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Yearly Archives: 2016

It Gets Serious

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It’s not a joke anymore. Violence erupted outside a Trump rally in St Louis and a rally later in the evening was canceled, supposedly over security concerns. Where violence inside these rallies has long been ignored the act of it spilling onto the streets has suddenly caught the attention of nearly everyone. This is scary stuff.

Nevermind that it’s been at a boil for months. Somehow, a line was crossed.

This will unquestionably change the nature of the Presidential race, but it’s unclear exactly how at this point. Will it crystallize Republican opposition? Will it escalate by engaging the left? What will the average voter think of this? What will the media report?

The fiery election of 2016 just had a lot of gasoline dumped on it. It’s no longer even remotely predictable.

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Definitely NOT Over

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One week ago, Barataria asked if it was over. “It” meaning the Democratic presidential primary season and “over” meaning decided. The theory was that unless Sanders won at least a few of four key states on Super Tuesday everyone would write his political obit.

He won three of them – and this week a big surprise in Michigan. Combined with the death match in the Republican Party we have an unusually fascinating endorsing season ahead of us as both contests will definitely run through to the convention floors.

But what that is likely to mean is something very different in the case of both parties. One will be fighting to not lose and the other may wind up fighting to not win.

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Flexible Cities

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Predictions of the future are often tricky. It requires an extrapolation of a trend from today to some kind of logical conclusion, taking into account how the object changing connects to the rest of the world. There’s a real showmanship to it all, too, when you start from the logical conclusion and then explain yourself backwards.

Cities will be radically different by 2050, with zoning codes and concepts that are more flexible and the corresponding buildings will have many uses on top of each other. Suburbs, as we know them now, will require extensive rehabilitation that will work well in some places but create wastelands in others.

See how it works? This is simply the logical conclusion of a flexible workforce and a fast-paced economy with people changing careers often. Should all that come to pass, our cities will have to have more flexible structures and more agile concepts of zoning. We can easily imagine how that might look because that is what cities were like before zoning came along about 100 years ago.

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The Industrial Arts

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A bizzy weekend of Robotics makes it a good night for a repeat, this from 2014.  With the Democratic Debate in Michigan the topic is very timely, too – Michigan has more FIRST Robotics teams per capita than any state and is clearly pushing this as a way to encourage a good future.  Industrial Arts?  The past and the future of Michigan, for sure.

If you have any fear for the future of America, visit a FIRST Robotics League competition. Your worries will simply melt away.

Three days with my son’s team (2491 No Mythic) at the Northstar Regionals, where we were knocked out in the Finals, constantly percolated with passion, grace, and ingenuity. The 800 plus high-schoolers in Mariucci Arena, and another 800 next door in Williams Arena, redefined competition beyond the unique sport that is something like hockey with robots. These kids make things happen and realize their visions together. As enthusiastically as they learned by doing, however, their drive showed that something might be missing from their school experience.

Call it shop class, call it “technical education”, use whatever words you want. These are the citizens that will make the world of tomorrow in their image, if only they have the tools to do it. That cries out for a revival and resuscitation of the Industrial Arts in a way that I have never seen contemplated before.

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The Only Thing We Have to Fear

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By the time you read this … Barataria says that far too often. Given the publication schedule at the start of each MWF, at midnight UTC, this blog often comes out before the news hits. The Employment Report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) will be out in just a few hours and it will be important.

This is, after all, an election year that has opened with a strong downturn in the stock market and a general feeling of panic. Money and politics have intersected in at least one critical way – people feel lousy about the future of both. But should they? And will they keep feeling lousy through November.

Our standing prediction is that sometime in July the economic future will look a lot better – which is to say just about convention time. And that better feeling may start with the BLS jobs report tomorrow – if only because it’s starting to look like the stock market is ready to believe good news.

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