Platinum Links: Tools Edition

1. This is a pretty nice review of the different to-do list tools that are available on the web. Having tried out Google Tasks and Remember The Milk, I can say that these reviews are spot on. I love google tasks. It's what reminded me to post today. :)

2. Here's a review of another kind of online tool. One that I hope no one who reads this blog will ever use.

3. . Megan Mcardle does an amazing job of explaining why everyone should be angry that Wal-mart is in favor of the employer health care mandate. Yet no one is even reporting what is so blatantly going on. While Megan talks about the other retailers who will get nailed by this, my mind tends to gravitate towards my father, who as a small businessman would get screwed by this kind of legislation. The way this story has been covered in the news is why I'm not sad at all about the death of newspapers. Long live The Economist.

4. People are looking for talented people in a recession, but not necessarily where you would think.

We are all philanthropists!

So, when it comes to education, a big website that many people use to donate money is Donorschoose. Teachers post grant applications describing essentially anything they want to do with their students, and you can pick which ones you want to donate to. I used it while I was teaching and it was great. But what about the the opposite? What about a website where you can go and say "I want to give away $600 for a technology project in a classroom"? Enter The Generation Project. Aside from being a really interesting way of empowering people to donate, they have a pretty sweet looking website. I highly recommend this for anyone interested in donating to education.

B and B: Prostitution style

Taiwan decriminalized prostitution. Good for them. Two good lines from the article:

"Local religious groups, however, have opposed the move."

Can you spot the bootlegger that comes paired with this baptist? (Hint: it starts with a p and Jay-Z likes to do it.)

"The Collective of Sex Workers and Supporters, a Taipei-based advocacy group, estimates that 600,000 people are involved in sex-related jobs."

Proof that you must organize if you are to get anything done in a democratic republic.

If only all fantasy sports were this good...

via these guys(awesome site)...

Platinum Links: Bully Edition

1. More on the CRA's contribution to the economic collapse. What I find most disconcerting about the whole thing is the way that gov't bullied companies into making really obviously stupid decisions. Oh well. It seems as though the companies were happy to go along with it.

2. So in the example above, businesses kowtowed to what the regulators wanted them to do and lent to people that didn't have the necessary credit history to be lent to. Here is an example of businesses doing the opposite and simply not allowing themselves to be put in that situation, to the detriment of the customers who live in the states. Here's an example of people doing it too. When people say that taxes don't matter, I disagree.

3. Using the bully pulpit to explain why it sucks to be the number 1 pick in the NBA draft this year. Probably one of the most exhaustive pieces of sports reporting I've seen in quite a while.

4. Why the way we develop basketball players in the USA isn't exactly the best.

5. I have friends who work on capitol hill. I wonder if they know about this.

Helping (not requiring) people to volunteer is definitely platinum

For the longest time, I've been thinking about volunteering. As an adult, I now have about 3-5 organizations I make annual contributions to, but that often feels like not enough. I almost decided to become a youth basketball coach with some friends, but the logistics proved nearly impossible given my absolute lack of a car. I then had to rethink what volunteering meant when I heard that it now means being required to do community service (at least according to some people).

I digress. With my new job, new apartment, and hopefully new workout routine, it only makes sense to revisit this topic. But how to do so? It's hard to comprehend just how many opportunities there are out there, especially if you're not sure how you want to volunteer. Enter, Google. They have kicked in to create this website, which after about 2 minutes of testing, I found to be superior to just about every other volunteer website I've ever seen. When will people get it? Do straightforward things really well and you can be the best in your business. Anyway, the website is called allforgood.org and I'm already brainstorming what I'm going to start doing on saturdays besides studying for the gmat.

Let's tear this mutha down!

The NYTimes has an article about public housing (ATL is tearing down all of its projects and moving to a system of housing vouchers for those that qualify) that is chock full of quotes - some platinum, some hilariously odd.

What were they clapping about?” asked Shirley Hightower, a former president of the tenants’ association who picketed the demolition. “Clapping for a demolition? You’ve had generations behind generations behind generations living in this public housing. This is not a time for celebration.

What this quote seems to imply is that it's a good thing that multiple generations of families lived in absolute poverty. I think about this more along the lines of Russ Roberts, who says the best way to understand wealth and poverty is longitudinally (how wealthy we are relative to our parents). In my mind, multiple generations living in the projects is a sign of their failure, not success. It's supposed to be an anti-poverty program, yet the end result is that poor people are staying in poverty. Doesn't sound to me like a program that is working as intended.

Ms. Glover does not blame the social engineers of the 1930s for creating housing projects. Their solution worked during the New Deal, she said, but collapsed as public housing became more racially segregated and attracted drug crime.

As previously mentioned, I would love to see the statistics measuring the success (people leaving projects to live in non-gov't subsidized housing and becoming part of the middle class) of projects pre segregation and drugs. Given the time frame we are talking about, I doubt there was ever a real time that projects weren't pretty segregated. I wouldn't doubt that drugs played a large part in the social collapse that took place. In general, I am highly skeptical of the projects having a truly positive effect on people moving out of poverty at any point in their existence.

The real winners, Ms. Beaty said, are business developers who make fortunes once the projects are torn down and the neighborhoods gentrify. For years, wealthier Atlantans, frustrated by long commutes, have been moving closer to their jobs downtown and, critics say, displacing poorer residents to outlying suburbs.

This is by far the most amusing of the quotes and it reveals an absurd kind of logic. When whites/wealthier people moved to the suburbs it was seen as abandoning poor people in the city. Now that they are moving closer to the city, they are displacing poor people. I don't know what would be an "acceptable" place for wealthy people to live in relation to poor people.

My point is this; neighborhoods change. Property becomes more or less valuable based on any number of factors. Maybe there's a new Metro line being installed. Maybe entrepreneurs open new businesses that attract wealthier people, which raises rents. Maybe there is no way to know. This is how the housing market works. Neighborhoods go through ups and downs. More valuable property becomes more expensive, but that value is subjective and changes over time based on factors that few, if any, people are smart enough to understand. (Sidenote: while this person seems to very much dislike housing developers, who does she think builds the housing that essentially everyone lives in, wealthy and poor? would she like them less if they made less money? Because I may have heard about a few small things going on in the housing market lately.)

For the record, being able to move is a sign of how wealthy and free we are as a country (poor people included). Like I said earlier, it's a demonstration of their failure that multiple generations of families stayed in the same projects. As long as people's land is not being taken from them and they are being treated equitably under the law, there is no sweeping value judgement to be made on the morality of people making decisions about where they'd like to live. But for that statement to be true, people must actually have a choice and not be condemned to segregation in housing projects. I applaud ATL for moving to a decentralized voucher system and hope that my home town does the same.

Mobility in all its forms

1. Two quick hits. This blog post talks about how Ohio's municipal employees can't be required to live in the municipality that they are employed. This usually comes into play with police officers, firemen, and teachers. The post points out something that I'd never thought of before. If we don't require adults to live in the area that they work, why do we require kids to go to schools in their own zip codes? What's good enough for adults probably is good enough for kids...Very interesting way of thinking about how choice is allowed for in society already.

2. Here's an interesting article about the race for governor in New Jersey and how school choice may factor into it. I've met several people who say education reform isn't a democrat or republican issue. I think a lot of it has to do with circumstances, but I generally tend to disagree with the question. I think it's more a question of how you view the role of government providing services to the general population. It's not an ends, but a means question. Process matters, maybe more than the endgame itself at times. For a better idea of what I mean by process, read this short blog post about education vs. health care.

3. So I lied. One more thing. I'm going to try and follow this blog post, but who knows. One thing I do know is that I took my current job because I want to work on my writing. As a side note for anyone that does a decent amount of research, the application offered by Zotero seems to be amazing. Check out the video.

platinum links - haven't blogged in a bit style

sorry team. I started my new job this week and am also in the process of moving. things have been hectic and this is the first time i've had a chance to organize all the stuff I read.

1. Who are the 40 million people that are uninsured?

2. Good guide to the different cell phone carriers.

3. My college has a long history of being poorly managed. It looks as though things are turning around though. First they did this. Then this. Now this. Small steps are still steps.

4. An absolutely fascinating piece of writing about having an abortion. Of the links listed, this is by far the most platinum, based solely on it's brutal honesty.

Platinum News' got Agency

I don't mean "news agency" in terms of "an organization."  

I mean "news agency" in terms of a sweet means of transferring information.  

When this becomes the default Fox News broadcast, mark my word, I will buy drinks for everyone in the closest bar to me at that time.  Done. 

Non Platinum Behavior - Susan G. Komen Style

Alot of people complain about the Metro behavior of visitors to Washington D.C. The complaints are long and obvious. They stand on the left of escalators. They try to get on the metro before people have gotten off. They don't know how to use the farecard stations. The list goes on and on. While it is always frustrating in the moment, I try to keep my cool about things when they happen in addition to offering help when I can. Being an out-of-towner (like 90% of the city), I remember what it was like to learn the rules of the game, and I didn't have to do it with two kids under five years old nagging me. So I try to cut the tourists a break as much as possible.

The people I don't cut a break for are locals who, for whatever reason, don't obey the rules. Most of the time it is people who don't ride the metro very often and are using it for their once every three months trip into the city for some major event. Enter the Susan G. Komen Race for the cure, happening this morning at the same time I was headed to the BoltBus. I get on the Metro at my usual stop and it's packed. No big deal, right? Wrong. A family has decided to place not one, but two large strollers directly in front of the doors. Now for the 95% of the bus that was going to the Race, this is not a problem. But for the 5% of us that needed to get off before then, it was absurd. People were sucking in their guts just to fit between the crevice created by the door and the family's absurdly wide stroller. Trying to justify the situation, the mother stated matter-of-factly, "The wheels (on the stroller) are locked." I think she meant to imply that this was the reason why she couldn't remove the stroller from the metro in between stops so people could get off. This told me two things about her. 1) She has no sense of metro etiquette. 2) She had somehow forgotten how to disengage the lock on the stroller wheels in the time since she got onto the Metro. I left feeling frustrated at the world and the sometimes unplatinum people floating around it, even when they are on their way to do something I support.

All was better when I arrived at the BoltBus and the bus driver, in a wonderful voice that is impossible to convey through writing, said, "Raphael. I like that name." I'm on wifi right now and going to see friends. Life has moved back to equilibrium.

Random Platinum Link - Charter schools creaming from the "bottom?"

Man biting dog can be funny...

I swear, the Onion News Network has got to be one of the funniest things I've ever seen. Subscribe to their shows or watch them straight through. It is that funny.

Under-accomplished football coach turned anchor really lets it all go at former teams party

Former 49er coach Steve Mariucci gets trashy... and he's a pretty funny guy.  I think partying with Steve would be fun but totally not workplace appropriate.   No wonder he never had a championship team. Zing.

Platinum stuff

1. Here's a visual history of the credit card. I, for one, had no idea that Discover Card was less than thirty years old. One interesting thing to note is how new players came into the credit card market as time has gone on. Each time, there's an interesting innovation that leads that new player to become a major player.

2. I know at least one family member of mine who should be interested in this. I will almost certainly be in attendance and it should be incredibly interesting. To point out the obvious, Randi Weingarten and AEI are strange bedfellows. For the record, this kind of event is exactly why I took my new job and why I am so excited about what I'm going to be doing for the next couple of years.

Congrats!

I just want to send a big shout out to the Platinum team. All three of us, despite the times, have managed to find jobs/things to do with ourselves for the next year at least. It's a struggle, but we're alive and kicking. For my part, I'm looking forward to doing a better job of blogging this year. My goal is fewer links-only posts and more actual content.

Here's a link to an article in my hometown paper about all those greedy people that are not so happy about playing along with the bailouts. My biggest concern is that when people feel as though contracts can be rewritten on the fly by the president, investors will simply stop investing in America. Would you invest if you knew this could happen?