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Friday's Daily Pulse
What You Need to Know About Florida Today
Participants Sign up for Real-life Florida 'FarmVille'
FarmVille, Facebook's most popular game, allows millions to till digital soil and trade products in a virtual market. Now, University of Florida faculty are bringing social networking to real-life agriculture, and they want players. "Social networking is changing our personal lives and the business world in ways that we could have never predicted a few years ago," said Allen Wysocki, an associate professor of food and resource economics at UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences. "It only makes sense to bring that to agriculture." [Source: UF News]
» RELATED: Florida MarketMaker
Boeing Plans Space Taxis by 2015
The Boeing Co. plans to be ready to fly commercial space taxis from Cape Canaveral to the International Space Station by 2015 and soon will decide where the spacecraft will be manufactured and assembled. Four test flights -- including three from the Space Coast -- are targeted to launch in late 2013 and 2014. Florida is competing with Alabama, Texas and Nevada for various parts of the spacecraft work. The number of jobs is still to be determined. Decisions on where work will be done are expected within three months. [Source: Florida Today]
Video Rendering of Boeing/Bigelow Crew Space Transport Vehicle:
OPINION: End Stalemate over Job-creation Bill
The Senate, to its credit, managed to overcome the bitter partisanship that divides the chamber on two important votes Thursday. First, senators voted 61-39 to approve legislation that saves the jobs of 300,000 public workers -- including teachers, firemen and police -- thanks to two Republicans voting with Democrats to break a GOP filibuster. Later, five Republicans voted to confirm Elena Kagan as a new justice on the Supreme Court. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for a pending bill that would create a desperately needed $30 billion government fund to help community banks increase lending to small businesses. Partisan discord has made it nearly certain that the Senate will adjourn for the customary August recess this weekend without giving this bill the straight up-or-down vote that it deserves. [Source: Miami Herald]
Grand Jury Calls Jackson a Big 'Mess'
Jackson Health System is a "colossal mess" that must be governed in a new way, a Miami-Dade grand jury said Thursday in a much-anticipated report after six months of investigation. "Those who had the responsibility of running this institution, as well as those who had the duty of oversight, have been irresponsible, complacent and reckless, and blindly relied on financial misstatements," the report said. [Source: Miami Herald]
» Children Facing Spill Stress Too [AP]
» Florida Builder Sues over Oil Spill [Florida Today]
» Oil's Economic Fallout Easing up in Florida [Miami Herald]
ALSO AROUND FLORIDA:
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Award to Bring Top Tech to Tiny Myakka
A tiny Internet provider based in Myakka City has landed a long-shot federal award of nearly $8 million that will enable it to live up to its "Broadband to the Boonies" motto. Myakka Technologies requested the money as part of a federal stimulus program designed to give an economic and educational boost to the nation's rural areas.
› Busy Times for EA's Tiburon Studio
Many of the rooms inside EA's Tiburon studios were dimly lit Thursday as workers played video games. Some met in hallways decorated with football jerseys. Others gathered around a circular conference table filled in the middle with hundreds of colorful plastic balls like a bounce house. Despite the playful atmosphere, EA's mission is a deadly serious business, as workers each day wrestle with sound, image, design and, of course, the fun factor, for some of EA's most successful sports video games.
» RELATED: Electronic Arts Tiburon
› Navy Vets Charity Founder Isn't Who He Says
Lt. Cmdr. Bobby Thompson, who founded the U.S. Navy Veterans Association in Tampa in 2002, isn't named Bobby Thompson after all, and now stands accused of stealing that name from an unsuspecting resident of Washington state. "Our investigators have determined that this individual stole the identity of someone else and used that as a centerpiece of an apparent scam that has continued for seven years and involved tens of millions of dollars," said Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray. "We don't know who this individual is yet, but we do know that he is not Bobby Thompson."
› Stripper Finds For-profit Degree Wasn't Worth It
Carrianne Howard dreamed of designing video games, so she enrolled in a program at the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale, a for-profit college part-owned by Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Her bachelor’s degree in game art and design cost $70,000 in tuition and fees. After she graduated in December 2007, she found a job that paid $12 an hour recruiting employees for video game companies. She lost that job a year later when her department was shuttered. These days, Howard, 26, makes her living in a way that doesn’t require a college diploma.
› Land Preservation Program Takes Hit
When property values wane, so does preservation. Brevard County's Environmentally Endangered Lands program faces almost $2 million in cuts over the next two years as the tax base continues to wilt under the housing slump and NASA layoffs. The cuts would close EEL's flagship visitor center, put two-thirds of the program's trails off limits, halt all its land buys, increase fire risk and lay off more than half the EEL staff, officials say.
› OPINION: McCollum v. ObamaCare
'The brazen nature of this administration is undermining the basic rule of law, the confidence of the public, and taking away states' authority—creating an ever stronger federal government. My role is to make clear we're not going to put up with this." So says Bill McCollum, Florida's attorney general, now vying to be governor of the Sunshine State. It wasn't so very long ago that the job of a Republican governor was to promise lower spending, policies to encourage job growth, freedom in education, tax relief.
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