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

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

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.

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

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".