Wednesday, September 11, 2019

Silver Fox: To ensure nobody was left behind

"I invite everyone to choose forgiveness rather than division, teamwork over personal ambition."
--Jean-Francois Cope ( Not related to Dr Cope)
Everything Apple announced at its iPhone 11 reveal event


It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends.” 

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
Winston S. Churchill 


September 11th: Evil Is Real And So Is Courage. 


"For most of his life, Wendell Berry has written as a kind of elegist, detailing the tragic path that we have taken and recalling other paths now mostly fading"... Shared Place  A life filled with Havelisque Dissent  

Loneliness taking hold as people struggle to find sufficient work and affordable housing - ABC News

'We don't want businesses to fail': ATO looks to equip practitioners with more advisory tools ...

AccountantsDaily‎ 
Mr Hirschhorn said the Tax Office is now looking at ways to “help businesses thrive”



Data retention: ATO renews push to be part of 'metadata' regime

Computerworld Australia‎
The Australian Taxation Office has reiterated its frustration at being excluded from the list of ...
Australian Taxation Office really wants its access to telco metadata ... ZDNet
The ATO is cracking down on this $6 billion problem Ragtrader
Law must change to make super payable on payday Money Management


Liberal MP Gladys Liu refuses to say China's actions in SouthChina ...

The Guardian‎ 
The MP for the Victorian seat of Chisholm also questioned over her connection toChinese Communist ...
Liberal MP Gladys Liu denies links to Chinese government The Sydney Morning Herald
Gladys Liu says she 'cannot recall' being on China Overseas ... ABC News



Grief is like a garment of variable size.

At times, it is a heavy wool cloak, enveloping, engulfing, it weighs you down.
At others, it is that t-shirt with the annoying tag you cannot rip out and that only gets worse if you cut it
It is never light and comfortable
It is usually too hot and saps your energy
It is a flattering color on no one.
It cannot be removed, cannot be dropped by the side of the road.
Laundering does not help it, nor does washing it in tears.
It will not rip; you cannot remove it; it is as if it is the enchanted
Shoes from that fairy tale; it has molded to your body.






   REST IN PEACE, OLD-TIME BLOGGER CHARLES G. HILL.



 Reasons to kill your LinkedIn account

 






Ancient Earth, the tool behind this millennia-spanning visualization, is the brainchild of Ian Webster, curator of the world’s largest digital dinosaur database. As Michael D’estries reports for Mother Nature Network, Webster drew on data from the PALEOMAP Project—spearheaded by paleogeographer Christopher Scotese, the initiative tracks the evolving “distribution of land and sea” over the past 1,100 million years—to build the map. Users can input a specific address or more generalized region, such as a state or country, and then choose a date ranging from zero to 750 million years ago. Currently, the map offers 26 timeline options, traveling back from the present to the Cryogenian Period at intervals of 15 to 150 million years…”

Strike with the Band The Baffler. Kate Wagner.


 

MakeUseof.com: “How often do you get an email that makes you wonder, “I wonder why they sent this to me? What am I supposed to do with it?” As an adult, it’s an essential skill to know how to write professional emails that save time and get replies. Even though you send several emails every day, you might not be great at composing these messages. And like with any form of communication, email etiquette evolves as time passes. You can learn some of these data-backed ways to write professional emails, or use these apps and websites for easy templates and rules…” 

 Ways to Write Professional Emails That Save Time and Effort

streets of Prague


STEVEN KENNEDY: The new Commonwealth Treasury secretary says there is ample space for cooperation between all Australian governments, and he urges public servants to make it happen without waiting to be authorised by ministers all the time.
 


THE 21st CENTURY IS NOT WORKING OUT AS I HAD HOPED: Leprosy Could Be The Next Public Health Crisis To Hit Los Angeles.






(Via Small Dead Animals’ recurring “O, Sweet Saint Of San Andreas Hear my prayer” category.)



The Atavist’s “Masterpiece Theater,” by Anna Altman, traces the works of an art forger, Geert Jan Jansen (aka, among others, Jan Van den Bergen). Among other notorious works, Jansen forged a Picasso drawing which was thought to have been destroyed in a robbery, then directed a writer to it so the painting could be rediscovered.

Altman spends a fair amount of time chipping away at Jansen’s motives, and those of art forgers in general:

It takes a certain psychology to exploit art’s loopholes: a tendency toward self-aggrandizement, a loose relationship with the truth, and a sense of superiority, particularly vis-à-vis art royalty. Many forgers take a perverse pleasure in thumbing their noses at gatekeeping elites. And forgers can be something of a Rorschach test for the public. The art world, with its exclusivity, money, and pretension, elicits strong, sometimes negative reactions. The idea of someone skilled enough with a paintbrush or pen to fool the rich and powerful can be tantalizing. “To art critics, the forger is a mediocre artist seeking revenge; to the media, a conman interested only in money; to the apologist, he is the equal of the masters he forged; to the public he is often a folk hero,” Wynne writes.

There’s an element of Catch Me If You Can here:

Inside the château, Schoeller found hundreds of artworks that he and the French police suspected were fraudulent. They were attributed to masters like Picasso, Matisse, and Joan Miró. They were arranged in neat stacks, apparently ready for sale. Fake Chagall paintings hung above the stove, drying. Several rooms were designated for a particular artist whose style was being faked. Authorities also found half-finished works, sketches for new ones, contracts with auction houses in Belgium, Switzerland, and New York, and false authentication certificates. Moreover, Van den Bergen had all the tools required to produce fake certificates of authenticity, including a bag full of stamps and 30 vintage typewriters used to approximate typefaces from various time periods. In a dustbin were strips of paper cut from forged certificates to eliminate watermarks, which might have given away the documentation’s true age.

“Tolerance only for those who agree with you is no tolerance at all.”
Ray Davis