Having gone through an institutional hiring process—both as the hirer and the hiree—I am well aware of the intricacies of non-discriminatory practices. Essentially: you can’t base your decision on anything outside of the approved job description and qualifications. Regardless, I got a hoot out of the following qualification on a job my friend sent me:

Employee must be able to relate to other people beyond giving and receiving instructions: works well with co-workers or peers without exhibiting behavioral extremes; perform work activities requiring negotiating, instructing, supervising, persuading or speaking with others; and respond appropriately to criticism from a supervisor.

After a bunch of googling around, I haven’t found an authoritative answer to my question: how are you supposed to set up and use your refrigerator’s food crisper—fruits and vegatables need different levels of humidity (which ones need what I wasn’t sure), and the little baffles are supposed to change that (which setting does what I wasn’t sure).

So it seems that they are more about humidity than they are about keeping your foods fresh.

That being said, this Cooks Illustrated PDF seemed to give a half-way decent explanation of the proper settings and use:

• Opening the baffles for air to pass through lowers the humidity, which is fine for basically anything that needs to be kept cold (like some fruit: apples and grapes)

• Closing the baffles to stop air from circulating allows the humidity to rise for leafy vegetables.

But according to Cooks Illustrated, it’s all much more complicated than that—some produce like it warmer than the crisper may provide, like green beans, subtropical fruits, melons and herbs. So good luck if you have roommates.

During an AmeriCorps icebreaker, I matched my desire to learn vegan baking with someone who knew how. Who say’s icebreakers are worthless (well, I sometimes do). I got the following two tips:

Egg Substitute: Use an amount of water equal to an egg (maybe ~1/4 cup) and mix in tablespoon of ground flax-seed

Best Oil: Coconut Oil is the best oil to use for moistness and tastiness. Of course, it’s really bad for you, but who cares.

If salmonella outbreaks weren’t actually killing people the following statement might be a humorous farce of a murder investigation:

Investigators are seeing more signs that the salmonella outbreak blamed on tomatoes might have been caused by tainted jalapeno peppers…. Echoing federal officials, who said this week that tomatoes remain the prime suspect, the health officials said that tomatoes cannot be ruled out as the cause of the outbreak. Investigators have been collecting samples of another possible suspect, cilantro, though the herb is less likely to be the source, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is continuing.

Other possible scenarios: salsa tryst, the tomato has an evil twin, the butler did it.

I was really excited about this year’s Grassroot’s Use of Technology Conference because I had submitted and had accepted a great proposal entitled “Facebook to Phone Trees: Multi-Generational Outreach Strategies” that was to be co-presented with Angela Kelly of Mass Peace Action and Daniel Karp of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW). Unfortunately I was forced to call-off the session because I’ve been worked to the bone at my daytime job and ended up running out of preparation time.

So, despite the session’s ultimate non-existance, I thought it might be valuable to post my notes for it here.

The impetus for the sessions came from some of my frustration with many technology initiatives that seek to tap into social networks like MySpace and Facebook. I often hear these initiatives couched in terms of “keeping up with the joneses” (or just tech-fetishism) rather than a measured communications strategy. Sometimes tried-and-true tools are overlooked or even forgotten. The goal of the session was to move people from thinking of the newness of a tool, to thinking of their audience (i.e. constitutents, donors or members) and what tools would most effectively reach them. We were really hoping to get an age diverse audience who would remember what things were like before the internet.

One of the strengths of the session a dialogue format in which, once the frame was set by a personal case study from Daniel, a group discussion facilitated by Angela would take place about different tools that were successfully (or not) used for specific audiences and situations, and then move into some small-groups to map out some personal strategies.

Of course, the dialogue didn’t happen, but Daniel’s case study was a quite interesting story of how (and how not) to go about integrating new social networking tools into a communications plan. To set the stage, the IPPNW is a large, distinguished (they received the Nobel Prize) and successful international organizing and advocacy organizing organization. The leadership had become concerned that a gap was developing between older members of the organization and younger medical students and new doctors who they wished to recruit and involve. Basically, the organization worried that they seemed too old and stuffy with their dead-tree newsletters and symposiums. To reach-out to these younger potential members, they instituted a large online social network campaign: MySpace, FaceBook, the whole-nine yards. And it was incredibly successful—they were recruiting hundreds of young people into the organization and creating a thriving online space. But then they had a problem….

The youthful online community was huge, but it wasn’t happy: they felt like they were being relegated to the sidelines. The online community felt that they had joined this legitimate and eminent organization, but they didn’t feel like they were really participating in it since they were only interacting with themselves in the walled-off online community. The older generation was still going about its activities offline—and it’s completely unrealistic to think you can get everyone online (says someone who works with people who print off their email). The online community hadn’t been integrated into the full scope of activities like submitting articles for the dead-tree newsletters or being invited to the symposiums. The wisdom, eminence and legitimacy of the organization still lay offline, and the online crowd hadn’t been invited.

From that experience and many others, we came up with the following advice:

• Audience is Audiences: One size doesn’t usually fit all, and sometimes size isn’t the problem (for a shirt, maybe it’s color, fabric or style). Think of different ways to split up your audience—age, culture, values, tech-savvyness—and how it might affect your message or medium.

• Avoid Interaction Silos: Don’t wall off different segments of your audience from one-another by virtue of the technology. If you have both a FaceBook Group, a MySpace page and a dead-paper newsletter, ask yourself: “Are we creating real opportunities for these different audiences to interact?”

• Balance Aggregate Reach with Personal Impact: An email written in 5 minutes can reach 10,000 people. A 5 minute phone call can only reach 1, but it can have 10,000 times the impact of an email. When designing a communications strategy, make sure you’re looking at both.

• Offer Genuine Participation: A thriving online community usually isn’t an outcome. Organize real-world actions and events and use the technology tools to communicate information about them. Have a dialogue online, but make sure to create opportunities for it to come to life.

• Keep Humanity in Mind: Every audience has the same basic desires for success, recognition and advancement. Be innovative with technology, but never lose sight of the bottom line.

The original session submission (for posterity’s sake; I love the last line)—though in discussion the scope was narrowed:

Participants will bring their own knowledge and experiences to this open discussion of targeted communications strategies. How do generational differences affect the effectiveness of your messages, opportunities and appeals? We’ll discuss everything from Facebook to Phone Trees and PayPal to to Planned Giving.

Ever since Dr. Strangelove I’ve found the fluoride controversy interesting and scary (for many reasons). I can’t verify any of this, but from a Digg article entitled Fluoride’s glory may be cresting, here was a comment that seemed to have enough info to worthwhilely put it here:

Fluoride replaces the hydroxyl ion in the naturally occurring calcium hydroxyapatite causing a stronger nuclear bond. In that respect it strengthens the tooth. The problems associated with flouride come from poor understanding of the inherent dangers of ingestion.

When it comes to toothpaste, I alternate a flouride containing paste with a paste containing sodium-calcium phosphosilicate which adheres to the surface of the tooth enamel creating new calcium hydroxyapatite. It does this by a simple mechanism. The sodium raises the ph of the saliva which causes the calcium and phosphorous to plate out of solution onto the tooth and re nourishing any damaged areas.

I’ve found the Lumifi Search / Research Platform useful at times, but it sometimes seems like a sledgehammer. They have a widget for just search that’s pretty useful. If I’m looking for specific things with a lot of noise (like “nonprofit culture”), it tends to give some interesting results.

Get the lumifi widget and many other great free widgets at Widgetbox !

They also have it as an OSX Dashboard Widget.

An article on nonprofit challenges from the British org Yorkshire Culture:

In business, we are told that the customer is king; in the non-profit sector it is more like Jack, Queen and King — multiple stakeholders ranging from funders, to brokers to end users. The problem is that the end user or recipient often has very little say in what is being ‘purchased’ on their behalf. To most non-profit organisations the crucial relationship is that shared with the funder or broker, not the end user. If cultural non-profit organisations are to fully exploit their enterprise potential, relationships need to be rebalanced.

And the challenges:

1. Satisfying the needs of the funders

2. Pricing and cost

3. Unwilling funders

4. Restricted income

5. Handling surplus

6. Investment problem

7. Overheads in service delivery

It’s another election year which means that politics are flying.

From a story on NASA forcibly downplaying global warming:

The report did not directly accuse them of lying, but used more nuanced terms such as “mendacity “ and “dissembling.” The space agency complained those terms were unjust.

And I enjoy how the New York Times describes a John McCain statement:

Like Mr. Bush, Mr. McCain has steadfastly refused to set dates for withdrawals of troops and envisions a long-term American presence in the country. But last month, in the general election battleground state of Ohio, Mr. McCain did a semantic dance and said he expected that most American troops would be home from Iraq by 2013.

The IRS is using the last two digits of your Social Security Number to determine when you’ll receive your Economic Stimulus (e.g. free money i.e. your children’s money).

Paper checks will also go out based on Social Security number. For Social Security numbers ending in 00 through 09, the paper checks will be mailed starting May 9 and will continue through May 16. A similar process will be repeated in the following weeks.

Please allow additional delivery time, perhaps 3 to 5 days, since the paper checks are being sent through the mail. PAPER CHECK

Last two SSN digits: Payments will be mailed no later than (and received a few days after): 00 through 09 May 16 10 through 18 May 23 19 through 25 May 30 26 through 38 June 6 39 through 51 June 13 52 through 63 June 20 64 through 75 June 27 76 through 87 July 4 88 through 99 July 11

** Spies Like Us release**