Toms Blog on Life and Livingness
What could be the largest human skeleton ever discovered has been unearthed by a team of archeologists from the University of Adelaide at the Uluru archeological site near Ayers rock in Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, reports the Adelaide Herald this morning.
If you have vested interest in comprehending and learning, this article is well worth a read! From the article:
Our work has revealed a significant discrepancy. Students said they preferred and performed better when reading on screens. But their actual performance tended to suffer.
For example, from our review of research done since 1992, we found that students were able to better comprehend information in print for texts that were more than a page in length. This appears to be related to the disruptive effect that scrolling has on comprehension. We were also surprised to learn that few researchers tested different levels of comprehension or documented reading time in their studies of printed and digital texts.
https://www.businessinsider.com/students-learning-education-print-textbooks-screens-study-2017-10
You cannot trust governments!
They are the collective irresponsibility of the people!
And this is a first world, “benign” government too!
Governments should have their powers strictly curtailed and, like Mark Twain said, changed often, like nappies, and for the same reason!
Convenience is not always a benefit; sometimes you pay a very high price for it without even knowing. So-called “digital assistants” such as Amazon’s “Alexa” and Google Home are all the rage. You leave them on in your kitchen or den, where they are online 24/7. Using voice recognition, they can turn music on and off, play your favorite tunes, give you a weather forecast, order pizza for home delivery and much more. You don’t have to lift a finger; just give the device your orders and your wish is their command. But is that all they do? Turns out the answer is no. They listen to what’s going on in your home continually. The devices use sophisticated artificial intelligence and big data to “evaluate” your home behavior and decide if it’s morally correct in accordance with the definitions and standards of software developers crowded into Silicon Valley or Seattle. Their values are not yours. These developers are typically left-wing, politically correct and not particularly religious. They’re not guided by the moral standards that moderate your behavior. They do believe in human-caused climate change (false science), the end of internal-combustion engines (impractical) and the Green New Deal (unaffordable), among other things. So what happens when your conversations with your friends and family, your selection of books and articles and your political opinions run afoul of the Silicon Valley thought police? According to this article, a network of similar devices from other homes holds a digital kangaroo court (no humans allowed) to decide if you are a threat. If you are judged to be a threat, the devices will report you to the police (usually politicized on their own) or place you on a surveillance list or worse. Your digital assistant is actually a well-placed spy and you are the enemy. I don’t own one and have no intention of getting one. If you get one for the convenience, just watch what you say… and think.
5 years on and still as fresh as todays’ bread!
Unfortunately.
Because that means nothing has changed.
And it desperately needs to.
Too many lives are being wasted for lack of this knowledge by the many.
The Senate has launched an enquiry into the breakup of the banks. You can learn more on it here: http://cecaust.com.au/releases/2019_02_18_Submission.html
Here is my submission. Please add your voice to protect our bank deposits.
I would like to address the desirability of separating the deposit/lending activities of banks from the investment/insurance/advice activities.
I consider it mind-bogglingly unconscionable that parliamentatrians elected to represent the people should have allowed the possiblility of depositor’s funds to be stolen to support the investment activities of a commercial bank.
That the IMF should be promoting this misuse of depositor’s funds is completely wrong.
Separating the investment and deposit taking activities of the banks is the sanest guarantee that those deposits will not be used without the consent or permission of the depositors.
A corporation is by nature a risk taking venture and the rewards and losses of that venture belong primarily to the shareholders, secondarily to debenture holders. Not the depositors. Not the government. Not the public. The shareholders. Period. Anything else is a perversion of the construct of a corporation.
Providing the banks have securities against which they lend the depositor’s funds there is no honest reason at all the depositor’s funds need be placed at risk.
Depositors partake of neither risk nor reward in the investment activities of a commercial bank. No depositor I know of asks to see the commercial portfolio of a bank prior to making a deposit. That risk was not part of the explicit or implicit contract the depositor effected with the bank on depositing his funds.
The risk should lie where it naturally falls, with the alternative of reward, at the shareholder’s feet. And depositor’s funds should be completely removed from that arena.
Failure to do so is an irresponsible act of gross negligence towards depositors.
Thank you for your time.
Tom Grimshaw
Jon Barron writes: Yes, back in 2014, many alternative health websites went hyper-hysterical concerning the West Africa outbreak of Ebola, predicting over a million dead worldwide and the imposition of martial law in the US in response to Ebola ripping through the States, passed along by infected people coughing and sneezing their way to the end times. Of course, that didn’t happen. As a result, many people adopted the attitude vis-a-vis Ebola, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” But before you tune out this newsletter, keep in mind that I never pitched an apocalyptic view. In fact, at the time, I said, “There’s no reason for hysteria. The current outbreak of Ebola is highly unlikely to ever become a worldwide pandemic. If you live outside of Africa and are not planning to visit an affected area in the near future, your chances of dying from Ebola are as close to zero as you can get–without actually being zero.” So, when I tell you that you need to be concerned about the current Ebola outbreak in Africa, you might wonder why? What’s changed? And the answer is: nothing has changed. The danger from Ebola does not lie where you might think. If you’re not concerned, it’s because you’re looking at it all wrong. Let me explain.
https://jonbarron.org/colds-flus-infectious-diseases/ebola-you-need-pay-attention