This is a sweet short film, part of the portable film festival, which on name alone, is a wonderful concept. The portable film festival is just like any film festival except that its completely online designed to be distributed via portables — iPods, mobile phones and laptops. Which means that the Dick Tracy TV watch is about here, and how cool is that? To really get the impact of that last bit, think of how hard its been to get a movie out to be seen by the public.

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Better buy those “forever” stamps now, because first class postage is going up by a penny in May. First class stamps will be 42 cents. You can still buy the forever stamps at 41 cents until May, and save a penny. More details on the other tweaks to the rates are at the USPS.gov site.

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Practically everyone understands that Connecticut needs property tax reform. The single biggest expenditure of local municipalities is education. So naturally you’d think there’s some support for state run education. Think again. There’s an interesting article in The Atlantic, which I’ll excerpt a bit of below, but first a quote:

“In the first place, God made idiots,” Mark Twain once wrote. “This was for practice. Then He made School Boards.”

You can guess why I grew very fond, very fast of this article. Of course what is being advocated here is the idea of a national educational program. Sort of along the lines of the anti-thesis for conservative dogma since the days of the Reagan revolution which sought to dismantle the federal Department of Education.

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Sorry for the late notice, but today at the Police Department Community Room there’s an open house between 2-6 PM with representatives on hand form Norwalk Redevelopment and VHB a brownfields consultancy. At 6 PM they will be making a formal presentation and from 6:30 - 8 PM they have a charette.

If you are interesting in what RDA is doing about cleaning up pollution and reducing blight in the guise of economic activity and creating a vibrant community, this forum is for you. Norwalk’s current brownfields will be identified and panelists from the EPA, DT DEP and DECD will be on hand to talk about the environmental and economic impacts.

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Who knew that the state legislature passed a minimum staffing level recommendation 10 years ago? Governor Rell has asked that over the next 5 years 100 state troopers be hired. The current staffing is 1220 troopers. The 10 year old minimum staffing level is 1248. The usual political flunkies weigh in:

Gov. M. Jodi Rell’s call for 100 new troopers over the next five years to crack down on unsafe drivers has renewed debate about how to reach the elusive goal of full state police staffing.

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With the state legislature back in session, the leader of the fightin’ 44, Larry Cafero submitted legislation requesting funding foe a DEP hydrology management plan for the Five Mile River watershed. From The Hour:

State Rep. Lawrence Cafero, R-142, House minority leader, submitted legislation last week for a $200,000 management plan for the river. The state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) told Cafero the study would cost between $150,000 and $200,000.

“When I met with the DEP and the neighbors, the big thing was that we’ve got to have a master plan, for lack of a better term, as to how we’re going to handle this,” Cafero said.

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