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Monday, March 16, 2020

Government resources on Coronavirus

 The most ingenious men are now agreed, that [universities] are only nurseries of prejudice, corruption, barbarism, and pedantry.
— George Berkeley, born in 1685

Kindness? Or cold hearts and hysteria? Coronavirus crisis a chance to change our story

We have one chance to change our story. What’s it going to be? Dystopian horror? Or something with a little more hope for humankind?


'Matter of life and death': NSW Police can enforce isolation bans


Gladys Berejiklian's warning came before two more coronavirus deaths were confirmed on Sunday evening.



Episode 52: Love in the Time Of Corona (podcast) TrueAnon. Recommended by Greenwald.

‘Dead Sea Scrolls’ at the Museum of the Bible are all forgeriesNational Geographic. Fragments that mysteriously appeared on the market in 2002.

Shelves might be bare, but here's why Australia isn't running out of food

Empty supermarket shelves have become a common sight in the past few weeks — but retail, agricultural and economic experts are urging everyone to calm the farm.
“Data scientists are involved with gathering data, massaging it into a tractable form, making it tell its story, and presenting that story to others.” – Mike Loukides, editor, O’Reilly Media.


“A data scientist is someone who can obtain, scrub, explore, model, and interpret data, blending hacking, statistics, and machine learning. Data scientists not only are adept at working with data, but appreciate data itself as a first-class product.” – Hillary Mason, founder, Fast Forward Labs. 


ATO remote working plans in place for tax time 2020

Bridget J. Crawford (Pace) & Ashley Unangst (J.D. 2020, Pace), A Picture of Society with Critical Tax Theory As Its Interpreter, 41 J. Am. Tax'n Ass'n 128 (2019) (reviewing Anthony Infanti (Pittsburgh), Our Selfish Tax Laws: Toward Tax Reform That Mirrors Our Better Selves (MIT Press 2018)):

Our Selfish Tax LawsProfessor Infanti's work has long explored issues of bias and difference in the U.S. context, and with this book, he places his study of U.S. tax law in a comparative context with Canada, France and Spain. He uses the lenses of housing policy and the taxable unit to illustrate each country’s different values. Professor Infanti’s book illustrates the myriad ways that the U.S. tax law both supports and is a constituent part of a discriminatory legal system that treats people differently because of race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexual orientation, immigration status, gender identity, and disability. In that way, the tax laws are a “mirror” of the society we currently have. But Professor Infanti goes a step further and calls readers see, in the reflection of the tax laws, the possibility of our “better selves.” Professor Infanti recognizes the extraordinary expressive value of the tax law; he imagines a system of collection, enforcement and public spending that benefits all people and reflects the nation’s highest and best values of equal opportunity, human dignity and shared community. ...

NSW launches new centralised website
EFFICIENCY DRIVE: More than 500 of the government’s 750 websites are being erased, to cut costs and improve user experience.

Why Do New Diseases Like COVID-19 Appear First in China?

Jason Kottke 
This video from Vox is a few days old but is still a good look at why diseases like SARS and COVID-19 originate in China. It involved the designation of wild animals as “natural resources” by the Chinese government, which caused a large increase in wildlife farming, with many more and different kinds of animals being put into contact with humans and each other on a regular basis. Add illegally trafficked animals into the mix, and you’ve got the right conditions for diseases to jump from the animals to humans. Then potentially infected animals and their meat, accompanied by potentially infected humans who raised those animals and butchered that meat, are then brought to the wet marketsfor sale to the public.
It’s important to note, as Christopher St. Cavish says in the LA Times, “most wet markets are not wildlife markets, and confusing the two is dangerous”:
“Wet” markets are what China calls its fresh food markets, the kind you see all over the developing world and in many parts of Europe, where small stalls sell fresh vegetables and butchers sell meat, primarily pork. They are the daily market for tens of millions of Chinese who prefer to talk to the people who sell them produce, meat, seafood and tofu, and in small cities, are often the only outlet for small-scale farmers who can’t meet the supplier requirements for supermarkets.
I couldn’t find any up-to-date information on which animal is suspected of passing the coronavirus responsible for COVID-19 along to humans, but bats are a prime suspect with a possible pangolinintermediary

Government resources on Coronavirus

Via Kathryn Bayer, Outreach Librarian, Library Services and Content Management, GPO [GovDocs Librarians Rock!!]  “Patrons across the country are in search of information on the Coronavirus. Here are some U.S. Government resources that can help.

ALEX MITCHELL: NSW Parliament is a politicians’ tuck shop

 
All Liberal and National MPs in the NSW Parliament get a prize. Their basic salary is topped up by appointing them as junior ministers, assistant ministers, parliamentary secretaries or committee chairpersons. Continue reading →

The New York Times – At the molecular level, soap breaks things apart. At the level of society, it helps hold everything together. It is advisable to maintain all the activities added to our routine during the pandemic, indefinitely. Washing hands throughout the day has always been advisable. If everyone thinks about the implications to others and takes only one action throughout the day – please consider this one. Print this and other graphics and share in your workplace and home – many humans have a higher response rate to pictorial messages and icons – they assist us in visualizing the steps of each action and the outcome. Thank you.
“…People typically think of soap as gentle and soothing, but from the perspective of microorganisms, it is often extremely destructive. A drop of ordinary soap diluted in water is sufficient to rupture and kill many types of bacteria and viruses, including the new coronavirus that is currently circling the globe. The secret to soap’s impressive might is its hybrid structure. Soap is made of pin-shaped molecules, each of which has a hydrophilic head — it readily bonds with water — and a hydrophobic tail, which shuns water and prefers to link up with oils and fats. These molecules, when suspended in water, alternately float about as solitary units, interact with other molecules in the solution and assemble themselves into little bubbles called micelles, with heads pointing outward and tails tucked inside…”
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