Month: May 2013

Ha ha Heritage open Friday thread

by

by liberal japonicus Don't get me wrong, I like the word heritage. If you haven't noticed, I'm someone who often dwells in the past, and the whole idea of finding out stuff about the past, be it digging up ancient mysteries, contemplating the enamel on dinosaurs' teeth, or reading about the last member of a … Read more

Transfer Pricing (A Tax Post!)

by

A month ago a commentor asked about the practice known in the tax community (and more broadly) as "transfer pricing" and reigning in some of its effects.   As background, "transfer pricing" generally (very generally) refers to how to account for transactions between related entities for tax purposes.  That is, if wholly owned subsidiary A … Read more

The split mission and split personality of the MPAA movie ratings

by

by Doctor Science

This Film Is Not Yet Rated does a great job of exposing many of the deep problems with the movie industry’s MPAA ratings, but I think it overlooks a big one. It seems to me that the movie ratings board hands out R and NC-17 ratings based on two general factors: how much they dislike the violence, and how much they like the sex. Just as pornography has been defined as “what turns the Supreme Court on”, NC-17 is defined in practice as “what turns the Ratings Board on”.

Cut for a major work in the canon of Western art, may be NSFW in parts of the US.

Read more

We’re Doomed

by

by Ugh From the front page of today's Wall Street Journal (copying from the paper version – emphasis supplied): The Pentagon has redesigned its biggest "bunker buster" bomb with more advanced features intended to enable it to destroy Iran's most heavily fortified and defended nuclear site. U.S. officials see development of the weapon as critical … Read more

A Golden Week Friday-ish Game of Kings open thread

by

by liberal japonicus We are coming up on the Japanese holiday period known as Golden Week. Which, being Japanese, is not really a week. Though I'm not a stickler for words keeping their god-given meaning, of course, I would prefer the translation of Ogata Renkyu. ('Have a nice Large Scale Holiday!'), but when I try … Read more