All excerpts are quoted from the respective link(s). For authors: This is not a linkblog, and these are personally curated links.

• Rahm Emanuel: "Fuck the UAW" [Emissions] –
• The Best iPhone Apps for Your Car [IPhone] –
• The Best Android Apps for Your Car [Android] –
• Google Android Hidden Secret Codes – Tweaking with Vishal – Secret service codes!
• Adults, Cell Phones and Texting – There's a problem with this, I suspect. Adults are more likely to have web access and text, while younger users have text-messaging only. If you converted the number of emails and IMs and viewed each transaction as a text, I suspect there would be more parity between the young and old in messaging.
• How to tell if your Company is Advanced: 10 Criteria Of Social Business Maturity –
• Hidden meanings of 10 professional symbols –
• To Unfriend or Not to Unfriend: That Is the Facebook Question –
• 3 Trends in Idea Management –
• More People Are Choosing the Freelance Lifestyle –
• Apple TV vs. the competition — how does it stack up? –
• Tracking News in Realtime: Discovery Gunman –
• Taping the Potential of Enterprise 2.0 for Workplace Learning –
• DoubleTwist announces a bevy of new and upcoming features –
• Facebook’s Latest Patent Targets Search Behaviors –

All excerpts are quoted from the respective link(s). For authors: This is not a linkblog, and these are personally curated links.

• Google Launches Blog Finder for Any Topic –
• Lorelle on WP: Mind Blowing WordPress Plugins –
• Google Places vs Facebook Places: It’s Search vs. Social –
• Clash of the Blogosphere Titans –
• Crowdsourcing National Challenges With the New Challenge.gov –
• The Big Data Explosion and the Demand for the Statistical Tools to Analyze It –
• Wikileak-proofing the Pentagon –
• A sure-fire bet and cause for doubt –
• Why Old People Are The Way That They Are –
• Who are you calling gay, smart guy? –
• America’s 21st-Century Business Model –
• NY Magazine: How The NYC Mosque Site Was Chosen –
• The Most Popular Payment Solutions for Freelancers (Charts) –
• Calorie counts to appear in trains, planes, groceries and theaters –
• Archos unleashes five (five!) new Android Froyo tablets, we go hands-on –
• Disqus Analytics Will Give Us More Insight Into Our Audience — Even The Trolls –

All excerpts are quoted from the respective link(s). For authors: This is not a linkblog, and these are personally curated links.

• What Hotel Towels Can Teach You About Facebook Fans –
• Studies Do Not Show –
• PogoPlugs Print! Also, Biz Model and WiFi Adapter Now Shipping –
• Historical cell phone location data is a privacy intrusion, rules NY judge –
• Comforting Map Indicates That Philly Is Not As Screwed, Maybe, As Some Other Places –
• Revenge of the Electric Car coming to a theater near you… sometime –
• Psychological Stages of a Bubble Market –
• Elite Grads Report Lower Job Satisfaction –
• Want to Build Workplace 2.0? Embrace Smartphones. –
• Samsung Epic 4G vs Fascinate, Vibrant, & Captivate: Total Cost of Ownership –
• Another T-Mobile BOGO Offer Coming Up, Samsung Vibrant In On It –
• Home Improvement retailers shootout –
• Philips GoGear Connect is a legitimate Android-based iPod touch competitor –
• Forum Corporation Blog Provides Thought Leadership in the Learning Space and More –
• Gmail Priority Inbox Launches: Your E-mail Will Never Be the Same –
• The Jersey Circus –
• Say It Ain't So, Sam –
• As the school year begins, many districts in the Philadelphia region remain without teacher contracts –

All excerpts are quoted from the respective link(s). For authors: This is not a linkblog, and these are personally curated links.

• Designing Obama by Scott Thomas –
• REPORT: Facebook and the New Age of Privacy –
• As the school year begins, many districts in the Philadelphia region remain without teacher contracts –
• iPad Magazines: The Pros & Cons –
• The Clod and the Pebble and the politics of resentment –
• The founding fathers and their faith –
• Sharing Is Contagious –
• Popular Android Mod Now Supports Froyo, Breathes Life Into Old Phones –
• Gun control and suicide rates. –
• The Full-On Assault On Cable Is Underway –
• On This Week, Arne Duncan Pushes Teachers Performance Pay As The Best Solution To Classroom Crisis — And No One Pushes Back –
• Facts & Stats: Infographic: Hurricane Katrina History and Numbers –
• County school districts make difficult decisions as they try to maintain high level of education. –
• Five Evidence-Based Outcomes Of Both The Bright-Side And The Dark-Side Of A Leader’s Personality –
• Online friends almost as valuable as real family –
• A Friday Dose Of Father Coughlin – August 27, 1939 –

All excerpts are quoted from the respective link(s). For authors: This is not a linkblog, and these are personally curated links.

• How Much Does it Cost to Die? –
• The Fox News Enemies of America Diagram –
• Where Are All the Location Web Apps? –
• Petruno: Time to let home prices fall? –
• HootSuite gets political and “Bumps” up iPhone app features. –
• “The Manufacturing Fallacy” –
• GOP Funding Octopus – Many tentacles, same groups –
• The 2010 MetLife Study of the American Dream –
• Weblog Tools Collection: WordPress Plugin Releases for 08/28 –
• Joseph Campbell: The Man Who Wrote The Book on Heroes –
• Survey Says Facebook Feeds Narcissism [STUDY] –
• Could Be Trouble –
• Wow. If You Think Quitting Booze Freaks People Out, Wait ‘Til You Quit Twitter –
• Zuckerberg: Facebook Photos Used 5 Or 6 Times More Than Competitors — Combined –
• Americans For Prosperity: Things go better with Koch –
• Scientists Explain Beer Goggles –

All excerpts are quoted from the respective link(s). For authors: This is not a linkblog, and these are personally curated links.

• Speaking Up Constructively: Managerial Practices that Elicit Solutions from Front-Line Employees –
• Mortality rate per 1,000 population [Interactive] –
• Can 48ers beat Google in the realtime social goldrush? –
• The Geography of Sex –
• College in America –
• Innovation & Boomer Retirement –
• Rigs of Rods – A Free Online Simulation Game To Test Drive Vehicles –
• Before there was Beck, there was Coughlin –
• Education: Morning Roundup, Data, Rankings, Evaluation –
• Car Models mentioned on Twitter [Interactive] –
• Glenn Beck vs. Martin Luther King Jr. –
• Ken Mehlman: I’m a Virgin –
• The Seven Secrets of Successful Data Scientists –
• Scitable goes mobile. Social science research comes to your phone. –
• Grand Taxonomy of Rap Names –
• Sarah Palin Endorsements Tracker [Interactive] –
• Why do we follow companies on Twitter? by Rosaura Ochoa –
• What Motivates Us? –
• Charter Schools –
• 3 Handy Sites To Check Out Before You Buy A Car –
• Colors of the Social World –

The NYTimes blames the victims:

It’s happening all over, in all sorts of families, not just young people moving back home but also young people taking longer to reach adulthood overall. It’s a development that predates the current economic doldrums, and no one knows yet what the impact will be — on the prospects of the young men and women; on the parents on whom so many of them depend; on society, built on the expectation of an orderly progression in which kids finish school, grow up, start careers, make a family and eventually retire to live on pensions supported by the next crop of kids who finish school, grow up, start careers, make a family and on and on. The traditional cycle seems to have gone off course, as young people remain un tethered to romantic partners or to permanent homes, going back to school for lack of better options, traveling, avoiding commitments, competing ferociously for unpaid internships or temporary (and often grueling) Teach for America jobs, forestalling the beginning of adult life.

The article goes on and on comparing now to then, and seems to not talk sufficiently about causes.  Who in their right mind would move home unless they had to?  If you are a recent college graduate, you are competing with 5 or 6 people for every job opening.  You’re going to grad school, hoping to ride out the storm.  You aren’t getting married because you can’t start a household and family from your mother’s basement.  Why are things not like they were for my/your/their parents?  What happened to those good jobs, lifetime employment, and other things the previous generations took for granted?  The impression that I took from the article was some sort of implied defect in today’s youth.

Meanwhile, in the People’s Republic of California, Berkley Campus, a different conversation takes place:

The bad news is that you have been the victims of a terrible swindle, denied an inheritance you deserve by contract and by your merits. And you aren’t the only ones; victims of this ripoff include the students who were on your left and on your right in high school but didn’t get into Cal, a whole generation stiffed by mine. This letter is an apology, and more usefully, perhaps a signal to start demanding what’s been taken from you so you can pass it on with interest.

Swindle – what happened? Well, before you were born, Californians now dead or in nursing homes made a remarkable deal with the future. (Not from California? Keep reading, lots of this applies to you, with variations.) They agreed to invest money they could have spent on bigger houses, vacations, clothes, and cars into the world’s greatest educational system, and into building and operating water systems, roads, parks, and other public facilities, an infrastructure that was the envy of the world. They didn’t get everything right: too much highway and not enough public transportation. But they did a pretty good job.

Young people who enjoyed these ‘loans’ grew up smarter, healthier, and richer than they otherwise would have, and understood that they were supposed to “pay it forward” to future generations, for example by keeping the educational system staffed with lots of dedicated, well-trained teachers, in good buildings and in small classes, with college counselors and up-to-date books. California schools had physical education, art for everyone, music and theater, buildings that looked as though people cared about them, modern languages and ancient languages, advanced science courses with labs where the equipment worked, and more. They were the envy of the world, and they paid off better than Microsoft stock. Same with our parks, coastal zone protection, and social services.

This deal held until about thirty years ago, when for a variety of reasons, California voters realized that while they had done very well from the existing contract, they could do even better by walking away from their obligations and spending what they had inherited on themselves. “My kids are finished with school; why should I pay taxes for someone else’s? Posterity never did anything for me!” An army of fake ‘leaders’ sprang up to pull the moral and fiscal wool over their eyes, and again and again, your parents and their parents lashed out at government (as though there were something else that could replace it) with tax limits, term limits, safe districts, throw-away-the-key imprisonment no matter the cost, smoke-and-mirrors budgeting, and a rule never to use the words taxes and services in the same paragraph.

Now, your infrastructure is falling to pieces under your feet, and as citizens you are responsible for crudities like closing parks, and inhumanities like closing battered women’s shelters. It’s outrageous, inexcusable, that you can’t get into the courses you need, but much worse that Oakland police have stopped taking 911 calls for burglaries and runaway children. If you read what your elected officials say about the state today, you’ll see things like “California can’t afford” this or that basic government function, and that “we need to make hard choices” to shut down one or another public service, or starve it even more (like your university). Can’t afford? The budget deficit that’s paralyzing Sacramento is about $500 per person; add another $500 to get back to a public sector we don’t have to be ashamed of, and our average income is almost forty times that. Of course we can afford a government that actually works: the fact is that your parents have simply chosen not to have it.

We should be attributing culpability, not just assigning blame.

If this letter to the editor in the Philadelphia Inquirer is to be believed, if we get rid of the safety net and all worker protections, we get ponies and rainbows (via Young Philly Politics)?

Jim Florio states, “Businesses are deciding . . . higher levels of U.S. unemployment are a necessary and acceptable way to control costs and boost profit.” Florio has obviously never run a business. Businesses don’t consider the overall employment level when determining their staffing needs; they hire based on their own needs, nothing else (“Economic barriers to hiring,” Thursday).

If the governor were truly concerned with unemployment rather than berating businesses for trying to be profitable, he should focus on eliminating the economic barriers to hiring Americans imposed by well-intentioned politicians such as himself. A machine or a worker in a developing country will work overtime for regular pay, doesn’t get family or medical leave, or require workman’s comp and unemployment insurance, and won’t sue for every alleged slight, as American workers do.

The author of said letter – Andrew Terhune [LinkedIn] – is the Director of Management Development for Toll Brothers, the regional home builder.  While he is certainly free to espouse cheap labor conservative viewpoints, I would certainly be hesitant to state them so publicly.  I wonder how is employer feels about this?  And what of the consequences of his suggestions?  If American workers’ pay was obliterated as Terhune suggests, who would by their McMansions, and by extension provide Toll Brothers profits (and Terhune’s salary)?  Even Henry Ford – no DFH – knew that his workforce had to be able to purchase the product they were building.

All excerpts are quoted from the respective link(s). For authors: This is not a linkblog, and these are personally curated links.

• Colors of the Social World –
• Stupid American Month –
• Food Bubbles & Starvation by Broker –
• Mistakes were made –
• StumbleUpon Comes to the iPhone and Android –
• The Tornado History Project –
• The Value Added by Our Broker Friends –
• Google Tries To Steal Facebook’s Thunder, Plays Up Impressive Maps Userbase –
• All About Freedom, Decency and Responsibility In A Social Media Age –
• GeoPosty: A WordPress plugin that lets your site serve location-aware content. –
• Generation Ech –
• A 21st Century Twist on Old Standbys: The Islamophobic Southern Strategy –
• U.S. Failed Banks [Interactive] –
• Public Opinion and Obama’s Religion –
• Secrets the Banks Don't Want You to Know –

All excerpts are quoted from the respective link(s). For authors: This is not a linkblog, and these are personally curated links.

• Food Bubbles & Starvation by Broker –
• Mistakes were made –
• StumbleUpon Comes to the iPhone and Android –
• The Tornado History Project –
• The Value Added by Our Broker Friends –
• Google Tries To Steal Facebook’s Thunder, Plays Up Impressive Maps Userbase –
• All About Freedom, Decency and Responsibility In A Social Media Age –
• GeoPosty: A WordPress plugin that lets your site serve location-aware content. –
• Generation Ech –
• A 21st Century Twist on Old Standbys: The Islamophobic Southern Strategy –
• U.S. Failed Banks [Interactive] –
• Public Opinion and Obama’s Religion –
• Secrets the Banks Don't Want You to Know –
• LTE From Toll Brothers Director: Eviscerate All Worker Protections –
• The Web is Undead –
• 12 Interesting Facts about Toolbox.com –
• How To Find Out What Marketing Websites Know About You –
• Study Shows People Are Clueless About Energy Savings – Here’s What Actually Works. –