EdCone.com

My friend T-Square told me to go to Grady's Barbecue in Dudley, near Goldsboro. I was up for the scenic route home from the beach, so that's where I had lunch today. It was quite good. And it's pronounced to rhyme with "daddies."

I asked what made the black-eyed peas so tasty and the lady said, "I pray while I'm cooking them."

Also, salt, pepper, a little sugar, and making sure they're soft but not mushy. 

I spoke for a while with Mr. Grady's son-in-law, Milton, who is retired from the Air Force and learning to cook pig. It's an art, and how Mr. Grady knows that a pig that looks ready to turn still needs another half-hour remains somewhat mysterious. The family hopes to keep the place going when the senior Gradys retire (one of the Grady granddaughters was living in Greensboro until departing recently for grad school in Boston; her sister, a pianist, is in England studying at Oxford).

Wrightsville Beach, recently.

 

Under Mr. Obama, we are now spending more money on the military, after adjusting for inflation, than in the peak of the cold war, Vietnam War or Korean War. Our battle fleet is larger than the next 13 navies combined, according to Defense Secretary Robert Gates. The intelligence apparatus is so bloated that, according to The Washington Post, the number of people with “top secret” clearance is 1.5 times the population of the District of Columbia.

Not really the change for which I was hoping.

Flat Top Mountain, recently.

"All the emotions I felt during those few moments—fear, doubt, resolve, and finally courage—were as intensely vivid as any I have felt while reading a novel or watching a film or listening to a piece of music."

One for the Video Games as Art side.

Previously.

HPE (print only link now live) says "Several bidders are seeking to buy the High Point Market showroom holdings of Merchandise Mart Properties Inc. in the wake of its parent company's default on its loan on the properties."

N&R still MIA.

Previously.

Wrightsville Beach, recently.

 

Vornado Realty Trust is opting to forfeit a 2 million-square-foot furniture mart in High Point, N.C., to holders of its $191 million securitized mortgage.

Attention, local media: this is a very big story. Thnx to JD for making sure I saw it.

Previously.

Requiring Arizona law enforcement officials and agencies to determine the immigration status of every person who is arrested burdens lawfully-present aliens because their liberty will be restricted...

Federal judge blocks major parts of Arizona's controversial immigration law, but notes it was passed "Against a backdrop of rampant illegal immigration, escalating drug and human trafficking crimes, and serious public safety concerns."

Oliver Stone, kind of an idiot.

The impact of WWII on Russia probably is under-appreciated in the US, though. The Russians think they won the war with an assist from us, which is not an indefensible position.

What's better than an alt-weekly issue on dogs?

An alt-weekly issue on dogs that includes a hard-hitting investigative feature on my dog.

Not even open for discussion:

A modest but worthwhile effort to curb the power of money in politics died on Tuesday afternoon when Senate Republicans refused to let debate on the measure go forward.

Wrightsville Beach, recently.

 

North Carolina is not a particularly active place. In a survey by the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), more than one-fourth of respondents in North Carolina had not exercised in the past month, and the state ranks 10th nationwide for obesity. The average time spent watching television and relaxing and thinking is slightly greater there than in most states.

Why is "thinking" on the list? 

Thnx to TC for the pointer.

"What kind of web-based service is that?"

This happened recently to a woman to whom I am married.

Facebook said that in order to get into her account from a non-regular location, she needed to ID several of her FB friends from their profile pics. But she's never met many of the photographers from around the world who have friended her, and one of the pics offered was of palm trees. So she did something other than mess around on Facebook.

What's $8.7 billion between friends?

The U.S. Defense Department is unable to properly account for over 95 percent of $9.1 billion in Iraqi oil money tapped by the U.S. for rebuilding the war ravaged nation.

These are explicit titles of adult movies that Time Warner Cable has so far decided that you can not block from your new programming guide.They are available for anyone in your family to see, and they’re just past the HBO On Demand selection.

I tend to be less freaked out than some people about OMG KIDZ SEEING SEXY, but this does not sound like a customer-friendly move by TWC.

Stranger than fiction: man tries to invent a memory-loss pill so his CFO can't testify against him in a fraud case that involves his military-funded body-armor company paying for:

...more than $6 million in personal expenses on behalf of Mr. Brooks, covering items as expensive as luxury cars and as prosaic as party invitations...

...Also included were university textbooks for his daughter, pornographic videos for his son, plastic surgery for his wife, a burial plot for his mother, prostitutes for his employees, and, for him, a $100,000 American-flag belt buckle encrusted with rubies, sapphires and diamonds.

Here I've been wondering how a country that prizes freedom of religion could ban an Islamic center or mosque, when the answer is as simple as declaring that Islam is not a religion.

"Cobb’s intercranial adventures aren't like dreams at all."

"They don't look or feel anything like dreams."

I said something similar to Elijah after we saw Inception -- it's more video-gamelike than dreamlike, and Nolan's Memento is more of a mindbender -- but we enjoyed it anyway on a hot afternoon.

"HAMP has been a disaster. It should be a story, but political reporters don't seem to care."

They don't have time to care, they're busy getting other stuff wrong.

The War Logs:

A trove of military documents made public on Sunday by an organization called WikiLeaks reflects deep suspicions among American officials that Pakistan’s military spy service has for years guided the Afghan insurgency with a hidden hand, even as Pakistan receives more than $1 billion a year from Washington for its help combating the militants.

WikiLeaks seems to be getting much traffic today.

Jay Rosen: "Wikileaks is able to report on what the powerful wish to keep secret because the logic of the Internet permits it. This is new."

The danger does not arise from the fiscal deficits of today, but the attitudes to fiscal policy, over the long run, of one of the two main parties. Those radical conservatives (a small minority, I hope) who want to destroy the credit of the US federal government may succeed. If so, that would be the end of the US era of global dominance. The destruction of fiscal credibility could be the outcome of the policies of the party that considers itself the most patriotic.

Thanks to AB for the link.

The central insight was that you wanted people who couldn't quite stay ahead of the loan. Then you could hit them with late fees and try to get them to refinance with more fees and catches, and generally bleed them and bleed them and bleed them.

Lovely people running our big companies.

This morning's N&R article fails to ask some key questions about the logic behind the proposed downtown hotel.

We read about the business acumen of the developers, but those plaudits are all in service of their argument that the hotel will succeed. 

What if the developers are such good businessmen that they make out even if the hotel deal founders?

Might they have figured out a way to use the tax-free bond offering as the basis of a win-win for themselves?

How healthy is the business housed in the buildings they are pledging as equity, and how much are those buildings actually worth, and how much might the developers take out of the deal in cash?

"How much risk with new hotel?," asks the N&R front-page headline.

Might the answer be, for the developers, little or none?

It's hard to explain to a kid raised in the instantly-available, high-quality digital copy age that one of our best wedding presents way back when was a box of Betty Board cassettes.

Actually, that was kind of hard to explain to the bride.

A look at North Carolina's new public records law.

Jane Goodall on a half-century among some of our closer relatives.

Brian May, man of many talents. Previously.

Don't make Zach Wamp secede, because he'll do it!

Democrats face the usual off-year challenges, plus the dismal reality that "Great Recession" was more than a glib phrase.

But they do get to run against Republicans.

Circumstances beyond my control led to me teeing off, barefoot, on the fourth hole of a venerable Greensboro golf course yesterday afternoon. That barefoot swing was the beginning and end of my round, but it was enough to remind me of stories my dad and his contemporaries would tell about Monty Hill, a Greensboro boy who won the NC/SC junior championship in the '40s while playing barefoot.

Further circumstances beyond my control led to me having a gin and tonic this afternoon with Bynum Hunter, who confirmed my inherited memory and, as is his wont, told several other tales in the process.

I then checked in with my friend Decatur Cunningham, who remembers watching the match, played at the Greensboro Country Club, in which Hill beat P.J. Boatright. "Monty couldn't even reach the par threes with a driver, but he was deadly with a wedge and a putter," he said. "It drove Boatwright crazy."

PP sez Robbie Perkins has emerged as a strong leader on the City Council, and singles out the future mayor for helping to upgrade Greensboro's excellent Coliseum complex.

Although that's not quite how it's worded.

A thorough review of the Standing Indian Campground in the NC mountains.

I liked A Walk in the Woods, although the ending is a little disappointing. A Short History of Nearly Everything was good, too.

Opposition to the Pigford settlement has emerged as an element of the Sherrod story, but it's nothing new.

Earlier this year, Kay Hagan mentioned it in a conversation about the obstructionist Congress:

Another [bill I've put forward is] is the Pigford farm bill, trying to give some compensation to African-American farmers who did not receive loans like their white counterparts did...people say, have you voted on them yet, have they come forward yet, and, no, because all these bills have to go down through this funnel to get a time to actually bring something to the floor...

Fred Phelps and his tiny, twisted "church" are best ignored, but nerd-powered counter-demonstrations are another good option.

Jews still Jewish.

Previously.

I had all but given up on this story, but apparently the House has been working patiently on the Rangel case.

I was reminiscing about the North Carolina mountains with my uncle. He said of all the things his father (my grandfather) remembered about visiting Blowing Rock as a kid, the most poignant might have been the chestnut trees. 

Being in Ashe County reminded me of one of my more popular columns. "The map of North Carolina is written in code."

Being the brains behind the new consumer protection agency doesn't necessarily make Elizabeth Warren the best person to run it, but opposition from those elements of the administration closest to Wall Street is one argument for giving her the job.

American finance blowed up, so FDR regulated it and the financial system went several decades without a repeat performance.

Maybe that lack of disaster was a coincidence or maybe a well-regulated machine runs better than one operated in the shadows by people with huge financial incentives to redline the engine. In any case we deregulated and pretty soon afterward things blowed up again. 

So now we are reregulating. The photo of Obama embracing a smiling Paul Volcker is promising at least on a symbolic level.

People are more interested in other things here in late July 2010, but this is historic, and part of a bigger historic trend that will end up including post-Gulf oil spill attitudes toward big business.

Reconsidering the Korean War:

Americans need to get past the idea, Mr. Cumings says, that the Korean War was a “discrete, encapsulated” story that began in 1950...He notes how “appallingly dirty” the war was.

Your premium dollars at work:

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina has stockpiled a surplus of $1.4 billion with steady and steep rate hikes, Consumers Union reports...

As with other plans, the reserves at this state's Blue Cross plan are well above industry standards, and more than what's necessary to protect the insurer's financial health and ensure that claims are paid, the report's authors say.

Dave Winer on the proposed Islamic center in lower Manhattan: "I think we should build nothing but shrines there."

Robert Wright: "Bin Laden would love to be able to say that in America you can build a church or synagogue anywhere you want, but not a mosque."

Previously: "Hard to see how you can tell people they can't build a religious center in a country that prides itself on freedom of religion."

A service-industry employee was waiting for some paperwork to be done on a routine transaction, and she filled the time by telling me about the spirits who inhabit a nearby house. This was stated as fact, not conjecture. Beyond the size and age of the house, she cited as evidence a portrait that had crashed to the floor after being moved by the caretakers from one wall to another.

Several responses came to my mind, including, "Sounds more like leprechauns to me," and, "Once you've ruled out gravity and old plaster, Occam's Razor leaves ectoplasmic vandalism as the only explanation," and, "I think I'll wait outside."

But I just said, "Huh, it sure is a big old house!"

Near Blowing Rock, Sunday.

 

"This party is not as fun as it once was. Time to go."

Bora leaves Scienceblogs, with a long, thoughtful post that says a lot about the publishing industry. PZ Myers goes on strike.

Debunking some Social Security myths, including the longer-life-expectancy story.

UPDATE: A very informative post by Joe Killian about the bond authority meeting.

As reported here yesterday, the local bond authority has approved the downtown hotel project and sent it along to Raleigh.

I'm still not clear on what's changed, if anything, in terms of the underlying economics of the project, but the county board did not hold feasibility as its primary concern. The LGC is supposed to consider feasibility, but its standards have been relaxed.

Using an edited, truth-bending, racially-charged attack video is despicable, but caving in to it without a fight is pathetic.

Flat Top Mountain, Sunday.