22 Boom – Fast Times Special – Episode 32
Mar 9th
22 Boom’s Fast Times Special has lots in store. First up it’s World News with Heather Loser who reports about Internet Media, then we learn about Mardi Gras, Ash Wednesday and Lent, also How to Celebrate St. Patricks Day, Baking with Scott Irish Soda Bread, Frozen Dead Guy Daze in Nederland and we wrap the show up with Video Blogs Hotshots Movie Review of Cedar Rapids and Jann Scott Live Cats and Oil.
Videos in this Episode
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22 Boom Intro -
World News 1 – Internet Media -
Mardi Gras and Carnival -
Ash Wednesday and Lent -
events/stpatricksdayhowto -
Baking with Scott – St. Patrick’s and Easter Breads -
Frozen Dead Guy Daze -
Hotshots Movie Review – Cedar Rapids -
Jann Scott Live – Cats and Oil -
Outro
City of Boulder Named IBM Smarter Cities Challenge Grant Recipient
Mar 9th
City of Boulder today announced that IBM has selected the city to receive an IBM Smarter Cities Challenge grant.
The grant provides Boulder and 23 other cities worldwide with access to IBM’s top experts to analyze and recommend ways Boulder can become an even better place in which to live, work and play. The approximate value of each Smarter Cities Challenge grant is equivalent to as much as $400,000.
The IBM Smarter Cities Challenge is a competitive grant program in which IBM is awarding a total of $50 million worth of technology and services to 100 municipalities worldwide over the next three years. Teams of specially selected IBM experts will provide city leaders with analysis and recommendations to support successful growth, better delivery of municipal services, more citizen engagement, and improved efficiency.
In its application for the IBM Smarter Cities Challenge, Boulder identified three potential projects to work with an IBM expert team. The projects focused on developing new technology applications to support community action in key areas: community engagement, sustainability indicators, and smart grid-enabled energy management. The project selected by IBM focuses on the smart grid, as Boulder is the home of the nation’s first fully integrated smart grid. The City of Boulder will explore the project scope and details with IBM over the next few weeks, as well as with Xcel Energy, which owns and operates the project, known as SmartGridCity™. IBM will help the city explore the potential for consumer-facing devices to help residents and businesses become more savvy energy managers, and increasing the potential for distributed renewable energy generation in the city.
“Over 46,000 homes and businesses have been enabled with communications technology that supports a smart grid platform,” said City Manager Jane Brautigam. “Energy management tools in the hands of our residents could be an integral part of optimizing smart grid technology for Boulder and other cities throughout the nation.”
IBM selected cities that made the strongest case for participating in the Smarter Cities Challenge. During these engagements, IBM technical experts, researchers and consultants immerse themselves in local issues and offer a range of options and recommended next steps. Among the issues they examine are healthcare, education, safety, social services, transportation, communications, sustainability, budget management, energy, and utilities.
“We selected the City of Boulder because of its commitment to the use of data to make better decisions, and for its desire to explore and act on smarter solutions to their most pressing concerns,” said Pete Lorenzen, IBM Boulder Senior Location Executive. “The cities we picked are eager to implement programs that tangibly improve the quality of life in their areas, and to create roadmaps for other cities to follow. The stakes have never been greater but we’re excited at the prospect of helping cities tackle the most pressing challenges of our time.”
Smarter Cities Challenge draws upon IBM’s intrinsic technological savvy, but also upon the field experience accumulated by IBM over the last three years from the company’s ongoing pro bono Corporate Service Corps grant program. Corporate Service Corps has deployed 100 teams of 1,000 top IBM employees from around the world with skills in technology, scientific research, marketing, finance, and business development. They work with local government, non profit civic groups, and small business to develop blueprints that intersect business, technology, and society.
Here are the 24 cities that earned IBM Smarter Cities Challenge grants in 2011:
Antofagasta, Chile
Boulder, CO
Bucharest, Romania
Chengdu, China
Chiang Mai, Thailand
Delhi, India
Edmonton, Canada
Eindhoven, Netherlands
Glasgow, UK
Guadalajara, Mexico
Helsinki, Finland
Jakarta, Indonesia
Milwaukee, WI
New Orleans, LA
Newark, NJ
Nice, France
Philadelphia, PA
Providence, RI
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Sapporo, Japan
St. Louis, MO
Syracuse, NY
Townsville, Australia
Tshwane-Pretoria, South Africa
NPR, PBS on chopping block backed by Boulder City Council
Mar 8th
Republican congress is after public broadcasting again. Though you might think the Boulder City Government would want pulic broadcasting, they voted against it repeated over the past 10 years. Your local channel 54 was shut down in 2007 by Shaun McGrath, Macon Cowles, and that bunch.
According to Cowles ” I have no interest in ever having public broadcasting back in Boulder.” That gang at city hall then took all of our dedicated funds to public broadcasting , stole it, miss-used it and put in censorship everywhere.
Tell Congress: Don’t pull the plug on NPR and PBS!
We’re only a few weeks into the 112th Congress, and Republicans are already attempting to pull the plug on public media.
In a budget proposal made public last week, House Republicans announced plans to zero out all funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the nonprofit responsible for funding public media including NPR, PBS, Pacifica and more.
If the Republicans are successful, it would be a tremendous blow to the entire public interest media sector.
We cannot allow Republicans to destroy public media.
Tell Congress: Fully fund NPR and defend public service media!
Republicans are disingenuously claiming that they need to cut funding for public media because of budgetary constraints. But what they fail to highlight is that national public broadcasting is remarkably cost effective, providing local news and information, free of charge, for millions of viewers while only receiving about .0001% of the federal budget.1
More to the point, it’s nearly impossible to put a price tag on the actual value of public broadcasting.
Public media is one of the last bulwarks against the corporate media, where the combination of consolidation and profit motive has long since shifted the focus to infotainment rather than substantive news. In many rural and less affluent communities, broadcasters rely on federal funding to provide the only available high-quality news and public affairs programming.
Without public media, corporate media monopolies would increase their already large control of what we see on television, hear on the radio or read in the newspaper.
This outcome should deeply worry all of us. The increased accumulation and consolidation of corporate power is a threat to our democracy. And nowhere is this more evident than in our media.
At a time when media consolidation is shrinking the number of perspectives we have access to over the airwaves and when newsrooms are shrinking, we need more diversity in our media not less. And we simply cannot afford to lose what public media brings to the table.
Tell Congress: Fully fund NPR and defend public service media!
Conservatives have longed for any opportunity to defund NPR, PBS and other public media. And with Speaker Boehner wielding the gavel, it looks like they may finally get their wish.
Don’t let Congress pull the plug on NPR and PBS! Tell them reject cuts to public broadcasting.
