John Wright's Weblog

CauseWorld: Make your shopping count

I’m back from the dead again, I know.

I thought I’d use this platform, for whatever it’s worth, to mention a new app that’s been released for iPhone and Android.  It’s called CauseWorld, and here’s the basic premise:

Corporations pledge to donate money to charities based on your shopping visits to certain stores.  You don’t have to buy anything at these stores, but you “check in” at the store using the phone’s geolocation feature.  Checking in gets you a certain number of “karma” credits.  Once you accumulate credits, you can “spend” them on charities that have signed up through the CauseWorld program.

Essentially, you get to choose where certain corporations (at the moment, Kraft and Citi) allocate their charitable donations.  Just open the app and check in when you’re out doing your normal shopping, and then spend the karmas you accumulate on the charities of your choice.

I’m all for charitable giving, and the corporations are all about encouraging economic activity by getting you out shopping.  This app leverages those interests, which can certainly be seen as competing interests, into something that I believe is immensely powerful.  It turns over control of these corporate donations to you and I, people who are interested in helping out where we can.  We get to evaluate the charities ourselves and, hopefully, make wise choices on how to allocate this corporate money.

I want to accomplish two things in this post:

First, I want to encourage anyone out there with an iPhone or Android-based smartphone to download the free CauseWorld app and use it all the time.  You don’t even have to change your shopping habits.  Just use it in the normal course of your day.

Second, I want to help you spend your “karmas” wisely.  So, I’m providing a list of the charities, what they claim to do with the karma credits, and their Charity Navigator star ratings (out of four stars).  Charity Navigator evaluates charities based on a number of factors, including the percentage of their donations that directly relate to their charitable activity (rather than administration, etc.).  I’m not necessarily going to rate the particular causes, but I would encourage you to give first to the 3- or 4-star-rated charities, since you’ll get the most bang for your (corporate) buck that way.

Currently there are nine charities associated with CauseWorld:

• Carbonfund.org (NR) – 1 karma offsets 2 pounds of carbon emissions
• DonorsChoose (4) – 5 karmas for ??? toward netbooks for a South Side Chicago classroom
• Prevent Child Abuse America (1) – 5 karmas for ??? toward child abuse prevention
• Feeding America (3) – 14 karmas for one food bank meal
• CHF International (4) – 30 karmas for one month of clean water for a Sudanese person
• American Humane (3) – 50 karmas for ??? support for the care of an injured animal
• Jane Goodall Institute (4) – 100 karmas for 1 pound of food for chimps in the Congo
• American Forests (4) – 100 karmas for 1 planted tree in the rainforest
• Room to Read (4) – 100 karmas for a children’s book for SE Asian kids

There’s a more immediate need than any of these causes today in Haiti, and plenty of good organizations will be supporting that effort as well.  For now, they’re not part of CauseWorld.

I think I’m going to start out with CHF International because of the severity of the water crisis in Africa, although there are a number of highly-rated charities participating.  I’m probably going to steer clear of Prevent Child Abuse America and Carbonfund.org (at least until it gets a rating), and I will probably favor the non-animal charities over the animal charities (even though I love our pets).

Hopefully this kind of thing inspires you to give in the same way it inspires me.  I know I’m always amazed at the power of technology, both good and bad, and I hope you’ll join me in supporting one of its good uses.  Check out the CauseWorld website to learn more and download the app.

Posted in Christianity/Ministry, Other | No Comments »

Twenty-six

It’s been over a month since I last checked in around here, but I promise I’ve been keeping busy.  Busy enough not to blog, at least.  I don’t have a reflective birthday post for today, either, but I suppose I’m turning 26 whether I have one or not.  Time tends to pass regardless of a person’s readiness for it.

So, what have I been up to, you ask?

• Thanskgiving with my family in Cleveland and Melissa’s family at our house.  A few pics of the latter are here.
• I’ve been working longer hours and will be for at least the next few months, but I think that will be pretty rewarding in the end.
• Lots of activities at church.  I’ve been leading a home small group for the last few months, we’ve helped with a few kids activities, and I’m preparing to teach adult classes for all of 2010 (on the Holy Spirit, if you’re curious).

It’s still the best time of year, even though I’ve been wearing myself out.  I hope all of you have a terrific and sane holiday season and a merry Christmas next week.  Try not to get so caught up in all the Christmas parties and gift giving that you forget to make it a special time for everyone around you.

Posted in Christianity/Ministry, Friends/Family | No Comments »

Hello Hurricane by Switchfoot

It’s been nearly three years since the first new studio album from Switchfoot, but Hello Hurricane finally came out this week.  They’ve been busy touring, recording, dropping their record label, and working on side projects.  Frontman Jon Foreman released a series of solo albums for each season between 2007 and 2008, and he and Nickel Creek’s Sean Watkins released an album as Fiction Family earlier this year.

I’ve only been a Switchfoot fan since their first “mainstream” album, The Beautiful Letdown, came out in 2003.  Not coincidentally, I became a fan about the time they made a tour stop at Harding in support of that album.  I’ve seen them live four times since, but not since Oh! Gravity came out in 2006.

Switchfoot’s sound has changed somewhat over the years, and they’ve endured some criticism on at least two fronts: (a) for “softening” the Christian message in their songs by essentially dropping direct references to God, and (b) for “hardening” their sound to reach more of a mainstream rock audience.  Personally, I prefer the newer sound as a fan of mainstream rock, and I don’t have a problem with the band’s lyrical content, which I think is second to none.

Anyway, Hello Hurricane is a pretty good album, at least from my early take.  I’ve listened through about four times now and found 4-5 songs I like a lot, with the title track perhaps being my overall favorite.  I generally like the harder songs initially (i.e. “This is the Sound” and “Bullet Soul”) and take longer to come around to liking the slower songs.

Then again, Switchfoot does something great where I think some pop-rock bands fail.  They mix softer and harder songs, but their softer songs all seem to have a unique feel and rhythm, whether through an acoustic guitar or wandering bass line.  As a result, all of their songs are re-listenable, rather than just a few.

On Hello Hurricane, Switchfoot continues that mix, although I think they’ve done it less effectively than on their last three albums, each of which was full of excellent songs.  I think they may have peaked with Nothing is Sound, although it was a very small peak, and they haven’t declined precipitously even on Hello Hurricane.  I enjoy “Mess of Me,” “Your Love is a Song,” and “Free,” but I don’t see them (yet) in quite the same bright light as I did “Stars,” “The Blues,” and “Happy is a Yuppie Word” four years ago.  There are plenty of great lines and hooks, but their quality is down as a whole.

As a parting shot, I’ll note that Switchfoot has supposedly recorded “four albums worth” of material in the last 3 years, and they are currently planning to release another album early next year.  So, it could be that they’ve spread out their best material, in which case I’d say they’ve been truly prolific over the last three years.  I wouldn’t change my ranking from a few years back; they’re still the best mainstream or Christian band for my money.

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Basketball season approaching, and I’m MIA?

For most, this will be a rather uninteresting “excuse” post, something I’ve had a bad habit of doing over 5 years of somewhat irregular blogging.  As infrequent as my non-Braves posts have been in the last year or so, it will probably come as no surprise that I’ve decided to further reduce my bloggy footprint.  Before I get to that, let me give a little backstory.

I graduated from Harding in May 2006 and have written regularly about the Bisons basketball team in this location since the beginning of the 2005-2006 season, my last season regularly attending games in Searcy.  I have maintained some form of web footprint for the Bisons (starting with stats only) since early 2004.

Soon after leaving Harding, I merged multiple blogs that I maintained into one location at this current address.  I kept up with fairly intensive posts about the Bisons through the ’07-’08 season, as most of the players I followed as a student were still around.  Last year, I stopped tracking stats and wrote mostly simple game reviews.

This year, I’m going to quit the game reviews, which will result in even less frequent posting about the Bisons.  I’ll admit that I’ve lost some interest in the program in 3 1/2 years away from Searcy, although I’ve still enjoyed attending a few games (including the ’08 GSC tourney in Southaven) and listening on the web.  It’s gotten tougher to justify spending my free time tracking stats for my alma mater when I have a full-time job and other things I need to be doing.

Not being able to watch a reasonable number of games was probably hurting my analysis, anyway.  No matter how much I focused on the stats here (they do tell us a lot), I couldn’t make a lot of intelligent observations without at least occasionally seeing the team in action.  There’s no way I’m paying $5 a pop for terrible video quality on the Penn Atlantic site, and it’s tough to really follow the games on the radio.

Overall, I feel like I put in my time for the team I grew to love over the last 7 years, and I will still follow them as I do my other favorite teams.  For a while, HU was the only D-II school with a presence on one of the major blog networks (MVN).  Perhaps another enterprising HU student will pick up the slack; I know there’s still a solid fan base and plenty of talented and passionate HU students, and it’s inevitable that someone else (who doesn’t directly work for the school) will take up that challenge at some point and do a far better job than I did.

It was a good run, and I’ve had a blast doing it.  I still love analyzing data and writing about it.  I just don’t have as much time for it anymore and can’t do the quality of work I take pride in doing.

Looking toward the future, this blog will still include personal stories and other notes about what’s going on in my life.  I’ve got plenty of things to write about when I can find the time to do it.  In the last month, I’ve seen Muse and U2 live at the Georgia Dome and the Vols beat up on South Carolina for my first game at Neyland Stadium, so I’m not short on experiences to share.  I’ll still be writing about the Braves for the foreseeable future as well.

Now that this is out of the way, if anyone knows where I can read some good coverage of the Bisons, link me up.  The season starts this weekend, and I’m ready.

Posted in D-II / Harding | No Comments »

Braves Check: October 5, 2009

The Braves sure know how to finish, don’t they?  The team made it to the final week of the season in contention and decided they’d had enough drama for one season, so they packed up and went home a week early.  The end result: a six-game home losing streak to the Marlins and Nationals.  By Thursday, I had stopped watching again.

I’m going to spare everyone the stats for this week and focus instead on a few positive signs for next year:

• The Braves had three starting pitchers finish the season with an ERA under 3 in at least 20 starts: Jurrjens, Vazquez, and Hanson.

• Jair Jurrjens didn’t fade in the second half like he did in 2008, and he finished with the best ERA on the starting staff.  Javier Vazquez was more dominant, and it’s going to be immensely tough for him to sustain his 79.4% strand rate, but there’s no denying that he got excellent results.  His peripherals suggest he didn’t make great strides from 2008 overall, so I’d expect to see him settle back into the low-to-mid-3.00 range in 2010.  Still not bad for a 23-year-old.

• Speaking of young pitchers, Tommy Hanson pitched well enough to deserve the Rookie of the Year award, and he looks like a present and future ace.  He finished with a better ERA (but one fewer win) than the Phillies’ J.A. Happ.  Other batting contenders like Chris Coghlan, Casey McGehee, and Garrett Jones had good seasons, but each has a pretty strong weakness in my mind.  Coghlan hit for high AVG but only middling power, while McGehee and Jones didn’t play quite as much.  None were particularly great in the field according to UZR.  I think Hanson probably finishes third in reality behind Coghlan and Happ.  It’s pretty close, but I think that would be a shame for Tommy.  He deserves it.

• Tim Hudson and Kenshin Kawakami combined for 32 starts with good results, further demonstrating the Braves’ wealth of starting pitching talent.  Derek Lowe is the only Braves pitcher needing a big rebound year in 2010, and the Braves can afford to pull the plug on him as a starter if the other five are productive.

• Adam LaRoche was somewhat predictably outstanding in two months after returning to Atlanta.  I have no idea why he can’t seem to produce in the first half, but he’s an elite hitter in the second half of the season.  Hopefully the Braves can afford to re-sign him; 2007 didn’t work out so well with Scott Thorman starting the year at 1B, and the Braves made a poor (in retrospect) reactionary trade for Mark Teixeira as a result.  I don’t think Freddie Freeman is ready yet (where’s the power?), and there’s no other heir apparent for LaRoche.

• An outfield upgrade is in sight.  Nate McLouth is probably a little better than he seemed at times in 2009, although he’s not a good defensive center fielder.  Jason Heyward will hopefully make the team out of spring training and see plenty of at bats.  It’s possible he’ll platoon with Diaz, but I’d like to see him get to hit lefties as well.  Ideally, Jordan Schafer would play center field, since he’s a better defender than McLouth, but he’ll need to show signs of life at the plate.  If the Braves trade for a right-handed bat, as they’re rumored to be trying to do, some of these pieces may move in that deal.  But it will get better than the Anderson-’09 Schafer-Francoeur trio we saw for much of the year.

• Yunel Escobar and Martin Prado were solid up the middle, at least offensively.  Escobar has a defensive reputation that isn’t really backed up by the numbers (at least not UZR); realistically, they’re both pretty close to average defenders.  Maybe I’d concede that Escobar is a bit better, especially when he’s playing hard.  Yunel was tremendously lucky at the plate with RISP in 2009 and won’t be so fortunate in the future.  Both appear to be above average hitters considering where they play on defense, and both are young enough to keep improving.

• Brian McCann had another excellent year, although Joe Mauer clearly made strides to widen the gap between him and the rest of the field among all MLB catchers.  Still, McCann is establishing an excellent early baseline for his career, and I think he’s got a .300-30 homer season in him within the next year or two, since he’s still young enough to forecast some improved power.  I’ll also mention that David Ross had an excellent year backing him up…that was an incredibly wise signing in retrospect.

The Mets will regroup somewhat next year, although they still have a ton of question marks.  The Phillies will of course return strong to defend their division title.  The perpetually-young Marlins will be a year older.  They were very fortunate to finish second this year, but I suppose they shouldn’t be overlooked.  The Nationals, well, they’ll play next year too.

Are there any other positive signs worth mentioning for the Braves?

Posted in Braves | 2 Comments »