“Do you know I sometimes think I’m a man of genius, half finished? The genius has been left out, the faculty of expression is wanting; but the need for expression remains, and I spend my days groping for the latch of a closed door.”
~ Henry James, Roderick Hudson
“Do you know I sometimes think I’m a man of genius, half finished? The genius has been left out, the faculty of expression is wanting; but the need for expression remains, and I spend my days groping for the latch of a closed door.”We have no monuments to speak of, no dreams in stone, no Guernicas, no sacred places. We could vanish and leave singularly few signs that, for some generations, there had lived a people who had made a homeland of this Australian Earth. A homeland? To how many people was it primarily that? How many penetrated the soil with their love and imagination? We have had no peasant population to cling passionately to their few acres, throw down tenacious roots, and weave a natural poetry into their lives by invoking the little gods of creek and mountain road. The land has been something to exploit, to tear out a living from and then sell at a profit. Our settlements have always had a fugitive look, with their tin roofs and rubbish-heaps. Even our towns . . . the main street cluttered with shops, the million-dollar town hall, the droves of men and women intent on nothing but buying or selling, the suburban retreats of rich drapers! Very little to show the presence of a people with a common purpose or a rich sense of life.
Twitter suspends 1.2 million accounts for terrorism in two years
The social media company addressed senior ministers at a regional meeting on counter-terrorism in Jakarta
Forced out of KPMG, Jordan gives big four a bruising.
Do you think KPMG regrets turfing out
Chris Jordan in 2013, after he fell foul of
the firm’s mandatory retirementage of
58? The nation’s tax collector, recently
reappointed for a further seven years,
told the World Congress of Accountants
at Sydney’s International Convention
Centre on Tuesday that he never figured
he’d be in his current role so long.
'Blew up the government': Malcolm Turnbull challenges plotters in defence of his government
Malcolm Turnbull named the plotters against his leadership in a sensational interview on ABC TV that shed new light on the chaotic leadership spill.
The social media company addressed senior ministers at a regional meeting on counter-terrorism in Jakarta
Forced out of KPMG, Jordan gives big four a bruising.
Do you think KPMG regrets turfing out
Chris Jordan in 2013, after he fell foul of
the firm’s mandatory retirementage of
58? The nation’s tax collector, recently
reappointed for a further seven years,
told the World Congress of Accountants
at Sydney’s International Convention
Centre on Tuesday that he never figured
he’d be in his current role so long.
'Blew up the government': Malcolm Turnbull challenges plotters in defence of his government
Malcolm Turnbull named the plotters against his leadership in a sensational interview on ABC TV that shed new light on the chaotic leadership spill.
Increased Transparency in the U.S. Tax Court: Has the Moment Arrived?
Coming Soon: Trump’s Tax Returns (or Maybe Not)
As we’re all acutely aware, in his presidential campaign, Donald Trump flouted decades of history by refusing to release his tax returns. And given that (a) the history was based on norms, not law, and (b) the Republican-controlled Congress did nothing to enforce the norms (or transform them into law), he continued to flout that norm throughout the first two years of his presidency.
But on January 3, 2019, Democrats will gain control of the House. And Democratic Representatives have made pretty clear that one of their first agenda items will be to request Trump’s tax returns. So does that mean we’ll finally get access to his tax returns?
Maybe. (But probably not.) Continue reading
Many Americans have been politically active on social media, from encouraging others to take action to using issue-related hashtags. And liberal Democrats were more likely than other ideological and partisan groups to have engaged in these activities, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of survey data collected this summer.
Lexus 2019
ABC journalist releases explosive statement about Luke Foley
The
ABC has released a lengthy statement from Ashleigh Raper, outlining her
version of the events of an incident involving Mr Foley at a CBD bar in
late November 2016.
ABC on allegations
ABC on allegations
How Fascists Connected Themselves To Ancient Culture
Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy both proudly and explicitly connected themselves with the ancient Romans and borrowed many of their symbols — the very name “Fascist” refers to an important Roman status marker, and the Nazi Imperial Eagle is derived from the Roman standard. Himmler’s reading of antiquity, on that train in 1924, was extreme, but it was also the natural extension of the discipline’s origins; earlier classicists had simply been more genteel, or perhaps less proactive, in their application of white supremacy to antiquity. … Read More
Are The Days Of Stadium Rock Concerts Over?
After a decade of pop acts dominating the hallowed ground - the only artists to have headlined this year being Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran - is it too late? Has the era of stadium rock been unplugged and relegated to smaller venues? … Read More
Forger Couple Who Sold Hundreds Of Fake Monets, Matisses, Etc., Get 4-5 Years, €13 Million Fine
"A district court in Helsinki determined that the married couple at the center of the allegations, gallery owners Kati Marjatta Karkkiainen and Reijo Pollari, duped private collectors and auction houses into paying millions of dollars for paintings purportedly by blue-chip modernists and Impressionists such as Henri Matisse, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Claude Monet, and Wassily Kandinsky; lesser-known Russian romanticists; and works by the popular 19th-century Finnish painter Albert Edelfelt." … [Read More]
Probiotics of the plant world: Why soil microbes are gaining worldwide interest Australian Broadcasting Corporation News
A Substantially Good Book: On Charles J. Shields’s Life of John Williams - Los Angeles Review of Books.
One of those high-low moments came for John Williams the day after the publication of Augustus, his epistolary novel of Ancient Rome. That morning he took a seat in the English Department lounge at Denver University, where he taught for more than 30 years, hoping to receive some admiration from his colleagues. And who could blame him? The novel had taken him seven years to complete, and The New York Times had just ran a rave review. But, as was the case with his earlier work, Williams sat all day waiting without anyone saying a word of praise to him about his recent success. Williams, who died in 1994, would never experience the kind of fame he dreamed about all his life. It was only after the resurgence of Stoner this past decade that he would find a prominent place in American letters as a forgotten master
Neanderthals were upright individuals, skeleton proves Telegraph
Palau Bans Sunscreen Chemicals to Protect its Coral Reefs Dive
Palau Bans Sunscreen Chemicals to Protect its Coral Reefs Dive
Naomi Watts to star in Game of Thrones prequel series Guardian Martin is the series “co-creator.” Shouldn’t he be spending his time finishing his book?
The GAO issued a report titled "Whistleblower Program: IRS Needs to Improve Data Controls for Some Award Determinations (GAO-18-698 published 9/28/18 and publicly released 10/29/18). The fast facts, highlights and recommendations are here. The full report is here.
I cut and paste the highlights below:
Ontario ombudsman offers masterclass in public impact
INVESTIGATIONS: Shining a light often galvanises political support for changes public servants already wish were in place, says visiting ombudsman Paul Dubé. "Most public servants want to do a good job."
'We've seen it before': what secretaries talk about during leadership spills
INSIDE LOOK: The release of secretaries' board notes from the prime ministerial spill provide an insight into what APS mandarins talk about when their ministers are falling around them.
GovHack 2018 challenge: 118 entries, 5 judges, 3 winners
INNOVATION: With over 100 entries for the DTA’s GovHack challenges, how were the winners decided? Behind the scenes of the judging process.
Why we should worry less about retirement ‒ and leave super at 9.5%
CASE STUDY: Compelling Australians to put even more into super runs the risk of giving them a better standard of living in retirement than they had while working.
Should We Care About Inequality? Jacobin
Housing, by any means necessary San Francisco Chronicle
I spent the day in an Amazon “fulfilment centre”, and it was worse than I ever imagined New Statesman
TechCrunch: “Oxford University’s Oxford Internet Institute (OII), which has just launched an aggregator tool which tracks what it terms “junk” political views being shared on Facebook — doing so in near real-time and offering various ways to visualize and explore the junk heap. What’s “junk news” in this context? The OII says this type of political content can include “ideologically extreme, hyper-partisan, or conspiratorial news and information, as well as various forms of propaganda”.
Americans Are Easy Marks for Russian Trolls, According to New Data: A Daily Beast analysis of Twitter data shows the Kremlin troll farm’s English-language propaganda is nine times more effective than its disinformation in Russian: “You don’t need to read the federal indictments to spot the moment Russia began targeting the United States with its army of internet trolls. Just chart the American flag emoji. Best estimates trace the founding of the Internet Research Agency to August 2013, and for eight months of its existence the Saint Petersburg troll farm was focused on influencing citizens in Russia and Russia’s near abroad.TechCrunch: “Oxford University’s Oxford Internet Institute (OII), which has just launched an aggregator tool which tracks what it terms “junk” political views being shared on Facebook — doing so in near real-time and offering various ways to visualize and explore the junk heap. What’s “junk news” in this context? The OII says this type of political content can include “ideologically extreme, hyper-partisan, or conspiratorial news and information, as well as various forms of propaganda”.
The GAO issued a report titled "Whistleblower Program: IRS Needs to Improve Data Controls for Some Award Determinations (GAO-18-698 published 9/28/18 and publicly released 10/29/18). The fast facts, highlights and recommendations are here. The full report is here.
I cut and paste the highlights below:
What GAO Found
Prior to February 9, 2018, when Congress enacted a statutory change requiring the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to include penalties for Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts (FBAR) violations in calculating whistleblower awards, IRS interpreted the whistleblower law to exclude these penalties from awards.
Ontario ombudsman offers masterclass in public impact
INVESTIGATIONS: Shining a light often galvanises political support for changes public servants already wish were in place, says visiting ombudsman Paul Dubé. "Most public servants want to do a good job."
'We've seen it before': what secretaries talk about during leadership spills
INSIDE LOOK: The release of secretaries' board notes from the prime ministerial spill provide an insight into what APS mandarins talk about when their ministers are falling around them.
GovHack 2018 challenge: 118 entries, 5 judges, 3 winners
INNOVATION: With over 100 entries for the DTA’s GovHack challenges, how were the winners decided? Behind the scenes of the judging process.
Why we should worry less about retirement ‒ and leave super at 9.5%
CASE STUDY: Compelling Australians to put even more into super runs the risk of giving them a better standard of living in retirement than they had while working.
HELLO, GUARDIAN VOICE LAB: With funding from Google, The
Guardian is launching a four-member team experimenting with storytelling
and delivering journalism through smart speakers and interactive audio.
