The same day I finally get my left ear all unplugged and can once again hear, 87.7 FM plugs back in and is on the air after a too long absence. There are no accidents in life.

The Daily Olympian now has a daily(?) Podcast. . . ? . . . ¿ . . .

Hopefully they'll figure out an RSS feed is necessary for ease of subscription. Their other audio feed, doesn't seem to include this latest content.

Cosmo

Blogged with Flock

I have taken upon myself to once again enlighten the community about those things which...well, really don't mean a darn thing. ...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnJAozfBq7w

The bus shelter at Harrison & Division on the west side of Oly has returned, improved. The sight of the brand new beautiful bus shelter stopped me in my tracks today, I had to do lots of blinking and exclaiming out loud. Where once was a forlorn bombed out appearing slab of cement is now a nifty green and glass shelter.

Yes, People have Power. Thank you everyone.

Ride that Bus

Update Olympian 10/18

So I'm not such a big fan of the standard U.S. school curriculum's foreign language requirements (too little too late) so I speak to my daughter with my limited yet serviceable French and my partner and I have been learning sign language with her, but it struck me that this would be a potentially community valuable thing to cooperate on.  Are there any OlyBlogger parents out there who would be interested in meeting up once or twice or three times a week with kid(s) in tow to speak and interact with them using other-than-English language(s)?

MSN Real Estate

We asked Bert Sperling of Sperling's Best Places fame to help compile a list of places where homes are relatively cheap, the cost of living is affordable and the local economy is going strong.

Economies are important, since robust ones typically mean plenty of opportunities and growing incomes. Strong economies also tend to lead to better quality of life, Sperling said, by lowering crime and divorce rates, along with other ills.

But we were looking for something else -- that spark, that liveliness, that extra something that makes a city, however big or small, an interesting place to be. Because let's face it, there's still plenty of cheap real estate out there; the problem is that it's in places few people would want to live.

Our chosen cities range in size from the pretty small (Prescott, Ariz.) to the almost-big (Austin, Texas); no huge metropolis made the cut. All eight have a university presence, and three of the eight are also state capitals. Government and university jobs can help provide economic stability in good times and bad, while the college presence almost always enlivens a town.

"A college or university can boost any town from good to great," said Sperling, co-author of "Best Places to Raise Your Family: The Top 100 Affordable Communities in the U.S." "There's the vibrancy of the college scene, arts and lecture series, concerts (both touring and student-produced), guest professors, literary events, classes to audit, and not least, college sports, which some prefer to pro sports."

All our choices also have their drawbacks, just like anyplace else. What they have going for them, though, makes them worth checking out.

[...]

Olympia, Wash.

How Olympia compares

	Olympia	U.S. average
Population	43,982
Median home price	$236,600	$217,900
Median household income	$42,526	$44,684
Cost-of-living index	107.8	100
Unemployment	5%	5%
Future job growth	26.60%	9.06%

 

Like Austin and Boise, Olympia benefits from the economic pillars of government and higher education. In Olympia's case, the higher education comes from Evergreen State College, a small, progressive liberal-arts institution with no grades, no tests and no tenured faculty. Evergreen's funky vibe contrasts interestingly with the more conservative tenor of the rest of the city.

Olympia's also ideally situated for those who like the outdoors. The city itself is located on an inlet of Puget Sound and is a couple of hours, or less, from the ocean and the mountains.

Watch out for: The rain. Olympia is wetter than notoriously soggy Seattle, with more rainy days (163) and more rainfall (53.5 inches).

[Hat tip to Jade at WTTN]

This excerpt is from an article by Joshua Holland, available at alternet.org. link to follow...

...

Both independent analysts and officials within Iraq's Oil Ministry anticipate that when all is said and done, the big winners in Iraq will be the Big Four -- the American firms Exxon-Mobile and Chevron, the British BP-Amoco and Royal Dutch-Shell -- that dominate the world oil market. Ibrahim Mohammed, an industry consultant with close contacts in the Iraqi Oil Ministry, told the Associated Press that there's a universal belief among ministry staff that the major U.S. companies will win the lion's share of contracts. "The feeling is that the new government is going to be influenced by the United States," he said.

During the 12-year sanction period, the Big Four were forced to sit on the sidelines while the government of Saddam Hussein cut deals with the Chinese, French, Russians and others (despite the sanctions, the United States ultimately received 37 percent of Iraq's oil during that period, according to the independent committee that investigated the oil-for-food program, but almost all of it arrived through foreign firms). In a 1999 speech, Dick Cheney, then CEO of the oil services company Halliburton, told a London audience that the Middle East was where the West would find the additional 50 million barrels of oil per day that he predicted it would need by 2010, but, he lamented, "while even though companies are anxious for greater access there, progress continues to be slow."

Chafing at the idea that the Chinese and Russians might end up with what is arguably the world's greatest energy prize, industry leaders lobbied hard for regime change throughout the 1990s. With the election of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney in 2000 -- the first time in U.S. history that two veterans of the oil industry had ever occupied the nation's top two jobs -- they would finally get the "greater access" to the region's oil wealth, which they had long lusted after.