I take offense at the New York City financiers and Washington D.C. regulators who cooked up the ripoffs of millions of investors and employees being portrayed as the best and the brightest. The fact that they now seek to continue their illegal activities via a ponzi scheme against my generation on the US Treasury is more than outrageous.

These folks may well have graduated in the upper portions of their Ivy League classes, but they have chosen to apply their intelligence to enrich themselves not by improving the world buy by stealing from it.

Let me play devil's advocate for a second here and take the position that more higher education is actually **bad** for our economy, at our current level of investment. Certainly we need higher education, but it is, by definition, for our best and brightest and not everyone will make the grade.

Although there is the occassional need for Manhattan project style efforts most advances are either made by individuals or small teams and, frankly, not everyone is up to that level of work nor do we need dedicate but a small portion of our population to these tasks. Better to recognize and reward these successes rather than muddle them with mediocrity and the undeserving

But I'll take it a step further than this.

Blink

By Malcolm Gladwell

2005

Author Malcolm Gladwell is best know for his first book, 'The Tipping Point'. Like that book this one synthesizes the work of criminologists and marketeers to analyze the subject. 'Tipping' also utilized sociologists, while 'Blink', more inward looking, brings psychologists to the matter of understanding how we make snap judgements, sometimes very effectively sometimes not.

More to the point, this book will help you to evaluate how you make snap decisions and make you quicker at thinking on your feet. Who knows, reading them both and perhaps you could 'tip' the world in a 'blink' of an eye - and become and 'Outlier', subject of his third book, not yet read.

I just finished the requirements for a 200 hour program in Native Plant Restoration here in Western Washington, a great idea for a citizen based program.

As rambling as this particular brain may be I've gotten to wondering, perhaps we should be looking at corporate America - public and private, as an 'invasive' weed.

Of course this is nothing but an analogy, but do consider the similarities. Both spread easily in 'disturbed' ground, both create monocultures where diversity, by some measure, disappears. Getting rid of them both are also similar, nothing to be done but yank em out by the roots, and repeat - while replacing with some more desirable 'organisms' along the way.

Certainly, it would be great to get rid of those folks who have built their career not contributing to the ecology, but by attacking it, by whatever means - and the plants too - whether it be public 'ground' or private 'ground'.

Cry the Beloved Country

Starring James Earl Jones and Richard Harris

1995

This is a story set to a backdrop of politics and nature - and nature wins out in the telling. Harris and Jones are a couple of older gentleman living in the beautiful Natal province of South Africa in the 1940's - Jones roots his preaching and spirituality in the land, Harris his farmer businessman ways.

Both have young sons that have gone to the big City to live the modern life, Jone's son one of rebellion, Harris's one of reform. Both men meet in the City over a tragedy, but it is back in Natal where the future is made.

Nim-by acronym; Not In My Back Yard n. A perjorative stereotype with some basis in reality but more often used by those unable to communicate outside of the controlled confines of a public or private corporation - nor able to design a project worthy of survival outside of same. (Ed Note:Abusive behavior does occur in neighborhood groups, curiously though it is most often public servants, usually acting outside of their lower middle roles that do so. The other common type is a victim seeking revenge, rightfully or wrongfully. Note also rhymes with Quimby, a synonym for 'N' word #2, 'Nickels')

I must confess I was once a big transportation policy wonk - hopefully 15 years of abstinence have cured any weaknesses thereof. I have been getting active again over the last year and half here in Tacoma and hopefully can still indulge this obsession with a bit of prudence and productivity occassionally, as such, the following.

Proposed: A Sound Transit 2 Funded Expansion of Light Rail in Tacoma Integrating the Existing High Capacity Light Rail Corridor into the Currently Funded HOV Expansion of I-5 adding Bus service as per the same Design Specs as in the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel.

Click Here for the High Resolution PDF

Please note that although there is strong precedence for this approach including direct HOV access ramps, as at 320th in Federal Way, and strong general support for multi-modal systems I am not aware of any project that creates a direct HOV-Light Rail connection. Handling the seperation of car pools and HOT lane users from larger vehicles is not designed in this proposal, but is presumably resolvable with a minimum of risk.

Manny and Lo

Starring Scarlett Johansson (age 10?), Aleksa Palladino, and Mary Kay Place

Written and Directed by Lisa Krueger

1996

Amanda and Laurel are pre and post pubescent orphan sisters on a 'Thelma and Louise' run from foster care. Circumstances dictate they settle down in a country house and now all they need is to find parents!

This youtube video is an audition tape of Johansson's from a year or two earlier. She's a very cute kid, and, as they say, an 'old soul'.