EdCone.com

Greg Corrin is registered for ConvergeSouth, the free web-user conference in Greensboro, Oct 19-20.

You should come, too.

Just spoke to David Craft, one of the co-chairs of Citizens for Haw River State Park. These guys are serious about preserving a nice chunk of North Carolina, and they may have the money and political skills to pull it off.

John Young lays out the basics:

On Aug. 8, the Guilford County Planning Board approved a rezoning request by Bluegreen Corp., based in Boca Raton, Fla., to develop approximately 691 acres along the banks of the Haw River. The proposed development will comprise 775 housing units in a gated golf course community.

The primary issue here is...the preservation of the integrity of the Haw River State Park. The parcel in question, which is primarily in Guilford County but also crosses into Rockingham County, is essential for the expansion of the fledgling Haw River State Park; it is also an integral link for the proposed Mountains to Sea Trail...[T]he N.C. Division of Parks and Recreation has sufficient funds set aside to make a comparable offer to the landowners. (emphasis added)

Lewis Ledford, director of the state Parks and Recreation division, has endorsed the appeal of the zoning decision.

The volunteer group has an action plan for grassroots supporters. I spoke with David Craft about beefing up the web component of that effort, and I hope we'll see some results in the very near future.

I wish we had Japan's internet.

"Broadband service here is eight to 30 times as fast as in the United States -- and considerably cheaper... Accelerating broadband speed in this country -- as well as in South Korea and much of Europe -- is pushing open doors to Internet innovation that are likely to remain closed for years to come in much of the United States."

The argument in favor of government regulation will cause some heads to explode.

Billy Jones is outraged at blog-comment spam, and at companies that sell software to enable it.  More products listed here. Some background here.

I started requiring verification of comments at this blog after a surge of spam earlier this summer. It's all but eliminated the problem. For now.

Doug Clark: "No surprise that John Edwards won the endorsement of the 520,000-member Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners. They all worked on his 28,000-square-foot house."

Applied Rationality reads Thomas Sowell so you don't have to: "[H]e could at least have the decency to call himself something other than an economist."

If I was a conspiracy theorist, I'd argue that the librul N&R runs Sowell and Cal Thomas to make conservatives look bad. Speaking of which, what happened to Davenport Jr.?

Karen Crouse of the NYT profiles John Isner. She says he's from Winston-Salem -- hey, right state! -- but otherwise it's a nice article.

Because you can't watch Bowie in space all the time, you freaky old bastard, you.

Chris Knight: "Viacom used my video without permission on their commercial television show, and now says that I am infringing on their copyright for showing the clip of the work that Viacom made in violation of my own copyright!"

Viacom can probably claim fair use -- a principle much beloved by bloggers -- as could Chris.

But Viacom is fighting a much bigger battle, which probably explains its asinine hardline stance.

UPDATE: The VH1 clip in question. Seems like fair use to me (see additional discussion in comments below).

If I was involved in the Milton Kern campaign, I would have already shot a handful of videos showing my guy moving through his downtown environment, talking about the changes he has helped bring to the area, highlighting his easy style and common-sense message.

The videos would be on YouTube and the campaign site (which wouldn't be limited to a half-assed MySpace entry and would include pictures of some of MK's projects and daily written updates) and probably posted on half the blogs in town, and thus available to be emailed from office to office and home to home.

The quality of the videos would be sufficient to mix into TV spots that would run on cable stations next week, when the city wakes up to the fact that it might have its first interesting mayoral race in years -- should Kern decide to make it so -- and again closer to election day.

The cost would be for video production (not much) and TV time. The value would be considerable.

And that's what I would do if I was involved in the Milton Kern campaign.

Michael Habib is registered for ConvergeSouth.

You can register here.

Lunch at Table 16, the new restaurant in the old Undercurrent building on South Elm. Pappardelle Bolognese and a nice glass of wine. Recommended.

Fun watching GSO's John Isner win again at the US Open last night.

The crowd seemed to love him, and he started with a good base. 

Next up: Federer. Our guy is taking it in stride.

WaPo reports on the ins and outs of anonymous public-bathroom sex.

The Onion (warning: vulgar language) anticipates the Larry Craig defense.

NYT looks at Patti Boyd's "spotty but scrumptious memoir" and Vivian Cash's "unusually intriguing memoir."

Wall Street Journal says Bernanke "shows signs of a break with Alan Greenspan."

The Fed historically has had two major economic duties. Maintaining financial stability is one. Controlling inflation while preventing recession is the other.

To Mr. Greenspan, market confidence and the economy's growth prospects were so intertwined as to make the Fed's two duties almost inseparable. He cut rates...to prevent investor reluctance to take risks from undermining the nation's economic growth.

By contrast, Mr. Bernanke distinguishes between the central bank's two functions. So, on Aug. 17, the Fed cut the interest rate and lengthened the term on loans to banks from its little-used discount window in hopes banks would use the window -- or at least the knowledge it was available -- to lend to solid borrowers having trouble getting credit amidst the market turmoil. The action was aimed at restoring the normal functioning of disrupted credit markets, not primarily at boosting growth.

A movie I'd go see tonight at the Weatherspoon were I not otherwise obligated: Who Killed the Electric Car? Discussion to follow. Free and open to the public.

Analysis and reviews here.

Lisa Scheer took this pic in Martinsville last weekend (click to embiggen).

The Opus cartoon that many papers refused to run.

So while the rest of the world is whacking Scoble for his Mahalotopian vision, I'm thinking, huh, Jason Calacanis is going to have a lot to talk about at ConvergeSouth...

One of the great things about ConvergeSouth is that it's a user event, not an industry event.

Our challenge to Jason: tell us about Mahalo and its place in the larger story in a way that respects the non-commercial nature of the conference.

I'm looking forward to it.

Citizens for Haw River State Park:

"Click to read our Action Alert, then tell YOUR County Commissioners that the lands near our Haw River State Park are more important than a golf course to the Citizens of Guilford and Rockingham Counties!"

If anyone's got a digital copy of the related op-ed in this morning's N&R, send it along. UPDATE: Ask and ye shall receive: here's the article by John Young.

The old springhouse mentioned in this column is quite near the proposed development. As I wrote then about another big project perpetrated in my youth, "It was the first time I would see Greensboro devour its landscape on a grand scale, and despite prolonged and repeated exposure to the phenomenon since then I've not quite gotten used to it."

An interview with Skybus CEO Bill Diffenderffer (via Instapundit).

I was somewhat skeptical when the airline came to GSO, but this morning's N&R (unposted) says traffic is up at PTI.

Still hoping these guys will come here...and dreaming of this.

I can think of any number of reasons why EdCone.com is not the best political blog out there, but as they say, it's an honor just to be nominated.

Thanks to reader CA in DC for the nod.

Winston-Salem Journal:

Guilford County’s aggressive recruitment of math teachers willing to work in failing schools has led to staffing trouble for the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County school system.

Local school officials are using lateral-entry or unlicensed interim teachers to teach several math classes this year because of a shortage of math teachers, Dave Fairall, the director of human resources for the school system, told the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County school board last night.

Previously.

(thanks to Jon Lowder for the tip)

That politics-and-online-media thing in RTP is a week from Saturday.

Mary Katharine Ham and Ryan Teague Beckwith and I are on the last panel of the day, so we should be able to just mock or agree with everything said before us. That's my plan, anyway.

The N&R campaign blog lists local candidate websites. I learned quite a bit in just a few minutes of clicking around.

It's hard for me to take seriously a candidate who is not on the web in some fashion -- the messages sent  about communication skills, accessibility, and general awareness of the year on the calendar are just too depressing to contemplate.

Lisa Scheer photographed Robbie Robinson yesterday at his automotive service shop in Greensboro (click to enlarge).

Politics and security considerations aside, withdrawing from Iraq would involve "a huge logistics challenge" and "a monumental information management task." Baseline's Deb Gage and Kim Nash report:

An order to pull out some portion of 160,000 American troops, plus the 9 million tons of equipment and supplies the U.S. has shipped to Iraq—everything from bandages to bullets to Bradley fighting vehicles—is not only a huge logistics challenge, it's also a monumental information management task. The military will need to determine when troops and equipment move, which routes they will take, and what supplies should stay or go.

And should a pullout be ordered, how well the military's information management systems work will be a significant factor in determining how quickly that mission is accomplished.

A quick pell-mell pullout with no setbacks could take six months, according to retired Army Maj. Gen. William Nash, who is now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, a nonpartisan think tank.

On the other hand, a withdrawal of this magnitude — which, in addition to the logistical challenge, could risk attacks by Al Qaeda or Iraqi sectarian forces trying to make a withdrawal look like a rout — could take two years, says Maj. Gen. Michael Diamond, deputy director of the logistics directorate at U.S. Central Command, the unified combat command in charge of Iraq.

"Woman Sees Face Of Jesus On Fence," says a headline on WFMY's new website.

The site is called DigTriad. It's billed as "the triad's home page," all lower-case.

The Jesus on a fence story is from California. The article does not say how the woman knows the face on the fence is Jesus. The site does not say why this story is a lead item on "the triad's home page." The grammar ("The family, who is Catholic, plans to invite the parish priest to see the image, too") ain't so good, neither.

I like the design more than Jeff Sykes does, which isn't saying much,  but the flashing rotation of top stories is pretty awful and could trigger seizures in small children. There is a blog, written by someone billed as "WFMY News 2's Web Reporter."

Have I mentioned recently that the N&R has a huge opportunity to become the dominant news brand in this region, using the net to recapture audiences lost generations ago to television?

Previously.

Semi-related: the bugs bedeviling the new N&R site seem to have been squashed -- it works well for me now on various computers/OS/browsers.

Remnick says Mearsheimer and Walt are "not anti-Semites or racists. They are serious scholars." But he details the ways they gloss over the complexities of the Middle East, and says that in their explanation of US policy, "Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Exxon-Mobil barely exist."

The many failings of Bush's Iraq adventure, he says, have "left Americans furious and demanding explanations. Mearsheimer and Walt provide one: the Israel lobby."

Yeah, we passed the laptop around the dinner table and laughed at the addled beauty queen from South Carolina, but you've got to give her credit for climbing back in the saddle in the midst of her YouTube moment.

TPM has one of the more thoughtful takes I've seen on the Larry Craig story.

The hypocrisy angle--conservative U.S. senator with a voting record antagonistic to gay rights--is the one just about everyone can hang their hats on here. Paying a political price for that hypocrisy seems reasonable. But clearly the hypocrisy is not just political; it's deeply personal. The fractures and fault lines in Craig's psyche must be something to behold. It's hard not to feel some sympathy for the guy. But hypocrisy, thank god for all of us, is not a crime. Being gay shouldn't be either.

Sarkozy talks tough on Iran.

Sarkozy profiled by Adam Gopnik: "[T]he election of Nicolas Sarkozy may be seen not as the start of a new pro-American moment in Europe but as a marker of the beginning of the post-American era."

Alert reader GG sends along this photo of gang-related graffiti on a busy and not-at-all downscale stretch of Lawndale Drive.

N&O: The specter of massive civil lawsuits has stopped the work of a special committee probing the Durham Police Department's handling of the Duke lacrosse case.

The city's liability insurance provider said continued investigation by the committee could provide ammunition for a civil lawsuit by superstar lawyers.

David Evans, Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann have lawyered up with big names including Barry Scheck and Brendan Sullivan Jr.

More from the article by Matt Dees and Joseph Neff: "The conflict between full disclosure and financial discipline is a Catch-22 for council members, some of whom pushed hard for an unfettered accounting of mistakes. Several council members said Monday they have to recognize their obligation to preserve the public purse: Actions that almost certainly would lead to severe financial penalties would be irresponsible."

Money quote: "I think after a while the city may end up feeling like General Custer at Little Bighorn," councilman Eugene Brown said. "He looks around and, to paraphrase, says, 'Where ... are all these lawyers coming from?'"

This post from the WSJ econ blog begins on a positive note but ends in confusion.

Referring to a survey by the National Association for Business Economics, writer Sudeep Reddy says, "Few economists expect a housing recovery before next year, but they don’t appear to be scared by the softening housing market."

Then he says many of the economists confess they don't know what they're talking about. 

About half "admitted to having little or no familiarity with the structure, activities and risks" associated with asset-backed securitization and collateralized debt obligations, two tools used in recent years to spread risks from mortgage debt. More than two-thirds said they had little or no knowledge of credit-default swaps, a form of credit insurance. About 45% said they had little understanding of hedge funds, and 40% admitted ignorance about private equity funds.

So they're optimistic, but without understanding the financial underpinnings of the market about which they are expressing optimism.

And they call it a dismal science.

A roundup of some lessons learned after a decade of newspapers on the web.

Lisa Scheer photographed this gentleman on Saturday afternoon at his motel in the vicinity of Martinsville, VA.

Killian adds to his gangland article with a fascinating blog post at the N&R site.

Too much good stuff in there -- about gangs, cops, newspapers, and reporting -- for me to excerpt it. Go read the whole thing.

They should print this thing in the Sunday paper -- maybe give it a big chunk of the op-ed section if that's where it fits best. If anyone around the country is looking for an example of how traditional newspapering and new media can come together, here it is.

City Council candidate Greg Woodard posts a campaign video at his blog and on YouTube. Simple, direct, and effective.

Update: Also in the game -- Yvonne Johnson, who has her own YouTube channel (found via Inside Scoop).

WFMY's Frank Mickens asks The Troublemaker for a comment.

The Troublemaker decides to just tell his side of the story at his blog.

Jayne England Byrne registered for ConvergeSouth.

The free web-user conference will be held in Greensboro on October 19-20.

Register here.

Y'all come.

Stuart Taylor and KC Johnson have a book out on the Duke lax case.

Johnson looks at the Skube piece in the context of coverage of that case by bloggers and the NYT.

Roger Cohen:

Zalmay Khalilzad...expected Bush to announce his return to Iraq to convene a grand assembly — something like an Afghan loya jirga — that would fast-forward a provisional Iraqi government.

Instead, the appointment of L. Paul Bremer III to head a Coalition Provisional Authority was announced. Khalilzad, incredulous, went elsewhere. In the place of an Afghan-American Muslim on a mission to empower Iraqis, we got the former ambassador to the Netherlands for a one-year proconsul gig.

"Powell and Condi were incredulous. Powell called me and asked: 'What happened?' And I said, 'You’re secretary of state and you’re asking me what happened!'"

Powell confirmed his astonishment..."[W]ith no discussion, no debate, things changed. I was stunned."

Gonzales resigns. He will be remembered for doing a heckuva job.

New York Times: Here in Guilford County, N.C., turnover had become so severe in some high-poverty schools that principals were hiring new teachers for nearly every class, every term. To staff its neediest schools before classes start on Aug. 28, recruiters have been advertising nationwide, organizing teacher fairs and offering one of the nation’s largest recruitment bonuses, $10,000 to instructors who sign up to teach Algebra I.

"We had schools where we didn’t have a single certified math teacher," said Terry Grier, the schools superintendent. "We needed an incentive, because we couldn’t convince teachers to go to these schools without one."

Has this been reported in the N&R?

Nick Carr and Mark Glaser debate the journalism job market. The choices range from "awful" to "yes, but..."

Casey Jones was an engineer, on this we can agree. People started singing about him soon after he died. He's been appropriated by the labor movement, the Skipper, psychedelia, and Nashville, among others.

This song is not about Casey Jones, but I feel like it kind of is anyway.

LAT:

"Iran's Revolutionary Guard has quietly become one of the most significant political and economic powers in the Islamic Republic, with ties to more than 100 companies, which by some estimates control more than $12 billion in business and construction, economists and Iranian political analysts say...Under the leadership of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a former Revolutionary Guard commander, the force also has extended its reach in the Cabinet: 14 of 21 members are former Guard commanders. Former officers also hold 80 of the 290 seats in the parliament and a host of local mayorships and local council seats. Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, is a former Guardsman."

Douglas Brinkley: Reckless Abandonment

Two full years after the hurricane, the Big Easy is barely limping along, unable to make truly meaningful reconstruction progress. The most important issues concerning the city's long-term survival are still up in the air. Why is no Herculean clean-up effort underway? Why hasn't President Bush named a high-profile czar such as Colin Powell or James Baker to oversee the ongoing disaster? Where is the U.S. government's participation in the rebuilding?

And why are volunteers practically the only ones working to reconstruct homes in communities that may never again have sewage service, garbage collection or electricity?

Eventually, the volunteers' altruism turns to bewilderment and finally to outrage. They've been hoodwinked. The stalled recovery can't be blamed on bureaucratic inertia or red tape alone. Many volunteers come to understand what I've concluded is the heartless reality: The Bush administration actually wants these neighborhoods below sea level to die on the vine.