About three years ago my wife read the novel Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns and pointed out a passage that astounded me at the time. Why? Because in…
Category: <span>Life</span>
What’s wrong with these prayers? “Let us pray for the safe return of our troops.” “And now let us bow our heads in prayer and ask God for a bountiful…
On Saturday Northfielder Millie Johnson and her daughter Jean Churilla (left) visited our house (which is for sale, in case you wondered if I was going to once again engage…
Since Ross is AWOL from Locally Grown today, I thought I’d fill in with a nice fluffy post. To some, the ratio of coffeehouses to population is indicative of a…
I got this invitation, so I must be hip, as I keep telling my kids. (“Your father’s hip he knows what cooks“) But not everybody can be hip so I’m…
I love this cold weather. Bring it on, baby! How cold did it get last night? ‘Twas -19 F at around sunrise this morning, according to the Carleton College Weather…
The Intelligent Community Forum will be announcing its Most Intelligent Community of the Year award in May. The Intelligent Community list isn’t based on Ph.D’s per capita; if it were,
Significantly, there are no American cities among the finalists. In the last five years only three American cities have even been nominated, and we’ve never gotten top honors. Rightfully so; we’re way behind the curve in the New Global Economy despite having pretty much invented it.
What’s going on here?
According to the ICF, in the broadband economy, “adaptability outweighs legacy, skills rather than resources are the keys to the future, and innovation, not location, creates a competitive advantage.” Sounds good: Creative Class plus tech infrastructure equals economic strength.
I wish Northfield had a good technological infrastructure. We’re working on it, but there’s a lot of catching up to do. I’m preparing a broadband/tech primer which I’ll probably present to the EDA in February, and when I have that together, I’ll post it here as well, to provide some definitions and an overview of the issue.
This year’s Intelligent Community finalists are:
About ten years ago (I’m 57) I noticed I was starting to have trouble understanding people in places where there was a lot of background noise — pubs, coffeehouses, parties,…