitting just outside the Grill Team’s studio, but this morning the statue was replaced by a man covered head to toe in bronze body paint. One by one the hosts walked past the statue and got the fright of their lives when it came to life. It was not MEdia Dragon We sleep all night every night!

Robert H. Frank and his forthcoming book title  Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy.  The main point of this book is to illuminate the major role which luck plays in our lives and then to flesh out the social and policy implications of that fact. Is Bob Frank just rehashing the “lucky fool syndrome”

They gather each morning at 8:30 in a converted warehouse in Long Island City. What brings them together is a shared belief that the 20th century ruined art  

Neil Gaiman has unveiled two covers for his forthcoming nonfiction collection,The View from the Cheap Seats: A Collection of Introductions, Essays, and Assorted Writings. The famed author posted the covers on his Twitter page
Here’s more from Gaiman’s blog post: “It’s not every speech, introduction or article I’ve written, but it’s all the speeches that seemed important, all the articles I was still proud of, all the introductions that seemed to be about something bigger than just telling people about the book or author they were going to read. (Kat Howard helped such a lot: she went through the archives, read everything, and made an initial call about what should go in or go out. Then she sighed whenever I changed my mind or remembered a forgotten piece I’d written about something).”

Guante has crafted a moving poem called “Small Talk.” The video embedded above features his performance at Sierra DeMulder’s book release show. Click here to read the text of the poem. Follow these links to listen to three more of Guante’s poems: “REACH,” “Consent at 10,000 Feet,” and “Ten Responses to the Phrase ‘Man Up’.”

It is all about Love: "She pulled his trousers off, ripped the underpants off excitedly ..."

WA Dr Dennis Jensen pitching racy sex almost cold war type novel on Parliamentary stationery 

New photo leak of Perth women, girls online

Now There’s Proof: Doctors Who Get Company Cash Tend to Prescribe More Brand-Name Medications Pacific Standard  

Is someone impersonating you on Facebook? 

Google Maps error allegedly leads to demolition of wrong house CNET

Terrorism by association: FBI files on Food Not Bombs MuckRock

Web of agencies at U.S. airports could hinder security overhauls Reuters