EdCone.com

Orrin Hatch speaks up and speaks well about the Park51 project.

I was talking with a cop who was on the scene nine years ago. He said he doesn't care if they build an actual mosque in one of the office towers that will consecrate the WTC site itself. Again, I'm of the opinion that 9/11 happened to all of us, but there's one survivor's perspective.

E.B. White, via some anthropomorphous crickets:

"Summer is over and gone, over and gone, over and gone. Summer is dying, dying."

Autumn in North Carolina is nice, though.

But even after controlling for nearly all imaginable variables — socioeconomic status, level of physical activity, number of close friends, quality of social support and so on — the researchers (a six-member team led by psychologist Charles Holahan of the University of Texas at Austin) found that over a 20-year period, mortality rates were highest for those who had never been drinkers, second-highest for heavy drinkers and lowest for moderate drinkers.

Time to rewrite the joke where the rabbi says, "You call that living?"

If economists seem totally at sea, it’s because they have carefully unlearned the old wisdom. If policy has failed, it’s because policy makers chose not to believe their own models.

Yeah, yeah, next he'll tell us that bankers don't always act in the best interest of others.

Seriously, though, please enumerate both the proximate and underlying reasons you wanna hurt me, girl.

Population Density in the United States from 1790 to 2000, from Stanford's Spatial History Project.

One of the oddities of the current crisis is that throughout the 1990s it was absolutely conventional wisdom in the United States of America that Japan, though suffering from some real structural issues, was making things much worse for itself than necessary by failing to coordinate fiscal and monetary policy to stimulate adequate demand...

...In that light, it’s interesting to see that western media coverage of Japan still adheres to the old western orthodoxy about the desirability of stimulative policies.

Lost decade, anyone?

Finally, a possible link between an Islamic cultural center and terrorism.

"I personally can't wait to switch my NeuroPhone into vibration mode."

Nick Carr on the coming era of real-time multi-party neural synchrony.

You can stop the mealy-mouthing about access to information, folks, because now we know that questioning library filters is evidence that you are "someone who rejects all theories of morality or religious belief." 

Next thing you know we'll be letting members of the First Presbyterian Church hold public office.

Our reading this morning is from the book St. Stephen. Is that a Mexican poncho, or a Sears poncho?

A recent post on James Dickey inspired reader GT to send along Fred Chappell's poetic take on the author, from Midquest:

"The next of those you see in this loud hell
   You’ll know for certain," he said.
  "Without dispute The horniest creature alive since Satan fell.

"James Dickey his name, the Poet in the Cowboy Hat,
   Whose greatest fame is propositioning
  Every woman from here to Ararat.

"No one will deny the man can sing;
   But also no one will deny that ever
   And ever he is after that one thing.

"Deliverance? His ceaseless thirst for beaver
   May show him sometime what that word implies.
   Some husband with a knife may him de-liver."

N&R exiles to the limbo of its proprietary e-reader an article on possible changes to RUCO, so I'll summarize it for you:

RUCO seems to work pretty well at its objective of making rental properties safer and more livable, and people who advocate for renters like it a lot, but some landlords and politicians don't like it as much so it might get changed.

Someone I enjoyed getting to know after moving back to my hometown was Dacia King, who died this week at the age of 84. We met through the Weatherspoon, and her interest in sustainable agriculture later came to influence my own thinking on that subject. Plus, she was just nice to be around. RIP to a strong and gentle woman.

Some useful info here on discounting inflated porn-viewing stats.

It may be possible to get a more accurate number, but I'm not sure if that would show pages loaded successfully or still include a number of frustrated attempts.

It may be that we're talking about a problem centered on a handful of hardcores who keep trying to load porn, possibly on multiple tabs at once, despite getting through only occasionally due to bandwidth shaping.

That seems like a manageable problem under some version of the current procedures. Stiffer penalties might be part of the solution.

If we want to remove any chance of anyone ever loading inappropriate content on a library computer, that will mean blocking email and Facebook, or disconnecting computers from the net altogether.

Short of advocating for those solutions, we're all negotiating the best compromise in a clash between legitimate principles of access to information and a safe, welcoming library environment.

As long as they don't ban strip clubs and OTB, I suppose it's OK.

Shocking, if you're Alan Greenspan:

Over the last two years of the housing bubble, Wall Street bankers perpetrated one of the greatest episodes of self-dealing in financial history.

Faced with increasing difficulty in selling the mortgage-backed securities that had been among their most lucrative products, the banks hit on a solution that preserved their quarterly earnings and huge bonuses:

They created fake demand...

...The products they were buying and selling were at the heart of the 2008 meltdown.

Closely related:

The same day in June that the House gave final approval to the sweeping overhaul of financial regulations, Mr. Singer had a fund-raiser at his Central Park West apartment, netting more than $1 million for seven Republican Senate candidates who had opposed the bill. His hedge fund, Elliott Management, is the biggest source of money to the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

One of Greensboro's authentic examples of creative culture is the Dot Matrix Project, where Sean Coon is cogitating about the next steps in its evolution.

I'm interested in seeing this thing flourish well into the future. If you have ideas, send 'em along.

Warnersville Music Heritage Festival, tomorrow from noon-7 at 601 Doak St.

The City press release says "Warnersville Festival!" in the subject line, but all the info is locked up in a docx attachment and I'm on a machine that can't read docx, as might be other recipients of City correspondence.

Will we have our very own Lost Decade? Check back with me in seven years, but we're making progress toward that goal.

I linked this in a comment yesterday but it probably deserves wider distribution. The topic is "the $288 million incinerator debt crisis that threatens to swamp Harrisburg and sock every Dauphin County taxpayer."

In my day job I've seen a whole lot of overpromising and undelivering and added costs from supposed tech fixes. Looking at vendor claims very carefully is sound practice in all cases, perhaps especially so when technology is involved.

Also in that comment thread, Robbie Perkins pointed out that the $100 million savings figure is not discounted over the quarter-century life of the projection. Danny Thompson also mentioned this to me at lunch yesterday. I should have made that clear when I wrote the post.

The savings would still be substantial, and some of the money could be applied to long-term solutions to the trash problem, but we should know the real number before we start making it rain with all our newfound cash.

Of whom I never tire, and on whom I would never pour hot grits:

Carolina wanted a big-time football program, looks like it got one.

Rabid raccoon reported in New Irving Park.

I bet Luna looks at me and thinks, "I don't have to outrun the raccoon, I only have to outrun you."

The message that students in business and economics will get at Guilford until 2019 is this: for those ten years, some faculty members will assign Atlas Shrugged, a novel that has never previously been assigned at Guilford College in its entirety, so that we can receive $50,000 a year. At a faculty meeting, one of my colleagues suggested, probably facetiously, that for those courses that require students to read Ayn Rand, the syllabi should acknowledge the role of the BB&T grant in the assignment—maybe something along the lines of “this assignment was brought to you by the BB&T Foundation.”

I know at least one person got up and walked out of the current BB&T boss's speech at a Community Foundation event when it veered into Randianism.

Thnx to TB for the pointer.

No possible conflicts here:

Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour is on the speaking circuit...A source tells me that his fee is between $50,000 and $75,000 per appearance, plus the usual travel expense.

Marcus Kindley makes this Washington Post article about an impending rally in DC.

Thnx to reader KG for the pointer.

Tony Wilkins claims there were 700 visits to porn websites per day over the last month at the GPL.

This claim seems to be inaccurate.

As I understand it, the number tracked by library software is attempted visits, not pages successfully loaded.

And the number of attempts can include multiple hits for a single page, depending on the contents of that page -- as many as 50 hits on one page tested by library staff.

The number of inappropriate pages visited (or, more precisely, pages flagged as inappropriate by software that even supporters acknowledge misreads some sites) would thus be lower, and perhaps much, much lower, than the number advanced.

This is why the incident reports are important. On their own, they offer an incomplete view of the problem. Combined with other data, including accurate software-tracking numbers, they help us triangulate to reach a reasonable estimate of the problem's scope, and the efficiency of solutions in place.

Also: I asked Sandy Neerman about the filtering module included in the library's existing software. The answer was what I suspected -- users pay for the modules they use, so adding the filtering module included in the package would incur cost to the library.

Always start with some good news, even if it's not true.

Early yet, but we may have a winner in today's Ledes That Make You Want to Keep Reading contest:

Marcel Albert, who became one of the leading French fighter pilots of World War II, flying Soviet-built planes in duels with German aircraft on the Eastern front, died Monday in Harlingen, Tex.

"We are not afraid to maul a black man over the head if he dares to vote, but we can't treat women, even black women, that way. No, we'll allow no woman suffrage."

I have to admit, it's an argument I had not considered.

[I]t will be illegal to become a Facebook friend with an applicant in order to check out private details, he said, adding that some people seem to be indiscriminate about whom they accept as a friend.

That's in Germany. Here, maybe not.

Lost on purpose.

$100 million here, $100 million there, pretty soon you're talking about real money.

I'd want some solid documentation on any promised technology fix.

Music for a cloudy morning (MP3).

It's not summer at our house until some says "this corn is special, isn't it?" at the dinner table.

I don't live in GSO to sit in traffic, and also my pain hurts worse than anyone else's, but I'm willing to concede that this might be slightly more of a problem than, say, Battleground and Wendover at 5:15 on a weekday afternoon.

City press release:

RUCO Task Force Special Meetings

WHAT: To gather information from the public for modifications to the City’s Rental Unit Certificate of Occupancy (RUCO) Ordinance.

WHEN: 3 pm Wednesday, August 25, and 1 pm Friday, August 27

WHERE: 115 S. Westgate Dr.

WHO: The public and media are invited to attend.

All info included in the body of the email, too. Thanks.

18. North Carolina: Why don't you and Duke go in the closet and make ugly children together already?

One of the less offensive entries in the Hater's Guide to the Top 25.

One reason the market is hurting is that buyers and sellers are in a standoff over prices. Many sellers are reluctant to lower their prices. And buyers are hesitating because they think home prices haven't bottomed out.

A protracted housing bust seemed like a pretty sure bet three years ago, and its impact on the broader economy has been obvious for some time. This was going to be a hard grind under any circumstances, but the alleged liberals in Washington seem content to shovel money into the banks and willing to watch unemployment drift along at very high levels, and the other guys are checked out completely.

Can't imagine anything worse than this blog?

What about this blog, forever.

Barbecue wars.

I've got a couple of friends with Big Green Eggs, including T-Square. Good people to know.

UPDATE: Reader EH proudly emails a photo of his meat. "A 14lb beef brisket after 16hrs on my egg."

The stated arguments against an Islamic center two blocks from the WTC site have morphed over time, as point after point (location, extreme imam, symbolism) turned up false.

What I hear more now is that it's a matter of outreach and compassion -- if only these Muslims were more sensitive to the feelings of others, they would build a few blocks further away.

Translation: all Muslims are in time-out for the actions of a handful of fanatics on 9/11. Muslims must tread softly around Real Americans, who own 9/11.

It comes down to barely-opaque prejudice and misplaced anger.

This looks bad, too.

I don't think Greensboro should make me pay for a privilege license so I can maintain an office for the practice of journalism, but at least they aren't charging bloggers. Yet.

Thnx to JO for the tip.

A great deal of Empires and Barbarians consists of untangling what we thought we knew about Volkerwanderung and such from the political agendas and time-hardened memes that serve to confuse the facts, and applying both historical and archaeological sources to the reconstruction of something approaching a reliable record, and accepting that best guesses and blank spots are often going to be the best we can do.

Interesting (to me, at least) to see similar logic applied much closer to home, in terms of both time and geography.

Slow down the car and let the kid jump out with his bags. 

My late father seems to have ghost-written more than one article in this morning's NYT.

Local media coverage of the GGO is extensive, with ample consideration of the econ dev and community event angles in addition to the golf. Which is fine, that's how it looks from here.

In the rest of the country, the Wyndham is worth a short AP article about qualifier Arjun Atwal winning on Sunday (nice putt, btw), or it's another excuse to talk about the guy who wasn't there. The CharlotteRaleigh paperplex sent a reporter, although the N&O site buried the story.

It's a big damn deal in India, though.

I was driving through town the other day, counting the For Sale signs in front yards.

GSO was hardly the epicenter of the housing collapse, but we did have our share of new construction, and I guess over the past three years a certain number of houses have come on the market in the normal course of events (e.g., aging families, job transfers, etc.) and of course the local economy has been weak for a long time, and people who can't sell their own houses can't buy new ones, etc., so even here there seems to be a glut of housing stock that will take quite a while to work off.

And I started thinking about one of the things that was supposed to make this bubble-burst less painful than the last one -- this time there is something real (houses) involved, not just paper, so the intrinsic value of the assets should  provide a floor for prices. Which is true, at some level, but until you reach that level the reality of the asset works against you, because it's there every day and it costs something to maintain and there are X large (and maybe growing) number of similar real properties on the market at the same time.

So, anyway, we blowed an engine, and "Great Recession" is more than a glib phrase, and my dad was right that you should buy your house first and foremost as a place to live and then enjoy any appreciation you might get.

I'm a fan of athletes acting like they've been there before when they do their jobs well -- just flip the ball to the ref and move on.

Anyway, I have a new hero.