Values

“Bank secrecy is essentially eroding before our eyes,” says a recent NPR article. ”I think the combination of the fear factor that has kicked in for not only Americans with money offshore, countries that don’t want to be on the wrong side of this issue and the legislative weight of FATCA means that within three to five years it will be exceptionally difficult for any American to hide money in any financial institution.”

In order to bridge the holidays, while we cruise the Caribbean and use skepticism to stave off the "end of the world"... here’s a classic bit of blather about the future, written way back in the early nineties, when the web was new and when pioneers like former JPL director Bruce Murray were trying out these new conversational methods utilizing a brand new breakthrough called the "world wide web."

Songwriter Gotye has released a YouTube re-mix of his ubiquitous hit "Somebody That I Used to Know" generated from YouTube clips of his fans doing their own covers of that hit. It is a mildly edifying clip, but seems to me far more interesting than the simple tribute we are being told it is, whether a tribute to Gotye's fans, a tribute to the YouTube utility that mediated and indispensably facilitated his fame, or a tribute to Kutiman's fabulous Thru-YOU project.