Friday, January 10, 2020

Injustice for all: Some secrets must remain secret.

“Memory is not static, but dynamic. By its very nature, it implies movement. Nor is tradition static; it too is dynamic, as that great man [Gustav Mahler, taking up a  metaphor used by Jean Jaurès] used to say: tradition is the guarantee of the future and not a container of ashes.”



You've donated to Celeste Barber's bushfire fundraiser — what next?

If you've donated to Celeste Barber's hugely successful Facebook fundraiser, the money has already left your account. But where did it go after you clicked the donate button?



'Absolute calamity': NSW lags Victoria in wildlife fire response

NSW is facing "an ecological catastrophe" in the wake of the massive bushfires, with the Berejiklian government accused of lagging in its response compared with Victoria.

Heroes and villains revealed

Here in Bermagui we have been without power for a week. All the shops are closed, but a service station did open one day for petrol.

THE WAR THAT SAVED EUROPE FROM COMMUNISM: A century ago only the Polish army stood between Bolsheviks and a severely weakened Europe. Not many Americans know about this. I believe I originally learned about it from Jim Dunnigan’s Strategy & Tactics magazine, back in high school.


Lunch with Silverwater Prison Governor Craig Smith: 'A sad place not a bad place'

Silverwater Prison is Craig Smith's seventh jail and by far the hardest. "Today we’ve gassed one inmate and we’ve had two fights."




Analysis: Trump spoke for 10 minutes while the world watched. But 10 words tell us all we need to know about what might come next

The opening line of his response to the strikes in Iraq made Donald Trump's position clear, but there could be more tension on the horizon with the path from here still hard to predict, write Emily Olsen and Kathryn Diss.

JSTOR Daily – Well-researched stories about the forest economy, eavesdropping squirrels, and more from publications that bridge the gap between news and scholarship

“I prefer a Church which is bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets, rather than a Church which is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own security. I do not want a Church concerned with being at the center and then ends by being caught up in a web of obsessions and procedures.”~ Pope Francis


ROBERT MICKENS. Pope Francis begins the most important year of his pontificate.



When the history of Pope Francis’ time as Bishop of Rome is finally written, there is a good chance that the Year of Our Lord 2020 will be recorded as the most important of his entire pontificate. Some are wondering whether it may actually be his last.
"What the pope did demonstrates one thing – he’s a man.”
Pope Francis began this New Year by apologizing for losing his patience. It is perhaps an auspicious sign.

First of all, because it showed that the pope, the tallest tower on earth, has the humility to publicly admit his faults and say he’s sorry. But, secondly, it showed that, beneath a seemingly unguarded display of irritation, there is also a sense of urgency and restfulness within Francis.

Chris W. Surprenant and Jason Brennan, Injustice For All: How Financial Incentives Corrupted and Can Fix the US Criminal Justice System.  A good and clear introduction to exactly what the title promises.  Possible reforms are “End Policing for Profit,” “Stop Electing Prosecutors and Judges,” “Required Rotation of Public Defenders and Prosecutors,” and others.


We study how promotions to top jobs affect the probability of divorce. We compare the relationship trajectories of winning and losing candidates for mayor and parliamentarian and find that a promotion to one of these jobs doubles the baseline probability of divorce for women, but not for men. We also find a widening gender gap in divorce rates for men and women after being promoted to CEO. An analysis of possible mechanisms shows that divorces are concentrated in more gender-traditional couples, while women in more gender-equal couples are unaffected.
That is from a new paper by Olle Folke and Johanna Rickne, just published in the American Economics Journal: Applied Economics.  Elsewhere in that issue, Adukia, Asher, and Novosad find that better roads aid education  by boosting the returns to schooling.

MUELLER’S CULTURE OF CORRUPTION:  Inspector General Report Shows Special Counsel Replicated FBI Abuses.


 Kabalarians at the Gate – Quadrant Online
There is little doubt that children, even the most privileged, are being bred up to easy moral outrage about complex and difficult social matters before they can even think, which is why, perhaps, a child of nine or ten can spell correctly the word offensive but not write (or we are willing and able to believe that it can). 


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