After watching the live television broadcast of the April 19, 2016, Coeur d’Alene City Council meeting, OpenCdA is cautiously hopeful that maybe Coeur d’Alene’s city government has turned the corner and veered away from  looking for ways to steer lucrative municipal contracts to cronies and benefactors.

What we saw at Tuesday night’s meeting was the most encouraging sign we’ve seen in the last 15 years or so.   We saw the Council actually follow state law.  Some did it begrudgingly, but they did it nonetheless. (more…)

OpenCdA has long suspected that the Coeur d’Alene Press skews paper’s publisher and editor are little more than parrots.   A parrot is a pet bird that can be taught to appear to speak by mimicking its owner’s or handler’s voice.

We saw pretty conclusive evidence confirming our suspicion in the April 18, 2016, Press “news” article headlined Democrats:  Don’t support Kunishiga [sic] for sheriff.  Coeur d’Alene resident Tina Kunishige is a Democrat candidate for Kootenai County Sheriff in the November 2016 election.

Read the linked Press article closely.  Including the headline, candidate Kunishige’s surname  has been misspelled five times.  Not once in the article was it spelled correctly.

Now read a letter to the editor attributed to Paula Neils, Chair, Kootenai County Democrats.  It’s in the April 20, 2016, Press.  It is headlined SHERIFF:  Non-support for Kunishiga [sic].   Including the letter’s headline, candidate Kunishige’s surname was misspelled four times.  Not once in the letter was it spelled correctly.

Looking beyond the misspellings, compare the words and sentence structure in both the “news” article and the letter to the editor.

Neils speaks — Patrick parrots.

There ought to be at least one copy of this book in every high school library and public library in the United States.

Through diligent and thorough research, masterful storytelling, and skillful writing, author Dr. Nathalia Holt introduces readers to the women who did the math behind the United States’ missile and space programs.   They were  computers.

“Before Apple, before IBM, and before our modern definition of a central processing unit partnered with memory, the word computer referred simply to a person who computes.  Using only paper, a pencil, and their minds, these computers tackeled complex mathematical equations.” (p. 13)

Rise of the Rocket Girls is the personal and professional stories of women who were  computers at the Army’s Air Corps Jet Propulsion Research Project in Pasadena, California.  It was the beginning of what would become the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).   Some of the women were there from the early 1940’s during the days preceding 1958 when the Army handed over control of JPL to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

We suspect many readers will recognize the names Theodore von Kármán and Wernher von Braun and easily associate them with early US rocket science.  Fewer will recognize Barby Canright, Macie Roberts, and Barbara (Lewis) Paulson.  Yet had it not been for these Rocket Girls and the others including Janez Lawson, Helen (Yee Chow) Ling, Susan Finley, and Sylvia (Lundy) Miller, the US might not have put men on the moon and brought them home safely.  We might never have had Pathfinder that put the rovers Sojourner, Spirit, Opportunity, and Curiosity on Mars.

But why should Dr. Holt’s book be in every high school library in the United States?  Because Dr. Holt includes not just the historical information about the Rocket Girls.  She includes enough science and the discussion of the importance and relevance of math and science to also remind us of the importance the first Rocket Girls’ work done with “only paper, a pencil, and their minds” at JPL.

Those of us who struggle balancing our personal checkbooks can barely fathom the complexity and number of the Rocket Girls’ calculations needed to deliver a rocket to a planet millions of miles away, then place scientific instruments exactly where they need to be on that planet, then position a massive earth antenna to receive the data sent back from the low-power telemetry equipment.

When the first room-filling electronic computers found their way into JPL, it was the Rocket Girls’ knowledge of mathematics and the mission that enabled them to make the smooth transition from paper and pencil to FORTRAN.

This book is very readable.  It tells the story of the Rocket Girls, the women doing the math behind the US’s missile and rocketry development programs.   It talks of the CalTech Suicide Squad and the lovely and talented contestants for the Miss Guided Missile award.  It is inspiring.

Saturday morning’s Coeur d’Alene Press skews paper article by staff writer Devin Heilman was aptly headlined Sanitation service showdown.

At its regularly scheduled meeting on Tuesday, April 19 at 6 p.m., the Coeur d’Alene City Council is scheduled to consider Resolution 16-020 awarding a ten-year contract with two three-year option extensions to Northern State PAK, LLC, d/b/a Coeur d’Alene Garbage Service.  This is an extremely lucrative contract (several million dollars) with a guaranteed ten-year revenue stream.

OpenCdA thinks the public needs to pay very close attention to this agenda item at Tuesday night’s meeting.  (more…)

The Wednesday, April 6, 2016, Coeur d’Alene Press skews paper online published an article (likely based on a press release from the Community Library Network) headlined Library Network talks planned.

OpenCdA urges Kootenai County taxpayers whose Kootenai County Tax Statement includes Taxing Districts identified as 271 – Com Lib Net J and 272 – CLN Bond J to pay close attention to the content of today’s skews paper article.  We will also want to follow the plans and progress of the Community Library Network library expansion.

To help readers better understand how libraries are changing and why modern and progressive ones like the Community Library Network are even more relevant today, we urge you to read Biblio Tech – Why Libraries Matter More Than Ever in the Age of Google.  (Mouse-click on the book cover’s image to enlarge it.)  It was published in 2015 and is available from the Community Library Network.

Biblio Tech would be a good book to read before attending any of the meetings listed in today’s Press article.

OpenCdA’s post on Saturday, April 2, 2016, titled Change in CdA Council Meeting Time? pointed out that the online agenda announing the Tuesday Coeur d’Alene City Council meeting contained a serious but easily correctable defect.  The agenda would, if executed as published, result in a violation of the Idaho Open Meetings Law.  The violation was not created by the meeting time change; it was created by the order of business as announced in the agenda.  The violation and lawful correction for the violation was explained in the post.

Today at about 5:59 AM, we went to the Coeur d’Alene City website and once again looked at the online Council meeting agenda.  It had been changed, perhaps in response to our post, but the change did not correct the original error.   Here is the new agenda as it appeared this morning.

The Idaho Open Meetings Law is clear about how public meetings must be announced and conducted.  It is equally clear about when and how Executive Sessions are authorized and what business may and may not be conducted in them. (more…)