EdCone.com

Let's say, just for the sake of argument, that you are such a huge nerd that you spend time thinking about the all-time team for your favorite program or franchise.

Do you choose the very best players, or the combination of great players that would form the best team when playing other all-time squads? 

I go with the winning team.

For example, would you put George Lynch on your all-time UNC basketball team? I would. I might even put Derrick Phelps on there. I want me some toughness, even if it means famouser players don't make the roster.

Leaving off a Worthy or a Jordan is crazy talk. But as you round out the second five and name the last three, things get interesting.

A post-Mubarak Egypt, even a democratic one, does not necessarily mean great things for the US, or for human rights, etc. 

But the army's pledge not to fire on the people is a heartening moment. And the army is one place where we would seem to have substantial influence.

The recent reference to a potential "Ceausescu moment" took me back to the eponymous event. Lisa and I were in some weird restaurant in a forest near Chenonceau. I was eating undercooked lamb. There was a television tuned to the news. Nobody was sorry to see the dictator go, but the violence was upsetting. There was so much hope as the Eastern Bloc turned, and so much disappointment over the years that followed...maybe, maybe, that arc of the moral universe we keep talking about is still bending in the right direction.

Nobody seriously argues for letting people die outside the health care system.

The current methods for including a lot of people are inefficient and inhumane. Requiring people to fatten insurance company profits is an odd approach, and it may not be legal.

Maybe we should have some sort of public health insurance plan?

The City of Greensboro appears to have used a more rigorous selection process (page 9 of PDF) for its website vendor than did the County of Guilford. A contract is in place. Public input was solicited and more is expected.

The City is paying much more than the County planned to pay for its site -- anyone have a strong sense of the relative scope of the two projects? -- but the County's bargain-hunting has yet to result in real savings and may end up costing us more than pursuing a better-planned, higher-priced project from the start.

This is not just geekery, it's wonkery, too. Government websites are kind of a big deal. And to whatever extent the management of these projects provides a window into the business practices of the two organizations, that's also useful.

Some 23 percent of homeowners owe more than their home is worth on the market, and their demand for goods is restrained by the need to pay down debt.

The plan was to rescue the bankers and let the rest of us slog through to recovery. Keep clapping, it's working. So much for Blue Dogs and tea partiers as voices for regular folks.

The skating championship seems to have gone well, and rumor has it that skating bigwigs were pleased and may shortlist GSO for future events. Expect a fresh round of Coliseum-bashing to commence. Just in time for the ACC tournament, which will also be terrible for Greensboro.

Downtown GSO has a long way to go before we see this kind of deal, but it's conceivable that some future buyer will see the N&R as a real estate play with a quaint old business attached.

Scoble loves too easily and speaks too freely. His critics have a point about the QA service but they are joyless and self-serious. And the whole kerfluffle is teapotted to the point of internet parody.

Somehow it warms my heart to know this kind of thing still goes on.

“The problem with the economic reforms was that they didn’t trickle down,” ElBaradei said. “The gap between rich and poor is widening dramatically. There’s a hangar at the Cairo airport for private jets, billionaires are on the Forbes list, and Egypt’s annual per-capita income is two thousand dollars. How can you sustain that?”

From Joshua Hammer's New Yorker article on Egyptian politics, April 2010.

This looks prophetic:

Mustafa called ElBaradei’s ambitions for democratizing Egypt and ousting the Mubaraks unrealistic, however. “You are talking about a real state machine,” she said. “Even ElBaradei himself, unless he gathers a huge number of people into the streets, can’t succeed.”

I was surprised at the number of Americans said to be in Egypt. The standard count over the weekend seemed to be 50K, with references to people living, working, and studying there intermingled with accounts of tourists and other visitors. NYT (echoed frequently elsewhere) has the highest count and most specific explanation I've found of the semi-permanent population, but that still leaves shorter-term visitors unnumbered: "An estimated 90,000 Americans live and work in Egypt, most in cities now roiled by antigovernment protests, looting and a military presence that includes tanks and helicopters."

An email from a NW GSO community watch group says that last Tuesday, after leaving a nice downtown restaurant, two people were forced at gunpoint into their car. Their abductor had them drive around for a while, then withdraw as much money as possible from an ATM, at which point he sent them on their way. Word is the perp or perps were arrested after another incident on Friday morning...

The new House majority's laser-like focus on the deficit is broad enough to include a redefinition of rape.

Also at Roch's, some reporting on the purported economic impact of the US Figure Skating Championships.

I've argued here and in my newspaper column that big televised events at our excellent coliseum bring GSO some value beyond direct spending and multiplier effects, in the form of advertising for the city. If Greensboro bought several thirty-second commercials on NBC during the big skating events, it would cost a bundle; we get a similar level of publicity from the on-air mentions, repeated visual reminders, and newspaper datelines, etc.

Roch was wondering where to find the 2011 State of the City report.

This morning's N&R opinion section front has a column (GPV) by the report's author, Keith Debbage, with a note at the bottom saying the report is available on his website, www.uncg.edu/~kgdebbag. I couldn't find it there, but I did find it at the Greensboro Partnership site.

Here it is. I'm going to read it, but first I'm going outside to enjoy this warmish January day.

Chuck D was right about rap and CNN.

"It turned out that few of his convictions were as strong as Obama thought they were."

Obama, Incorporated.

What is hard to take in at a glance is the extent of the change in the political description Obama has dedicated himself to earning over the next two years. All his general pledges now bear the stamp of the corporate ideology...

...Obama now cultivates a style of deliberate platitude. “Sustaining the American Dream has never been about standing pat. It has required each generation to sacrifice, and struggle, and meet the demands of a new age.” There are times when the strenuous blandness passes finally into a vacuity of non-meaning...

UPDATE: Correct time for today's screening is 1PM

A second showing of Michael Frierson's documentary, FBI KKK, will be held this afternoon at 1:30 1:00 at the Civil Rights museum in downtown GSO.

The screening was added when it became clear that the museum's large auditorium would not accommodate everyone who showed up for the film last night.

We ended up walking down to Bin 33 with some friends. The food was OK, but not great, and the service was friendly but sporadic. It's a great-looking place, but they need to raise their game on the whole restaurant part of the deal.

Charlie Louvin, 1927-2011.

Beware the mushroom of destruction.

Nothing wrong here that some government belt-tightening won't fix:

The Sarasota-Bradenton metropolitan area, a two-county sprawl of condominiums, marinas and retirement homes, saw the proportion of people living below the poverty line rise by more between 2007 and 2009 than any other big city in America, from 9.2% to 13.7%, according to the Census Bureau. Nor is Sarasota an aberration. All the other metropolitan areas that saw jumps of four points or more are also formerly fast-growing southern and western cities.

Wait, tried that:

Many of the federal grants come courtesy of the stimulus bill of 2009, and so are quickly drying up. When the federal money runs out, says Carolyn Mason, a county commissioner, “that’s pretty much the end of the road”.

Moreover, cities like Sarasota are unsympathetic places for those down on their luck. One of the reasons they grew so fast in the boom years were their low taxes, leaving little money for social programmes [sic].

The success of the American social safety net has dulled our collective memory of what hard times were like in this country before the New Deal. The reminders will not be pleasant.

You can sponsor contestants in Operation Smile's Dancing with the Carolina Stars fundraiser here. The big night is Feb 19 at Grandover.

Blocking the Internet may be seen in retrospect as the Ceausescu moment for the regime...

...Mubarak was safe while people were sitting on their butts twittering. He is much less safe now he has taken away Twitter and forced them to come out into the streets.

The message is the lack of the medium.

A walk through Union Cemetery yesterday afternoon took me back to this bit of crowd-sourced history and thus reminded me of the best name ever: Bransard Mook.

Al Jazeera coverage of Egypt and the Middle East "has helped propel insurgent emotions from one capital to the next."

People are free in their private lives to believe that John Quincy Adams was a member of the slavery-ending Founder's generation, or that the USSR bankrupted itself winning the space race, or that Europe is Greece but not Germany, or that the poor innocent banking industry was pushed into refis and spec condos in Miami by Jimmy Carter.

But we shouldn't be making policy based on know-nothingism.

Right now, the Egyptian government is periodically blocking Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, which are critical tools for organizing protests. But with all of our help, Egyptians and others in the region can jump their government's firewall and anonymoulsy access these online communications platforms which are currently being blocked or throttled. There are several ways that you can help them to do this...

Via Rebecca MacKinnon on FB, as is this remarkable photo.

Pricey Harrison, via Facebook:

Bad health care repeal bill just rammed through brand new Judiciary Committee with no opportunity for public or affected state agency input. Harbinger of what to expect this biennium?

"Once I started to realize I wasn't earning my money, I felt bad. I was making a crazy amount of money for not even pitching. Honestly, I didn't feel like I deserved it. I didn't want to have those feelings again."

Maybe an easier decision to make after making $40 million from the deal, but nice all the same.

Lemon socialism: passing your money to Goldman Sachs was necessary to save capitalism, but making sure you get health insurance is wicked.

A good roundup of the County website story. 

Commenter gsogeek:

[W]hen you get to the level of management that can approve that kind of spending, you should already have had rule #1 drilled into your head: if there is no contract, you get what you get. Period. I've looked through the SOW (Scope of Work) document that XMG released, and with what was listed there, it seems like the County got what was listed. Rule #2 of IT work, if the SOW doesn't list it, it doesn't exist.

To what extent does this reflect business practices at County IS or other departments?

Apologies to Skip Alston are quickly forthcoming, no doubt.

As long as it's got Wessonality, I don't need my chicken slurried and centrifuged.

The industrial food chain seems to lead to further industrialization of the food chain.

When God starts making boneless, skinless chickens, I'll start eating them that way. Until then, pass the drumsticks, please.

 

Back in the days when you couldn't buy alcohol on Sundays in South Carolina we used to drive from the beach to North Carolina to restock after Saturday night.

Now the last blue laws are being reconsidered:

Several states in the last decade have lifted or modified bans on Sunday alcohol sales. Along with Georgia, only Indiana and Connecticut have such laws on all forms of alcohol, with bills now introduced in all three states to end the prohibition.

"Patch Is A Huge Waste Of Money, And It Has Us Worried About Tim Armstrong's Ability To Run AOL."

Hmm. Can't really tell from the headline what the article is about...interesting observations therein about Facebook, Groupon, and low-quality local content.

UPDATE: A less-than-enthusiastic view of Patch from an almost-insider.

"It took a call to my nephew to solve a couple of non-intuitive Netflix issues.."

As someone who tries to replace his televisions every 22 years or so, I appreciated this writeup and review of local merchants and service providers.

Leave comments at his place if you can answer any of his outstanding questions.

The reality that emerged from interviews with protesters — many of whom said they were independents — was more complicated and reflected one of the government’s deepest fears: that opposition to Mr. Mubarak’s rule spreads across ideological lines and includes average people angered by corruption and economic hardship as well as secular and Islamist opponents. That broad support could make it harder for the government to co-opt or crush those demanding change.

I hope all those angry people understand that just because we give the guy $2 billion a year it doesn't mean we don't love them, too.

UNC has already had a rough trip to Miami.

Maybe the perspective provided by surviving "flashes of death" will make tonight's game easier...

Sorry, not this year.

In a stunning denouement to Nadal's tournament and year of hope to sweep all four grand slams, the world No.1 was stopped from completing the rare feat by his own body.

Laurelyn Dossett, Rhiannon Giddens and Scott Manring at Lucky 32 in GSO, where LD is artist in residence on Tuesday nights. The YouTube tells us this is "part of a song cycle that Laurelyn is writing for the North Carolina Symphony. She'll perform the cycle with Rhiannon and others November 2011."

Having been raised by a Nabokov fan, I remembered that the author was a lepidopterist. Turns out he was a good one.

Few professional lepidopterists took these ideas seriously during Nabokov’s lifetime. But in the years since his death in 1977, his scientific reputation has grown. And over the past 10 years, a team of scientists has been applying gene-sequencing technology to his hypothesis about how Polyommatus blues evolved. On Tuesday in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, they reported that Nabokov was absolutely right.

Wayne Robinson has been named to the 2011 ACC Basketball Tournament Legends Class. The former GDS and VA Tech star, current pastor, businessman, and all-around good guy, joins notables including Bill Guthridge, Len Elmore, and Thurl Bailey on the roster of honorees to be feted at the upcoming ACC tourney in GSO.

Thanks to The Artist Formerly Known as Timmy for the tip.

Let's win the future, because the past is kicking our asses!

So, the SOTU date-night special.The man gives a pretty speech. Why couldn't he boil down the benefits of healthcare reform like that before the midterm elections? A commenter at Metafilter says Biden and Boehner looked like the Comedy and Tragedy masks. Didn't we used to have nine Supreme Court justices? Why didn't Ryan mention his actual plan instead of just sharing puppy-eyed concern? Lots of teeth-gnashing over CNN including Bachmann's response, but it might have been a strategy to discredit Bachmann.

Former Bear Stearns mortgage executives who now run mortgage divisions of Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and Ally Financial have been accused of cheating and defrauding investors through the mortgage securities they created and sold while at Bear. According to e-mails and internal audits, JPMorgan had known about this fraud since the spring of 2008, but hid it from the public eye through legal maneuvering.

Cheat and then fail upward, they'll cover for you.

No doubt, repealing the limited financial sector reform we barely managed to pass after the Wall Street disaster is an awesome idea.

When did everyone in Guilford County go nuts?

Uptight is the best song in the history of songs, at least for the next 2 minutes and 36 seconds.

This lipsynched version is worth watching just for the oddly listless dancers and seemingly disinterested audience, and also because the ah ah ah ah ah yeah from the familiar studio track never gets old.

Not unrelated to the previous post:

Winding Springs' eight pre-K classrooms are among 105 that will disappear next year if the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board approves Superintendent Peter Gorman's cost-cutting plan today.

Advocates for young children are urging the board to delay a vote, saying there's no need to rush a decision that sets back academic progress and closes schools in fragile neighborhoods.

The headline on this WSJ article -- Why Rich Parents Don't Matter -- is at odds with the reporting. 

The longer version of the head that shows up in the browser tab -- How Poverty Hurts Young Children, and Why Rich Parents Don't Matter -- is somewhat more accurate, although it still understates the reported value of "rich" parents.

From the article:

These results capture the stunning developmental inequalities that set in almost immediately, so that even the mental ability of 2-year-olds can be profoundly affected by the socio-economic status of their parents. As a result, their genetic potential is held back.

Recall that in 2004 the educational backgrounds of the cultural elitist John Kerry (St. Paul’s, Yale) and the cultural populist George Bush (Andover, Yale) were remarkably similar. Kerry’s elitism signified not that he had gone to such schools but that he appeared to have learned something there, including — l’inutile beauté — French.

Considering a question posed here from time to time: why are so many rich, powerful people -- elites by any reasonable definition -- exempt from charges of elitism in our political culture?

Once-great papers like the Washington Post and the LA Times — already eroded by economics and niche online competitors — find that they simply aren't good enough to make a paywall work...Second-tier papers will continue to cut costs and get worse.

Turns out people actually want something for their money.

Snowy in Alabama, mild in the Arctic.

An unusually weak polar vortex is blamed; blame for the unusual weakening is harder to affix.

"Polar vortex" is my new favorite thing to say.

On Friday, January 28, The Media Studies Department and the International Civil Rights Center & Museum in Greensboro will host “Klansville, USA: Race, Repression and Civil Rights;” a free program, open to the public, which will present both a panel of experts on the history of the Ku Klux Klan as well as a screening of the documentary, FBI KKK, by Dr. Michael Frierson.

Not clear to me from the post where all this is happening, but you've got the rest of the week to figure it out.