Europe ‘faces political earthquakes’

Europe ‘faces political earthquakes’ BBC

Denmark Just Followed Switzerland And Slashed Interest Rates As Europe Stagnates Business Insider

Fully 46 percent of Polish home loans are denominated in Swiss francs. I am still waiting for figures for Bohemian lands ... classified as top secret.

The Great Leap Rightward Balkan Insight 

BAGGING THE CAT – KSENIA YUDAEVA, THE FIRST RUSSIAN CENTRAL BANK GOVERNOR TO BE SACKED IN SECRET John Helmer

More Young Adults Stay Put in Biggest Cities New York Times. Li: “Evidence of the hollowing out of the middle of the country in terms of brainpower.”

Stimulus and jobs, hard to have it both ways

Were poor people to blame for the housing crisis? TylerCowed

Michel Houellebecq is not a polemicist but a satirist. And his target is not Islam but spineless French intellectuals... Ouch

How Black Middle-Class Kids Become Poor Adults Atlantic

Martin Luther King, Jr.: All Labor Has Dignity Truthout

…a public outcry has arisen over a town council plan to house refugees in a building that once served as a Nazi Command post at the Buchenwald concentration camp. Schwerte, a community of 50,000 south of Dortmund, has decided to move 21 refugees into the camp’s only remaining building on the outskirts of the town. The move comes, town officials say, because all the refugee housing in the town’s jurisdiction is already filled with 200 asylum seekers, and the town doesn’t have the money to purchase temporary structures. According to the town council’s spokeswoman, “The solution is a practical one.”

The most dangerous man

“If a man hasn’t discovered something he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.”
~Martin Luther King, Jr. – of “I Have A Dream’ speech fame

In Wagner, we encounter a truth: Anti-Semitism is a metaphysical condition that can express itself in unexpected forms, even abstract sound and opera...Wagner of rings... --- Biased Composers

“The most dangerous man in America.” Could it be an unstylish, self-deprecating, confrontation-averse law professor? Risque Akademik

American Orwell. Irving Howe was a tender polemicist, a socialist with conservative cultural tastes and a deep commitment to heterodoxy...Havel and Howe(ll)

Cowardice and courage no longer carry the moral resonance they once did. They now tend to be used as goads to violence... Virtues of Nothingness

Alabama Legislators Say You Must Be A Salaried Employee Of Old School Media To Get Approved For Press Credentials Techdirt

 

Does great expertise make for great criticism? Not always. Knowing everything about a topic forecloses on original and unexpected takes. Experts

Edgar Allan Poe: popular writer, successful editor, and always meagerly paid. Nearly everything he wrote, he wrote for money

Lionized in his own time, Beethoven was nonetheless in a perpetual rage. Thus hisfondness for Exclamation Points

In one restaurant in China, people like Media Dragons, beautiful people, eat for free

\ The blockchainiacs?

3-D printed drones

British markets in everything: fish and chips chips

In praise of Piketty’s translator
 

- See more at: http://marginalrevolution.com/page/3#sthash.zSpyQ2VN.dpuf

http://www.executedtoday.com/

Machiavellians

“Doesn’t science make philosophy obsolete?”

Anne Applebaum writing how Vladimir Putin and cronies looted Russia should add to the title, “How The West Drove The Getaway Car.” To suggest that looting occurred independently of the corrupt offshore system organized by Western banks finesses the truth
When Browder and his partners, billionaire investor Kenneth Dart and New York investor Francis Baker, bought Avisma from Khodorkovsky in 1997, they agreed the corrupt profit skimming would continue...

Komisar Scoop

 

A close friend, NSW Labor MP Lynda Voltz, said Mr O'Grady was "tenacious and extraordinarily clever, with a little bit of the Machiavellian in there"

Paul O'Grady dies

I should like to place on record my thanks to the Parliamentary Library staff who, over many months, have contributed greatly to my knowledge on this issue. I refer particularly to such people as Richard Baker, Greig Tillotson, Warren Cahill, Joseph Imrich and Margaret Horton, who have continually come up with all sorts of articles and books, an action that I have appreciated. I also thank Veronica, who has typed many editions of this speech. I hope the House finds it worthy of careful consideration. LC Hansard Paul O’Grady 17 October 1989 

Charlie and Theo Project Syndicate (David L). A particularly good piece on the “free speech” angle

 Coda: When I was new to the library world, I learned how to do "reference service work". The library customer would walk through the doors and ask for a subject. Whether it was too broad or too narrow in focus, it was my job to find the answer. I noticed every day that the people who were asking the questions were the same people every day. Repeat business meant you were doing the job right ... Bringing Out the Best ...

The best films of the decade so far?

People who want to make a living in arts and letters are screwed. It’s a sad fact worthy of attention. It’s also not at all surprising... the Media Dragons

The best films of the decade so far? The Best Films of the Decade So Far (2010-2014)

Kurosawa’s favorite movies.  A good list.

And how well can computers judge your personality?

Barbaric Icelandic markets in everything.

Scroll down for research on France and Muslims.

The strange case of Rosemary Tonks. A successful poet and novelist, she smashed her possessions, burned her unfinished manuscript, and  Started Anew       


Clichés in context. At best they help us understand our commonality; at worst they replace our  thoughts entirely

Happiest lawyers are tax lawyers

Of 17,000 associates from over 150 large and mid-sized law firms surveyed by Vault for their annual Law Firm Associate Survey, it's the tax lawyers who clearly they love their jobs. Or rather, are at least more "satisfied" than their counterparts in other practice areas.
Tax law may be satisfying work because it is often described as solving a puzzle, allowing lawyers to find creative solutions to their clients’ problems.
Happiest legal eagles are tax eagles

Robert Wood, Taxman Is Funny In UK, Why Not IRS? 

One Thing Gangs Smuggling Latin Migrants Over the Border Can’t Do Without: Big U.S. Banks Bloomberg

Howard Gleckman offers Nine Tax Stories to Watch in 2015 (TaxVox)

We are the 1%.  Admit It: You’re Rich like Imrich (Megan McArdle):

The cutoff for the global 1 percent starts quite a bit lower than the parochial American version preferred by pundits. I’m on it. So is David Sirota. And if your personal income is higher than $32,500, so are you.  

It’s all a matter of perspective.

Jason Dinesen, Sorry, But There Really Isn’t a “Gray Area” for Most Taxpayers to Push:

NEWSFLASH: for the vast majority of taxpayers, there is no gray area to be pushed.

Your income is whatever your W-2 says it is.

Your deductions are whatever they are. Mortgage, property taxes, charitable, car registration. I suppose there could be a gray area if someone is claiming employee business expenses. But even then, those expenses are not likely to end up being deductible anyway.

No matter what the H & R Block commercials say, there is no magic wand that a tax preparer can wave to make a bigger tax refund appear.

Absolutely true. And if a preparer boasts otherwise, it’s likely that there is a perfectly bad explanation.

Robert Goulder, China’s Fiscal Roadmap: Tax Like America (Tax Policy Blog). If you are worried about China achieving economic domination, you can rest easy now.

• Quantitative easing: socialism for the rich in action 
• New Oxfam report says half of global wealth held by the 1%  
• Richest 1% will own more than all the rest by 2016  
• Oxfam Report: Wealth: Having it all and wanting more 
• Why extreme inequality hurts the rich  
• This is the year for Europe to put its tax house in order  
• 'No plans' to publish David Cameron's tax return  
• Obama targets top 1% with $300bn tax plan  

How Dragon’s Dominance Comes To An End

Even When They Don’t Have Jobs, Men Do Less Housework Than Women Slate

LARRY PAGE’S NIGHTMARE: How Google’s Dominance Comes To An End Business Insider

Many variants of Moore’s Law are now over Moore Less Laws

Social media becomes part of a digitally transformed ecosystem Real-time and content marketing becomes more sophisticated and portable Social becomes key hub for shaping customer experiences Social connects the Zero Moment of Truth and the Ultimate Moment of Truth
Twenty Five (25) media dragon trends in MMXV

Big savvy internet publishers will spend a lot of money posting things directly to social networks that they do not own or control. This will be a success by every immediately important measure: these posts will reach and delight many people; they will assume new forms, most of which will have fresh potential as vessels for advertising. Some of these forms will closely resemble common website posts, which will suddenly feel clumsy and unnecessary. Other types of website posts will not find a comfortable home on social networks. From the networks’ perspectives, this will be fine—these posts never did that well anyway. The publication of non-viral, non-native-social content will begin to be viewed by a new breed of triumphalists as either pathetic or vain. Home pages—now less curated selections of stories than uncomfortably revealing glimpses into the social sausage factory—will be considered by large sites to be something of a liability Some predictions

Hacked emails reveal China’s elaborate and absurd internet propaganda machine Quartz.

Coal Companies Are Selling Coal To Themselves To Get More Government Subsidies ThinkProgress

House prices: The luxury London bubble has burst Telegraph

Mapping the World’s Problems

As a virulent strain of austerity capitalism takes over the world, leaving shattered lives in its shadow ... This research shows that when countries try to compete with each other by lowering wages and slashing the social safety net, the costs are high both economically and socially, and why co-operative and regulated capitalism is a far better path Welcome-hunger-games-brought-mainstream-economics

A new breed of economist is helping firms crack markets

Blame politics for ascent of rich Financial Times

A Manchester councillor has accused half the British Cabinet of tax avoidance during a council meeting this week.

The accusation was made by Labour councillor Rebecca Moore during a Manchester City Council economy scrutiny committee on Wednesday. Her comments were in response to suggestions the council would try to lobby government to close tax loopholes that allow companies to avoid paying tax.

Half cabinet are tax avoiders


Friday lay day – unemployment is a pernicious state Bill Mitchell. In fact, it’s state terrorism. 

Marcel Imrich leaves his camera unattended in the High Tatra Fairy Mountains...

Europe’s Lapse of Reason Joseph Stiglitz

Nighttime Must-Read: Larry Mishel: American Wages Have Stagnated Brad DeLong

Investors put €1.2tn into negative havens Financial Times

As Climate Disruption Advances, 26 Percent of Mammals Face Extinction TruthOut

The Erosion of Law Project Syndicate

Mapping the World’s Problems New York Times

Researchers find exposure to nanoparticles may threaten heart health PhysOrg

Companies Pay Millions To Promote Some Of Their Most Unremarkable Drugs ProPublica

To Treat Depression, Drugs or Therapy? New York Times.

Vanishing New York: Icons and residents crushed by surging rents Aljazeera ... Retail store rents are being doubled in my neighborhood, and businesses are dropping like flies. And their replacements are idiotic high end concepts, like a store for upscale frozen food, that will be dead in a year.

Back to Feeding the Hungry

“Terrible things happen. And those are the things that we learn from… The amazing thing is that despite all… the human spirit still manages to survive, to stay strong."  “One can’t write directly about the soul,” Virginia Woolf wrote in her diary

You Can’t Make a Living: Digital Media Dragon, the End of TV’s Golden Age, and the Death Scene of the American Playwright Alena Smith LA Review of Books

One Extra Second In 2015 Could Break The Internet HuffPo.



I figure I’m entitled to a little more than three week break and my mater Peter Reilly agrees totally ...  Did You Hear The One About Lois Lerner Walking Into A Bar?

Robert D. Flach is Buzzing away with his usual good stuff from around the taxing world of Smarter Data ...

29-year-old leaves NFL and $37 million contract to become farmer in order to feed the hungry Daily Kos

Robert D. Flach, THE RETURN OF THE GAO UNDERCOVER OPERATION:

In 2006 the Government Accountability Office (GAO) sent undercover operatives to 19 “commercial preparer” branch offices in a major metropolitan area posing as taxpayers looking to have their tax returns prepared. Errors were identified in 19 of the 19 completed federal returns, some “significant”.

As complicated as the tax law has gotten, this is no surprise, and it’s gotten a lot worse since 2006.


Career Corner for Media Dragons. What If Your Job Title Were Brutally Honest? (Adrienne Gonzalez, Going Concern). I don’t suppose it would be easy to fit “Chronic Blogger Who Does Taxes to Finance It” on a business card.

Cara Griffith, Crowdfunding and State Taxation (Tax Analysts Blog). Is Kickstarter funding taxable income or taxable sales?

Alan Cole, Au Revoir to the Millionaire’s Tax (Tax Policy Blog). “The French government will quietly allow its millionaire’s tax to expire.”

Slave islands: South Korean salt farms ‘a living hell’ Associated Press  Note the story ran in Australia as I headed back to salt mines ....

Showing that they don’t care about me, or caring that I should know they don’t care about me, still denotes dependence… They show me respect precisely by showing me that they don’t respect ME dia (dragon) social butterfly

US export economy fails to import jobs Gillian Tett, Financial Times

A Point of View: The pursuit of happiness BBC. Happiness is a bad idea, particularly in its American embodiment of bouncy smiling people selling consumer products on TV. Frankly, that looks more like “giddiness”. The ancients sought contentment. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi argues that “happiness” is actually absorption in an activity, meaning being engrossed. If you accept his view, modern technology is making people unhappy on a mass scale to make their brains less capable of that type of focus.

Tech Etiquette: 21 Do’s and Don’ts for 2015 Wall Street Journal. Li: “Drone etiquette”

"I cannot trust a man to control others who cannot control himself." ~ Robert E. Lee on some of the leaders in public service

Economics (and Nostalgia) of Dead Malls New York Times. The wealthier areas of Birmingham, Alabama are lousy with them. Contrast with: Europe’s Empty Churches Go on Sale Wall Street Journal

"If you really want the key to success, start by doing the opposite of what everyone else is doing."  
~ Brad Szollose

Must-Have Gadgets You Don’t Need Will Glimmer at the Consumer Electronics Show Bloomberg 

How far, we must ask ourselves, is a book influenced by its writer’s life — how far is it safe to let the man interpret the writer? How far shall we resist or give way to the sympathies and antipathies that the man himself rouses in us — so sensitive are words, so receptive of the character of the author? These are questions that press upon us when we read lives and letters, and we must answer them for ourselves, for nothing can be more fatal than to be guided by the preferences of others in a matter so personal.

"No guts, no story" Keeping My Thoughts Off the Record '-)

"When eagles are silent, parrots begin to chatter."  
~ Winston Churchill as he knew that the loudest noise came from the shallow end of the parliamentary swimming pool ...

The cause of the world-wide consumption of hashish, opium, wine, and tobacco, lies not in the taste, nor in any pleasure, recreation, or mirth they afford, but simply in man’s need to hide from himself the demands of conscience.

“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

G. Brint Ryan, Who’s Afraid of the IRS? When Business Fights Back Against Government Overreach and Wins (Procedurally Taxing)

Grimm tidings. A Congressman pleads guilty to tax fraud involving a restaurant he owned. From the New York Times:

Michael G. Grimm, the Republican representing New York’s 11th Congressional District, who carried the burden of a 20-count federal indictment to a landslide re-election in November, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to a single felony charge of tax fraud.
Representative Grimm said he had no intention of stepping down. “Absolutely not,” he said.

Bob Vineyard, Another One Bites the Dust 

The Insanity of the Welfare State: Why Ronald Reagan Should Be Seen as a Complete Failure

“Skepticism like chastity should not be relinquished too readily. Indeed skepticism is the chastity of the intellect and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer. There is nobility in preserving it coolly and proudly through long youth until at last, when instinct and discretion have ripened, it can be safely exchanged for fidelity of outlook and for happiness.”
~ George Santayana, Skepticism and Animal Faith: Introduction to a System of Philosophy

Cash-strapped Canterbury council has scrapped its immunisation program and closed its swimming pool over winter to save money. Yet Canterbury ratepayers have forked out almost $50,000 over the past four years for the council's all-powerful general manager Jim Montague to dine at Il Buco, a restaurant in Liverpool Road, Enfield.
Most Fridays the man known as the "King of Canterbury" and his companions place their customary order of carpaccio ($23), oysters, followed by the fish of the day ($38), and dessert which is washed down with a $48 bottle of Pepper Jack wine...
Bechara Khouri makes his money by opening doors for developers...
The King of Canterbury and his princely $50k lunch bills

Bryan Caplan, The Inanity of the Welfare State:

While taxes are highly progressive, transfers have an upside-down U-shape.  Households in the middle quintile get the most money.  The richest households actually get more money than the poorest.  Think about how many times you’ve heard about government’s great mission to “help the poor.”  Could there be any clearer evidence that such claims are mythology?

Wall Street Rises Again Be afraid. Be very afraid Wall street rises again

David Brunori, Mississippi’s Very Good Idea to Help its Poor (Tax Analysts Blog). It’s an earned income tax credit.

The economy’s broken record: Lots of jobs, but no raises WaPo

Why Ronald Reagan Should Be Seen as a Complete Failure ... If you’re thinking of running for president, you need to have a book. I don’t mean own one—I mean write one. Or at least pretend to do so. You don’t actually have to write the book, as long as your name is on the cover as if you did. The contents don’t matter much. They can be your “vision”—lifted in whole or in part from think-tank research on the Web. They can be your life story. If you love your wife or husband, mention that here. Ditto if you’ve ever overcome adversity of any kind. Do you like hunting? Great! Got any photos of you and an animal carcass?
The Irony and the Ecstasy

The Art World’s Patron Satan

Restaurant Review: Kappo Masa on the Upper East Side New York Times (Scott). A reader quips: “A place made for the 0.1%.” 

Sotheby’s and Christie’s Return to Guaranteeing Art Prices New York Times. Proof of robust demand at the top end.

“I’m the poster child of evil [art] speculation…The Bohemian Art World’s Patron Satan” An excellent piece, also NYT

There is a new paper on sinking ships by Bruno Frey, rather by Mikael Elinder, the abstract is this: Since the sinking of the Titanic, there has been a widespread belief that the social norm of “women and children first” (WCF) gives women a survival advantage over men in maritime disasters, and that captains and crew members give priority to passengers. We analyze a database of 18 maritime disasters spanning three centuries, covering the fate of over 15,000 individuals of more than 30 nationalities. Our results provide a unique picture of maritime disasters. Women have a distinct survival disadvantage compared with men. Captains and crew survive at a significantly higher rate than passengers. We also find that: the captain has the power to enforce normative behavior; there seems to be no association between duration of a disaster and the impact of social norms; women fare no better when they constitute a small share of the ship’s complement; the length of the voyage before the disaster appears to have no impact on women’s relative survival rate; the sex gap in survival rates has declined since World War I; and women have a larger disadvantage in British shipwrecks. Taken together, our findings show that human behavior in life-and-death situations is best captured by the expression “every man for himself.” Do sinking ships put women and children first?

Computer program ‘perfect at poker’ BBC 

Family ties that bind: Having the right surname sets you up for life (Imrich did not make it) Springer

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 

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