Bloomberg Businessweek, Dec 1, 2014

choi

Katie Linsell, Spanish Theater Company Solves Tax Problem With Porn.
www.businessweek.com/articles/20 ... x-problem-with-porn

Quote:

Spain "raised sales taxes on sporting events, leisure activities, and personal services such as haircuts. Cinema and theater were among the hardest-hit industries, with levies on ticket prices for both movies and live shows almost tripling to 21 percent from 8 percent. * * *  Spain’s theater tax is the second-highest in Western Europe, behind Denmark at 25 percent, according to the European Commission.

"Now, a company in Madrid says it’s found a way around the tax. Primas de Riesgo—a name that translates as risk premium—says it is registering as a porn distributor and selling 300 back issues of the 20-year-old porn magazine Gente Libre, or Free People. Each copy costs €16 and comes with a 'free' admission to the company’s new production of El Magico Prodigioso, a 17th century drama by Pedro Calderón de la Barca, at the New Alcala Theater in central Madrid. Theatergoers still pay a tax, but it’s only 4 percent—the standard tax on magazines.

Note:
(a) summary underneath the title in print: Overweight pigs have yielded legs too big for the most popular cut

(b) "While heavier hogs mean more pork per animal, their hind legs—the source of the ham cut—exceed the size used for producing 7-pound, spiral-cut 'half hams,' which typically serve as many as 14 people. * * * Around the holidays, Americans favor spiral hams, which are created by slicing the meat in a continuous coil around the bone, according to Urner Barry, a food industry publishing company. A typical light ham weighs 17 lb to 20 lb and yields two half hams.
(i) Ham Selection & Preparation. The Virtual Weber Bullet; Your best source for Weber Smokey Mountain Cooker information & discussion on the Web, undated
www.virtualweberbullet.com/hamselect.html
(read two sections: "What Is Ham?" and "Ham Cuts: Whole, Half, Bone-In, Boneless, Butt, Shank")
(ii) swine body parts:
(A) For hind leg, see hindlimb
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindlimb
("A hind limb is a posterior limb on an animal. When referring to quadrupeds, the term hind leg is often instead used")
(B) shank
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shank
(is the lower part of the leg, also called the "shin")
(C) "Ham" is used for not only food, but also the live animal. Google (pig body parts) without quotation marks.
(D) The term "hock" appears in a hind leg only--the corresponding part in the FRONT leg is "knee"--between ham and shank.

(c) "Last year, Americans bought 318 million pounds of ham during November and December, or 50 percent of the annual total, according to researcher IRI.

choi

Joshua Brustein, Cop Cams Face Threat From Transparency Law in Washington State.  
www.businessweek.com/articles/20 ... in-washington-state
(Washington "state’s 42-year-old public-records law, which requires government agencies to release—at nominal charge—almost all records that aren’t tied to active investigations and imposes stiff fines for not responding promptly to requests")

Note: summary underneath the title in print: Police in the state say transparency is too expensive

choi

Katie Linsell, Spanish Theater Company Solves Tax Problem With Porn.
www.businessweek.com/articles/20 ... x-problem-with-porn

Quote:

Spain "raised sales taxes on sporting events, leisure activities, and personal services such as haircuts. Cinema and theater were among the hardest-hit industries, with levies on ticket prices for both movies and live shows almost tripling to 21 percent from 8 percent. * * *  Spain’s theater tax is the second-highest in Western Europe, behind Denmark at 25 percent, according to the European Commission.

"Now, a company in Madrid says it’s found a way around the tax. Primas de Riesgo—a name that translates as risk premium—says it is registering as a porn distributor and selling 300 back issues of the 20-year-old porn magazine Gente Libre, or Free People. Each copy costs €16 and comes with a 'free' admission to the company’s new production of El Magico Prodigioso, a 17th century drama by Pedro Calderón de la Barca, at the New Alcala Theater in central Madrid. Theatergoers still pay a tax, but it’s only 4 percent—the standard tax on magazines.

Note:
(a) summary underneath the title in print: Tucking tickets into porn mags is one way to protest a theater tax

(b) Spanish English dictionary
* prima (noun feminine; ultimately from Latin adjective masculine prīmus (ordinal) first): "bonus"
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/prima
* riesgo (noun masculine; From Italian risco or rischio, itself probably from Latin resicum, risicum, from Greek):
"chance; risk; the possibility of harm or an unfavorable outcome from random chance"
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/riesgo
* gente (noun feminine; from Latin gēns^): "people"
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/gente
* prodigioso (adjective masculine): "prodigious [qv], marvelous"
www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/spanish-english/prodigioso

^ Latin English dictionary
gēns (noun feminine):
"1: Roman clan, related by birth or marriage and sharing a common name.
2: tribe; people"
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/gens

(c) Gente Libre
www.gentelibre.com/

It is a porn site (in Spanish), you know.

(d)
(i) Pedro Calderón de la Barcaen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedro_Calderón_de_la_Barca
(a dramatist of the Spanish Golden Age; section 4 Selected plays: El mágico prodigioso (The Mighty Magician) (1637))
(ii) Consonant: g. StudySpanish.com, undated www.studyspanish.com/pronunciation/letter_g.htm
("when 'g' comes before 'e' or 'i,' it sounds like the 'h' in the [English] word 'hot'")
() The plot:
The Wonder-Working Magician (El mágico prodigioso). The Guide to World Drama, undated. www.4-wall.com/authors/authors_c ... orking_magician.htm

(e) Theater’s statement (in Spanish; announcement No 3 in the home page):

Primeras reacciones e informacion práctica para hacerse con una revista. Compañía Primas de Riesgo, October 31, 2014.www.primasderiesgo.com