Welcome to the secret world capitalist conspiracy

David Brin posts on Google+ about the millions of files cracked to reveal over 100,000 secret bank accounts. This link:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/03/offshore-companies-politicians_n_3008426.html

Tony Merchant, one of Canada’s top class-action lawyers, took extra steps to maintain the privacy of a Cook Islands trust that he’d stocked with more than $1 million in 1998, the documents show.

In a filing to Canadian tax authorities, Merchant checked “no” when asked if he had foreign assets of more than $100,000 in 1999, court records show.

Between 2002 and 2009, he often paid his fees to maintain the trust by sending thousands of dollars in cash and traveler’s checks stuffed into envelopes rather than using easier-to-trace bank checks or wire transfers, according to documents from the offshore services firm that oversaw the trust for him.

One file note warned the firm’s staffers that Merchant would “have a st[r]oke” if they tried to communicate with him by fax.

It is unclear whether his wife, Pana Merchant, a Canadian senator, declared her personal interest in the trust on annual financial disclosure forms. Under legislative rules, she had to disclose every year to the Senate’s ethics commissioner that she was a beneficiary of the trust, but the information was confidential.

The Merchants declined requests for comment.

Yeeessss!

http://youtu.be/2IROtC6cAT4

CARBON TAX! ON EVERYTHING!

Especially relevant if you are a Canadian, or paying any attention at all to our present political situation in Canada, where the governing party fantasizes its opponents.

There will be other rainbows to overcome

After watching the episode of Over the Rainbow, the sing off between Stephanie and Cassandra, it was clear that Cassandra’s glasses and bangs hindered her. Stephanie’s face was clear and open.

As much as the glasses and bangs are a brand that makes her stand out, at a distance it works. But they mask the display of information and emotion in the eyes and eyebrows, mark a border in the process of contact in close up situations, and especially with a panel of trained actors who, with their own cognitive bias, see, need to see, and have to be in that very contact space, even unknowingly, even knowingly and professionally aware, this is where they live, this is where the close up camera lives, and if it can’t get past the mask, it dies. This held back Jesse too, who could deliver a song, the mask of the hair bangs, hid the expression.

That Cassandra has such a brand, is a strength. But here, they are seeking a girl they can mould into Dorothy. For the longest time I couldn’t tell the difference between Danielle, Colleen, Stephanie, Jesse… On a large stage, busy with action they can be made into Dorothy with costume and staging. Could Cassandra’s brand be remade to fit that role?

Birth, Death and Rebirth in Buddhism

Reblogged from Essays in Idleness:

Recently I've been avidly reading a Buddhist book sent to me by a certain reader last year (thank you Ashin S.) titled How to Live Without Fear And Worry by the late Ven. K Sri. Dhammananda. In particular, I found an interesting passage on page 121:

The mystery of birth and death is very simple. The coming together of mind and matter – also known as the five aggregates – is called birth.

Read more… 740 more words

A mystery plainly explained. There is no mystery.

Link shifting and connections

I will try to make this the last product post here. But I will spam this post with a few links :-)

The pages for the ebooks are still hosted here at WordPress. Links to those pages are in the menu of text links above. The image links to each book’s pages have been moved to the samu press blog.

I will manually post items from the samu press Zazzle store to that blog, and to the samu press Facebook page – which, if you’re a Facebooky kind of person could use a few Likes :-). The Blogspot blog allows JavaScript and Flash interactive widgets which are provided by Zazzle, and rotate through a bunch of product images, which is nice.

I had set up an @samupress Twitter account. I’m not so sure I need it. But I’ll keep it around for a bit. It might prove useful. What I do need to set up for here and otherwise is an About page. I’ll have to figure out what I’m about.

The state of my brain

A phone call

Received a phone call this morning from an Indian accented tech support(?) person. Woke us up and he spoke too fast, babbling something about a viewer app and that I needed to go to my computer to fix something.

I don’t get very many phone calls from some stranger who knows my name unless they’re spam telephone call center calls. Least of all on a Saturday morning. So something doesn’t add up.

And seriously. You’ve just woken us up, you’re parsing through my tinnitus, you’re talking something about PC’s, you’re talking like my bed is on fire, and you’re speaking in an accent that spits over the information you’re trying to give me. Slow the fuck down.

So I go downstairs while the phone is ringing the third time, pick it up to a dial tone. I go to the Mac and search for ‘Viewer’, because that’s the only word I understood. Oddly, out of nowhere iCalViewer pops up a dialog asking for access to my contacts. I haven’t run iCalViewer in a dog’s age. Its not in Account Login Items. I find it in my apps folder and try to delete it. It’s open? It won’t delete? WTF? Activity Monitor. Make it quit. Trash it.

Odd.

samu press on facebook

I am setting up a page for samu press at Facebook.  I’ll try to send most of the product based stuff to there. :-) Thanks!

UPDATE sept 25 2012 Of course the samu press blog page also features product and links to the samu press store at Zazzle.

Holy cats! 100 cats is live on the iTunes bookstore!

100 cats: http://itunes.apple.com/ca/book/100-cats/id559121901?mt=11

What a fast turnaround! I thought I would have some time to set up a page for the book before then.