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.

Fec links to a piece advocating for changes in the foreclosure process to give owners the right to stay in their homes and rent them at market rates for an extended (7-10 years) time.

Not cool: "Boeing [BA] is conducting an internal investigation into a nascent social media effort after a company spokesman posed as an independent blogger and sat in on several briefings of archrival Northrop Grumman [NOC] at a trade show last week." h/t to Arik Johnson for the lead.

From the article: "Sales of existing single-family homes fell 12 percent in July compared to a year ago…The average sale price was $164,945 in July, down from $173,422 a year earlier. It was up slightly from $161,973 in June."

I really like these two sentences from Dennis: "What makes private markets desirable is not the fact that they are in the private sector, but that they are competitive. But current health insurance is far from competitive (when was the last time you shopped around for health insurance and had lots of options?)"

If I was a chick I'd dig this.

My favorite part of this post: "If you define membership as entrance into a community, then you’ve just commoditized your membership — and if you don’t have higher aspirations than “bringing people together” then you will find yourself struggling with a steep uphill battle over the next several years. Connections are just too easy. Leveraging connections (whether made through you or someone else) to provide real value and influence? Now, that’s hard, and a lot more fun."

From the article: "'In 1960, UNCG housed 76 percent of our students on campus,” Brady told the board before unveiling the school’s strategic housing plan. “By 2008, this figure had dropped to 25 percent.'" and "Carol Disque, vice chancellor for student affairs, said UNCG is expected to have more than 16,000 undergraduate students by 2020. To reach its goal of housing half those students on campus, the school will need more than 8,000 new beds.

The question: Where to put them? Already using most of its 200 acres and hemmed in by development, the school has struggled with that question for years."

"Work on multifamily homes, such as townhouses and apartment buildings, dropped 13 percent to an annual rate of 91,000. Multifamily projects are more vulnerable to credit constraints facing some builders.

The decrease in starts was led by a 16 percent drop in the Northeast, followed by a 1.6 percent decline in the West and 1.4 percent in the South. They rose 13 percent in the Midwest."

Very interesting piece on the intersection of cloud computing, particularly the hardware aspects of it, and government, particularly regulation and taxation, and what that means for the future of technology companies.

Winston-Salem Journal managing editor Ken Otterbourg questions whether or not Sunday will retain its primacy in the newspaper business as the print and online worlds continue to converge.

A couple of community news operations down near Charlotte are doing what newspapers are supposed to do and it doesn't seem coincidental that they're both run by journalists who have a history of mixing it up. (h/t to Fec for the link).

"Insurance reform absolutely does need to consider costs. However, dollars spent by the Federal government, as important as they are, are neither the sole metric of costs nor the sole determinant of effective social policy."

According to Mark Cuban, serial entrepreneur and owner of the Dallas Mavericks, the most patriotic thing you can do is: "Bust your ass and get rich.

Make a boatload of money. Pay your taxes. Lots of taxes. Hire people. Train people. Pay people. Spend money on rent, equipment, services. Pay more taxes."

He also says:
"I’m not saying that the government’s use of tax money is the most efficient use of our hard earned capital. It obviously is not. In a perfect world, there would be a better option. We don’t live in a perfect world. We don’t live in a perfect time. We live in a time where the government plays a big role in an effort to help lead us out this Great Recession. That’s reality.

So I will repeat my point. Get out there and make a boatload of money. Enjoy the shit out your money. Pay your taxes.

Its the most Patriotic thing you can do."

I truly don't know how these people sleep at night.

Just when I started seeing light at the end of the tunnel Fec goes and screams "Train!"

Guerrilla Marketing has a cool biz card idea.

Some interesting health care stats for the developed world. Two numbers that grabbed my attention: US spends higher percentage of GDP (16%) on healthcare than other countries, yet has fewer doctors per capita than the others (2.4 per 1,000 vs. the 3.1 per 1,000 that is average in rest of developed world).

The President submits an op-ed to the Grey Lady. He states his case for health care reform. His final paragraph: "In the end, this isn’t about politics. This is about people’s lives and livelihoods. This is about people’s businesses. This is about America’s future, and whether we will be able to look back years from now and say that this was the moment when we made the changes we needed, and gave our children a better life. I believe we can, and I believe we will."
On a side note I must say that I'm fairly certain that the President engaged his staff to help write this piece, but at the same time I'm also fairly certain that he has the ability to pen the piece on his own if he so desires. Can't say I think the same about his predecessor's writing ability.

Anil Dash has an interesting post about the gubment being 2009's most interesting tech startup.

Seth's right. Please, please, please stop the screaming.

So the whole 'death panel' thing didn't start with Rep. Foxx after all. Looks like she got the ammo for her pea shooter from some familiar anti-health reform types. (h/t to Ed Cone for the link).

Unfortunately this piece neglects to give the actual day of the week that the town hall is occuring, so I'll tell you that it's on Thursday, August 20. Time is 6:30. Instructions for participating are: Constituents can participate in the meeting by dialing 1-877-850-4133 at 6:30 p.m. and entering the password FOXX (3699).

(BTW, that's the same day that most of the high schools in our area are having their open houses so I don't think she'll be getting a lot of high schoolers or their parents on the call.)

"The dramatic downturn in the Triad commercial building sector has hit the city of High Point the hardest even while construction in unincorporated Guilford County is up so far this year versus last year, according to a Business Journal analysis of area building permits."