Lex provides the conditions necessary to him for the death penalty to stand: "If it ever can be shown that the state has wrongfully executed an innocent person even though a fair exculpatory case existed before the execution, then we also should put to death the prosecutor and judge in the case. If a parole board ever commits the kind of dereliction of duty displayed in Willingham’s case with the result that an innocent person is executed, the board members who voted for execution should be put to death. If a governor can be shown to have denied clemency to an innocent prisoner even in the face of exculpatory evidence, as Texas Gov. Rick Perry appears to have done, the governor should be put to death.

Then and only then, my friends, will we know that the accused is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt."

"Workers are more productive, but employee earnings are falling, according to a closely-watched report released Wednesday." File this under least surprising business news of the decade. Fear of loss of job/starvation is a powerful motivator.

"The next time you write that yearly check to renew those memberships within your industry’s organizations, think about their value in two parts: What are you willing to put into the membership, and what do you want in return?"

"On Saturday, millions watched as Ted Kennedy made his final trip to Arlington National Cemetery. With rather less attention, Arlington's soil opened again Monday to accept the remains of one of Kennedy's former aides, 40-year-old Bill Cahir."

"The chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. warned Tuesday that more banks could be put out of business in the next year because of commercial mortgage problems."

I had the opportunity to work with Ellen Naylor during my time with SCIP and found her to be one of the most insightful and fun people to work with in the SCIP member community. She makes some good points about the association business in her post, the most important of which is that association execs need to be attuned to the changes being wrought on their "business" by the evolution of social media.

This has to be a first in the annals of politics in the Triad. GSO City Council At-Large Candidate Ryan Shell was canvassing when he came across a guy running from, and who was eventually tazed by the police. Later he interviewed the guy and as they guy's walking away Ryan tells him to pull up his britches.

"The benefit of a consumer centric health care system is we all would start paying attention to what all of this costs and negotiating ourselves for better prices and/or shopping around. That never happens except in the cases where the procedures aren't covered. And Goldhill makes a compelling argument that uncovered procedures have shown the benefit of a competitive market at work:"

This bit of info should be a wake up call to anyone who lives in Lewisville, NC seeing as we must have more cyclists per capita than any other town in the union. A study shows that 90% of accidents that result in the deaths of cyclists are caused by motorists.

Graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister finds that regular sabbaticals are highly beneficial.

After sitting through two presentations on how to build an attractive, multi-use, pedestrian friendly downtown, last night at the Lewisville Planning Board meeting I found this piece kind of interesting.

Rex: "In other words, it’s not the “medium” of print that’s dying. It’s the business model of daily newspapers and mass-market magazines that is bringing down the “traditional” and big brands of print media. And in another other word, the “institution of journalism” and the “institution of the general-interest daily newspaper as we now know it” are not one and the same."

In a nutshell: two wrongs don't make a right. h/t to Ed for the link.

Interesting "back of the napkin" look at health insurance reform. h/t to Ed Cone for the link.

Foothills Brewery is hosting an Oktoberfest Celebration on September 12. They're raising money for two charities with fantastic names: Save the Tatas and Pints for Prostates.

The Chicago Transportation Authority allowed consumers to give feedback by writing comments in chalk on a huge "street chalkboard."

If you've been wondering about how the Fed has been spending our money and frustrated by the lack of transparency on the terms of the bailout then Lex has some good news for you.

"Small business owners struggle to provide health insurance for their employees and don’t feel confident about deciding what health insurance best fits employees’ needs, according to a survey by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners."

Candidate Shell thinks land owners should have been involved in the development of Greensboro's proposed DDCM a lot earlier in the process.

According to this Biz Journal article a survey of CPA executives by the AICPA found that the vast majority don't want a government-owned health insurance provider.

"More than 30,000 businesses filed for bankruptcy protection in the first half of 2009, a 64 percent increase from the same period a year earlier."

"The FDA has received 32 reports of serious liver injury among patients taking orlistat. Six cases resulted in liver failure and 27 required hospitalization.

A GlaxoSmithKline spokeswoman said that there is no evidence that Alli causes liver damage."

This post from Fec links to a story that truly has me saying, "WTF?" Banks that have been suckling at the taxpayer teat for the last year have been buying up oil at low prices, putting it on supertankers and keeping it at sea until prices rise. Seriously, WTF? Anyone think they can manage the oil biz any better than the banking, insurance or broker biz?

How to release your inner MacGyver. h/t to Dan for the link via Twitter.

Residents of a neighborhood near West Forsyth HS are a ticked that a median is being installed on Lewisville-Clemmons Road just outside the entrance to their neighborhood. One of their arguments against the median, that it would increase response times of emergency personnel, doesn't really seem to hold water but their argument that an increase in U-Turns could be hazardous seems to be a valid one to me. I'm not sure why DOT can't put in a cut to allow at least for left hand turns into the neighborhood even if it doesn't allow left hand turns out of the neighborhood. There's a cut just like that just a couple of miles down the road.

Seth Godin has a very interesting idea for doing a presentation. Really it's an idea for not doing a presentation, but turning a presentation into a collaboration.

"When someone in poverty buys a device that improves productivity, the device pays for itself (if it didn’t, they wouldn’t buy it.) So a drip irrigation system, for example, may pay off by creating two or three harvests a year instead of one.

What does that do for the family that buys it? Well, if you have one harvest a year and you’re living at subsistence, it means your income is zero, or probably just a little below. If you can irrigate and get two or three harvests a year, though, your income goes up by infinity. Now, instead of making -1 pennies a day, you’re making 100 or 200 pennies a day. That’s a surplus of $700 a year. That’s enough to participate in other productivity or life-enhancing investments, like a well, or a roof, or health care. Now, the edge is a lot further away."

Lex writes: "If the journalism bidness gave a damn for its customers’ well-being, it would gauge its performance on the basis of how well informed the populace is and adjust its performance accordingly. In no developed country in the universe should any significant number of people have been able to believe, years after the fact, that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11. But if the journalism bidness did anything at all in reaction to this travesty, it was to blame it on those scruffy, undisciplined, unserious bloggers."

"One potentially ominous sign for the regional economy evident in the banks’ numbers for the second quarter is a big jump in commercial properties they’d taken over. After two quarters of declines, banks reported more than double the value of those assets on their books since the end of the first quarter of this year, $14.3 million worth."

Why this recession is worse in terms of unemployment than other recessions since the Great Depression: more folks are staying unemployed longer. From the post: "The answer is that the welfare effect of unemployment depends on its duration. Society is worse off at 10 percent unemployment if that figure is concentrated on a small number of long-term unemployed than if it’s spread more evenly across the labor force. A few weeks of unemployment don’t exhaust savings and don’t lead to great depreciation of skills. A year of unemployment can do both."

Good news if you're a jock in Winston-Salem Forsyth County Schools: If your GPA falls under 2.0 you can still play for at least two more grading periods if you attend mandatory tutoring sessions, even if your GPA stays under 2.0. They're raising the bar I see.

"The fastest-growing segment of American higher education is now asynchronous or online learning—where the professor is in one place and the student in another, and not always at the same time. We’ve always disdained this as “not our way.” But contemporary technology has significantly narrowed the gap between distance learning (where teacher and student are apart in space or time) and traditional learning (where they are physically together). We are deluding ourselves if we think that the only truly effective teaching and learning occurs when all God’s children are in the same place."

Thanks to my buddy Dan for linking to this piece on the "digital bomb" that's about to go off in education.

You remember sandwich boards? You know, those ads that people would wear while walking in front of businesses on city sidewalks? Well, this guy is a natural "hairy sandwich board" for a body waxing service.