this paragraph is about to get picked apart...

Plaintiffs assert claims for aiding and abetting violations of the law of nations against defendants—all of which are corporations—under the Alien Tort Statute ("ATS"), 28 U.S.C. § 1350, a statute enacted by the first Congress as part of the Judiciary Act of 1789. We hold, under the precedents of the Supreme Court and our own Court over the past three decades, that in ATS suits alleging violations of customary international law, the scope of liability—who is liable for what—is determined by customary international law itself.  Because customary international law consists of only those norms that are specific, universal, and obligatory in the relations of States inter se, and because no corporation has ever been subject to any form of liability (whether civil or criminal) under the customary international law of human rights, we hold that corporate liability is not a discernable—much less universally recognized—norm of customary international law that we may apply pursuant to the ATS.  Accordingly, plaintiffs' ATS claims must be dismissed for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. 

 Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co., 621 F.3d 111 (2d Cir. 2010),

word of the week

epigrammatic

adjective

1.  of or like an epigram;  terse and ingenious in expression.

2.  containing or favoring the use of epigrams.

ep·i·gram

1.  any witty, ingenious, or pointed saying tersely expressed.

2.  epigrammatic  expression: Oscar Wilde had a genius for epigram.

3.  a short, often satirical poem dealing concisely with a single subject and usually ending with a witty or ingenious turn of thought.

The Real Keynesian Economics

Today I was considering that famous quote from John Maynard Keynes. He essentially complains that economists are always concerned with the long run effect of economic principles. Keynes then reminds us that "in the long run, we're all dead." Go look up the quote yourself; I don't trust my own memory very well.

This is the condition of fallen mankind. Without God, our long-term prospects are pretty grim. Despite our varied, insignificant, short-term success, in the long-run it all goes to zero. It turns out that for us the long-run is drastically significant.

Perhaps Keynes had been reading Ecclesiastes. If so, he would have been impressed with verse 11 in chapter 3. It says that there is something within man that longs for something eternal. And the proper interpretation of Eccl. 3:11 is found in 2 Cor 4:18. This is the eternal character of our Christian life:

"We do not regard the things which are seen but the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal."

Selah.

Sent from my iPhone

foods for thought

What kind of lunch can you prepare for 2 dollars? That's the name of the game this week. Tonight I tossed a Stouffer's frozen lasagna in the oven; it was huge. And also heated up a can of corn on the stove. That's my lunch for tomorrow. It's all part of a renewed endeavor/experiment with preparing food in bulk and then parsing it out throughout the week(s). The lasagna ($12) claims to serve twelve, but I'll be happy with 10 servings. That's lasagna M-F for two weeks!

It's not the best lasagna ever, which was documented back in 2008, but it should do the trick...

Photo of the Week

This just came in today. My personal copy of the tax code, all 15lbs of it. Below is the textbook for business law.

study spot of the week

the annex of the law school library

how to choose between studying and serving

Well there's not much to say, except that these paragraphs really supplied me today. One week into grad school; it's already pretty rigorous. There's a lot more pressure than I expected. So this afternoon I dropped into the sofa and was considering how to allocate my time between recruiting events, classes, meetings, etc. But I was reminded of this chapter, and reading it again it was very helpful to me. There was something like Isaiah 40 taking place. Anyway, I don't usually post large block quotes, but I couldn't let this one escape. Please enjoy...

All Music Considered

It's pretty obvious that this blog is similar to the book of Psalms, which captured many of the "natural sentiments" of the psalmists. And that may just be a flattering way of saying, well, I'm really stuck on this new song by R.E.M. (They're from Athens). A preview was featured by NPR's All Things Considered. As Bob Boilen would say, take a listen...

Today in MAcc (pt.1)

This web log was originally created as a repository for trivial and insignificant things that I stumble upon. So in keeping with that principle, I'm going to start throwing up things that I am covering in class. This may help me recall important code topics down the road.


In corp tax we covered the control requirements under §351 for deferring losses and gains upon incorporation. There are three important factors that come into play when you want to defer the loss or gain. Here's an overview:

Okay, I can't resist....

[No comment necessary]

Art of the Week

This portrait is a memorial to the friendly birds of Ladera Ranch, CA. In particular, the birds that attacked me as I was walking into Starbucks. The story is to graphic for me to recount in it's entirety; psychological damages are still being assessed. 

Special thanks to the artist, the commissioner, and agent who worked tediously to produce this sketch.

Warren Buffet on Tax Policy

This week the WSJ reports on Warren Buffet's tax policy recommendations. And there has been a flurry of response; nearly 1600 comments following the post. His proposals are well-intended but untenable, and if you can follow the article you'll have some talking points for that upcoming cocktail party. Enjoy...

quote from jane eyre

Maybe my aunt's house is boring, but she just sat there on the sofa, moping about and complaining. I couldn't help but think about that paragraph in Jane Eyre. It's one of those paragraphs that jumps out and slaps you in the face, and this was the perfect opportunity...

Georgiana, when not unburdening her heart to me, spent most of her time in lying on the sofa, fretting about the dulness of the house, and wishing over and over again that her aunt Gibson would send her an invitation up to town...One day, however, as she put away her account-book and unfolded her embroidery, she suddenly took her up thus -

"Georgiana, a more vain and absurd animal than you was certainly never allowed to cumber the earth. You had no right to be born, for you make no use of life. Instead of living for, in, and with yourself, as a reasonable being ought, you seek only to fasten your feebleness on some other person's strength: if no one can be found willing to burden her or himself with such a fat, weak, puffy, useless thing, you cry out that you are ill-treated, neglected, miserable. Then, too, existence for you must be a scene of continual change and excitement, or else the world is a dungeon: you must be admired, you must be courted, you must be flattered - you must have music, dancing, and society - or you languish, you die away..."

I read it slowly, letting each word drop carefully like a well placed arrow. She promptly left the sofa and quickly became occupied with something more meaningful. 


Today is my sister's birthday. Happy birthday Sarah!

Only White Rice!

Sam, this is kind of sobering don't you think? 

In 1949 when I began the work in Taiwan, many Sunday churchgoers came into our midst to “worship.” At that time there were not many who came for the gospel; many came only to attend the “worship.” At a certain point, I had a feeling before the Lord that I needed to speak a strong word to them. Therefore, I said, “In our service to the Lord, we have no intention of developing into something big, nor do we want to limit the work of the Holy Spirit. Anyone who comes here to meet with us must have a heart that seeks only the Lord. In the way of illustration, we do not serve steamed buns or dumplings; we serve only white rice. When you come here, you must know what you want to eat. If you want to eat dumplings, there are dumpling stores elsewhere. If you want to eat steamed buns, there are places offering steamed buns elsewhere. Here, we have only white rice. If you have come here for steamed buns or dumplings, you have come to the wrong place.” The building of the church is not accomplished by attracting people in a natural way but by consecration. If we serve the Lord in various places but are unable to present the Lord’s loveliness, glory, and honor in order to gain their hearts for Him so that they follow Him willingly, then our work is in vain. (Witness Lee, Three Aspects of the Church: Book 1, The Meaning of the Church.)

Down to Business (pt.3)

In this edition I want to highlight some points that were recently addressed in the Harvard Business Review. With a typical issue of HBR you get an array of topics. The OnPoint editions are focused on a particular subject, somewhat like a crystallization study. This issue can be located here. Anyway, after two awesome years in Anaheim with FTTA, I'm a little intimidated by the thought of returning to the business scene. Maybe you can relate. Here are some things I found insightful...

Down to Business (pt.2)

It was a Sunday evening in the FTTA, and I was sifting through a stack of periodicals at Barnes & Noble. One article in the Harvard Business Review (HBR) caught my eye. Each year a panel selects the top articles from HBR and these become the Annual McKinsey Award Winners. So I was curious which article the McKinsey & Company panel had selected. Turns out the top article for 2010 is "How Will You Measure Your Life" by Clayton M. Christensen; it came from a speech given by Christensen to the 2010 graduating class at Harvard Business School. I want to highlight and apply a couple of excerpts, but you can view the full article here. 

Clayton M. Christensen is a distinguished professor at Harvard Business School, and if you read the above links you may appreciate this article more. But what really impressed me was the testimony of his experience as a student:

For me, having a clear purpose in my life has been essential. But it was something I had to think long and hard about before I understood it. When I was a Rhodes scholar, I was in a very demanding academic program, trying to cram an extra yearʼs worth of work into my time at Oxford. I decided to spend an hour every night reading, thinking, and praying about why God put me on this earth. That was a very challenging commitment to keep, because every hour I spent doing that, I wasnʼt studying applied econometrics. I was conflicted about whether I could really afford to take that time away from my studies, but I stuck with it—and ultimately figured out the purpose of my life.

Because I was raised in a Christian home and in college became very active student with the Christian Students club at UGA, this story touched me very much. How many college students spend an hour each day to muse upon the Word and consider the meaning of our human life? Do you allocate an hour each day to such a cause? Are you a Rhodes scholar at Oxford? That's probably more difficult than my upcoming semester in graduate school. Yet Christensen was able to allocate an hour each day to something he believed in. Later in the article there is a subheading that says "Choose the right yardstick." Here he expounds:

This past year I was diagnosed with cancer and faced the possibility that my life would end sooner than Iʼd planned. Thankfully, it now looks as if Iʼll be spared. But the experience has given me important insight into my life. 

I have a pretty clear idea of how my ideas have generated enormous revenue for companies that have used my research; I know Iʼve had a substantial impact. But as Iʼve confronted this disease, itʼs been interesting to see how unimportant that impact is to me now. Iʼve concluded that the metric by which God will assess my life isnʼt dollars but the individual people whose lives Iʼve touched.

I think thatʼs the way it will work for us all. Donʼt worry about the level of individual prominence you have achieved; worry about the individuals you have helped become better people. This is my final recommendation: Think about the metric by which your life will be judged, and make a resolution to live every day so that in the end, your life will be judged a success

If we consider today what yardstick we want to be measured by, we may determine that what really matters is not how people judge us, but how much of what we do has eternal value in God's eyes (take a look at 1 Corinthians 4:1-5). This really touches me, and as I head back to school want my time be allocated according to the highest meaning in the universe. I hope many of us would take this pattern and dedicate some time, even an hour each day, to dive into the Bible and get with other Christian students to explore the meaning of our human existence. 

And to me this is what ties these two excerpts together. If we are faithful to know God and through the Bible come to know the purpose of our life, automatically the lives of people around us will be changed. So tonight I want to challenge you with the same question: How will you measure your life? 

Down to Business (pt. 1)

This is the kickoff post for an exciting new series that will document my journey to graduate school, with highlights from my adventures in the accounting realm, plus anything else that tickles my toes. Here we'll address all the exciting functions of debits and credits, but also cover more generally the student/working life with all of its complications. Stay tuned...


We know that a subscription to the WSJ is a must have for any B-school student. But here's something you may not know about: CFO Magazine. This is quality reading for any aspiring accountant, or business student for that matter. I've been scanning the pages of CFO magazine since my undergrad days at UGA. You'll gain some solid, behind-the-scenes exposure to the business decisions that are shaping the landscape of our country.

Quick example. Do you know of a Morris Trust tax transaction? How about a Reverse Morris Trust (RMT)? If you are going into tax you need to know this, and you can read about it here. And take a look at the six cardinal rules of resume writing, compliments of Wendy Enelow.

Cheers.

Word of the Week

Just dug this up from an old post from 2008. The word is "fustian." It could be considered a synonym for pretentious, but more in reference to one's writing or speech. Enjoy...


Fustian
–noun

1.

a stout fabric of cotton and flax.

2.

a fabric of stout twilled cotton or of cotton and low-qualitywool, with a short nap or pile.

3.

inflated or turgid language in writing or speaking: Fustiancan't disguise the author's meager plot.

Actually, this word reminds me of the quote about the rhetoric of Warren G. Harding. It was said that a typical speech by Harding was like "an army of pompous phrases moving over the landscape in search of an idea." 

Who was the first full-time co-worker...

Here's a fascinating perspective on service. It's from a book by Witness Lee, The History of God in His Union With Man. Have a look:

Have you ever realized that the first full-time co-worker was Abel? He raised up sacrifices for God's offering. This was his job, his work. This was also his kind of living. Abel was a person doing nothing on this earth but offering to God. Genesis 4:4 says that God had respect unto Abel and his offering. How good it was that Abel was a full-timer doing nothing but living for God! He was not in the line of good and evil. He was in the line of the tree of life, living for God and living to God.

Those of us who are serving the Lord full time should compare our full-time service with Abel's. When we compare ourselves with Abel, we probably need to say that we are part-timers, not full-timers. Abel was living a life that was absolutely for God. His living was for God, not for food, for eating. His elder brother Cain was the opposite. Cain was living for his daily necessity, for food. 

Abel lived on God in a spiritual sense, and he lived on what God did, on what God provided, in a physical sense. If we are full-timers we should live as Abel did. We should not live on anything worked out by ourselves. Cain was different from Abel because he lived on what he did. He was a farmer producing food for himself. Thus, we can see that it is not too much to say that Abel lived a Christian life. If we live the Christian life merely according to what the New Testament teaches, that is not adequate. We have to come back to the Old Testament to see the first typical full-timer for God—Abel.

A new day has dawned/
The saints are going on.

just think about it...

Early on, Henry Bracton, a thirteenth century jurist and compiler of the first known British legal compendium, The Statute and Common Law of England (in Latin, of course), recognized the revolutionary implications of the Magna Carta. For the first time, the king was explicitly subject to the common law: ‘The king must not be subject to any man, but to God and the law; for the law makes him king.’  

- from a book

All Music Considered

Okay don't judge. I'm on a heavy Michael Nyman trip. Rochester's Farewell is leading charts, and some other creepy stuff.

[embed the broken link]

notes from the incubator + song of the week

So there was a post some time ago where Turgenev's On the Eve was quoted without context, nor comment for that matter. Some people asked what it means. Well, I think that dialogue sums up the entire book and perhaps it doesn't require explanation. But I'm considering maybe putting something together to explain what I find so moving, and even relevant, about Shubin's timeless question: "will there ever be men among us?"

And that's our last post for tonight. Here's the song of the week, a little thing from Tom Waits. G'night.

"Take a listen."

The Curse of Natural Resources

Pandora's Box in Russia's Transition to a Market Economy

Here's an example of a 10 pager that deserved to be about 3 pages. 

Herman Melville on FTTA

"For the most part, in this tropic whaling life, a sublime uneventfulness invests you; you hear no news; read no gazettes; extras with startling accounts of commonplaces never delude you into unnecessary excitements; you hear of no domestic afflictions; bankrupt securities; fall of stocks; are never troubled with the thought of what you shall have for dinner - for all your meals for three years and more are snugly stowed in casks, and your bill of fare is immutable."