Community Matters

(Community Matters) Through Shobie Partos in our Entrepreneurs Foundation office, we helped Silicon Labs, Inc. host tonight’s fundraiser for the Literacy Coalition of Central Texas – a happy hour spelling bee at the Alamo Drafthouse South.  There are three feeder spelling bees leading up to the big kahuna on April 29 at the Austin Musica Hall.

Tonight, teams from Austin Ventures, Bazaarvoice, BMC Software (formerly Phurnace), Convio, Creditcards.com, Silicon Labs, Thinkwell and Troux Technologies competed.  Creditcards.com won the competition.  Everyone had a blast for a good cause.

(Community Matters) While chatting with a 23 yo over lunch today, I listened attentively, since so much of what many need today is simply to be heard (and to talk outloud, to have to reach conclusion in their thoughts).  Increasingly I don’t prioritize making nice or becoming friends with 20 year olds.  I’d much rather share truths as I’ve experienced them, or as I interpret them, with the hope of favorably counseling someone.

This young man (who’s a casual acquaintance but whom I’ve watched on facebook and in a business setting), has many gifts to recommend him.

After listening, inquiring and mostly affirming, I explained that there are many paths one can take, which while looking similar, sometimes even easier, lead to very different sorts of lives.  While I’ve thought about it before, I’m not sure I’ve articulated how blessed some lives can be (I don’t mean blessed in any religious sense) – certainly mine & Steven’s among those.  I don’t mean materially (though that too); I mean because of the people we are lucky to count among our closest friends – how most of us spend a lot of time, money and effort on others – sometimes ones’ children, grandchildren or community, politics, running a business & providing fair paying jobs supporting families. How within this cohort, you don’t really have to look over your shoulder because these friends have your back.

Even among us, we sometimes become too ego-centric.  This doesn’t serve us well.  When we start feeling sorry for ourselves, or obsessing about ourselves, perhaps it’s time to focus on others.

(Community Matters) Flint Sparks (a Buddhist priest) posted these comments about this video on his Facebook:

This is really interesting, and there are loads of people out there projecting their stuff onto this very ambiguous image. This may possibly the most “Buddhist” response I’ve seen in advertising. Tiger stands and faces the camera in ordinary black and white – he turns toward the witness not away, just as in meditation, nothing fancy. He offers nothing but himself and his father’s words, which encourage reflection rather than judgment. “Inquisitive” and”inviting discussion” – just like one might be with a good teacher – opening to curiosity and deep looking. “What were you thinking… what were you feeling?” Paying attention to the the ways we create suffering through the self-centered dream. “Did you learn anything?” Each moment, life as it is, is the real source of all learning, but only if we don’t turn a practice opportunity into an ordinary event. Only if we choose deep questioning and real attention over reactivity and easy judgment.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

(Community Matters) excellent piece.  quite reflective of my thoughts and one of the reasons I’m hoping to meet with staff from J Street while I’m in DC later this month.

The essential question for Israel is not whether it has the friendship of the White House—it does—but whether Netanyahu remains the arrogant rejectionist that he was in the nineteen-nineties, the loyal son of a radical believer in Greater Israel, forever settling scores with the old Labor élites and making minimal concessions to ward off criticism from Washington and retain the affections of his far-right coalition partners. Is he capable of engaging with the moderate and constructive West Bank leadership of Mahmoud Abbas and Salam Fayyad, and making history? Does there exist a Netanyahu 2.0, a Nixon Goes to China figure who will act with an awareness that demographic realities—the growth not only of the Palestinian population in the territories but also of the Arab and right-wing Jewish populations in Israel proper—make the status quo untenable as well as unjust?

full New Yorker article

(Community Matters) good quote: “the RNC chairman’s problem ‘sn’t the race card, it’s the credit card,'” Robert Gibbs (in NPR story on what a week for Obama)

(Community Matters) Cellphones.org

Hat Tip: Amanda Rose

(Community Matters) Westboro Baptist Church – “Nate Phelps fled his loony family years ago, but is telling the world about the horror of growing up Phelps.”

Vodpod videos no longer available.

(Community Matters) I’m a big fan of Paul Krugman. Though, I disagree with today’s column (Making Financial Reform Fool-Resistant). Financial regulatory reform as expected to be passed is – yes, admittedly – dependent on the sound execution by regulators. That’s what we need to give them, not some micro-managing, these-explicit-rules-fit-all solution. If there is a problem with the soundness/transparency/coziness-to-industry of the regulators, that’s another problem to also be addressed

(Community Matters) New York University’s jounalism faculty and distinguished outside judges, “the Top Ten Works of Journalism of the Decade in the United States.”

Hat Tip: Chris Hayes: “This is a pretty good list, but I definitely would have included David Grann’s Trial by Fire from the New Yorker”

(Community Matters)

Vodpod videos no longer available.

(Community Matters) If you missed his column about Cpl Matthew Snyder and Westboro Baptist “church” – read it here.  And, hoping you’ll consider donating even $5 here

(Community Matters) Reading Hale Stewart’s analysis on 538.

Temporary help services and health care continued to add jobs over the month.

Employment in federal government also rose, reflecting the hiring of temporary workers for Census 2010. Employment continued to decline in financial activities and in information.  Total private hiring was 123,000 — meaning the “census workers tilted the numbers” argument is wrong.   Unemployment rate for:

Less than a high school diploma: 14.5%
High school with no college: 10.8%
Some college or associates degree: 8.2%
Bachelor’s or higher: 4.9% (this is near full employment from an economic perspective) Continue reading →