~ Larry Niven
“High sentiments always win in the end. The leaders who offer blood, toil, tears and sweat always get more out of their followers than those who offer safety and a good time. When it comes to the pinch, human beings are heroic.”
– George Orwell, author and journalist
'Wrongful arrest': Alleged standover man to sue the state over extortion case
A Sydney lawyer claimed he had been stood over by some big underworld names over a $160,000 construction industry debt, but then changed his story.
Uber Sued By 6,000 Australian Taxi Drivers For ‘Illegal Operations’ International Business Times
WATER BUYBACK: Barnaby Joyce is on video explaining why he sacked Paul Grimes, as the auditor-general confirms review of the department’s water purchasing
Transcripts reveal Ken Wyatt's office was subject to a secret inquiry into bullying allegations - Sydney Morning Herald |
Carparks, swimming pools and sport fields - how to sandbag a seat, Liberal style
Transcripts reveal Ken Wyatt's office was subject to a secret inquiry into bullying allegations - Sydney Morning Herald
Complex securities blamed in crisis make comeback FT. CDOs but for corporate debt, not subprime mortgages.
My experience as a whistleblower Slashdot (JB). Interesting Fujifilm-Intel connection.
'That Little Murmur Wasn’t There Before'
I remember a little girl who was said to have a “heart murmur,” which conjured the image of a small internal voice forever nagging. She was deemed “delicate.” We shouldn’t yell around her or knock her down, and definitely don’t mention the murmur. It was all mumbo-jumbo, something adults told kids to make them behave. The Mayo Clinicattempts to clear things up for the lay audience:
“Heart murmurs are sounds during your heartbeat cycle — such as whooshing or swishing — made by turbulent blood in or near your heart. These sounds can be heard with a stethoscope. A normal heartbeat makes two sounds like ‘lubb-dupp’ (sometimes described as ‘lub-DUP’), which are the sounds of your heart valves closing.”
In other words, yet another illustration of nature’s fondness for iambic meter, and “turbulent blood” is awfully good. While recently writing an essay about light verse, I corresponded with a fine poet in Louisiana, Gail White, for whom humor and the more troubling human realities are conjoined twins. She wrote a poem titled “Heart Murmur,”which begins:
“‘That little murmur wasn’t there before,’
the doctor says, folding his stethoscope.
‘The valves are stiffening a bit with age.
It’s natural.’ So is the hangman’s rope.”
They were angry that he said it happened, because they knew it happened.
'Move to higher ground': Liberal MP's climate advice to Fijians
John Alexander, the sitting Liberal MP for Bennelong, has sought to downplay his comments at a public forum in his electorate.
Crowding worsens as more commuters pile on trains to Sydney CBD
The number of commuters travelling by train into Sydney's CBD during the busiest hour of the morning peak has surged by almost 8000 in a year, new figures show.
CORRUPTION
ALLEGATIONS: Eight Logan City Council members now face criminal charges
and are suspended from office.
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'Millionaires' factory' chief's pay packet leaves big four rivals in the shade
Macquarie Group boss Shemara Wikramanayake was paid $17 million in the past financial year, more than the combined pay of the chief executives of the big four banks.
“Today, consistent with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA), as amended (codified in 50 U.S.C. § 1873(b)), and the Intelligence Community’s (IC) Principles of Intelligence Transparency, we are releasing our sixth annual Statistical Transparency Report Regarding Use of National Security Authorities presenting statistics on how often the government uses certain national security authorities. Providing these statistics allows for an additional way to track the use of FISA authorities and National Security Letters (NSLs). The statistics also add further context regarding the IC’s rigorous and multi-layered oversight framework that safeguards the privacy of United States persons’ information and non-U.S. persons’ information acquired pursuant to these national security authorities. This report goes beyond the government’s statutory duty of providing statistics by further providing the public with detailed explanations as to how the IC uses its national security authorities…”
TechCrunch: ‘The intelligence community’s annual transparency report revealed a spike in the number of warrantless searches of Americans’ data in 2018. The data, published Tuesday by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), revealed a 28% rise in the number of targeted search terms used to query massive databases of collected Americans’ communications…”
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