stock prices: not so interesting

I never believed stocks told me much about a company. Only about shareholders. And men.

motorcycle noise: maybe more is better

I witnessed a motorcycle accident today.  It was really loud and is the second one I’ve seen in 6 months. In both cases I didn’t hear the motorcycle before I heard it in the accident.  It’s an awful sound. The one before this sounded like a plane landing next to you. It sounds like nothing else you hear and all you know is something somewhere has gone terribly wrong. There’s the collision plus the bike slides on the pavement. While I don’t like motorcycle noise, I now think motorcycle noise is protective.  It puts surrounding cars on notice that a motorcycle is around. Cars just aren’t looking for them, and they can disappear in a car’s mirror easily.

So I was surprised to learn that legally in the US across states statute-wise there are frequently ceilings on motorcycle noise–for example, 84 dba at 50 feet in Colorado–but apparently no minimums.  You can be whisper quiet like a bicycle.  But bicycles are mostly always on the right-most side of the road and are slow.  Being whisper quiet and visually slight while sandwiched between mammoth SUVs, trucks and cars carries a danger, I’m now convinced.  And I’m surprised that at this point in transportation history that manufacturers–the insurance industry really, hasn’t actuarially linked motorcycle noise to accident risk–I assume they haven’t given the lack of any minimums. I’d like to see a simple regression analysis of auto/SUV/truck and motorbike accident as a function of motorcycle noise decibels by speed. I wonder how frequently loud Harleys are ever in accidents due to other drivers’ fault. Finding a connection might lead insurers to lobby for a noise minimum of so many decibels–and engineering for more noise is easy for manufacturers. The rider could not get up and was taken via ambulance but here’s the bike after a cop set it upright.

Apparently the bike went vertical in collision with the car or completely overturned to acquire top level damage like this. The color of the car was light silver, like the color of the damage though the damage appears done by a rough surface like the road rather than a car panel, and the car’s passenger side rear quarter panel looked pretty beat up afterwards. I saw the rider as he landed on his side and rolled onto the sidewalk next to his assaulted bike.

Economics Nobel analyzing job market—not entirely “news”

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded 3 economists–Peter Diamond, Dale Mortensen and Christopher Pissarides–the Nobel Prize for their work analyzing deviations from classical theories of how job markets work–namely, that prices set at the optimum such that markets clear, that is, employers and employees find each other and deal.

I lack ability and interest to judge the work’s analytics but the conclusions are longstandingly apparent to some job market actors on the ground–and disproportionately clear to certain demographics. As examples:

• Black doctors and surgeons of a certain generation as I’ve known, who couldn’t find work. The mere existence of a need for their board certified services and their available labor wasn’t determinant in their securing employment or supporting a lone practice.
• Highly trained female lawyers like Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsberg to whom opportunity to become  judge was flatly closed in their career’s outset and extensively thereafter.
• Extracontinentally, geographic barriers to entry for immigrant groups of relatively equal poverty and initiative but unequal remoteness from the US labor market–for example, Mexico vs. South Africa or India.

In fact, the sheer number and diversity of exactly these factors may suggest that they should instead define any classical theory for job market clearing vs. being declared “friction” and marginalized as exogenous factors in some unencumbered dynamic.  Hard socially inflected issues like where some Americans physically enjoy freedom of movement and tacit permission to shop have determined as much of a business’ clientele and profitability over history as have many of its products, prices, marketing and planning.  In reverse, the real estate valuation mantra “location, location, location” speaks to just that.

2010 top 25 “most valuable” blogs in America

According to 24/7 Wall St. these are the Twenty-Five Most Valuable Blogs in America. Their methodology is described at the link.

 
1. Gawker properties. Valuation: $240 million.
2. The Huffington Post. Valuation: $150 million.
3. Drudge Report. Valuation: $50 million.
4. PopSugar Media. Valuation: $40 million.
5. MacRumors. Valuation: $37 million.
6. Cheezburger Network. Valuation: $35 million.
7. Perez Hilton. Valuation: $32 million.
8. SB Nation Network. Valuation: $30 million.
9. Funnyordie. Valuation: $24 million.
10. Mashable. Valuation: $20 million.
11. Seeking Alpha. Valuation: $19 million.
12. GigaOm $16 million. Valuation: Pageviews of 12 million at a $19 CPM.
13. BoingBoing. Valuation: $15 million ($18 million in 2009).
14. ReadWriteWeb. Valuation: $9 million.
15. Business Insider. Valuation: $9 million.
16. Breitbart sites. Valuation: $8 million.
17. BuzzMedia. Valuation: $7 million.
18. Destructoid. Valuation: $6 million.
19. Slashfilm. Valuation: $5 million.
20. Smashing Magazine: Valuation: $5 million.
21. TPM Media. Valuation: $5 million.
22. Pitchfork. Valuation: $4 million.
23. Pajamas Media. Valuation: $3.5 mllion.
24. Mediaite. Valuation: $3 million.
25. MichelleMalkin.com. Valuation: $2.5 million.

Health Reform Hits Main Street–KFF cool cartoon gives low-down

Narrated by Cokie Roberts and recommended by Risa Lavizzo-Mourey (current President of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the nation’s largest healthcare philanthropy), this Kaiser Family Foundation animation aims to give a summary low-down on health reform.

unemployed Donald Duck joins the Tea Party—sort of—then shoots it

You know it’s bad when the recession claims a Disney character–even in jest. I don’t blog on politics but this political cartoon is noteworthy for creativity; it depicts the influence of the decided rankings leader in cable news, FOX News, on none other than Donald Duck. My post title takes liberty as the formal Tea Party descriptor doesn’t appear invoked. But I think it’s a fair one: