If it’s too long or too confusing for you, skip the crap to go to the highlighted lines…
—————————————————————————————————

Calls for native germanic baby-making are too little too late …
birthrate-related demographic projections are the only element of
economic forecasting that have any real validity. A new German baby
born in 2010 would hit peak its peak earnings years in 2055-2065. Too
late!

Voluntary immigrants can be divided into two broad camps:
1) those who feel that another place would be a better place to make
their pile and 2) those who already have one who want to preserve the
one they’ve already made and feel they can do so more comfortably/tax
efficiently somewhere else.

1) can be further divided into a)
people whose home country is so bad sociopolitically (war, famine, no
rule of law, racial/social subtype discrimination) that they’ll hide in
a shipping container to get anywhere else, b ) people whose home
country is so overpopulated/already competitive that economic
opportunity is squelched, c) people whose home country’s labor laws
and/or tax regieme are so restrictive/regressive that they’re afraid
they’ll never be able to make their pile regardless of how hard they
work.

2) can be further divided into a) those whose home country
is just fine lifestlye and weather-wise but has a confiscatory tax
regieme, b ) those whose country has an okay lifestyle but with crappy
weather and a regressive tax regieme but who don’t care about
the weather, c) those whose home country has a crappy lifestyle, crappy
weather and a regressive tax regieme who want to move to fairer climes.

N.b.
I’ve deliberately left out those of us who are expatriates working for
international firms whose jobs are increasingly geographically
independent and/or living here for family reasons (from what I can see,
most of the Toytown demographic); I think this covers Dubai, Singapore
and Hong Kong as well.

A major mitigating factor is how
accepting the country to which one plans to emigrate is toward
immigrants … either because the culture is accepting from a
social/language perspective and if barriers to entry to setting up
typical immigrant businesses (restaurants, construction, piece work,
etc.) are low and/or whether there’s an extant expat community of one’s
fellow original countrymen already in place … clearly a bit more
important for 2 than for 1. This includes having an extant elite
private secondayr/university education system with international appeal
(US and UK).

The US, Canada and Australia tick the boxes for 1
and 2a,b&c. Spain attracts British and German retirees because the
weather’s nice and there are sufficient colonies of expats, so cover
2c. Switzerland, Luxembourg, Isle of Man, Channel Islands also attract
2a&b, whilst Carribean Islands, "sunny places for shady people"
like Monaco or Andorra or the US attract 2a&c. Germans moving to
Denmark or Finland (and until recently the UK) are clearly a
combination of 1c and 2b; same for the French in the UK (which is why
Sarkozy campaigned there). Indian/Pakistani and other Commonwealth
immigrants to the UK are generally 1b.

Unfortunately, Germany is perceived (sometimes unfairly) to have crappy lifestyle, crappy weather and
a confiscatory tax regieme, so sadly fails most of these decision
trees, and as a result attracts only 1a&b. The mitigating factors
are perceived to be not nearly as strong as they are elsewhere.

They
should turn East Germany into a special economic zone like Deng
Xiaoping did with Schenzhen, West Germany into Switzerland writ large,
and tune their universities back up to the levels of a few decades ago.
Bonus: If you’re a believer in "global warming", then there’s going to
be a premium on cool, green and wet (and the Baltic Coast becomes the
new Costa Del Sol). Problem solved.

]]> http://rbxpress.wordpress.com/2009/11/19/the-most-profound-immigration-analysis-ive-ever-seen/feed/ 3 rbxpress http://rbxpress.wordpress.com/2009/11/07/my-first-video-on-youtube/ http://rbxpress.wordpress.com/2009/11/07/my-first-video-on-youtube/#comments Fri, 06 Nov 2009 21:29:33 +0000 rbxpress http://rbxpress.wordpress.com/2009/11/07/my-first-video-on-youtube ]]>
]]> http://rbxpress.wordpress.com/2009/11/07/my-first-video-on-youtube/feed/ 3 rbxpress http://rbxpress.wordpress.com/2009/11/07/incredible-video/ http://rbxpress.wordpress.com/2009/11/07/incredible-video/#comments Fri, 06 Nov 2009 21:15:57 +0000 rbxpress http://rbxpress.wordpress.com/2009/11/07/incredible-video ]]> Simply Incredible!
http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=4038064&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=1&color=FF7700&fullscreen=1
]]> http://rbxpress.wordpress.com/2009/11/07/incredible-video/feed/ 1 rbxpress http://rbxpress.wordpress.com/2009/10/16/%e4%ba%b2%e8%ba%ab%e7%bb%8f%e5%8e%86db%e5%a4%a7%e6%99%9a%e7%82%b9/ http://rbxpress.wordpress.com/2009/10/16/%e4%ba%b2%e8%ba%ab%e7%bb%8f%e5%8e%86db%e5%a4%a7%e6%99%9a%e7%82%b9/#comments Thu, 15 Oct 2009 21:43:43 +0000 rbxpress http://rbxpress.wordpress.com/2009/10/16/%e4%ba%b2%e8%ba%ab%e7%bb%8f%e5%8e%86db%e5%a4%a7%e6%99%9a%e7%82%b9 ]]> 早就听说Deutsche Bahn如果晚点导致乘客没赶上下班车的话，是需要负责付出租车钱把旅客送到目的地的。现在终于亲身经历了一回。。。
因为项目略显紧张，提早到周日傍晚出发前往牛堡。因为不想多转车，放弃了之前的一班，选择了晚上11点到的ICE.
车到Siegburg-bonn，也就是前往法兰克福机场的那条快速专线起点，居然停了10分钟，广播里叽哩呱啦一顿解释，居然说前面有趟车好像碾过了什么东西，还说现在还不清楚到底碾过的是人还是动物，巨寒。。。
之后就是说整条快速专线被关闭了，还说估计要往回驶到机场附近，然后所有人换乘另一辆ICE走另一条路线去法兰克福，晕死。车窗外的车站边已经停了好多Taxi, 那些本来去法兰克福赶飞机的人匆忙都下车了。坐taxi跑近200公里赶飞机，够酷，反正DB会出钱。
剩下的人只能呆坐车内慢慢等消息，过了差不多一个小时，才通告说不用换车了，不过我们预计会晚点两小时。。。因为快速轨道关闭，至少有三五辆ICE都趴在这个车站动不了。再过了约莫半小时后终于发动，据观察貌似是每五分钟动一辆车，我这辆又过了15分钟才开，还说不按原计划到慕尼黑了，只开到法兰克福，之后必须换车，靠。
不过这次终于见识了德国人的火车能跑多快，我刚想到因为晚点火车一般都要开的快一点的，于是去看屏幕上有没有速度显示。果然显示为270公里每小时，之后慢慢涨到281公里每小时，这时突然一个闪光，看来有心人不止我一个，还有人要拍照留念的。之后屏幕显示换了，也不知道最高速度开到多少，感觉两百八已经差不多了。
车到法兰克福，按广播说的换车，居然是换去一辆又旧又慢的IC。靠，老子买了ICE的票，DB不光晚点还把我们当猴耍，拿破车来应付。这下子晃悠晃悠，凌晨一点多终于到了牛堡，困得要死的我奔到Service punkt，据说出租票是在这儿领的。就算我只做到牛堡市内，也不能便宜了DB。一个老头在哪儿把众人分组，原来相同目的地的人要尽量乘坐同一辆车，DB也是知道要省钱的。我还算好的，看看周围一群半夜要赶往慕尼黑的人，那才叫可怜。
最后搞来搞去只有我这方向的只有我一个，于是拉着工作人员理直气壮的说你快给我张票，就我这个方向。人家还真先给了我一张Gutschein，旁边一老头看我手上有票，马上要求搭船（虽然他是去另一个方向的)，搭就搭吧。就这样，瓢泼大雨凌晨1点半，出租车总算给我送到公寓，tmd以后哪个德国人再跟我说德国火车可靠拉高价有理之类的话我就送他一个字，呸！
]]> http://rbxpress.wordpress.com/2009/10/16/%e4%ba%b2%e8%ba%ab%e7%bb%8f%e5%8e%86db%e5%a4%a7%e6%99%9a%e7%82%b9/feed/ 9 rbxpress http://rbxpress.wordpress.com/2009/10/04/%e8%a6%81%e4%b8%8e%e6%97%b6%e4%bf%b1%e8%bf%9b%e5%95%8a/ http://rbxpress.wordpress.com/2009/10/04/%e8%a6%81%e4%b8%8e%e6%97%b6%e4%bf%b1%e8%bf%9b%e5%95%8a/#comments Sun, 04 Oct 2009 14:10:33 +0000 rbxpress http://rbxpress.wordpress.com/2009/10/04/%e8%a6%81%e4%b8%8e%e6%97%b6%e4%bf%b1%e8%bf%9b%e5%95%8a ]]>

原来现在扛摄像机的新闻记者已经太土了

看清楚没，下图手上拿的不是Sony也不是松下的摄像机，而是佳能的7D。此等外接设备，无比强悍亚。

7D提供1080p, 720p, 480p三种视频大小选择，比起5d mark ii来多了个720p, 个人认为还是蛮实用的，毕竟1080p高清太大，480p又太小太不专业了点

英国卫报记者用7D拍摄的天安门国庆阅兵：

Shooting China’s 60th anniversary parade with the 7D, 5DmkII and Nikon D700

其实阅兵也不用这么严肃的，观赏一下成都某校校运会入场式的杰作…

原文在bullogger上

….

《建国大业》从影片的制作和表演上讲还算上乘，从影片的类型上来讲应该算是幻灯片。我很怀疑导演是在用反讽的手法来拍摄这部电影。看着那些开国元帅们纵情唱着国际歌，毛泽东说，我们永远要团结。我看到了这部电影成为一部真正的优秀电影的潜质——那就是它不在1949年结尾，而是以1976年结尾。在1949年的时候，诚挚的人民诚挚的望着诚挚的毛泽东和诚挚的新中国，然而六十年后，人们依然没有一米自己的土地，大家都是寄生而已。以前我们的旧社会由很多的阶级组成，现在简单了，只有四个阶级，那就是穷人，房奴，富人和富豪。

从另外一方面来讲，建国大业是一部爱情文艺片，它委婉的讲述了穷小子追求富家女的故事，当时的共产党就是穷小子，新中国是待嫁的富家女，国民党是订了婚的情敌，各民主党派和社会名流是富家女的朋友，穷小子成功的秘诀就是一开始要有理想，谈未来，许承诺，拉拢朋友，乱开空头支票，当然，会打架是排在第一位的。最终终于成功的娶了新中国。当然婚后的生活就和在座的各位当年花言巧语的男同志们的婚后生活差不多。

你们泡妞时的承诺都做到了吗？

但是无论如何，建国大业告诉我们一个真理，当年我党攻克上海，宋庆龄有点犹豫，我党问道，这套房子怎么样？黄金地段，超大户型，军队物业，独栋带花园，开发商精装修，特批永久产权，送给你了。宋庆龄就被搞定了。

影片告诉我们，想要搞定女人，还得靠房子。尤其在上海。

…