Think Tank LA

Planning on going to Little Tokyo or Sawtelle or your neighborhood convenience store tonight?

Thinking of ordering Unagi?

Or Hamachi?

Consider, then, the "Ocean Friendly Sushi" guide produced by the Blue Ocean Institute, an advocacy org founded by MacArthur winner Carl Safina and author Mercedes Lee.

More

The exhibition, "Otto Neurath. Gypsy Urbanism," opens this Tuesday, November 3, at the MAK Center in West Hollywood. The show runs through the end of January, 2010.

From the particularly interesting press release:

More

A wise man asks, "Is there a game tonight?"

A wiser man replies, "There's always a game."

So, the day after the Clips at least held their road opener close, here's a quick starting five of baller-related tanks and theorists:

More

George Soros will give $5 million annually for the next ten years to the Institute of New Economic Thinking, a new think tank.

Joseph Stiglitz and Jeffrey Sachs are among the luminaries affiliated with the org.

More from the Financial Times is here.

More

Like many people around the web, our KCET.org colleague Ophelia Chang astutely followed the recent new media circus saga of Balloon Boy & His Reality Show Familiy.

Sixty years before Falcon Heene, thirty-eight years before Baby Jessica fell down a well, came the tragic Southern California story of Kathy Fiscus.

More

If original and independent research, statistical analysis, and position papers are among the hallmarks of think tanks, then the national pastime is lousy with 'em.

Let's start with Bill James, the sort of one-man-RAND of hardball wonks.

More

The Milken Institute's 2009 annual State of the State Conference is scheduled to take place Tuesday, October 20. This year's theme is, "California's Road to Recovery."

Outgoing LAPD chief William Bratton is listed as the keynote speaker. Politicos past and present including Gavin Newsom, Pete Wilson, and Gray David are among others on the bill.

For more information about State of the State, see the Milken site.

The Palm Center (motto: Blueprints for Sound Public Policy) at UCSB is all over the U.S. military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which has been much in the news this week.

Here’s a link to the free-of-charge .pdf download for “How To End ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’: A Roadmap of Political, Legal, Regulatory, and Organizational Steps to Equal Treatment.”

More

Editor's note: For more on how to get ready for the Big One, visit KCET's Earthquake Preparedness resource area.

Thursday morning at 10:15am is the Great California Shake Out, a mass earthquake preparedness and response drill.

A handful of past seismic-related research by Calif. tanks and guilds include:

• *A Critical Look at Earthquake Preparations in the Los Angeles Basin, by Robert L. Patrick (RAND)
• A Balanced Earthquake Engineering Program, by Edward W. Merrow and Kathy Rosenblatt (RAND)
• After Shock, a collaborative online post-quake simulation (Institute for the Future, et al.)
• Long Beach Earthquake: 75th Anniversary (Southern California Earthquake Center at USC)
• Global Earthquake Model Survey (Earthquake Engineering Research Institute)