The worst moment for the atheist is when he is really thankful and has nobody to thank.
At the University of Western Australia, the honorary doctorate given to Tim Minchin was rewarded with possibly the best graduation speech in a millennium of university history. Honorary doctorate is also known by the Latin phrases honoris causa ("for the sake of the honour") or ad honorem ("to the honour").
One: You don’t have to have a dream. Americans on talent shows always talk about their dreams …
Two: Don’t seek happiness. Happiness is like an orgasm. If you think about it too much it goes away. (crowd laughs) Keep busy and aim to make someone else happy and you might find you get some as a side effect. We didn’t evolve to be constantly content. Contented Homo erectus got eaten before passing on their genes.
Eight: Respect people with less power than you. I have in the past made important decisions about people I work with – agents and producers - big decisions based largely on how they treat the wait staff in the restaurants we’re having the meeting in. I don’t care if you’re the most powerful cat in the room, I will judge you on how you treat the least powerful. So there!
9 Life Lessons - Tim Minchin UWA Address
MM XX II: Universiity of NSW - Honorary Degree holders
My hero Vaclav Havel was honoured by UNSW in 1995 - I was lucky to have lunch with Vaclav Havel and Alexander Dubcek in early 1990s as former President of the upper house, Johnno Johnson knew how to throw liquid luncheons at the NSW Parliament House. Sydney Institute Of Gerard Henderson’s fame also scored the invites as he was close to the Architects of the Velvet Revolution.
Those were those glory days of democracy working as it should under unprecedented Hung Parliament at the NSW Bear Pit.
It was time for robust parliamentary motions or debates and the influence to run over the little powerless citizens by the corporate soulless lobby groups was limited. NSW was fortunate to embrace independent MP such as John Hatton, Clover Moore and Peter McDonald as well as the Liberal Speaker Kevin Rozzoli who took his role as an impartial chair in Legislative Assembly seriously …
UNSW … Vaclav Havel (Hon.DLitt 1995)
I am sure not only Johnno, but Frank also put a good word for Vaclav …
Frank P Lowy (Hon.DLitt 1999)
Commissioner Christopher David Jordan AO (Hon.DBus 2022)
The Honourable Dr Jillian Gell Skinner (Hon.DMedSc 2022)
Peter Wilfred Mattick AM (Hon.DBus 2022)
Michael Cannon-Brookes (Hon.DBus 2022)
Scott Farquhar (Hon.DBus 2022)
The Honourable Margaret Ackary Stone AO FAAL (Hon.LLD 2022)
Associate Professor Richard Millard (Hon.DMedSc 2022)
History of Honorary Holders:
The Rt Hon. Sir Robert Menzies (Hon.DSc 1957)
The Hon. Robert William Askin (Hon.DLitt 1966)
The Hon. Robert James Lee Hawke (Hon.LLD 1987)
The Hon. Neville Kenneth Wran (Hon.LLD 2006)
Leo George Schofield (Hon.DLitt 2001) - Dr George Dorman’s nephew
The Hon. Deirdre Mary Grusovin (Hon.DUniv 2003) Laurie Brereton’s sister who has eight children and was last month at Laurie’s tribute for serving 50 years in public life - Paul Keating excelled himself again with his after dinner speech 🎤
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to today's Westpac National Press Club address. Death and taxes are the two things that most of us can't avoid in life. Certainly, some Australians and multinational companies do go to extreme lengths, it seems, in paying tax at least.
When Chris Jordan became the Tax Commissioner four years ago, he made history becoming the first appointee from outside the Australian Tax Office to take the job and today, he is actually the first Tax Commissioner to address the National Press Club. He has bought a different perspective to the job and the Turnbull Government has liked it so much, they have recently extended Mr Jordan's tenure to 2024. You can follow today's conversation on Twitter. Tag your thoughts with hashtag NPC. I would like to acknowledge in the audience today the Treasury secretary John Fraser. Please welcome Chris Jordan to for the first address to the National Press Club by an Australian taxation Commissioner.(APPLAUSE)
"I do not want to compare the ATO’s performance with other tax authorities or government agencies. I want to compare the ATO with the best of any large organisation interacting with a large and diverse client base anywhere in the world; and for people to think that whilst they didn’t want to deal with us, their interactions were as good as they could ever expect."
Tax chief to address National Press Club
Tax chief to address National Press Club
Confidential reports detail rampant incompetence, identity theft at KDOL
The Tax Lawyer Publishes New Issue
Azam: Online Taxation Post Wayfair
Total Anarchy – Ann Handley – “OneLook is a search engine that aggregates word definitions from over 1,061 indexed dictionaries. Visually, it’s a bit overwhelming—so it took me a minute to get used to its sorting + searching. Stick with it: it’s useful for not just defining words… but also finding them when you’re like what’s a word that means….?
Global cost of cybercrime topped $6 trillion in 2021 (techxplore.com)
Richard Stein <rmstein@ieee.org>
The world's economy, per GDP estimates, is estimated @ US$ ~104T per
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_economy (retrieved on 11MAY2022).
The essay cites a deficit of ~200K cyber-security professionals, in Europe
specifically, as a possible remedy to reduce grift and cut the skim.
Investing in people, training, and infrastructure is proactive and usually,
with supportive leadership, effective.
The outrage expressed by corporate lobbyists' to recently proposed SECregulations (see https://www.sec.gov/files/33-11038-fact-sheet.pdf)
indicates that disclosing corporate CxO cyber-skillsets for the investing
public to assess might accelerate essential investments to tame the
cybertheft wildfire.
See "Industry Report" in
(retrieved on 11MAY2022) for a discussion.
I spoke this week at a conference organised by PricewaterhouseCoopers on the legitimacy of tax systems. The conference was held under the Chatham House rule
Read the full article…
Brooks: The International Tax System Is There To Achieve Justice
How did we end up with these bandits in charge?
It seems almost certain that the government will announce legislation to abandon the Brexit Northern Ireland protocol in the next few days. No coherent lawyer
Read the full article…
Calling a man ‘bald’ is sexual harassment, employment tribunal rules
A total lunar eclipse will turn the moon red. Here’s how to watch CNN
The Story of Robert Southey and the Three BearsBerfrois
The Untold Story of the White House’s Weirdly Hip Record Collection Washingtonian
The Birth of the Egghead Paperback American Scholar
‘What the Ermine Saw’ Review: A Da Vinci Painting’s Journey WSJ
The rise and fall of the literary bloke New Statesman
When Animals Shed Their Wings Quillette
Going to the ends of the earth The Critic