There are lives, and then are well, LIVES. People have lots of opinions about Charlie Wilson, but they have them because he lived life large and whether you agree with what he did or not and the long term results of it, the guy made a difference in this life in a powerful way. Anyway, I think it is worth noting his passing. Former Texas Rep. Charlie Wilson dies at 76 |
DALLAS – Charlie Wilson, the former congressman from Texas whose funding of Afghanistan’s resistance to the Soviet Union was chronicled in the movie and book “Charlie Wilson’s War,” died Wednesday. He was 76. |
Wilson represented the 2nd District in east Texas in the U.S. House from 1973 to 1996 and was known in Washington as “Good Time Charlie” for his reputation as a hard-drinking womanizer. He once called former congresswoman Pat Schroeder “Babycakes,” and tried to take a beauty queen with him on a government trip to Afghanistan. Read more at news.yahoo.com |
I’ve been so busy lately, I haven’t been able to Amplify much, mostly with this new project, the Alliance of Youth Movements…check it out. U.S. Girds for a Fight for Internet Freedom |
The State Department’s more sensitive efforts are those that seek to empower grassroots organizations, such as the $5 million Civil Society Initiative 2.0, officially launched in Morocco last November to work with local NGOs in North Africa and the Middle East. An even broader effort, the Alliance of Youth Movements, mentors activists from around the globe using annual summits and a bulging library of how-to videos such as How to Create a Grassroots Movement for Change. “Mostly these are one or two people doing amazing things on their own, who often did not appreciate the full significance of what they were doing, so we brought them all together,” says Jason Liebman, co-founder of the AYM and Howcast, which produces the videos. “For most of them this was a first time on an airplane.” (Read “A Coming Chill Over Internet Freedom?”) Read more at www.time.com |
If you have kids, or plan to have them, this is interesting, especially if you, like me, spend a ton of time on line yourself. |
If Your Kids Are Awake, They’re Probably Online
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The average young American now spends practically every waking minute — except for the time in school — using a smart phone, computer, television or other electronic device, according to a new study from the Kaiser Family Foundation. |
The study’s findings shocked its authors, who had concluded in 2005 that use could not possibly grow further, and confirmed the fears of many parents whose children are constantly tethered to media devices. It found, moreover, that heavy media use is associated with several negatives, including behavior problems and lower grades. Read more at www.nytimes.com |
This tool has a pay for services aspect to it, but it could also work well with volunteers on campaigns. Smartsheet and Google Apps: Crowdsourcing Made Easy |
Smartsheet recently integrated with Google Apps. Clients can work from Google Apps to crowdsource information through Smartsheet. |
Let’s say you have a list of the startup companies from the top 10 metro areas in the United States. You have the names of the companies in Google Apps. But you are lacking the name of the CEO and any contact information. So, you add some columns and open the Smartsheet application directly from Google Apps. |
You may now make your request to have the work done for you. Smartsheet opens a service such as Mechanical Turk. You describe the job, what you need and set your price. As the tasks are performed, the new information pops into the spreadsheet. |
Nicholas Kristof’s advice for saving the world |
Nicholas Kristof’s advice for saving the world
From Outside Magazine, by New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof:
In 2004, I visited the Darfur area three times, trying to bear witness to the slaughter of children and the burning of villages. |
| So I turned to the field of social psychology, trying to understand how I could craft my writing so that it would generate a response rather than a turned page. |
Good people engaging in good causes sometimes feel too pure and sanctified to sink to something as manipulative as marketing, but the result has been that women have been raped when it could have been avoided and children have died of pneumonia unnecessarily—because those stories haven’t resonated with the public. So for God’s sake, let’s learn how we can connect people to important causes and galvanize a robust public reaction. Read more at blog.invisiblechildren.com |
Fascinating discussion about how the web is changing and what it means for the use of the web. |
Russians Wary of Push for Cyrillic Web Domains
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MOSCOW — The Kremlin has long been irritated by the way the United States dominates the Internet, all the way down to the ban on using Cyrillic for Web addresses — even kremlin.ru has to be demeaningly rendered in English. The Russian government, as a result, is taking the lead in a landmark shift occurring around the world to allow domain names in languages with non-Latin alphabets. |
Russians themselves, though, do not seem at all eager to follow. |
But now, computer users are worried that Cyrillic domains will give rise to a hermetic Russian Web, a sort of cyberghetto, and that the push for Cyrillic amounts to a plot by the security services to restrict access to the Internet. Russian companies are also resisting Cyrillic Web addresses, complaining about costs and threats to online security. Read more at www.nytimes.com |
Just yesterday my wife and I were talking about how we thought that our daughters should be able to learn math even earlier than language. Apparently, that is not the standard thinking, but this article suggests the standard thinking might be wrong. |
Studying Young Minds, and How to Teach Them
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For much of the last century, educators and many scientists believed that children could not learn math at all before the age of five, that their brains simply were not ready. |
But recent research has turned that assumption on its head — that, and a host of other conventional wisdom about geometry, reading, language and self-control in class. The findings, mostly from a branch of research called cognitive neuroscience, are helping to clarify when young brains are best able to grasp fundamental concepts. |
In one recent study, for instance, researchers found that most entering preschoolers could perform rudimentary division, by distributing candies among two or three play animals. In another, scientists found that the brain’s ability to link letter combinations with sounds may not be fully developed until age 11 — much later than many have assumed. Read more at www.nytimes.com |
Addresses for military overseas are usually treated the same as domestic addresses, but not by Wal-Mart. I’m always amazed just how tone deaf they are. Some retailers inflate costs to ship to APO addresses |
On a $120 purchase, Walmart.com charged $10.35 to ship to an APO address,
compared with $2.10 to a stateside address. For most items, Amazon.com charged
the same to ship to an APO address as a stateside address. And Target offered shipping on a $120 purchase to an APO address for less than to a stateside address. |
Wal-Mart Inc. officials did not return calls requesting an interview.
However, in an e-mailed response, spokesman Ravi Jariwala said: “In your
shopping cart during the checkout process, we show an estimated shipping cost,
based on our lowest-price shipping method and assuming all items in your cart
are going to a single address within the contiguous United States. If you select
a different shipping method, a military APO/FPO address or an address outside
the contiguous United States, your actual shipping cost may be higher. We
continue to work with carriers to negotiate favorable shipping rates.” Read more at www.stripes.com |
A top labor leader urged Congress and the White House on Thursday to make major improvements to the Senate health care legislation, suggesting that the labor community could not support the current incarnation. |
If you haven’t been watching the Sestak v. Specter race, it’s a good time to start | Representative
Joe Sestak: He’s my pick for Sleeper of the Year. Watch the former Admiral closely; he’s
the real deal … brilliant, hard-working congressman who is headed for bigger
things if the people of Pennsylvania and the leaders of the Democratic Party
know what’s in the national interest.Read more at rothkopf.foreignpolicy.com |
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