We went into a posh wine shop in town yesterday and Bean said to Katy : “now don’t get too excited mummy…”
Month: November 2014
Birthday cake, part 2.
This is what my brilliant, talented, wifey has done. Congrats to her!
Cows and capitalism
SOCIALISM; You have 2 cows. You give one to your neighbor.
COMMUNISM; You have 2 cows. The State takes both and gives you some milk.
FASCISM; You have 2 cows. The State takes both and sells you some milk.
NAZISM:You have 2 cows. The government takes both and shoots you.
BUREAUCRATISM; You have 2 cows. The State takes both, shoots one, milks the other and then throws the milk away.
TRADITIONAL CAPITALISM; You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull. Your herd multiplies, and the economy grows. You sell them and retire on the income.
DEMOCRACY: You have 2 cows. Your neighbor has none. You vote people into office who tax your cows, forcing you to sell one to raise money to pay for the tax. The people you voted for then take the tax money and buy a cow and give it to your neighbor. You feel righteous.
AMERICAN CAPITALISM: You have two cows. You sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt/equity swap with an associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with tax breaks for five cows. The milk rights of six cows are transferred via an intermediary to a Luxembourg company secretly owned by the majority shareholder who sells the rights to all seven cows back to your listed company. The annual report says that the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more. You sell one cow to buy a new president of the United States, leaving you with nine cows. No balance sheet provided with the press release. You force the least paid to produce the milk of all your herd. Later, you hire a consultant to analyse why the cow has dropped dead. The public buys your bull.
FRENCH CAPITALISM; You have two cows. You go on strike, organize a riot, and block the roads, because you want three cows.
A GERMAN CAPITALISM; You have 2 cows. You re-engineer them so they live for 100 years, eat once a month and milk themselves.
A JAPANESE CAPITALISM; You have 2 cows. You redesign them so they are 1/10 the size of an ordinary cow, and produce the milk of 20 cows. You then create a clever cow cartoon image called cowkimon and market them worldwide.
ITALIAN CAPITALISM; You have two cows, but you don’t know where they are. You decide to have lunch.
SWISS CAPITALISM; You have 5,000 cows. None of them belong to you. You charge the owners for storing them.
CHINESE CAPITALISM; You have two cows. You have 300 people milking them. You claim that you have full employment and high bovine productivity. You arrest the newsman who reported the real situation.
RUSSIAN CAPITALISM; You have 2 cows. You count them and learn that you have 5 cows. You count them again and learn that you have 42 cows. You count them again and learn that you have 2 cows. You stop counting cows and open another bottle of Vodka.
INDIAN CAPITALISM; You have two cows. You worship them.
BRITISH CAPITALISM; You have two cows. Both are mad.
IRAQI CAPITALISM; Everyone thinks you have lots of cows. You tell them that you have none. Nobody believes you, so they bomb the crap out of you and invade your country. You still have no cows but at least you are now a Democracy.
AUSTRALIAN CAPITALISM; You have two cows. Business seems pretty good. You close the office and go for a few beers to celebrate.
NEW ZEALAND CAPITALISM; You have two cows. The one on the left looks very attractive.
GREEK CAPITALISM; You have two cows borrowed from French and German banks. You eat both of them. The banks call to collect their milk, but you cannot deliver so you call the IMF. The IMF loans you two cows. You eat both of them. The banks and the IMF call to collect their cows/milk. You are out getting a haircut.
Stirring up trouble in the language war pot
Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard is being criticized for not speaking French in a speech at a recent conference in Iceland.
There are times, especially on the international scene, when speaking English is required to be understood, he said. In the case of the Arctic Circle Assembly in Reykjavik, Iceland last week, where Mr. Couillard spoke in English only, no simultaneous translation was available. The former prime minister of France delivered his remarks in English as did the president of Iceland and a Norwegian minister, Mr. Couillard noted.
“With all due respect, I think my colleague is exaggerating,” Mr. Couillard told the National Assembly in response to a question from Coalition Avenir Québec leader François Legault, who was on the attack, saying the premier “failed to live up to his responsibilities as a representative of the Quebec nation.”
“There are two angles when it comes to language: expression and comprehension. Here’s a little challenge for him; go to the London and New York financial circles and pitch your remarkable economic plan … in French only. Let’s see how that goes. I submit the following hypothesis,” Mr. Couillard said,“when we make important remarks, especially those involving the economic development of Quebec, it’s usually a good thing to make sure everyone understands what we are saying.”
Little Hamster Bartenders Serving Tiny Food And Drinks
Bars are already great places to be, but I’m sure they’d be a whole lot better if the bartenders were hamsters. And that’s exactly the world that Twitter user Kawanabesatou imagines when he comes home from his job as a graveyard caretaker – he photographs his pet hamsters as they tend the tiny bars he’s built for them.
We have no idea why these hamsters spend so much time in bars, but they are surprisingly well-done given their size. There are also bookstores and even a gravestone storefront in the mix as well.
Highly appropriate love note
Need to get this made into a t-shirt for Katy.
Dramaaaaa llammmaaaa
Design by committee meeting earlier today where everyone had the bestest ideas about the new office space layout. Half the people don’t really care and make it blatantly obvious, half the people are very passionate indeed about their proposals (as long as they get what they want), and the last half is trying to be pragmatic about finding a solution that will be workable and that management will sign off on. Fun times.
Birthday cake, part 1.
Scottish drinkers could be forgiven for crying into their drams after a single malt from Japan was named the best whisky in the world
Whisky expert Jim Murray awarded a record-equalling 97.5 marks out of 100 to Suntory’s Yamazaki Single Malt Sherry Cask 2013, hailing it as “near indescribable genius” in his comments in the forthcoming 2015 World Whisky Bible.
It is the first time since the guide was first published 12 years ago that the top award has gone to a whisky from Japan. The country’s whiskies were once the butt of jokes but have won a slew of awards and widespread critical acclaim in recent years. To compound the pain felt in the spiritual home of the “water of life”, this is the first time that not a single Scottish whisky made it into the top five in Murray’s respected guide.
Second, third and fourth places in this year’s awards went to three bourbons from the US; the prize for best European whisky went to Chapter 14 Not Peated, from the English Whisky Company.
Murray warned Scottish distilleries that reputations counted for little now that other countries were producing their own world-class whiskies. “Where were the complex whiskies in the prime of their lives? Where were the blends which offered bewildering layers of depth?” he wrote. “It is time for a little dose of humility … to get back to basics. To realise that something is missing.”
Well, that’s a big oopsie!
According to researchers at Newcastle University in the UK, the card system developed by VISA for use in the United Kingdom fails to recognize transactions made in non-UK foreign currencies and can therefore be tricked into approving any transaction up to 999,999.99.
What’s more, because the cards allow for contactless transactions, wherein consumers need only to have the card in the vicinity of a reader without swiping it, a thief carrying a card reader designed to read a card that’s stored in a wallet or purse could conduct fraudulent transactions without the victim ever removing their card.
Since the transaction is done offline without going through a retailer’s point-of-sale system, no other security checks are done.
“With just a mobile phone we created a POS terminal that could read a card through a wallet,” Martin Emms, lead researcher of the project that uncovered the flaw, noted in a statement about the findings. “All the checks are carried out on the card rather than the terminal so at the point of transaction, there is nothing to raise suspicions. By pre-setting the amount you want to transfer, you can bump your mobile against someone’s pocket or swipe your phone over a wallet left on a table and approve a transaction.”
In tests the researchers conducted, transactions took less than a second to be approved. In the UK, contactless payments are limited to a maximum value of £20, requiring a PIN for anything more than this. But the researchers found that the system doesn’t recognize foreign currency transactions and therefore doesn’t require a PIN for these.
“This lends itself to multiple attackers across the world collecting small transactions of perhaps €200 at a time for a central rogue merchant who could be located anywhere in the world,” Emms notes. “This previously undocumented flaw around foreign currency, combined with the lack of POS terminal authentication and the ease of skimming contactless credit cards, makes the system more vulnerable to high-value attacks.
It is not clear from reading the payment protocol how banks would deal with the inconsistencies we have found through our research, hence we believe the vulnerability poses a potential threat,” he said. “The fact that we can by-pass the £20 limit makes this new hack potentially very scalable and lucrative. All a criminal would need to do is set up somewhere like an airport or the London underground where the use of different currencies would appear legitimate.”