Many species of migratory birds, like the Canada goose in North America, fly in a v-formation. Scientists have long suspected that there was some energy-saving advantage to flying in formation and a 2014 study provides evidence to that effect.
WHY YOU SHOULDN’T TRUST YOUR FOOD CRAVINGS. Your gut bacteria may be manipulating you
 | @linzcom | |||
Two Headlines. Former Australian Tax Office (ATO) deputy commissioner Michael Cranston has been found not guilty of misusing his position to benefit his son.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-1… ATO whistleblower breaks silence on facing 161 years in jail smh.com.au/business/the-e…
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Ex-senior firefighter jailed for receiving nearly $200k in kickbacks
A former senior firefighter is sentenced to three years' prison for corruption after receiving $194,500 in payments from two companies he helped secure contracts with at Queensland Fire and Emergency Services.
X Marks the Spot Where the Personal Information is Stored: Avoiding Common Mistakes in Data Mapping – “With new global privacy laws requiring consumer access to specific pieces of personal information and documentation of processing generally, organizations are now finding themselves having to go on treasure hunts for buried personal information within the company. Between the explosion of cheap electronic storage methods and expansion of the definition of personal information in new laws, these “data mapping” exercises often feel as cryptic and fabled as a treasure hunt.
Conducting a fruitful data mapping exercise requires strategic planning, partnership between legal teams and IT, and a toolbox of technological tools designed to facilitate the process. Even then, the clues may be difficult to decode. DWT can help you avoid these five common mistakes…”
Fawlty Towers. Passing on the family tradition of watching old British comedies to my children. Some of the best television ever made, yessiree. (A)
Andy Warhol - From A to B and Back Again. I was personally underwhelmed by this, possibly because I’ve seen so much Warhol and read so much about him and his work? (B)
How Did One Of The Best Documentarians Around Get Caught Up In The Theranos Fiasco?
Errol Morris (The Thin Blue Line, The Fog of War, Standard Operating Procedure, American Dharma) actually directed a few commercials for Theranos several years ago, before the company’s fraud was discovered. Morris now refuses to acknowledge any responsibility for having promoted fraudulent goods and services (as is the case with the AIG ads he directed in the years before the 2008 financial crisis). – Hyperallergic
Artist Creates Stamp To Convert $20-Bills Into Harriet Tubmans
“I was inspired by the news that Harriet Tubman would replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill, and subsequently saddened by the news that the Trump administration was walking back that plan. So I created a stamp to convert Jacksons into Tubmans myself. I have been stamping $20 bills and entering them into circulation for the last year, and gifting stamps to friends to do the same.” – Hyperallergic
“Giorgi Revishvili discusses the issues of misinformation and disinformation. Revishvili is a fellow at the Sunlight Foundation participating in the Professional Fellows Program, which is funded by the U.S Department of State and operated by the American Councils. Hailing from Georgia — the country in the South Caucasus, not the U.S. state — he works for the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the International Relations Department. Previously he was a researcher at the Media Development Foundation, specializing in Russian disinformation and conducting media literacy trainings. He has BA and MA degrees in International Relations from Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University. The opinions expressed in the blog are solely his and do not represent official views of the Ministry or any other organization…” [includes text and a podcast]
Useful sources for fact-checking include:
If you want to understand more about current disinformation campaigns, check out the following websites, which provide in-depth information about disinformation, and place individual invented stories in the context of larger disinformation campaigns:
In Scetis a brother went to Moses to ask for advice. He said to him, 'Go and sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything'.
A hermit was asked, 'How is it that some struggle in their religious life, but do not receive grace like our predecessors?' He replied, 'Because then love was the rule, and each one drew his neighbour upward. Now love is growing cold, and each of us draws his neighbour downward, and so we do not deserve grace'.
Hilarion once came from Palestine to Antony on the mountain: and Antony said to him, 'Welcome, morning star, for you rise at break of day'. Hilarion said, 'Peace be unto you, pillar of light, for you sustain the world'.
The hermits said, 'If an angel really appears to you, do not accept it as a matter of course, but humble yourself, and say, 'I live in my sins and am not worthy to see an angel'.
Hyperchius said, 'The tree of life is high, and humility climbs it'.
[Poemen] said, 'A brother asked Alonius, "What is humility?" The hermit said, 'To be lower than brute beasts and to know that they are not condemned'.
[Poemen] said, 'Humility is the ground on which the Lord ordered the sacrifice to be offered'.
Mathois said, 'The nearer a man comes to God, the more he sees himself to be a sinner. Isaiah the prophet saw the Lord and knew himself to be wretched and unclean'.
Theophilus of holy memory, the bishop of Alexandria, once went to the mount of Nitria, and a hermit of Nitria came to see him. The bishop asked, 'What have you discovered in your life, abba?' The hermit answered, 'To blame myself unceasingly'. The bishop said, 'That is the only way to follow'.
... Zacharias took his cowl from his head, and put it beneath his feet and stamped on it, and said, 'Unless a man stamps upon self like that, he cannot be a monk'.
Evagrius said, 'To go against self is the beginning of salvation'.
They used to say of Arsenius that no one could understand the depths of his monastic life. [...]
[Antony] said, 'I saw the devil's snares set all over the earth, and I groaned and said, "What can pass through them?" I heard a voice saying, "Humility".'
[Allois] said, 'Until you can say in your heart, "Only I and God are in the world", you will not be at peace'.
[Allois] said, 'If you really want to, by the evening of one day you can reach a measure of godliness'.
A hermit said, 'Anyone who wants to live in the desert ought to be a teacher and not a learner. If he still needs teaching, he will come to harm'.
Hyperichius said, 'He who teaches others by his life and not his speech is truly wise'.
A brother sinned and the presbyter ordered him to go out of church. But Bessarion got up and went out with him, saying, 'I, too, am a sinner'.
A hermit said, 'When you flee from the company of other people, or when you despise the world and worldlings, take care to do so as if it were you who was being idiotic'.
A hermit said, 'The monk's cell is the furnace in Babylon in which the three children found the Son of God. It is the pillar of cloud out of which God spoke to Moses'.
Poemen said, 'The character of the genuine monk only appears when he is tempted'.
They said of Helladius that he lived twenty years in his cell, and did not once raise his eyes to look at the roof.
A hermit saw someone laughing, and said to him 'We have to render an account of our whole life before heaven and death, and you can laugh?'
A hermit said, 'As the shadow goes everywhere with the body, so we ought to carry penitence and weeping with us everywhere we go'.
A brother asked a hermit, 'I hear the hermits weeping, and my soul longs for tears, but they do not come, and I am worried about it'. He replied, 'The children of Israel entered the promised land after forty years in the wilderness. Tears are the promised land. When you reach them you will no longer be afraid of the conflict. For it is the will of God that we should be afflicted, so we may always be longing to enter that country'.
In Egypt once when Poemen was going somewhere he saw a woman sitting by a gravfe and weeping bitterly. He said, 'If all the delights of this world should come to her, they would not bring her out of sorrow. Just so should the monk always be weeping in his heart'.
A hermit, who had an experienced disciple, once turned him out in a fit of irritation. The disciple sat down outside to wait and the hermit found him there where he opened the door. So he did penance to him, saying, 'You are my abba now, because your humility and patience have overcome my weakness. Come inside, now you are the old abba, and I am the young disciple; my age must give way to your conduct'.
From The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the Early Christian Monks
