All over town
All-day pass
Despite the fact that you generally have to buy them from The World's Worst Fare Machine, an RTA all-day pass is a very good thing.
With individual rides going for $2.25 or $2.50, you only need to make more than one round-trip to benefit from the $5 pass that's good on any bus or rapid all day.
I bought mine in the morning, used it to go to University Circle and back, knowing that later in the day I'd ride the bus home from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Research extravaganza
At the invitation of the Ingenuity Festival I visited the CWRU research fair, called ShowCASE. The CWRU field house was filled with hundreds of posters and booths where faculty showed off their work.
Not surprisingly, most of the work was related to health sciences or engineering, two areas where CWRU excels. A tiny handful were about design, and none of them were earth-shaking.
I did learn about Comic Life software, a way for students to easily create their own comic-like stories. The examples shown were from foreign language classes (German and Japanese) but I can see it being helpful in our Interactive Media and Media Design classes.
Crazies?
As I walked from the Rock Hall to Public Square later in the day I found myself literally in the middle of a local Tea Party protest near City Hall. I've seen the videos and read stories about Tea Party gatherings that were filled with hate and anger, but this didn't seem to be one.
The mostly older, mostly white crowd of several hundred calmly sat holding signs, talking, and listening to speakers. While I emphatically disagree with nearly everything they stand for, I didn't feel any hostility as I wandered through the rally, snapping an occasional picture.
The bogus Lenin quote about medicine was popular with the group. There were lots of signs about freedom and socialism, but thankfully none showing Obama as Hitler.
As I left the gathering I realized that with a 180-degree change in the politics, this didn't seem much different from a rally that I might attend. I don't think they represent a groundswell of opposition, although they do have the advantage of organizing around anger and opposition, much easier than rallying people to peace and love.
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