Saturday, January 20, 2018

We Must Choose Our Bosses and Parents ( and Legal Eagles) Wisely


Sneak Peek: Boss Springsteen on Broadway "Brilliant Disguise" - New York City, Walter Kerr Theater



 Bruce Springsteen sings "Robert Mueller's Comin' to Town"#YouBetterWatchOut #YouBetterNotCry#YouBetterNotLieToTheFBI pic.twitter.com/HvebMmVQCR


Predicting Crime in SF- a toy WMD Orlando Torres. WMD = “Weapon of Math Destruction.”

 Top ten failed intellectuals

"Nine more women say judge subjected them to inappropriate behavior, including four who say he touched or kissed them": Matt Zapotosky of The Washington Post has an article that begins, "Nine more women say that Alex Kozinski -- a high-profile judge who sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit -- subjected them to sexual comments or other conduct, including four who say he touched them inappropriately."

 NSW Planning Minister launched pro-developer group headed by his friend - The Australian


‘Over the top’ discipline: rethinking bullying in the public service.
 Recent cases show that bullying in the public service can take place through otherwise legitimate HR mechanisms, such as reassignment and misconduct investigations. The law is catching up, writes employment lawyer John Wilson

Can Government Officials Have You Arrested for Speaking to Them? Atlantic 


Vanilla Ice inspires public sector innovation.
The guiding words for this year’s public sector Innovation Month will be chosen through an online survey. Lyrics from a certain 1990s rap song are in the running.

WELL, IT PROBABLY COULDN’T HURT:  Unless you sneeze immediately afterwards, of course.  Having sex at an older age can improve brain function.

Thomson Reuters: “The market for law firm services is being transformed — by clients, by law firms that ‘get it,’ and by alternative service providers — and that pace of change in this transformative process is accelerating.”
“This statement sets the premise found in the 2018 Report on the State of the Legal Market just issued by The Center for the Study of the Legal Profession at Georgetown University Law Center and Thomson Reuters Legal Executive Institute. But the report suggests that few law firms may be ready for the change. Law firms have spent much of the past decade fortifying themselves against anticipated future challenges. But strategies based on how the market has behaved in the past may be leaving many firms unprepared for the rapid transformations that are sweeping the legal industry. The report compares the strategies of many firms to the French strategy of the Maginot Line — a seemingly impregnable fortification that provided a false sense of security until it was easily defeated in the early stages of World War II. Strategic blind spots, decision-making inertia and unwillingness to adapt strategies to changing conditions can lead decision-makers to ignore signs that the world has progressed and current strategies may not be working…”


Anecdotal Evidence: `We Must Choose Our Parents Wisely'.




“[Dr.] Johnson, the most effectively learned man of his time, had taken in all that mattered of everything that had been written, but he was sure that his ability to judge it had started in his blood.”

By “blood” Clive James means something like tested instinct, not accepting one’s enthusiasms, revulsions and indifferences as gospel but honing them over time against experience (of life, of books). A good critic is covertly or unconsciously confirming or rejecting his early tastes. James traces his critical faculty to reading Hans-Ulrich Rudel’sStuka Pilot as a boy in Australia. At the time, he had no ideaRudel was a fugitive Nazi hiding in Argentina who knew the whereabouts of Eichmann. In the postscript to “Starting with Sludge” (The Revolt of the Pendulum: Essays 2005-2008, 2009), he writes: “My clueless fervor was the beginning of my later capacity to find such things out, and the thrill of reading was the first and most solid installment of what Bruno Schultz called the iron capital of the adult brain.”
      
While assembling his book of essays, James says he often thought of a “worthless critic” created by Dr. Johnson, Dick Minim, in The Idler #60. “Rising to great prestige through no other gift but his sensitivity to the direction of the wind,” James writes, “Dick Minim was devoid of any genuine critical capacity, because he had not been born with it.” In short, a careerist, a dedicated follower of fashion. James next quotes Johnson’s “Preface to Shakespeare” to suggest what he means by blood:

“There is a vigilance of observation and accuracy of distinction which books and precepts cannot confer; from this almost all original and native excellence proceeds.”

Good critics are born, not made. That’s debatable but think of a hot-air balloon like Michiko Kakutani, the former chief book critic for the New York Times whose decades-long career was based on her inability to write a memorable sentence. In the nineteen-twenties, Desmond MacCarthy was an English critic who wrote a New Statesman column under the pseudonym “The Affable Hawk.” That might describe Johnson’s approach, at once independent and clubbable, amiable and savage. James describes Johnson’s “Preface to Shakespeare” as
“. . . full of precepts equally pertinent for all critics, however general their approach. As he says here, however, the precepts will never mean enough unless we have it in our nature to recognize their truth. Yes, we must read. But first of all we must choose our parents wisely.”

Are there more bullies now – or just more of the bullied? | afr.com




Disaster recovery: audits urge public servants to plan for the worst.
When floods, fires or storms strike, the public sector needs its critical IT systems. Audits across three states suggest a lot of agencies aren't up to scratch, and offer useful recommendations on best practice disaster recovery planning.


No more hiding in the hierarchy: APS commissioner on the limits of layers.
John Lloyd tells Verona Burgess that traditional hierarchies with lots of layers hinder innovation, weaken accountability and encourage micromanagement. He sees top-down management giving way to team-based structures

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