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Friday, June 16, 2017

Patrick Carl Scully; Jeff Bezos: Full Frontal Ideas and Knowledge: MEdia Dragon

Lines of Spines – What is a library? - Give me winter, a fireplace, tea and a stack of books and I'll wish for winter to never end...
According to a quote sometimes attributed to the great Albert Einstein: "It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer."

 THERE SEEMS TO BE A SERIOUS LACK OF PROFESSIONALISM AT THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT, THE CIA, THE NSA, AND, WELL, EVERYWHERE, REALLY: Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein cautions against anonymous sources in bizarre, strange, curious statement



The stories we tell and the stories we don’t...




'Mr Turnbull, (a Bondi Iceberg swimmer,) reportedly responded: "Bob Carr and I are friends. I couldn't do it to him".


Mr Scully writes that he was "simply astonished that with no stated philosophical commitment to the Liberal Party, he was quite prepared to leave its political opponents in power, rather than take the reins of government away from a personal friend".' (Leader v Leadership inside political waters)

Andrew Clennell: Light rail is Gladys' heavy load to pull


... inspired The Daily Telegraph headline over a picture of then premier Morris Iemma and then-roads minister Carl Scully: “Out Of Their Depth.”

In politics and Latitude walks assume everything will get out by Hungarian Antipodean 


Each year, the press gallery at NSW Parliament (We were the best folkloric dancers on the floor) holds a Christmas party that, like the Midwinter Ball in Canberra, involves politicians and journalists making  "self-deprecating" humorous speeches, and liberally roasting each other.
So what are these "Chatham House Rules" that Channel Nine political correspondent Laurie Oakes left lying in a shattered heap, like a child's doll's house run over by a road grader? Chatham House Rules are a bit like the Richter scale – everyone is prepared to drop them knowingly into conversation, but nobody really has a clue what they are.



We really cannot commend this judgment more highly to m'learneds. Very Bohemian Tom Stoppard-esque passage at AUSTLII (Dr Cope used to make us even read government gazettes  ;-) 




CHARLIE MARTIN: Brush Up Your Shakespeare

Patrick Carl Scully  is the Director of Carl Scully Consulting, an independent corporate advisory firm focused on providing strategic advice to government and industry on the planning, funding and delivery of infrastructure projects. He is an Advisory Board Member of NSW Leaders and Chairman of the NSW Mine Safety Advisory Council (MSAC) 



Carl had a style as he always wore best coordinated ties with his suits...


$1b Sydney desalination plant 'decided by a focus group', former minister Carl Scully claims



Carl Scully describes conversation with Malcolm Turnbull in new memoir


[Carl]  was the roads minister who introduced a swag of tollways to Sydney, but former Labor politician Carl Scully is now passing the buck, claiming his opposition to the tolled expressways was ignored by Labor heavyweights.
Mr Scully says his former premier Bob Carr and treasurer Michael Egan were the ones responsible for Sydney having so many tollways.
And, he says, if he had had it his way, the Lane Cove Tunnel, Eastern Distributor, M7 and Cross City Tunnel would all be un-tolled roads.
Mr Scully, who is launching his memoirs Setting The Record Straight at NSW Parliament today, said that Mr Carr and Mr Egan did not want to spend any money on roads and blocked him all the way, preferring to retire debt and spend the cash in the government’s coffers on health.
“We had a premier and a treasurer who were not overly focused nor all that interested in improving public transport,” Mr Scully writes in his book. “The period of Liberal rule from 2011 has seen literally billions of dollars of extra public funds for both heavy and light rail.
“I can only look on in awe and wonder how different would have been the legacies of our long years in office if Carr and Egan had shown the same level of interest.’’
Mr Scully told The Daily Telegraph yesterday: “I did what I could.’’
“I would have preferred to build the Lane Cove Tunnel and the Cross City Tunnel (as well as the M7) as freeways,’’ Mr Scully said. Former NSW Labor MP Carl Scully scuttles his former boss over tolls

's Three Crooked Kings. We will never allow this to happen again in Qld.

Salim Mehajer's sister Fatima pleads guilty to electoral fraud on first day of trial

Paul Pisasale subject of explosive claims by MP Rob Pyne in Parliament
This tweet is a request for ideas.  I’m thinking about a philanthropy strategy that is the opposite of how I mostly spend my time — working for the long term.  For philanthropy, I find I’m drawn to the other end of the spectrum: the right now.  As one example, I’m very inspired and moved by the work done at Mary’s Place here in Seattle.  I like long-term — it’s a huge lever: Blue Origin, Amazon, Washington Post — all of these are contributing to society and civilization in their own ways.  But I’m thinking I want much of my philanthropic activity to be helping people in the here and now — short-term — at the intersection of urgent need and lasting impact.  If you have ideas, just reply to this tweet with the idea (and if you think this approach is wrong, would love to hear that too).
Thanks!
Jeff

Adam Harvey's famous father Peter would be so proud of him. Peter covered the Viet Nam War. Speedy recovery Adam.


An update: I've been flown to Manila for surgery to remove the bullet. Doc glanced at X-Ray and said 'M-16'. They know their slugs here.

Silicon Valley loves giving money to manic, headstrong sociopaths. Uber's Travis Kalanick did not disappoint

 Tim Gorichanaz: “…But libraries are still important, and that’s because they are notfundamentally storehouses for books — despite the name and our longstanding cultural assumptions. We can begin to see this in the example of Kafka on the Shore, if we look beyond the surface. It’s not just that Kafka wound up in the library because he liked books. He wound up in the library because he had no other home, and the library provided a free, safe space. Indeed, over the course of the book, Kafka comes to know the proprietors of the library, and he ends up living there in a spare room. A library is not just a refuge for the intellect, but for the whole person…” “Tim Gorichanaz is a PhD candidate in information studies at Drexel. His research explores the historical and philosophical aspects of libraries and information technology”

 At News Corp, they kick down, not up, kissing the backside of business with great ardour every day. At michaelwest, we kick up, not down, holding power to account and batting for the public interest.
Westie ...

 Google Translate arrived in 2006, and has grown to over 500 million users worldwide, translating more than 100 billion words daily. Voice speed is the name of the next game changer, and the next communication boundary-crossing frontier presents in the form of speaking, not in writing.

Talk to anyone, anytime, anywhere? It’s a head-turner and, despite the perennial promise of a Star Trek universal translator being right around the corner, some workable applications appear to be at least in sight:

  • An ear device from Waverly Labs that translates foreign languages in real time 
  • A pocket widget called Travis that lets you speak 80 languages in your travels
  • A gadget  called ili that translates English, Japanese and Chinese instantly 
  • Pure Neural Machine Translation by Systran for advanced multilingual communications

 THE EARTH-SHATTERING KABOOM ONE IS ENOUGH FOR ME: NASA Just Gave Us 10 Good Reasons to Hunt For Near-Earth Asteroids: And Czech scientists give us at least a few more
 IT’S NICE THAT WOMEN AREN’T AS SUPERFICIAL AS MEN: 64 Girls Confess The First Thing They Check Out On A Guy. “The 3 B’s: butts bulges and biceps.”



Guide to the classics: Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War. "It remains a must-read for all who want to understand how power politics manifest, and learn about its effect on the psychology of humankind, both individual and collective."

New on LLRX.com – How to turn phone-aholics and others into library book readers and gung-ho patrons, if they aren’t already? One answer is greater visibility for libraries on the Web and elsewhere. David Rothmanexplains that’s what Koios, Troy Gordner’s company, is about. Rothman, a national digital library evangelist, also shares innovative ideas that many libraries can implement to raise their visibility
The Dreyfus affair gave us the word “intellectual.” It also redefined truth, justice, and art. Look at the impact on Proust, Joyce, Kafka, Connors Imrich et al at 

In an 1888 diary entry, Thomas Hardy reflected on a church service. His stream-of-consciousness style was a harbinger of modernist techniques to come. We are Hardy's heirs... Heirs of Story: 
Human character, we know, changed on or about December 1910, but it had already changed on or about December 1863, when Baudelaire published his essay ‘The Painter of Modern Life’. In the course of writing about the journalist-illustrator Constantin Guys, Baudelaire leaves the salon and goes out into the street, away from art criticism to urban digression. He mentions Poe’s story, ‘The Man of the Crowd’, whose narrator, recovering from a recent illness, sits in a London café and watches the human traffic through the window. Artists are like convalescents, Baudelaire adds: nervously alert, grateful for the slightest detail, omnivorously curious. And the convalescent is like the child, who sees everything as if for the first time, drunk on novelty. Inspiration, Baudelaire continues, ‘has some connection with congestion’. Guys is such an eternal child, and the urban crowd is his domain: ‘he watches the flow of life move by, majestic and dazzling … He gazes at the landscape of the great city, landscapes of stone.’ From this, comes a further generalisation: ‘Modernity is the transient, the fleeting, the contingent; it is one half of art, the other being the eternal and the immovable.’

 Churchill and Orwell, different in so many ways, shared a determination to confront unpleasant realities. They also had a tragic understanding that their views were unlikely to prevail ---- Join the Club Winston and George  


 Where tarot cards come from. Not ancient Egypt, but a place almost as mysterious: Paris, in 1781, with its occult-obsessed secret societies and private clubs. Bohemian Parties and Latitudional Cliques  
At 89, [Bill Crawford] is LSU’s oldest faculty member. He teaches two classes a semester at the Paul M. Hebert Law Center [Louisiana Civil Procedure I & II; Louisiana Security Devices; Advanced Louisiana Torts].
“Some day, they’ll come in here and carry me out,” Crawford says.

A. Felecia Epps (Dean, Florida A&M), Lessons Learned on the Journey from Associate Dean of Academic Affairs to Dean, 48 U. Tol. L. Rev. 241 (2017) Light reading For Michael Egan ...
Comedy Central plans a special called "The Fake News with Ed Helms." ... Funny stuff needs fact-checking, too: Amy Sherman of PolitiFact investigates claims from a recent "Full Frontal with Samantha Bee" episode. 

The Value of Face Time

About 25% of all US employees work remotely and according to a Gallup study the most engaged employees work remotely 60 to 80% of the time. That doesn’t surprise me. I’m all for working remotely. Some people work better in teams, others work better on their own. Whichever gets the job done. Technology companies today dream up all kinds of ways to set humanity free from the office constantly.

 What’s interesting is they don’t practice what they preach. A recent Financial Timesarticle cautions to pay attention to what companies do rather than what they say. Think of the tech hotspots of the world – from the Silicon Valley in the US to the Silicon Roundabout in London. It seems that tech giants still value the power of physical agglomeration.

 IBM, who are known for their remote working policies, have called workers back to physical locations. They argue that while remote work increases productivity, face-to-face work is better for innovation and generating ideas. Agreed. Often we are most creative when we bounce ideas off each other and can feed of each other’s energies. Studies confirm that physical proximity benefits effective communication and fosters better understanding between co-workers and improves collaboration. In addition employees spark ideas through chance encounters and unplanned interaction. Steve Jobs once famously proposed building all of the bathrooms in Pixar’s offices in only one part of the building to encourage unplanned meetings. And tech companies all around the world embrace this so called “water cooler effect” and many offer perks for employees living close to hubs. In London one employer is taking it further and offers millennials financial assistance so that they can rent homes in the capital (and close to the office).

 All up, I believe that people should be free to choose what works best for them, but face time needs to be part of the equation. In my experience, people who work remotely often work harder and are more productive than those sitting in offices. It’s an important conversation managers should have with their staff – what works best for both sides? 

This article and the checklist are relevant to researchers in all sectors – via Winny de Jong 
“At the intersection of data and journalism, lots can go wrong. Merely taking precautions might not be enough. “It’s very well possible that your story is true but wrong,” New York Times data journalist Robert Gebeloff explained at the European Investigative Journalism Conference & Dataharvest, which was recently held in Mechelen, a city 20 minutes outside of Brussels. “When I work on a big story, I want to know everything about the topic.” To make sure he doesn’t miss out, Gebeloff gets all the data sources he can, examines it in all relevant ways and publishes only what he believes to be true…”


    20 things you didn't know about MasterChef's Matt Preston


    Fact-checking Hollywood
    If you're a "House of Cards" fan, you've probably already watched the first six episodes. So now it's safe for you to read this spoiler-filled fact-check. ... TV Guide writes about "Dr. Who" and the show's fake-news story line.

    Crowdfunding stunner
    Full Fact's crowdfunding campaign successfully raised £100,263 from 1,920 supporters plus one foundation — and Director Will Moy loves "every last bloody one" of them.

    7 quick fact-checking links 
    (1) Another terror attack, another round of fake news. (2) Will Twitter bots become a "fake news army?" (3) When Trump says "fake news," most polled respondents think he means "stuff I don't like." (4) The Internet Archive has collected TV news clips of climate change coverage and uploaded corresponding fact-checks.  (5) From PolitFact: How the Trump presidency has changed fact-checking. (6) Vodafone wants to fight fake news.  (7)  Monica Lewinsky announces that she is "still here" despite fake news reports — oh, and she has a new book out.
      You're gonna miss this, you're gonna want this back. You're gonna wish these days hadn't gone by so fast. These are some good times, so take a good look around. You may not know it now, but you're gonna miss this. 

       Trace Adkins - You're Gonna Miss This - YouTube (Not part of the Songlines of Latitude Paranoia ;-)
      • Dead men tell no tales[1]
      • Devil take the hindmost[1]
      • Discretion is the better part of valour[1]
      • Do as I say, not as I do[1]
      • Do as you would be done by[1]
      • Do unto others as you would have them do unto you[1]
      • Do not bite the hand that feeds you[1]
      • Do not burn your bridges behind you[1]
      • Do not cast your pearls before swine[1]
      • Do not cry over spilt milk
      • Do not change horses in midstream[1]
      • Do not count your chickens before they are hatched[1]

      • Do not cross the bridge till you come to it[1]
      • Do not cut off your nose to spite your face[1]
      • Do not fish for a shark with your hands, fish for hands with a shark.
      • Do not keep a dog and bark yourself[1]
      • Do not let the bastards grind you down[1]
      • Do not look a gift horse in the mouth[1]
      • Do not make a mountain of a mole hill
      • Do not meet troubles half-way[1]
      • Do not put all your eggs in one basket[1]
      • Do not put the cart before the horse[1]
      • Do not put new wine into old bottles[1]
      • Do not rock the boat[1]
      • Do not spoil the ship for a ha'pworth of tar[1]
      • Do not throw pearls to swine[1]
      • Do not teach your Grandmother to suck eggs[1]
      • Do not throw the baby out with the bathwater[1]
      • Do not try to walk before you can crawl[1]
      • Do not upset the apple-cart[1]
      • Do not wash your dirty linen in public[1]
      • Do not sympathize with those who can not empathize
      • Doubt is the beginning, not the end, of wisdom[1]
      at