Call these endorsements or not -- whatever. Enough people have asked me to post these over the past few elections that I feel like doing one here. I do my best to be clear with just how much knowledge (or lack thereof) about the candidates I'm basing my decisions on, so I don't give any false impression of expertise. Anyway, enough primary blather to choke a horse awaits just below the fold....
(I've put whom I'm voting for in bold, for perhaps easier reading.)
At work, running low on sleep, and not having blogged in a while, this post at Barry's got me thinking:
By the way, Wichita KS is in Sedgewick County, not Wichita County, which can be confusing, at the least.
For all the talk about merging city and county governments here (which I continue to think is a ridiculous idea -- hopefully more on that soon in my primary election post), one reason it actually could work is that the city of Durham, NC is actually in Durham County, NC. Oddly enough, this seems to be the exception rather than the rule in NC. This is an attempt to come up with all of the oddly mismatched city/county names in the state. I'm sure I'm going to miss an awful lot.
I've listed the cities and the counties they're in, along with the counties and their county seats.
Asheville -- Buncombe County
Asheboro -- Randolph County
Ashe County -- Jefferson
Alexander -- Buncombe County
Alexander County -- Taylorsville
Graham -- Alamance County
Graham County -- Robbinsville
Greensboro -- Guilford County
Greenville -- Pitt County
Greene County -- Snow Hill
Pittsboro -- Chatham County
Beaufort -- Carteret County
Beaufort County -- Washington
Washington County -- Plymouth
Henderson, NC -- Vance County
Hendersonville, NC -- Henderson County
Franklin, NC -- Macon County
Franklin County -- Louisburg
Cherokee, NC -- Swain County
Cherokee County -- Murphy
Jacksonville, NC -- Onslow County
Jackson County -- Sylva
Waynesville, NC -- Haywood County
Wayne County -- Goldsboro
Yanceyville, NC -- Caswell County
Yancey County -- Burnsville
What have I missed?
I had to do something today I don't like to do, which is unpublish a comment. Now, in the past, the only reason I've ever done this is when it was blatant commercial spam. In this case, it was someone who seems to be frequenting this blog more and more, largely with the purpose of posting things related to a single personal issue that has been only tangentially related to the topic at hand. Up until now, I'd let it slide.
In general, I'm going to let anybody say whatever they want here, regardless of how nutty. Usually, as in the case of frequent pseudonymous commenter at Barry's and more recently here named Locomotive Breath, eventually the commenting becomes so self-contradictory until there's really no need for me to argue, much less delete the comment. (LB's most recent one had me so in awe of its admissions that I still haven't managed to respond due to the shock.) My general take is that so long as comments are not in violation of law, communicating threats, and are at least making a passing attempt at engagement in a discussion, it's far better to address them than to go about deleting -- even in cases where I couldn't possibly disagree more strenuously with the point being made.
However, there's comments of an entirely different sort, where the point becomes not engaging either me or other commenters in a conversation, but simply finding a place to drop whatever they happen to say, almost graffiti-like. (Incidentally, this fits in more closely with the original definition of electronic "spam," which took its name from the Monty Python sketch where the Vikings singing "spam spam spam spam" over and over finally drowned out the conversation the waitress and her customers were trying to have (about spam). Bloody Vikings...) The most recent comment finally crossed this line, in my mind, and so it got deleted. If you want a place to publish your own opinions or issues, get your own blog -- they're either free or very cheap, depending on where you decide to let it live.
On the other hand, if you want to complain about my editorial decisions, this post would be a fine place to do it.
Just to repeat myself a bit, but it's amazing how The Onion, despite being dedicated to humor, has been one of the most prescient news organizations on the planet. This past week, I haven't been able to get this video out of my head.
Continue reading "BiF flashback: The Onion on the most important issue to voters" »
It just hasn't been a good week for sports around here, has it? I'm going to ignore except in passing the pathetic and embarrassing episode from last weekend, as well as the even more pathetic and embarrassing response by UNC fans to Roy Williams wearing a Kansas sticker at the championship game.
What's on my mind more at the moment was the display of baseball ineptitude I watched at the Bulls' game last night. Bad pitching, bad fielding, bad hitting, almost all of it on the side of the Bulls.
But more troubling was one of those silly video spots they put on in between innings, this one featuring the Bulls' head groundskeeper giving tips on how to have a good lawn. What was the crux of his advice on this one? (I'm not making this up.)
Water your lawn. A lot. 2-3 times a week, give it a good healthy soaking. When in doubt, use more water. The man even ended the clip with this priceless nugget:
"Remember, no water means no grass!"
Sitting in the stands, I kept feeling like I needed to check my ears to make sure I was hearing things. Was the image-obsessed Jim Goodmon's baseball team REALLY that tone deaf?
Here's a tip for the Bulls -- don't run that clip any more, and get Mr. Water-a-lot to shoot a video about xeriscaping for you.
To top it off, there was a nugget in Wednesday's Herald-Sun, now swallowed up in the black hole of their internet policy, about plans for a national Minor League Baseball museum next to the old DAP. Now, I confess, I've generally been behind this project. The old ballpark is a great piece of history, and can still continue to function as a good baseball stadium, so I don't have much of a problem with dropping $5 million into the renovations on the park itself. My assumption was that with those renovations, MiLB would come in and do its museum largely on its own.
But I confess I got classic sticker shock when it came to the plans for the museum. From the H-S:
Accompanying the ballpark will be the Minor League Baseball Fan Experience and Museum, which is scheduled to open in 2010.
Plans are to build that facility, which would overlook center and right fields, at a cost of $50 million, with Minor League Baseball providing a $25 million endowment and running the operation after the city comes up with $25 million in construction costs. (my emphasis)
Okay, on the face of it, a MiLB museum (can we please drop the lame sounding "Fan Experience" part of the name?) is a great idea for Durham. The Durham Bulls are pretty synonymous with minor league baseball nationwide, so building on that seems like a great idea. But $25 million is a ton of public money to spend on something that's going to be largely patronized by those from out of town. For comparison's sake, the new DBAP cost $16 million to build, and was the source of serious controversy at the time. And all with the goal of opening by 2010?
Now, some might point out that I was a proponent of the new DPAC (SOMEBODY buy the naming rights so we can get away from these freakin' ackronyms), which took something on the order of $32 million in public money. But I'll also note that we only built that thing after 2 years of intense public debate, which resulted in a theater that ended up costing less and being built with a far better design than the one originally proposed. I guess I'd hope for a bit more scrutiny of this proposal and a bit less hurry on this one.
Lastly, I'll note that the new Carolina Basketball Museum which just opened in Chapel Hill cost $3.4 million. If we're helping to pay for a museum that costs $50 million, I sure hope it's going to be fabulous.
[where: 27701]
From the Herald-Sun:
White House hopefuls use Iraq hearings to stress positions
Is it really a good idea to be using the phrase "stress positions" in a headline about Iraq, at least when you're not referring to the Yoo memos?
I made the prediction at Barry's yesterday, and while it wasn't exactly going out on a limb, it looks like Durham's reservoirs are finally topped off:
Lake Elevations
Lake Michie Elevation: 341.00 feet, mean sea level.
Lake Michie is full at 341.00 feet, mean sea level.Little River Reservoir Elevation: 355.00 feet, msl.
Little River Reservoir is full at 355.00 feet, msl.
Matt Dees at the N&O notes the same thing, and hints that we may finally be ready to back off of water restrictions.
On the one hand, despite the soggy weekend, we're not out of pretty bad drought conditions. The historic low flows in the Flat and Little Rivers before this heavy rain testify to the fact that the groundwater and the underground aquifers are simply a long ways from being fully recharged yet. But when you're spilling water over the dam, it would seem to make some sense to take a step back, not all the way to baseline, non-drought conservation measures, but to at least let people water their gardens twice a week. I mean, we're all happy to chip in when we're in a pinch, but loosen up the taps just a little at least. [where: 27701]
So, in the absence of pulling any April Fools jokes myself, I'm trying to keep up with all the internet pranks that show up today instead. Google's annual one is pretty good, (Virgle, the new Google mission to colonize Mars) although in my opinion, it can't hold a candle to the sheer subtle brilliance that was Google Romance a couple years ago. (I highly recommend that you take the tour.) Usually DailyKos has a prank post of some sort on the front page, but at last check all the stories for today are pretty obviously real. Homestar Runner seems to be sitting this year out too.
So, any good jokes out there today that I'm missing?
Update: Okay, I admit. Sports Illustrated really had me for the majority of this, which is actually a flash-back to a story 25 years ago. Absolutely exquisitely done -- I almost fell for it even today. (More foolin' off the front page under the 168 MPH Fastball link.)
To touch on a topic I keep trying to get to, it seems that the future of public transportation in the Triangle has come very quietly to a critical turning point. It appears that most of what's going to be said in public has been said, and the talk made its way from the pages of the newspapers to the back rooms, where I can only speculate that haggling over the process seems to be still going on. Given the amount of time and effort put into the STAC, I can't imagine that the process has already fallen dead. At least I certainly hope not.
To recap, following the final collapse of the originally proposed Raleigh-to-Durham high frequency rail service, the state government appointed a Special Transit Advisory Commission (a.k.a, the STAC), to be hosted out of the Triangle J Council of Governments. The purpose, ultimately, was to revisit every step in the decision-making process, to go back over all the options, and to see if out of the ashes of the original TTA plan, something could be made to work politically and financially. It consists of all sorts of movers and shakers from across the Triangle, from business folks, former elected officials, university leaders, and activists. The STAC met monthly for the past year or so, working with staff members from the various local governments as well as the state. In February, the STAC unveiled a draft report of its recommendations, which showed an ambitious $2 billion comprehensive plan for transit in the Triangle, to be funded through some sort of local tax, similar to Charlotte's .5% sales tax. One of the Indy's blogs captured it nicely in a post last month, wherein the stresses in the agreement started to show. Not surprisingly, the fault lines fell along much the same lines as before. There's all sorts of ways to describe that rift, but ultimately it boils down to the Durham-Wake county line.
Continue reading "Transit in the Triangle: Together, or apart?" »
I know I shouldn't, but sometimes you can't help it.
I put on waders and headed back into the rather icky waters over at Liestoppers, which is pretty much Grand Central for those most inclined to see the Duke lacrosse/Nifong mess as a grand conspiracy involving liberals, black people, the media, corrupt police, reptilian shape-shifters, and probably the Loch Ness monster, all centered in that city perched atop the hellmouth itself, Durham. The odd thing is, mixed in with the true loonies, there are a few people who come across as objecting out of principle. Given that, and the fact that I was sure these folks were obsessively watching Durham for signs of Masonic child sacrifices or what not, I was sure they had some take on Eve Carson.
Funny, just like almost exactly two years ago, there's a media frenzy going on, with suspects being arrested and a lot of evidence appearing in the media appearing to implicate them. Now, if there's one rock that the Liestoppers folks tether their ark to more than any other, it's the constitutionally protected presumption of innocence until proven guilty. Would these stanchions of constitutional and legal ethics insist on the presumption of innocence for Lovette and Atwater?
You can probably guess, or you can see for yourself.
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