Wednesday, April 25, 2007

workfare for the whole family

http://www.freakonomics.com/blog/2007/04/25/abortion-and-anti-poverty-in-mexico/

Yo. this is a great idea. Welfare mothers aren't recieving a blank check, they're actually being given money based on how well they're managing their lives:

It's happening in mexican rural areas, with a slow matriculation into the cities, but i think it's a great idea.

To implement something like this in the States would almost be a snap, we have a lot of record keeping in the schools and medical clinics. Setting up the database and tracking of it would be costly, but dollar for dollar this would be a lot better than giving chronic welfare mothers a blank check.

Accountability from the bottom up. Someone call Bill Cosby



http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/25/nyregion/25antipoverty.html?ex=1335153600&en=28bc52f07c895460&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
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Rating Netflix Movies

I've a friend who's going to work for Comcast. He's going to be creating algorhythms to figure out how to recommend movies a lot better. The way he has it, he's doing some advanced geekery, which is right, but i like to think he's going head-to-head with netflix's rating system (which i think is par).

I told him that he needs to build in some kind of device to create explicit associations between movies. For instance, i saw the Illusionist and The Prestige. Both wer movies about magicians. However, there's nothing except word of mouth to say that these movies are alike. For all of that, if i searched for "magic", i would have gotten things like Narnia, LOTR and so forth.

He doesn't even have to make the associations himself! He can have people tag movies and create a little device so that people can vote/say "like" or "not like" other movies along certain categories.

When i was ineffectually telling him this, he said i didn't know how powerful the algorhythms were to identify movies i'd like. So if you or anyone else is intereseted in this, here's a link to an article by the head-honcho of netflix explaining their recommendation system, and how they're trying to open-source thier recommendations improvement.

http://www.forbes.com/free_forbes/2007/0507/130.html
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Friday, April 20, 2007

vampires vs. neteru

My new guilty pleasure is vampire novels by L.A. Banks. She writes a damn good series. So far it’s been about battles between Vampires and Neteru (variants of Egyptian dieties). I like it for a couple reasons. First I get to indulge in some ebonics and spirituality at the same time. Also, we’ve heard a lot a bout demons and evils spirits, but this is the first time I’ve read anything about angelic hierarchies and things like that. She has a pantheon for the newmillenium.


Her writing style is defnitely fast-paced when the action is flaring, but i think she gives too much backstory. Actually, it's not too much, it's too much. What i mean by that is that she has lots of sentences where if you cut off the last three words. Just kidding . . . if you cut off the last three words the sentence has more impact. other than that, i'm good.

I haven't read the series in sequence (who does?) and i'm going back to read the first couple novels to get the backstory.

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Friday, April 13, 2007

the gauntlet and the dollar

so i've decided to actually do it. I'm going to publish my stuff way before it's time. i think it'll be good for me. The good thing is that nobody reads my blogs anyway (yo tom!). The bad thing is that nobody reads my blogs anyway.

That's good because nobody will steal my idea, bad because i don't know if the idea is worth stealing. Good because i'll actually be putting my ideas 'out there', bad because 'out there' is already filled with a whole lot of other crap. drumroll . . .

the website
wealthscore.googlpages.com

and my money blog:
wealthscore.blogspot.com

ps: apparently i'm on a publishing kick
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Second move 2

redundant, i know

I secured a venue for the first chess event. It'll be at the Rumbar in center city philadelphia.

Holla at me, throw a dolla at me.

So i've been telling everyone that i can talk to about SecondMove. Everyone thinks its a great idea, and most people are jealous that it isn't for more than Black Men. So most of the non-black men (which includes indians, scicilians, puertoricans and white guys) are jealous. I just might end up throwing a 'smattering' event and call it "your move".
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Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Wesabe, the sequel

I'd love to tell you what i'm working on, but i don't want you to steal my idea.

basically i'm working on something that'll help people get a handle on their finances, not in terms of 'absolute' wealth, but in terms of how well they're managing their money according to how much they make.
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Second move

I love chess. i'm finally going to get off my ass and play. I'm going to be organizing a bi-monthly chess event at various places around philadelphia owned by black people. I was going to say 'african american' but i'm down with ethiopian spots and other ethnicities, so it'll probably generalize to 'brown spots'.

the name of the groups is called 'second move'. If you're not a chess afficianado, then you wouldn't know that the black peices move second. So, since we're black men, i'll call it "Second move" it's not rocket science, it's chess (which is much harder . . equations don't fight back!).

it's also going to be a BYOB- bring your own board. silly i know, but great nonetheless. I'm hoping to have it at a places especially where we can drink. hopefully if we get a few regulars, when i pose the use of the spot to the owners, we'll get some kind of volume discount.

so, if you know of any spots in philly owned and/or frequented by black folk, and/or play chess, and/or know a black person who plays chess, drop me a line.
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Friday, April 06, 2007

why i'm late

in the last two months i've been having pretty deep conversations about what i want to do with my life, and two separate people in separate worlds asked basically, what the f@$k i'm waiting for. i'm smart, i communicate well and all other sorts of goodies.

I reply something stupid, that i planned my life that way. Seriously, when i was about 22 i figured i'd be a f#$kup for a couple years and start to get my ish together around 30. So i'm surely and slowly putting my life together, and its coming through very nicely. But it's not that stupid at a deeper glance because i'm actually taking responsibility for my life and having created it that way.

In the same vein, i see how utterly stupid that is. So i'm going to stop it.
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Wesabe

no, not japan's version of hot mustard . . .

Wesabe is one of the coolest programs that i've seen on the web. Basically you upload your bank and credit account information and tag it, and it sorts it into categories so you can track your spending in various categories.

For instance, you can tag your trip to wawa as both food and junkfood, and you'll find out how much you spend on junkfood in a month and over time. you can also see how much you spend with both! I was talking it up with one of my students (i teach people how to use computer applications) and he wondered whether it would add food to junkfood. I said that anyone smart enough to come up with this "applet?" or widget or program probably figured that out . .. but it makes me wonder.

I started emailing one of the head guys about my questions and he's been very responsive, so i think i'll sign up. Imean, already probably eleven million hackers have my and your data, why not give it to the other four rookies?

bdub
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