EdCone.com

Maybe we should limit the number of wars we fight at one time.

I vote for zero.

We lived, shortly after 18 Brumaire, in a then-unfashionable arrondissement, where we quickly discovered a really good and remarkably inexpensive restaurant down the street from our basement garden apartment, and we were pretty upset when an article about it appeared in the New York Times. Anyway, funny.

Scrabble is a game of skill (when I get good letters) and luck (when I get bad letters).

Anyway:

The Annual Scrabble Challenge is Reading Connections' largest fundraising event...

The 11th Annual Scrabble Challenge will be held on April 12th at the West Market Street United Methodist Church in Greensboro.  The evening will include food and tournament play for Scrabble enthusiasts and spectators as well as drawings for exciting door prizes.

And on top if it all, nice handwriting.

Lisa and Sydney call it "Italian lunch" -- bascially a variety of antipasti, almost always including caprese salad, with some combination of salami, cheeses, and olives, maybe prosciutto, and bread and fresh fruit.

Better and cheaper than the same thing in a restaurant, and especially good served on the deck in springtime.

Bonus: An email from HQ says, "It’s snowing in Manhattan. UGH."

"The taxing unit may foreclose the tax liens and sell the real property subject to the liens in satisfaction of its claim for taxes."

Lots and lots of entries on this PDF list -- how many are really at risk of being seized and sold? What are the typical time and dollar thresholds for such action?

UPDATE: Better and searchable formats; thnx to GH for the pointer.

"North Carolina ranks a paltry 41st in the nation for broadband access."

Hmm...what to do about this problem?

I know -- let's pass a law that will deny local governments the right to participate in broadband buildouts!

What a brilliant idea.

Even better from the GSO perspective, it would block the City from pursuing a vital economic development possibility!

Seriously, this terrible bill is a big damn deal and it needs to be stopped.

Much is made of the brainlock epidemic sweeping the NCAA tourney -- the Butler kid's horrible foul that was immediately erased by the Pitt kid's horrible foul, the Syracuse kid's backcourt violation, an entire chapter devoted to John Henson.

Entertaining or agonizing, depending on your loyalties, but not unprecedented.

Any Carolina fan can tell you that Fred Brown and Chris Webber set the bar pretty high in this department.

Detroit -- "the country’s most startling example of modern urban collapse" -- is now smaller than Charlotte.

That's probably a little misleading, based on the density of suburban areas, but it's still pretty incredible.

Greensboro could save an estimated $2.4 to $5.2 million a year if it expands the White Street Landfill, according to an analysis by the city staff.

I couldn't find the report online, and I haven't seen it in a City press release, so for now this brief article is what I've got.

What variables account for that enormous spread between savings targets? And are those savings net of lawsuits?

Last year Danny Thompson mentioned the possiblity of buying out and relocating neighbors as part of a new White Street plan. I wonder if that's under any sort of backroom discussion.

We're discussing the state of waste-management technology in another thread. I'm as eager as anyone to power my flying car with a spoonful of reconsituted coffee grounds, but let's be careful about the stuff folks are selling.

Cave art of the Cumberland Plateau (thnx to SK for the link).

"One of them, the oldest so far, was created around 4000 B.C. The sites range from Missouri to Virginia, and from Wisconsin to Florida, but the bulk lie in Middle Tennessee."

Not much in the way of images at Slate; the picture at left is from this site.

Anyone know of sites in NC? We seem to be a little off the beaten path.

I really need to post a pic of the Guilford Point arrowhead discussed in this oft-linked column.

Local control, good except when it's not.

Bob Page is right. We need a serious broadband program.

If local businesses and foundations, and/or Google, bring a reasonable plan to the elected leaders of this job-starved city, I'd hope we could say something other than, "Time Warner has more clout in the legislature then the citizens of Greensboro, so piss off."

UPDATE: More here.

It's springtime, on the calendar and out my window.

Let's have class outside today.

Why do so many of us not only permit our teenage daughters to dress like this—like prostitutes, if we're being honest with ourselves—but pay for them to do it with our AmEx cards?

I don't know, and your article doesn't really explain it. Sorry you and all your friends regret your youths, though.

I have wondered about this myself.

Previously.

After months of wrangling with a reluctant freight railroad, the N.C. Department of Transportation says it has won the agreement it needed to secure $461 million in federal grants that will put faster, more frequent and more reliable passenger trains on the tracks between Charlotte and Raleigh.

I know trains are socialism on rails, because people on Art Pope's payroll keep tellng me so, and also because they're popular in Europe. Even the phrase "all aboard" has an ominous collectivist ring to it.

Meanwhile, enormous public spending on highways and wars for oil are just the free market at work.

But I'd be happy to travel my home state by train anyway.

Signing up with Groupon "the single worst decision I have ever made as a business owner."

More here. Thnx to PLN for the link.

Private investment is low because aggregate demand is low and so capacity utilization is low--and is not expected to get better anytime soon. Full stop.

If an inconvenient truth falls in a room full of economists with their fingers in their ears, does it make a sound?

In my view there are powerful reasons to favor substantial changes to the structure of college sports. But it’s also worth remembering what is valuable about college sports as an institution.

The games are pretty great, and not filling out brackets has made them more enjoyable for me.

As Robert Simon argues persuasively, the best moral justification for vigorous athletic competition is when we conceive competition not as a zero-sum game in which one opponent tries to destroy another, but a mutual agreement by competitors to abide by a shared set of rules and make an honest attempt to play the game as it should be played, and to play it as well as possible.

Yes, and it's even better when your team wins.

The backlash against the Big East backlash has begun. It's not very convincing. Nate Silver says the conference's performance is not a gross statistical anomaly, but it's still gross. Of course there's luck involved, but this -- "6 of the 9 biggest upset victims have been Big East teams" -- translates easily as "the Big East was overrated." As in recent years, the league looks like a legit power conference, but not Godzilla among the fawns, which is pretty much what we were told, often. Eleven teams from one conference, even a very big conference, is about three teams too many. And after FSU's beatdown of Notre Dame, it's hard to argue that VA Tech shouldn't have gotten an invite.

Meanwhile, OSU reminds me a little too much of UNC's '09 team.

"In the north, a wet snow fell on nearly half a million newly homeless people."

On the ground in Japan.

Filming has begun on Peter Jackson's version of The Hobbit.

IIRC we were assigned this book in Lane Anderson's 5th grade English class. It is quite the ripping yarn and fun to read aloud to children, and it gains retroactive depth and texture from LOTR.

Dear Barack Obama,

Please nominate Elizabeth Warren to head the CFPB. Rubinite Democrats have done enough damage to this country, maybe time to try something new.

Thanks!

N&R is correct that GSO is much better off with a condo project -- even a recession-smacked, slow-selling one -- than the empty tower we had for years at the corner of Friendly and Elm. Roy Carroll did something really good for this city by redeveloping the old Wachovia building.

But that downtown curfew, aka the Condo Marketing Act of 2010, still sucks.

Related, an attempt to address the actual problems caused by the nightlife trade.

After the daily paper's love letter yesterday to Fred Lind, I tried to find something contrary to say about our new public defender, but it's slow going. In fact, I was with Fred at a Carolina game last year and even Rusty Clark was glad to see him.

The city of Richmond has as many teams in the Sweet  16 as the Big East, and the ACC has more teams still playing than any other conference.

Just like you called it, right?

[I]t cannot reassure anyone who cares about America's viability as a republic that it is entering another war with essentially zero Congressional consultation or "buy-in," and with very little serious debate outside the Executive Branch itself.

This matters immensely, whether or not things turn out well in Libya, as we all hope they do.

Combat is not reality television, and the Constitution is more than a piece of parchment.

It's not cheap, either, and it looks like we'll be footing much of the bill.

Japanese news coverage has been largely calm, rational, informed, and critical...

It also just looks good because there is something so ugly beside it: the non-Japanese coverage. That, I am afraid, has been full of factual errors and other problems...perpetually late...woefully selective...misleading.

Is the US media getting Japan wrong?

To give local economic developers and entrepreneurs a vast advantage when working to bring 21st century jobs and prosperity to our area, our local government and economic development partners should research building a 20 megabit-1 gigabit (symmetrical) public broadband network.   

— Bob Page, chairman and  CEO, Replacements Ltd., in this morning's N&R feature on big ideas for the local economy (the article is hidden from prying eyes in the GPV).

Education at various levels was mentioned a few times, perhaps most interestingly by Action Greensboro's April Harris, who talked about a town/gown partnership called Opportunity Greensboro: "Imagine the vibrancy that a downtown university district with 1,000 or more graduate students could bring to our city."

Hard to argue with Cone Health System CEO Tim Rice that health care is Kind of a Big Deal. Good to see native son Jeb Brooks mention quality of life as an econ-dev tool; I wish someone had developed that idea in terms of sustaining and marketing a green, livable city.

And it's a blogging professor for the win! David Wharton:

I have no idea what the Next Big Thing will be, but whatever it is, I predict that its boosters will claim that it will “revitalize ” something [...] and its detractors will claim that it is a dark plot led by a former Greensboro mayor, nefarious members of government staff, and the devil....I hope that instead of a Next Big Thing, we get a hundred Next Small Things — another neighborhood watch formed, an historic landmark preserved, better police protection in rough neighborhoods, new small businesses launched — that you will probably never read about.

A team from Dudley High School is participating in the Shell Eco-marathon, which "challenges high school and college student teams from around the world to design, build and test energy efficient vehicles."

Fox 8 video about the project here; you can learn more -- and help support the effort -- by contacting teacher Ricky Lewis at lewisr@gcsnc.com.

Thanks to Billy for the heads up.

"It is a problem that does not exist on a human time frame."

I'd guess that some of the stupider cheerleading for the awesome no-danger of nuclear power has quieted in the face of Japan's reality, but the Chernobyl, Not So Bad meme is already in circulation.

Don't believe it:

While some radioactive elements in nuclear fuel decay quickly, cesium’s half-life is 30 years and strontium’s is 29 years. Scientists estimate that it takes 10 to 13 half-lives before life and economic activity can return to an area. That means that the contaminated area — designated by Ukraine’s Parliament as 15,000 square miles, around the size of Switzerland — will be affected for more than 300 years.

How to photograph a full moon (SFW).

Black people are "Mascots, dupes, and yes, victims" of the Democratic Party, says N&R columnist Charles Davenport Jr.

"Conservatives must never become to the GOP what blacks are to the Democratic Party...Mascots, dupes, and yes, victims."

No chance that black people are making rational decisions on their own, based in some part on condescending attitudes like this?

Billy Jones suggests that the Randleman Lake bomber might have just been fishin'.

Another theory arrives via email:

Many fishermen are upset that the Piedmont Triad Regional Reservoir Authority (PTRRA) decided to delay opening of the lake by a full month...

...There are more than a few fishermen who believe the supposed discovery of an IED on the shore of Randleman Lake is an attempt by the PTRRA to circumvent Federal water access rights in the name of public safety. I sincerely hope this is not the case. As disturbing as it would be to find that a disgruntled fisherman or boater has attempted to cause harm to the public or the facility, it would be far more disturbing to learn that any agent of a local or municipal government would have participated in such a scheme in order to obtain authority to close the lake to public access...

...something is “fishy” here.

I'll take neither of the above in the betting pool, with Billy getting the higher seed.

Crucial efforts to tame Japan's crippled nuclear plant were delayed by concerns over damaging valuable power assets and by initial passivity on the part of the government.

One of the ways Fukushima is said to be less awful than Chernobyl is in the management of the crisis, but it looks like there was room for improvement there.

City Council interviews prospective garbage contractors on Tues afternoon. Details in this week's note from the Manager (starts p. 4 of PDF).

Jordan surveys the political landscape.

Binker says Civitas is "misleading" and "ill-informed" in its criticism of state funding for the HP furniture market.

I'm sure all their other work is tip-top.

She doesn't expect Naples, for example, to come all the way back until the late 2030s. Other Florida metro areas with a 20-year wait or longer include Punta Gorda, Palm Bay and North Port.

18% of the homes in Florida are vacant. You can bet the under on the prediction above and still feel a little queasy.

Lorillard Tobacco of Greensboro, N.C., which is more than 90 percent reliant on revenue from menthol products and makes the top brand, Newport, is leading the opposition to F.D.A. action...Jonathan Daniel Heck, Lorillard’s principal scientist, issued the industry view Thursday saying there was no evidence that menthol promoted youth smoking or made it harder to quit.

The F.D.A.'s Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee disagrees.

Chief Miller explains the use of the term "IED" for the bomb found at Randleman lake, and updates the progress of the investigation -- I put it all above the original post to keep the conversation in one place.

Number 4 is worrisome, but most of these points would seem to argue in favor of improved reactor design and proper oversight rather than abandoning nuclear power.

Joe posts about a conversation with a couple who say the information about Bret Riddleberger really was discussed as a threat, concluding, "It appears to me that certain individuals within the county GOP owe Jeff Hyde and the Riddleberger's a public apology."

"Use American manners." You first!

UCLA Girl makes it all the way to the NYT editorial stack, complete with quotes from Eugene Volokh, who says succinctly at his own site, "The speech is clearly constitutionally protected, as well as being moronic."

Walter Jones "may be one of the anti-war crowd's unlikeliest voices. A conservative and a member of the House Armed Services Committee, he is a strong supporter of the military and voted to authorize force in Iraq in 2002."

For the nth time I'm struck by the use of "conservative" to mean "not really very conservative at all," which is how I'd characterize a rush to start an unprovoked war.

It is the rare museum exhibition that bets most of the house on fabric swatches — or, more politely, textile samples — and succeeds. This is the impressive achievement of “Color Moves: Art and Fashion by Sonia Delaunay,” a sumptuous and enlightening show at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum that may change forever the way you look at dry goods.

I found this review interesting in itself, and also because the upcoming Jewish Museum show about Etta and Claribel Cone will focus on the sisters' textile collection as well as the more-famous paintings. I think the JewMu will bet pretty heavily on the big name artists to draw a crowd, but I'm hoping the stuff once deemed craft work get some love, too.

Here's another relevant show. Thnx to the Jewish Museum's Karen Levitov for the pointer.

UPDATE: GPD Chief Ken Miller tells me that the explosive device was what we might have called back in the day a homemade bomb, but that the term of art for such things is now IED -- "That's how the FBI refers to them, and that's the common terminology" in law-enforcement circles, he said, adding that the term "IED" differentiates it from a manufactured device.

The bomb was not as large as the ones that have caused such damage in Iraq, and was not large enough to destroy the Randleman dam, but it could have damaged the structure and caused serious injury or death to anyone unlucky enough to be near it if it exploded.

The dismantled device is now in the hands of the FBI, which as of this afternoon has taken the lead on the case; Miller says the device is a rich source of evidence, but that as of yet there are no breaks in the investigation. [end update]

Last night's press release from the CoG about a bomb at Randleman lake raised more questions than it answered (full text after the jump).

Like...was somebody trying blow up the Randleman dam? Do law-enforcement agencies now call every homemade bomb an "IED," or is there a more specific meaning to the term? Was this thing built by a local knucklehead, or does it have more exotic origins?

High Point on edge:

In the last 30 years, High Point lost its once-extensive base of textile mills and furniture plants because of fundamental shifts in the economy and, in some cases, after local company buyouts by out-of-town interests. Now, some High Pointers wonder if the pending deal to bring the three main furniture market showrooms and World Market Center under one ownership foreshadows a similar fate for the city.

As the article says, a live event like the furniture market is different from a manufacturing business -- it's location-specific. And I think the past few years have shown that the HP market still matters in the Vegas era.

But I'm nervous, too.

Process and Recommendations for Academic Restructuring at UNC-Greensboro (PDF doc).

After asking the universe if North Carolina actually has gold reserves to back its own currency, as proposed by Franklin County rep Glen Bradley, I put on my reporter's hat (fedora, with a card in the band that says "Press") and emailed the query to Heather Strickland, deputy director of communications for the NC Department of State Treasurer.

Her reply: "To our knowledge, North Carolina does not maintain gold reserves. You may also want to check with Department of Revenue."

So we're going to need to buy some gold.

Clemson boils down its NCAA history into 33 seconds of horror.

Don't look now, but Dalton Pepper just stole Howard's rock.

The N&R posts Doug Clark's column about fixing the University of North Carolina system.

Pricing qualified students out of UNC and NC State is still a terrible idea, but props to Doug for sparking conversation on an important topic, and to the N&R for making the column available to readers across the state.

I never loved a man, either, but my voice isn't good enough to carry this song.