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.

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.