Double the Platinum, Double the links...

1. This article empirically verifies what I pretty much knew; people are naturally social and for the most part, not interested in conflict in any form. This is a positive in many situations, but not all. Fascinating stuff. (HT: LT)

2. Someone smarter than I describing why she doesn't like government-run health care.

3. Chick flicks that men can like. Some I agree with more than others. I definitely enjoyed The Devil Wears Prada, though it's doubtful I will ever watch the Sex in the City Movie. The unstated part of this whole article is that men should tolerate watching these movies on the off chance that it gets your lady friend in the mood. The whole thing makes me think of this....(wait for the 1:50 mark)

4. Congrats to my friend, Courtney. She is going to be working at this school in Chicago. Here's an article about the new school they are opening up near my college.

5. This article is interesting in that it describes the dramatic transition communities go through when they modernize. To be certain, it is not always pretty and it is a process that can radically change in a few years much of what an agrarian society has become accustomed to over centuries. All I could think of while reading it is that an observer probably would have said the same thing about settlers in the United States two and three hundred years ago. I, for one, have a new blog to subscribe to. (HT: LT)

6. This is very odd. It's a charter school being run by a school district. This seems to defy the definition/logic of charter schools. Other than the school being allowed to choose their own employees (sort of), all this seems to prove is how districts recognize that they can't centrally control schools - even when they are still centrally planning the schools that are not centrally controlled. Weird.

7. This list is remarkably good. There are only two movies I'd replace: Goodfellas and Saving Private Ryan. Points to the person who can figure out which two movies I'd replace them with. The first should be very easy.

8. This is an extremely long post about basketball and the link to the Ewing theory is also a pretty decent length. Both are great posts. The main post provides an intellectual analysis of basketball that you just don't see very often. Great stuff. Another example that goes unmentioned is this article about Shane Battier. It fits so perfectly, it's scary. Make sure you give yourself a half hour before clicking on any of these links.

9. This seems remarkably accurate given what I know about New Yorkers. And having heard Rudy speak about a week ago, I completely believe his quote. Thoughts, anyone?

10. Here's an article that takes a pejorative tone against, ironically, one of the only bankers who did not help to get us into the recession. I'm no objectivist, but it's interesting that the article, in describing people that understood the crisis before it began, seems to take a higher than thou tone about laissez faire capitalism, and misses the crucial point that there is a difference between how markets operate and how the individual actors within a market should behave if they want to survive and thrive in the long term.

Don't shoot the moon unless you know you can make it

One of the things I learned during my non-profit management fellowship was the importance of clear expectations in a workplace setting. People need to know what they are empowered to do and where they should draw the line. It prevents confusion, wasted time/resources, and makes a team far more productive. It's surprisingly important and yet many people don't think about it very much.

Today we attempted to get new cable installed in our house. Due to some architectural issues, when the two fellows came in, they couldn't figure out how to approach installing the lines, boxes, etc. They immediately called their boss and we arranged a new appointment. Aside from being disappointed that the cable issue wasn't dealt with, I was pretty impressed. My roommate thought the guys gave up to easily, but I just assumed that that was what they've been trained to do. Neither one appeared to be well educated or in a position to know how to do the complex work needed for the project. They were most likely trained to do exactly what they did. Instead of wasting time and possibly biting off more than they could chew, they assessed the situation, realized it was beyond their skills, and moved on to their next task. I consider that a highly platinum use of labor.

Platinum Links: I've been productive today edition

1. Video on American consumption habits over the past quarter century or so. I'd like to say that I'm pretty meticulous about how I spend my money and absolutely hate debt. Definitely something I learned from my parents.

2. This looks much more like 21st century education in my mind. No clue whether it will work, but it's definitely the kind of innovation I like. Knowing the state of Hawaii, they will adopt this 20 years from now (regardless of evidence from this attempt), roll it out to every school, say that it will cure all ills, overpay for "consultants" to help them put it into place, and still not have air conditioning at most of the schools on the island.

3. Talk about barriers to entry! Interesting to think about, especially considering this video...




4. I'll be honest. I often find myself falling into this mental trap of being angry about bundling. My largest complaints are for things like cell phones, stadium food concessions, and definitely cable. But then I let my rational side calm me down and look for someone like Megan Mcardle to remind me of what I know in the back of my mind. Bundling happens all the time and it's good for me.

5. Advance Directives and google health. Get one if you don't already...

Talent Recruitment Openness Seems Platinum to me

So there was an article in the NYTimes today about colleges abandoning the use of the SAT/ACT in the admissions process. The general tilt of the article was that colleges do this to boost their applicant pool size, which then allows them to move up the rankings when they turn down more applicants. It also describes how some schools do not require the tests for applicants, but do require the tests for merit aid. The article seems to imply that the first activity is gaming the system and the second activity may just be unethical. I know I'm weird, but I had the exact opposite reaction upon reading the story.

Awhile ago, Malcolm Gladwell wrote an article in the New Yorker about how we really don't know what makes good teachers. There are lots of rules, regulations, and schools dedicated to saying what is required in order to be a teacher, but none of these have been found to produce great teachers. Gladwell gives several examples of how other entities (football coaches and investment bankers) go about finding top talent when they are looking for something hard to quantify. Both groups recruit widely, train intensely, and monitor progress methodically. They constantly thin the herd searching for the exact talent they want/need.

My thinking on the college article was that colleges are simply applying the principles that the football and banking groups apply (according to Gladwell). Given the poor predictive nature of the SAT/ACT for college performance, it makes sense for colleges to not treat them as hard and fast rules to be applied across the board at all times. By removing barriers to entry (standardized tests) colleges are widening the scope of people that can apply and getting more diverse streams of talent.

The implication of the article is that this may be some sort of race to the bottom, but maybe it's a race to the top. Maybe, in the long term, this is just one of many gradual steps towards identifying better indicators for the best and brightest students. One can only pray that other parts of the American education system adopt a similar openness.

Random Platinum Quotes

"Coke Zero is Diet Coke for men."
- Karl

"But for the love of God, let’s not forget the love of God."
- Tony Woodlief(more here)

“Universally, principals have been considered a part of management, so unionizing presents some obstacles for them. Many states, as well as classic labor-management law, forbid management groups from joining a union. The result is that in order to be eligible for union membership, many principals are now insisting that they are non-management.

In order to give principals non-management status, the New York State Public Employment Relations Board recently re-defined the principalship. The Board defined the principal as a highly paid clerk who supervises in some vague way, but who has no important function to perform.”

- On the attempts of principals to unionize, in a 1975 National Association of Secondary School Principals Bulletin, authored by B. Frank Brown

Nintendo DS while traveling... Platinum?

I live in DC, and as you might have guessed, we have quite a bit of tourists. Most new comers, myself included, are stunned at how the tourists behave. They frankly tend to get in the way. It's like all of middle America stampedes the city every weekend to clog up the escalators in the metro or stop and sight see while I'm trying to get somewhere. It's flippin annoying. Fortunately the tourists generally come and families and consequentially have not infested the bars as of yet.

If I was to be honest I would have to say though that from time to time visitors to the city crack me up. The extreme tourist has never seen the likes of what we got here. I'm talking about overweight dads with Hawaiian shirts and sun caps, tube socks with sandals, cameras and cargo shorts pulled way high. It's great! Once we even has a bunch of Chinese tourists take pictures with us while we were tossing disk on the mall. (I like to joke that it wasn't till later that day we found out they stole our wallets)

The question on platinum comes up in one such encounter with a traveling family. The entire family was in the metro and as soon as they had a free second every one of them popped out a little Nintendo DS and started gaming. This through me for a loop, maybe I'm a purist at heart and a little wearly of those things stealing my soul or something, but still... when your traveling?! I don't get it. But I will try to refraign from casting platinum judgment on such actions as those I simply fail to understand.

Blogs that you should start reading...

So, I'd say my two favorite bloggers are Megan Mcardle and Penelope Trunk. Both have a way of writing about complex things in a very simple and straightforward way with no bullshit. As a sidenote, I find smart women to be incredibly attractive. Anyway, a week ago when I made a note to myself to blog about both of these posts, I remember having a really coherent set of comments I wanted to make. I'm not sure if I still have them.

Mcardle discusses how she doesn't really see "villains" in the economic meltdown. I've had several conversations about this with my father. I tend to agree with her that there are not many people who really went out and tried to "hurt" other people. There were loads of overconfident bankers/regulators/homebuyers/congressmen/presidents/fed reserve chairmen...the list goes on and on. Mcardle says it best with "Once you have tens of thousands . . . or tens of millions . . . of people in the dock, you don't have villains. You have a system that has gone badly wrong." While it's not as satisfying as blaming a small group of readily identifiable people, most truths in life seem to be messy, complex, and not easily changed.

Trunk, for her part, delves into what I consider to be a much more trivial issue that received far more interest than what Mcardle wrote about - Sarah Palin resigning her position as governor of Alaska. Trunk reasons that Palin is actually employing some very new career management ideas into her own career. The reasons, in order as listed, are:

1. Get out of a job when you're done doing it
2. Ideas matter, not your resume
3. Careers are built on teams and networks
4. No one controls your career except you

I didn't really pay attention to any of the original Palin coverage and this was the only article I recall reading about it. What I found striking about my thoughts after reading the article was this - it actually makes a ton of sense. For example, replace the name Palin with say, Barack Obama. Every single one of the points still makes perfect sense. When Obama ran for President, everyone said that he hadn't been in the Senate long enough to do anything, didn't have a resume worth a damn, had no political backing, and should bow down to Hillary. He obviously didn't listen, had an idea of what would be politically successful, built an impressive team/network, and controlled his image to perfection. Whatever you think about Palin, the post is a very interesting way of looking at a topic that I couldn't find more inane.

Aside from these two articles, I highly recommend Trunk's blog. I don't really know what I think about my career, but her writing is absolutely amazing for its clarity. This post about public disclosure of personal issues is probably the best piece of writing I've read all year. Click on the link to the 9/11 post. It is fantastic as well.

Platinum Links

1. For all my friends and family that enjoy reading, this is awesome.

2. This is a cool post about how we measure the success of movies incorrectly. Basically, we should rank movies using an indexed-for-inflation + number of tickets sold formula/ amount of money spent to produce the movie that is nowhere near as sexy as the simple easy number we see on websites like rottentomatoes.

3. Ironically, the story of the Ak-47 (minus the millions killed using it) sounds like a great story involving national pride, perserverance in the face of difficult odds, and great ingenuity. The picture at the top is particularly creepy.

4. If you fuck with the process that produced the IPhone, you'll piss off about 20 million people.

5. As odd as it may sound, this is really good news. One fallacy always at play in public/charter schools is that it's all about "choice." My new job is quickly teaching me it's not. It's about producing quality schools and how we go about doing it. Tying resources to success/failure is what will (eventually) produce better results. That means shutting down shitty schools, of all kinds.

Platinum Links: I keep forgetting to post edition...

1. Here's a reason why I don't do much on Facebook anymore. When I'm putting something out that anyone can read, it's probably better if I have to at least think (briefly) about possible unintended consequences of my actions.

2. Apparently it was a good idea to switch to verizon for more than just use of my phone in the metro. Not that I actually have a data plan or anything...

3. I read this article and only one thing went through my head. What if public schools or the big three auto companies actually applied this? My guess is that we'd still have a car industry and a bunch more students would be learning in school.

4. Who's going on vacation? Kudos to whoever can figure out what place would be number one on my list of places to go...

5. My sister will certainly appreciate this article about her favorite restaurant. No, this is not a joke.

6. This is good news for my hometown and all the other apparently "boring" cities out there.
Describing how conferences are not being booked in Las Vegas, someone says, "In the quest to demonize travel, we're killing jobs." You mean to say that when gov't officials demagogue against business people, it can have unintended consequences? Well paint me red and shove a crowbar up my nose!

This is platinum to the extent that nobody died...

This is, without doubt, one of the craziest things I've ever seen. Watch till the end, the title will make sense. More on it here...

Claude Lelouch's Rendezvous... from Dat on Vimeo.