'A recent investigation by the Financial Times found that more than a hundred billions' pounds worth of real estate in England and Wales is owned by offshore companies. London properties account for two-thirds of that. Charles Moore [wanker], a former editor of the Telegraph, says that London's property market has become a form of "legalized international money laundering."'
--from The New Yorker.
Ah, the joys of deregulated markets and the old boys' network. You have to now wonder if the oil market has also been cornered? The report can be found here
And this caught your eye:
'Pop culture has disengaged our brains and arrested our development. Our cinemas are dominated by CGI spectacle, Pixar cartoon cutesyness and boring blockbuster sequels. Our restaurants are all artisan burgers, pop-up hotdogs and faux-ironic fried chicken. Our wardrobes overflow with hoodies, onesies, logo Ts and other outsized toddler-wear. Our Facebook feeds are all “yay!” this, “nom!” that..[turning us into] overgrown kids, obsessed with comic books, computer games, fast food and lazy nostalgia. The daydreams of our 1980s and 1990s childhoods have become a 21st-century reality.'
--M. Hogan, The Guardian.
Of course, you're very fond of hoodies yourself but not because of a feeble attempt to be hip-the usual middle age response to time flying before your eyes, slipping out of your hands; it's more about the comfort they afford and the idea that no-one can really see your face. If I had the chance I'd don a monk's habit, if not their habits.
Something childish, infantile about CGI?
'For, deeper still, in some primal part of us, there is always a vital role for the not-too-perfect in our pleasures. Imperfection is essential to art. In music, the vibrato we love involves not quite landing directly on the note; the rubato singers cultivate involves not quite keeping to the beat. What really moves us in art may be what really moves us in “The 7th Voyage of Sinbad”: the vital sign of a human hand, in all its broken and just-unsteady grace, manipulating its keys, or puppets, and our minds. Expressiveness is imperfection, and Harryhausen’s monsters and ghouls are expressively imperfect. “I don’t think you want to make it quite real. Stop-motion, to me, gives that added value of a dream world,” he once said, wisely, himself.'
--Adam Gopnik.
The penny has dropped:
'Our grandparents, less in hock to today’s ruling doctrines – that markets can be presumed to be infallible and egoism is always beneficial – were wiser about how to organise markets than today’s economists and regulators...
The entire framework, and the economic philosophy that supported it, has been found wanting.
Modern companies, of which banks are a sub-set, have been encouraged to define themselves not as organisations delivering economic and social good, but as profit-making machines for anonymous, tourist shareholders
And we need an acceptance that in market after market there is a co-dependence between state and business.'
--Will Hutton, The Guardian.
--from The New Yorker.
Ah, the joys of deregulated markets and the old boys' network. You have to now wonder if the oil market has also been cornered? The report can be found here
And this caught your eye:
'Pop culture has disengaged our brains and arrested our development. Our cinemas are dominated by CGI spectacle, Pixar cartoon cutesyness and boring blockbuster sequels. Our restaurants are all artisan burgers, pop-up hotdogs and faux-ironic fried chicken. Our wardrobes overflow with hoodies, onesies, logo Ts and other outsized toddler-wear. Our Facebook feeds are all “yay!” this, “nom!” that..[turning us into] overgrown kids, obsessed with comic books, computer games, fast food and lazy nostalgia. The daydreams of our 1980s and 1990s childhoods have become a 21st-century reality.'
--M. Hogan, The Guardian.
Of course, you're very fond of hoodies yourself but not because of a feeble attempt to be hip-the usual middle age response to time flying before your eyes, slipping out of your hands; it's more about the comfort they afford and the idea that no-one can really see your face. If I had the chance I'd don a monk's habit, if not their habits.
Something childish, infantile about CGI?
'For, deeper still, in some primal part of us, there is always a vital role for the not-too-perfect in our pleasures. Imperfection is essential to art. In music, the vibrato we love involves not quite landing directly on the note; the rubato singers cultivate involves not quite keeping to the beat. What really moves us in art may be what really moves us in “The 7th Voyage of Sinbad”: the vital sign of a human hand, in all its broken and just-unsteady grace, manipulating its keys, or puppets, and our minds. Expressiveness is imperfection, and Harryhausen’s monsters and ghouls are expressively imperfect. “I don’t think you want to make it quite real. Stop-motion, to me, gives that added value of a dream world,” he once said, wisely, himself.'
--Adam Gopnik.
The penny has dropped:
'Our grandparents, less in hock to today’s ruling doctrines – that markets can be presumed to be infallible and egoism is always beneficial – were wiser about how to organise markets than today’s economists and regulators...
The entire framework, and the economic philosophy that supported it, has been found wanting.
Modern companies, of which banks are a sub-set, have been encouraged to define themselves not as organisations delivering economic and social good, but as profit-making machines for anonymous, tourist shareholders
And we need an acceptance that in market after market there is a co-dependence between state and business.'
--Will Hutton, The Guardian.
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