"Corporate Support Key in Voting Rights Act Renewal"

According to an article in The Hill, more than 10 senior-level executives publicly advocated renewal of the VRA, including officials from Verizon Communications (No. 1), The Coca-Cola Co. (No. 3), PepsiCo (No. 18)—all in The 2006 DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity— as well as CBS, Tyco, Eli Lilly, Freddie Mac, the Walt Disney Co., and three companies on DiversityInc's 25 Noteworthy Companies this year: AT&T, Wal-Mart and Comcast. Pfizer CEO Hank McKinnell pledged support on behalf of the Business Roundtable, an association of more than 150 CEOs whose companies generate $4.5 trillion annually in combined revenue and have more than 10 million employees.

"Corporate influence is heavy in this institution for good or bad," CBC Chairman Melvin Watt, D-N.C., told The Hill. "A lot of members believe that when a corporation takes a position, it gives them the necessary justification and/or cover to support it."

• "A Civil-Rights Victory: Corporate Support Key in Voting Rights Act Renewal" (27 July 2006, DiversityInc)
  

Google Campus, San Francisco

I left for Dulles at 5 AM, amazed that I hadn't slept through my alarm after just three hours of sleep. JetBlue was *awesome*, I wish they had a Corporate Equality Index rating! But landing in Oakland was like a dream. I knew where I was going once I got off the plane, and y'all know how much I love the bay area. John picked me up, we waited for Joe at SFO and then headed over to Google.

Striking campus. Beautiful, nerdy people. Powerful representations of Google's breadth and capacity.

John's home is in the heart of my favorite part of the city. If only I knew what it is called. Here's me attempting artistic....

The highlight of San Francisco was meeting Ben in Golden Gate park (laden with my ridiculous suitcase) for a kickball game with his coworkers. My team kicked Mike's team's butt so badly, yet I can't say I've ever been so sore after a game of kickball... (must have been my inadvertent slides/tackles... darn muddy field).

I love San Francisco!!!! See all my SFO pictures.

St. Louis craziness

everyone was telling me that StL had a crazy storm. But we have crazy storms every year. How was I supposed to understand it was this crazy??

Peak Oil

The Four Corners program in Australia produced the following segment on peak oil, which includes a fair amount of interviewing/perspective on the U.S. and its citizens. It's pretty freaking interesting, particularly as we reached a record $78/barrel of oil on Friday.

If you don't know much about oil or oil production, please watch this segment. (Brought to you by Powering Down)

• Peak Oil? Four Corners Broadband Edition - click "Play Full Program" or go chapter by chapter.
• As Oil Hits New High, Businesses Continue to Struggle (13 July 2006, Inc.com)
  
• Oil: Looking at $100 (14 July 2006, CNN Money)
  

13 Days, 14 Homicides

DC is under a crime emergency because of the high level of murders beginning July 1. Previously, I was under the impression that my neighborhood was pretty safe. Comparatively, I still think so. But it makes you stop to think when someone is killed 3 blocks from your home.

This is how bad DC looks right now.

• Each Victim In the City's Violent July Has a Story (14 July 2006, Washington Post)
• DC Incident Logs
  

You Can Sleep When You Are Dead

If this is what viral marketing is going to contribute to the world, give me more!!

• "You're supposed to add water to your Folgers?" (10 July 2006, NYTimes)


• TolerateMornings.com

Open Document Format ... in the bag!

Responding to government requests for interoperability, Microsoft Corp. said on Thursday it will offer free software that will allow Word, Excel and PowerPoint to handle documents in rival technology formats.

What does this mean for you and everyone else? As more organizations adopt this format, you (or, more specifically, underpaid students or non-profit organizations with limited budgets) won't have to go out and buy expensive software just to be able to play in the game. Granted, Microsoft Office has taken us really far in terms of office productivity software and it is a very powerful software suite. But that's what competition is all about, right? Free markets leading to innovation, etc.

• Microsoft allows open document format for software (6 July 2006, Reuters)
• Microsoft to support ODF via plug-in (6 July 2006, Slashdot)
• All about ODF, brought to you by Wikipedia