Right After Al Gore Invented The... Internet... USC Invented - The Neighborhood Councils!

At a press conference about a long overdue focus on entrepreneurship and the commercialization of ideas generated at local universities - which has has been done at Stanford and MIT for years, USC announced it is about to get into the act. Much more on this later tonight.

But first... an interesting - if totally spurious - claim that USC developed the concept of neighborhood councils.

Traditionally, schools tend to focus on inventions and ideas connected to science and technology and ignore others, but officials said all disciplines must be included for maximum benefit to the public's quality of life. Innovative ideas could also include nonprofit organizations that aid a community. For example, many years ago, a USC professor from the School of Policy, Planning and Development developed the concept of the neighborhood council, according to the institute's director.

Well, the neighborhood council movement has been around in other cities long before the idea was ever broached here - and that history is too well known to need to go into detail. But even if NC's had been invented in LA - everyone knows that they would have been invented at UCLA.