Peanut Butter Knife

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

Odds & Ends

I'm trying to avoid doing too many of these sort of "round up" posts, but sometimes they work best, so here we go:

--Prime Minister Thaksin is going to step down in Thailand. I blogged about his tenure as a "CEO Prime Minister" in this post. Though he won last week's election, over 10 million people turned out to cast an "abstention" vote. I wonder how a "none of the above" scenario would play out in this country?

--Tribune columnist Jon Hilkevitch ponders what life in Chicago would be like if the Crosstown Expressway had been realized. Current plans for a combination of a rail/truck bypass sound much more sensible than the original plan for an 8-lane freeway that would have dramatically changed many of Chicago's interesting west-side neighborhoods.

--On that tip, I'm getting more and more interested in city planning, especially with regards to rapid transit systems. Could there be some sort of future in this for me? What kind of background do I need: public policy? urban planning? engineering? If anyone has insights, let me know. I am starting to feel trapped in what I do. I fulfilled one dream by going to Chicago to work at a record label, might I realize another by returning to work for the CTA?

--Thanks to UCLA for beating LSU. That was all I needed to ensure a win in my office NCAA pool. I've already spent the winnings on a digital camera, and I'm up and running on Flickr, so check it out. I'll be incorporating more photography in this blog as I go along.

--Finally, hopefully the long promised 7 Blunders post and some mp3 posts will finally materialize themselves this week. I probably shouldn't promise these things in such a public space, then the pressure is on!

3 Comments:

  • At 11:00 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    some mp3 posts will finally materialize themselves this week. I probably shouldn't promise these things in such a public space, then the pressure is on!

    Yes, the pressure is on. Or maybe not. But I really want to get a sense of that Donald Byrd album you mentioned. Hope you have that one queued up.

    Good blog. Skimming backwards, I especially liked your post on Chicago architecture and its ghosts. (In addition to the music posts, of course.)

    kj

     
  • At 9:30 AM, Blogger 54cermak said…

    Thanks KJ,

    I'll try and post something from the Blackbyrds first.

    Glad you liked the Chicago architecture post. I'm often very critical of my own writing, but I was proud of that piece.

     
  • At 1:27 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Well, the School of Public Policy at George Mason has a Transportation Policy, Operations, and Logistics masters degree. The Ph.D program has a Regional Development and Transportation track. A lot of folks here study just the stuff you're talking about.

    However, we don't have an undergraduate program. Some other schools of Public Policy do.

     

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