Top Right: Introducing Slate's list of the 25 Americans who best combine inventive genius and practicality.

Top Right

THOMAS EDISON LAST EXHALATION CAPTURED AND PRESERVED

The oddest exhibit at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Mich., is this sealed glass test tube, which may or may not contain the dying breath of Thomas Alva Edison. According to some historians, when Edison was on his deathbed in 1931, Ford asked Charles Edison to capture his father's last exhalation and preserve it for him. The test tube is a legitimate Edison artifact, and Charles Edison appears to have sent it to Ford, but its contents are probably legend. Still, it gets at something profound and touching about the two most important Americans of their age. Ford was Edison's neighbor, friend, and former employee, yet he found Edison's gift for practical innovation so mysterious that he sought to hold the Wizard of Menlo Park's last breath for eternity, perhaps hoping to locate, in the nitrogen and carbon dioxide, the source of Edison's genius—as if the essential nature of America's greatest practical thinker could be captured and bottled and passed on to future generations.

If only it were that easy! Like few people before or since—though Ford himself is probably his closest competitor—Edison combined two radically different kinds of brilliance. Edison was of course one of the greatest inventors of his age, responsible for the phonograph, the stock ticker, the microphone used in telephones, and the practical incandescent light, among other world-changing devices. But Edison also put his inventions—as well as the inventions of others—to work like no one else in history. He founded the first commercial research laboratory in Menlo Park, N.J., turning ideas and experiments into valuable consumer products. Having perfected a practical light bulb, he then tried to make it widely useful by inventing the power distribution company. He popularized the Kinetoscope, the first commercially successful way to show motion pictures. The carbon microphone he invented in 1877—and then won a patent war over—was used in Bell telephones until the 1980s. Has any American generated so many new ideas, and put those ideas into practice, as Thomas Edison?

Ford couldn't successfully capture Edison's essence in a bottle. But 80 years later, we can pay it tribute. Slate has launched a project, Top Right, to identify the Americans who best share Edison's dual talents for inventiveness and practical thinking.

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We're as enraptured as anyone by the utopian dreamers who promise fusion in a bathtub, a universal network of supertrains, nations remade by Twitter. But Slate is temperamentally inclined toward the here and now. Our focus in Top Right is on Americans who solve current problems.

Like a lot of others, we at Slate are very fond of the quadrant graph. (We don't need to tell you about it, right? See Steve Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People or, for more pleasure, New York Magazine's sublime "Approval Matrix.") It occurred to us that the quadrant graph is an excellent way to represent how people (or institutions) balance innovation and pragmatism. The X-axis on our graph represents innovation, ranging from hopelessly pedestrian on the far left to mind-blowingly innovative on the far right. The Y-axis is pragmatism—you could think of it also as "effectiveness"—ranging from the hideously impractical at the bottom to the ruthlessly effective at the top.

The center point is where most of us live—competent, occasionally imaginative. The bottom left quadrant—dull and incompetent—is a hell of surly DMV clerks, Eastern European waiters, and CBS sitcom writers. The upper-left quadrant, practical but dull, is where you'll find capable managers, derivative thinkers, and shopping-mall developers. The bottom-right quadrant, innovative but impractical, is an elevated Blimp City financed through a flat tax and powered by solar panels.

And then there's the Top Right. It is here you find the world-changers, the people who combine inventiveness and pragmatism to solve problems that other people couldn't solve, or wouldn't solve, or hadn't even recognized.

Who are the 2011 Top Right? In our first edition of this list—the first of many, we hope—Slate is identifying 25 Americans, five in each of five categories: business, culture, technology, government, and design. We are revealing them gradually over five weeks, one group at a time. Today we unveil our five Top Right Americans in technology.

Obviously, with 25 people, this is not a comprehensive list of America's most capable innovators. There are great tech-heads left off of our technology Top Right, and fabulous business leaders left off that list. We're aiming for a thought-provoking group, a mix of knowns and unknowns, each of whom is exceptional in tackling, and solving, a knotty problem in a new way. The business group, for example, includes both Netflix impresario Reed Hastings, who has cracked the movie and TV business not once but twice, and Lady Gaga's business adviser Troy Carter, who has combined old marketing techniques and radically new ones to build Gaga's music, fashion, and media empire. (Please click here to see the rest of the list.)

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WHAT MAKES A MAN TURN OFF AND REFUSE

What makes a man hate a woman and reject her:

- When she cheats and tells lies.
- Double-crossed relationship.
- Treat him like a fool.
- Woman likes yelling, screaming and complaining about his everything.
- Woman with no commitment.
- Heartless.
- Woman who only interested in his bank account, property.
- Dating with different partner.
- Never sleep at home.
- Night life diva.
- Irresponsibility.
- Likes blaming about his fault even though it was not his fault.
- Jealousy
- Has different sex partner.
- Sabotage his present relationship just to seize his attention and hurt his present lover.
- Likes humiliation.
- Jobless.
- Brainless.
- Cynic.
- Hypocrisy

Tokyo stocks soar on BOJ easing plan ‹ Japan Today: Japan News and Discussion

Tokyo stocks soar on BOJ easing plan

Business Apr. 05, 2013 - 04:00PM JST ( 10 )

TOKYO —

Tokyo stocks soared Friday, hitting record volumes as investors embraced sweeping new Bank of Japan stimulus measures which sent the yen plunging, spelling good news for the key export sector.

The scope of the BOJ action Thursday—including doubling the money supply—took some analysts and investors by surprise, despite expectations of major moves by the bank in its first meeting under new governor Haruhiko Kuroda.

The yen slumped against the dollar and euro after Thursday's announcement, the benchmark Nikkei jumped and bond yields hit a record low as Kuroda vowed no let-up in the battle against the decades of deflation that has weighed on the world's third-largest economy.

The Nikkei soared over 4% in early Friday trade, past 13,100 to intraday highs last seen in August 2008 just before the global financial crisis rocked markets. It ended Friday up 1.58%, or 199.10 points, to 12,833.64 on its biggest volume since the Tokyo Stock Exchange opened in 1949, with 6.45 billion shares changing hands.

The broader Topix index of all first-section shares jumped 2.74%, or 28.48 points, to finish at 1,066.24.

Shares were boosted by a tumbling yen, which sank to a 3 1/2-year low against the dollar, with the greenback buying 96.35 yen against 96.33 yen in New York late Thursday, after jumping as high as 97.05 yen earlier Friday. The dollar was trading below 93 yen before the BOJ announcement.

The euro bought 124.59 yen from 125.20 yen in U.S. trade, after soaring to 125.43 yen in earlier Tokyo trade on Friday.

Monetary easing tends to weaken yen, which makes Japanese goods more competitive overseas and lifts companies' foreign-earned profits when converted back to yen.

Investors have so far given a thumbs up to the economic policies of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, dubbed "Abenomics", after he swept December elections on a pledge to kickstart Japan's lumbering economy.

"Japanese stocks had long been undervalued, so the gain is justified," said Daisuke Uno, chief market strategist of Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp.

"But we also need to keep an eye on the downside of the fresh easing measures… We don't know where this gamble will take us."

Abe on Friday applauded the BOJ, with Japanese media quoting him as saying the market reaction was "exactly what the measures were expected to do".

Kuroda, meanwhile, brushed off worries of an asset-price bubble, a big fear in Japan after the last two decades of limp growth followed a huge stock and real-estate bubble in the late 1980s.

Boston University Prof William Grimes warned there "are no guarantees" after years of tepid policy action from the central bank.

"Deflationary expectations are much more firmly entrenched among Japanese companies and consumers (now)," he said. "Also, Japan's fiscal situation has become much worse."

Japan, which has proportionately the worst debt load among industrialised nations, has been wrestling with falling prices for years, putting the brakes on growth because it encourages people to put off buying goods in the hopes of paying less down the road and hurting producers in the process.

In Tokyo stock trading, exporters gained with Sony finishing up 0.44% to 1,580 yen, while Canon jumped 1.54% to 3,290 yen, Toyota rose 3.35% to 5,090 yen and industrial giant Hitachi finished up 3.01% to 547 yen.

Among the BOJ measures are expanding its asset-purchase programme to include riskier bets such as exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and real-estate investment trusts. ETFs are similar to an index fund, but are market traded like stocks.

It also plans to double the nation's money supply and buy longer-term government bonds, a move aimed at pushing down long-term interest rates to encourage companies and individuals to borrow instead of hoarding their cash.

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British Financial Industry Leak Reveals The Identities Of The Rich Who Hide Money Overseas

Major British Financial Industry Leak Exposes The Rich Who Hide Money Overseas

Oyster.com

Millions of internal records have leaked from Britain's offshore financial industry, exposing for the first time the identities of thousands of holders of anonymous wealth from around the world, from presidents to plutocrats, the daughter of a notorious dictator and a British millionaire accused of concealing assets from his ex-wife.

The leak of 2m emails and other documents, mainly from the offshore haven of the British Virgin Islands (BVI), has the potential to cause a seismic shock worldwide to the booming offshore trade, with a former chief economist at McKinsey estimating that wealthy individuals may have as much as $32tn (£21tn) stashed in overseas havens.

In France, Jean-Jacques Augier, President François Hollande's campaign co-treasurer and close friend, has been forced to publicly identify his Chinese business partner. It emerges as Hollande is mired in financial scandal because his former budget minister concealed a Swiss bank account for 20 years and repeatedly lied about it.

In Mongolia, the country's former finance minister and deputy speaker of its parliament says he may have to resign from politics as a result of this investigation.

But the two can now be named for the first time because of their use of companies in offshore havens, particularly in the British Virgin Islands, where owners' identities normally remain secret.

The names have been unearthed in a novel project by the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists [ICIJ], in collaboration with the Guardian and other international media, who are jointly publishing their research results this week.

The naming project may be extremely damaging for confidence among the world's wealthiest people, no longer certain that the size of their fortunes remains hidden from governments and from their neighbours.

BVI's clients include Scot Young, a millionaire associate of deceased oligarch Boris Berezovsky. Dundee-born Young is in jail for contempt of court for concealing assets from his ex-wife.

Young's lawyer, to whom he signed over power of attorney, appears to control interests in a BVI company that owns a potentially lucrative Moscow development with a value estimated at $100m.

Another is jailed fraudster Achilleas Kallakis. He used fake BVI companies to obtain a record-breaking £750m in property loans from reckless British and Irish banks.

As well as Britons hiding wealth offshore, an extraordinary array of government officials and rich families across the world are identified, from Canada, the US, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Iran, China, Thailand and former communist states.

The data seen by the Guardian shows that their secret companies are based mainly in the British Virgin Islands.

Sample offshore owners named in the leaked files include:

• Jean-Jacques Augier, François Hollande's 2012 election campaign co-treasurer, launched a Caymans-based distributor in China with a 25% partner in a BVI company. Augier says his partner was Xi Shu, a Chinese businessman.

• Mongolia's former finance minister. Bayartsogt Sangajav set up "Legend Plus Capital Ltd" with a Swiss bank account, while he served as finance minister of the impoverished state from 2008 to 2012. He says it was "a mistake" not to declare it, and says "I probably should consider resigning from my position".

• The president of Azerbaijan and his family. A local construction magnate, Hassan Gozal, controls entities set up in the names of President Ilham Aliyev's two daughters.

• The wife of Russia's deputy prime minister. Olga Shuvalova's husband, businessman and politician Igor Shuvalov, has denied allegations of wrongdoing about her offshore interests.

•A senator's husband in Canada. Lawyer Tony Merchant deposited more than US$800,000 into an offshore trust.

He paid fees in cash and ordered written communication to be "kept to a minimum".

• A dictator's child in the Philippines: Maria Imelda Marcos Manotoc, a provincial governor, is the eldest daughter of former President Ferdinand Marcos, notorious for corruption.

• Spain's wealthiest art collector, Baroness Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza, a former beauty queen and widow of a Thyssen steel billionaire, who uses offshore entities to buy pictures.

• US: Offshore clients include Denise Rich, ex-wife of notorious oil trader Marc Rich, who was controversially pardoned by President Clinton on tax evasion charges. She put $144m into the Dry Trust, set up in the Cook Islands.

It is estimated that more than $20tn acquired by wealthy individuals could lie in offshore accounts. The UK-controlled BVI has been the most successful among the mushrooming secrecy havens that cater for them.

The Caribbean micro-state has incorporated more than a million such offshore entities since it began marketing itself worldwide in the 1980s. Owners' true identities are never revealed.

Even the island's official financial regulators normally have no idea who is behind them.

The British Foreign Office depends on the BVI's company licensing revenue to subsidise this residual outpost of empire, while lawyers and accountants in the City of London benefit from a lucrative trade as intermediaries.

They claim the tax-free offshore companies provide legitimate privacy. Neil Smith, the financial secretary of the autonomous local administration in the BVI's capital Tortola, told the Guardian it was very inaccurate to claim the island "harbours the ethically challenged".

He said: "Our legislation provides a more hostile environment for illegality than most jurisdictions".

Smith added that in "rare instances …where the BVI was implicated in illegal activity by association or otherwise, we responded swiftly and decisively".

The Guardian and ICIJ's Offshore Secrets series last year exposed how UK property empires have been built up by, among others, Russian oligarchs, fraudsters and tax avoiders, using BVI companies behind a screen of sham directors.

Such so-called "nominees", Britons giving far-flung addresses on Nevis in the Caribbean, Dubai or the Seychelles, are simply renting out their names for the real owners to hide behind.

The whistleblowing group WikiLeaks caused a storm of controversy in 2010 when it was able to download almost two gigabytes of leaked US military and diplomatic files.

The new BVI data, by contrast, contains more than 200 gigabytes, covering more than a decade of financial information about the global transactions of BVI private incorporation agencies. It also includes data on their offshoots in Singapore, Hong Kong and the Cook Islands in the Pacific.

This article originally appeared on guardian.co.uk

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Cyprus's Dangerous, Necessary Capital Controls

Picture not being able to cash a check, transfer money electronically or withdraw more than $385 a day from your bank. Or imagine being searched by airport gendarmes making sure you aren't taking more than $3,800 of your own money out of the country.

These are the indignities Cypriots must endure after the country's $13 billion bank rescue. For the first time in the history of the single currency, a euro country is imposing capital controls, even for transfers within the union. It's as if California barred residents from moving their savings to banks in Oregon.

The unfortunate rule of thumb on capital controls is that they are easy to impose, difficult to enforce and almost impossible to lift. Iceland, whose banks ran into similar trouble as Cyprus's, adopted emergency controls in 2008. Five years later, they're still in place.

At first, Cypriot officials pledged that the controls would last about a week, but quickly revised that to about a month. Hardly anyone believes even that timeframe. The minute Cyprus lifts its controls, money will fly to safer havens. Even insured deposits -- the ones that were protected by the European Union's bail-in, which required all other creditors to take losses -- will probably flee.

Cypriot Euros

In imposing capital controls, Cyprus has detached itself from Europe's monetary union. A euro deposited in a bank in Cyprus is no longer worth the same as one deposited in France or Germany. It can't be easily withdrawn, spent or converted, and is therefore a second-class euro. The consequences are going to be harsh, with some economists now warning of Greek-like shrinkage of Cyprus's gross domestic product. As long as capital controls are in force, no one is going to buy Cypriot government or corporate debt, or make direct investments in Cypriot businesses.

It's too late to suggest that Cyprus should have been more prudent. It isn't too late, though, to warn other countries away from the practices that caused this debacle. The biggest lesson is obvious, but worth stating clearly: Don't let your banks get too big to save.

Both Iceland and Cyprus buckled under the weight of an overblown banking sector. Iceland's was 10 times the size of its economy; Cyprus's was eight times, bloated by deposits that came mostly from wealthy Russians avoiding taxes. But Iceland, at least, had its own currency which, once devalued, helped soften the blow.

Another lesson: Beware hot money. Trillions of dollars circumnavigate the globe in search of yields that well- regulated, well-capitalized banks simply can't -- and shouldn't -- offer. Once hot money flows into a country's banking system, it must be invested to deliver the returns that attracted it in the first place.

Cypriot banks, flush with about $20 billion from Russians, put much of that money to work in Greek government bonds. When those bonds were written down because of the 2011 Greek debt restructuring, the three largest publicly traded Cypriot banks lost 6.5 billion euros, sealing their fate.

Luxembourg and Malta, two euro-area countries whose banking sectors dwarf their national economies, should take heed. Luxembourg's financial industry assets are 22 times the size of its annual output. Bank assets in Malta, which hopes to replace Cyprus as Europe's newest offshore money haven, are about eight times the size of its economy.

Resolution Powers

The euro area also needs authority to shut down banks -- a power similar to what the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. possesses. The FDIC is adept at taking over troubled banks, shutting them down or merging them with healthy banks, and then reopening them so smoothly that retail depositors hardly even notice.

The EU's plans to create a banking union initially recognized the need for a single resolution authority, but governments now seem to be retreating from the idea, citing "bailout fatigue." If they want to avoid another Cyprus, they should think again.

The euro area shouldn't kid itself: Cyprus's capital controls, while necessary to prevent the island's banks from collapsing, are a break from the principle that a euro is a euro, no matter which of the 17 currency-union countries you live, work or travel in. If depositors in other countries start worrying that their money may one day be similarly trapped in their domestic banking systems, then the whole single-currency project will be in jeopardy.

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マレ�シア政府�光局 オフィシャルブログ:『Love Lane』の由来は？

http://blog-tourismmalaysia.jp/archives/51908043.html

『Love Lane』の由来は？

前にストリートアートと針金アートでご紹介したLove Lane 


Lane は「Street」の意味ですから
直訳は「Love Street」つまり「愛通り」　
きゃっ　なんて可愛い名前


割れたハートの絵もLove Lane にあります。

最近大注目のジョージタウン、
オシャレなカフェやブティックハウスはこの
Love Lane 沿いに結構ありますよ

すごくロマンチックな名前ですよね。
こんな名前、他を探してもちょっとない気がします

でも・・・
そもそもなんで「Love Lane」っていうの？？　

私も気になって名前の由来を調べてみました

そうしたら、

　イギリス統治時代、「Love さん」という名前の総督？がこの通りに
　　　お屋敷を構え住んでいたから、その総督の名前にちなんで
　　　この名前になった

　むかし、この通りは遊郭のような場所だったから、こういう名前になった

と諸説いろいろあるみたい。

そうしたら、Love Lane に描かれているこの針金アートに、
この通りのエピソードが書かれてました!!


これ、さっきの割れたハートのイラストの向かい側にあるんですが、
なんかでぶっちょなおじさんが壁に貼り付けになってて
気にも留めなかったんです（笑）ですが、ここに由来が!!

横に書いてある文を日本語にすると・・
「地元の華人によると、Muntri　Street（Love Laneのちょっと先）に
住んでるお金持ちの男性はみんなここに愛人を囲っていた。だから
この通りはLove Laneと呼ばれている」

で、このアートは、愛人を囲っているのが奥さんにバレて、あわてて
窓から逃げようとした旦那さんの絵だとか　たしかに～(笑)

今となってはホントかどうかはわかりませんが、
「愛のストリート」なんて　とってもロマンチック

ジョージタウンへ遊びに来たら、ぜひLove Laneにも足を運んでくださいねっ♪♪


いつも読んでくれて有難うございます
　　　　ブログランキングに参加しました

面白かったらポチっとお願いします!

 

Goay Joe Lie

Director of Joe Lie Beauty And Cosmetics

Tory Burch: Empowering Women Through Entrepreneurial Education

Empowering Women Through Entrepreneurial Education

As an entrepreneur, I'm fortunate to speak with many people who are interested in starting their own business. A few years ago, I met Jordan Salcito, a New York City sommelier who also works the harvest in various European vineyards. She was developing the concept for her own venture. I thought she had a very good idea and was thrilled when she launched Bellus Wines in November 2011 with the goal of creating and offering great wines at an affordable price. After a year in the business, the 32-year-old entrepreneur was frustrated. "I felt like I was treading water," recalls Jordan, who studied English literature and philosophy, not business, in college. "One of the things I'm good at is generating ideas but I didn't know what my next step should be."

Many early-stage entrepreneurs find themselves in this place: you have a great idea and the passion to move it forward but, at a certain point, you hit a wall. What is your strategic plan for growth? When should you hire someone to help you? How do you analyze a P&L statement? And why do you need to do an operational audit?

I know what it's like to launch a business from your kitchen table with a clear concept and plenty of passion but only a basic knowledge of business. I had a lot of experience in fashion, having worked in the industry for years in marketing and PR, but that, and my degree in art history, weren't enough to get my company off the ground. I was lucky. I had many friends and colleagues, trusted mentors that I could call on to answer my questions--and, believe me, I did. I benefited enormously from their generosity and patience, learning so much along the way. I also understand that not everyone has that network.

With that in mind, my team and I launched the Tory Burch Foundation in 2009 to support the economic empowerment of women entrepreneurs and their families in the U.S. through small business loans and mentorship. The more we learned, the more we realized that many of the women who participated in our mentorship programs needed something beyond advice and direction. They needed tools to help them develop their business and scale it. We partnered with Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses and, in collaboration with Babson College and LaGuardia Community College, designed a pilot program for early-stage women entrepreneurs who have not had a formal business education.

"Over the last five years, Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women has proven that investing in women around the world is one of the most effective ways to reduce inequality and facilitate economic growth. When women are empowered it leads to healthier, better-educated families, and ultimately more prosperous communities. This is also true domestically, where Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses has served over 1,200 American entrepreneurs, nearly 50% of the women. And we are looking forward to seeing the growth of the 18 graduates of this first all-female cohort designed in partnership with the Tory Burch Foundation specifically for early stage businesses," says Dina Powell, President of the Goldman Sachs Foundation and the executive in charge of the 10,000 Small Businesses program.

The intensive program is a kind of customized MBA course, offered free of charge to promising entrepreneurs in a range of industries. Over the course of nine weeks, participants received practical business and management training covering everything from financial fundamentals to lessons in leadership, marketing, hiring the right people and how to get funding from outside investors. We want them to own their title as CEO of their company.

I invited Jordan to apply and she, along with 17 other women business owners, recently completed the program and will celebrate their graduation with a ceremony and reception on April 1st.

This partnership encouraged the women to look beyond the day-to-day demands of their job to get a 10,000-mile view of their business. Or as Malene Barnett, the 40-year-old founder of Malene B Custom Handmade Carpets in New York City puts it: "I realized it was okay to take a step back to work on my business instead of in it, which is what I'd been doing."

A diverse group in industries from fashion and food to lighting design, the women also benefited from peer-to-peer networking and one-on-one advice from professionals, tailored to their particular needs. "The business coach was really key," says Jordan. "He helped me to apply the things I was learning in class to my specific business. Making a wine in California became the clear next step to putting Bellus on the track to sustainable growth and profitability."

Women like Jordan and Malene are our best investment. Small businesses are a vital engine for job growth in this country, creating nearly two out of every three new jobs and employing approximately 60 million Americans, which is roughly half the private sector workforce. They are also part of an important trend. More and more women are launching businesses. According to a 2010 U.S. Department of Commerce report, the number of women-owned businesses grew by 44 percent between 1997 and 2007, twice as fast as businesses owned by men.

As we celebrate the graduation of our pilot class, we hope to offer the program to a new group of women entrepreneurs and possibly even expand to other parts of the country. In the meantime, we're encouraged by the initial results and the enthusiastic response. "It truly transformed my way of thinking about my business," says 28-year-old Carrie Hammer of Carrie Hammer Custom Apparel in New York City, a two-year-old business with five employees and relationships with several factories in Asia. "I was winging it and now I have so much more structure. I feel like I have a serious company that is poised for great growth."

Tory Burch is CEO and designer at Tory Burch and the founder of The Tory Burch Foundation.

 

 

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Director of Joe Lie Beauty And Cosmetics