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Wednesday, July 03, 2019

Adam Minter on Libra: How Italy is tackling VAT fraud

 “A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.” 

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

 

“Focus your attention on the quality of your words, and not the quantity, because few sensible talks attracts millions of listeners more than a thousand gibberish.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson
Unmask Antifa and Watch the Cowards Retreat.


And Newsbusters’ Dan Gainor puts two cents into the Antifa story: “This is like reading a crap police reporter talking about the clothes a rape victim wore.”


A city of 1.3 million on Sydney's fringe, but no hospital - Sydney Morning Herald

Q&A: Liberal Senator addresses scathing descriptions of Scott Morrison - Sydney Morning Herald


Julie Bishop's new job at aid contractor Palladium breaches ministerial standards, Labor says - ABC News

  I’M CYNICAL ENOUGH TO SUSPECT THAT THE DIVISION IS INTENTIONAL, AND DRIVEN BY THE CHINESE GOVERNMENT: Hong Kong Protesters Storm Legislature, Dividing the Movement.
We The Pentagon has a laser that can identify people from a distance—by their heartbeat MIT Technology Review
Face-Reading AI Will Tell Police When Suspects Are Hiding Truth Bloomberg
Bitcoin (2019)Margaret Ryznar (Indiana-Indianapolis), Regulating Bitcoin: A Tax Case Study, in Handbook: Cryptofinance and Mechanism of Exchange (2019)):

This book chapter adapts the Coffee bonding theory [John C. Coffee, Jr. (Columbia), Racing Towards the Top?: The Impact of Cross-Listings and Stock Market Competition on International Corporate Governance, 102 Colum. L. Rev. 1757 (2002)] to the modern context of bitcoin, using tax as a case study. As the theory predicts, tax authorities may be able to increase the legitimacy of bitcoin by improving tax compliance and reducing tax evasion.


 Robert Samuelson, the economics columnist, has written a column titled, It’s time we tear up our economics textbooks and start over. What he actually says is we should tear up Greg Mankiw’s Principles of Economics:

But as a teaching device, [Mankiw’s] “Principles of Economics” has fallen behind. There’s little analysis of the impact of the Internet and digitalization on competition and markets. I couldn’t find either Apple or Facebook in the index; Google gets a few mentions.


Adam Minter on Libra 



 James Hamilton on Libra.  And Barry Eichengreen on Libra.  And Ben Thompson on Libra.
 African internet shutdowns are increasing.
 Russian or Chinese?
I am not sure how I feel about this obituary of Norman Stone.  And is “bizarrely” really the right word?
 China’s favorite food delivery service is now worth more than its biggest internet search firm.
 Classical music has a meta-data problem.

Harry POtterI’m sitting in my law school office daydreaming about the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and I’m working on pedagogy, not fantasy.

Published just over 20 years ago, the Harry Potter books captivated children and adults alike, with dramatic storylines, imaginative characters and even moral lessons about courage and self-determination. But the fictional world of Harry Potter may also have some useful insight for law schools and those of us who teach in them. 

Both legal education and a Hogwarts magical education involve a new way of seeing the world—an immersive and intense process requiring, in many ways, a transformation. Students need a new wardrobe for both law school and wizarding school—and an awful lot of puzzling and expensive textbooks. Both Hogwarts and law school have been accused of operating entirely apart from reality. One of these criticisms may be valid.

Broadly speaking, the pedagogical goals of legal education and practical education are the same: to turn out competent graduates. But there is a tremendous difference—beyond the obvious—between the ways in which Hogwarts students and law students learn, as well as how they are taught by the professors instructing them. ...

At Hogwarts, young witches and wizards are offered hands-on instruction and are shown the potential impact of the skills they learn in class. Beginning in Hogwarts students’ very first year, they receive step-by-step charms demonstrations, specific instruction in wand technique and contemporaneous feedback on potions-making. ...

Law classes, on the other hand—especially in the first year—are focused on helping students “think like lawyers,” to acquire a certain vocabulary and to develop a fundamental understanding of legal systems, important court opinions and fundamental concepts. This is all, of course, essential—but is generally missing hands-on instruction on filing matters in court, interacting with clients or wedding theory to practice: doing like a lawyer. 
Apple, Amazon, and the rest of Big Tech all have a lot to learn from the Green New Deal Fast Company
THE INFRASTRUCTURE MESS CAUSING COUNTLESS INTERNET OUTAGES Wired
More Than a Fifth of All European Flights Delayed in May BNN Bloomberg
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