“Comedy is the highest order of art, because it has to encompass tragedy or it’s not funny. You’re uplifted, but not in a saccharine way. You see all these truths of life, big and small, in their routines. In allowing us that, clowning is like the greatest sacrifice.”
How to fix inequality Economist
The real Goldfinger: the London banker who broke the world The Guardian
Making advocacy accessible – 5 Calls make it effortless for regular people to have a voice when it’s needed most
“Calling members of Congress is the most effective way to have your voice heard. Calls are tallied by staffers and the count is given to your representatives, informing them how strongly their constituents feel about a current issue. The sooner you reach out, the more likely it is that your voice will influence their position….5 Calls does the research for each issue, determining which representatives are most influential for which topic, collecting phone numbers for those offices and writing scripts that clearly articulate a progressive position. You just have to call. 5 Calls is a volunteer effort.”Is it time for ministerial KPIs and performance management?
IAN CHUBB: Australia's ex-chief scientist thinks government ministers should be subject to a public performance management system, so voters can judge how seriously they take their actual jobs versus their political careers.
'Regulate data to avoid losing public trust'
PETER HARRIS: Data is emerging as the major driver of innovation in countries like Australia and it’s important governments begin to regulate it to avoid loss of public trust, says the outgoing chair of the Productivity Commission.
◾ Data and Australia’s new consumer right
Via LawSites: “A study released this week pitted two legal research platforms against each other, Casetext CARA and Lexis Advance from LexisNexis, and concluded that attorneys using Casetext CARA finished their research significantly more quickly and found more releva cases than those who used Lexis Advance. The study, The Real Impact of Using Artificial Intelligence in Legal Research, was commissioned by Casetext, which contracted with the National Legal Research Group to provide 20 experienced research attorneys to conduct three research exercises and report on their results. Casetext designed the methodology for the study in consultation with NLRG and it of those people never recovered; they never got real work again,” says Wharton management professor Peter Cappelli, director of the school’s Center for Human Resources. “The spike in disability claims was in part caused by the difficulty laid-off people had in securing any jobs. A generation of young people entering the job market had their careers disrupted by it. The fact that this age group continues to delay buying houses, having children, and other markers of stable, adult life is largely attributed to this.” “It was a very traumatic event. Vast numbers of lives were changed forever undoubtedly when you look at the economy as a whole,” says Wharton management professor Matthew Bidwell.
Via LawSites: “A study released this week pitted two legal research platforms against each other, Casetext CARA and Lexis Advance from LexisNexis, and concluded that attorneys using Casetext CARA finished their research significantly more quickly and found more releva cases than those who used Lexis Advance. The study, The Real Impact of Using Artificial Intelligence in Legal Research, was commissioned by Casetext, which contracted with the National Legal Research Group to provide 20 experienced research attorneys to conduct three research exercises and report on their results. Casetext designed the methodology for the study in consultation with NLRG and it wrote the report of the survey results. This proves, says Casetext, the efficacy of its approach to research, which — as I explained in this post last May — lets a researcher upload a pleading or legal document and then delivers results tailored to the facts and legal issues derived from the document…But the LexisNexis vice president in charge of Lexis Advance, Jeff Pfeifer, took issue with the study, saying that he has significant concerns with the methodology and sponsored nature of the project…”
China hunts overseas tax cheats
Project Syndicate – Jim O’Neill: “In the decade since the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the start of the global financial crisis, the world economy has registered stronger growth than many realize, owing in large part to China. But in the years ahead, global economic imbalances and troubling trends in the business world will continue to pose economic as well as political risks…
The Universal Decay of Human Collective Memory (the authors): “Collective memory is believed to decay through two mechanisms, one involving communicative memory–the memory sustained by oral communication–and another involving cultural memory–the memory sustained by the physical recording of information. Yet, there is no statistical evidence showing that collective memory decays through these two mechanisms, or exploring the universality of the decay function across a variety of cultural domains. Here, we use time series data on papers and patents’ citations, and on the popularity of songs, movies, and biographies, to test the hypotheses that the decay of human collective memory involves the decay of communicative and cultural memory, and that the decay function is universal across all of these domains. We derive a mathematical model from first principles by formalizing these two mechanisms and show that the function predicted by this model provides a more accurate description of the data than previously proposed decay functions. Our results support the hypotheses that the decay of human collective memory involves the combined decay of communicative and cultural memory, and that the decay function is universal across multiple cultural domains. These findings allow us to explain the dynamics of the attention received by a piece of cultural content during its lifetime, and suggest that the dynamics of human collective memory follows a universal decay function.”
Marshall's law: ministers must respect PS independenceNEW EXPECTATIONS: South Australian Premier Steven Marshall has shown his softer side in his first address to the people of the state's public sector — at times sharing jokes, answering questions from public servants, and full of praise.
◾ Full speech: Premier's address to the South Australian Public Sector
Australian Digital Council: ministers discuss data sharing, service delivery
NEW INITIATIVE: Ministers from across the federation came together this morning for the first meeting of the new Australian Digital Council.
Top EU court: British spies broke human rights rules with mass surveillance
"The spies were able to find out far too much about people’s habits and contacts, by examining their online activities." (Fortune)
China hunts overseas tax cheats
Secrecy News Blog: “The Congressional Research Service once played a prominent role in supporting oversight by congressional committees. Although that support has diminished sharply in recent years, it could conceivably be restored in a new Congress, writes former CRS analyst Kevin R. Kosar in a new paper. In the past, CRS “closely assisted Congress in a myriad of major oversight efforts, including the Watergate investigation, the implementation of the Freedom of Information Act, and the Iran-Contra affair.” But over time, Kosar writes, “CRS’ role in oversight declined due to various factors, most of which were out of its control. Congress changed. Congressional committees, particularly in the House of Representatives, lost capacity, and hyper-partisanism turned much oversight into political point-scoring rather than an exercise in governing that required expert assistance.”
- See “The Atrophying of the Congressional Research Service’s Role in Supporting Committee Oversight“ by Kevin R. Kosar, Wayne Law Review, vol. 64:149, 2018.
Project Syndicate – Jim O’Neill: “In the decade since the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the start of the global financial crisis, the world economy has registered stronger growth than many realize, owing in large part to China. But in the years ahead, global economic imbalances and troubling trends in the business world will continue to pose economic as well as political risks…
The Universal Decay of Human Collective Memory (the authors): “Collective memory is believed to decay through two mechanisms, one involving communicative memory–the memory sustained by oral communication–and another involving cultural memory–the memory sustained by the physical recording of information. Yet, there is no statistical evidence showing that collective memory decays through these two mechanisms, or exploring the universality of the decay function across a variety of cultural domains. Here, we use time series data on papers and patents’ citations, and on the popularity of songs, movies, and biographies, to test the hypotheses that the decay of human collective memory involves the decay of communicative and cultural memory, and that the decay function is universal across all of these domains. We derive a mathematical model from first principles by formalizing these two mechanisms and show that the function predicted by this model provides a more accurate description of the data than previously proposed decay functions. Our results support the hypotheses that the decay of human collective memory involves the combined decay of communicative and cultural memory, and that the decay function is universal across multiple cultural domains. These findings allow us to explain the dynamics of the attention received by a piece of cultural content during its lifetime, and suggest that the dynamics of human collective memory follows a universal decay function.”
Marshall's law: ministers must respect PS independenceNEW EXPECTATIONS: South Australian Premier Steven Marshall has shown his softer side in his first address to the people of the state's public sector — at times sharing jokes, answering questions from public servants, and full of praise.
◾ Full speech: Premier's address to the South Australian Public Sector
Australian Digital Council: ministers discuss data sharing, service delivery
NEW INITIATIVE: Ministers from across the federation came together this morning for the first meeting of the new Australian Digital Council.
Top EU court: British spies broke human rights rules with mass surveillance
"The spies were able to find out far too much about people’s habits and contacts, by examining their online activities." (Fortune)