Day: June 23, 2005

The Moon

Last night as I was driving home listening to the San Francisco Bay Area’s all jazz station KCSM they were playing all moon related songs. This week the full moon is hanging lower in the sky than any full moon since  June 1987, so the moon illusion is extra strong. The moon illusion is  about how the moon looks extra big when it is near the horizon. It is all explained here. What is fascinating is that it is all  something our eye creates not something a camera sees and no one is really sure what causes it.

Duke and I love admiring the moon so last night just before moonrise we went out to the Hayward shoreline away from the trees and buildings. We went for a walk. When the moon came up it was absolutely amazing. Not only did look big but there was some fog on the horizon so the moon was an amazing orange. Then as it rose it changed to butter yellow and then a creamy white.

Materiality

I was part of a conversation today about materiality and blogging. One of the participants, 
a lawyer, was explaining all the SEC rules concerning disclosure of forward looking 
information by public companies and how dangerous blogging can be. Someone else laughingly 
said he had heard it said that blogging can destroy a company just be sure it is not ours. 

Obviously if a blogger starts talking about things like future product strategy or mergers 
and acquisitions it is material information. But where do you draw the line? If you say we 
are going to fix this bug in our next release is that material information?

It occurred to me that this is probably a discussion that has happened before. In fact I 
would imagine that whenever a public company talks about blogging this comes up. I'm sure 
there have been some good posts addressing this question. I'll do a bit of keyword 
searching but if anyone is aware of good blogs on this topic please let me know.