links for 2010-01-16

How could anyone be against transparency? Its virtues and its utilities seem so crushingly obvious. But I have increasingly come to worry that there is an error at the core of this unquestioned goodness. We are not thinking critically enough about where and when transparency works, and where and when it may lead to confusion, or to worse. And I fear that the inevitable success of this movement--if pursued alone, without any sensitivity to the full complexity of the idea of perfect openness--will inspire not reform, but disgust. The "naked transparency movement," as I will call it here, is not going to inspire change. It will simply push any faith in our political system over the cliff.

And maybe that's good enough, or better than nothing, or something. On the other hand, there's real value in occasionally letting legislators work through this stuff outside the glare of the cameras. The fact that government should be held to higher standards than other institutions doesn't mean the people in it work differently than the people at other institutions. No business would decide to televise or webcast all of its meetings, and for obvious reasons. Televising all of the government's meetings means, in practice, that more of those meetings are informal and there's less assurance of broad representation.

Change comes slowly to the venerable shows that grip the attention of a small but committed segment of TV watchers every Sunday morning. And taking risks almost never happens... The shows are particularly ripe targets for critics who see them as the epitome of insider Washington and conventional wisdom. James Wolcott, writing in Vanity Fair last year, for example, described watching the show that Stephanopoulos recently vacated to be “like receiving an engraved invitation to apoplexy.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0110/31311.html#ixzz0cmvBHNXT

The Center for Health and Social Issues at Georgia College & State University (GCSU) has been awarded a $360,000 grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) to improve opportunities for physical activity and access to healthy, affordable foods for children and families in Milledgeville and Baldwin County.

Based on a rigorous selection process that drew 540 proposals from across the country, Milledgeville is one of 41 sites selected for the RWJF Healthy Kids, Healthy Communities initiative.