PD starting to call it like it is

Refinance, Subject to Oversight--This reporting and editorializing the PD is doing on the bond job and the cozy arrangements is what we need more of in this town. We could also use even more numbers, less speculation, to see how this might actually benefit the public.

Avoiding the appearance of impropriety is what is called for, and we don't really have that in this situation. A school superintendent at Sanders' level should have enough common sense not to present such a lucrative target for criticism. What we do have, unfortunately, is a lot of the hired help telling us what they have to and don't have to do, and this doesn't sit well in a city that's continually conned by it's employees. We already have another embarrassment, regardless of how the deal eventually goes down.

It's time to shuck the third-world-country image and get on with ethical business practices.

Gypsy Beans lives the life, walks the walk, talks the talk

Gypsy Beans & Bakery in the Gordon Square Arts District in the Detroit Shoreway Neighborhood (Cleveland, Ohio)--I just clicked through the MTB ad network to this new website and was heartened to note, on their home page, that they're advocates of what Uncle Norm has tagged as "local production for local consumption."

Please note they also offer free wifi, but you have to ask them for access first. Only after that can you do what the suburban commuters do in Tremont: Go park in the lot, use the free wifi, and not buy anything from the merchant. We first ran into this freeloader, freerider phenomenon over at Scoops last year.

There's no mention of wifi on the Gypsy Beans site right now, but I'm sure that will be forthcoming.

if I ran the city, the series, #7: shoveled walks

I was out shoveling snow this morning and decided to do a little more than I had to and proceeded to clear the walk in front of the boardup next door. The pre-dawn Denison neighborhood looked great, as though everything were occupied again by people who were neat and industrious and considerate, people who had values and pride and self-respect, just like back in 1983. I also made it possible for my neighbors to use the sidewalk without slipping or sliding or struggling with an irregular frozen surface.

One of my main complaints for the past few years of my taking early morning walks around the city is that the public walkways are nearly impassable. Sidewalks on bridges have huge piles of snow and ice, and I feel like a mountain goat getting across. The sidewalk in front of and to the side of the church at 33rd and Denison is usually very unwelcoming because they shovel only from the parking lot to the church door, and I feel there sometimes like Don Ho or Dick Blake (sans clack stick, of course), doing slick dance routines with both feet firmly planted just to keep my balance.

I also was thinking about the recent TIWIDT move by Wendell Robinson, prompted by Jeff Hess and Henery Hawk, to do good deeds to raise the level of good karmic vibrations around these parts. Then I started thinking about how it's really never too late for anything, even to become a Boy Scout, and help people--as a pre-teen, I'd always been too terrified of their rumored circle activities to join.

Now, if I ran this city, I'd do what they do out in Bedford, for instance, and have a guy run around the whole city on some sort of little scooter/plow and keep all the sidewalks passable. But since I don't live in a city that puts the functionality of its own citizens first and doesn't seem to care too much about its own appearance, all I can do is to fill the gap until help shows up. And, I can do this by keeping my own space clear and also helping clear the areas that probably won't get cleared--in front of the boardups, in front of older peoples' homes, in front of the properties of the benighted investors who have been to Carleton Sheets seminars and taken them seriously.

I feel better already, and my arms are getting some tone back, and the neighborhood looks great.

Next on the agenda: overnight parking

if you get to talk about the money, you get to talk about everything

George has the podcast posted for the Jim Rokakis session last Wednesday, and Gloria, Jeff/Yellow Dog Sammy, and Wendell, and George, too, have already brought forth commentary to bear on the content and spirit of the talk we had. I think it's one of the better ones thus far, over the year and a half that MTB's been in play, but it can be argued that I'm biased, so you be the judge.

One of my favorite parts is where Jim recounts his running for county treasurer and getting comments from other politicians about why he'd ever want to have that job, where you only dealt with money. Jim's take is that, if you get to talk about the money, you get to talk about everything, and he does. Enjoy.

Rev. Robert Drinan, former head of BC Law, dies at 86

Congressman priest dies at 86 - Politics - MSNBC.com--Here's a story about one of those Jesuits who helped change the community dialogue and form our nascent social consciousness in Boston in the '60s. It's priests like him, on the front lines, who lent their ideas and influence to the movement that helped form such tax-credit-oriented development firms as Boston Capital and The Community Builders. Here's the middle of the article:

An internationally known human-rights advocate, Drinan was elected on an anti-war platform and represented Massachusetts in the U.S. House for 10 years during the turbulent 1970s.

He stepped down only after a worldwide directive from Pope John Paul II barring priests from holding public office.

During his Congressional tenure, Drinan continued to dress in the robes of his clerical order and lived in a simple room in the Jesuit community at Georgetown.

But he wore his liberal views more prominently. He opposed the draft, worked to abolish mandatory retirement and raised eyebrows with his more moderate views on abortion and birth control.

“Father Drinan’s commitment to human rights and justice will have a lasting legacy here at Georgetown University and across the globe,” said Georgetown President John J. Degioia.

“Few have accomplished as much as Father Drinan and fewer still have done so much to make the world a better place,” said Alex Aleinikoff, dean of the George University Law Center.

Drinan, dean of the Boston College Law School from 1956 to 1970, called for the desegregation of Boston public schools during the 1960s and challenged Boston College students to become involved in civil rights issues.

“He’ll be remembered in the country for his advocacy for the poor and underprivileged,” said John Garvey, the Boston law school’s current dean.

revisiting Kurosawa's Seven Samurai

Seven Samurai - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia--I haven't seen this flick in over 40 years but decided to experience it again this weekend. Warrior things have been on my mind lately. The film still holds up; it's a remarkable and incredible piece of work. Actually, it's even better now because you can watch it on DVD and concentrate and appreciate it. The last time I tried to view it was in a movie theatre packed with others who, like me, were afflicted with cases of raging adolescent hormones and did lots of strange things during the subtle scenes. If you have 3+ hours for the show itself and another 2-3 for the commentary, it's a great experience for a snowy day. We didn't realize, back in the '60s and before the advent of the spaghetti Western, how much the lead samurai, Takashi Shimura, looked like Lee Van Cleef.

noosphere vs. cyberspace

Noosphere - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia--I'd noticed in grazing through Chris Corrigan's material that he has a fondness for the term "noosphere," as did Teilhard de Chardin. The wikipedia entry is a good place to start on a refresher, or an introduction, as the case may be. I find it comforting to find people who have similar ideas on their back burners.

The noosphere can be seen as the "sphere of human thought" being derived from the Greek νους ("nous") meaning "mind" in the style of "atmosphere" and "biosphere". In the original theory of Vernadsky, the noosphere is the third in a succession of phases of development of the Earth, after the geosphere (inanimate matter) and the biosphere (biological life). Just as the emergence of life fundamentally transformed the geosphere, the emergence of human cognition fundamentally transforms the biosphere. In contrast to the conceptions of the Gaia theorists, or the promoters of cyberspace, Vernadsky's noosphere emerges at the point where humankind, through the mastery of nuclear processes, begins to create resources through the transmutation of elements.
The word is also sometimes used to refer to a transhuman consciousness emerging from the interactions of human minds. This is the view proposed by the theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who added that the noosphere is evolving towards an ever greater integration, culminating in the Omega Point—which he saw as the ultimate goal of history. The noosphere concept of 'unification' was elaborated in popular science fiction by Julian May in the Galactic Milieu Series. (more)

through George, through Chris Corrigan: Art Of Hosting - The Principles

Art Of Hosting - The Principles--Here's a killer blogsite that came to my attention through George Nemeth and through Chris Corrigan, whom George has linked to a bit lately. Maybe I'm just dazzled or starstruck with all the new awarenesses or consciousnesses that are popping up out there, but here's another really good one, one that frames the practice as "hosting," and all of them seem to somehow be speaking in the same voice, or singing the same tune.

what goes around comes around: subprime stooge's karma's not instant, but quick enough

Tremors at the Door - New York Times--Two days ago, Cuyahoga County Treasurer Jim Rokakis alerted us to this phenomenon as it had made itself manifest just across the Harvard-Denison Bridge, in the North Broadway and Fleet areas. The podcast should be posted shortly over at Meet.The.Bloggers. From a moral standpoint, this guy Dallas, the subprime mortgage lending company poster child, is, in my opinion, reprehensible. If this "hey, it paid more money, what would you do?" attitude passes for business ethics, we need to do a lot of re-tooling. Here's the poster child's whiny lament, now that HE no longer has credit:

...William D. Dallas, the founder and chief executive of Ownit, would argue that his company has become an early case of road kill.

In mid-November, JPMorgan Chase, which provided Ownit with money to make home loans, notified the company that it was in default and would lose access to a $500 million credit line by Dec. 13 because it was losing money. It had taken on too much debt and its net worth had fallen, according to bankruptcy documents and people briefed on the company’s finances

....For his part, Mr. Dallas acknowledges that standards were lowered, but he placed the blame at the feet of investors and Wall Street, saying they encouraged Ownit and other subprime lenders to make riskier loans to keep the pipeline of mortgage securities well supplied.

“The market is paying me to do a no-income-verification loan more than it is paying me to do the full documentation loans,” he said. “What would you do?”

we need to take care of our warriors

Cleveland officer investigated on claim he beat suspect--I really don't know what is at play here, but in general what we as a community need to remember is that, when we pay a policeman to go to war for us--the regular economy--against the drug economy, we need to support him as he uses his best judgment in an attempt to get our drug bait back. What does 5.5# of cocaine cost, and who pays for that if the drug dealer decides to play cute and keeps it hidden in his house? We paid the policeman to use bait to trap the dealer, and we also charged him with recovering the bait. Criminals need to understand that they give up certain rights and put themselves at unnecessary risk when they commit crimes and then fail to cooperate.

We must protect our warriors, first and foremost. We must protect our community. Those who work against the best interests of the community, who take from the community and make it sicker and weaker by distributing drugs and robbing people of their potential, deserve no sympathy from the court system. We need to write special rules of engagement when it comes to the war on drugs.