The motivational effect of being 'on the same page'

I never said I wanted a 'happy' life but an interesting one. From separation and loss, I have learned a lot. I have become strong and resilient, as is the case of almost every human being exposed to life and to the world. We don't even know how strong we are until we are forced to bring that hidden strength forward.

  ~ Bathroom Quote

“I am a failure as a exiled man. I am a failure as a perfectly ordinary man as well, I am too independent – I said that to a clown employee, Marco Polo, once when I was drunk, he got angry with me, really angry, he looked at me as if I was a traitor. I have always felt like a traitor. I am a traitor in every camp because I don’t really need other people. That is the greatest betrayal of the latitudehood, an awareness that you have no need for it...”

There is an old saying in Radio Caff: "If it wasn't for the last moment, nothing would get done here."


Upseting the legal applecart... Robert Ambrogi via Above the Law – “No one knows legal research better than a law librarian. So it says something that the American Association of Law Libraries has announced that it will present its New Product of the Year award to Pablo Arredondo, vice president of legal research at Casetext, for his development of CARA.” 

THE SCIENCE IS SETTLED: Eating salt could help you to LOSE weight, study reveals.

Maybe this is why you never see diet pretzels — they’re all diet.

Jeremy Corbyn pledges 'fat cat tax' on big businesses paying £330000 salaries

Why Collectors Collect First-Edition Books

Collecting modern first editions or antiquarian books is a fun pursuit. It can be exciting and compulsive and, contrary to some critics, it is not a dreary bookish endeavour, followed only by the status-conscious rich. Anyone can collect first editions and, taking taste and pocket into account, the collector’s choice is limitless.

How Literature Has Evolved With The Complexities Of How We Live

“Literature certainly reflects the preoccupations of its time, but there is evidence that it may also reshape the minds of readers in unexpected ways. Stories that vault readers outside of their own lives and into characters’ inner experiences may sharpen readers’ general abilities to imagine the minds of others. If that’s the case, the historical shift in literature from just-the-facts narration to the tracing of mental peregrinations may have had an unintended side effect: helping to train precisely the skills that people needed to function in societies that were becoming more socially complex and ambiguous.”

“..Although some analysts are excited about the IoT’s potential, others have argued that it is overhyped. We take a more balanced view, based on our extensive research as well as our direct work with IoT application developers and their customers. Like the optimists, we believe that the IoT could have a significant, and possibly revolutionary, impact across society. 

Sag, Matthew and Haskell, Jake, Defense Against the Dark Arts of Copyright Trolling (March 28, 2017). Iowa Law Review, Forthcoming. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2933200 “In this Article, we offer both a legal and a pragmatic framework for defending against copyright trolls. Lawsuits alleging online copyright infringement by John Doe defendants have accounted for roughly half ...

Study: A Connection Between The Type Of Fiction You Read And Your Ethics/Morals

The research finds fans of science fiction and fantasy, as well as literary fiction, lean toward a more permissive moral style. Romance and mystery readers, in contrast, tend to abide by a more rigid sense of right and wrong. 

Best-selling author Og Mandino says:

There are no secrets of success. There are simply timeless truths and universal principles that have been discovered and rediscovered throughout human history. All you have to do is to learn and practice them to enjoy all the success that you could desire.

Sounds a lot like what we’re trying to discover.

Fearing Failure

A lot of us do things not to succeed but to avoid failure. This is what Elon Musk calls the fundamental problem with regulators. Tracy writes:

Because of destructive criticism in early childhood and mistakes they have made as adults, they are paralyzed by the fear of making a mistake, of losing their time or money. Even if they are presented with an opportunity, they go into a form of paralysis.

Their fear of failure causes them to create all kinds of reasons not to take action. They don’t have the time. They can’t make the minimum investment. They don’t have the necessary knowledge and skills. Like a deer caught in the headlights, they are paralyzed by the idea of failure, which causes them to never take any action at all.

As it happens, most fortunes in America were started by the sale of personal services. The people had no money, but they had the ability to work hard, to upgrade their skills, and to become more and more valuable. As a result, more and more doors of opportunity opened up for them.

Artists Form Shell Company to Visit and Photograph Tax Havens (exhibit):

Artists Paolo Woods and Gabriele Galimberti traveled to 13 tax havens in an attempt to visualize the fundamentally invisible networks corporations and the ultra-rich employ to hide their wealth.

Wikipedia:Dismissal of FBI Director James Comey

John Brogden steps down as Australian Institute of Company ...

The Offshore Tax Enforcement Dragnet, by Shu-Yi Oei (Tulane)

Financial Times: Artificial Intelligence Closes In On The Work Of Junior Lawyers

Eric Franklin Amarante (UNLV), Why Don't White Supremacists Pay Taxes?: Many white supremacist groups enjoy tax-exempt status.

BEPS and the New International Tax Order, by Allison Christians

Following up on my previous posts (links below):  Chronicle of Higher Education op-ed:  You’re Wrong’: The Case for Confrontation, by Joseph Heath (University of Toronto):

I’m starting to think that some of the strange behavior that has been gripping college students in the United States has begun seeping north into Canada, where I teach. For the first time the other day, I came across the suggestion — made by a graduate student — that a philosophical research talk should be a "safe space." The concern was not that department members were abusive, merely that we were sometimes insufficiently "supportive" of the speaker. Apparently we’re supposed to find nicer ways of telling people how wrong they are. ...

Kay Bell, Tax audit lessons from ‘Mom’ on, of course, Mother’s Day. “You don’t see the connection? Then you missed the season finale last week of the CBS show ‘Mom.'”
Robert Wood, How IRS Audits Can Become Criminal Investigations. “Many big, messy and expensive tax disputes come down to trying to morph personal into business to get a write-off.”
Jack Townsend, New DOJ Charging and Sentencing Recommendation Guidance. “The perceived evils giving rise to the new guidance do not seem present in most tax crimes cases.” But they may apply anyway.
Carl Smith, Taxpayer Who Detrimentally Relied on IRS Erroneous Filing Information Properly Tossed from Tax Court (Procedurally Taxing)

“Honest people pay more taxes than they should have to because of those who don’t pay their share, it's a dangerous dynamic. It’s not fair that those doing the right thing end up having to pay for those who cheat the system.”
Mr Michael Andrew Chair of the Black Economy Taskforce

Dennis J. Ventry, Jr. (UC-Davis), Stiches for Snitches: Lawyers as Whistleblowers, 50 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 1455 (2017):

This Article challenges the prevailing wisdom that ethics rules forbid lawyers from blowing the whistle on a client’s illegal conduct. While a lawyer is not free to disclose confidential information in every jurisdiction for every legal violation, the ethics rules in all jurisdictions permit disclosure of confidential information pertaining to a client’s illegal activities under certain conditions. Proving the lie of the prevailing wisdom, this Article examines a high profile case in the state of New York that ruled a lawyer whistleblower violated the state’s ethics rules by revealing confidential information to stop his employer-client from engaging in a tax fraud of epic proportions. The Article argues that the court undertook a deficient analysis of New York ethics rules pertaining to permissive disclosure of confidential client information. Even if the whistleblower had violated his ethical obligations, the New York False Claims Act (the statute under which he brought his action) expressly protects disclosure of confidential employer information made in furtherance of the statute. In addition to New York’s statutory shield, federal courts across the country have developed a public policy exception safeguarding whistleblowers for disclosing confidential information that detects and exposes an employer’s illegal conduct.