The other day I was talking with Unny and Lisa Kimball about a nonprofit Lisa had looked at. She was disturbed because they'd spent their entire budget on salary. Unny and I didn't think that was a problem, and Unny had a very good take on how to evaluate a nonprofit organization's donation worthiness.

Spending on salary or office space or printing or pretty much anything else is irrelevant. The common advice you'll hear is that a nonprofit should not spend more than X% on admin, where X may be 10% or 15% or some other essentially random number. I googled and found a good blog post that goes into more detail on this.

Of course, if an organization is spending 80% of its income on admin, something is wrong, but is 20% okay? How about 25% or 30%? The answer is "it depends".

This obsession with admin and fundraising costs is particularly hard on smaller nonprofits that are trying to grow. Let's look at my favorite nonprofit, Compassionate Action for Animals (yes, I'm biased, since I co-founded this organization). About 18 months ago, we started renting an office in Minneapolis. Previously, our only office space was the space allotted to us as a student group at the University of Minnesota.

Having an office has been a huge help. Going to the U is really annoying for anyone who's not a student. It's hard to navigate, parking isn't free, and the space we have at the U is very small (maybe 120 square feet) and sometimes insanely loud. In contrast, our current office has lots of space, is very quiet, and is relatively easy to find. We can easily host small events (potlucks, training sessions), have meetings, store lots of equipment, and get work done.

For our current fiscal year, this office space will cost about 10% of our income. On one hand, that seems like a lot. On the other, we're spending $700 per month for at least 700 square feet of space, which is a very good price. The office enables us to be more effective, which is exactly what you want from a nonprofit.

If we spent half the money, we'd up with a tiny office, big enough for just a few people at a time. This wouldn't meet our needs, since what we really need is a space for collaboration (meetings, events, training), not a place to stick one employee. If we had "saved" money by getting a much smaller office, we'd actually be wasting money. This is a perfect example of how focusing on admin percentage can lead a nonprofit down the wrong path.

So how can you evaluate a nonprofit? Unfortunately, there's no simple way. It'd be nice to look at a few numbers and declare "this nonprofit is effective". That would make donation decisions so much easier! Too bad that doesn't work.

Now we come to Unny's idea. Pick ten (or five, or twenty) nonprofits in fields you care about. Now comes the hard part. Look at what they say their goals are, both in terms of mission, and in terms of year-to-year plans. Are their goals reasonable? Are they ambitious? Do their goals further their mission? Do they have a strategy?

Next, attend their events, read their newsletters, and volunteer with them. Get involved in ways that go beyond writing a check.

Now compare their reported outcome with their goals. Did they fail to meet their goals or exceed them? Did they change course when needed? Did they spend more than they said they would? If they did overspend, did they get more done for that money? How was your experience attending an event or volunteering? Was it a good experience? Would you recommend it to your friends?

You can also talk to the nonprofits. Call them up or write them email and ask some questions. A good nonprofit will be happy to talk to you.

Based on this, you can eliminate some of the nonprofits you're following. Keep doing this for a few years, and you should have a good idea of which nonprofits are doing good work. Donate to them.

Yes, this is a lot of work, but if you care where your money goes, it's worthwhile.

I went back to my old home-made MP3 server thingy and looked for the track, but it was missing there too.

Now, I could've gone downstairs and looked at my dusty shelves of CDs, found the CD (eventually), and ripped it. But that just seems like a waste of time. Instead, I went to The Pirate Bay and found a copy ripped at 320kpbs. It should be on my computer in about 15 minutes or so.

It's simply more convenient for me to download a "pirate" version than to rip my own CD. I wonder if this is illegal or not, since I do own the media, and when I made the original MP3, I was doing something legal. If someone else makes the MP3 for me and I download it, is that also legal?

I just finished re-reading Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn trilogy (for the first time since it was published 20 years ago). It was enjoyable, despite a bunch of cliche bits.

But it got me thinking about how ridiculous many fantasy worlds are when you look a little deeper.

The first example is the Sitha (Tad Williams' elves). In these books, the Sitha are immortal, and it's stated that they give birth approximately every 500 years. They migrated to the continent they're on thousands of years ago, but it doesn't say how many. For some reason, their population is ridiculously small, but that really doesn't make much sense, especially considering that they were the unchallenged rulers of that continent for a long time.

If we assume that 1,000 Sitha were in the first migration, and that migration occurred 10,000 years ago, how many Sitha should there be "now"? Let's assume that the every 500 years birth pattern is true. Let's also assume, since they're immortal, that the females can continue to have children indefinitely. That means that every 500 years, half of the population will give birth to a child, of whom half will be female, and so on and so forth.

In other words, every 500 years the population should increase by 50 percent. After 10,000 years, the initial population of 1,000 should be over 3,000,000 (that's 3 million)! That's a lot of Sitha! In the books, however, they're a dying race. Yes, there's been a bunch of wars and such, but those wars started a long time after their initial migration, when their population should already have been in the hundreds of thousands.

The other goofy bit of ecology is a dragon that supposedly lived in a system of tunnels underneath a castle. The dragon is described as being very large, presumably bigger than an elephant. While there are some big spaces in the tunnel system, there's no giant pathway into the part where the dragon is, which seems to be pretty far into the tunnel system. Maybe it was born there and grew too big to leave? I can buy that, but what does it eat?

People know about this dragon, so excluding the occasional foolhardy hero, I don't think there's a lot of traffic down there. Certainly there is probably nothing bigger than mice and bats, and even they would probably avoid a large predator's living space.

Stuff like this does kind of annoy me, because it seems like the author adopts some fantasy convention (immortal elves who are dying out) without actually figuring out how to make that make any sort of sense, other than "it's a magic world, and I say so".

A good example of doing better is Robin Hobb's Elderlings trilogy of trilogies. She actually comes up with a very interesting and sane life-cycle for various fantastic creatures (I don't want to be too specific), and even includes things like natural disasters in this fantasy ecology. It all makes sense and ties into the story very nicely.

In no particular order ...

• Weird Al at Toad's Place in New Haven, 1991 (or 1992). I know how deeply uncool it is to admit this, but I've seen Weird Al live, and it was great. I think this was the first rock concert I ever went to, in fact. Weird Al did a great live show, with all sorts of wacky costume changes, weird dances, and a generally kick-ass performance.

• Most of the They Might Be Giants shows I've seen. I think they may be the second band I saw live, and I've seen them many times since.

• The first time I saw Einsturzende Neubaten. I was amazed at how good the sound was for such a complicated set of instruments. I also appreciated the fact that it was loud, but not way too fucking loud, like many concerts I've been to.

• Tokyo Incidents at the Kamakura Cultural Center. This may be the single best concert I've ever been to. This band is amazing, and the singer, Ringo Shiina, is one of the best singers I've ever heard. A lot of what she sang was quite vocally demanding, and she and the band nailed every note. Combine that with great sound and acoustics (yay for concert halls).

• Seeing the Minneapolis Orchestra perform Messiaen's Turangalila, and a few years later Britten's War Requiem. These are two of my all time favorite pieces. I've also loved seeing George Crumb's chamber works live. I saw Music for a Summer Evening (Makrokosmos III) and then years later Vox Balanae, and both were amazing.

• Seeing Low perform at Orchestra Hall. The acoustics of the hall worked incredibly well with their minimalist music. I've seen Low many times live, but I think this was my favorite, just cause it sounded so good.

And finally, one dishonorable mention.

• The Polyphonic Spree at The Fine Line. This wasn't the band's fault, I think they might have been doing a fine job. However, the sound was so amazingly loud that I couldn't really hear any music, just a roar of noise from which I could sort of pick out musical sounds. This was a huge disappointment, because I'd been very excited to see them. I think some sound engineers are deaf, and they crank everything to 11. They need to be fired.

Either way, it's very annoying. They don't bite or sting, but I just don't like bugs. What's even more disturbing is the vast hordes of them I can see out the windows.

Here's to the first freeze of winter! (probably just a few short months away :( )