In case you missed it, Peter Orszag recently presented an interesting case for making voting mandatory. Did you know that Australia, which is clearly a democracy, has mandatory voting? I didn't.
As Orszag writes:
Beyond simply raising participation, compulsory voting could alter the role of money in elections. Turn-out-the-vote efforts, often bankrolled by big-money groups, would become largely irrelevant. Negative advertising could be less effective, because a central aim of such ads is to discourage participation in the opponent’s camp.____
A recent Star Tribune story reminded me how much I appreciate Caring Bridge, and also informed me that the site was founded by a woman, Sona Mehring. Before Facebook, MySpace, or Twitter, Mehring used the idea of social networking to help people with dire medical problems keep in touch with their families and friends. It's a great example of solving a problem no one quite knew existed: How to handle the one to many communication imbalance.
Caring Bridge -- which is completely free and much better about not "sharing" your info than Facebook -- lets close family members post updates. Friends can subscribe to updates by email, or just check the site. And Caring Bridge recently rolled out a scheduling feature that helps friends sign up to cook meals or run errands without anyone having to spend hours coordinating.
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An idea for full employment from economist Dean Baker.
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Minnesota scientists have found a way to diagnose post-traumatic stress disorder with a brain scan. Up until now, PTSD could only be identified by a cluster of symptoms and circumstances. Aside from speeding diagnosis, the new method will likely help people overcome the fear that their problems are "all in their heads."
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