Benefits of Diversity

A bunch of my favorite social scientists, including Philip Tetlock, Jonathan Haidt, Lee Jussim, and Charlotta Stern, have co-authored an amazing article on the scarcity and value of political diversity in social psychology*, forthcoming in Behavioral and Brain Sciences.  Full pre-print version here.  Highlights:
Benefits of Diversity

Danish research links circumcision to autism Copenhagen Post 

ABA Reminder to Prosecutors: Owing Money Is Not A Crime Bob Lawless, Credit Slips

Tax & Snakes & Oils

Robert Wood, Big Winner Of 4,000% Tips For Jesus? IRS

Christopher Bergin, Would You Settle for Flowers in Place of Help From the IRS? (Tax Analysts Blog).

When  the man selling the snake oil out of the patent medicine wagon takes a deep draught of his inventory, it tells you he believes it at least won’t hurt him. But if he then keels over and goes into convulsions, he’ll find sales tough to come by.
This explains why it might be harder for Peymon Mottahedeh to recruit additional “students” to his “Freedom Law School” after his visit to Tax Court last week. The gentleman is well-known in “tax honesty” circles — enough to have earned him a spot in the Quatloos “Hall of Shame.”
Mr. Mottahedeh’s law school has what the bar association might consider an unorthodox curriculum. Judge Morrison explains (footnotes omitted):

Since at least 1999, the Freedom Law School has organized conferences attended by hundreds of people. The Freedom Law School charged fees to the attendees. The Freedom Law School also sold books, tapes, CDs, and DVDs. It also sold packages of services, including:
-the “Simple Freedom Package” (for an initial fee of $4,000);
-the “Royal Freedom Package” (for an initial fee of $6,000).
The Freedom Law School also offered multilevel marketing arrangements, including:
-“Freedom Fighter in Training”;
-“Freedom Promoter”;
-“Freedom Leader”; and
-“Master Freedom Leader”.

You have to admit, not every law school gives you MLM opportunities.

Through its conferences, materials, and service packages, the Freedom Law School promoted various techniques for evading the payment of federal income taxes. The techniques included:
-Minimize financial records.
-Do not give information to the IRS.
-Do not file tax returns.

Mr. Mottahedeh apparently took his own advice, and that worked out about as well as you would expect. The Tax Court allowed the IRS to statistically estimate his spending, in the absence of bank and financial. The taxpayer objected, but the judge explains:

The Mottahedehs counter that in reconstructing their income the revenue agent should have considered only the income reflected in their bank and credit-union records. But the Mottahedehs tried to avoid the use of banks. Their bank records would not provide sufficient information about their income. Furthermore, even the bank records that the revenue agent obtained were incomplete. The revenue agent was unable to obtain records of all of the deposits to the Mottahedehs’ accounts. For these reasons, focusing exclusively on the income reflected in their bank records would underestimate the Mottahedehs’ income. The revenue agent had to find other methods of estimating their income. The revenue agent chose to use average spending statistics supplemented by estimates of actual spending amounts. The courts have permitted the IRS to rely on the use of average spending statistics when, as here, the taxpayer fails to cooperate with the IRS

The bottom line: $93,187 in tax, along with another $47,303 in penalties.
If the patent medicine man doesn’t die, expect him to just find another crowd and open up shop again.
Cite: Mottahedeh, T.C. Memo 2014-258

Too cold for a film tax credit trial? A strange development in the Iowa Film Credit scandal, reported by the Des Moines Register:

A new fraud trial for a Nebraska filmmaker accused of using a fake purchase agreement to get tax credits should be delayed because two elderly witnesses have left Iowa for the winter, according to a prosecutor handling the case.

Yes, it’s cold here. We’re supposed to get a snowstorm today, and it’s supposed to be 1 on Wednesday. For a high temperature. And I can’t say I have a great deal of sympathy for somebody who got millions in tax credit money.
But a criminal trial is serious business, and the film scandal has been going since 2009. The prosecution says the witness is worried that he might fall. I think arrangements can be made to get him safely from the car.
What’s the case about?

Dennis Brouse, 64, has been waiting for a second trial after judges on the Iowa Court of Appeals overturned a felony fraud conviction against him in April. Brouse’s company, Changing Horses Productions, received $9 million in tax credits from Iowa’s scandal-ridden film tax credit program.
Brouse faces a single fraud charge and potentially a prison sentence, stemming from the purchase of a 38-foot camper trailer he bought from Prole couple Wayne and Shirley Weese. Prosecutors say Brouse paid the couple $10,500 in cash for the trailer, but he claimed it cost twice that amount in a statement for tax credits given to the Iowa Film Office.

The state auditor’s report on the Iowa Film Office showed a lot of creative accounting for Changing Horses, including the claim of a $1 million expense for non-cash “sponsorship” considerations. I am guessing that they are going after the trailer case because there are e-mails from the Iowa Department of Revenue blessing the “in-kind” expense concept. I’m pretty sure that there is no such endorsement of doubling expenditures.

Charlie Hebdo shooting: Paris terrorists aimed at freedom of expression, we must defend it

When Canberra Times cartoonist David Pope heard about the Charlie Hebdo shooting he drew a quick pencil sketch while watching the TV reports late on Wednesday night.
Within hours the image had gone viral on social media with more than 50,000 retweets and close to 22,000 favourites by 8am.
"It just hit a nerve"

David Pope's Charlie Hebdo cartoon goes viral on social media

smh.com.au

Cathy Wilcox says political cartooning is a very big part of French life .
"Those line-crossing sorts of drawings - be it because they are sexually risque or politically close to the bone - the French are really proud of that history of freedom of expression.
"They publish stuff that would make us blush and make us look like a very conservative country with our notion of what is acceptable," she said.
She said the Charlie Hebdo magazine had a strong underlying principle of freedom of speech.

Cathy Wilcox, political cartoonist with Fairfax newspaper The Sydney Morning Herald

On 7 January 2015, at approximately 11:30 CET (10:30 UTC), three masked gunmen armed with Kalashnikov rifles, a shotgun, and a rocket-propelled grenade launcher stormed the headquarters of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris. They shot and killed 12 people, including Charlie Hebdo staff and two French National police officers, and wounded 11 others.
The gunmen entered the building and began shooting with automatic weapons, while shouting "Allahu Akbar". Up to 50 shots were fired during the attack.^[9] Following a massive manhunt, the French police believe they have located the attackers and are mounting an operation against them.^[10][11]
The incident is France's deadliest act of terrorism since 18 June 1961, when 28 people died in a train bombing.              ~     Charlie Hebdo shooting


Ten thousand singing, chanting, passionate Parisians have crammed into the square that symbolises their freedom, only blocks away from the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo where terrorists killed journalists and police officers only hours earlier.
The spontaneous demonstration swelled as the sun set over the Place de la Republique. Young and old crushed into the central city space, jamming traffic.

Crowds gather at the Place de la Republique in Paris to protest against the killing of Charlie Hebdo magazine staff by terrorist gunmen. Photo: Nick Miller

Velvet Demonstrations

An attack in Paris killed 12 people at the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo. View a report on the massacre here: http://slidesha.re/1xFShZL #SlideShare #CharlieHebdo

Cartoonists around the world publish cartoons on the attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices in solidarity with the victims.

David Pope's Charlie Hebdo cartoon goes viral on social media

CODA: Why France’s most famous writer is predicting a Muslim president Quartz

Swimming against the current

“Those who travel with the current will always feel they are good swimmers; those who swim against the current may never realize they are better swimmers than they imagine.”

Photo taken circa Jan 2015 by my nephew, Marcel IMRICH, in the High Tatra region

“Showing that they don’t care about me, or caring that I should know they don’t care about me, still denotes dependence.”

Mystery solved: Darwin's 'severed finger' that baffled police revealed as sea squirt Only in the NT

After days of speculation, marine biologist concludes that item found on a beach was not the remains of a murder victim

There is a form of envy of which I frequently have seen examples, in which an individual tries to obtain something by bullying. If, for instance, I enter a place where many are gathered, it often happens that one or another right away takes up arms against me by beginning to laugh; presumably he feels that he is being a tool of public opinion. But lo and behold, if I then make a casual remark to him, that same person becomes infinitely pliable and obliging. Essentially it shows that he regards me as something great, maybe even greater than I am: but if he can’t be admitted as a participant in my greatness, at least he will laugh at me. But as soon as he becomes a participant, as it were, he brags about my greatness.
That is what comes of living in a petty community.

Kierkegaard on Life 

Good people are not those who lack flaws, the brave are not those who feel no fear, and the generous are not those who never feel selfish. Extraordinary people are not extraordinary because they are invulnerable to unconscious biases. They are extraordinary because they choose to do something about it. 

You must match time’s swiftness with your speed in using it, and you must drink quickly as though from a rapid stream that will not always flow… Just as travelers are beguiled by conversation or reading or some profound meditation, and find they have arrived at their destination before they knew they were approaching it; so it is with this unceasing and extremely fast-moving journey of life, which waking or sleeping we make at the same pace — the preoccupied become aware of it only when it is over

Against the current 

I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us. That is my belief. How to melt “the frozen sea within us

You are living as if destined to live for ever; your own frailty never occurs to you; you don’t notice how much time has already passed, but squander it as though you had a full and overflowing supply — though all the while that very day which you are devoting to somebody or something may be your last. You act like mortals in all that you fear, and like immortals in all that you desire… How late it is to begin really to live just when life must end! How stupid to forget our mortality, and put off sensible plans to our fiftieth and sixtieth years, aiming to begin life from a point at which few have arrived!

Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it… Life is long if you know how to use it.
It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it  

Too much discussion about the public sector remains based on ideology, partisan cant and misperception.
Those words were written by Terry Moran last year, a former secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, the most senior official in the Australian Public Service between 2008 and 2011.
He wrote them a couple of weeks after the Abbott government handed down its first budget.
You can find them in the foreward to a report from the Centre for Policy Development that looked at the false economies resulting from short-term thinking on Australia's public services (the report's called False Economies: Unpacking public service efficiency).
Late last year, a former assistant commissioner of the Australian Tax Office, John Passant, warned in a letter to The Australian Financial Review that repeated efficiency dividends had seriously hurt the ATO's ability to collect tax.
Taxing Times 

Lumbersexual? Forest Journal: The fine art of distinguishing NH’s real men New Hampshire 

Outlaws: Brown Snake at Maroubra

“Children often have a sense of fun, but it is very rare for them to take a predominantly humorous view of life, still less an ironical pleasure in the spectacle of human folly. If humour comes into their daydreams at all, it is as comic relief to thrills and romance.”
~ David Cecil, Max: A Biography of Max Beerbohm

Yes, I’ve been fortunate beyond my wildest dreams and am well aware that it would be churlish to ask for more. Be that as it may, I still wish that I saw that brown snake so many people talked about ... While dragons were solving the world's problems and walking with father-in-law at the Maroubra Beach a large large Bown Snake  was spotted having a great time terrorising local wild walkers this morning while Malchkeon was asleep ;-) The Daily Terror only has images of the friendly black and red creatures:

Red-bellied black snakes have been spotted around the Maroubra sand dunes. Photographer: Liam Kidston.

 

Swimmers at a NSW north coast beach were forced to flee the water when a brown snake unexpectedly emerged from the surf at One Mile Beach.

Onlookers were expecting a shark when lifeguards blew warning whistles, but instead the 1.5-metre snake made its way to the shore from between the flags at the beach at Forster.
Mr Scott also said he was impressed that the snake knew where to swim.
"It was doing the right thing and swimming between the flags," he said.
Brown snakes are considered one of the world's most venomous snakes and are often found in sand dunes along the NSW coast.
 Forstering Brown Snakes

 A beach on Sydney’s south coast has been closed off after a beached whale attracted sharks to the area.
Herald Sun photographer Alex Coppel captured a series of images of the whale — thought to be a juvenile humpback — while on holiday at South Broulee beach, south of Batemans Bay.
At the time, the creature had an injured fin and a crowd of about 100 people gathered to watch, with a few brave enough to touch.
Batemans Bay Beach Whales and Sharks


Kay Bell, Look out for phishing scam from fake Treasury Secretary

 Telstra is trialling a new service that sends security codes to mobile phones before granting access to customers' private details, including call and location histories, after it was revealed how easy it was to hack into any customers' online billing account.
We Told Them So

Economic Terrorists

Najam Shah and Aizaz Hassan allegedly created false documents for more than 350 home loans submitted to banks including Westpac, ANZ, NAB and the Commonwealth Bank.
Terrorists fool banks


Why New Credit Cards May Fall Short on Fraud Control Wall Street Journal. This is appalling, particularly as far as debit cards are concerned. Someone who gets your wallet can drain your account and you have no recourse. My bank (TD Bank) offers PIN cards only on ATM cards that are not debit cards. And you cannot get a business account PIN card of any kind.

Princeton graduate, 30, ‘who shot dead his $200m hedge fund founder father, 70, in NYC apartment’ arrested after he ‘went on the run’ and barricaded himself in his Manhattan home’ Daily Mail

Scott Sumner, The French experiment: Laffer >>>>>>> Piketty. (Econlog). France imposed a 75% top rate. Mr. Sumner observes:

Even if you are not a devout supply-sider (and I am a moderate supply-sider, who believes tax increases usually lead to more revenue) it would be hard to deny that this particular tax increase cost revenue, after accounting for the impact of French economic growth.

There are people who seriously insist that a 75%-90% top tax rate would be a good thing. France is Exhibit A.


Murdoch, Scaife and CIA Propaganda Robert Parry, Consortium News 

Permanent capital: Perpetual cash machines Financial Times. This is insane. Private equity and hedge fund returns are faltering, and these clowns want a BETTER deal?

Even though I do not support the outsourcing of American jobs to foreign nations – in fact I am outraged that our corporations, built upon the blood, sweat and tears of the American population have abandoned their own citizens in the name of greed and profit – we now find ourselves in a huge ship that is quickly sinking.
Who needs enemies if you have home grown offshoring ....

A handy tool — but not the only one in the box Martin Wolf, Financial Times (David L). Reviews, and takes some issue with Richard Koo on balance sheet recessions.

Economic terrorism that shall not be named

Evil 666 And How the top end of town muscled in on Welfare Street

Some of Australia's wealthiest and best-connected business people are behind the company that issued elderly tenants with negotiable termination notices  for 12 previously government-owned houses in Homebush. The company sold the houses within months of acquiring them, almost doubling its investment.
Centennial Property Group offered cash settlements and asked the tenants to leave the properties on Welfare Street and Flemington Road in Homebush shortly after buying the properties from the state government's Sydney Olympic Park Authority in June.
Seven families moved out but five are fighting to stay, including Gerald and Grace Donnelly. The five families armed with sales documents that specify they are protected tenants. They also have letters from the previous owners, the state government's Sydney Olympic Park Authority, which say there was no intention to end their tenancies.
CPG's owners include Alex Waislitz, a long-standing adviser to the Pratt family and worth hundreds of millions of dollars in his own right*.
One of the directors of the company is Lance Rosenberg, the former head of stockbroking house Tricom. Mr Rosenberg successfully overturned a ban on acting as a company director in the wake of the near-collapse of his stockbroking company Tricom during the global financial crisis. On its website, CPG lists its executive team as Lyle Hammerschlag, Jonathan Wolf and Kim Kitchen. Mr Hammerschlag is the son of former Freedom Furniture boss Ivan Hammerschlag.
The Homebush deal is a spectacular outcome for the publicity-shy Centennial Property Group. The group won the state government tender for the property in June, and added $4.7 million to the property price tag in just six months.

Privatising Profit and Socialising Losses

The ultimate goal would be to bring it [the land] into public ownership  The fate of the "jewel of Jervis Bay" Huskisson

The United Nations' world heritage body will issue a "please explain" to the Abbott government demanding a detailed report on the threat posed by the Badgerys Creek airport to the natural integrity of the Blue Mountains Airport and world heritage status 

The state-government's sell-off of public housing at Millers Point hit a snag on Tuesday night when all three properties on offer passed in at auction.

There were 11 potential buyers gathered in the Ray White auction room in Double Bay to compete for three heritage-listed terraces on Kent Street

Up until last night the government had no issue finding buyers for other Millers Point properties, some of which were so popular they sold for more than $1 million above the price guides.

Save Millers Point From Greed

Bream, flathead, mackerel, leatherjacket: Bob Flood has fished them all from the wharves at Millers Point, and says they make "beautiful eating".
The fourth-generation resident has "never been crook", despite warnings about fishing in Sydney Harbour. "You just cut them behind the spine, take their head off and skin them and bring them home. Mum used to cook them up … sensational," he says.
As well as pulling the odd meal from the harbour, Bob, 64, has also drawn a livelihood from it. His teenage years were spent pressing wool into bales, ready for loading onto ships for export. As a tugboat worker, he helped haul oil barges up Parramatta River to the Clyde refinery; then he became a painter and docker on the wharves."I worked casual at all sorts of places. When the ships came in, you had a quid. When they weren't here, you did it tough," he said.
Sad Social Cleansing In Sydney courtesy of Soil Sickness and Casinos

Elements of The Fourth World Sydney in the eyes of the Fifth Estate

While Dr Cope was at the head of the Parliamentary Library, we had a day few will forget as Bernard Woolley and Paul Eddington came to visit the colonial collection of books ;-) Parliament House is based right next to the Florence Nightingale wing of the Sydney Hospital...

"The Compassionate Society" is the eighth episode of the BBC comedy series Yes Minister and was first broadcast 23 February 1981. In this episode, the final "Yes Minister" is uttered by Bernard Woolley.

Discussing a hospital that has 500 administrators, but no doctors, nurses, or patient
James Hacker: You think it's functioning now?
Mrs. Rogers: Minister, it's one of the best run hospitals in the country. It's up for the Florence Nightingale Award.
James Hacker: And what, pray, is that?
Mrs. Rogers: It's won by the most hygienic hospital in the area. Empty Hospitals 

Patients and paramedics were kept waiting up to 20 hours in a western Sydney emergency department on Monday as holiday bed closures led to delays throughout the hospital and ambulance network.
A paramedic source said Blacktown Hospital "closed" 60 beds during the holiday period to accommodate staff holidays. 
Sydney Hospitals

A seemingly endless queue  of buses is at a standstill on Sydney Harbour Bridge due to roadwork in the CBD, with reports some commuters have been forced to wait up to three hours.
The Transport Management Centre has attributed the hold up to roadwork in the CBD with buses that normally use George Street being diverted via King and Elizabeth Streets via Castlereagh Street and buses using temporary bus stops.

Sydney Roads

Another proof that God is on the Catholic Side of Religion Luke Foley Versus the Anglican Mike Baird ... the case is closed. Luke will rule Sydney by April 2015 ...

Coda: Whatever happened to C Newman  Queensland Liberal Premier’s crazy call to retain power The Newman government appears keen to distance itself as much as possible from its federal counterpart, with the Premier making a point of the state's "sovereignty" on the first day of the state election campaign.
Abbott and Newman 

Luke Foley: A man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd

"It seems that every political generation needs to learn the dangers of allowing 'the faceless men' to dictate to elected parliamentarians."
~ Michael Egan December 2014

It is simply impossible to become a great leader without being a great communicator. I hope you noticed the previous sentence didn’t refer to being a great talker – big difference.

"The challenge of leadership is to be strong but not rude; be kind, but not weak; be bold, but not a bully; be humble, but not timid; be proud, but not arrogant; have humor, but without folly."
~Jim Rohn
Ten Commandments of Great Leaders

Luke Foley, praised as intelligent, hard working and independent, has been elected unopposed as NSW Labor leader. He is pictured with deputy party leader Linda Burney. Photo: Nic Walker

“I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure, which is: Try to please everybody.” 
– Herbert Swope 

Foley will also take the infrastructure portfolio in an otherwise little-changed NSW opposition frontbench. He assumes the top job less than three months before the March 28 state election, which he insists Labor can win despite overwhelming odds.

With just three months to go until the next state election, the newly anointed New South Wales Opposition Leader Luke Foley believes his party can stage an upset and win government.

Speaking after being elected unopposed at a special Labor caucus meeting this morning, Mr Foley said he could make a dent in the Premier Mike Baird's popularity.
"I can do a lot. Watch this space. I am in this to win it," Mr Foley said.
"I'm a big sports fan and I've seen some upsets in my time. What I say is come along for the ride. Winning 


Luke Foley has moved to reset NSW Labor before the March election, placing his personal stamp on the leadership by declaring he is "not an ideologue" on asset privatisation and that he will "relish the battle of ideas" with Premier Mike Baird.  Foley is a man of many qualities. As a protege of the inscrutable former Labor Senator John Faulkner, he is refreshingly honest. Foley played an important role at the ICAC hearings into Macdonald in 2013 when he blew the whistle on the corrupt Australian Manufacturing Workers Union preselection process that protected Macdonald's spot in parliament.
In Depth Stories on New Leader

“A man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd.”
– Max Lucado

Former NSW Treasurer Michael Egan has accused Labor party bosses of intimidating MPs into supporting their favoured candidate in next week's leadership ballot.

As the French Napoleon noted "A leader is a dealer in hope."
 
In an email to Labor MPs on Tuesday – two hours before Luke Foley's sole remaining rival Michael Daley withdrew from the contest – Mr Egan says he is "appalled at the current behaviour of the machine men (and they are all men) in Sussex Street."
Fearless Michael Egan 

"Leadership is not about titles, positions, or flow charts. It is about one life influencing another." John C. Maxwell

Devoted Catholic Foley

"Victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan. John F. Kennedy

The virtues of Vice as Malchkeon Heads to Corporate Australia - Technology’s Impact on Workers

The internet and cell phones have infiltrated every cranny of American workplaces, and digital technology has transformed vast numbers of American jobs. Work done in the most sophisticated scientific enterprises, entirely new technology businesses, the extensive array of knowledge and media endeavors, the places where crops are grown, the factory floor, and even mom-and-pop stores has been reshaped by new pathways to information and new avenues of selling goods and services. For most office workers now, life on the job means life online. Pew Research surveyed online a representative sample of adult internet users and asked those who have jobs a series of questions about the role of digital technology in their work lives. This is not a sample representative of all workers. It covers online adults who also have full- or part-time jobs in any capacity. The most recent survey data from Pew Research in late 2013 shows that 94% of jobholders are internet users and they work in all kinds of enterprises from technology companies to non-technology firms; from big corporations to small proprietor operations; and from those in urban areas, farms, and places in between Some of the key findings are highlighted below Bright Button Malchkeon

RS – Cybersecurity Issues and Challenges: In Brief. Eric A. Fischer, Senior Specialist in Science and Technology. December 16, 2014.

“The information and communications technology (ICT) industry has evolved greatly over the last half century. The technology is ubiquitous and increasingly integral to almost every facet of modern society. ICT devices and components are generally interdependent, and disruption of one may affect many others. Over the past several years, experts and policy makers have expressed increasing concerns about protecting ICT systems from cyberattacks, which many experts expect to increase in frequency and severity over the next several years. 

The Virtues of Vice: how punk magazine was transformed into media giant 

It’s a hit with the millennial generation and predicts revenue of $1bn this year, so what can young company teach its rivals? 

In a break from making millions as the world’s richest ad man, Sir Martin Sorrell was asked how best to understand the new media landscape. Visit the headquarters of Vice Media, said the head of WPP. Later he said: “They understand how millennials think, what content millennials want.”
The enthusiasm of 69-year-old Sorrell, whose company owns a 10% stake in Vice, is shared by many of his media mogul friends. That the Murdochs, via 21st Century Fox, Disney’s Bob Iger and the co-founder of MTV Tom Freston all provide cash-backed enthusiasm for Vice suggests they believe that the company, which started life as a “punk magazine” in Montreal in 1994, could understand young people better than News Corp, Disney or any other more traditional media company.
Global Giant


Vatican Pope Francis uses new year mass to condemn slavery and human trafficking

Silence is Golden: Tolstoy's War and Peace

“Be kind, for everyone you meet is carrying a great burden.”
- Cold River in Action... 

We are in the habit of saying that it was not in our power to choose the parents who were allotted to us, that they were given to us by chance. But we can choose whose children we would like to be. There are households of the noblest intellects: choose the one into which you wish to be adopted, and you will inherit not only their name but their property too. Nor will this property need to be guarded meanly or grudgingly: the more it is shared out, the greater it will become. These will offer you a path to immortality and raise you to a point from which no one is cast down. This is the only way to prolong mortality — even to convert it to immortality.

“I do not want to wage war with the ugly. I do not want to accuse, I do not want even to accuse the accusers… I wish to be at any time hereafter only a yea-sayer!”
 
Rather than an annual ritual of promises made to be broken, the best New Year’s resolutions — the ones that actually stick and transform our lives by rewiring our physical and psychological habit loops — are enduring existential aspirations of which we remind ourselves when early January makes its convenient invitation for self-transformation. Famous resolution lists — like those of Italo Calvino, Jonathan Swift, Susan Sontag, Marilyn Monroe, Woody Guthrie, and Ursula Nordstrom — certainly embody this spirit Nietzsche new year resolution

Philip Larkin averaged four poems a year. “Silence is preferable to publishing rubbish,” he said, “and far better for one’s reputation” Silence is Golden
 
 Step aside, love. Jealousy, an emotion so nuanced that we need other words to capture its twists, makes the world go round Emotions

Serious, intellectual writing is overwhelmingly male. Why? Ask the serious, intellectual gatekeepers of serious, intellectual magazines Gender Power

Silicon Valley is run by some of the most privileged people in the world. Yet they are convinced that they are among the least. Thus, nerd entitlement  Media Dragons 

We can learn a lot about the art of living from Tolstoy's War and Peace - a 10-hour dramatisation of which is airing on BBC Radio 4 on Thursday. It acutely observes vanity and folly, sexual jealousy and family relationships. But we can also learn from the life of the master novelist himself, writes 
Another Media Dragon of Tolstoy Stature 


“The people of the United States spend exactly as much money on booze alone as on the space program,” Isaac Asimov quipped in a witty and wise 1969 response to a reader who had berated him on the expense of space exploration. At no other time of the year are our cultural priorities more glaring than during our holiday merriment, which entails very little cosmos and very many Cosmos.  tolstoy

To stand face to face with insecurity is still not to understand it. To understand it, you must not face it but be it. It is like the Persian story of the sage who came to the door of Heaven and knocked. From within the voice of God asked, “Who is there” and the sage answered, “It is I.” “In this House,” replied the voice, “there is no room for thee and me.” So the sage went away, and spent many years pondering over this answer in deep meditation. Returning a second time, the voice asked the same question, and again the sage answered, “It is I.” The door remained closed. After some years he returned for the third time, and, at his knocking, the voice once more demanded, “Who is there?” And the sage cried, “It is thyself!” The door was opened. 

The Cartel: Secretive DeepMind

“A success that has outlived its usefulness may, in the end, be more damaging than failure.”
~ Peter Drucker, Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices

Best of 2014: Google’s Secretive DeepMind Startup Unveils a “Neural Turing Machine” MIT Technology Review 

The Cartel: How BP Got Insider Tips Through a Secret Chat Room Bloomberg. Surprised we have not heard about more of this sort of thing. Most major multinationals run their treasury operation as a profit center, meaning trading operation.  

Pope Francis Has Declared War on Climate Deniers New Republic on Tony Abbott

Banking Culture Encourages Dishonesty Scientific American  

The jerk himself is both intellectually and emotionally defective, and what he defectively fails to appreciate is both the intellectual and emotional perspectives of the people around him.  Theory of Geoff Myers of Thie Customs World 

The True Costs of Corporate Welfare Truthout 

Pilot Program Will Be Expanded Next Year to Include Data in Footnotes By MARIA ARMENTAL, WSJ.com – Dec. 30, 2014

“The Securities and Exchange Commission has launched a program aimed at making it easier for investors to dig through and compare company financial filings. Under the program being tested, financial data the companies report will be organized into structured sets that the public can then download in bulk. The program will be expanded next year to include data in footnotes of the financial statements. The structured data are currently available as eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) exhibits. The SEC will now make the information available in other formats. Data sets will be updated quarterly.”

Fingerprint ‘cloned from photos’ BBC (David L). Not sure I believe this since there are people whose fingerprints are so shallow that standard ink fingerprints aren’t usable for legal registration purposes. This pol may conversely have atypically dep fingerprintes that are unusually legible. But anything that throws sand in the gears of biometric IDs is all for the good.  

Berlin is secretly feeding the U.S. data on Germans Washington Post 

via Daily Nous Philosopher King I wasn’t quite sure how to wrap up the year. A parody of Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off”? Too cheesy. A video montage of action sequences from a year of blogging (me, staring at phone; me, sitting in front of laptop; etc.)? Too boring. An ironic play in which an enormous baby keeps whining about infantilism? Too realistic. A grandiose statement about progress in the profession? I would never.
So what, then?
First, some gratitude. I’d like to thank you all for stopping by to read Daily Nous. I put a lot of work into the site, and I am glad that you find it worth visiting. Some of you have taken the time to write me notes, recommend links and ideas, send in news, join discussions, share posts on social media, and provide critical feedback. This really helps keep Daily Nous flourishing, and I very much appreciate it. (For those curious, during the past three months the site has averaged over 10,160 views per day.) If you have suggestions, please don’t hesitate to email them to me.
Second, some hopes. While we’ve covered a number of important topics in the philosophy profession, problems still remain. I hope that in the upcoming year Daily Nous continues to serve as a forum in which a diverse range of voices raise and discuss issues of concern, and I hope that more and more people feel welcome to participate in these discussions.
Third, I thought I would link to a few of my favorite posts/discussions of the year:
Teaching Philosophy in Prisons.
Bryce Huebner’s interview of Jim Maffie (I’ll try to get some more “philosophers interviewing philosophers” for the coming year).
The Non-Academic Hires page.
Daily Mousse (the collection of hair-themed April Fools Day posts).
Philosophers from Poverty (in which many philosophers discuss the impact of class on their status in and feelings about the profession).
Why Did You Go Into Philosophy? (130 responses from a variety of philosophers).
Last, but not least, best wishes for a happy new year, everybody!

“In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.”
Eric Hoffer, Reflections on the Human Condition

Imitation Games: Foreign Intelligence Gathering Laws

During the winter of 1952, British authorities entered the home of mathematician, cryptanalyst and war hero Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch) to investigate a reported burglary. They instead ended up arresting Turing himself on charges of 'gross indecency', an accusation that would lead to his devastating conviction for the criminal offense of homosexuality - little did officials know, they were actually incriminating the pioneer of modern-day computing. Famously leading a motley group of scholars, linguists, chess champions and intelligence officers, he was credited with cracking the so-called unbreakable codes of Germany's World War II Enigma machine. An intense and haunting portrayal of a brilliant, complicated man, THE IMITATION GAME follows a genius who under nail-biting pressure helped to shorten the war and, in turn, save thousands of lives ... The Enigma Games

The 2015 Oscars battle has well and truly begun ....The-imitation game

There is no such thing as the Enigma. In fact, Enigma is the brand name of a series of cipher machines, developed before and during WWII, some of which are compatible with each other, and some of which are not.  Enigma cipher machine 

In 2001, none other than Sir Mick Jagger bought the rights to a novel by Robert Harris called Enigma. The novel, a fictionalized account of WWII British codebreakers, then became a feature film, written by Tom Stoppard, produced by Sir Mick, and starring Mr. Dougray Scott and Ms. Kate Winslett as derring-do Bletchley Park mathematicians and cryptanalysts employed in a race against time and the Nazis to break the fabled Enigma code before all hell breaks loose. It all sounds very dramatic (and I’ve heard the film is entertaining), but things didn’t happen quite like that. Reality is never so formulaic or so good-looking. But the Enigma code was broken, and the story of the code machine and its eventual decryption is fascinating on its own terms. As University of Cambridge “Enigma Project Officer” Dr. James Grime says–in the series of videos above and below–it’s a story of “how mathematicians can save lives.” Still with me?

The best military decisions rightly go down in history as great events and the people who made them are immortalised for all of time. But what about the worst decisions?  Military Histories 

Library of Congress – “This report contains information on laws regulating the collection of intelligence in the European Union, United Kingdom, France, Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, and Sweden. The report details how EU Members States control activities of their intelligence agencies and what restrictions are imposed on information collection.  All EU Member States follow EU legislation on personal data protection, which is a part of the common European Union responsibility comparative summary is included.” Full Report

Friendly Ghosts: The Future of the Cold River

“The more personal you are willing to be and the more intimate you are willing to be about the details of your own life, the more universal you are.”

When you recognize that pain — and response to pain — is a universal thing, it helps explain so many things about others, just as it explains so much about yourself. It teaches you forbearance. It teaches you a moderation in your responses to other people’s behavior. It teaches you a sort of understanding. It essentially tells you what everybody needs. You know what everybody needs? You want to put it in a single word?
Everybody needs to be understood.
 

Gollum is a pretty vulnerable guy the electron and the bit of MEdia Dragon's Praha

Reading and eating are natural companions, and they’ve got a lot in common. Reading is consumption. Eating is consumption. Both are comforting, nourishing, restorative, relaxing, and mostly enjoyable. They can energize you or put you to sleep. Heavy books and heavy meals both require a period of intense digestion. Just as reading great novels can transport you to another time and place, meals — good and bad ones alike — can conjure scenes very far away from your kitchen table. Some of my favorite meals convey stories of origin and tradition; as a voracious reader, I devour my favorite books.My Cook Mum Maria Could not agree more ;-)

A peculiar medical condition caused one woman to see images of dragons everywhere she looked. 

Mystery over woman who saw 'dragons'
 

Coma patient wakes up speaking French

A car accident also left barber Rory Curtis believing that he was Hollywood actor Matthew McConaughey.

We Need Your Help BradBlog. BradBlog is the go-to blog for e-voting and its discontents.

The Cold Wet Mackerel of Reality The Archdruid Report

Piketty and James Cumes -

Dr James Cumes is author of The Human Mirror: The Narcissistic Imperative in Human Behaviour. His book America's Suicidal Statecraft was published in November 2006.

After soldiering in Papua and Dutch New Guinea in WW II and diplomatic posts in Paris, Geneva, London, Bonn and Berlin, he became Ambassador to the EU and several individual countries. High Commissioner to Nigeria, Permanent Representative to the United Nations and UNIDO, Governor on the Board of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and Australian representative at UN and other meetings around the world.

He is the initiator of Victory over Want, an organisation devoted to ending world poverty. Want

The Economist – From Papyrus to Pixels: “Books like de Officiis have not merely weathered history; they have helped shape it. The ability they offer to preserve, transmit and develop ideas was taken to another level by Gutenberg and his colleagues. Being able to study printed material at the same time as others studied it and to exchange ideas about it sparked the Reformation; it was central to the Enlightenment and the rise of science. No army has accomplished more than printed textbooks have; no prince or priest has mattered as much as “On the Origin of Species”; no coercion has changed the hearts and minds of men and women as much as the first folio of Shakespeare’s plays. Books read in electronic form will boast the same power and some new ones to boot. The printed book is an excellent means of channelling information from writer to reader; the e-book can send information back as well. Teachers will be able to learn of a pupil’s progress and questions; publishers will be able to see which books are gulped down, which sipped slowly. Already readers can see what other readers have thought worthy of note, and seek out like-minded people for further discussion of what they have read. The private joys of the book will remain; new public pleasures are there to be added. What is the future of the book? It is much brighter than people think.”


Notes from the Fight Against Surveillance and Censorship: 2014 in Review

“In recent years, we’ve seen a dramatic, global surge in attempts to censor and surveil users worldwide. Nevertheless, in the face of such threats, I find myself energized and awed by our growing movement. In the past year, we’ve seen the whole community become more organized, resourceful, and more creative than ever before. While these are long fights, we’re in them for the long run. And right now, I think we’re bringing some of the very best to the protection of digital civil liberties.

See all of our 2014 year in review blog articles. Thanks to EFF members, friends, and allies, we fought—and are on the brink of winning—the most significant battle for net neutrality in a decade. Working with partners across the country and the globe, we helped galvanize over 3 million people to speak out in defense of an open Internet. We also saw global outrage turn to action in our efforts rein in NSA surveillance abuses. Our legal challenges to mass surveillance are garnering increased worldwide attention and seeing movement in the courts, while Congress considered multiple reform bills and is poised to address one of the most controversial sections of the Patriot Act in 2015. We kept the pressure up through activism campaigns at home and abroad, including our first-ever aerial activism campaign—an airship over the NSA data center.”

New York Times: “Four years ago, the Federal Trade Commission announced, with fanfare, a plan to let American consumers decide whether to let companies track their online browsing and buying habits. The plan would let users opt out of the collection of data about their habits through a setting in their web browsers, without having to decide on a site-by-site basis. The idea, known as “Do Not Track,” and modeled on the popular “Do Not Call” rule that protects consumers from unwanted telemarketing calls, is simple. But the details are anything but. Although many digital advertising companies agreed to the idea in principle, the debate over the definition, scope and application of “Do Not Track” has been raging for several years. Now, finally, an industry working group is expected to propose detailed rules governing how the privacy switch should work. The group includes experts but is dominated by Internet giants like Adobe, Apple, Facebook, Google and Yahoo. It is poised to recommend a carve-out that would effectively free them from honoring “Do Not Track” requests. If regulators go along, the rules would allow the largest Internet giants to continue scooping up data about users on their own sites and on other sites that include their plug-ins, such as Facebook’s “Like” button or an embedded YouTube video. This giant loophole would make “Do Not Track” meaningless.”