A Evolução Humana está acelerando?

Segundo notícia deste blog () e do Estado de São Paulo (Evolução do Homo sapiens' continua, cem vezes mais rápida CIÊNCIA Processo acelerou nos últimos 40 mil anos, quando homem moderno se instalou na Europa, Ásia e Austrália, Herton Escobar, 11/12/2007) a espécie humana está evoluindo mais rapidamente. Será?

Você é um Gênio

Se você está conseguindo ler este blog você é um gênio. Aqui um teste de legibilidade de um blog. Eu coloquei este blog e o resultado foi que a pessoa que consegue ler este blog é um gênio. Óbvio, o teste é válido somente para língua inglesa. Mas eu testei o sítio da minha universidade em inglês e a resposta foi a mesma.

"Regras de contabilidade dos EUA ficarão melhores"

As regras do FASB são complicadas e representam mais de 25 mil páginas. Por isto a comemoração do WSJ da adoção da IFRS

Closing the GAAP
The Wall Street Journal -12/12/2007 - p. A18

Believe it or not, there's some good news to report for U.S. companies, capital markets and investors. America's bloated and confusing accounting standards are in line for some healthy competition, thanks to a series of rule changes at the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The private Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) has for decades enjoyed government-enforced monopoly power over America's accounting rules, and not even FASB is impressed with the results. The board's Chairman, Robert Herz, says the rules, known as Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), are "too detailed," with "too many exceptions" and just plain "not good" for specific industries like insurance. Just how complicated are America's accounting rules? Mr. Herz says they run "up to 25,000 pages, we think."

A set of rules so dense that no one is sure how many there are must set some kind of regulatory record. Still, Mr. Herz has been on the job for more than five years, so he's an unlikely candidate to perform an extreme makeover, bureaucracy edition. Why is he trashing his organization's principal product?

It's the only tenable position, as virtually the entire financial world outside the United States rejects cumbersome, complex GAAP in favor of -- and we promise this is the last acronym -- IFRS, International Financial Reporting Standards. More than 100 countries now accept or require these more rational standards. In the U.S., companies have had no choice but to report their financials in GAAP, no matter how confusing to investors -- until now.

On November 15, the SEC voted unanimously to stop requiring foreign companies that use IFRS to re-issue their financials in GAAP for American investors. Until Sarbanes-Oxley came along, this was the number one obstacle to foreign companies considering a listing on a U.S. stock exchange. Furthermore, the costly rule was unblemished by evidence that it provided any net benefit to investors. Institutional investors, buying record numbers of shares through Rule 144A offerings that require no conversion, have made it abundantly clear that they have no need for GAAP in valuing companies.

The next item in this investor-friendly agenda is to give U.S. companies the option of choosing to report with IFRS, instead of GAAP. The SEC has issued a proposed rule to do just that and this week will host the first of two roundtables to explore the possibilities.

Some participants will no doubt urge "convergence" of the international and U.S. accounting standards, but creating one "super-monopoly" for the entire world might compound the problems created by the FASB bureaucracy, notes an influential 2003 Harvard Law School paper by Rachel Carnachan. Ms. Carnachan urges a competition that will likely improve both sets of standards.

Knees start jerking about a possible "race to the bottom" whenever the idea of regulatory competition is raised. But IFRS's streamlined accounting standards will offer investors more protection against fraud, not less. That's because IFRS is a "principles-based" system, in contrast to GAAP's "rules-based approach." GAAP's hyper-detailed standards invite the ethically challenged to seek ways to violate the spirit of the rules by contorting to follow the letter. With IFRS's concise principles, there's far less opportunity to lawyer around them.

One lesson of Enron is that accounting complexity can help crooks conceal fraud. Reflecting that lesson, one of the more sensible provisions of Sarbanes-Oxley directed the SEC to explore the possibilities of a principles-based system. The result could be an investor-friendly initiative that will bring competition to a monopoly that sorely needs it.

Pequenas empresas devem ganhar prazo extra na Sox

A SEC planeja atrasar em mais um ano as exigências de controles internos para pequenas empresas em razão dos estudos sobre o custo da informação. As pequenas empresas são aquelas com uma capitalização menor que 75 milhões de dólares, que apesar do pouco valor em termos do mercado global, representam a maioria das ações negociadas.

In testimony prepared for a hearing of the House Small Business Committee, Mr. Cox said that he would propose delaying the rules until 2009 and that the decision on whether to require compliance would then be based in part on a study of costs to be conducted by the commission's economists.

Fonte: S.E.C. Planning to Delay Accounting Rules for Small Companies for Another Year, Floyd Norris, The New York Times, 12/12/2007

Custo da emissão de carbono

Pesquisadores de Manchester estimaram, a partir do custo de produção, processamento e transporte dos ingredientes natalinos, o que representa um jantar para oito pessoas: 20 kg de emissão de carbono. Se cada tonelada de carbono gera um custo ambiental de 10 libras, é fácil calcular o custo ambiental desta ceia típica.

Fonte: Aqui

Rir é o melhor remédio

Homens são complicados. Fonte: Aqui

Links

1. Dívida de Curto Prazo e Manipulação dos Lucros - Segundo uma pesquisa recente, empresas com mais passivo circulante são mais susceptíveis de gerenciar resultados.

2. 200 maneiras de pesquisar sobre uma empresa

3. Problema de xadrez proposto por Euler: O salto do cavalo

4. Auditores encontraram no Iraque