Leading climate and environmental scientists urge Malcolm Turnbull to take urgent action ‘while there is still time’
Letter signed by 154 Australian experts demands climate policy match the science
More than 150 Australian experts have signed on open letter to the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, demanding urgent action on climate change that matches the dire warnings coming from climate scientists.
The letter, organised by the Australian National University climatologist Andrew Glikson, calls on the federal government to make “meaningful reductions of Australia’s peak carbon emissions and coal exports, while there is still time”.
The 154 signatories include leading climate and environmental scientists such as the Climate Council’s Tim Flannery, Will Steffen and Lesley Hughes, as well as reef scientists Ove Hoegh-Guldberg and Charlie Veron.
Dangerous Crossroads: US Invades Syria, And Warns Russia
The US government will not allow the Syrian government to expel US forces in Syria. The Syrian government never invited US forces into Syria, but the US now officially dares the Syrian government to assert its sovereignty over the areas where America’s troops are located. This means that the US not only is at war against the legitimate government of Syria, but will also be at war against Russia if Russian forces (which the Syrian government did invite into Syria) defends Syrian forces from attacks in Syria by US forces.
US Hawks Advance a War Agenda in Syria
The US, having illegally sent American troops into Syria, is now threatening to attack the Syrian military if it endangers those troops, an Orwellian twist that marks a dangerous escalation
Music of memory
A heart-warming movement called Music & Memory is creating personalised music playlists for those with dementia. Eyes light up and bodies start to move with the rhythm as the music awakens memories of their forgotten lives.
Doctors Now Prescribing Music Therapy for
Heart Ailments, Brain Dysfunction, Learning Disabilities, Depression, PTSD, Alzheimers, and more.
Why They Did It: Madoff and Enron’s Fastow Explain the Biggest Frauds in U.S. History
Why do business executives—people who already possess status and wealth—commit financial crimes?
Eugene Soltes offers some interesting theories in his new book, Why They Do It: Inside the Mind of the White-Collar Criminal, including the notion that many senior business people operate in a moral "gray zone." An associate professor at Harvard Business School, Soltes posits that they step over the line—breaking accounting rules or making illegal insider trades—in part because they rely on intuition. And, it turns out, their instincts stink.
More compelling than his analytical efforts, the author's unusual research method ought to draw a large audience to his book. With an admirably naive eagerness, Soltes wrote letters to some four dozen convicted criminals, ranging from Ponzi scheme legend Bernard Madoff to Andrew Fastow, late of Enron Corp., to Dennis Kozlowski, once the chief executive of Tyco International Ltd. Lo and behold, many of them wrote back.
Soltes thus had the opportunity to pepper his book with the first-person observations and self-justifications of a colorful Murderers' Row of white-collar crime. Here are some examples:
I’ll pay them all back. Promise.
"It's like a comedy of errors," Madoff told Soltes. "To cover the losses, I decided to take in money from hedge funds. And in order for me to do that, I had to commit to a long-term strategy that I wouldn't send the money back [to investors]. I kept taking in more money, figuring that once the market allows me to do the strategy, I will be able to fix it." That's the classic explanation of supposedly well-intentioned Ponzi masters: Eventually the scam will miraculously produce profits and everyone will be made whole. Madoff, 78, has plenty of time for correspondence, as he's serving a 150-year federal prison sentence.
