Monday, November 29, 2010

Never waste a good crisis!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/8166198/Germany-faces-its-awful-choice-as-Spain-wobbles.html

This was foreseen, of course and this is why the Brians and Bertie dumped Ireland into a pile of shite! They will get their reward!

Fast track merger into a new Europe, solving the NI issue.

Life

Flesh without the spark of life is corruption, food for maggots and worms. Life cannot manifest without flesh?

Freedom is life without flesh. This is a subject worthy of true study.

Paranoia or preparedness?

“The superior man, when resting in safety, does not forget that danger may come. When in a state of security he does not forget the possibility of ruin. When all is orderly, he does not forget that disorder may come. Thus his person is not endangered, and his States and all their clans are preserved.”

Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)

The common choice?

Aldous Huxley describes the American choice to be ignorant:

Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don’t know because we don’t want to know.

Being bored is nature's way

Of telling you to move on: the rolling stone gathers no moss. Eventually, you will find a situation where you are suited to stay and gather moss.

Iceland

http://noir.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=ab9qiwb6VDNg

Has a great future behind it! If it joins the EU.

It has about the highest per capita land and sea area per person.

That is a massive amount of potential wealth! All those oil and gas wells! No wonder talks with the EU continue! Despite that little mishap that left every person owing 30,000 Euro for bank debt, until Iceland said NO!

My kind of democracy! Do Icelanders realize what they are going to give up?

How to stop wars pt 94

When the vets come back, they should be given advice about what to do before suicide.

They should use the skills they picked up to remonstrate with the politicians and businessmen who made money out of the war..... and their relatives etc.

Pretty soon the onjly wars would be truly just wars!

Sunday, November 28, 2010

Airships

I firmly believe that we need more involvement in outer space!

To do this we need airships...... We need a massive, hydrogen lofted platform. This would have to be capable of acting as mother ship to supplies from earth surface and shuttle to inner space.

It might even try the space elevator, but the electrical currents might be too problematic. A helium based platform, far smaller in size might be an aunty ship!

The aim of the hydroship is to act as a launch pad for the shuttle, cutting the fuel needed for the initial boost to that altitude. By splitting water harvested aboard the hydroship, the hydrogen can be provided by eletrolysis providing oxygen as a bonus for fuelling the shuttle. Getting to that hydroship, at 50,000 ft, would be a job for a B747 or A380.

Power provided by harnessing electrical currents from metal ropes dangling down with thyristors & capacitors attached.

The hydroship would be largely automated, but humans would have hardened fire-proof pods available to them for release to the ground in event of destruction.

Obliterated Contributions to Irisheconomy.ie! 28/11/10

It seems I said something!!!!

Friday, November 19, 2010

Which type are you?

As the Russians like to say

"the situation is hopeless,

but not serious."

We are all going to the same destination. What differs is how we spend our time, getting there.

Do you walk, looking around you, following up what interests you? Do you run, not looking anywhere but directly ahead of you?

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Is Ireland stealing corporation taxes from the EU?

False invoices representing fake activities in Ireland might allow deductions in German CT charges?
That would be crude indeed! It may happen, but Ireland and Germany are obliged to investigate if the other treaty partner, to the Double Tax Agreement, a treaty, wishes. Anything this simple falls apart easily. The tax paid in Ireland might then be returned, but the deduction in Germany for the purchase, would be disallowed making it ineffective. Charges might follow in Germany. Even genuine matters with real but suspect transfer pricing issues, can be pursued by the Germans should they have suspicions. Perhaps they do not employ enough “Steuer”(?) Inspectors to do this, but the ball is firmly in their court.

The OECD have a model avoidance of double taxation treaty that coutries use, and mutually adapt in certain details, for their network of Double Tax Agreements. (DTAs) The Model DTA contains provisions on avoidance and ensuring that the correct level of profits of entities (or gains) are taxed in the correct jurisdiction. The HCPs (High Contracting Parties) jointly investigate and agree if there is a dispute. I have to say, in my experience, this has not happened for any of the cases I and my colleagues dealt with at the time, when I was in D16, Lansdowne House, which dealt with Multi-National Entities (MNEs).

Rare, but provision for it exists. There is much spin about these matters. That might also apply to the German side as to the Ireland side. The Germans might protest, but in response to domestic pressure.


Sarkozy may face similar domestic pressures, but Regional Aid has always been part of the EU parcel, as it is obvious that with the dismantling of borders and other obstacles, business for the core would pick up. That

they can successfully choose to impose higher taxes there

simply means that businesses that are inelastic in location are trapped and lower personal taxation results? Those that are elastic, will set up elsewhere, even outside the EU, if it suits them. It is not a problem specific to Ireland. What next? France takes taxes from every corporation in the world? Simply seize any articles entering France and hold them against “taxes due”? The Doublke Taxation Agreements all deal with these matters. He is simply posing and appearing tough, prior to going home to his ‘licious missus?

As the tax situation has already been addressed, he is presumably referring to that?

Or spinning!?

The EU is attacking Ireland!

The whole of the EU is socialist. Look at all the funds and redistribution of money to farmers, BMW region etc. Fabians have designed it and are probably happy wioth all the interference in people’s affairs and the jobs that this brings? Ireland is lucky that way. We would be fighting them off if we were suddenly rich, which is why Norway is not a member?! JHusrt as they share Frau Merkel’s taxes with Ireland today, so will they adjust payments for oil and gas finds tomorrow!

Save the banks? We need some institution to issue cash when demanded and to keep it safe from thieves. These may belong to others, but the banks are ours in almost every respect. We no longer need so many and they need to be reduced in size, but their owners have already been punished. The problem was that instead of being a steady engine for gradual growth and slow inflation (theft!) idiots decided to open the taps full on and more idiots went along with it. They could have been stopped. They weren’t. The only ones taking out money unfairly were those who sold all property prior to that collapse and those on bonuses for trapping as many people in debt slavery as possible. Taxation will deal with both of these, but the pricing disruption in the meantime means massivcew delays in investment and recovery, and of course, a shrinking economy as most of it, nearly, was borrowed! Not real! The economy recognized much of the borrowing as revenue and that caused the tax problem, fiscally.

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Using older, manual lenses for photography

Do not be discouraged! Practice will enable fast focussing to become second nature.

The main advantage is that the lens isn't hunting focus at the moment you want to fire the shutter. It is set where you've put it. Sometimes that can be a greater confidence builder than the false confidence of autofocus. It only changes focus when you choose. Control.

Practice using likely settings and distances, beforehand. Muscle memory is very important and ease of use, means many otherwise fine pieces of equipment are never used.

Find your favourite lenses and practice with them, when sitting in front of the TV during a break at work etc. Sit at various distances and focus without using any viewfinder. Educate your hand to find the focus distance seen by your eye?

If you've just captured an image where you carefully focused through the viewfinder, and another person enters your field of interest. By merely releasing the shutter when they're the same size in the viewfinder you are using your previous picture as a focusing aid, judging subject distance by its relative size in the viewfinder.

Don't tell me it is impossible! Do it! Try and see if you can surprise yourself. The lens can accept markers, preferably glued on, with strong tactile feedback, enabling feel of the lens to be correlated to the eye.

This will differ for various lenses so be drastic and use a max of three for this exercise, probably your fastest, to freeze movement, but not necessarily the sharpest? Some lenses will not be suitable for this treatment, if they have controls that require tiny movements to cover your full shooting range, then will it be possible to use depth of field to ensure that once set, the lens need not be focussed again at all. For lenses with a large "throw" meaning that the focal ring can be twisted quite a distance then these techniques may be more useful.

Knowing the range of each lens, for specific types of photography, means that your restricting photography to an almost automatic reflex. For each specific subject matter, the lens will be restricted to a certain focal range. The marking therefore should be to enable these ranges to be found by feel in the dark, if that is associated with the subject matter.

If a subject is a distance away then the lens markers may have to be reset. Take the time before the shots start to make the likely focal distances as relevant to the markers as possible.

Try to multiply the sensory aspect of manual operation especially with lens stopped down two stops for best performance.

The markings on manual lenses may be of no use for determining range or infinity if used on say m4/3 sensor camera. Making new markings may be practical.

Do not just be satisfied with getting close to correct focus, practice to get it perfect. Use your body to find perfect focus too. If you have grasped the lens in a certain way, you may need to reposition your focus hand and that may cost more time than a pace towards or away from the subject.

When only manual focus lenses were available, photographers would burn through dozens of rolls of film per event, or use bulky 750 frame film backs, hoping for that one shot that they could sell and they managed to get it, perfectly focussed.

In this day of DSLRs and mirrorless cams, where there are no film costs, and no need to reload until one fills up a memory card, and the ability to erase pics taken, and auxillary memory in form of portable hard drives, frame rate per second is becoming very high, albeit at the same focal point. Currently, 10 frames per second are acheived. Some cams offer higher rates, designed for manual focus, at the loss of some resolution, but 5 megapixels is quite adequate for most purposes and even less is acceptable, if focus is acheived of a spectacular event.

One of the techniques, when shooting very fast cars or sports action, was to pre-focus on a specific spot and then trip the release just before the spot was reached. This allows for reaction time and the time taken to open the shutter. Trap focus is the name for that technique. At airshows, aeroplanes, fly at about the same distance from the crowds, so attempt to keep focus at that range.

Patterns are usually discernible, but always shoot, as practice frequently makes perfect focus and that unconscious perfection only comes with repetition, so get started.

It can only develop with practice and you can be happy with each step of your progress.

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Suppose the LHC is wrong?

Colliding large Hadrons is supposed to allow theoretical physicists to determine all of the "fundamental" particles.

These are the ones that make up the proton, neutron and electron among others.

In EU theory, a large red shift detected from galaxies does not mean they are a great distance away, but are newly ejected from the galaxy that is nearest, ie shows a low red shift. The idea is that the metter in the new galaxy, created by EM forced out of the parent, has a low energy. It might be made consistently across the galaxy, of some of the particles found in the LHC and its predecessors? They eventually age, by acquiring more energy from neutrino type particles.

No Big Bang! Just Electromagnetism?

Interesting analysis of the earlier depression

http://www.shtfplan.com/howard-katz/the-great-depression_11152010

"But remember that these savings increased in value (due to the appreciation of the currency by 30% from 1930-33. That is, the average American worker received an additional 120 ounces of gold (almost 2½ years income) over these 3 years without doing any extra work. This was, of course, money which had been stolen from him during World War I (when prices doubled) and given to the paper aristocracy (courtesy of the Democrats). In words of one syllable, the Democrats were the party of the banks and Wall Street (despite their loud protestations to the contrary)."

Second stage

For most people, the GFC did not start in 1989, as it did for Japan, it started in 2006 or thereafter. For Australians it started in 2009, very gently, because it is "the Lucky country", after all!

What has happened is quite simple. All sorts of legitimate, not unlawful, ways exist to make money or credit. Once it is made it becomes very difficult not to borrow, thereby making more money, and buy an appreciating asset. This continues until no one else wants to borrow money. Then, surprisingly perhaps, banks run out of money, having helped to create so much of it.

Banks then reverse some of that money creation and no matter what is tried, the bubble is going to burst. IUn the USA, this happened in 1999. The NASDAQ share market collapsed as all the dot.com share flotations ceased and values collapsed as it dawned that there were very few viable business plans, as not every company can be Amazon or eBay or Paypal or eventually, Google.com.

As the malinvestments collapsed, the banks had to bankrupt those who had borrowed from them, as their security, the shares they had bought, were now worth less and indeed, some were worthless.

So, rather than endure the depression thyen America decided to postpone it and to make it worse by successfully further inflating the bubble. The share markets are large, but the housing and commercial property markerts are larger! They dropped interest rates always a danger signal and sold everyone who could borrow a cheaply financed house. So much was sold that they had to get European banks to lend even more money by selling the mortgages to them.

But eventually, everyone had all the loans they could pay off and then people realized that the price of housing would not grow as to grow more loans were needed. So prices started to fall. Thus the depression started in the USA. It was different in Spain and Ireland and Latvia and every where else, but even though China and India, Russia and Brazil were still growing, the west started to find that most prices were too high and that commodities in demand by the BRICs were the only growth are they could buy into. Thus all the essentials are costing more as jobs disappear to China and elsewhere.

All of this was known and predictable by those who control banking, but they joined in to make even more than they already had. They withdrew first, helping the bubble to collapse, with the intention of buying again only when the most profitable assets were low in price. They still have not invested again.

There will be another collapse when growth falters in the BRICs and commodity prices collapse. Banks will be caught again!

Derivatives will make the situation more complex.

This could happen soon!

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Civil Disobedience

Speaking to Power is never popular.
If under employed, say in an economic depression for a few decades, demonstrations are just one way of showing concern.

Another is to travel slowly. Drive at half the speed limit?

Clog up the system, using technology to ask questions and to make your views known.

Organize locally and internationally.

Share shopping and use the time and money saved to impact those who are distorting the system.

Barter. Tax flows diminish and wealth stays locally.

Recycle. Ditto

Armistice?

11.am 11/11
What a wasteful way to decide who has the best bankers?
Killing off the young, conscripted and volunteer!
Human against metal, bought with credit.
Hey, credit wins!
No need to send out our young unless to cull them?

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Foreign Affairs

Just now we have some very "heavyweights" occupying the primary policy making positions in some countries.

Kevin Rudd; Australia
Hillary Clinton; USA
Ed Milliband; UK

All were voter favourites and leaders or leader potential. NWO anyone?

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Genetic improvement

The old way of doing this, in a hurry, is to in-breed, keeping the females pregnant constantly.

The defective were killed. Those who could be useful could be kept alive, but if male, not allowed to breed. That way, some out breeding of the undesirable traits might be accomplished.

Once the population had reached a size that enabled survival, then incest would be banned. The range of genetic variety would have been concentrated into what would become a "race".

This would be necessary after a catastrophe that threatened the survival of that species. The Y chromosome would exhibit a very tight range, suggesting only a few males.

Encounters with others would be encouraged and gifts and trade on equal terms would also flourish. Adventures and anger would be curtailed as much as possible. Flight rather than fight for at least four generations. Sea travel would be favoured for the contact and evasion potential.