Andrew's (in Palo Alto, CA) Mini Cooper S

A friends tweaked Mini Cooper. a hot box indeed!

eyes

The EYES have it!

Ma and Pa

Here's a better picture of Ma and pa. Taken a week or two ago. Two of my favorite people!

Penny Lane- gone!

Penny Lane. Dead and gone. One of Boulders most unique coffee houses.. Around for decades. Home of poets and musicians. Hang out for the weird of Boulder.

There are a few communities in the country that attract 'interesting' people. Boulder is one of those towns. These folks tend to be creative and non traditional thinkers. Sometimes they look like your next door neighbor, sometimes they look like their homeless (and sometimes, they are) but they ARE interesting and unique people.

Penny Lane was one of the places that people like this in Boulder congregated. Go there for a cup of coffee and you were bound to run into an old friend, or a local university prof, an author of a book you'd just read or a musican in a band you might have seen at one of the local venues during the past weekend. It was a meeting place and a small community all onto itself.

And it's gone. The landlord didn't like the 'element' (people) that the place attracted. And that reflects back to what's happening to Boulder (and to many 'weird' places in the US): Gentrification. The rich. Average income of a Boulderite is $150K a year. Average age: 29.

Think about that.

Lot's of youth, lots of healthy people (Boulder has the lowest BMI/body fat index, per capita, in the USA), lots of money.

Oddly, that combination tends to push out the different, the unique and the slightly mad. What, you're not a marathon running, rich beautiful person?? Well then, get the hell out of town.

I've seen some bumper stickers around town lately that say "Keep Boulder Weird". Amen, but good luck. It's hard to fight the economics.

My Next Car? mmmm...aybe

Hmmmm... Funky micro van.. The Toyota xB. I wonder if I should trade in my gas hog Landcruiser for one of these fun rides. Let's see, Landcruiser: 12MPG, xB: 30MPG...yea...

People as interchangable knowledge components-NOT

I'm sitting here thinking about the power of Google (and related search engines) and it occurs to me that, if you're smart, and you know how to use the tools, you are AS smart as the smartest and most knowledgeable expert on the planet about almost any narrow subject you can imagine.

The global access to information that's exploded via the internet and tools like Google have made it possible. So, what's that mean to people? Well, what it does off the cuff is negate the need for consultants. Who needs em? ANY person within a company or institution that has any brains and can use the tools can be as knowledgeable on the data of a subject within hours as someone with a PhD in computer science or nanotechnology. It's the EDITORSHIP of that information that has value. If you've got context and knowledge in your mind that others don't have, knowledge that allows you to create connections between what appear to be disparate bits of unrelated data, you've created information.

Now, wrap your own experience in an industry, it's players, it's politics and it's marketplace all together, you've taken that information, and you've transformed it into knowledge. If you're able to effectively communicate it to others (or yourself) in a way that's understandable and actionable, well, you've just taken the leap to wisdom. Data->Information->Knowledge->Wisdom. Funny, I started this post out thinking that Google made everyone as effective as a high powered consultant or company executive and that people, even knowledge workers, where really just becoming cogs in a bigger mechanism.

As I write, I change my mind. The fear we American's have of outsourcing our 'information workers' to India or China is really not a threat. You can't take the big picture and shove it down the minds of programmers in Bangladesh. That set of knowledge is too broad and too tied to relationships and politics to transfer. And that set of knowledge, propertly combined into one or a few minds, is where the creative juice to make things happen, happens. So, fear not o smart folk of the world. You are not going to be outsourced anytime soon. You ARE going to have to use more of your mind and your skills, particularly the skill of communication. SGC

A compressed Neighborhood

Major high density building in Boulder ..must be the wave of the future.