Obama Blasts ... Evasive Stance On Gay Marriage
This article might be even more funny if “the leader of the free world” was used for the finger-waving figure scolding the president. That’s the term most people who appreciate the evolution of Obama’s validation are using in interviews. It delivers more emotion, I guess.
The secret to success - willingly hit the ball back.
(Source: danielleamber21)
It happens when people look past their ultimately minor differences to see themselves in the hopes and struggles of their fellow human beings. That’s where change is happening.
And that’s not just the story of the gay rights movement. That’s the story of America—the slow, inexorable march towards a more perfect union.” President Obama (via barackobama)
Peace Proof
1.) Lead by example. It’s the best evangelism for any idea … including peace.
2.) If above becomes axiomatic we get one rule: Partner or split up with other entities if you like, but never invade.
3.) The moment one organization invades another organization, the first’s sovereignty becomes “undefined”.
To lead the world toward peace, a proof like the one I’ve drafted above could help convince every entity on earth to walk peacefully. If the world is the sum of its members and no one supports invasion, then, the moment you invade another entity, the denominator for your entity’s fractional existence in the world becomes zero. You are no longer sovereign. In other words, you can’t be treated as sovereign while being invasive.
Bank of America Goes Local
Bank of America took out a page advertisement in the San Jose Mercury News on Sunday that partially resembles the nutritional labeling I’d like to see. (It was the paper addition so I can’t present the image for you here.)
Volume of loans and customers helped were the focus. These are close to the ones that matter to main street customer reading the paper on Sunday. But, could banks put these matters in a pie chart near each branch door summarizing last year’s leverage from assets.
Could data in the ad be presented in a pie chart or as raw percentages or even as ratios. These would help main street customers compare the priorities across many banks.
Instead, Bank of America chose to simply present icons representing large number of small business loans it was underwriting and the large number of struggling mortgage customers it was helping. Large numbers look good only to the people running the company. The nutrition labeling they chose looked neat, but it was designed for a low grade reading level.
The advertising team is only telling me that B of A is a large bank (and hopes to wow me, fool me by holding back on the denominators).
Alternatively, please give percentages or ratios that help us decide if the small number of too-large-for-the-federal-treasury-to-not-bail banking organizations that remain are also very interested in community lending. We can deposit, apply for credit cards and mortgages, pay my bills through your often better computer interfaces, but we will leave if you don’t present the data in a way that we know you are gaining momentum to be as thoroughly invested in my main street businesses.
I believe Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Chase, or Citi can do as well with my dollar of deposits as my regional bank. But, can you go beyond quarterly statements, state fact sheets and ads that only report large numbers.
Stats that matter presented well helps the fans tracking make baseball a hit. Give me your batting percentages please.
Read about Apple v. Samsung yesterday. LG Chocolate had rounded corners.
Check out this revolutionary design. Now we don’t have to look down.
Tablets have facilitated some learning, but looking at them is like digging in a closet and imagining how to use what you find in the real world. Glasses will help us keep walking in the real world and more actively work with the data and technology to improve it.
It will be fun to see what entrepreneurs and big co.s too build to take advantage of new products like this to move society forward for many generations. We’re not here to just sell product.
Washington Post
These guidelines are examples of professional associations thinking toward the long term to enhance the practice of their members. Additionally, while many doctors remain compensated with fee-per-service models a balance presentation of ‘do this’ and ‘don’t do this’ guidelines will help the public trust that judgement is not always compromised by pay structure.
Most importantly, spelling out when it’s best not to treat helps doctors point to the consensus when patients need more reassurance that less care is sometimes best.
Sourcing social innovation from current business crowds
apoliti.co began with business portraits from simple, candid images photographed from the street. Now that I’m not traveling as much I’m looking for story portraits online that tell of groups demonstrating creative moves that build social innovation into their business. The most elegant will be simple tweaks leveraging one of their current business lines.
These moves, if promoted, can get contagious as customers and the public-at-large engage more actively with the companies. Serious strides toward helping others in society use these new features will also help move society ahead. Crowd innovation will become common practice and we might learn we need less formal organization to have the good life.
Look Inside
Positive innovation - Amazon stores 1,700 human genomes in the cloud
Donating code can help more discovery with data. A ‘prime’ membership may be enough to nudge more of these gifts get stored. Privacy concerns will deter many. Getting rid of individual health insurance would assuage many of those fears.
If you want to use the codes here’s a link to a tutorial.
Care and Culture rights
In last night’s Quora answer I edited out my strong belief that health care is not a right. Even if a statement is simple, if it is also inflammatory it invites confusion. I didn’t want to distract from my goal of describing the moral problem of the poorly designed market. Access is a right, but payment to subsidize indulgent provision and use of it isn’t.
The same might be said for cultural arts. Society would deteriorate if we only had access to the arts created purely from profit motivated minds. Luckily, we are graced both by artists and medical care performers who creatively find ways to practice their art in financially prudent ways.
I haven’t acquired any taste for opera yet, but thankfully we can get the story of culture presented in many flavors and fashions. Other versions of lyric, music, and dramatic theater are quickly becoming more abundant in formats on and offline for those willing to seek them out and support their non-traditional revenue models. They will continue to flourish as more people figure out they can support their habits and make hobbies pay while avoiding ‘golden handcuffs’ of traditional versions of successful careerism.
As these formats become easier to find and share, many will also grow entertaining enough to have broader and broader appeal. This will save society from the savage Coliseums or various versions of future hunger games.
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Cultural performers learned to be thrifty a long time ago - this article from The New York Times feels a bit stale, but the quote below, coming from a seeming cultural org. caveman, was too preciously quaint not to forward.
“Culture is a basic need,” said Andreas Stadler, director of the Austrian Cultural Forum in New York and president of the New York branch of the European Union National Institutes for Culture. “People should have the right to go to the opera.”
Lick Observatory Moonrise
Image Credit & Copyright: Rick BaldridgeExplanation: As viewed from a well chosen location at sunset, the gorgeous Full Moon rose behind Mount Hamilton, east of San Jose, California on March 7. The lunar disk frames historic Lick Observatory perched on the mountain’s 4,200 foot summit. Both observatory and Moon echo the warm color of sunlight (moonlight is reflected sunlight) filtered by a long path through the atmosphere. Substantial atmospheric refraction contributes the Moon’s ragged, green rim. Of course, the March Full Moon is also known as the Full Worm Moon. In the telescopic photo, Lick’s 40 inch Nickel Telescope dome is on the left. The large dome on the right houses Lick’s Great 36 inch Refractor.
(Source: had-a-thing-for-astronauts)
Wonder Woman by Brian Bolland
(Source: crimesagainsthughsmanatees)
(Source: sr17)
