A meme going around compares Syrian refugees to jelly beans:
If i gave you a bag of 50000 jellybeans and told you 100 are poisonous, you wouldnt accept them right? Then why would we accept 50000 refugees if some of them are bad?Jazz is not broken South of Sydney - Midnight dancing with the Hattons
The Deal, Ex-IRS Official, Successor Clash Over Tax-Free Spinoffs; Darden, Yahoo! and Other Firms Planning Splits Caught by Dramatic IRS Policy Shift: "It is a sea change in attitudes," said Robert Willens, president of tax and accounting consulting firm Robert Willens LLC. "Bill Alexander was very permissive of tax-free spinoffs and Wellen has turned against everything Bill stood for. They couldn't be more diametrically opposed to each other." ...
U.S.
Senator Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., will speak about corporate
international tax reform at the National Press Club on Wednesday, Nov.
18.
It
has become an accepted truism in academia that there are two
fundamental intellectual styles: the fox and the hedgehog. The ancient
Greek poet Archilochus observed that “the fox knows many things, but the
hedgehog knows one big thing.” Following Sir Isaiah Berlin’s famous
interpretation of the line, we have come to believe that intellectual
pursuits (and careers) are characterized by either a singular, coherent,
abiding focus or a collection of approaches and ideas that are
seemingly unconnected, eclectic, and even disorganized. ...
Paris attacks demonstrate the relevance of social media
“Hemingway said being a reporter was useful for a writer. He also said staying too long in journalism was damaging. Writing becomes so routinized that the words lack emotional force, exactly the opposite of literature. “ Los Angeles Review of Books
Virginia Woolf on Shakespeare From the Diaries, April 13th, 1930:
I read Shakespeare directly I have finished writing. When my mind is agape and red-hot. Then it is astonishing. I never yet knew how amazing his stretch and speed and word coining power is, until I felt it utterly outpace and outrace my own, seeming to start equal and then I see him draw ahead and do things I could not in my wildest tumult and utmost press of mind imagine. Even the less known plays are written at a speed that is quicker than anybody else’s quickest; and the words drop so fast one can’t pick them up. Look at this. “Upon a gather’d lily almost wither’d.” (That is a pure accident. I happen to light on it.) Evidently the pliancy of his mind was so complete that he could furbish out any train of thought; and, relaxing, let fall a shower of such unregarded flowers. Why then should anyone else attempt to write? This is not “writing” at all. Indeed, I could say that Shakespeare surpasses literature altogether, if I knew what I meant.Shakespearean Alan Jones given a blessing to use coins brain dead nitwit label
But Shakespeare isn’t responsible for confusion around the meaning of the battle: “Henry V, ‘a master of propaganda,’ controlled the message; victory at Agincourt validated Henry’s divine authority. From there, over 600 years, uncertainties have been compounded." The Philadelphia Inquirer
In September, the FTC and Christian Aid launched SwissLeaks Reviewed, a joint project that takes a fresh look at HSBC bank accounts data from the ICIJ investigation. Graphics (like the one illustrating this article) show funds connected to a particular country as a percentage of their GDP, rather than in absolute numbers. These percentages show the compelling need for countries in the Global South to know about their citizens’ foreign bank accounts.
Still Broken: major new report on global corporate tax cheating
STILL BROKEN Governments must do more to fix the international corporate tax system
Who runs our countries: us, or global finance?
BEPS: The scale of Base Erosion and Profits Shifting
It's Insane How Giant Corporations Avoid Paying Taxes & And No One Is Upset
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| British Horses at Eaton |
Feeling friendless is common among men ... Millions of Men have no close friends
If the the intellectual world has a center, the Paris apartment of AndrΓ© Glucksmann has long been one of its locales ...
For #NaNoWriMo, read a bit from Joan Didion:
Paris Review: You have said that writing is a hostile act; I have always wanted to ask you why.Didion: It’s hostile in that you’re trying to make somebody see something the way you see it, trying to impose your idea, your picture. It’s hostile to try to wrench around someone else’s mind that way. Quite often you want to tell somebody your dream, your nightmare. Well, nobody wants to hear about someone else’s dream, good or bad; nobody wants to walk around with it. The writer is always tricking the reader into listening to the dream.PR: I wonder if your ethic—what you call your “harsh Protestant ethic”—doesn’t close things up for you, doesn’t hinder your struggle to keep all the possibilities open.Didion: I suppose that’s part of the dynamic. I start a book and I want to make it perfect, want it to turn every color, want it to be the world. Ten pages in, I’ve already blown it, limited it, made it less, marred it. That’s very discouraging. I hate the book at that point. After a while I arrive at an accommodation: Well, it’s not the ideal, it’s not the perfect object I wanted to make, but maybe—if I go ahead and finish it anyway—I can get it right next time. Maybe I can have another chance.
“Very few authors believe they have sold enough books. Don’t seek personal validation for your career through book sales.” Rd Cyzewski has a new book out today about the calling and career of writing, Write without Crushing Your Soul. He observes how experts have differing ideas of what works and you can’t copy one writer’s successful habits to gain your own success (though perhaps that works for some)
This film [Spectre] doesn’t exactly hide its place within Lovecraftian mythology.” An interesting piece, but I have to say the film stunk past the first thirty minutes. I find it more interesting that such a mediocre Bond film is today achieving such cultural resonance. And Hollywood average is over, uh-oh I say (NYT).
There is no great stagnation: a new Uber-like app for casual fighting for free
“After a list of the top 20 academic books was pulled together by expert academic booksellers, librarians and publishers …, the public was asked to vote on what they believed to be the most influential.” The winner – a volume arguably at the very heart of America’s culture wars – finished well ahead of Marx’s Communist Manifesto, the complete works of Shakespeare, Plato’s The Republic, Kant’sCritique of Pure Reason, and Smith’s The Wealth of Nation The Guardian
This film [Spectre] doesn’t exactly hide its place within Lovecraftian mythology.” An interesting piece, but I have to say the film stunk past the first thirty minutes. I find it more interesting that such a mediocre Bond film is today achieving such cultural resonance. And Hollywood average is over, uh-oh I say (NYT).
There is no great stagnation: a new Uber-like app for casual fighting for free
“After a list of the top 20 academic books was pulled together by expert academic booksellers, librarians and publishers …, the public was asked to vote on what they believed to be the most influential.” The winner – a volume arguably at the very heart of America’s culture wars – finished well ahead of Marx’s Communist Manifesto, the complete works of Shakespeare, Plato’s The Republic, Kant’sCritique of Pure Reason, and Smith’s The Wealth of Nation The Guardian
