Friday, February 05, 2016

Who Do You Trust


"As I wrote recently, I’m focussed in 2016 on raising the ante on business leadership – across the  board.  Why?  The UK MORI  Veracity Index published last week reports that more people expect their hairdressers (69%) to tell the truth than business leaders (35%).  This crisis in leadership continues with politicians now the least trusted group of all (21%), marginally less trusted than journalists (29%) and estate agents (25%).

The worst hit group are the clergy – once the most trusted profession in 1983 (85%), but now only 67% of people trust their priests.

And, reflecting the rise of social media, 68% of people expect the ordinary person on the street to be honest – way ahead of our so called leaders.  Time for leaders to stand up, to be transparent, to be Purpose driven and to set the agenda and standards again.  In other words, to lead. Who do you trust?  via Kevin Roberts who is driven by two passions, Creativity and Leadership 

"You can't trust anyone anymore," says our Tax Commissioner, Chris Jordan, and boy is he happy

McKibbin: Sell it all to China MacroBusinessn (Davin). This is appalling. More privatization of public assets. In Australia, all beaches are public (I believe the first 150 feet). Or at least have been until now ...

Beware the data based on multiple regression analyses. You’re quite likely to get no information, or misinformation 

The man, identified by The Indian Express as Malay-Australian Ahmad Fahim Bin Hamad Awang, was detained at New Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport after arriving on a flight from Perth on Thursday night.


The mother of a Sydney teen who allegedly wanted to perform “an Islamic Bonnie and Clyde” attack in Sydney says she is struggling to cope with her daughter’s arrest. Alo-Bridget Namoa, 18, was refused bail on Saturday and is facing 31 charges of refusing to answer questions during a Crime Commission hearing, reports The Daily Telegraph

Three Melbourne men have arrived in Victoria after pleading guilty to raping a 17-year-old backpacker in a bar in Croatia. Dylan Djohan, 23, Ashwin Kumar, 23, and Waleed Latif, 21, have returned home after their case was finalised in the port city of Split on January 29. The men, who had their passports seized by Croatian authorities when they were arrested last July, secured their freedom after agreeing to pay their Norwegian victim $30,000 Price of A Destoyed Life  
Tax bosses cosy up to corporate giants but threaten ordinary people 

HMRC reforms have led to a glut of 'gamekeeper-turned-poachers' undermining it

Public servants put up with a lot of bad behaviour from the political class, from verbal abuse to questioning why professional development is in the public interest. And it appears even after the pollies leave office, they remain firmly part of the “upstairs” and the public servants “downstairs”. Ex-pollie credentials ‘off-limits’ for public servants

San Francisco Chronicle, Cal Professors Fear UC Bosses Will Snoop on Them:
UC Berkeley faculty members are buzzing over news that University of California President Janet Napolitano ordered the installation of computer hardware capable of monitoring all e-mails going in and out of the UC system.
screech-owl- links

How a centimeter of clay in a 1,300-foot layer of rock in Italy explains one of the most important days in the history of life... history 

Literature has always reflected humans’ fascination with criminality. In the classical world Homer wrote the rape of Helen into The Iliad, in the twentieth century mafia fiction took centre stage with The Godfather ... Criminal Minds ...

Index perceived corruption billions locked in poverty by public sector

“It is one thing for a journalist to make a mistake; like everyone, they all do that at some point. But to expressly lie about your sources in order to make your assertions seem more substantial is as serious a journalistic breach as can be committed.”
—Glenn Greenwald (2006)

A-lone-man-refusing-to-do-the-Nazi-salute-1936
A lone man refusing to do the Nazi salute, 1936
*History's Most Powerful Photos

The last public use of ‘death by a thousand cuts’ in China, curiously, was photographed by a Czech guy 

Consciousness may be the product of carefully balanced chaos Science

We tend to use pretty concrete language in journalism, so it's not surprising that the place where we work isn't just an office, it's a newsroom. Earlier this week, I wrote about The Middletown Press' move away from a physical newsroom to a virtual one. No news happens in the newsroom but lots of people still love working in them

Radio aficionados and die-hard fans of longform journalism often cite the fall of 2014 as the moment the mainstream media finally began paying attention to podcasting.
As "Serial" attained widespread popularity among casual radio listeners, general interest publications like New York and The New York Times published pieces that placed the true crime broadcast in the vanguard of a breakout trend that had finally transcended "nerd curio" and ushered in a "great podcast renaissance." Meet the 26-year-old who’s got all the news on podcasting

One of the most common questions I get as a technical person in media from new journalists is, “What are your favorite storytelling tools?” There’s a big focus on tools and the next big thing in figuring out how best to tell stories. Journalism schools have taken awhile to catch up training cub reporters about how to tell stories in new ways.
Starter storytelling tools for new journalists
a9631-zeus-edge-fly-25jan16. links

Little Kids React to the Revealing of a Villain in a Puppet Show – 1944

T9GDnh

How David Petraeus avoided felony charges and possible prison time Washington Post

Robert Reich on Money & the Left Political Establishment Gaius Publius. Quotes from an MSNBC interview that…get this…was taken down from YouTube. Today’s must read. What Reich said was not all that controversial, but the fact that it came from an impeccable source, an insider with deep experience, apparently made the remarks too hot to handle...

Last week, an odd tale emerged from the world of soccer of a government agency potentially breaching privacy law. The case has embroiled two NSW public sector agencies as well as the sport's governing body, Football Federation Australia, and prompted talk of a lawsuit against The Sunday Telegraph. Our main interest, however, is with the bizarre reactions to this breach from some officials at the agencies involved.
To recap for readers who aren't obsessive A-League fans (of whom there may be a handful), the Telegraph reported details of "secret police files" containing photographs of 198 "soccer louts" banned from attending games. Privacy and hooliganism

North-west coast of Australia.

The College Fix, The IRS Scandal, Day 1,000: Every Single Day For Nearly Three Years Prof Chronicles IRS Scandal ...

Thursday, February 04, 2016

Socialising Losses and Privatising Profits

“You put me in this position,” Gleeson told prosecutors and lawyers for the bank during a hearing on Jan. 15. “I can’t for the life of me figure out why the sun shouldn’t shine.” Judge lets sun shine-on secret hsbc report on money-laundering

“A self that goes on changing goes on living,” Virginia Woolf wrote in her defense of letter writing as the humanest art

***Too poor to retire and too young to die LA Times

 The West Is Traveling The Road To Economic Ruin Paul Craig Roberts. Teejay: “Devastating commentary.”


 Loneliness grows from individual ache to public health hazard Washington Post

Doing the Math: Why Kommunist China’s Exports Aren’t Adding Up Bloomberg 


The World’s Favorite New Tax Haven Is the United States Bloomberg (resilc). Not news if your read Nicholas Shaxzon’s Treasure Islands.

The California Public Utilities Commission has voted to approve a $7.6 million dollar fine levied against ride-sharing app provider Uber “for not adequately reporting legally-demanded data on its service to the disabled.” The paperwork dispute is distinct from any actual proceedings over claims of service denial. [Brian Doherty, Reason; earlier and related on what Doherty calls California’s “regulatory war on Uber” here (employee status of drivers), here (CEQA), etc.

Everyone is watching  Cuba. Can it morph into a decent version of “social democracy” without creating a nouveau-riche nouveau-ruling class ...

The EUs banking union: a recipe for disaster Pieria

Tories accused of shortchanging public as £26bn privatisation haul revealed Guardian. Wait, that’s the point of privatization…the mistake is the bad PR

Noel Towell Predicts: Business plots Medicare takeover   Kafkaesque's tenses updated from the Politics in the Pub by Sam Dastyari  (from commentariat:  Why does this government hate us so much? What have we done wrong (other than elect it)?  Private sector to deliver Medicare benefits under radical government proposal

Lawsuits Claim Disney Colluded to Replace U.S. Workers With Immigrants New York Times

Power Line, Federal Bureaucracies: Incompetent, Corrupt, Or Both?: 
The saga of Barack Obama’s Internal Revenue Service is almost unbelievable. After “joking” years ago that he would audit his enemies, it turned out that Obama’s minions were in fact delaying or blocking routine applications for 501(c) status by conservative organizations, in order to help the Democratic Party. When Congress tried to investigate, the Obama administration stonewalled at every turn. Evidence mysteriously disappeared and the key player in the scheme, Lois Lerner, pled the Fifth rather than answer Congress’s questions.

Advocacy group documents privatizing of US criminal justice system “Today, private companies hold contracts that allow them to profit from all corners of America’s criminal justice system. Consequently, many people charged with crimes are exposed to the profit-seeking of companies every step of the way, from entering the system to being released. These graphics depict the possible paths of people charged with different offenses, revealing the various privatized services provided by the corrections industry…”

Tim Dowd, Paul Landefeld & Anne Moore (Joint Committee on Taxation), Profit Shifting of U.S. Multinationals

Australia perceived as more corrupt ...

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“Government Thinks You’re Too Dumb To Try Crowdfunding” [Ben Weingarten, The Federalist]

Precipitous Rents in Ski Country Push Workers to Edges New York Times

Owning a house is a part of the “American Dream” and perhaps as a result the US tax code subsidizes houses, especially for the rich. Most economists, however, think that the United States tax code is inefficiently biased toward housing. There is no good reason to bias people away from renting and towards buying. Germany is a wealthy country yet most people rent Most Germans don’t buy their homes, they rent. Here’s why
Behavioural economics tells us that we quickly get used to big houses but we never get used to commuting. So when you have a choice, go for the smaller house closer to work.

A report by the NSW Crime Commission found criminal gangs have exploited the property market as surging prices increased demand for funds into Australia. "This has provided greater opportunities for organised crime syndicates to launder millions of dollars," the commission found. The flow of money outside of Australia to settle drug transactions and the use of so-called "remittance agents", who facilitate the movements, have entangled legitimate offshore investors in money laundering schemes.
The commission used the example of an "individual of significant wealth" based overseas who bought into the Sydney real estate market. Real Estate and Money laundering ...

“One man appeared on state-run Chinese TV saying he’d voluntarily returned to the mainland to face justice in a 2003 drunk-driving case. Meanwhile, the wife of another said she had received a handwritten letter, purportedly from her husband, reiterating that he too had returned to the mainland of his own volition to assist with ‘investigations.’ Both of the men hold European passports.”  Los Angeles Times

University student Tom Wade spent an hour on the phone to Centrelink and got nowhere with his issue. So, he went up the chain of command, and here's how he did it.




 

Wednesday, February 03, 2016

Amber: It’s getting harder to stand out from the crowd

Our Slavic Google ate Apple a Day and now is the world's most valuable listed company

Translators rarely become celebrities.Ann Goldstein — translator of Elena Ferrante, Jhumpa Lahiri, Primo Levi -- is an exception... Hiding Behind Success

When someone declares "I have a book  in me,” that person will never be an artist, says Richard Sennett. You either do it or you don’t...  Just do it
I am a blunderer, but I don’t intentionally cause you real pain. If I ever deliberately twist your arm it is only to occasion so much pain as will be indistinguishable from pleasure. You on the other hand when you decide to punish me (vide the letter I received this morning) emulate Modesty [Blaise] with her kongo [Japanese martial arts weapon] and nerve-centres technique. Don’t do it. I am fonder of you every day and your power to hurt me grows alarmingly.
~ Latituders from the East duri''' Appy Our

It’s getting harder to stand out from the crowd, according to the latest figures published by the Australian Public Service Commission. Just don’t expect senior leaders to take time out to help develop you for the next career level Leadership

“The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University is pleased to release Amber, a free software tool for WordPress and Drupal that preserves content and prevents broken links. When installed on a blog or website, Amber can take a snapshot of the content of every linked page, ensuring that even if those pages are interfered with or blocked, the original content will be available. “ The release of Amber builds on an earlier proposal from Zittrain and Sir Tim Berners-Lee for a “mutual aid treaty for the Internet” that would enable operators of websites to easily bolster the robustness of the entire web. It also aims to mitigate risks associated with increasing centralization of online content. Increasingly fewer entities host information online, creating choke points that can restrict access to web content. Amber addresses this by enabling the storage of snapshots via multiple archiving services, such as the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine and Perma.cc…”

Amazon dives into Australian book sales through the book depository and digital cold rivers

Of all the wars ignited by the late Abbott government, the one on "red tape" got off to a rocky start. It promised "deregulation units" in all departments; that is, more regulation in the cause of less regulation. Even sillier was a threat to link regulation reductions to secretary and senior executives' performance agreements and pay, a move that would have chagrined those in immigration and national security who, at the behest of ministers, have been laying on "red tape" with a trowel.
War on Red Tape

A federal Department of Agriculture spokesperson said the mosquitoes had only been found within the confines of the airport and that the risk of a transmitted virus was ­“extremely low” Zika standing out at Mascot Sydney NSW Australia .... 


Teacher assistants in the Mississippi Delta have an enviable job. Also, they earn $9 an hour. Slate 

Merit protection is not 'red tape': the dangers of scrapping job selection criteria

I know my boss would like to give me feedback, but she just has too many responsibilities. She’s too busy
Managers, you work really hard. But are you doing your job?

ATO gets out of the compliance business

As we noted this summer, “There’s simply no time for thank-yous in Biglaw. Time is money, and being polite is not only a waste of time, but it’s surely a waste of a few cents to boot. This is pretty standard protocol at many firms.”
The latest firm to make this standard protocol is Sidley Austin. An email from partner Paul Wysocki has been making the rounds since it was sent out earlier this month.
Going forward, please don’t send “thank you” emails but if you decide to do so (notwithstanding my instructions not to do so) please do not include partners. Just a complete waste of everyone’s time.

"Statistical analysis carried out at the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences reveal something intriguing. The composition of works from within a particular genre was characterized by the exceptional dynamics of a cascading (avalanche) narrative structure. This type of narrative turns out to be multifractal. That is, fractals of fractals are created.”  EurekaArt

 Disney brothers with their wives and mother on the day they opened their studio in 1923
RP005 Czeching on Ruby and Dhillon at LA ...

Briefly a lawyer, Goethe turned to writing poetry and falling in love - and never stopped. At the age of 72, he proposed marriage to a 17 years old ...

I am bewildered at [the Department of Parliamentary Services'] approach – particularly given the Commonwealth's obligation to act as a model litigant" PS

Does literature belong on the streets? Thanks to some forward-thinking initiatives like the Coffee Sleeves Conversation at Coffee House Press and the Chicago-based project “Poem While You Wait,” (in which poets stationed around the city produce original, on-demand poems for five dollars a piece) literature is finding its way to the masses


Public servants as 'silent members of society'? The creeping encrouchments on freedom of speech  

Permanent and temporary migration: a quick guide to key internet links 

Australian Government powerless to stop Kommunist Chinese Daigou formula hoarders

Quick Guides Migration Statistics 

Hemingway Story 

Tuesday, February 02, 2016

The Bull (Taurus) market era on borrowed time


Sadly, that rare insightful Observer of rises and fall and another fall of markets and social networks Historian Forrest McDonald has passed away

Red-Hot Property Markets Cool as Rich Investors Retrench WSJ


The financial relationships between multinationals and their subsidiaries can be labyrinthine, involving several countries and jurisdictions. Take transfer pricing, for instance, which essentially covers transactions within multinationals as a firm buys goods and services from subsidiaries or vice versa. Think of automotive components shipped within Toyota, or customer services in Apple. In financial terms, these transactions can be substantial: it is estimated that around two-thirds of all cross-border transactions occur between entities belonging to the same group. Tax inspectors without borders

The World Has Discovered a $1 Trillion Ocean Bloomberg

Roo links


The low tricks of high finance: how greedy bankers, weak politicians and timid journalists could cause a new crash Spectator. Michael Lewis interview


Central counterparties, also known as central clearinghouses, were supposed to reduce systemic risk. That story, like the tale of smarter data, is not playing out according to its script Central counterparties the new locus of systemic risk

Why Robots Mean Interest Rates Could Go Even Lower In The Future Bloomberg

Chicago Public Schools Bankruptcy? Credit Slips

 Research suggests that over the past decade, Google has earned more than £24 billion in the UK, with its taxable profits leaving it with a projected bill of more than £2 billion, according to Reuters. In reality, Google has paid just 10 per cent of that throughout that time period. Politicians question cosy tax deals




Michael Simkovic (Seton Hall) presents The Knowledge Tax, 82 U. Chi. L. Rev. ___ (2015), at NYU today as part of its Tax Policy Colloquium Series hosted by Daniel Shaviro and Chris Sanchirico

“I keep hearing about whistle-blower protections,” he tells Salon, exasperatedly. “It certainly didn’t happen for me.”
Czech out the whole Story of the Man Who Knew Too Much ... Countrywide really did have this pose about integrity; meanwhile they didn’t only sell toxic loans but they housed their staff in toxic buildings. What Countrywide, and then BofA, did to Winston is inexcusable. I admire how he’s channeling this into the cause of bank accountability more generally, among the others.

Leslie Meisels, Suddenly the Shadow Fell (Toronto: Azrieli Foundation, 2015), p. 59:
The psychological effects of my experiences [during the Holocaust] taught me certain things that formed a philosophy that I have lived ever since. Life in the concentration camp [Bergen-Belsen], especially watching the leadership in our barracks and acquiring the simple knowledge of how to measure and cut bread rations precisely, taught me a great deal. I saw how people who were well educated and broad-minded stood out from the crowd, how they were able to adapt to their situation more easily than others. People looked up to them and they became leaders. I came to the conclusion that no matter what circumstance life puts a person in, even if everything you have is taken away, as long as you live, no one can take away your knowledge. Everything you have learned remains yours and can help you. For me, this produced a thirst for knowledge and a will to learn, which has never changed.
CLOs, Save Our Souls Bloomberg



Big U.S. banks will be rolling out ATMs that take smartphones, not cards LA Times. I can think of about 36 mostly privacy-related reasons why this is a terrible idea.

Monday, February 01, 2016

We Know Little of Nosing ...

Even front haulted door of agrees with MEdia Dragon How little we know about  Shamelessly Strong Door In Martin Inc or even Iggy Pop, né James Newell Osterberg, Jr. I say “apparently” because fraud is legal tender on the internet. Pop recounts his reading of Edward Gibbons’ The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, first in an abridged edition and later the full six volumes. Pop lists five benefits from reading Gibbon’s masterwork, the most admirable being No. 4: “I find out how little I know.” That’s precisely the reason ambitious readers read -- less to learn than to be reminded how small and inadequate is the knowledge we already possess. I hope Pop has gone on to read the volume often lost in the shadow cast by Gibbon’s History,his Memoirs with their beguiling introduction: 


“In the fifty-second year of my age, after the completion of an arduous and successful work, I now propose to employ some moments of my leisure in reviewing the simple transactions of a private and literary life. Truth, naked, unblushing truth, the first virtue of more serious history, must be the sole recommendation of this personal narrative. The style shall be simple and familiar: but style is the image of character; and the habits of correct writing may produce, without labour or design, the appearance of art and study.” 


[See Joseph Epstein’s recent essay devoted to Gibbon: “The true subject ofThe History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is human nature, and, in Gibbon’s recounting, it’s a far from pretty picture.”]

Reading between graveyards of Vrbov and Vienna and Villawood  

Charles Buxton, Notes of Thought  (London: John Murray, 1883), p. 58:

Alas! alas! for the mere trifle that threw us in the way of our misfortune! How ineffably small a change would have saved us! It cuts us to the heart to think that a friend's call, a word lightly spoken, a chance meeting, gave us the petty shove into the bottomless abyss!

In each separate case this is so. And yet there is a want of manly good sense in this lamentation. For are we to expect no calamities ? And if they are to come, the chain that ends with them is sure to have links as feeble as those we are bewailing. Our regret is, practically, a regret not for the smallness of the cause that brought this evil upon us, but for the existence of evil itself.

Moreover, 'tis as broad as it is long. If our misfortunes were tumbled upon our heads by trifles so too were our fortunes. You may trace your present happiness, not less than your unhappiness, along a line of incidents, which, at some points, a fly's weight would have snapped asunder.


James Huneker, Egoists (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1909), p. 179:
Huysmans never betrayed the slightest interest in doctrines of equality; for him, as for Baudelaire, socialism, the education of the masses, or democratic prophylactics were hateful.... Nothing was more horrible to him than the idea of universal religion, universal speech, universal government, with their concomitant universal monotony. The world is ugly enough without the ugliness of universal sameness. Variety alone makes this globe bearable. He did not believe in art for the multitude, and the tableau of a billion humans bellowing to the moon the hymn of universal brotherhood made him shiver — as well it might. [ imagine if we all behaved like CJ or NO]

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Dawn Of Day  (§163), tr. J. M. Kennedy (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1924), p. 167:
Against Rousseau. If it is true that there is something contemptible about our civilisation, we have two alternatives: of concluding with Rousseau that, "This despicable civilisation is to blame for our bad morality," or to infer, contrary to Rousseau's view, that "Our good morality is to blame for this contemptible civilisation. Our social conceptions of good and evil, weak and effeminate as they are, and their enormous influence over both body and soul, have had the effect of weakening all bodies and souls and of crushing all unprejudiced, independent, and self-reliant men, the real pillars of a strong civilisation: wherever we still find the evil morality to-day, we see the last crumbling ruins of these pillars." Thus let paradox be opposed by paradox! It is quite impossible for the truth to lie with both sides: and can we say, indeed, that it lies with either? Decide for yourself. 

Friedrich Nietzsche, Morgenröthe, inGesammelte Werke, Vol. 10 (München: Musarion Verlag, 1920), p. 152 ...


Requiem-writing

“Misanthropes are, generally speaking, delightful people. At least I’ve never met one I didn’t like.” An absence of Vanity is rare in any writer ...

The great writer’s gift to a reader is to make him a better writer.

Man comes back to life after freezing for one night ZME Science A more extreme version of the case of a doctor, Beck Weathers, in the disastrous Everest climb documented in Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air. except Beck suffered much more long-term damage. IIRC, Krakauer was one of the ones who’d seen him outside the camp, apparently frozen to death, and was stunned when Beck managed to stagger in hours later

"We go to our deaths asymptotically, never getting there because ‘we’ and ‘there’ can’t exist at the same moment"


Our irrational overuse of numbered lists does nothing to improve critical thinking. And they are rife in the public service. Lists

“I’m still me: a person for whom reading has always been a defining feature. I deal with change by reading my way through it.”  LitHub

Writing political speeches by AI algorithm.
This is the era of the first sentence: supposedly a writer's only chance to entice a reader. Too often, however, a great first sentence is the only great sentence Requiem Sentences

Will inequality in Sydney fuel Antipodean Revolution and New Writers

How the Homeless Population Is Changing — and Becoming Much More Vulnerable The Conversation

Zygmunt Bauman: “Social media are a trap” El Pais (martha r). Important. This article is mainly about inequality, which Bauman was early to identify as a “metastasis”.
Google Beethoven Logo
Beethoven's Requiem on Media Dragon and Google ...

... What’s great about Goethe? 



First they came for the Revolution and I did not speak out
because I was not a Revolution.
Then they came for the Parliamentary Socialism
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Parliamentary Socialism.
Then they came for the Third Party
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Third Party.
Then they came for the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party.
Then they came for the Green Lantern
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Green Lantern.

Then they came for me
but that was cool
because I’m a Democrat.
First They Came For… Corey Robin 

“Tolstoy’s huge novel about Russia during the Napoleonic Wars has been adapted many times, despite the difficulty of catching the essence of a work whose essence has a lot to do with sheer scale. When the book was published, in 1869, people wondered … Was this a history or a novel? And why was it so big? It’s big because it’s both.” The New Yorker: What Do We Love About ‘War and Peace’? 

UK's Tony Blair Privatizing Other Countries' Public Services 

"The camera is just as capable of lying as the typewriter," wrote Brecht. How then should we handle this devious tool?

“The best-selling author of the His Dark Materials trilogy said he had ‘had enough’ of writers being expected to work for nothing. He announced his decision on Twitter and revealed he had long tried to persuade the Oxford festival to change its policy ‘but they won’t. Time to go.'”
Read the story at The Independent (UK): Philip Pullman Quits Oxford Literary Festival Because Guest Authors Don’t Get Paid

Redundant phrases will clutter your writing and frustrate your readers. Review your writing for the obvious, and less obvious, culprits
Clarity is Key: Making Writing Clean and Concise
a9631-zeus-edge-fly-25jan16. links
1. What’s great about Goethe?
- See more at: http://marginalrevolution.com/#sthash.l7xvYP2W.dpuf
Writing for Vocabulary

Pew – Projects funded through Kickstarter cut across more than 60 countries – “Over the past several years, crowdfunding via the internet has become a popular way to engage public support – and financial backing – for all kinds of projects, from the Coolest Cooler to a virtual reality gaming headset to a prototype of a sailing spacecraft and a bailout fund for Greece. The area of journalism is no exception. From April 28, 2009 to September 15, 2015, 658 journalism-related projects proposed on Kickstarter, one of the largest single hubs for crowdfunding journalism, received full – or more than full – funding, to the tune of nearly $6.3 million.”