Thursday, November 18, 2021

Understanding corruption: there’s no need to get personal

 

It’s not forensic rocket science: why we need a Criminal Cases Review Commission

An independent review body will buttress the courts, remedying miscarriages of justice by deciphering often complex expert evidence


Second jobs can be incredibly lucrative – just ask any of the MPs who gained at least £6m collectively from their side gigs since the start of the pandemic. But it’s not only MPs benefiting from second jobs: ordinary white-collar workers have been getting in on the act. And these workers aren’t just taking on positions that might require a couple of days’ work a month. Instead, they are juggling several traditional full-time jobs, and keeping each one a secret from their other employers – leading, in effect, multiple lives

It’s the biggest open secret out there’: the double lives of white-collar workers with two jobs



Kam C. Chan (Western Kentucky; Google Scholar), Jiaxin Wang (Zhongnan), Zhi Wang (Southwestern; Google Scholar) & Chao Yan (Zhongnan; Google Scholar), Is Reverence for Life Reverence for Rule? Abortion Rate and Corporate Tax Avoidance in China:

Despite the momentum of research on the impact of informal institutions on corporate behavior in recent years, few studies probe the effect of an “awe culture” on corporate behavior. Thus, this study explores the economic consequences of the awe culture. It proxies awe culture with regionally induced abortion rates and examines its influence on corporate tax avoidance in China. We document that higher induced abortion rates associate with a higher degree of corporate tax avoidance, confirming that “reverence for life is reverence for rules.”


The ABC must not let itself be bossed around. End of story

The ABC is not just another government department. A Senate inquiry into its complaints process cannot be allowed to happen. 


It takes a planet to make a vaccine, submarine, car, computer or smart phone. Consider the iPhone: designed in California, “assembled” in Shenzen, “made” everywhere. The Corning glass screen and Wi-Fi and audio chips are born in the USA. It sports a Swiss gyroscope and an accelerometer from Germany’s Bosch; a Sony camera, compass and LCD screen are Japanese; the battery is from South Korea’s Samsung. 

TOM DUSEVIC: Covid-19 pandemic delivers an insult to our culture of plenty





  1. “The polarizing effect of Dr. Mills’ work is a testament to its ingenuity” — Elvira Basevich (U. Mass Lowell) on the philosophical legacy of Charles Mills
  2. “What is a knower?” — debates in epistemology, such as externalism vs. internalism, are downstream from this more fundamental question, which deserves more attention, argues Nate Sheff (Connecticut)
  3. “Dehumanization lies at the intersection of two compelling imaginative dispositions: our propensity to essentialize and our propensity to project a grand hierarchy onto the natural world” — David Livingstone Smith (New England) on imagination and dehumanization
  4. “You’re an idiot. Hope is the confusion of the desire for a thing with its probability.” — Richard Marshall interviews Arthur Schopenhauer at 3:16AM
  5. Is the result 1000 works of art? Or 1001? Or 1? Or for all we’ll be able to tell, 0? — And what is it? A brilliant art prank? A tribute in the style of the original artist? A distributed artwork?
  6. What makes Hi-Phi Nation so good? — the research, interviews, writing, editing, choices, technology, aesthetics, craft, and person behind “the philosophy show you can send to your family and friends who aren’t philosophy geeks”
  7. “The connection between sex work and philosophy had a long life in the western tradition” — Dawn LaValle Norman (Australian Catholic U.) looks at it in the ancient world

Understanding corruption: there’s no need to get personal

Politicians have kept their ethical rulebook as vague as possible. All the better to deflect critics of their blatant vote-buying.