ResMed Leaving California?

Via reader and friend Simon M.:

ResMed Inc., one of San Diego’s largest medical device companies, is evaluating whether it should move its headquarters outside of California.

ResMed CEO Peter C. Farrell cited California’s tax increases, strengthening union presence, strict regulations and the Democratic majority in the state Legislature as reasons the company is looking elsewhere. The company posted revenue of more than $1 billion last year.

Read the whole thing.

As Simon says, “Bet we see more of this...”

Firefights...

Michael Yon has several videos of firefights in Afghanistan...

Real Places...

The photo at right is of Mt. Roraima, in Venezuela.  It doesn't look real – I'd have guessed it was created by an artist.  But it is real!  Here's a web site devoted to such things...

Bombs on London...

In WWII, that is.  Here's an amazing interactive map showing the exact location of every bomb that struck in the London area during the Blitz.

It was quite sobering to look at the areas I'm most familiar with, such as Richmond and Kew Gardens.  I've walked over or by quite a few of these bombed locations, but never knew it...

We're a 21st Century Couple...

...or something.

A few minutes ago, I'm in my home office, door closed, Christmas music playing loudly, and foot heater going full blast.  Debbie is about 10 feet away, in our bedroom, doing her physical therapy exercises and watching a movie on her iPad.  She spots one of our cats (Maka Lea, our little physiologically challenged fellow) stuck in the bedroom.  He wants to get into our livingroom, but he can't jump over our dog gate.  Debbie can't easily get him there in her current state.  She wants to get my attention.  How does she do it?

She emails me.

Our Moon?!?!

Did some kid run amok on the moon with a set of different colored paints?  What is this?

This particular image shows the thickness of the lunar crust around the entire surface of the moon.  The data to create this image came from NASA's GRAIL satellites, delightfully named Ebb and Flow, which measure the gravitational field of the moon with unprecedented resolution and precision.  The crustal thickness map is just one of many results from the mission.  More here and here...

Earth at Night...

NASA has posted some beautiful composite photos and movies made by the Earth Observatory satellite, showing the night sky of Earth.  It took me several tries to download the movie; I suspect the site is overloaded as this has gotten wide distribution.  As usual, you can use the brightness of any given area as a proxy for human wealth – check out North Korea, Yemen, and Mali to see what impoverished areas look like.

Corruption Perceptions...

Transparency International has released their Corruption Perceptions Index for 2012, complete with a lovely interactive infographic (snapshot below).  There really aren't any surprises for the bad guys: North Korea, Afghanistan, Somalia, Venezuela, etc.  The good guys list is surprising mainly for which countries are not on the list: U.S., Britain, Germany, and Japan.

Is This What Obama Is Hiding?

The terrorists who killed our ambassador to Libya and three others were using weapons provided by the U.S.

I don't have the words...

Stock Market Manipulation...

One of the many things I learned while working in the electronic stock trading industry was just how common – and easy – stock market manipulation is.  Some forms of manipulation are illegal, and some are actually completely legal.  One of the illegal forms of manipulation is the practice of making trades solely for the purpose of raising a company's apparent market capitalization (“market cap”).

The Wall Street Journal has an excellent and detailed analysis of how this works, complete with real world examples.  This particular form of market manipulation leverages one of the odd customs of the fund management world: the determination of a fund's value by using the closing price of the stocks it holds.  The closing price is simply the price of the last trade of any given trading day.  For stocks that trade thinly (that is, not many trades during any given day), it's not hard to arrange for your trade to be the last trade of the day – all you need is the cooperation of someone who holds the stock and is willing to sell it to you for an above-market price – and for you to buy it at that price. This needn't even involve much money, as a trade of even a single share will still set the closing price.

This particular market manipulation could be eliminated quite simply, by changing the basis for fund valuation from closing price to a weighted average price.  I've seen this proposed on several occasions, but I have no idea why this hasn't happened...

Curiosity Is On the Move!

Curiosity is all finished at Rocknest, and is on the move on the floor of Gale Crater on Mars.  At right is a view of the way forward, from Curiosity's navigation camera...

How To Live With an Introvert...

A clever cartoon, and accurate according to my own experience as an introvert...

Driftwood Horses...

These look like something my brother Scott might make...though he's more attached to sea serpents!

Invalid Update...

Both Debbie and Mo'i are doing fine.  Debbie is pushing to get more range of motion (especially flexion).  She's up and about much more now than even just a week ago.  Being stuck in the house is driving her crazy (I know, short drive :-).  Mo'i is likewise doing fine.  His behavior is completely back to normal.  He's loving his 4 or 5 times a day chicken-and-rice diet :-)...

State Business Tax Climate...

All 50 states, ranked by the impact of all state taxes on business...

Wedding Surprise...

...but a good surprise!

Tax Burden Changes...

The New York Times has an interesting article (with graphs) about how the total tax burden has changed over the years for people in different income ranges.  It suffers from one very significant flaw, the same flaw that nearly every analysis from the progressive side shares: it completely ignores the way that tax deductions, exemptions, and credits have changed over the years.  Include those, and this picture changes dramatically.  Leave them out, as the NYT did, and you make a solid-looking argument for raising taxes on higher-income folks.

This article has already been cited over 1,000 times in the online media.  You can be sure it will be the foundational reference for the argument to raise taxes.

Doom.  I smell doom...

Is LEGO the Best Company in the World?

These folks certainly think so:


Backstory...

Fishing With Hand Grenades...

Now here are a couple of candidates for a Darwin award!  Via reader Simi L.:

A Distribution...

Nick Berry, writing at DataGenetics, has another in his fine series of data analyses “just for fun”.  This time he looked at the number of images with names like IMG_0001, IMG_0002, etc.  This particular series of file names is commonly created by digital cameras and smart phones.

What he found is in the graph at right: a classic logarithmically decaying curve, with a few glitches on it.  With some thought, you might be unsurprised by the log decay.  Most people wouldn't worry about the glitches – who knows what would cause them?  Not Nick Berry – with some help from a reader, he figured them all out...