Yes, today is Flag Day. Do you know how yours is hanging?
It’s also a day where there’s a few things worth commenting upon in the news:
- Los Angeles Times Up For Sale? It’s a possibility, the Times is reporting. Evidently, there’s a rift between the Chandler estate and Tribune, the current owners. Billionaire investor Ron Burkle, former Olympics organizer and Major League Baseball Commissioner Peter Ueberroth and philanthropist Eli Broad have indicated in recent interviews or in comments to others that they would like to buy The Times or see it in local hands. In some ways, I think leaving Tribune would be a good thing: perhaps then the Times would realize its role as a local paper.
- If You Build Them, Will They Come?. The Los Angeles Times is also reporting that enrollment in city schools will continue to drop by thousands of students next year, Los Angeles education officials said Tuesday, and the decline is expected to cost the Los Angeles Unified School District tens of millions of dollars in state funding. According to Romer’s proposed budget, about 20,000 fewer students will attend classes next year at the roughly 690 traditional campuses that dot the sprawling district, dropping enrollment to about 678,000. The loss would mark the fourth consecutive year the district has lost students. Last fall, district officials were caught off guard by a decline of 20,258 students for the current school year, which far exceeded their projections. Of course, this comes at a time where the results of a construction program are coming to fruition, and lots of new schools will be opening over the summer. One wonders if we will see a repeat of the 1980s, when lots of schools were shuttered because of enrollment drops; said schools having been built to accomodate the baby boom generation.
One interesting point related to this: The number of students attending scores of independently run charter schools in the district, meanwhile, is expected to rise by about 5,000, bringing the district’s overall head count to about 712,000 children. Could this be because charter schools, with their local control and more involvement, do a better job of education than a bloated bureaucracy? Ya think? The only thing for which a large central district is good is bulk purchasing of supplies.
- Those Who Don’t Want To Complete Should Stick Their Heads in the Ground. Actually, that won’t work, as they might find a freeway. According to the Los Angeles Times, the MTA unveiled three possible routes for twin 4 1/2 -mile tunnels that would connect the Foothill Freeway in Pasadena with the Long Beach Freeway in Alhambra (and complete I-710). A preliminary study found that building an underground freeway with four lanes in each direction is physically, environmentally and financially feasible. The next step is bolstering community support and securing the $3 billion needed to build what the study calls “one of the biggest and longest highway tunnels in the Western Hemisphere.” Advances in tunneling technology have allowed transit officials to explore the tunnel alternative in an attempt to finish the 6.2-mile gap in the 710 Freeway between Alhambra and Pasadena. The same technology has been used to build tunnels along Metro’s Red Line and is currently in use along the Gold Line Eastside extension. Transit officials said the machine can dig 100 feet under the surface without disrupting neighbors.
- Unix was a Trademark of Bell Laboratories. Unix, as us old-timers knew it, really doesn’t exist anymore. Soon, neither will Bell Laboratories. No, not the corporate entity. That died years ago. Rather, the New York Times is reporting that the Holmdale NJ building that housed Bell Labs is about to be sold to a developer and torn down. The vaunted Bell Labs, whose scientists invented the laser and developed fiber optic and satellite communications, touch-tone dialing and cellphones, modems and microwaves, was housed in the glass building, set far off the road. The soaring lobby is surrounded on three sides by stacks of windowless concrete-walled cubicles. The perimeter provides displays of technological breakthroughs like a 1929 movie camera or an early office switchboard straight out of “Bells Are Ringing.” At one time, Lucent (the successor to Bell Labs) employed 5,600 people in Holmdel. The company plans to move the approximately 1,000 who remain to offices in Murray Hill and Whippany by the summer of 2007.
