EdCone.com

Some words for hangover, like ours, refer prosaically to the cause: the Egyptians say they are “still drunk,” the Japanese “two days drunk,” the Chinese “drunk overnight.” The Swedes get “smacked from behind.” But it is in languages that describe the effects rather than the cause that we begin to see real poetic power. Salvadorans wake up “made of rubber,” the French with a “wooden mouth” or a “hair ache.” The Germans and the Dutch say they have a “tomcat,” presumably wailing. The Poles, reportedly, experience a “howling of kittens.” My favorites are the Danes, who get “carpenters in the forehead.” In keeping with the saying about the Eskimos’ nine words for snow, the Ukrainians have several words for hangover. 

Hebrew only recently added a word for the malady; 50% of Jews are said to have a low tolerance for alcohol. I used to be able to hang with the drinking half of the tribe, but I've aged into the lightweight clan.

Last week's note from the City Manager covers a pay raise for Council members and some new hires for the GSO Historical Museum.

Are the ribs at Country Barbecue the best ribs in Guilford County?

The late, lamented King's on Phillips Ave set the standard for local joints, but Country (woodless though it be) does a good job.

Halston, by Andy Warhol, 1974. Polaroid from the collection of the Weatherspoon Museum.

Back here this afternoon for a long ramble. Dog seemed to enjoy it.

We went to Florida. I'm acculturated to the ideal of Christmas weather colder than what I grew up on in NC, and the transplanting of pagan traditions from northern Europe to the palm trees feels strange to me. Still, big fun with the in-laws. The dog seemed happy to see us when we got home.

Previously: A somewhat grim look back at my first tropical Christmas.

I had not realized that the Weatherspoon has a Diego Rivera drawing in its collection (image not yet online), but reading about this show led me to that discovery.

Left, Frozen Assets, about which more here: Rivera’s jarring vision of [New York City] -- in which the masses trudge to work, the homeless are warehoused, and the wealthy squirrel away their money -- struck a chord in 1932, in the midst of the Great Depression.

Seems pretty timely in late 2011, too.

Romallus Murphy's "work helped enact the Voting Rights Acts of 1965 and increase representation of black lawyers in the state court system."

In 2010, Murphy explained to an audience at Elon Law the long-term legal strategy that led up to Brown v. Board of Education.

Murphy died last week in GSO at 83.

So many Boxing Day memories, and more still to come.

Merry Christmas, errone.

GPD press release:

Due to the high probability of rain, tonight's DWI checkpoint has been cancelled. Operating this type of checkpoint in adverse weather poses safety risks to the officers and the public.

Instead, GPD officers will perform supression [sic] patrols throughout the city to detect impaired drivers.

Probably a better strategy anyway.

Be safe.

This is nicely weird.

Second rock concert I attended was Jethro Tull at the Greensboro Coliseum.

"Bank of America's practices are not at issue."

So says a company mouthpiece after B of A was forced to cough up $335 million for Countrywide's habit of screwing black and Hispanic customers back before it was acquired by the Charlotte leviathan.

Nor is NCNB directly responsible for Countrywide's other sins during the bubble.

But for the Nth time one has to ask if anyone did their homework before buying that horrible company.

[T]he gravitational pull between Curry and Davidson is substantial.

How Stephen Curry spent the lockout.

His old team is having a pretty good year without him.

Corinne Stickley Buckalew died along with her husband, two children, and a business associate in this week's small-plane crash in NJ.

Thoughts are with her family. The old neighborhood Christmas party will be a sadder affair tonight.

I mentioned not long ago that Luna and I were seeing signs of resilience and renewed growth downtown; this is the project upon which we had stumbled. Meanwhile, the new Hibachi Cafe around the corner gets a good review, with which I'm happy to concur.

We were back this warm week at GSO's great courthouse plaza, which is so nice that if I had not called my architect friend to talk about the experience last time I would have done it this time.

"Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views, beyond the comprehension of the weak."

--John Adams

Looks like some of that retroactive depth and texture is baked into the movie.

North Carolina native Joshua Long gets all First Amendmenty on the NYPD.

[F]ood insecurity is much likely higher among some especially disadvantaged groups than the reported statistics indicate.

C'mon, I thought I dealt with this kind of thing yesterday:

"At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge," said the gentleman, taking up a pen, "it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor and Destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir."

"Are there no prisons?" asked Scrooge.

The entire exercise is political, but Republicans have thoroughly botched the politics.

The WSJ editorial page is frustrated with GOP leadership, although the fact it doesn't flag the opening quote from McConnell as part of the problem is part of the problem.

Occasionally he’d attempt to strangle young journalists, who admired him unquestioningly, with their own neckties. But he was right. He was always right. Even when he was wrong.

A final word on Christopher Hitchens.

Genuinely curious: Why did the N&R choose to give the top left quarter of its front sports page to a photo from the Kentucky-Samford game, local interest in which seems likely to have been minimal?

Wouldn't the State game, which was relegated to less-choice real estate below the fold, have been a more logical choice than a widely-disliked Goliath from another state pounding on an even more distant David? Even Butler-Gonzaga would have made more sense in terms of national attention.

Also: What are the plans to hire an editor in chief over on Market Street?

"[O]ne of Greensboro’s best examples of Craftsman design" saved from destruction.

"In the cosmic game of hide and seek, finding planets with just the right size and just the right temperature seems only a matter of time."

Life as we know it flourished on Hoth, so the temp range must be pretty broad. 

A relatively normal-seeming person recently told me that the moon landing was a hoax. Good thing Buzz Aldrin wasn't there.

"It's not my business," Scrooge returned.  "It's enough for a man to understand his own business, and not to interfere with other people's. Mine occupies me constantly..."

Seasonal ur-glibertarianism.

Time to give this old chestnut the same treatment IAWL gets here.

Then they can show it at the Marie Antoinette awards dinner.

Interesting to see what happens here if the pagan mom takes the principal at her word and shows up with some Korans and spell books to share with the kids.

UPDATE: Much more here. /update

South Elm Urban Market being planned for Sunday afternoons.

A conversation about fracking on the Diane Rehm program.

Needs more shouting.

Thanks to CS for the pointer.

Chanukah, a minor Jewish holiday commemorating a successful rebellion against some of Alexander the Great's heirs, must be upon us soon, I surmise, as well-meaning white people who have been led to believe it's the Jewish Christmas keep wishing me a happy one.

Louis C.K.'s experiment with please-pay web delivery is a success.

I might give the guy $5 if I saw him on the street, just to say thanks for the lulz.

More here.

Havel's is the rare life, Milan Kundera has written, that resembles a work of art and gives "the impression of a perfect compositional unity." Consider: A bourgeois boy becomes a bohemian playwright; he then becomes a dissident, who, for the crime of writing subversive essays and helping to organize a subversive movement called Charter 77, is encouraged by the regime to master the art of welding in a reeking Czech prison; finally, in late November, 1989, everything implodes and he is leading demonstrations in Wenceslas Square, and hundreds of thousands of people are shouting "Havel na hrad!" ("Havel to the Castle!"); within days, he is the head of state, working in the same hilltop redoubt that served as a seat of power for dynasts of the Bohemian kingdom and the Hapsburg monarchy, for the emissaries of Berlin and the satraps of the Kremlin.

1936-2011.

Greensboro makes a cameo appearance* in this article about the Occupy movement, a phenomenon built on personal stories that "amass the moral force of a Steinbeck novel."

Before Occupy Wall Street, the economic upheavals of the past few years produced no organized movement of the have-nots...the Obama Administration failed to harness public anger or turn the economy around, and the Tea Party wore out its welcome after the 2010 elections. When Occupy Wall Street lit a match, the wood was bone-dry. Suddenly, there was a dramatic, public way to talk about problems—money in politics, income inequality, corporate greed—that frustrated Americans but seemed intractable...

...The most important facts about our society, widely known but seldom mentioned, are now the first order of conversation...In this sense, Occupy Wall Street has already done its work...No one should expect this protean flame to transform itself into a formal political organization with a savvy strategy for enacting reforms and winning elections. That’s someone else’s job.

* "Occupy Wall Street became an instant brand across the country...in Greensboro, North Carolina, a march of seven hundred people was organized with little advance notice, largely through social media."

Freshly turned red soil covered his coffin, which went into the ground two weeks and a day before he was due home. There were two shriveled carnations on the damp dirt. There was no marker yet, no indication that this was a soldier’s grave.

David Emanuel Hickman of Greensboro "was the 4,474th member of the U.S. military to die in the war..And he may have been the last."

Life-sized foam Merlin, at Foamhenge, VA, as discussed in this old column I found while looking for something else.

This also (and inevitably) is referenced therein.

Manager's weekly report. Have at it.

The bill has so many other objectionable aspects that we can’t go into them all. Among the worst: It leaves open the possibility of subjecting American citizens to military detention and trial by a military court. It will make it impossible to shut the prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. And it includes an unneeded expansion of the authorization for the use of military force in Afghanistan to include indefinite detention of anyone suspected of being a member of Al Qaeda or an amorphous group of “associated forces” that could cover just about anyone arrested anywhere in the world.

Civil liberties were supposed to be important to Obama, no?

Oh, well. At least he stood up to Wall Street and fixed the housing mess.

A 2010 conversation with the late Christopher Hitchens on the Brad and Britt radio program (background begins around 72:30; Hitchens comes on about 74:20).

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York recently asked a simple question: What percentage of mortgages lent during the bubble went to people who owned more than one home?

Its answer: nationwide, over a third. In Arizona, California, Florida, and Nevada, it was nearly half. Astoundingly, about 1 in 10 mortgages lent in those states during 2006 and 2007 went to those who owned more than four homes. All figures are about double the rate seen before the bubble.

The article takes pains to cite the media and cultural vibe during the bubble, which made a second home seem like both an investment and a birthright, and that stuff matters, but I wouldn't let the lenders or the borrowers themselves off too easily.

Stopping SOPA: "The internet is one of the few sources of job creation in the U.S. economy right now. We don’t need laws that will stifle it."

JR posts on the meanings of "No Comment;" Lex responds that we aren't always told exactly what's not being commented upon, and Robert notes the speaks-volumes lack of comment by officials of other universities on this HPU story.

War is over (if you want it)

• Total deaths: Between 110,663 and 119,380

• Coalition deaths: 4,803 

• U.S. deaths: 4,484 

• U.S. wounded: 32,200 

• U.S. deaths as a percentage of coalition deaths: 93.37 percent

• Iraqi Security Force, or ISF, deaths: At least 10,125 

• Total coalition and ISF deaths: At least 14,926

• Iraqi civilian deaths: Between 103,674 and 113,265 

• Non-Iraqi contractor deaths: At least 463

• Internally displaced persons: 1.24 million 

• Refugees: More than 1.6 million

UPDATE: More here. /update

Duke and Progress warned the FERC that it was applying standards so strict as to foreclose the possibility of any utility merger from taking place.

And the feds seems OK with that possibility, "assuring the $26 billion deal won't get done this year and raising questions whether it can get done at all."

Leave Newt alone!

After all he's been through.

He went through a divorce! All you people care about is winning an election. You're lucky he even performed for you bastards. Leave Newt alone. Please.

Greensboro Police Chief Ken Miller:

“As this situation rapidly unfolded, we shared the concern that a potential breakdown in the system may have contributed to the tragic death of Officer Figoski on Monday. We conducted a thorough review of our records, and had in-depth interviews with our employees. This review indicates that people performed their duties appropriately and in accordance with established protocols.”

Full press release after the jump.

UPDATE: This. /update

The listification of American journalism didn't begin with the Forbes 400, but I think we accelerated the process. Once Forbes began turning out magazines the size of a small-city phone book, we quickly got orders to publish more and more lists, until even junior staffers were saying to each other that the quality of our product was suffering as a result.

We had no clue what was coming.

Lists are huge on the net, in some part because the medium lends itself to quick hits, but also because publishers can sell each click to the next item as another page view. And JR and Jeff are right, most of the wrap-ups and predictions are pretty stupid.

Worse, it's easy to assume that every feature presented in that form -- even those that involve actual reporting -- is guilty of the same sins.

Also, the David Letterman Top Ten frequently was funny in the '80s, kids.

“I’m a conservative Republican, and this goes against all my principles,” said Brian Coppola, the chairman of the Board of Supervisors of Robinson Township. The pending legislation, he said, “is an enormous land grab on the part of the industry. Our property rights are being trampled.”

NYT follows the Inquirer's lead on the erosion of local control in the shale gas boom.

Blah blah currency valuation blah blah fluctuation blah blah Greece...all I know is the chart verifies that the Euro spikes whenever I'm headed for Europe.