Blog Improvement Notice! - No, I'm not getting someone else to write the blog for me. I'm discontinuing the ability to post anonymously. That doesn't mean posts will be identifiable, only that to post a comment one will have to complete a short registration process, using a name or pseudonym.

My hope is that having to identify ourselves, even if it's with a pseudonym, will make us less inclined to carry on our conversations by calling each other names. (Read the posts, you know who you are.) If some don't understand, I'll give a couple of examples of what we're going for here:

Example 1) "I don't agree with that opinion, perhaps you were unaware of certain facts that I am privy to such as......" GOOD!

Example 2) "I don't agree with that opinion, perhaps you were unaware of certain facts that I am privy to you Clueless Moron!!" NOT GOOD!

It really is pretty simple, no? Have a great weekend, Sarasota.

Moving People Downtown - With the fears that have been expressed that downtown densities will bring more traffic congestion, it's a good time to talk about alternative ways to move people around downtown without their cars. Out there in the world there are a lot of really interesting alternatives; electric shuttles, racks of free bicycles (pick it up from a rack where you are, leave it on a rack where you're going,) moving sidewalks, all sorts of mini-trains or trolleys, and more traditional methods as well. How about an overhead gondola running from Hollywood 20, to Five Points, to Marina Jacks, out to St. Armand's Circle, and back. I know, it sounds crazy. But at one time powered flight sounded crazy too.

So - what are your ideas, or what have you seen out there in the rest of the world that you think might work in Sarasota? And for this stage of the game, lets leave out the part where we pick apart the ideas and find all of the reasons why they would never work - let's just focus on the possibilities. What do you think, no matter how crazy it might seem to us now?