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All about the standing-upright chimps that really love to talk about themselves.

Prince

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“I’ve tried to avoid all this, but I can’t”
“I just gotta know, are we gonna try to love each other?”
Batdance (1989) (from the “Batman” soundtrack)

The outpouring of love for Prince over the last few days has been deep, wide, and intense. It was more than his music that people loved – it was his purple self that resonated all over the world. Sexually androgenous as well as culturally androgenous, he redefined the boundaries between id and culture to create a new identity that was uniquely his own.

His otherworldly presence also provide an example for a new approach to life that may yet help us all navigate a changing world. Like Prince, we can make it all in our own image, born in love and creativity, together.

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A Durable City

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The noise of construction and the vision of cranes on the horizon has become a feature of urban life in Minneapolis and St Paul lately, at least in some neighborhoods. The construction industry is booming, and the structures of choice are large apartment buildings. The demand appears insatiable – and no one is building condominiums. It’s all apartments, reaching to the sky in large complexes of 100 units and more.

My own neighborhood, West Seventh, is one of the hot-spots for this development craze. But are these units a good idea? Is this what the city needs? Or are we simply building the slums of tomorrow, today?

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Japan – Down the Rabbit Hole

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For all we complain about low growth and dimming prospects here in the US, it’s a problem that has plagued the developed world. If anything, we’re doing quite well, thank you. Europe is still struggling to get out of the depression, with high unemployment – especially among their youth. China and other developing nations appear to have hit a wall, unable to round the corner and step up to developed nation status.

And then, there is Japan. “Basket Case” doesn’t begin to describe it.

We last checked in with them over three years ago when Shinzo Abe became Prime Minister and instituted what has been called “Abenomics”. Call it “Supply Side” if you want, as it emphasized growth in the money supply and a cheap Yen to stimulate growth in production. Call it “A license to print money by the Bank of Japan (BOJ)” if you’re a cynic.

But the problems in Japan are much more severe – they are demographic and social. Without a wholesale restructuring they are as doomed now as they have been for an entire generation. There’s a lesson here for everyone.

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The Case for Pragmatism

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A bizzy day calls for a repeat.  This one is especially timely, originally from two years ago.

You probably have a better idea about how to do something. But will it work? You’ll never know until you try. When you do give it a go, you may find that getting there requires a lot of compromises along the way before your dream is realized. Or, perhaps, you’ll simply give up – blaming your own inability to make it happen or blaming the world for being so darned unfair.

Both experiences are simply part of human nature meeting reality. We’re all idealists at heart, at least in a certain sense. Only a few people have the skills necessary to make those dreams a reality and much of the time they have to keep their eyes on the prize. A dream is one thing, but getting there requires wide-awake attention.

That is why an open, democratic political system can’t live by rigid ideology alone.

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Outrage

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Every day we are bombarded with information – far more than we can handle thrown at us from a perspective we don’t understand. The most common response is outrage – disbelief that this could possibly happen.

Every day we find ourselves in situations we don’t understand – things that are going crazy around us.. The most common response is outrage – disbelief that this could possibly happen.

The officers responsible for the death of Jamar Clark on 15 November was one of these incidents, and the reports and (lack of) legal proceedings comes at us in much the same way. Everything about this makes no sense if you look deep enough into it yet everyone has an opinion about it. Let me tell you the simple, clear facts that we can be sure of:

Jamar Clark is dead. Any city that has been through this and wants to be known as “civilized” has to make sure that this does not happen ever again.

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