Friday, November 15, 2019

The Law Librarian Pipeline


Eileen Miller of Diet hness just jabbed moi about how ' ... art can permeate the very deepest part of us, where no words exist.” 


HMM: Model said she didn’t know she was pregnant until giving birth in the bathroom. “Langmaid, who told the news outlet that she had been using birth control injections throughout the unsuspected pregnancy, said the entire labor and birth was ‘over in about 10 minutes,’ and that baby Isla weighed 7 pounds, 9 ounces.” Many women will be jealous of that record


Life after death. A Halloween thought from Socrates. – Mark Vernon
 Socrates argued that the connection between life and death, without a loss of the gains of individuality, could be found once more if the individual could readjust their sight to appreciate eternal life in this life. In the Phaedo dialogue, for example, Plato portrays Socrates as ready for death because he has one eye settled on the side of life that doesn’t die, which he has befriended in the here and now. “Those who philosophize rightly make dying their care,” Socrates remarks. It’s another aspect of philosophy as a way of life. The philosopher steps back from the commonplace fears of frightened mortals and awakens to a forgotten ground. They’re facing death to discover life.

Nothing to be frightened of …


Next in MEdia Dragon's and Google’s quest for consumer dominance – banking - WSJ via FoxNews: “Google will soon offer checking accounts to consumers, becoming the latest Silicon Valley heavyweight to push into finance. The project, code-named Cache, is expected to launch next year with accounts run by Citigroup Inc. and a credit union at Stanford University, a tiny lender in Google’s backyard. Big tech companies see financial services as a way to get closer to users and glean valuable data. Apple Inc. introduced a credit card this summer. Amazon.com Inc. has talked to banks about offering checking accounts. Facebook Inc. is working on a digital currency it hopes will upend global payments. Their ambitions could challenge incumbent financial-services firms, which fear losing their primacy and customers. They are also likely to stoke a reaction in Washington, where regulators are already investigating whether large technology companies have too much clout


 Ransomware Hit Case Management Provider TrialWorks. What Happens Next?, LegalTech News. “Add case management platform TrialWorks to the laundry list of companies and public sector agencies that were struck and paralyzed by a cyberattack this year. And unless lawyers backed up their client files to a separate storage network, they could be frozen out of their data by TrialWorks’ problems. Still, experts say there are ways to mitigate the damage…”


The World's a Stage


by Joseph Hilaire Pierre Belloc

The world's a stage. The trifling entrance fee
Is paid (by proxy) to the registrar.
The Orchestra is very loud and free
But plays no music in particular.
They do not print a programme, that I know.
The cast is large. There isn't any plot.
The acting of the piece is far below
The very worst of modernistic rot.

 The only part about it I enjoy
Is what was called in English the Foyay.
There will I stand apart awhile and toy
With thought, and set my cigarette alight;
And then — without returning to the play —
On with my coat and out into the night.

 Business Roundtable Ranked How Well Apple, IBM, and Amazon Actually Serve Stakeholders - Fortune: “In August, almost 200 leading business executives—including Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Apple CEO Tim Cook, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, and IBM CEO Ginni Rometty—made news headlines by offering a new definition for the purpose of a corporation that challenged long-held corporate orthodoxy. These chief executives, collectively known as the Business Roundtable, argued that the modern corporation should no longer exist only to deliver value to stockholders, as it plainly stated in 1997—rather, it should serve stakeholders including customers, employees, partners, communities, and yes, shareholders. “Each of our stakeholders is essential,” reads a rather concise statement signed by 181 of the Business Roundtable’s 193 members. “We commit to deliver value to all of them, for the future success of our companies, our communities and our country.” It didn’t take long for questions to emerge: Were the CEOs violating their fiduciary duty by embracing a broader mandate? And just how the hell were they going to measure their success, anyway?…”





 ‘A Russian vowel is an orange, an English vowel is a lemon’ | Spectator USA
it was all a performance. Any journalists who presumed to know what Nabokov really thought about anything, let alone those Italian idiots under the impression that Lolita had an autobiographical aspect, were quickly seen off. Did anyone know what was inside there? Did even Nabokov? Or was there just the splendor of his sentences, which can present feeling, impersonate it and retreat heartlessly from it, making the reader weep or laugh heartily when someone is horribly killed in two words: ‘(picnic, lightning)’?


This is why you keep killing your plants – they’re scared of water

“I am the reason the birds are missing… I am made of dirt and grit and stars and river, skin, bone, leaf, whiskers and claws. I am a part of you, of this, nothing more or less. I am mycelium, petal pistil and stamen… I am energy and I am dust. I am wave and I am wonder. I am an impulse and an order.”



A rough sound was polished until it became a smoother sound, which was polished until it became music,” the poet Mark Strand wrote in hisode to the enchantment of music. The trailblazing philosopher Susanne Langer considered music “a laboratory for feeling and time.” Perhaps because we experience music with our whole selves, with sinew and spirit alike, it is impossible to consider it merely as a sound. Like light, it seems to be both particle and wave; a vessel, a form, a space for working out who we are and what we long for — an essential language for our inner storytelling, which is the narrative pillar of our identity. In consequence, the most powerful and enchanting storytelling, be it a fairy tale or a novel or a biography, has a certain symphonic quality that lends it its power and enchantment.







“People?” Endlessly editing this scene because Lucas knows he alienated fans badly with his decision to take our first glimpse of Han Solo’s badassery and neuter it away seems to be his purview alone.
The thing women struggle with most at work isn’t sexism, it’s ageism - Quartz: “…per a survey conducted by The Riveter, a gender-equal coworking space now in seven cities across the US. According to the whitepaper published today, the organization, along with partners Xerox and YouGov, surveyed 1,550 women “across racial groups, professions and caregiving roles,” and followed up with about 100 interviews.


Internet Archive Blogs: “The Internet Archive has transformed 130,000 references to books in Wikipedia into live links to 50,000 digitized Internet Archive books in several Wikipedia language editions including English, Greek, and Arabic. And we are just getting started. By working with Wikipedia communities and scanning more books, both users and robots will link many more book references directly into Internet Archive books. In these cases, diving deeper into a subject will be a single click. “I want this,” said Brewster Kahle’s neighbor Carmen Steele, age 15, “at school I am allowed to start with Wikipedia, but I need to quote the original books. This allows me to do this even in the middle of the night.”

For example, the Wikipedia article on Martin Luther King, Jr cites the book To Redeem the Soul of America, by Adam Fairclough. That citation now links directly to page 299 inside the digital version of the book provided by the Internet Archive. There are 66 cited and linked books on that article alone. Readers can see a couple of pages to preview the book and, if they want to read further, they can borrow the digital copy using Controlled Digital Lending in a way that’s analogous to how they borrow physical books from their local library…”

 
NDIS chief deletes Twitter account, defends past activity: ‘I am not an anti-union Trump supporter’
OPEN BOOK: Martin Hoffman’s past social media use came back to haunt him in his first appearance at Senate estimates since taking up the role.  


Hillary on BBC Radio: ‘I Think About What Kind of President I Would Have Been All the Time.’

 David Whelan via LexBlog: “Where do law librarians come from and where do they go to? Organizations that want to promote diversity struggle with the demographics of law librarianship. There’s an issue with finding and attracting diverse candidates. But there’s also the other end: are there positions waiting at the other end, once the candidates are looking for jobs? Diversity is a challenge for lots of reasons. Smarter people than me have already looked at, discussed, and identified tools or methods to improve the diversity of law library staff. It’s an obvious and positive goal for organizations but it’s not an easy one to solve. There are some things, though, that as a hiring manager, seem like opportunities to change…”
 BioScience: “Scientists have a moral obligation to clearly warn humanity of any catastrophic threat and to “tell it like it is.” On the basis of this obligation and the graphical indicators presented below, we declare, with more than 11,000 scientist signatories from around the world, clearly and unequivocally that planet Earth is facing a climate emergency


Earlier this year, an employer who emailed warnings to clients about a former employee was taken to the NSW District Court for defamation. The case proved to be very costly for the employer and highlighted the legalities around what an employer can say publicly about the dismissal of an employee.

Exercise due diligence before making a public statement about ex-employees

The case involved a young TAFE childcare student who was dismissed from a childcare centre. After the employee had left his position, his former employer sent an email to the parents of the children he had cared for, explaining why the student was no longer employed.

The problem with the email was in the wording. The childcare centre told parents that the student was no longer at the centre because of "disciplinary reasons" and for being "untruthful" with the centre regarding his studies, along with "some other issues".

The student took the childcare centre to court for defamation, claiming the emails impugned his integrity, honesty and fitness to work in the childcare sector.
Giving false explanations to clients about an employee's dismissal can backfire
The emails sent by the childcare centre employer cost him $237,000 in a defamation payout to the former employee, in a decision made by the NSW District Court. (See Bowden v KSMC Holdings Pty Ltd t/as Hubba Bubba Childcare on Haig & Chapman [2019] NSWDC 98.)
It was found that the email the employer had sent to parents had led them to believe there was something more serious behind it. One mother told the court that the employer had warned her about the student, claiming he couldn't be trusted and wasn't honest.
The student told the judge that when he learnt about the emails two weeks later, he became quite ill and required psychological treatment.
Did the employer resign or was he sacked?
The judge determined that the employer's email to clients gave the impression that the student had been fired. The student had, in fact, resigned after he was pressured to work 40.5 hours a week. This was incompatible with the hours required for his TAFE studies. Also, his contract allowed for a minimum of 16 hours a week, with two days time off for TAFE.
The employer told the court the student had been sacked because he had overstated his qualifications; a claim the judge rejected.
Grapevine effect of defamatory statements detrimental to career
The judge found the emails to be defamatory under the NSW Defamation Act 2005 and injurious to the man's otherwise good reputation. He found malice in what the employer had said, stating it was a "callous defamation of a vulnerable young man".
In awarding damages of $237,970.22, plus legal costs, the judge also noted that the grapevine effect among parents left a cloud over the former employee's childcare career.
Employers urged to seek legal advice before making statements about former employees
Making public and disparaging statements about an employee, past or present, can lead to an employer being sued for defamation.
If an employer has genuine concerns about a former employee and has something they wish to impart to clients, it would be wise to seek legal advice on workplace law before taking any action.
 
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