Mashups for Granny?

Seriously, look, I love this. :) The image was created by psd and I found the story through PHILANTHROPIY 2173.

Don't know what a mashup is? I don't either, but I know they are sweet, due primarily to my buddy B-Money. He says it's cool, then I will probably agree. Most of the time. :)

What do you think of the granny mashups? Would granny use it? Do they already? Sorta? Granny is using Facebook to talk to the grandchildren, after all.

Givelist.org: 71 ways to give without opening your wallet

I originally posted this list of ways to give last December. While I was too late for the holidays last year, this year I think it'd be pretty awesome if you gave right now, in July. Check it out. People are in need all year.

I bike Detroit

A few weeks ago I went on the Colin Hubbell Memorial bike ride through the city of Detroit. It was a beautiful day (those clouds cleared up) and a whole bunch of people gathered at Belle Isle to ride. We rode along the riverside, which is beautifully redone and expanding. We rode the Dequindre Cut, which is an outstanding paved bike trail and has the potential to be even greater. Then we rode north and south, through Midtown by Wayne State, to the New Center and then back south and along the river and back to Belle Isle. For a ride through a city, it was really peaceful.

The New York Times had an op-ed about Detroit becoming the next big biking city. I chuckled at first, but after remembering my ride and paying more attention to all my pedaling people during the work week, I think I buy it. I'm trying to figure out if I'm just being a sappy optimist, grasping at anything that can ease the regular burden of bad news around these parts. The other option is finding a way to combine two things very near and dear to me: Detroit and biking.

These paragraphs in the op-ed particularly caught my eye and roused my imagination:

"With the legendarily affordable real estate and without needing to pay for car payments, gas or insurance, bicyclists could rebuild Detroit into a model of a two-wheeled economy. They could pass laws promoting bikes over cars and designate entire avenues motor-free zones, which, given the state of many of them now, wouldn’t be so much of a stretch.

Maybe it sounds far-fetched, but then again maybe it’s just destiny. Look at a map and you’ll see that Detroit is designed in the shape of a wheel, with streets emanating like spokes from the downtown hub. It looks like a premonition, a city uniquely designed to alter transportation forever."

Is this really something to believe in and explore? Could it be true that Detroit could transform its mode of transportation with the bike like it transformed the world with the car?

And could this new mode of movement in Detroit help with maybe moving Michigan a little lower on the fatty list (we're #9). It could motivate people to be more active and have a better chance at preventing heart disease and diabetes. Fewer cars would equal less pollution. There's a lot of potential here to make huge moves as a community. Grassroots, son. Grassroots.

Read the NYT's op-ed: Bike Among the Ruins

Thoughts?

Some links for your Detroit biking pleasure:

• The Hub of Detroit is a non-profit, full-service retail bike shop. Funds raised by The Hub support their free youth and adult education program, Back Alley Bikes.
• Learn more about Detroit's Trails
• Wheelhouse Detroit is a cool, booming Detroit business. They want to help the "whole world to experience the Motor City on two wheels."
• Brochure: What Every Michigan Biker Must Know (PDF)
• Read more about the Dequindre Cut and the Detroit RiverWalk connecting at Model D, one of my favorite Detroit-based news sites. Add a little Belle Isle to this new greenway connection and good times will be had by all.
  

Podcast: Author Sharon Kedar talks about personal finance

My former boss introduced me to the podcast that the Commonwealth Club of California puts out. In general, the podcasts are all pretty freaking great, but the other day while toiling with laundry, I had the pleasure of hearing author Sharon Kedar talk about personal finance. Please, if you aren't a personal finance guru, check this podcast out. It's very informative and I guarantee you'll learn something important.

The podcast is partly about the book co-authored by Manisha Thakor called On My Own Two Feet: A Modern Girl's Guide to Personal Finance. The book sounds great and I am definitely going to check it out, but the podcast provides solid advice for men and women alike. The moderator, Cathy Curtis, also adds tons of valuable insight through asking great questions and sparking interesting conversation. This is a particularly great personal finance podcast to listen to if you are in your 20s or 30s.

Listen to the podcast at: cc_20090608_inforum_kedar.mp3

Book Review: Your Big Fat Boyfriend

Your Big Fat Boyfriend: by Jenna Bergen
The reason I picked up this book was because since I had quit smoking, I started gaining quite a bit of weight. Though it appears I have started to get my weight under control, I still wanted to discover ways to make healthy eating and exercise a sustainable part of my life. Surprisingly, this book might be the ONLY reference I'll need. It was fantastic and one of my luckiest book picks ever. It was such a fulfilling read, no pun intended.

Normally I'd never sit down to read A) A self-help book or B) a diet book, but the weight gain from quitting smoking created the need to reach out. But wait - this is NOT a diet book, though it is a self-help title. The author, Jenna Bergen, does a great job of providing a ton of helpful, practical advise in a little, one-sitting book. Topics include ways to add nutrition to your diet, ways to get your boyfriend interested in different foods, calculating your dietary needs and getting exercise out of everyday, fun activities. Not once was Bergen preachy or bitchy. (I tried the "Bitch in the Kitch" series and wanted to gouge my eyes out.)

Also, it's important to note that my boyfriend is not big and fat, quite the contrary. He is very lean, eats very well, and is in good shape. The book made me really introspective and I realized I was the Big Fat Boyfriend (BFB). I realized it was not HIM eating a ton of pizza with ranch dressing. Nor did he make me eat that enormous bacon, cheeseburger. He's also not the one keeping me in bed when I should be up and at 'em, working out. You get the drift. This book is not about boyfriend bashing. I found the author really found a way to connect real life and the choices we have to make when part of a relationship.

Bergen keeps it really fun, lighthearted and simple all while inspiring you to eat better and get your but moving. Plus, I literally laughed out loud a couple of times. The writing is good, very to the point and Bergen wastes few words on rhetoric. It's not the "starve yourself" option or the cut carb option or all the other diet-like crap that's out there. It's about identifying your specific problems, whether they be about eating or exercise, and taking specific, easy steps to make the change.

Loved this book and was immediately inspired to live healthier than I have been. Highly recommended for all women, whether you have a better half or no.

5 things I'm Grateful for: Independence Day edition

Happy 4th of July! Today I wanted to think about a few reasons that I love the United States of America:

1. My entire family found better lives when we immigrated from Poland.
2. We have public libraries, archives and public institutions of higher education.
3. My writings are all protected by the First Amendment.
4. I got to vote for Barack Obama.
5. Benjamin Franklin was one of this country's founding fathers. He ruled.

Business community changing as recession charges on

The recession is tough in a lot of ways, but there's some positive news coming out of the business sector. One of Business Week's cover stories ("The Risk Takers") described the best kind of risk companies can take that isn't based on greed: hunting for growth in a bad market. In a world of bleak news, it was good to hear about corporations diving into a raging sea seeking the treasure of new opportunities.

Perhaps I was particularly interested in hearing this kind of news because it seems that if there are those risk-takers out there, looking for the next big thing, than Detroit might have a chance. I mean, come on, where is there more risk than in Detroit? Then again, where is there a better place to try something completely new and innovative? I've got to think that with all the misfortune plaguing the City it'd be an eager beaver, ready to take on something, anything that could boost the circumstances.

The other really awesome thing I heard about was the push to create something similar to doctors' Hippocratic oath for business managers. The Economist had a great article in June about how 400 MBA's from Harvard Business School all took a voluntary oath the day before graduation. The article said the oath required MBA's to "avoid corruption, to represent the performance and risks of their firm accurately, to educate themselves continuously and to allow their peers to hold them to account." Not too shabby. And measurable, too!

Between the economy being in the dumps, unemployment numbers being daunting and corruption (see Detroit politics for examples) and outright fraud (see Bernie Madoff Wikipedia entry) being prevalent, it is refreshing to see the new members of the business community taking a more active interest with the value of all people, not just the value of shareholders. I'm not saying that there aren't companies out there with great social responsibility records, but the number is still too low. This time of need is exceptional.

One last thing that I really liked reading in the Economist's article was the fact that Harvard's new class feels the non-profit sector is their best bet. The article said the oath is one sign students are looking to "distance themselves from earlier generations of MBAs, whose wonky moral compasses were seen to have contributed to the turmoil, especially on Wall Street, the biggest employer of Harvard MBAs in recent years."

Related Links:

• ARTICLE: Business Week's "The Risk Takers"
• ARTICLE: The Economist's "Forswearing Greed"
  
• PODCAST: The Economist's "A Hippocratic oath for MBAs"