The Press-Citizen had another op-ed guest piece in favor of the rainforest the other day. Anyone keeping score on the pro/con pieces?



Some goodies:



"With a structure larger than the Biosphere 2 Center and a distinctly different architectural design, the Iowa Environmental/Education Project may be a terrestrial ecosystem research facility that can address global climate change research. It's likely that few in our community are aware of the scientific aspects of this project proposed to be built in Coralville."



Again with the digs at the supposedly uneducated masses that make up Johnson County residents. Are you people aware of the area's average education level? Do you really want to sound quite so patronizing?



"On the basis of the agency initiatives cited above, it seems reasonable for the project to seek to address some of these globally important issues. Clearly, project planning involves maximizing its design so that it will be research-capable. One possibility is to design a portion of the facility that could function as a DOE National Scientific User Facility. This means that the project cannot contain the same design flaws as found in the Biosphere 2 Center."



"Cannot?" Imprecise. How about: "had better not"?



"The Iowa Environmental/Education Project is pursuing computing systems that truly will be at the cutting edge of technology. Among them is high-bandwidth connections with the Iowa Communications Network (www.icn.state.ia.us)."



Oh, you mean this ICN Network? "Key legislative leaders say they'd like to get rid of the Iowa Communications Network (ICN) this session, but they can't reach agreement on how to do it. At a total cost of a couple hundred million dollars, it's become one of the biggest boodoggles ever fobbed on the Iowa taxpayer."