Friday, July 01, 2005

N&R posts the full letter from Linder to City Council. It is a pretty remarkable document. 7:36:24 PM   permalink   comment []

Blogs as a Tool for Teaching, an article from the Chronicle of Higher Education by Steve Krause, a college prof who has experimented with blogs in the classroom: "I think even the failures were interesting." 4:00:46 PM   permalink   comment []

Brooke Shields takes on Tom Cruise on the NYT op-ed page: "I'm going to take a wild guess and say that Mr. Cruise has never suffered from postpartum depression." 9:09:59 AM   permalink   comment []

Brian Russell is one of the bloggers to score press credentials and a backstage pass to Live 8 in Philadelphia...Philly Future has a Live 8 blog with lots of info, and is sending a credentialed blogger, too. 8:12:51 AM   permalink   comment []

Sandy Carmany says Don Linder is still hoping for the City to help out with his Wal-Mart deal. She posts excerpts from a fax sent by Linder, in which he says he has borrowed money for the project with the understanding that the City would chip in with infrastructure credits or "other funds." According to Carmany, the fax from Linder reads, "several Council members had expressed their interest in facilitating this development through other means such as infrastructure credits...After that public support was stated, I received a loan commitment from my bank...there is a contingent covenant specifically stating that, in order to proceed with this financing proposal, within 60 days the bank requires written confirmation that infrastructure credits or other funds in 'an amount acceptable' to them will be provided by the City." In the comments to her own post, Carmany says, "I am not AWARE of any 'infrastructure credits' commitments by council members and have not been asked if I would support such a thing (until this fax arrived)." Carmany on Linder: "I question his business operations, creating his own financial difficulties and crises by making unsecured commitments, THEN seeking the money to rescue the situation." UPDATE: Carmany and other Council members are briefed by Deputy City Manager Mitchell Johnson about certain expenses that the City might take care of: "Mitchell said they communicated to Dr. Linder that these were only identified POSSIBILITIES, but that city staff made NO commitments, pending City Council approval." This is a new era of transparency into City affairs. 8:01:47 AM   permalink   comment []