You can never change the past. But you can always change how you feel about it.
On Second Thought
Sometimes I wish I could be God,
Could not see with my eyes but His,
Could master His divining rod
And understand all languages,
Even the chattering of birds,
Could look past rotten teeth, bad breath,
Past insufficiency of words,
Past fear, past lust, past hope, past death.
Could not see with my eyes but His,
Could master His divining rod
And understand all languages,
Even the chattering of birds,
Could look past rotten teeth, bad breath,
Past insufficiency of words,
Past fear, past lust, past hope, past death.
But other times, especially
At night, I think how difficult
Existence by itself must be,
How difficult to live without
Surprise or ecstasy or doubt.
At night, I think how difficult
Existence by itself must be,
How difficult to live without
Surprise or ecstasy or doubt.
The state-the machinery and power of the state-is a potential resource or threat to every industry in the society. With its power to prohibit or compel, to take or give money, the state can and does selectively help or hurt a vast number of industries…The central tasks of the theory of economic regulation are to explain who will receive the benefits or burdens of regulation, what form regulation will take, and the effects of regulation upon the allocation ofresources.Regulation may be actively sought by an industry, or it may be thrust upon it. A central thesis of this paper is that, as a rule, regulation is acquired by the industry and is designed and operated primarily for its benefit.
Stigler, George J. 1971. “The Theory of Economic Regulation.” Bell Journal of EconomicsSpring: 137–46.
Suppose that asset pricing factors are just data mined noise. How much data mining is required to produce the more than 300 factors documented by academics? This short paper shows that, if 10,000 academics generate 1 factor every minute, it takes 15 million years of full-time data mining. This absurd conclusion comes from rigorously pursuing the data mining theory and applying it to data. To fit the fat right tail of published t-stats, a pure data mining model implies that the probability of publishing t-stats < 6.0 is ridiculously small, and thus it takes a ridiculous amount of mining to publish a single t-stat. These results show that the data mining alone cannot explain the zoo of asset pricing factors.
That is from a new paper by Andrew Y. Chen at the Fed.
Lesson From The Tax Court: Last Known Address Rules Apply To The Rich And Famous Too
Oxford University Press Blog
“Disinformation” is a common term at present, in the media, in academic and political discourse, along with related concepts like “fake news”. But what does it really mean? Is it different from misinformation, propaganda, deception, “fake news” or just plain lies? Is it always bad, or can it be a useful and necessary tool of statecraft? And how should we deal with it?
There are no straightforward answers not least because each of these terms provokes a subjective reaction in our minds. Misinformation could be the wrong information put out by mistake, but Disinformation sounds like a deliberate strategy of deceit. Propaganda might be intended to persuade, maybe exaggerated but essentially harmless; or it could be used by an authoritarian state to brainwash its people. In 1948, the Foreign Information Research Department (IRD) was set up in the UK to combat aggressive Communist propaganda, issuing or sponsoring its own propaganda in return: was one of these bad, and the other good? Former CIA analyst Cynthia Grabo said that if propaganda was true, it was public diplomacy; if false, disinformation. Things are not that simple...”
Independence is paramount to the work of a scrutineer
The retiring Inspector-General of Taxation discusses, among other things, the tensions between the internal regulators and the agencies they oversee.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."
50 States of McMansion Hell: King County, Washington McMansion Hell
Major Study Finds ‘Some Evidence’ of Link Between Cellphone Radiation and Brain Cancer New York Times
Win at all costs': Cricket and banks caught tampering with ethics
ATO needs governance shake-up
The ATO is a monopoly service provider by necessity, but there are governance issues
The ATO is a monopoly service provider by necessity, but there are governance issues
including
too much power focused on one individual, according to taxation watchdog the
Inspector-General of Taxation.
“One is that I believe the tax
office should have a board. I do believe there is too much power focused on one
individual. Others countries such as the UK, US all have a board,” he said.
Beware: China may be reading your email Asia TimesTurkey’s Erdogan inaugurates ‘world’s largest airport’ in Istanbul Independent. Bill B: “22,000-camera surveillance system.” Compare this against Chicago’s 30,000 cameras.
Who is Robert Bowers, the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting suspect? Reuters
Feel the love, feel the hate – my week in the cauldron of Trump’s wild rallies Guardian. Joe H: ” I don’t recognize my country and my people anymore.”
HBR – Brigid Schulte: “Ninety-eight percent of companies say they have sexual harassment policies. Many provide anti-sexual harassment training. Some perpetrators have been fired or fallen from grace. And yet more than four decades after the term “sexual harassment” was first coined, it remains a persistent and pervasive problem in virtually every sector and in every industry of the economy, our new Better Life Lab report finds. It wreaks financial, physical, and psychological damage, keeping women and other targets out of power or out of professions entirely. It also costs billions in lost productivity, wasted talent, public penalties, private settlements, and insurance costs. So what does work? Or might? Sadly, there’s very little evidence-based research on strategies to prevent or address sexual harassment. The best related research examines sexual assault on college campuses and in the military. That research shows that training bystanders how to recognize, intervene, and show empathy to targets of assault not only increases awareness and improves attitudes, but also encourages bystanders to disrupt assaults before they happen, and help survivors report and seek support after the fact.
The EL2s that are most likely to break through to SES
CAPABILITY: Who makes the cut for the career fast track will depend on a new set of talent assessment tools the Australian Public Service Commission has planned, likely replacing existing department-driven processes.
“Over the past two years, Americans have become more likely to say it is “stressful and frustrating” to have political conversations with those they disagree with. The change in opinions has come largely among Democrats: 57% now say that talking about politics with people they disagree with is stressful and frustrating, up from 45% two years ago. By contrast, Republicans’ feelings about political conversations with people they disagree have changed very little. About half (49%) continue to find such conversations stressful and frustrating. Overall, 53% of Americans say talking about politics with people they disagree with is generally stressful and frustrating; fewer (45%) say such conversations are usually “interesting and informative.” In March 2016, during the presidential primaries, slightly more found such conversations interesting and informative (51%) than stressful and frustrating (46%). The national survey by Pew Research Center, conducted Sept. 24 to Oct. 7, also finds that a majority of Americans (63%) say that when discussing politics with people they disagree with they find they usually have less in common politically than they thought…”
