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andrewducker ([personal profile] andrewducker) wrote2011-11-22 11:00 am
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Interesting Links for 22-11-2011

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[identity profile] bracknellexile.livejournal.com 2011-11-22 11:05 am (UTC)(link)
Re: dress codes.

Loved the post but odd that you should use those tags because that article sums up not only how I feel about dress codes but also how I feel about fancy dress. Some folks love it and good luck to 'em. When I go to a party I want to go, socialise, drink and enjoy myself, not have to devote time to something I don't want/need to do :)
ext_52412: (Wake up gay!)

[identity profile] feorag.livejournal.com 2011-11-22 11:18 am (UTC)(link)
The UN story is old and the vote has subsequently been overturned.

[identity profile] artkouros.livejournal.com 2011-11-22 11:28 am (UTC)(link)
Space X is my hero.

[identity profile] bart-calendar.livejournal.com 2011-11-22 11:47 am (UTC)(link)
Hollywood is weirdly prudish about sex still.

In Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 1 they were told they had to cut out the deflowering scene but could keep the birth scene if they wanted a PG-13 instead of an R even though the birth scene was really much more graphic than Bella losing her virginity.

The reasoning they were given was that seeing a painful, bloody consequence of sex was fine for teenage girls, but seeing a teenage girl really enjoy losing her virginity and being the sexual aggressor would send the wrong message to teenage girls.

Of course, they'll just include the sex scene in the DVD, but still...

(The director and Kristen Stewart have both said that one thing that bothered the MPAA the most about the sex scene was that Bella was doing more "enthusiastic thrusting" than Sparkleboy was.

An even weirder story was with the second Herbie movie which they wanted a PG and not a PG-13 for. While there was no sex or nudity in the film at all, Lindsay Lohan had grown up between the two movies and had much larger breasts than in the first film. The MPAA thought that just the existence of her breasts (while fully clothed) was enough to bump it up to PG-13, so they had to use CGI to digitally make her boobs smaller in every frame.

[identity profile] philmophlegm.livejournal.com 2011-11-22 01:21 pm (UTC)(link)
I've said this before somewhere on LJ: no single individual, company or pressure group should be allowed to donate more than a few thousand pounds to any one party and nothing to any individual politician.

That is the only way to remove the corruption of political-favours-for-cash from British politics.



[identity profile] philmophlegm.livejournal.com 2011-11-22 01:56 pm (UTC)(link)
More old-time Hollywood prejudices:

6. Blokes with posh English accents are either bad guys or Hugh Grant.

7. It is not possible for an attractive woman to have dark skin. Where a script calls for the attractive female lead to be black, she will therefore be played by a half-white or otherwise mixed race actress with a complexion rather paler than a Wigan girl after two weeks on the Costa del Sol. This rule has done wonders for the careers of Halle Berry and Thandie Newton.

[identity profile] philmophlegm.livejournal.com 2011-11-22 02:13 pm (UTC)(link)
The article on general anti-avoidance rule illustrates the problem with GAARs:

"It recommended a series of safeguards, including an explicit protection for reasonable tax planning and arrangements which are entered into without any intent to reduce tax."

So what they are saying is that in a very complex tax environment, it would be verboten to make arrangements which follow the letter of the (highly complex) regulations and reduce a tax liability IF the intention was to reduce the liability...

But...

It would be acceptable to make arrangements which follow the letter of the (highly complex) regulations and reduce a tax liability IF the intention was something other than reducing the liability.

So you end up with a situation where HMRC inspectors have to guess people's intentions. And then argue them in court. Against lawyers. (And guess who has the best lawyers - ordinary taxpayers, HMRC or big corporations? Exactly.)

If a piece of tax law says in effect "If you do this, then you pay less tax", then a taxpayer surely has every moral right to "do this" and surely should continue to have every legal right to do the same.

Governments who want to stop taxpayers from doing "this" and thereby paying less tax, should concentrate on simplifying the tax code and removing the countless situations where taxpayers can do "this" instead of faffing around with half-arsed General Anti-Avoidance Rules.

[identity profile] khbrown.livejournal.com 2011-11-22 11:37 pm (UTC)(link)
There could be concensus on party funding, just like there's concensus on MPs pay - self-interest rules OK...

[identity profile] momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com 2011-11-23 11:09 am (UTC)(link)
The spider story is fascinating, yet seems a bit too hand-wavy.

How do they know that's what it does internally?
And where does it store information while it's not keeping it in its tiny brain? In its kidneys, perhaps? The analogy to computers just doesn't fit.
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