“It's a very frustrated feeling you get when the only people with good photos of you work are the police department.”
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SET ON FIRE: The Russian "troll factory," run by a Putin
associate, at the center of the disinformation campaign seeking to persuade Americans to vote for
Russia-friendly Donald Trump and against Hillary Clinton in the 2016 U.S.
presidential elections. Via The Moscow Times.
Language of migration
To be called a plagiarist is arguably the most existential accusation a writer can face. But perhaps borrowing is simply part of art
ABA Journal – “Equifax. Yahoo. Anthem. Sony. In the past few years, these companies experienced some of the most significant data breaches to date. And all of these companies found themselves subject to intense worldwide media coverage over their failure to secure their information. The industries affected—from health care to entertainment—know all too well that the struggle to secure data in the digital age never ends.
The Big Hack: How China used a tiny chip to infiltrate US
"The attack by Chinese spies reached almost 30 U.S. companies, including Amazon and Apple, by compromising America’s technology supply chain, according to extensive interviews with government and corporate sources." (Bloomberg)
'Big four' firms should face royal commission to prove independence
"A former ASIC investigator says the accounting firms' business model presents a conflict of interest" (ABC)
Scrutiny over fees for public service talkfest
"A summit which charges WA Government departments thousands of dollars for public servants to hear their colleagues speak about the digital era — is facing scrutiny from the Premier and Police Commissioner." (The West Australian)
Australia's new race commissioner is not inclined to advocacy
"Instead, he approaches issues with a clinical dispassion befitting his background as a commercial and property lawyer. One of his favourite words is 'balance'." (Fairfax)
Talk by Andrew Tink - Australia 1901 – 2001
Andrew began his talk by outlining how he came to write his latest book, Australia 1901 to 2001, his fourth since retiring from State politics. The UNSW Press approached him to write a book on 20th century Australia but with clear instructions that what was required was a different style of history book, one where there was a continuous narrative from start to finish rather than the normal compartmentalised historical account. Andrew achieved this by using segues from story to connected story, with some 600 stories being included in the book. He then gave members a taste of his new book by relating a number of selected stories from the book.
Andrew first pointed out that while most Australians know that Edmund Barton was Australia’s first Prime Minister, fewer Australians are aware that he was not the first choice. With Federation in 1901 came the need to hold an election for members of the first Parliament and a concomitant need for a Government to oversee this election. The recently arrived Governor General, Lord Hopetoun, wanted to appoint the Premier of NSW, Sir William Lyne (photo), as Prime Minister. However, other senior politicians, like Alfred Deakin and Barton, refused to work with Lyne because he had vigorously opposed Federation right up until the very last moment. As a result, Barton, a strong supporter of Federation, was appointed.
Barton went to the male electorate promising to give women the vote at the next Federal election if he won and which he was able to legalise in 1902. The segue that Andrew then introduced into his narrative at this point was to focus on Miles Franklin, one of the leading novelists in Australia of her time. Her highly acclaimed first novel, My Brilliant Career, was published in Scotland in 1901 (no Australian publisher was interested) and was made into a movie in 1979, with Oscar nominated actress Judy Davis in the starring role.
Andrew continued with a story about Major General William Holmes, the uncle of the Headmaster of the local Shore School for 25 years, Basil ‘Jika’ Travers. Holmes, after whom General Holmes Drive near Sydney Airport is named, first led the Australian forces that seized all of the German controlled territory in New Guinea and the Pacific Islands in 1914. He then served on the Western Front until 1917 when he was mortally wounded by a stray shell while escorting the then Premier of NSW, William Holman, on a tour of the battlefield at Messines. He was the highest ranking citizen-soldier to be killed in WW1 (the highest ranking professional soldier to be killed was Major General Sir William Bridges, who founded Duntroon and led the ANZAC forces in their landing at Gallipoli).
1942 was the only year to be given a whole chapter in the book. Andrew explained that this was because it was the only year in the 20th century when Australia was subjected to very serious existential threats. It was the year in which Singapore fell; in which Darwin was heavily bombed; in which the Australian PM, John Curtin, and Winston Churchill continued to fight a cable war over Curtin’s plea for the return the 6th and 7th Australian divisions to defend Australia; in which the critical Battle of the Coral Sea was fought; and in which Sydney was attacked by Japanese midget submarines. The bombing of Darwin was hushed up, reports at that time stating that only 15 people had been killed whereas the real number was more like 252 killed and 400 injured. Andrew was surprised to find in the Darwin Military Museum an order from the commander of the 43rd Battalion defending Darwin that it was expected that Japanese troops would soon land near Darwin and that
the Australian troops were expected to hold all of their areas ‘to the very end’. Fortunately, Curtin’s resolute persistence led to some 35,000 Australian troops being brought home to defend Australia.
Andrew presented the fascinating story of Eddie Mabo, born on the island of Mer (Murray Island). In 1967 he lost his job while working for the Townsville Harbour Board because he was happenstantially shown on TV attending a Communist Party meeting. He then started work at James Cook University as a gardener, where he came in contact with the indigenous historian Henry Reynolds. Mabo was shocked to learn from him that Mer was Crown land, not land owned legally by his people. This was a consequence of the principle of Terra Nullius (nobody’s land), which was the law in Australia for over 200 years. Eddie then fought legal battles over many years until the High Court in 1992 in its landmark Native Title decision overturned that long held principle. Unfortunately, Eddie had died 5 months earlier.
Andrew enthralled members with further intriguing stories about the role of Halvorsen cruisers in the midget submarine attack on Sydney; the last woman to be hanged in Australia (Jean Lee); the kidnapping of Graham Thorne; the TCN 9 opening of TV in Australia from a broom cupboard; the first Vietnam boat arrival; and the opening of the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games. These, and Andrew’s many other stories, are available in very readable detail by purchasing his latest hard-to-put-down book. ……………...via Don Napper
Andrew Tink on History
Christian Howard · October 1, 2018 – Mining Twitter Data
“Hello again, everybody! I’m back this semester as a DH Prototyping Fellow, and together, Alyssa Collins and I are working on a project titled “Twitterature: Methods and Metadata.” Specifically, we’re hoping to develop a simple way of using Twitter data for literary research. The project is still in its early stages, but we’ve been collecting a lot of data and are now beginning to visualize it (I’m particularly interested in the geolocation of tweets, so I’m trying out a few mapping options). In this post, I want to layout our methods for collecting Twitter data.
Okay, Alyssa and I have been using a python based Twitter scraping script, which we modified to search Twitter without any time limitations (the official Twitter search function is limited to tweets of the past two weeks). So, to run the Twitter scraping script, I entered the following in my command line: python3 TwitterScraper.py. This command then prompted for the search term and the dates within which I wanted to run my search. For this post, I ran the search term #twitterature (and no, the python scraper has no problem handling hashtags as part of the search query!). After entering the necessary information, the command would create both a txt and a csv file with the results of my search…”
This old house is falling down around my ears I'm drowning in a river of my tears When all my will is gone you hold me sway I need you at the dimming of the day