Jinn of Quality and Risk

Seasonal innovation knows few boundaries. NYT: Ski resorts have been manufacturing snow for about five decades, churning it out when nature fails to do so. Still, the perfect artificial snowflake remains elusive. ... Synthetic snow is created by... either spraying the water with compressed air from snow guns or using power fans to blow air on it. When the air and water hit each other at a cool enough temperature, snow forms. Additives can control both temperature and formation speed by acting on the water molecules. Sounds like a fun field of experimentation. Create snow. Ski. Report and change mix. Repeat. Experiment in multiple resorts, to assess the impact of air and water differences. 

Companies should be allowed to treat dividends as an expense, just like interest payments on debts. Treating both equally would improve corporate accountability. More profit would go to shareholders, thus increasing their interest in and leverage on corporate behaviour. And there would no longer be a double-taxation of dividend income, which amounts to taxation without profit and may encourage executives to cook their books (by playing games with bottom line results). Other consequences include markedly better price signals in stock markets, an immediately higher valuation of future business profits, one less distortion in capital markets (with no bias towards debt and junk bonds), and a renewed comparative advantage for the US economy. Further, because of the tax-enforced bias against dividends, many people have forgotten (or never discovered) that shareholders are supposed to profit from the businesses they wisely invest in, rather than hope for (temporary) bubbles in share prices.

Observe the distorted title in the NYT article: No Tax on Dividends Under Bush Stimulus Plan, when the real scoop is that Bush is proposing to abolish the irrational double-taxation of dividends (once as corporate "profit" and a second time as shareholder "income"). Under the Bush proposal, dividends will still be taxed, but only once, not twice. The NYT also claims that such a measure could cost the government $300 billion over 10 years as if that money belonged by right to the government and was being wrongly taken away... Even if we assume that so much dividend-double-tax money will really be "missing" from government budgets (which ignores the current bias towards tax-free interest payments) the benefits of the measure are so fair, large, and lasting that only lunatics or rabid marxists could oppose it.

As usual, some people will complain that reductions in taxes (if not their outright abolition) benefit the rich. Which is true and normal, since the 37% of the American population who do not pay any Federal Income Tax are by definition not rich. What these critics forget or ignore is that wealth is not caused by government confiscation; on the contrary, the more rich people there are, the better off we all are. The richest Tyrants of the past could never even have dreamed of the wealth available to the poorest population in the USA today: cars and superb roads, electricity, colour TVs, air conditioning, CDs for instant concerts even long after the death of musicians, millions of books, airplanes, specialized magazines, central heating, computers and Internet access, microwave ovens, daily newspapers, fresh fruits at any time of the year, colleges, the Bill of Rights, and endless opportunities. By nature, taxes make it harder for the rich to create more wealth and very hard for the poor to become rich. 

This year marks the 25th anniversary of publisher O'Reilly and Associates. They have a celebration site, with information about the famous animals, and a timeline. Tim O'Reilly indicates that his BHAG (big hairy audacious goal) has been capturing and transmitting the knowledge of innovators. Excellent and thanks for all the great books! May O'Reilly's next 25 years be even better! [via /.] 

How suitable that I should have an epiphany while I was waking up today!

I'm starting development work for two new tools. They've both been knocking at my mental door, in various forms, for a decade at least, and more frequently in the last 4 weeks. They solve problems close to my heart. One supports personal productivity (aka "life management") and the other user-centered design. One will work on MacOS X because that's what I use and need, the other will be Web-based because nothing else would make sense. Each will have its own weblog when the initial design and first prototype are done (sometime in February).

Epiphanies are good. In my mind the meaning of that concept is a sudden, crystal-clear mental manifestation (such as the essence, meaning, or value of something) that produces a feeling of elation (as if having received a great, unexpected gift). I usually experience epiphanies in between sleep and wakefulness — when my mind is lightly drifting into the possible futures, sifting through values and experience, and sipping from the nectar of the past.