Search Engine Optimization expert Sage Lewis started blogging today. Be gentle. He’s a newbie.

Deep Cleveland’s Mark Kuhar links to an interview with Pere Ubu’s founding father David Thomas:

andrew: david, as an artist, a musician, what do you believe sets you apart from other artists / musicians?

DT: The only possible response is: unique vision. The fundamental principles that shape my work are not unique… the folk methodology is as old as the hills. My life experience is no different from hundreds of thousands of others. The culture I was raised in is shared by millions. So I guess all I got that is different is me.

From Civic Strategies, How a City Becomes a Magnet for Talent:

What does it take for a city to be a magnet for talent? The City of Memphis, the Memphis Regional Chamber and Shelby County wanted to find out, so they asked Carnegie Mellon University professor Richard Florida and a team of Memphis consultants, including Coletta & Company, to investigate. The report was completed recently, and we are now executing its recommendations.

The report explains what it takes for a city to become a magnet for talent, where Memphis stands in comparison to other metropolitan areas, and makes recommendations for strengthening the city’s appeal for creative workers.

Download a copy of “Technology, Talent and Tolerance: Attracting the Best and Brightest to Memphis” in PDF form.

Take a look at the Memphis Manifesto. I’ll ask it again. Who’s working on the Cleveland Manifesto?

Take heed:

‘The trigger in this decade underlying autonomous computing is “computer-to-computer” communication. By the end of the decade, more than 60 percent of the computer communications will be computer-to-computer. Computer-to-computer vastly speeds up the pace of business. For example, end-to-end supply chains can be automatically adjusted by point-of-sale computers directly communicating with warehouse computers, which in turn directly communicate with manufacturer computers, and, again in the chain, manufacturers’ computers directly communicate with their supplier computers. In addition, computer-to-computer communications can track demand and adjust logistic systems to automatically direct product to geographical points of demand.’

For a few companies to feature in an upcoming book:

“In 30 days, I’m going to publish a new eBook called 99 Cows. I’d like to feature the most remarkable people, organizations, products, services and ideas. Do you or someone you know qualify? Would you like to be in it? You can nominate yourself and read new articles by visiting my blog.

I can think of a few. Can you?

This from a /. post:

“A recent article in The Town Paper describes a new community in Issaquah, WA that has, among it’s interesting features: a wired LAN in every home, free community Intranet, and a choice for a fiber optic connection. Is it a coincidence that Microsoft is planning on building 3 million square feet of office space there? How much is a pre-wired house worth to you? What will this do for community building?”

Good questions. What are your answers?

“He could have added fortune to fame, but caring for neither, he found happiness and honor in being helpful to the world.” - Carver’s epitaph

In Seven Habits, Stephen Covey asks “How do you want to be remembered by the people giving your eulogy?”.

You know that someone needs to do something around here when someone named Putz who writes for a magazine like Scene does a story like this. Too bad the story is based on remarks he made six months ago. Maybe the only thing current about Scene is their calendar.

Melinda of Life, Liberty, and Pursuit sent me this link to an old Dave Barry column. A little research reveals the column is based on the Kopi Luak. The Caffiene FAQ also relates the author trying some at the company where I order my beans, Sweet Marias.

The Sculpture Center’s website contains over 1000 photos and description of works from around Ohio.

“After 30 years of intensive research, no one has been able to demonstrate that moderate amounts of caffeine cause harm. What’s moderate? About three cups of coffee (300 milligrams of caffeine) per day.”

Which reminds me. Time for another cup. Make it a double.

Plain Dealer Art Critic turned Film Critic Steven Litt bashes a documentary about the history of the Arts in Cleveland and the panel discussion that followed. Gene Siskel he ain’t. Cleveland doesn’t have Creative Inferiority, it has a creative inferiority complex, Steven. There’s a big difference.

Website Update: The left side of this page is all XML. Today, I added a section of recent comments. You’ve been posting great ones, and I don’t think I may be the only one who reads them. Maybe now that they’re prominent, you’ll say more.

I’ve also added a list of links. If you can think of any that I’m missing, please help by emailing them to me.

“Jason Therrien keeps a sealed copy of the letter of intent next to his bed and on his desk. It reminds him of the choice he made: to go urban bike riding after work rather than sweating sports-car payments. To work in his own cozy office in a converted boiler room in MidTown’s Creative Corridor instead of paying for downtown parking and pushing papers in a cubicle. To keep his goatee, work hard with people he considers friends and create a culture that’s warm, rather than punching a clock and numbly reporting to several layers of management.”

“He could have taken the consulting position with Accenture Ltd.’s Cleveland office[George: Good thing he didn’t. They’re gone.]. But after they pushed back his start date a few times, Therrien, 24, says his heart wasn’t in it. He had built up a nice client base with Thunder::Tech, the Web design and database development company that he launched from his dorm room at John Carroll University.

If you’re concerned about a city that’s a great place to LIVE, I have serious doubts about the “build a new convention center, expand the airport” approach to community building. Because it doesn’t build community, it builds “attractions” for tourist and visitors. I lived in Indianapolis part-time while teaching… I can attest to the bustling downtown - some weekday nights you’d have to try several downtown restaurants to find one where you could get a table without a long wait. Conventions keep the place hoppin’. I’m sure conventioneers think Indy is a great place to visit.

My Indianapolis neighborhood was the Old Northside, a gentrified area of big old houses similar in appearance to my Cleveland neighborhood, the Near West Side (or Ohio City, in marketing lingo). But in Indy there was no neighborhood life. Lots of people living inside houses and apartments, but no mom and pop stores, no street life, no sense of a community that people cared about. A clear indicator of this was a community meeting held to discuss problems with a halfway house for inmates a half block from my apartment. The community meeting drew about 30 people for what I’d call a “hot-button” issue for any neighborhood. In contrast, fairly routine block club meetings on Cleveland’s Near West Side regularly attract this many people, and major issues like a threat to close our local YMCA bring out hundreds. That’s a neighborhood. That’s community.

While in Indy I also walked around downtown a lot, enjoying attractive park areas created near the Convention Center and downtown museums. Usually I shared the space with joggers and a few individuals, rarely families and children. In my unscientific view, I’d say these were mostly tourists, not residents. Now believe me, I know that downtown Cleveland lacks what you’d call a vibrant street life, nonetheless it feels more like a multicultural city than that tourist ghetto on the White River.

So be careful what you wish for. Indianapolis downtown does seem to be thriving, and perhaps it actually is. I’d be happy to visit there, and in fact am looking forward to returning when Herron opens its new downtown campus. But live there? I think not. I want to live in a real neighborhood, not a Chamber of Commerce brochure. We have real neighborhoods in Cleveland, and the benefit they gain from a new convention center is insignificant.”

“Why do we Cleveland artists have to be labeled ‘local’? Why can’t we be referred to as Cleveland based artists or just plain Cleveland artists?” After exchanging emails, I have to agree. Why do we place limits on people? To call them local artists, implies that they aren’t known outside this area. The shame of it is, many artists are better known outside the area. We should be grateful they stay here and put up with us.

Uncovering the finest info on Bread, Coffee, Chocolate, Yoga. Fortune Elkins links to this article, which breaks coffee roasting down for you all in plain engrish:

“Green, or unroasted, coffee beans smell and taste nothing like coffee as most people know it. It’s the roasting of the beans that brings out all those wonderful aromas and flavors that have gained coffee such a widespread following.”

“Two main things happen during roasting. First, water evaporates. Second, a chemical process called pyrolysis breaks down the raw beans’ components and forms hundreds of volatile aromatic compounds. These compounds include ketones and aldehydes, which also are responsible for flavors in foods and wine, and sulfides, which are desirable in small quantities but unpleasant, as in rotten eggs, when overabundant.”

An independent publication created to document, analyze and support improvement efforts in Cleveland’s public schools. This issue, CATALYST takes a look at high-stakes testing and what it means for urban districts like Cleveland. Included are updates on district test scores and changes in state testing policy.

This article is on Arts & Letters Daily:

“Postmodernists - the very word is like a knell. According to popular fears, they scoff at everything we hold dear, replacing truth, reason, objectivity, knowledge, and scientific method with fashion, rhetoric, power, subjectivity and relativism - thereby summoning our history and politics, literature and art, indeed western civilisation itself, to its doom.”

“According to these fears, almost all the humanities have answered the diabolical call. And currently leading the danse macabre, in the steps of Nietzsche and Foucault, Lyotard and Derrida, capers the cloven-hooved and triple-horned figure of Richard Rorty.”

“Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.”

abbasso
1222 prospect ave, east of e9th st, cleveland
(below bottoms up)

::TRUE:: keeps the underground alive on Fridays with the quality, cheese-free dance music that you crave. Residents Deviant and Darbe bring you the latest in deep progressive house and tech-house. This week, Deviant returns from the Winter Music Conference to lay down some fresh wax. The illmatic Chris Eberhart, one of our personal faves, is sure to shock and awe you, while Thomar opens up the evening after returning from some commendable partying at the WMC.

After months of stasis, I pulled the trigger on the new website for NCS DataCom. I’ve still got a few things to do, but overall I’m pleased.

I’ve been voting on where to have a meetup ever since I started my blog. There aren’t enough people voting on where to have them. If you blog in Northeast Ohio, please vote. I’d like to get together with you one of these days.

I’m deeply indebted to Anne for sharing this awesome resource.

Profile Summary for the Enneagram Type Five

Healthy: Observe everything with extraordinary perceptiveness and insight. Most mentally alert, curious, searching intelligence: nothing escapes their notice. Foresight and prediction. Able to concentrate: become engrossed in what has caught their attention. / Attain skillful mastery of whatever interests them. Excited by knowledge: often become expert in some field. Innovative and inventive, producing extremely valuable, original works. Highly independent, idiosyncratic, and whimsical. At Their Best: Become visionaries, broadly comprehending the world while penetrating it profoundly. Open-minded, take things in whole, in their true context. Make pioneering discoveries and find entirely new ways of doing and perceiving thing.

What is the Enneagram?

Don Riso has defined the Enneagram as “a geometric figure that delineates the nine basic personality types of human nature and their complex interrelationships.” While the Enneagram suggests that there are nine basic personality types of human nature, there are, of course, many subtypes and variations within the nine fundamental categories. Nevertheless, the assertion of Enneagram theory is that these nine adequately map out the territory of “personality types.”

Take a free Enneagram Test

Steve Czarnecki is the CEO for the Enterprise Group of Jackson, Michigan. Enterprise Group is the umbrella organization for economic development there. They’re trying to “figure out how to lure artists to Jackson”. Once they do that “it will be easier to lure desirable high-tech business and their employees to the community”.

Steve says, “I think we have to increase our Bohemian Index a little bit here to attract those kind of people.” Artists have a track record for moving into old warehouse and industrial areas where rents are low, fixing it up, and making a community hip and attractive. The rub is they often then get priced out of the market.

For artists like Kay Howard and Phil Chiban, affordable housing is one attraction of the project. They support themselves on his pension payments and her pottery sales. But there’s another reason they’re interested. The couple is drawn to the idea of living with other working artists. “You get kind of solitary as an artist and you really need that contact and comradery and so forth, so the idea of living in a community-type setting with other artists is very exciting.” She’s also excited about the prospect of being part of a project that recycles an abandoned building and one that could bring excitement to a downtown in need of new life.

What do you suppose Cleveland’s “Bohemian Index” is?

Something else heard on WCPN. Go online and choose which Convention Center you like. Too bad there isn’t a “Don’t waste the money on a Convention Center” option.

“Representative Steve LaTourette is outraged that the Defense Department is using a German-made sealer to coat the walls of the Pentagon during the building’s restoration instead of a cheaper version made in his hometown.”

You go, Steve.

Last night I had the distinct pleasure of hanging out with Sage, Rocky, and Michelle of SageRock. I have to thank them for allowing me to regale them with stories of coffee growing, coffee roasting, coffee brewing, and coffee consuming. In turn, they shared their stories with me. I received Rocky’s permission to quote her on my blog. I noticed that she was reading a book about Existentialism and when I asked her, she commented “Nietzsche is fun to read”. That’s the first time I’ve ever heard those two words used in the same sentence. As I walked in, the strains of a Cello greeted me. I asked Sage about it. It was a new CD by his high school friend Zuill Bailey. With cool friends like these, I may have to spend a lot more time down in Akron.

I heard this on WCPN this morning.

“Steve McGreevy is a sound recordist based in California. With the help of a special antennae and radio receiver, he listens to what’s called chorus: the very low frequency electromagnetic waves which are created when charged particles from the sun reach the Earth’s magnetic field.”

“What’s happened is the sun has burped out a solar flare or what they call a coronal mass ejection. This energy travels several hundred kilometers per second and so eventually, within about twenty four hours or less, it impacts the Earth’s magnetic field and causes it to pulsate. Imagine a bubble floating with wind currents pushing against it. You can see it deform. Well that’s essentially what happens with Earth’s magnetic field.”

“Once this energy from the sun collides with the Earth, it disturbs the Earth’s magnetic field, generating the electromagnetic radio waves that we’ve been listening to.”

This would make a great background for electronic ambient music.

Peter Babula of Blue Robot linked me to this:

“Researchers from Humboldt University found a way to build self-assembling networks. By emulating the behavior of ants and insects the team, which is led by Frank Schweitzer, demonstrated a simulation where agent-based architecture was able to quickly assemble itself into a network and quickly react to a broken link or damages.