Category: whatever

Can the City Speed Up the Building Permitting Process?

One of Keith Amemiya’s stated goals is to speed up the building permitting process. Like others, Amemiya seems to believe that this is a crucial part of addressing the homeless and affordable housing issue. I’ve never heard him really delve deeper into the reasons for this, but the cost of housing and homelessness seems to stem largely from a supply problem. Currently, I believe we’re far from reaching the projected housing needs as well, and the slow permitting process for building is often cited as a big reason for this.

But the city make the permitting process more efficient, or has it reached a ceiling on efficiency? Based on your experience in government, do you think this is feasible? Consider processes in your own work place, particularly the processes that seem slow. Do you think there are viable solutions to make it faster?

Earlier in my career, I felt there were many services or processes that could have been made more efficient. For example, with regard to repairs, a process that would often be inefficient, I felt like if you could get each person in the chain to complete a repair to sit down in a room, you could identify where the process bogged down, and probably find ways to remove or reduce the problem. While I think this is still true, to some extent, I now wonder if the main issue is motivation, or lack thereof. That is. the main problem might be the desire make the process run efficiency. If one person in the process is not motivated to do this, that can slow the entire process down. For example, generally, I would say a request for a repair ends up the desk (or inbox) of someone in that chain. The person may not be motivated to act on the request and push it to the next step. (The person also might be extremely busy as well.)

If motivation is the issue, can the Mayor find a way to address this? I think it might be possible, but I’m less optimistic. I’ll try to share some possible ways of motivating workers, but I’d like to hear from you guys about this topic

Could Tower Records Resurrect Itself Today?

I’m sure exactly when the coining of “third places” occurred, but I do believe it’s real–the idea that people have a need for a cozy, appealing space where they can be next to people they don’t necessarily know or interact with. After college, Tower Records was definitely such a place for me, and watching this reminded me of this.

Based on what I gather from the film, Tower Records did not need to go out of business. For one thing, if they had made a transition to online music streaming, thinking they could still be here seems reasonable. On the other hand, I believe they filed bankruptcy in the mid-2000s, and this was before a lot of music streaming sites like itunes. Made going to a music streaming wasn’t viable at the time. But even if you put that aside, there are other, perhaps more critical reasons they went out of business…con’t.

NFL 2010s All-Decade Team

You can read about it here.

OFFENSE

QB Tom Brady*
QB Aaron Rodgers
RB Frank Gore
RB Marshawn Lynch
RB LeSean McCoy
RB Adrian Peterson*
WR Antonio Brown
WR Larry Fitzgerald
WR Calvin Johnson
WR Julio Jones
FLEX Darren Sproles
TE Rob Gronkowski
TE Travis Kelce
OT Jason Peters
OT Tyron Smith
OT Joe Staley
OT Joe Thomas*
OG Jahri Evans
OG Logan Mankins
OG Zack Martin
OG Marshal Yanda*
C Alex Mack
C Maurkice Pouncey

DEFENSE

DE Calais Campbell
DE Cameron Jordan
DE Julius Peppers
DE J.J. Watt*
DT Geno Atkins
DT Fletcher Cox
DT Aaron Donald*
DT Ndamukong Suh
LB Chandler Jones
LB Luke Kuechly
LB Khalil Mack
LB Von Miller*
LB Bobby Wagner
LB Patrick Willis
CB Patrick Peterson
CB Darrelle Revis
CB Richard Sherman
S Eric Berry
S Earl Thomas
S Eric Weddle
DB Chris Harris Jr.
DB Tyrann Mathieu

SPECIALISTS

P Johnny Hekker
P Shane Lechler
K Stephen Gostkowski
K Justin Tucker*
PR Tyreek Hill
PR Darren Sproles
KR Devin Hester
KR Cordarrelle Patterson

COACHES

Bill Belichick
Pete Carroll

Math Corner: Solving for One Variable

From the another thread:

Do you guys know if anyone has written down rules for solving equations with variables? Here’s what I’m getting at: When you solve an equation with a variable, the sequence of actions you will take to isolate a variable. It seems like the first action you choose can be crucial, too. For example, look at this equation:

7(2e−1)−11=6+6e

What should you do first? I saw this at Khan Academy, and they used the distributive property first–getting “rid of” the 7 outside of the parenthesis. That does seem like the best move, but I didn’t realize that initially. I think I might have tried to add 11 to both sides first. And then my instinct might have been to divide by 7 on both sides, but I think that would have been a mistake. In working on several of these type of problems prior to this one, one of the important early moves involved “getting rid of” the number being multiplied by an operation with a parenthesis. For example,

200 = 20(4c+2)

I guess you could use the distributive property first, too.

In any event, I’m trying to find a list of rules or principles that will guide a student on the sequence of operations they should choose. What should be the first step, and then the second, third, etc. I did a quick search for something like this, but didn’t see anything.