Daily Archives: 12/18/2012

(Community Matters) Profile of Nate Silver in Out Magazine.

“To my friends, I’m kind of sexually gay but ethnically straight,” explains Silver, who came out to his parents after spending a year in London studying economics—“I don’t know how I got any work done”—and considers gay conformity as perfidious as straight conformity. He supports marriage equality, but worries that growing acceptance of gays will dent our capacity to question broader injustice.

(Community Matters) “There is no substitute for good teachers: successful school systems have a number of things in common: they find culturally effective ways to attract the best people to the profession; they provide relevant, ongoing training; they give teachers a status similar to that of other respected professions; and the system sets clear goals and expectations but also lets teachers get on with meeting these. Higher salaries, on the other hand, accomplish little by themselves.” The Economist’s, The Learning Curve

Five lessons for education policymakers

1. There are no magic bullets

2. Respect teachers

3. Culture can be changed

4. Parents are neither impediments to nor saviours of education

5. Educate for the future, not just the present

(Community Matters) in the NYTimes, Young, Unemployed and Living on the Street

future implications?

(Community Matters)

video here

the guys are especially thoughtful and effective discussing gun control

(Community Matters) As we’re decompressing, remembering how to be quiet, we’re reminded:

On the Importance of Waiting and Doing Nothing: 
A Mid-Advent Reflection

There are so many ways to wait, and things to wait upon, in our lives. This time of year especially we wait in lines so that we can buy stuff for people we (sometimes) can’t wait to see. Then we get in our cars and wait for mall traffic to subside and for red lights to turn green, only to arrive at home and wait the minute and a half it takes to warm up last night’s dinner since we were too busy off doing other things to get home on time. There’s as much waiting and standing around as there is holiday bluster and hustle.

Continue reading →

(Community Matters) Today’s Gilded Age.

I’ve long planned to write on this topic and continue to catalog these thoughts. This isn’t the piece; nevertheless, yesterday’s article on Wal-Mart’s bribes in Mexico, especially the desecration of one of the world’s most important archeological sites adds one of the least flattering, most corrosive perspectives on corporate behavior from a company of whom we should be able to expect much better. I’m back off them despite their advances in employee benefits and practices. They’re too big and too unwieldy.

Appears time to bust Wal-Mart apart, Teddy Roosevelt style. There are a few, additional MNC candidates. Probably time to rewrite the 1890s legislation for today’s threats against workers, consumers and even citizen governance

the next Teddy Roosevelt? #ElizabethWarren

(Community Matters) Interview on Creating Shared Value (not values) with Kyle Peterson, managing director of FSG (Harvard Prof Michael Porter and Mark Kramer, co-founders)

Shared Value is the policy and practices that accompany and that are employed to bring about competitive advantage while addressing a social problem. Three forms:

The first form is reconceiving products and markets.

Second is redefining productivity in the value chain.

The third form is what we call ‘enabling local clusters’.

Earlier posting: Creating Shared Value