Wednesday, December 06, 2017

Troubled Waters: Saint Mikulas aka Nicholas Day

My dear, it is a great strength to have faced the worst and to have *felt* it a feature of beauty. Nothing ever after can shake one.”
― Olaf Stapledon, Odd John


CHRISTINE KEELER, FORMER MODEL AT HEART OF BRITAIN’S PROFUMO AFFAIR, DIES AT 75


Swift is popularly regarded as the author of one book, Gulliver’s Travels, which is like remembering Shakespeare solely for “Venus and Adonis.” His output was prolific and varied. Blair’s observation that Swift “delivers his sentiments in a plain, downright, positive manner” applies to his verse as well as his prose. This is from “On Poetry: A Rhapsody”(1733):



“In bulk there are not more degrees

From elephants to mites in cheese,

Than what a curious eye may trace

In creatures of the rhyming race.

From bad to worse, and worse they fall;

But who can reach the worst of all?”


THE LITTLE RODENTS PROBABLY WORSHIP SATAN:  Squirrel menace really, really hates Christmas.


A snowboarder dressed as Santa Claus rides down a slope at Sunday River during the ski resort's 18th annual Santa Sunday

There could be at least four by-elections in the early part of next year with two Labor MPs and a Nick Xenophon team MP all apparently being dual citizens when nominations closed last year.
Another MP, Labor's David Feeney, says he might also need to be referred to the High Court to test his eligibility.
Labor MP Josh Wilson's renunciation of his British citizenship came into effect on June 29, 2016 — 20 days after the June 9 deadline.


A troubled king tide prompted by a supermoon earlier this week has inundated areas around Sydney Harbour, with further record tides and flooding to come.




Bloomberg:  ‘Future Tax Traps’ Lurk for Multinationals in Senate's Proposal, by Lynnley Browning

Peter Baron's son in law Malcolm Turnbull starts a war and launches fiery attack on Sam Dastyari in question time





Senate Republicans tucked some multibillion-dollar tax increases for corporations into the 515-page tax bill they released this week — spring-loaded hikes that would begin after 2024 if the economy doesn’t grow as fast as GOP lawmakers have promised.



Some of the taxes in question aim squarely at companies like Apple and Alphabet, which rely on intellectual property, also known as “intangibles,” that they’ve transferred to overseas subsidiaries, tax experts say. Spokesmen for the two tech giants didn’t respond to requests for comment Tuesday.

“These so-called ‘sunrise’ provisions essentially are future tax traps for unsuspecting multinationals,” said David Sites, a partner in Grant Thornton LLP’s National Tax Office in Washington. In all, changes made by the Senate Finance Committee last week would boost revenue from international provisions aimed at such companies by about $55.6 billion over a decade, to $154.6 billion; most of the increase would come in 2026 and 2027. 





AOC chief decided on an act of radical transparency - the sky didn't fall.
"There was one question I couldn't have answered if we hadn't done it and it was: ‘What are you hiding?’ And that would have dragged us backwards." 


Memory is a willful dog. It won’t be summoned or dismissed but it cannot survive without you. It can sustain you or feed on you. It visits when it is hungry, not when you are. It has a schedule all its own that you can never know. ~ Elliot Perlman

“When you’re working hard to meet tight deadlines, you don’t have time to painstakingly bold every title in your document or fiddle with mysterious formatting inconsistencies at the 11th hour. Word can do more than you think. There are plenty of options for getting the program to work for you so that you always meet your deadlines and are confident in the accuracy of your documents. Here are 10 simple Microsoft Word features that every lawyer should know…”

Dear Santa:

DeepDotWeb: “A study by Google discovered that phishing attacks through fake emails were as effective as compared to data breaches that exposed usernames and passwords. Cyber criminals or cyber groups manage to steal over 25,000 valid sets of web credentials for Gmail accounts every week, painting a picture of the extent this problem has reached. Hackers are constantly searching for, and are able to obtain over millions of different platform’s usernames and passwords on dark web marketplaces. This study was as a result of a team effort with the University of California at Berkeley and the International Computer Science Institute. The study focused on discovering the most common way in which user accounts get hacked. It also emphasized on the numerous hacking techniques available and which of them was the biggest threat to web users. “We find that the risk of a full email takeover depends significantly on how attackers first acquire a victim’s (reused) credentials,” the researchers stated. A 12-month investigation of login and account data found on websites and criminal forums, (or which had been harvested by hacking tools) observed more than 12 million instances of account theft as a result of a phishing

Clear Memories came back via Teacher a film of real note  There is a poem I once wrote 'Troubled Waters Love Moi' but cannot share even under capitalism as it ponders and reckons even reflects on the current state of affairs as well:  








Martin Parkinson on the rise and fall of the APS in his notable career.
Howard gets too much blame. Abbott not enough. The PM&C secretary reflects on his career through turbulent times and forming policy in a 24-hour news cycle.