I tried to explain this strip to someone once and it failed miserably.
via xkcd.com I still think it’s pretty funny.
Emerging Leadership Lunch next Wednesday at City Club
Wednesday's lunch at the Landmark promises to be an interesting lunch. First we'll have Brian Boyd, Executive Director of the Sequoia and Forest Foundations as our speaker. After that, we'll be giving out the Dennis Seinfeld Emerging Leader Award to a current UPS student, Keith Blocker. I think it's really great that City Club is honoring a student. There is often a great disconnect between the student community and the city but Keith has helped bridge that gap. If you're interested in coming, email me by Monday and you can come as my guest for the member rate of $23 Read more…
“Significant” water on the moon
NASA said Friday it had discovered water on the moon, opening “a new chapter” that could allow for the development of a lunar space station. The discovery was announced by project scientist Anthony Colaprete at a midday news conference. “Indeed, yes, we found water,” he said. via cnn.com I love space. After reading Kim Stanley Robinson’s “Mars Trilogy” I have a secret desire to colonize Mars and retire there. I also believe that Stephen Hawking was right when he argues that in the interest of survival of humanity we need to get off this rock and spread ourselves out a Read more…
Here’s a crazy stat: 60% of American men have been arrested …
In 1967, 50% of American men had been arrested. Since then, arrests made in connection with domestic violence and illegal drugs have pushed the number to 60%, estimates Alfred Blumstein, a criminologist at Carnegie Mellon University. The annual number of arrests for possession of marijuana more than tripled to 1.8 million from 1980 to 2007, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. via online.wsj.com … and with background checks getting easier and cheaper, arrests from the it’s hurting job candidates, even when those arrests are more than thirty years old. The article is well worth a read!
Next up in the Presidential series
I've decided to skip over Jefferson for now. I've already read Hitchens' biography of him in the Eminent Lives series and I will eventually get to American Sphinx. But he features prominently in both the biographies of Washington and Adams and I know he is Madison's mentor, that I think I'll just skip on up to the 4th President and cycle back to Jefferson later.
John Adams
via whitehouse.gov I was moved by the Adams biography. Having seen the mini-series last year, I enjoyed the re-tread of his life and the greater detail. I thought he was a fascinating man, and his stamp on the country rather large. He nominated George Washington to lead the army (apparently Hancock wanted it); he wrote the Massachusetts constitution, in many ways a preliminary document for our own; he negotiated and won a loan from the Dutch at an incredibly important time to keep the revolution afloat; then negotiated peace with the British; he kept us out of a war with Read more…
The vertical moonwalk
via succeedblog.org You know I could totally do this if I wanted to, right?
“Strong Mayor” question in the Trib and on Exit133
Here's Callaghan in the Tribune: Tuesday’s apparent change of government in Federal Way, from council-manager to strong mayor, might trigger another look in the state’s third-largest city. If the majority holds in Federal Way, three of the state’s 100,000-people-plus cities will have strong mayor and three will have council-manager. Federal Way will join Seattle and Spokane with mayors who run the city while Tacoma, Bellevue and Vancouver will have mayors who chair the city council. In the next rung down – cities with populations between 50,000 and 100,000 – six are strong-mayor cities and six are council-manager cities. And Exit133 Read more…
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