Monday, March 21, 2016

Google Translates Cold River into Sto (100) Languages

What – Napoleon came to no good, nor did the Kaiser, neither will Hitler do.  What we are not told is, who derived the benefit?  – and if posterity’s half sharp that’s what they’ll want to know, too.  What satisfaction is it to have someone else coming along learning a lesson of history off me?’ 
~Bathroom Quote

What happens when a poet who writes about fame becomes famous? Eileen Myles, renegade outsider, is now an insider. Welcome to the hall of mirrors... Surface of Cold River

Quite a read: former Wyoming GOP Sen. Alan Simpson, arguing for second chance law, recalls his own youthfull offences  [Sioux Falls Argus-Leader]

Ink colors, flag fringe, lower case:@jjmacnab tweetstorm explores fixations of “sovereign citizen” subculture. Plus: “Oregon Occupier Files ‘Counter-Complaint’ Against Feds and/or Devil” [Lowering the Bar]

goat living dangerously links
Business Insider, 19/2/16. The translation app now covers 103 languages, it announced on Wednesday — 99% of the total online population Google is a hair's breadth away from being able to translate the entire internet

 Great Reads – Our best deeply reported and engaging works
The mattering instinct. Sure, figure out what matters to you, what’s meaningful in life. But resist the tendency to universalise

Stephen Stigler, The Seven Pillars of Statistical Wisdom.  What are the seven foundational pillars of statistics?  Beautifully written.

& Sons by David Gilbert ... " slice of red neon that seemed forever reflected in [Cold River] rainwater."

Hybrid approach model for prevention of tax evasion and fraud
Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 213 ( 2015 ) 383 – 389. The theoretical research analyzes the interaction between the taxpayer behavior and their social status, and not only individual motivations reasons to explain the level of tax evasion.   

Jack Townsend, Tax Court Holds FBAR Penalty Collected Is Not in the $2,000,000 Threshold for Whistleblower Award under § 7623(b)




The Untold Story of Why the SEC Paid Whistleblower Eric Hunsader $750,000 Pam Mertens and Russ Martens. Not a great headline but a good piece. Another example of SEC window-dressing, this time on HFT…
On March 8, 2016 the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) wired $750,000 into the bank account of Eric Hunsader as a whistleblower award for spotting and documenting an illegality at the New York Stock Exchange. Hunsader is a trading software and market data expert and founder of Nanex LLC, a market data company that also provides a boatload of free research on behalf of the public interest. Hunsader is one more thing: he’s the SEC’s biggest critic when it comes to its failure to restore integrity to U.S. stock exchanges and U.S. markets.
The SEC doesn’t release the names of its whistleblowers but Hunsader alerted the media himself to his award in order to silence critics and one particular executive at the New York Stock Exchange who had, heretofore, disparaged in public Hunsader’s allegations about the NYSE’s discriminatory dissemination of market data in order to benefit high frequency traders.
 
Cut out the middleman, be a reporter for Facebook! 


Geopolitical Risk: The Butterfly Effect and Black Swans
FTI Journal, Nov 2015. Risk management tends to focus on country specific risks — natural disasters, things that could go “boom,” changes in the political landscape that could affect a company’s security arrangements or its ability to operate within a specific regulatory regime. But geopolitical risk is different. Even a regional conflict between two nations may not result in a geopolitical risk for an entity, especially if the conflict is contained. But other — seemingly remote political, economic or social — events can create a cascading series of responses and counter-responses that may lead to adverse impacts on a company’s business operations. 
Determinants of Tax Compliance: A Review of Factors and Conceptualizations
International Journal of Economics and Finance; Vol. 7, No. 9; 2015. This paper aims at providing a review of the factors that determine taxpayer compliance from a social marketing point of view.


"Feds want convicted journalist to serve 5 years, his lawyers ask for no prison time; DOJ: 40-minute hack was 'an online version of urging a mob to smash the presses.'" Cyrus Farivar of Ars Technica has this report

  • Unbowed by terror: interview with heroic Danish editor Flemming Rose [Simon Cottee/The Atlantic]
  • “If The Left Had Its Way On Citizens United, ‘Funny Or Die’ Would Not Be Allowed To Ridicule Trump” [Luke Wachob, Independent Journal]
  • Justice Department considers push for law criminalizing support of domestic terror groups [Reuters] Per federally funded police-support center, possible indicators of “extremist and disaffected individuals” include display of “Don’t Tread on Me” flag [Jesse Walker, Reason]
  • U.S. BigLaw firm Squire Patton Boggs represents Venezuela as it tries to shut down U.S.-published DolarToday for publishing data about inflation [Jim Wyss/Miami HeraldCyrus Farivar/Ars Technica, earlier here, etc.]
  • When scandal broke about IRS targeting of opposing groups, even President Obama talked about accountability. After press attention waned came refusal to press charges, whitewash, denial [Glenn Reynolds, USA Today]
  • Bad, bad bar: behind recent rise in blasphemy prosecutions in Pakistan is a lawyers’ group [Reuters]