While international agreements have framed regulations to persecute and burden smallholders and the domestic business entities and financial houses have employed in order to institution willing to accommodate the routine banking needs of US
expatriates or those accidental Yanks, like the Lord Mayor of London,
for example, who perhaps has not sufficiently renounced his
dual-citizenship (due to being born in America to diplomatic parents) to
the satisfaction of the tax-man and competent authorities to be able to
forego the reporting requirements, unrequited as they may be, precious
little attention has been paid to the lengths and loopholes that they will go to in order to mask their corporate citizenship. Via Boing Boing, here is a very thorough and interactive illustration to show the convoluted network, business apparently not subject to the same kind of scrutiny as the public when it comes to AMT usage or grocery shopping. Maybe a better stress-test (applied to banks operating in the EU exclusively) would be to subject them to a theoretical insolvency and time how long it took to them to make themselves whole, what kind of collateral would take to back up the mortgage against their demur pseudopodia. Such behaviour, faking right and left, is enshrined and even encouraged, not by business culture alone but also by omission on the part of the US government.
Thursday 18 July 2013
bad bank or off-shoring
Tuesday 16 July 2013
green grow the rushes ho, tell us of your GOOG-O
If one does not look at them, do they go away? Certainly the profit-motive and the creation of niche-markets has done much in the name of progress and ease of propagating ideas, even for those panhandlers that collect the crumbs of the advertising industry and including those Great-Souled individuals who expect nothing. What do you think? Targeted ads, when they hit the mark, can be disturbing in their own right, without considering the full dossier that others may have—and considering those tangential commercials that are laughably off-target, one has to wonder what computer-driven assumptions might be conspiring to form one's persona of record.
catagories: ๐ฅธ, ๐ง , technology and innovation
Monday 15 July 2013
adult literacy
Sunday 14 July 2013
sunday drive: bad homburg von der hรถhe
Not discouraged by a sprawling but terrible flea-market (I did however resolve to note these particular organisers that have disappointed before and avoid them in the future) I drove a few kilometers further on the path to explore the town of Bad Homburg, a bedroom community and the wealthiest in Germany due to its proximity to the financial centre but away from the hectic pace, just beyond the city limits of Frankfurt am Main.
There was a lot of things to see besides, but I focused my windshield tour first at the Schloss and surrounding park that was chosen late in its long and storied career as a summer residence for Emperor Wilhelm II. This designation at the beginning of the twentieth century afforded the town a lot of acclaim, which grew its spa (Kur) and casino—whose directors went on to manage the casino of Monte Carlo in Monaco.
I enjoyed walking through the park, peopled with classic and modern art sculptures. I especially like the stretched motor-scooter, an East Germany NSU model, that looked like it got too close to a blackhole or neutron star, and the Red Boy by comtemporary artist Kenny Hunter.
Among the imperial influences, the Protestant Church of Christ the Redeemer (Erlรถserkirche, the problem-solver) was built in 1901, that is resoundingly Art Nouveau in style and a very distinctive fusion of Celtic symbols and mosaics that are reminiscent of the Near East. I enjoyed exploring this building as well, which reminded me of the lobby of the Empire State Building too—finished in 1908, the positive public reception initiated the Wiesbadner Programme, which saw other churches build in this style.
The Altstadt was comprised of grand avenues and narrow alleyways of half-timbered homes.
A little lost, I regret not having ventured into the spa part of the town, with an equally large public park in the style of English Garden and its own ensemble of stories and historic buildings.
I admit, I was a little turned- off to exploring further by the Kurhaus and Rathaus that resembled shopping centres more than civic institutions, but what lays beyond that one street ist something for H and I to see together for ourselves, next time.
jam yesterday, jam tomorrow
Bloomberg has thoughtful editorial critiquing the calls of one US senator, who urges de-vamping the financial sector by portraying it as the utility company it ought to be, as something dull and dutiful to discourage risky behaviour and swash-buckling.
While certainly individuals should not be lured into the industry over false-idols and misguided perceptions—rather than providers of a basic service, but the business of banking is inherently a gamble, and always has been, and corporate captains were able to transform something mundane and reliable, like the Electric Company, into the aphrodisiac called Enron, and it is an easy matter to portray banking, to fellow loan-officers and the public alike, as something sexy and promising. It would be an improvement, definitely, if there was just the aversion of boredom and not much chance to reap profits to be realised here, causing people to move along, but being boring may just be another institutional veil and a reform in image that does not go far enough. Using concrete examples, the Bloomberg piece suggests that people should not be shielded from the native terrors and hazards on trying to skim an honest transaction fee off the differentials between savings and loans. Industry collusion for cheap and easy credit and governmental assurances, depositor-insurance, the American-Dream, bail-outs and monetary policy have not mitigated the peril of tight margins but rather made people forget about how really frightening the consequences of this pyramid-scheme can be when it does not work out.
Saturday 13 July 2013
zing, zing, zing went my heart-strings or grey hat
It's amazing how the pitch of marketing to embrace the latest versions, like there's no looking back, has this extravagant fervor, choreographed like a Busby Berkeley musical number, something unbridled and detestable as a tactic in the advertising world, in which a single product—much less an awkward operating system, can make someone alive with pleasure and depict someone having more fun and more at ease than is possible. Maybe such a ploy, besides encouraging people to flock to the latest de-bugged edition and not have to operate in troublesome compatibility- or legacy-mode, is enough to dissuade end-users from putting a band-aid, fig-leaf over the cameras on their computers and phones or keeping said phones in the refrigerator or tin-foil wrappers when not being actively used. What do you think? Is that court-stenography in your pocket a little bit disconcerting? Or are such worries still the egotism of conspiracy theorists?
catagories: ๐ฅธ, lifestyle, technology and innovation
imago dei
The superb and thought-provoking blog about neuroscience and psychiatry, Mind Hacks, makes an interesting observation on the process to sainthood that John-Paul the Great is currently undergoing:
the requisite pair of miracles investigated and countered by the Devil's Advocate attributed to the pope both had to do with neurological conditions—healed without explanation, other than prayers of intercession to the recently departed pope. Considering that in times past, such ailments would have been treated as the handiwork of demons, and not diagnosable diseases, the pope was interested in neuroscience himself, the heuristics of the brain and metaphysics of the mind, and reversed the advance of Parkinson’s Disease for one nun—a condition the pope himself suffered from, shows, I think, not just John-Paul's qualifications for sainthood, giving hope to other sufferers, but also signals the maturity of the Church to work within a scientific and clinical framework.
catagories: ⚕️, ๐ง , philosophy, religion