 the professional look Toodledo uses is smart.
Avatars work for some forums but they are not necessary for a professional forums such as this. This will only add more work on Toodledo's end and I rather them focus their energy on the product, not the forums.
This is something that has a good and bad side to it. By showing post count, you get a feeling of how long someone has been using Toodledo and how active they have been with the forums.
A Post count could be implemented here and probably work. Where I see issues with Post Count is when they start attaching some kind of title or rank if you will to the users with lots of post. That destroys many forums as the users become more interested in their post count, rather than the quality of their post.
If we could show how long someone has been a member of the forums, this will give us a reference to their experience with using Toodledo, without the draw back of having post counts.
I think the search can also improve, but overall the forums are great in my opinion.
If you click on someone's name, you can see their subscription level, membership duration and post count. The information is there if you want it but not forced to you with every post.
Personally, I like that delivery.
I learn something new everyday. Thanks Allen.
There is only one reason I wish there were avatars here: to quickly scan through a list of posts to see when I replied last, or to note when a conversation is bouncing back between two people.
If avatars themselves tend to be too risqué, perhaps Gravatars would be a better choice: from what I've seen, these tend to be more mature and professional, because they are used in a variety of places. I think that you could also restrict displaying avatars if they are not rated for a general audience (I forget if they call it "PG" or "Everyone").Maric College - North Hollywood Campus - San Diego, California
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Contact Us | Article Submission Guidelines | Receive Your Free HeartCore EzineReaffirmation of a secured debt, like a vehicle loan, can be a great way to keep the vehicle or other collateral. But know the risks.
Last time we introduced reaffirmation agreements as a good way to keep collateral like a vehicle under Chapter 7. Essentially, you get to keep the vehicle or other collateral in return for agreeing to remain liable on the debt. Plus this enables you to put positive information on your credit report as you make each monthly payment.
But reaffirming a debt comes with risks. You need to be clear about those risks as you consider whether to sign a reaffirmation agreement.
We’ll focus again today on vehicle loan reaffirmations because they are common, and a handy way to explain the issues.
Chapter 7 “straight bankruptcy” gives you the near-lifetime opportunity to get out from under your debts. Don’t pass up on this opportunity as to any of your debts unless you do so with your eyes wide open.
Be especially careful with relatively large debts, such as a car or truck loan.
Are you are simply assuming that you want your present vehicle and its debt, without seriously considering other alternatives? Stop and think about whether you have ANY alternatives. Do you have a friend or relative who’d sell (or maybe even give) you another, cheaper, but reasonably reliable vehicle? Does public or other alternate transportation make sense considering how much money you’d save, on monthly payments AND the other many costs of vehicle ownership? What other transportation could you get with the money you’d save without a vehicle payment and the other costs?
Sometimes it absolutely makes sense to get rid of all of your other debts and just reaffirm one. But think long and hard about whether it might be better for you—on the short run and long—to not reaffirm and thus get rid of ALL your debts.
The big risk when you reaffirm a debt is having to pay it later when you wished you didn’t.
Circumstances change. In the context of a vehicle loan, you might not be able to afford the payments like you expected. The vehicle may cost lots more in repairs. A much less expensive vehicle may come your way and you wish you weren’t stuck with the reaffirmed one. Your job or other life circumstances may change so you don’t need the vehicle so much.
If your vehicle gets repossessed at some point after you’ve reaffirmed the debt you’ll very likely owe a substantial balance. That’s because the creditor will likely sell the repossessed vehicle at an auto auction for very little proceeds. It will apply those modest sale proceeds to the debt, but after likely adding large fees related to the repossession. The creditor will then demand payment of this “deficiency balance” in a lump sum. If you don’t pay it quickly vehicle creditors usually don’t hesitate to sue for that balance.
So after having gone through bankruptcy months or years later you end up with a new serious debt problem. You’d also significantly hurt your credit record just when you’d hoped to make progress after your bankruptcy filing.
Of course you can avoid this risk by surrendering your vehicle or other collateral and not reaffirming the debt. Any potential deficiency balance or other obligation would then be discharged—permanently written off. This would happen within 3 or 4 months after your bankruptcy filing, and you’d be completely free of the debt.
You MIGHT be able to keep the collateral WITHOUT reaffirming the debt. In SOME circumstances you could just keep current on the payments, fulfill any other obligations on the debt (such as maintaining the required insurance on the vehicle), but NOT enter into a reaffirmation agreement. Under some state laws the creditor could not or would not repossess the vehicle. Then if your circumstances later changed you could surrender the vehicle without owing anything. Because you had not reaffirmed the debt the creditor would only have rights to the collateral itself. It would have no further rights on the debt, including to any deficiency balance.
Reaffirming a debt may be completely sensible. If you definitely need or even strongly want your vehicle (or other collateral), can afford both the monthly payment and other costs of ownership, can do so long-term, reaffirming the debt can be a prudent choice. Just do it only after getting fully informed of the risks and seriously considering the alternatives.
I started off taking a lot of notes while reading this book, with the intention of writing a comprehensive review for CT. But as I got further along, I realized that no major insight or concrete ideas were coming, and by the end I basically wished I could have those 7 hours of my life back. What follows is a brief summary of my thoughts.
In 2004, Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger published an essay called “The Death of Environmentalism.” In it they argued that the political language and tools which served as the cornerstone of the environmental movement since the ‘60s were insufficient to tackle a problem as large and complicated as global warming. More specifically, they claimed that environmentalists defined their causes too narrowly and ignored the interplay between these issues and more general human wants and aspirations. Break Through builds on this diagnosis by suggesting a way forward and promoting a new way of thinking about global warming specifically, and politics more generally. This new way of thinking recognizes that environmental concerns are post-material, and must therefore be promoted by addressing material concerns on the lower end of society, and tied more concretely to post-material desires on the higher end.
While the authors make a lot of good individual points, I found the overall argument unconvincing and uninspiring. Most of the meat of the book deals with tearing down seemingly marginal boogey men, from “anti-choice liberals” to environmental justice attorneys to the Cape Wind detractors. While some of these individual gripes are compelling, their link to the greater dilemma is tenuous at best. Moreover, in drawing lessons from these idiosyncratic examples to make their case, the authors consistently gloss over the real complexities which define the larger issues. Perhaps the most interesting section of the book was on deforestation in Brazil. The authors describe how abject poverty and massive foreign debt combine to encourage Brazilians to pillage their forests. Yet while this helped to make their point about environmental concerns being post-material, Nordhaus and Shellenberger take this example as support for alleviating third world debt, as if that would simply solve the problem. Illegal logging and local corruption would still be profitable, and Brazilians would still be far from wealthy. Future borrowers would be punished unfairly and would face a conflicting set of financial and democratic incentives. This, in a nutshell, characterizes my main complaint about the book. In trying to make a nuanced point that is fundamentally about tone and rhetoric, they completely understate the real constraints and consequences at play.
I agree that fatalism is politically unhelpful, but Nordhaus and Shellenberger take optimism to an equally unhelpful extreme. This book is clearly the work of two dudes who have spent a lot of time studying surveys and demographics, and believe that marketing holds the key to harnessing human desires. Yet they seem to forget that at the