Whoever thought that among the gazillionaires, politicians, and various dodgy types, Emma Watson would find company.
The name of the English actress who played smarty-pants Hermione in the Harry Potter series popped up on the Panama Papers list published by the International Consortium of Journalists on Monday, in a trawl of the more than 200,000 companies, foundations and trusts conducted by British magazine The Spectator.
So is Emma trying to keep her cash out of the clutches of Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs?
Not at all, her publicist insists. "Emma (like many high-profile individuals) set up an offshore company for the sole purpose of protecting her anonymity and safety."
There you go – a perfectly reasonable decision and riposte to the cynics who suggest she set up an offshore account in the interest of (perfectly legal) tax avoidance.
"U.K. companies are required to publicly publish details of their shareholders and therefore do not give her the necessary anonymity required to protect her personal safety, which has been jeopardized in the past owing to such information being publicly available."
So, it's a safety concern, too. If people knew Emma had money in the bank in Britain, well, there's no telling what could happen.
A Boaty McVolte-face
Britain's Brexit cheerleaders are likely hoping it doesn't set a precedent: After an online poll to suggest names for the nation's new polar research ship, the Natural Environmental Research Council (NERC) gave the thumbs-down to winning entry Boaty McBoatface.
The decision would be a "Boaty McVolte-face," said MP Nicola Blackwood – chairwoman of the parliamentary committee that is examining the competition – before the decision was announced, despite the fact NERC insisted it had never committed to use the winning entry, but was just asking for suggestions for naming the new Royal Research Ship.
Fair enough. So what name prevailed? Last Friday it was announced that the £300,000 ($558,000) research vessel would be known as the RRS David Attenborough, after the celebrated British naturalist.
That seems a pretty good pick, what with Sir David having spent a lifetime educating us about the natural world and all that, although it was only the fifth choice among voters.
After Boaty won far and away, chalking up 124,000 votes, the second-place finisher was RRS Poppy-Mai at around 34,000, after a British toddler who recently died from cancer, according to The Telegraph.
So, third place for Sir David? Nope. That went to RRS Henry Worsley, the British explorer who died in January attempting to cross Antarctica, while RRS It's Bloody Cold Here scooped fourth-place honours. Then way down there at No. 5 was our friend Sir David, with just over 10,000 votes. (If it was up to Disclosures, NERC would have gone with long-shot entry RRS What Iceberg?)
At any rate, the whole affair should put the Brexit "Leavers" campaign on notice, as The Globe and Mail's Mark MacKinnon pointed out: The will of the people – even in a democracy – doesn't always prevail.
A no-fly fiasco
In an age of hypersensitivity to security, widespread no-fly lists have seen passengers refused boarding or pulled off flights on the tarmac because of suspected "flags" that may indicate a connection with terrorism.
It seems no one is safe nowadays. Not just from the threat of terrorism – but the threat of being thought a terrorist. That's exactly what happened to Guido Menzio, an Italian economist from the University of Pennsylvania, as The Washington Post reported on Saturday.
After settling in to his seat on a flight en route to Kingston, Ont., to deliver a talk at Queen's University, Prof. Menzio got his pad out and started scribbling away in what appeared to be some kind of strange code, thought the woman sitting next to him.
When she tried engaging him in conversation, he offered brief, perfunctory answers and returned to his writing. Her concern mounting, she surreptitiously alerted a flight attendant and was asked to exit the plane to be interviewed by authorities. Next, it was Prof. Menzio's turn.
So what were the mystery writings? Well, he's an economist, and so was playing around with mathematical equations – the sort of things that economist tend to do. He was allowed back on the very-delayed flight, while, just to be sure, his former seatmate opted to wait for the next one.
But you can't be too careful, as The Economist points out, helpfully offering "Ten ways to tell you might be sitting next to an economist." The three most telling, according to Disclosures:
1. He avoids prolonged conversation with you because he has a "rational expectation" that you're an idiot since you chose the middle seat.
2. He plonks his elbow on the arm rest because space has a "higher marginal utility" for him than for you
3. Spends all the flight scribbling Greek letters into a notebook. Turns out it's not a series of equations; he's part of the IMF negotiating team en route to Athens.
How do you say 'lawsuit' in Klingon?
It's always been the preserve of the uber-nerd: Dressing up as a character from Star Wars or Star Trek. Weird alien humanoids are always a fave, and it's Star Trek's Klingons who are at the heart of a battle taking place in the present world of copyright, and which may have repercussions in the future world of technology.
It all started when the makers of a 2014 short film called Prelude to Axanar began raising funds through Kickstarter for a full-length sequel called Axanar, which makes use of Klingon characters and their fictional language, as Quartz reported Wednesday.
Oh no you don't, cried Star Trek franchise owner Paramount Pictures, which launched a lawsuit for copyright infringement on Dec 29, 2015 (don't ask what stardate that is.)
Last month, the Language Creation Society filed an amicus brief filed – in support of the defence – that was written partly in Klingon. (Really, folks, get a life.) Now, Disclosures' Klingon is a little rusty, but the nub of it seems to be that while Paramount paid a linguist to create the language, the defence claims that Klingon "has taken on a life of its own."
The society argued that if a language could be copyrighted, then any ideas expressed in that language could be, too. So never mind the Axanar hopefuls, as Quartz points out, a decision in Paramount's favour could mean that the ownership of work developed in various computer programming languages could be in question.
On Monday (U.S. District Court docket 2:15-cv-09938-RGK-E, in case you're interested), Judge Robert Gary Klausner allowed the suit to continue, but said he would not rule on whether the Klingon language can be copyrighted, as the World Intellectual Property Review reported.
The Axanar people have also filed a countersuit against Paramount, but it's in Romulan, so Disclosures has no idea what it says.