Must Reads

The director of the Oregon Zoo, Kimberly Smith, spoke to City Club members last Friday, unveiling a variety of new initiatives for the state’s most popular paid tourist attraction.

The house rules committee will hold a hearing next Monday on two bills that seek to improve Oregon’s initiative process and provide more transparency to political contributions.

The latest stop on the campaign trail for higher education reform happened last night at Portland State University, where education officials repeated many of their same proposals: less state regulation and line item budgets, more university control of tuition. More efficient and independent universities able to save on costs while expanding the reach and quality of education.

During the first year of a statewide ban on dumping electronics in the trash, Oregonians recycled more than 24 million pounds of electronics, or about 5 million pounds more than they did in 2009.

Until University of Oregon economist Mark Thoma is sure that the economy is on firmer footing, and that employment prospects have improved substantially, he says he will continue to push back against the optimistic economic forecasts that are all the rage these days.

The pioneering computer game Oregon Trail enters its 40th year with a hot iPhone app and a key Facebook launch. A closer look into the game’s history offers insight for all those raised in an age of educational computer games. There’s also something of a parable for game developers here in the Silicon Forest about a man with a clever idea and brilliant approach, actualized with the help of state support and outside business investment, who eventually took control of his vision and built the most successful educational video game ever.

Say you’re under 40 and, like most everyone else, you log into your Facebook account today. You’ll notice the latest iteration of a game you played in elementary school, Oregon Trail. Only instead of rationing your resources in a classroom, you can now play for hours with friends online, spend real money in the form of facebook credits on wagon gadgetry, and, say, bomb down the Green River collecting gold coins and rescuing drowning children.

CEOs — and others in the C-Suite — can find themselves in a bubble, an alternate reality, detached from what’s really happening in the business. Here is how you can figure out whether you are in a bubble like that, and how you can get out.

A year has passed since the passage of Measures 66 and 67, the controversial tax increases targeted at wealthy individuals and businesses in Oregon. These measures were extremely unpopular with many within the business community, and after the vote the predictions of abandonment and downsizing were dire. Have those predictions come to pass?

Oregon has filed two lawsuits against the infamous subprime mortgage lender Countrywide in an attempt to recover $14 million in losses to the state’s pension and worker’s comp funds.