Story Category Archives
with the utmost respect
29 April 2012 | Economics, Lifeform, Literature, Story | No Comments
[Amanda Staveley] set up PCP Capital Partners in 2005. <...> What does PCP stand for, I ask? “It’s from the Philip Pullman novels,” she says. “The P stands for Pantalaimon, the spirit guide for the main character Lyra. I based the company on that character’s values. I really loved the books.”
“It was going to be Pantalaimon Capital Partners,” she adds, “but nobody would have understood that[1], so it became PCP.”
—
[1] — что и не удивительно:
PCP is discreet and has no website.
за ширмой
24 March 2011 | Economics, Lifeform, Story | No Comments
еще немного о формах жизни — на этот раз почти из учебника по экономике:
Leeds’ ownership structure came under scrutiny at the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee’s inquiry into football governance, in a hearing at Burnley FC. Shaun Harvey, Leeds’ chief executive, said the club was owned by a holding company called FSF, based in the West Indies island of Nevis, and owned by three discretionary trusts. The trustees have appointed Patrick Murrin and Peter Boatman to run the club and they had asked Bates to be chairman.
Harvey told the committee: “I don’t know who the beneficiaries of this discretionary trust are, no.” Asked if Bates knew, he replied: “Not to my knowledge. There is no individual [owner], that’s the nature of discretionary trusts – it’s a perfectly legal and much used ownership structure in many different industries, not just football.”
One MP, Damian Collins, queried whether that was a healthy state of affairs, saying: “With a club like Leeds United the majority shareholding is owned by a mysterious trust and we don’t know who the investors are and I think that is a legitimate concern.”
и ведь ясно же, да, какие именно натянутые параллели я хочу провести?
“<...> You saw a double. A hologram perhaps. Many things, Marly, are perpetrated in my name. Aspects of my wealth have become autonomous, by degrees; at times they even war with one I another. Rebellion in the fiscal extremities.”
<...>
“Forgive me,” she found herself saying, to her horror, “but I understood you to say that you live in a vat?”
“Yes, Marly. And from that rather terminal perspective, I should advise you to strive to live hourly in your own flesh. Not in the past, if you understand me. I speak as one who can no longer tolerate that simple state, the cells of my body having opted for the quixotic pursuit of individual careers. I imagine that a more fortunate man, or a poorer one, would have been allowed to die at last, or be coded at the core of some bit of hardware. But I seem constrained, by a byzantine net of circumstance that requires, I understand, something like a tenth of my annual income. Making me, I suppose, the world’s most expensive invalid.
китайское чудо
9 March 2011 | Crime, Economics, Literature, Story | No Comments
еще одна неслучившаяся литературная героиня:
[Ms] Li Wei [a billionaire businesswoman] slept with up to 15 top business and party figures before turning on some of them in a series of corruption cases to save herself from a long prison sentence, according to Caijing business magazine. Her contacts book contained some of the most powerful men in the land, as she used her beauty to break into the secretive bastion of powerful men that tightly control China, according to the magazine.
очередная Элиза, разве нет? или, ввиду географии, может быть это Нелл?
“You cannot invest all your resources and opportunities into one person, you have to construct a huge relationship net, like an umbrella,” Ms Li was quoted as saying by Chinese media. Her empire at its peak consisted of more than 20 companies in Beijing, Qingdao, Shenzhen, Hong Kong and overseas, in industries including tobacco, real estate and advertising. She owned 183 petrol stations in Beijing.
настоящий роман. чистой воды бондиана, умноженная на учебник экономики и отлитая в золоте миллиардов юаней. плюс, как и положено высокой драме, есть и жертвы, и результат:
*Chen Tonghai
Ex-chairman of China’s second-largest oil company, Sinopec, given a suspended death penalty in 2009 for taking 196m yuan (£17.5m) in bribes.*Li Jiating
Ex-governor of Yunnan province, sentenced to death for corruption in 2003. Thought to be in Qincheng Prison, Beijing.*Liu Zhihua
The ex-vice-mayor of Beijing, who supervised preparations for the 2008 Olympics, was sentenced to death in 2008 for taking $1.45m in bribes. His sentence may be commuted to life imprisonment.*Zheng Shaodong
Ex-head of China’s Economic Criminal Investigation Bureau received a suspended death sentence for corruption.*Huang Songyou
The ex-deputy head of the Supreme Court is currently serving a life sentence for embezzlement and receiving bribes worth £500,000.
вот тебе и капитализм с коммунистическим лицом.
пипипи
19 December 2010 | Conspiracy, Lifeform, Story | 3 Comments
отдельного упоминания, кстати, несомненно заслуживает история самой загадочной радиостанции в мире:
Tinfoil hatters around the world are abuzz that UVB-76, the Russian shortwave radio station that has been broadcasting its monotonous tone almost uninterrupted since 1982, has suddenly gone offline.
правда, теперь уже снова действует (а так же другие ссылки по теме: 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6) — так заблудившиеся астронавты шлют на свои планеты крик о помощи[1].
—
1 — надо ли называть их по имени?
за стеклом
7 December 2010 | Story | 3 Comments
вообще же, если говорить о новостях, то удивительные истории случаются повсеместно, сюжеты ненаписанных книг заполняют мир. так, например:
Грабитель МакАртур Вилер (коротышка весом в 140 килограмм) откуда-то узнал, что если намазать лицо лимонным соком, то станешь невидим для телекамер. Он старательно готовился: намазался соком и снял сам себя на “Поляроид” — на снимке никого не оказалось.
и дальше:
So, we’re at the Last HOPE Conference in New York. The moment we arrived at the Pennsylvania Hotel, we took the escalator upstairs to the showroom floor. We were then greeted by this blossoming solar powered dildo flower thing. Whew, that’s a mouthful, and so are all those dildos!
плюс, еще:
During renovation of the Notting Hill Gate tube station in the London Underground, an abandoned passageway was discovered whose walls featured vintage adverting posters from 1956-1959 in what turned out to be a mid-century time capsule.
и наконец:
At the corner of Christopher Street and Seventh Avenue South in the West Village, in front of the iconic Village Cigars store, lies this blink-and-you’ll-miss-it mosaic embedded in the sidewalk. Its tough-talking message: “Property of the Hess Estate Which Has Never Been Dedicated For Public Purposes.”
а так же знаменитое первое убийство в Диснейленде и охота в библиотеке:
A Canadian man was charged with first-degree murder Friday for fatally shooting his father in the back with a crossbow in a Toronto library as shocked mothers and children watched.
меня постоянно терзает некий внутренний зуд соединить[1] все тристеро происходящего волшебными законами композиции и сюжета — и тогда, знаю, сквозь дверь мне навстречу покажется В.
но где же ты, просветление?
—
[1] — по инструкции, разумеется.
капли ртути
21 October 2010 | History, Literature, Story | 2 Comments
вдохновленный придуманной Нилом Стивенсоном Элизой, герцогиней Йглмской, я постоянно ищу не менее удивительные судьбы.
и оказалось вдруг, что Ольга Александровна Жеребцова, урожденная Зубова, была тоже наизанимательнейшей барышней.
тростник на ветру
6 October 2010 | Economics, History, Literature, Religion, Story | No Comments
замечательный сюжет для очередной проекции “Барочного цикла” — как говорится, а что было бы, если Нил Стивенсон писал бы его в древнеегипетских реалиях:
This paper uses over 700 years of Nile flood data and a novel data set on the tenure of Egyptian political and religious leaders to investigate how economic shocks affected the balance of power between “church” and “state” in pre-modern Egypt
и прекрасные выводы:
Results suggest that while deviant Nile floods increased political instability, such floods decreased the likelihood of a change in the highest ranking religious post. Additional empirical evidence is combined with the historical record to investigate the extent to which this pattern represents increased political influence of the religious elites. The paper concludes that Nile-induced economic crises appear to have increased the political influence of a subset of incumbent religious authorities.
ага, “Фараоном” Болеслава Пруса я в детстве зачитывался, разумеется.
президенты против
29 June 2010 | Politics, Story | No Comments
никак не могу определиться, кому следует написать роман о случившейся бондиане: то ли Пинчону, то ли Хмелевской.
женская хватка
18 June 2010 | Economics, Sport, Story | No Comments
Аманда Стейвели, современная Элиза, тем временем, и дальше распродает родину по частям:
Amanda Staveley, broker to the sheikhs, has pulled off another high-profile property deal for the emirate of Qatar, which is continuing its aggressive buying spree in London.
Staveley advised the Qatari property company Barwa Real Estate on the £250m acquisition of the Park House site in Oxford Street – the biggest development in the area since the Second World War – from the developer, Land Securities.
чистый роман, на каждом углу по принцу, устала выбирать — да и работы много:
The tiny emirate, which recently bought Harrods for £1.5bn, is on track to become the largest overseas property investor in the world this year, according to a report from Jones Lang LaSalle. The QIA, which is controlled by Qatar’s ruling Al Thani family, was set up in 2005 to invest the billions of dollars flowing in from the emirate’s huge offshore gas fields. Trophy assets acquired in London in recent years include the US embassy in Grosvenor Square, the Shard of Glass tower near London Bridge and the Chelsea barracks site in west London. It has taken advantage of the weak pound and the fall in property prices during the recession.
впрочем, что принцы, даже болельщики Liverpool F.C. смотрят на нее с надеждой — прекрасная, одним словом.
путешествие к центру Земли
7 June 2010 | Geography, Story | No Comments
в центре Гватемалы снова появилась дыра — 3 года и 2 километра после первой:
“We are sinking,” said resident Carlos Ajanel. “Nobody can rule out the appearance of more holes and the possibility of a major human catastrophe.”
An investigation of the 2007 disaster blamed the city’s drainage system, which experts believe also caused the more recent one.
на карте их не видно, однако хватает и традиционных свидетельств — чистый Мэтт Рафф, не иначе:
David Monterroso, a geophysics engineer at the National Disaster Management Agency, said buildings within 100 metres of the hole had been evacuated while his team evaluated the solidity of the ground with radar. “It’s evident that we need a full revision of the drainage system,” he said.
He said underground sewage leaks could have created a cavity that collapsed when the weight of the porous volcanic ground above increased during heavy rain. Ash from a nearby volcano that erupted a few days before may also have put extra pressure on the drains.
He added that once the hole had dried out experts would go down to analyse the soil.
но мы-то понимаем, в чем дело.