Blogs

Drupal has a great community now with lots of volunteers who have been helpful to me personally on numerous occasions and who really value community-building. Having said that, I think there are also lots of ways that we can improve. I used to be fairly involved in the Wikipedia community, and although they're not perfect either, I think it would be worthwhile to study some of the ways that they welcome new people and encourage participation. I'll just point out a few things:

A number of people have criticized Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams for his rather offensive recent blog post arguing that "Powerful men have been behaving badly, e.g. tweeting, raping, cheating, and being offensive to just about everyone in the entire world" because "society is organized in such a way that the natural instincts of men are shameful and criminal while the natural instincts of women are mostly legal and acceptable."

I certainly support historian Douglas Brinkley's call for a boycott of advertisers who support Donald Trump's TV show. Here is a list of sponsors' phone numbers, in case you want to call them to demand that they stop supporting the man how now qualifies as the most shameless bigot currently active in American politics:

My sister Debi is racing to raise funds to save a young girl's life in Africa. Here's the story that she posted on her Facebook page:

I need your help to raise funds to save the life of Sena Ahouanmenou. She is a 13-year-old girl in the village of Ajara in the Republic of Benin. Through the efforts of my personal friend, Peter Opa, she and other students have been attending a school there.

The Wall Street Journal has published an article by Shmuley Boteach saying that Sarah Palin is "right" to accuse her critics of "blood libel" for linking her political rhetoric to the murders in Arizona. Its author says it is appropriate to use that term "whenever an amorphous mass is collectively accused of being murderers or accessories to murder."

Does this mean that Sarah Palin is an "amorphous mass"?

I'm attending an International Impact Investing Summit in New York and will be attaching my raw notes from the conference. here are my raw notes from the 2:45 a.m. panel titled "Impact theme: Education."

2:45 p.m. Impact theme: Education

Moderator: Steve Hardgrave, Senior Managing Direcor, Gray Ghost Ventures

Panelists
Francisco Vizcaya, CEO, FINAE
James Tooley, Ph.D., Professor of Education Policy, Newcastle University
Tom Vander Ark, Managing Partner, Revolution Learning

Francisco Vizcaya

I'm attending an International Impact Investing Summit in New York and will be attaching my raw notes from the conference. here are my raw notes from the 11:45 a.m. panel titled "Impact theme: Housing."

Moderator: Terri Ludwig, COO, Enerprise Community Partners

Panelists
Deidre Schmidt, Executive Director, Affordable Housing Institute
Jawad aslam, CEO, Ansaar Management Company
James Magowan, Managing Director, Housing MicroFinance, LLC

James Magowan

I'm attending an International Impact Investing Summit in New York and will be attaching my raw notes from the conference. here are the notes from the 11 a.m. panel titled "Impact Theme: Energy."

Moderator: Mark Campanale, Halloran Philanthropies

Panelists:
Nicola Armacost, Co-Founder and Managing Director, ARC Finance, Ltd.
Herta Von Stiegel, Partner, Executive Chairman, Ariya Capital LLP
Christine Eibs Singer, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, E+Co: http://eandco.net/
Anish Thakkar, Co-Founder, Greenlight Planet

I'm attending an International Impact Investing Summit in New York and will be attaching my raw notes from the conference. here are the notes from the 9:45 a.m. panel titled "Impact Theme: Environment -- Water and Agriculture."

Moderator: Bruce M. Khan, PhD: Director, Senior Investment Analyst, DB Climate Change Advisors
Panelists:
Michael Jenkins, President & CEO, Forest Trends
Ion Yadigaroglu, Co-Founder, Capricon Investment Gorup LLC
Paul J. Young, Managing Member, Conservation Forestry LLC

Jay Rosen has has written a very nice, thoughtful piece about the recent firing of NPR news analyst Juan Williams and what that means regarding the NPR's effort to appear journalistically neutral.