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In defending his selection of an anti-gay rights activist to become the Cincinnati NAACP’s legal advisor, Christopher Smitherman scolded critics for daring to invoke the legacy of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.---Speaking on his WDBZ (AM 1230) radio show last weekend, Smitherman addressed the local LGBT community. He criticized them for mentioning King when discussing their own civil rights struggles.“But the bottom line is your comm
Android users who are switching over to their Google Voice phone number full-time like I am need a handy little app called GV. GV provides calling and SMS support via your Google Voice number in Android that isn’t perfect, but is getting there.
GV’s About dialog says that GOOG hasn’t released an official, supported API for the product, so it’ll only work as long as Google Voice’s mobile interface doesn’t change. No doubt the Android developers at Google are busy at work building default hooks to Google Voice into a future release of the mobile phone operating system. But until Google Voice support comes out of the box, GV’s the way to go.
Install GV from the Android Market (it’s free), and hit up the settings to enter your Google Voice username, password, and phone number. From there, any time you make a call or send an SMS, you have the choice to use your Google Voice number or your cell phone number.
Here’s what that looks like.
Tap and hold on a contact you want to text or call, and GV will ask which method you want to use, as shown.
Since I’m switching to my Google Voice number full-time, I checked off that “Use by default for this action” box before I chose GV for both texting and calling.
For the most part the transition to Google Voice with GV is going well for me, save a couple oddities that take some getting used to.
First, to place a call, you tap your contact, and GV calls you first. You pick up, and then it rings your contact. That’s the only way to have your GV number show up on the caller ID on the other end–but it’s still weird when you’re used to just picking up a phone and dialing.
Update: Commenter Oren points out that in GV’s settings, you can choose “Dial out” instead of “Call back” as the method for calling a contact. That option calls Google Voice, which prompts you to “dial the number of the person you want to call.” Hang in for a moment, and do nothing, and GV will ring the contact you chose automatically. Awesome, thanks, Oren!
Second, when you text message a contact from your GV number via GV, and that person replies, you can reply back to their message–but the “From:” number is an unknown 406 phone number. Again, you can save that Google-Voice-to-contact specific number in their contact record, but it introduces yet another phone number into the scenario.
Google Voice is still young and needs more work to grab the folks without high tolerances for multiple-phone-number complexity in exchange for the convenience it provides. But for the early-ish adopters on Android, the GV app is a good bet. (Thanks for the tip, emailtoid!)
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In addition to our summer PCF internship, we’re excited to announce an AmeriCorps*VISTA based position, which is centered around working with our Miro Local TV partners (namely, public broadcasting affiliates and community TV centers from around the US).
What: VISTA Position @ PCF
When: Mid-July 2009 to July 2010
Where: Boston or NYC
Wage: Living Stipend/Educational Award/Health Care
See eligibility requirements below.
This is a very unique opportunity to work as part of the PCF team for a full year. Read on to find out more about how a VISTA position works, and details on what you would be doing.
Due to media consolidation and disintegrating business models, traditional local journalism is on the decline. As a result, mainstream media is failing the needs of American towns and cities for a local discourse that articulates common identities and informs the democratic process. Citizen journalism could fill this void, but citizen journalists constantly struggle for audience, reach, and relevance.
Miro Local TV (MLTV) will create a series of community-based video hubs to connect local creators, public access stations, and the community of viewers. With these new hubs and the relationships that they form, vibrant local communities of video can flourish. Quite simply, we can create an active, citizen-driven, online television world for individual cities and towns.
MLTV will focus on five communities in the first year. Each hub will be a local website (e.g. worcestervideo.org) where people can watch and submit video. A partnership with the local public access station will ground an outreach effort to connect creators and creative organizations to residents that are eager to engage with local news and information. MLTV will provide tools for syndication (in and out), ways to geographically code and gather local content from across the internet, and custom local versions of the open source video player, Miro.
a. Aiding in the development of outreach guidelines with our Outreach Director.
b. Managing relationships with partner community access and public television stations.
c. Co-developing and publishing training materials for partner organizations to use to learn to use the Miro Local TV web software.
d. Assisting organizations in the initial setup and customization of their Community Video Hub.
e. Outreach to potential community partners for the larger, second year of the project which will begin in fall 2009.
We would be able to make efficient use of a range of skills for this position, and to some extent will adapt the position based on the degree of technical proficiency of the candidate. By far, the most important criteria for us are demonstrated intelligence, professionalism, and responsibility. More specifically, we will look for the following:
a. Proficiency with use of modern internet tools and services (eg. email, word processing, etc).
b. Ability to write clearly and simply, including the ability to explain technical concepts and software instructions in plain english.
c. Strong and positive communication skills both for internal communication with our team and communication and support for partner organizations.
d. Ability to listen and synthesize diverse demands.
PCF is one of the leading software development non-profits in the world. Our hiring process is strict, our positions are very desirable, and the resulting team that we have assembled is world-class.
Above all, being a member of our team offers access to this wealth of human resources— professionals that are leaders in their field, that are well connected to other organizations and companies, and who are happy to offer their knowledge and experience to each other.
The VISTA member will have full access to our staff and our technical resources. In addition, the member will be invited to technical and media conferences that staff participate in at various times during the year.
The VISTA position is available in both Boston and New York City — you will technically be a volunteer, but will receive a living stipend, educational award, and health care coverage. More information on the CTC VISTA program.
In return for your service, AmeriCorps*VISTA and the CTC VISTA Project has many benefits, some more valuable than others:
* ~$11,000/year living allowance. This amount varies based upon the community in which you serve.
* $4,725 Education Award or $1,200 stipend paid at the successful completion of your year of service
* Student loan deferment or forbearance on qualified loans
* Health benefits and prescription drug coverage
* Serve as part of a national team, facilitated by the CTC VISTA Project, to share resources, experience and advice
* The opportunity to gain high-level experience, skills and access within the nonprofit sector. Many of our alumni have gone on to full-time employment within their organization or another as a result of their service within the CTC VISTA Project
AmeriCorps*VISTA candidates must be a U.S. citizen, U.S. national, or lawful permanent resident, be team-oriented, and be willing to take on a wide range of challenges. Some listings may require college degrees or previous work experience. You must be at least 17 years old. There is no upper age limit, and many AmeriCorps*VISTA members bring significant work and life experiences to their assignment. Self-initiative, flexibility and organizational skills are a must.
Send your application directly to jobs [at] pculture.org with “VISTA Position” somewhere in the subject line. Please include: brief bio, statement of interest, and a resume. We’ll be interviewing candidates over the coming weeks.
I’ve been thinking about downtown Cincinnati skywalks as sites for public art, and I just came across a project entitled Speaking of Home by Nancy Ann Coyne. Installed last year in IDS Center /Macy’s Skyway in Minneapolis, the project featured large-scale portraits of new Minnesotans, along with their countries of origin, definitions of “home,” and the word “home” in each native language.
For more information, see the project site and Steven Heller’s thorough interview with the artist.
If Atheists Ruled the World -- four minutes of dramatic readings from choice selections in various fundamentalist Christian online forums (see here for more).
Grass is officially the greatest idea ever. It's a "crafty carnival circus party" where you can see how talented and creative your friends are. Be proud of them and of Cincinnati. Buy things. Drink beer. Eat pizza. Watch some flicks. And dance to the Lions Rampant and DJ INDIANgiver. ---
Of the 34 ButtonShields currently bought/funded, 13 were bought right out vs. 21 funded, which means an "accountable agency ratio" of 38%. The "accountable agency ratio" is a term that Justin and I thought up after reading some econ textbooks we borrowed from friends. It probably deserves it's own blog post, but the gist is that there's this thing called the "agency problem" which is what economists like to blame lots of problems on - like greed and bubbles and mismanagement and lack of CEO ethics and corruption. I think it basically comes down to this: the guy running the company is often not the guy who's money is at stake, so he's an agent, and he does all kinds of stuff for his own benefit, not for the benefit of the investor.
In his New Yorker review of Jonathan Cott’s 1990 biography of Lafcadio Hearn, Brad Leithauser wrote “The canon of nineteenth-century American literature contains a number of outsize oddballs (Poe, Dickinson, and Whitman foremost among them), but even in such singular company Hearn often succeeds in looking sharply eccentric. In his fifty-four years, this British-Irish-Greek-American-Japanese essayist, fiction writer, folk- lorist, and translator clashed with our country’s miscegenation laws (in 1874, with a black clergyman presiding, he married Mattie Foley, an eighteen-year-old mulatto who was born a slave); denounced Christianity and pursued Buddhism; composed journalism of such raw gusto that even in our unbuttoned age it can still jangle the nerves; . . . talked to ghosts in mediums’ dens; and became, possibly, a bigamist (his marriage, in 1891, to a Japanese woman was evidently not preceded by a divorce from Mattie). Given a life so contrarily colorful and so charged with explosive social issues, it is surprising that Hearn has not found his way onto more English-department syllabuses.” Does this sound accurate? Will Lafcadio Hearn: American Writings remedy this oversight?
I’m completely convinced that Hearn’s time has come. He famously wrote that he worshiped “the Odd, the Queer, the Strange, the Exotic, the Monstrous.” Such pronouncements have made it easy to dismiss him as some oddball com- bination of Poe and Gauguin, living in an escapist world of dreams. But what Hearn was really interested in was the astonishing variety of human life. That’s what comes across strongly in his American Writings, in which his omnivorous curiosity is everywhere on show. Despite his traumatic early years, when he was abandoned by his relatives and just about everyone he trusted, he retained an incredible zest and openness for new experiences and places. When he finds himself in a new locale—an African-American dive in segregated Cincinnati, a voodoo ceremony in New Orleans, an uncharted Filipino fishing village in the Gulf of Mexico—he wants to devour everything in it. He simply goes further afield than any of his contemporaries—try to imagine Henry James or Edith Wharton in these places! It’s true that Hearn’s tastes run toward the decadent and the evanescent. “The Last of the Voudoos” is the title of his vivid article on the legendary voodoo wizard Jean Montanet, and we’ve also included his charming portrait of “The Last of the New Orleans Fencing-Masters.”
(...) One of our best current travel writers, Pico Iyer, uses the phrase “global soul” for people who have adapted themselves to our new world of mass migra- tion and globalization. Hearn, it seems to me, was an early version of a global soul...
If the Industrial-Era economic system is, in fact, on its last legs, it would be useful to think through some of the possible post-capitalism models that might emerge.
I don't think we have enough early indicators to create a solid vision, so anything we talk about will have to be something of a thought experiment. What kinds of constraints would we face? What kinds of demands? Consider the following, then, at best a scenario sketch.
The trigger was a phrase we'd all become sick of: "Too Big to Fail." The phrase had moved quickly from sarcasm to cliché, but ended up as the pole star for what to avoid. Any economy that enabled the creation of institutions that were too big to fail -- that is, whose failure would threaten to collapse the system -- could never be thought of as resilient. And, as the early 21st century rolled along, resilience is what mattered, in our environment, in our societies, and increasingly in our economics.
Traditional capitalism was, arguably, driven by the desire to increase wealth, even at the expense of other values. Traditional socialism, conversely, theoretically wanted to increase equality, even if that meant less wealth. But both 19th/20th century economic models had insufficient focus on increasing resilience, and would often actively undermine it. The economic rules we started to assemble in the early 2010s seek to change that.
Resilience economics continues to uphold the elements of previous economic models that offer continued value: freedom and openness from capitalism at its best; equality and a safety net from socialism's intent. But it's not just another form of "mixed economy" or "social democracy." The focus is on something entirely new: decentralized diversity as a way of managing the unexpected.
Decentralized diversity (what we sometimes call the "polyculture" model) means setting the rules so that no one institution or approach to solving a problem/meeting a need ever becomes overwhelmingly dominant. This comes at a cost to efficiency, but efficiency only works when there are no bumps in the road. Redundancy works out better in times of chaos and uncertainty -- backups and alternatives and slack in the system able to counter momentary failures.
It generates less wealth than traditional capitalism would, at least when it was working well, but is far less prone to wild swings, and has an inherent safety net (what designers call "graceful failure") to cushion downturns.
Completely transactional transparency also helps, giving us a better chance to avoid surprises and to spot problems before they get too big. The open-source folks called this the "many eyes" effect, and they were definitely on to something. It's much harder to game the system when everyone can see what you're doing.
Flexibility and collaboration have long been recognized as fundamental to resilient systems, and that's certainly true here. One headline on a news site referred to it as the "LEGO economy," and that was pretty spot-on. Lots of little pieces able to combine and recombine; not everything fits together perfectly, but surprising combinations often have the most creative result.
Lastly, the resilience economy has adopted a much more active approach to looking ahead. Not predicting, not even planning -- no "five year plans" here. It's usually referred to as "scanning," and the focus is less on visions of the future than on early identification of emerging uncertainties. Resilience economists are today's foresight specialists.
What does this all look like for everyday people? For most of us, it's actually not far off from how we lived a generation ago. We still shop for goods, although the brands are more numerous and there are far fewer "big players" -- and those that emerge tend not to last long. People still go to work, although more and more of us engage in micro-production of goods and intellectual content. And people still lose their jobs and suffer personal economic problems... but, again, there's far less risk of economic catastrophe, and some societies are even starting to experiment with a "guaranteed basic income" system.
Is it perfect? By no means. We're still finding ways in which resilience economics isn't working out as well as past approaches, and situations where a polyculture model doesn't provide the kinds of results that the old oligarchic/monopoly capitalist model could. But those of us who remember the dark days of the econopalypse know where non-resilient models can lead, and would rather fix what we've made than go back to the past.