Preschool for all - of course, it's a good and worthy idea.

But "getting behind" any cause means knowing the ups and the downs.

The downs are that there is very little real space available. Seattle Schools will be nearly 54k next year and there is NO room there. Nearly every school has given up space - art, music, etc - to be classroom space.

The Mayor said yesterday that the City might renovate some community centers for spaces. Great but with what money?

Should this be preschool for poor children or a sliding scale?

I appreciate that it's being called a "phased" project but there's more to it than just having a colorful room for little children.

Oh, and it's also part of what President Obama wants as well with this notation:

"A plan to implement comprehensive data and assessment systems."

Ah, did you know they want to start testing preschoolers? Tracking their data? Yup.

Are those good ideas?

I'm planning on going to a number of SIFF films and find the scheduling this year better than last year, but I don't find the fact that it is the "biggest" festival very useful.

SIFF shows the most films, but there isn't much prestige in having your film shown there. Much Ado About Nothing premiered at Toronto and then showed at South by Southwest, Wisconsin, and San Francisco before coming to Seattle. And last nights Jimi: All Is by My Side premiered at, yes, Toronto, and was shown at South by Southwest already.

They actually tout How to Train Your Dragon 2 as a SIFF event.

Smart and savvy parents know that six years is quite soon enough for the Government to start messing with their kids heads - especially after two terms of the Obama regime. The prop will fail.

Hello - I just got back from the grocery store (here in Switzerland), where I picked up some ground beef (not ground ostrich, or some other exotic) for c. $45/lb. When your Seattle cost of living approaches ours, let's talk about that $25/hour thing...

Turkey is your libertarian paradise (little regulation, rampant corruption).

Meanwhile, Canada enacts tougher regulations on pipelines in advance of new projects. What a concept:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/1…

http://online.wsj.com/articles/canada-in…

@3: Not sure if serious...

@2,

Basically all of the high-status movies they screen not only already have a distributor (assuming they weren't a big studio production in the first place), but they're also slated for national release within a few weeks or months after SIFF. I've seen some movies premiere a whole week after being screened at SIFF.

SIFF is good for smaller movies that won't get wide distribution, or any distribution, but it's kind of a waste of money for everything else.

Personally I skip most US movies at SIFF unless I'm dying to see them or they have a local angle.

That said, I told you $22 in 2022 was the compromise - it should be $27 in 2015 to be fair.

@9: Sorry for the delay venomlash. Although I did slip into hyperbole, my comment has a strong foundation in sincerity.