These colleges do not generate much intellectual ferment or political radicalism, but they and their graduates do provide the city with other voices and a useful degree of political flexibility.
While Democrats are not openly criticizing the vice president, there is much greater ferment in their party than among the Republicans over how to proceed in this overtime election battle.
The move toward selling the brewing business reflects a much wider ferment in the British drinks and leisure markets where buyers have been scrambling to acquire pubs and bars.
"How that translates into any effect on Election Day, I don't know". For now, though, such prospects are secondary to the confrontation on the ground, where there appears to be much more ferment on Obama's side.
Two thoughts, not strictly political but social, come to mind as one exits the museum: First, that the Weimar Republic gets a very bad rap for how it ended and insufficient credit for how much creative ferment and intelligent thought it contained.
Diners can add as much gochujang (fermented chile paste) as they wish.
Much of the ferment in bottom-up energy entrepreneurialism is focusing on South Asia, where 570m people in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, mostly in rural areas, have no access to electricity, according to the International Energy Agency.
As for UK dance, there's much more creative ferment, but even here a lot of the reference points – funk (everything from Cameo to the Dr Dre sound) and 80s videogames – have a retro-tinge too.
He was drawn not only by its "sheer drama and colour", but by its quickening political pulse: it was a time of radical ferment, much of it inspired by the Cuban revolution of 1959.
