I ran across this beautiful video on Flowing Data and think it is absolutely correct. I’ve always said that the only way to save the world is to empower women. This organization, Girl Effect, focuses mostly on young women in developing countries, but I think the problem is much bigger.

Women everywhere need to be treated as equals. Imagine increasing the work force of this world by nearly 100%. Imagine a world where education is pervasive and disease is ancient history. I’m convinced, as are the folks over at Girl Effect, that this will only occur if/when women (all women) are genuinely integrated into main stream society.

There’s also a wonderful TED talk by Isabel Allende on the same topic. I recommend taking the 18 minutes to watch it and be inspired:

Unfortunately, I agree.

I’ve always asked myself this question, but it became particularly relevant when I heard about today’s anti war protest run by United for Peace. Don’t get me wrong, I’m generally against this war (though I appreciate the complexity of the situation we are in right now and don’t think that a simple “let’s just leave” solution is optimal), but I can’t for the life of me figure out why people would line up and protest the war today.

With only 31% of Americans supporting Bush and the war, what does this protest hope to accomplish? I see the value in hitting the streets when the cause is little known, but come on, an anti-war protest now? Isn’t that too little too late?

An example of a protest that I think worked wonderfully was when a group of concerned citizens stood outside a restaurant and handed out flyers informing the populous that the restaurateur was underpaying his delivery men and treating them as indentured servants. I didn’t know about this at the time, so the protest served to draw my attention to a problem that I can get on board with. To this day, I don’t go to this restaurant, despite the tasty food (I’m not identifying the restaurant as that would give out too much personal information). But had this same problem been ongoing for 5 years on a international level, the protest would have been mere ego-masturbation.

I’m sure the protesters mean well, but there is far better use of their time than standing on the streets (of what is a VERY liberal city) and telling people that already agree with them that the war is bad. How about sending your Congressman a letter about your feelings? How about donating your time to a VA hospital? How about volunteering for your favorite candidate? Any of these would serve the general public better.

The point is that next time you decide to take to the streets, think about what impact you’re actually going to have. If it’s nill, than stay home.

If you think you have a good reason to protest, leave me a comment and let me know.

Wired has an interested story about a new Wiki’esk movement to try and clean up congress. The idea is that by getting the web masses to track down who’s doing what, we as a society will be better informed about the rediculous spending habits of our Congressman and Congresswomen.

The Change Congress website is set up to help identify which members of Congress are gaming the system. The idea is to get every Congressmen/women to sign a petition saying that they support the following four items:

1. No money from lobbyists or PACs
2. Vote to end earmarks
3. Support publicly-financed campaigns
4. Support reform to increase Congressional transparency

The hope is that once everyone is on board with these four ideas, we will have a more transparent and less corrupt government. Although I’m absolutely for all of these ideas, I am a bit skeptical that this movement will take off. It assumes that Congressmen/women will give up all their free lunches (stand up only) just like that. I love the idea, but worry that it won’t pick up much steam.

Good luck though!

Apparently the Clinton campaign sent out a letter to news pendents about how Obama was starting to fall behind. The Obama camp responded to this letter with some fantastically witty remarks. Here’s my favorite at the end:

If Barack Obama cannot reverse his downward spiral with a big win in Pennsylvania, he cannot possibly be competitive against John McCain in November.

[If they are defining downward spiral as a series of events in which the Clinton campaign has lost more votes, lost more contests and lost more delegates to us ... I guess we will have to suffer this horribly painful slide all the way to the nomination and then on to the White House.]

[Thanks for the laughs guys. This was great.]

Text in brackets was added by the Obama campaign.

NPR has the full story here.