Think Tank LA

That's the question headlining a recent blog post by Nina Hachigian, a Los Angeles-based Senior Fellow of the Center for American Progress.

Hachigian's answer: No, not in the long run.

"It is bleak now," writes Hachigian, "but Americans should step back from the ledge because the future is looking up."

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What a year or so it's been for Van Jones.

Profiled last winter in the New Yorker by the great Elizabeth Kolbert, named President Obama's environmental advisor, then forced out in part because he signed a 9/11 internet conspiracy theory petition, Jones has found a new home, same as his old home: The Washington, D.C.-based think tank, Center for American Progress.

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The TED website features a baker's dozen short videos culled from last month's Long Beach conference.

Of particular interest is, "Gary Lauder's New Traffic Sign: Take Turns." Here, the venture capitalist and public intellectual slyly advocates for a new style of street sign that's neither "yield" nor "stop."

Sound inconsequential? Lauder's brief powerpoint and speech calculates an estimated $2 million economic loss for just one existing three-way intersection. This bill includes gas, car wear-and-tear, and lost productivity while idling. Lauder points out that buying the adjacent property and cutting down the shrubbery would be cheaper.

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Way back in the early aughts, the TTLA blogger wrote The Secret City column for latimes.com. During one Academy Awards season, an editor said, hey, go do a story about Oscar.

So, from the resulting column: "I'm sitting with Oscar Williams, his back to the wall, Yakuza style, at a table inside a trendy Marina del Rey Thai eatery. Williams directed four films released in the 1970s: "The Final Comedown," "Five on the Black Hand Side," "Death Drug" and "Hot Potato."

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Previously, TTLA's Vancouver Expat Bureau Chief, Amy Pederson, wrote this dispatch prior to the opening of the Winter Olympics.

Now that the games have concluded, Pederson checked in via Facebook with other Vancouver natives for their final take on the big happening. Here's a sampling of the replies:

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A RAND study out this week calculates that poor local air quality results in an average annual cost in the nine-figure range at Southern California hospitals.

RAND researchers studied a two-year period from 2005-2007 and concluded that the combined Calif. hospital bill due to particulates and other air woes was $193 million.

Hospitalizations for acute bronchitis, pneumonia, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease cost one-third of the overall bill, according to RAND's press release.

The full study is available as a .pdf download here. Also online: The California Air Pollution Mapping Tool.

The current issue of the Milken Institute Review (free registration required) includes a remix of an article by economist Allen Sanderson that was commissioned by the University of Chicago Magazine.

The piece sets out to determine blame for the global financial crisis, via an NCAA basketball tournament style "Sweet 16" bracket. UC fans voted for the winners of each round's match-ups.

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Today marks the scheduled debut of a new conservative think tank -- presumably based, per usual, in Washington, D.C. Here's the link to the American Action Network's currently bare-bones site.

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The USC U.S.-China Institute has compiled and posted press clippings from the various trips taken to China by U.S. Presidents since 1972.

The clips begin, of course, with Richard Nixon's meeting with Mao Tse-tung, and continue through travel by Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, both George Bushes, Bill Clinton, and, last November, Barack Obama.

The post is titled, "Instant Analysis: Reporting on US Presidents in China," and is available here.