The Olympian reports that the NFZ will pass the city council next Tuesday. What does it mean to be a Nuclear Free Zone?

The city does business with 32 companies that make the components used in nuclear weapons, according to a list compiled by and borrowed from the city of Arcata, Calif. These companies supply cars and other major items to the city.

Under the ordinance, the city still would do business with companies that don't sign the affidavit if there isn't a reasonable alternative. But officials would announce the company's name at a public council meeting and write a letter asking the company to stop producing nuclear weapons or their components.

Officials would take the companies at their word when they sign the affidavit because they lack the staff and expertise to monitor whether companies are telling the truth. They'll depend on watchdog groups to raise those questions.

Seems like a reasonable request that the companies we give our money to don't build WMD.

This flash movie is an interesting information design project reportedly done as a senior project.

Reminds me of Charles Minard's antiwar statement in his Napoleans March to Moscow diagram.

The exception being that Tim didn't necessarily start out with an antiwar slant.

Here's the training schedule at the Thurston County Dispute Resolutioin Center for the rest of this year:

September 20 & 21: 16-Hour Facilitating Effective Meetings Training
October 3-5: 20-Hour Multi-Party Mediation Training*
October 20-22 & 27-29: 40-Hour Basic Mediation Training
November 17-19: 20-Hour Family Mediation Training*
December 3: Beyond Power; Process Work Contributions to Wisdom & Eldership in Times of Conflict
*Requires 40 hr. basic training.

Sign up now!

In order to inform the discussion about the people who are homeless in downtown Olympia, and with the help of several citizen-journalists, OlyBlog will be conducting a series of interviews that will be posted (in video) on this blog. Rather than conducting surveys of "the public" on how they feel about the homeless (a la The Olympian), why not go directly to the source and ask the people involved? We'd like to get your input about what questions we ask. What would you like to know about the folks that you see on the street in downtown Olympia?