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Figured out some conditional filtering and publishing rules in Google Spreadsheets. This page is selectively published from my larger inventory sheet of every pen I've ever bought and sold.

Recent studies by Princeton University's Angus Deaton and Justin Wolfers and Betsy Stevenson of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School question the Easterlin Paradox and indicate a closer link between happiness and income across nations. Carol Graham raises the enigma of the "happy peasant and the miserable millionaire" as a way to resolve this apparent paradox. Graham suggests that happiness is relative to one's position in society. Take unemployment for example. Unemployment is crushing for previously employed people in places where gainful employment is the norm. But people in poor countries where unemployment is more the norm find other ways to be happy.

NLC concert Saturday in St. Paul with members of @roseensemble. Tickets and info at

NLC concert Saturday in St. Paul with members of @roseensemble. Tickets and info at

"The nonprofit sector, like the rest of the nation, has been riveted by the first great economic crisis of the new century. This response is only natural, as the crisis threatens large numbers of organizations with, at the least, hard times, and at the worst, extinction. But this story is not about that crisis. The nonprofit sector is at an inflection point1 that will fundamentally reshape it long after the recession, when surviving nonprofits find themselves in a new reality — not just economically, but demographically, technologically and socially."

Typically, when you find a fountain pen "in the wild," it is going to require a bit of refurbishment (or at least a good cleaning and polish) to get it back into proper shape. Even newer pens sometimes fail or get damaged and have to be repaired. On this page I will describe a number of typical problems with pens and how they can be repaired or adjusted.

No database setup or installation files, simply drop the application on a server and it runs. Your content is managed by creating folders and editing text files. No login screens, no admin interface.

Step by step instructions to grind an italic nib

Work with UMN Extension: Community Leadership Development Specialist

Work with UMN Extension: Leadership and Civic Engagement Educator

Immigrants will play a key role in Minnesota’s economic future, according to a report released by the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey Institute and the Minnesota Business Immigration Coalition. The contributions range from their entrepreneurial activity, consumer spending, tax payments, and participation in the labor force to their contributions to social and cultural diversity.

Plans for a national design center to help alleviate rural poverty will be solidified when 60 designers, corporate leaders, foundation heads, and journalists meet next month for the 2009 Aspen Design Summit.

This study demonstrates that the nonprofit arts and culture industry is an economic driver in communities—a growth industry that supports jobs, generates government revenue, and is the cornerstone of tourism.

Taking people off their primary tasks to participate in teams or other decision making activities may be good empowerment, but when unnecessary it can be costly.

Someone taking apart Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” documents the prevalence of harmony, chordal patterning, swung 16ths and the like. But their analysis goes beyond such objectively observable metrics. To what extent, on a scale of 1 to 5, does melody dominate the composition of “Hey Jude”? How “joyful” are the lyrics? How much does the music reflect a gospel influence? And how “busy” is Stan Getz’s solo in his recording of “These Foolish Things”? How emotional? How “motion-inducing”? On the continuum of accessible to avant-garde, where does this particular Getz recording fall?

Keep in mind that all adults reach their developmental milestones at their own pace. It is important not to compare your adult's rate of development to that of his peers.

Staff has dropped from approximately 16 a year ago to 10. In a cost-saving move, its office is going virtual soon and it is rethinking how it contracts with staff.

Summary: Users like the simplicity of messages that pass into oblivion over time, but were frequently frustrated by unscannable writing, overly frequent postings, and their inability to locate companies on social networks.

nanoc is a tool that runs on your local computer and “compiles” documents written in HTML, Markdown, Textile, Haml, etc. into a static web site, ready for uploading to any web server.

Webby works by combining the contents of a page with a layout to produce HTML. The layout contains everything common to all the pages – HTML headers, navigation menu, footer, etc. – and the page contains just the information for that page. You can use your favorite markup language to write your pages; Webby supports quite a few.

Jekyll is a simple, blog aware, static site generator. It takes a template directory (representing the raw form of a website), runs it through Textile or Markdown and Liquid converters, and spits out a complete, static website suitable for serving with Apache or your favorite web server.

links to research in the area of race and racism

Ever wonder how Antiques Roadshow really works? How they pick who gets on TV? Whether the people on the show have fun? Whether the appraisers really know what they’re talking about?

If only this had existed for the gradeschool-aged Hans and Bjorn....

Homeowners and businesses were not alone in taking on piles of debt over the last decade. Nonprofits of all sizes did the same, and now they, too, are paying the price.

The Assets & Opportunity Scorecard is a comprehensive look at wealth, poverty and the financial security of families in the United States. The Scorecard assesses the 50 states and the District of Columbia on how well residents are faring and what states can do to help residents build and protect assets.

More and more people might need a MicroGrant boost, according to a poll released last week the Northwest Area Foundation. www.nwaf.org According to a national survey: "two-thirds see more people struggling to make ends meet than a year ago, mostly because of circumstances they believe are beyond their control." (Perhaps the surprising news here is that one third of those surveyed don't see more people struggling.)