Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Three good things.

Now and then, good things happen. Today there were three positive pieces of news - the oil leak was plugged (semi-permanently), California's Prop. 8 was ruled unconstitutional, and 34 more people with lots of money pledged to give 50% or more away. Two quick comments and one longer one.

(1) While I'm happy that the innovative solution of forcing dense crud down the hole was successful, the level of optimism about the situation in general seems a little early. Claims that only 25% of the oil remains come across as misleading. The full extent of the impact to environment and industry is still largely unknown. Don't start downplaying things now.

(2) Mr. Govt. - Stop sanctioning discrimination against a small portion of the population based on a larger portion's desire to impose their conservative "values" on others. This will likely end up with the Supreme Court...so one battle over, the war soldiers on.

(3) One of the most uplifting moments of my day is related to this link: http://givingpledge.org/#enter
34 more people pledged to give away more money than you or I will ever see. With all the hate speech that goes around about "the wealthy" as if they're a tribe of baby stealing trolls, it's uplifting to see that some of them are actually trying to feed, clothe, educate, and promote innovation and entrepreneurship among the babies. These are generally people that weren't born m(b)illionaires, but they managed to claw their way to the extreme reaches of the bell curve. It really is worth reading their personal statements about why they're doing what they're doing. Hopefully this group keeps growing, leaving us with some well funded philanthropies rather than well funded offspring of the rich.

In thinking about other happy stuff....here's a random picture of the Saints' Super Bowl ring!

No comments:

Post a Comment