This morning, one country disappeared, two more were born, a fourth was expanded, and all are part of a single kingdom. The Netherlands Antilles, the collective islands of the Dutch West Indies which since 1954 has formed a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, was dissolved. Two of the islands in the archipelago, Curaçao and Sint Maarten, have become full constituent countries of the Kingdom (alongside Aruba, which was separated from the Antilles in 1986, and the Netherlands proper), while the islands of Bonaire, Sint Eustatius, and Saba (the ‘B.E.S.’ islands) have been merged into the Netherlands proper as special municipalities.
When a company in Europe, the Middle East, or Africa purchases a search ad through Google, it sends the money to Google Ireland. The Irish government taxes corporate profits at 12.5 percent, but Google mostly escapes that tax because its earnings don’t stay in the Dublin office, which reported a pretax profit of less than 1 percent of revenues in 2008.Irish law makes it difficult for Google to send the money directly to Bermuda without incurring a large tax hit, so the payment makes a brief detour through the Netherlands, since Ireland doesn’t tax certain payments to companies in other European Union states. Once the money is in the Netherlands, Google can take advantage of generous Dutch tax laws. Its subsidiary there, Google Netherlands Holdings, is just a shell (it has no employees) and passes on about 99.8 percent of what it collects to Bermuda. (The subsidiary managed in Bermuda is technically an Irish company, hence the “Double Irish” nickname.)
Still in the 70s. I recall very clearly being driven down the I-5 from the Canadian border to somewhere south – Bellingham, probably, but possibly the seaside oasis of Birch Bay or the Emerald City. As we entered the farmland outside of the border town, Blaine, there was what appeared to be a wooden control tower, maybe five stories high. Sitting in a field. No planes, no runway. Blackberries taking over. Then it was gone. Today, I could no longer even place the field.
I just stumbled across this great site, Abandoned & Little-Known Airfields, and there, in the North West, Washington section was Blaine Municipal Airport, a grass runway opened in 1945. By 1975, the airport sported a 2,100’ paved runaway located away from the old grass one, the latter possibly now only serviced by my haunted control tower.
The Blaine airport closed permanently on New Year’s Eve, 2008.
As a kid in the 70s, I loved Mad Magazine. By the late 70s, early 80s, I had switched my loyalty to the National Lampoon. But I had never heard of this brutally dead-on 1971 National Lampoon parody of Mad. So much hate. It can only be a love affair gone wrong.
Every time I happen to come across a 21st century Mad, I’m horrified that they are peddling this stuff to kids. They still have it.
The (US) Supreme Court for much of its history has approved of racial segregation and disenfranchisement, the subordination of women and gays and lesbians, the criminalization of dissident speech, and a very narrow conception of the separation of church and state and of the rights of criminal defendants.
In the end, we, the American people, determine what sort of country we live in–the Constitution and the courts play a relatively marginal role in that process.
To paraphrase the great jurist with the greatest of names—the Honorable Learned Hand—no constitution and no court are going to rescue us from white supremacy or sexism or homophobia or Japanese American internment or FBI profiling of Arabs and Muslims.
To believe otherwise is a delusion, and possibly quite a dangerous one.
Use only one space after a period. Hallelujah.
Part of a new lecture series that clothing company Frietag is curating in Zuruch Next up – tomorrow – is Wired UK editor David Rowan.
Good news, bad news. Good news is this is a great interview about modern magazine design with Dick Barnett. Bad news is that he is currently designing Maxim.
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