EdCone.com

Zack Matheny:

I respectfully request that the City Council consider a bond referendum of $20 Million dollars for Job Creation and Retention and Economic Development.

Full text of his email to the City Manager after the jump.

Greater wage flexibility may in practice be resisted by economic agents.

Translated from the technocratese, I think this means that one of the many risks facing the latest European debt deal is that Greeks already consigned to penury to keep lit the lamps of Gstaad might frown upon further reductions to their paychecks.

Or as a local philosophizer put it in another context, "Personal fiscal austerity is great unless you have nothing to austere."

Compared to the average rates in the past three years, crime in Greensboro has declined in every category except two in 2011...

Given that those two categories were murder and rape, that's a fairly sunny take on the numbers, no?

The percentage jump in homicides reflects the relatively small base rate, but the increase in rapes reported looks large in absolute numbers.

Full GPD press release after the jump.

Dean Smith was ahead of the curve...he had a math background. Everything we did was measured up against an efficiency rating. Everyone talks about Bill James in baseball or "Moneyball," but Coach Smith was way ahead. If you go back and read his books today, he was using statistical data and different metrics to measure the efficiency of any offense or defense that we were running...

Big Ten commissioner and former UNC player Jim Delany reminisces about his days in Chapel Hill.

Home. Dog seems glad to see us.

We heard again and again that President's Day weekend is the busiest time of year in South Florida. Anecdotal evidence gathered at airports, restaurants, and beaches gave me no reason to disbelieve this assertion.

Kind of bummed I missed our one day of winter.

Rare relevance sighting: SNL opener actually funny and sharp on a touchy topic.

UPDATE: Touchy but less funny.

I wonder if this was like the famous "Mush from the wimp" headline.

To previous discussions of branding Greensboro my cousin David adds a query about the long-forgotten moniker City of Flowers, which he then answered himself with this link to the work of Gayle Hicks Fripp.

N+1 is a well-regarded literary magazine, but there's nothing in the description of this project about cities that indicates details of the component articles are supposed to be fictionalized, and yet the piece on Greensboro by Aaron Lake Smith is weirdly wrong on so many details that it reads like a sci-fi story in which someone has altered the present by making a butterfly-wing change to the past.

HEAT, hybrids, and more in your weekly report from the City Manager.

UPDATE: N&R confirms Matheny's claim, posts correction.

Zack Matheny: I was misquoted on the "key people" remark in today's News & Record.

He tells me it was more like, "Here's the key, we've got people who live downtown, and people who run businesses, we can find something that works."

Quote: "I may say some stupid things, but I didn't say that, and I wouldn't say that." 

At this rate, it's only a matter of time before a prominent Republican suggests that the ladies are a little emotional this week because of PMS.

Some discussion here of last night's noise ordinance meeting.

Bringing this to Council prematurely backfired, because now everyone's paying attention to the process, instead of just a few "key people."

This is actually an improvement on the blogging version of the fracking debate, where asking questions is assumed to reflect a desire to return to pre-industrial society.

Let them eat austerity:

[N]o one in charge in Europe has expressed any interested in fixing the economic problems of Greece. Mass unemployment is not the issue they're concerned about, the continued financial success of European bankers is.

I went out of my way to watch the Knicks the other night, something I don't think I've done since I left New York, at which time they were still using peach baskets.

The non-basketball stuff about Lin would be of little interest if he couldn't play, but he can. Now, can he play with Melo?

Paging the Lorax:

Davidson College says a pipeline Piedmont Natural Gas plans to build across its campus would damage the college's 200-acre nature preserve...

...the college accuses Charlotte-based Piedmont of withholding information about the pipeline's route.

More Senators have joined the One Million Strong for Women campaign, which Kay Hagan promotes today via email:

Yesterday, Senator Roy Blunt proposed an amendment that would allow any employer to be given an exemption from covering contraception. That's right. This amendment would allow ANY employer to not cover any essential preventative benefit for ANY moral reason.

This amendment is dangerous and offensive. We cannot allow anyone -- not politicians, not employers -- to get in between women and their health care.

No problem, they can just go to Jenny McCarthy for checkups:

Pediatricians fed up with parents who refuse to vaccinate their children out of concern it can cause autism or other problems increasingly are "firing" such families from their practices, raising questions about a doctor's responsibility to these patients.

Glad to hear it:

"We need to talk about income mobility," [Santorum] implored his party... "We need to talk about people at the bottom of the income scale being able to get necessary skills and rise so they can support themselves and a family."

By the same token, Santorum hasn't shied away from mentioning poverty...

...[That] stands in contrast to most of Santorum's rivals in the Republican race, where the word poverty has barely been mentioned, despite a record number of Americans living in poverty.

Just 31% of registered voters across the US favor no legal recognition for gay couples, according to this NYT/CBS poll (p 22).

North Carolinians will vote in May on a constitutional amendment that would allow no legal recognition for gay couples.

NC is not America, it's one poll, etc., but there should be a strong effort to explain to NC voters just what this amendment would do in terms of banning civil unions.

Legal Landmines of Social Media: A seminar for users, employers and lawyers, happens next Weds, Feb 22, at the Central Library, 2-4 PM; $75 for lawyers looking for CLE credit, free for the rest of youse.

What I'm told: "The presentation covers privacy issues, using evidence found through social media in trials, and the latest social media issues for employers." Details here.

Things surely are looking up for Obama, not least because of the protracted GOP nominating war and the weak candidates conducting it, but given the fragility of the economy it's far too early for Democrats to start doing the Snoopy dance.

This is still kind of funny, though:

[R]unning around the country in a long twilight struggle with Rick Santorum is just … how to put it? inherently demeaning and diminishing. It’s like struggling to land a one pound fish or searching for the way out of a paper bag. People see you doing that and you just look weak and feckless, even pitiful.

Cultural sites provide value, including economic value, beyond their P&L statements.

Running them efficiently is good governance.

Running them into the ground is not:

For state officials, the savings - which amount to 2 percent of the state's attractions total budget - don't justify the devastating effects.

The Facebook page opposing the proposed GSO noise ordinance seems to be gaining support.

Some good comments below this post, pointing out that this would be a city-wide rule (not just for downtown) and also that the proposed noise ceiling would require downtown streets to be quieter than what charts show for an average suburban street.

Rustling leaves would make it under the cap, but crickets could be a problem.

I guess freight trains and airplanes would be exempted, along with the Coliseum and the ballpark?

There must be a reasonable solution here. Good on the Council for taking its time on this one.

"Valentime's Day: The 14th of February. It falls on the same day as Valentine's Day except this one is only celebrated by 5 year olds."

You could get a book about it at the liberry.

Scoff at Hallmark holidays all you want, but this one and Mother's Day are best not ignored.

New tech media no less awful than old tech media, says former fake Steve Jobs.

Occupy the SEC on the Volcker rule.

Felix Salmon edits Andrew Ross Sorkin's Valentine to the big banks.

How did that rule get so complex, anyway?

Commissioner Erv Portman, a Democrat from Cary, called the idea of international intrusion into Wake citizens' constitutional rights "crazy" and "cockamamie."

Just what the little chip in your head told you to say, eh, Comrade?

For an organization that can't manage to tell Syria that killing its own people is kind of bad, that UN sure gets a lot done.

I get a lot done when my internet goes down, except for the stuff I need to do on the internet.

Upsetting reactions to Chris Brown's performance at the Grammys.

Greensboro Citizens Against Noise Ordinance says that "Normal ambient noise [downtown] on a Monday night when no clubs are open is 53dB," while the number under discussion for a new regulation is 45dB after 11pm. 

If the chart at left is correct, they'll have to outlaw rain.

Anyone got one of these?

N&R reporting that Skip Alston will not seek reelection.

Kind of a big deal around these parts.

Justin Conrad, a respected Greensboro businessman, announced his state senate candidacy in District 27 almost a month ago.

Someone please tell our daily newspaper.

UPDATE: Credit Doug Clark for knowing his stuff. This is interesting, too: "Wade's candidacy raises a strong question of why she ran for re-election to her District 5 council seat last year. She's clearly not interested in it, having run for the state Senate unsuccessfully in 2010 and now trying again."

A brief history of contraception and the Catholic Church.

This Albemarle man is absolutely correct that posting a temper tantrum on the internet is a bad thing to do.

Where in the world might his daughter have learned that kind of behavior?

Shooting that laptop does look fun, though.

More here.

ACC basketball in decline, Chapter the Nth.

Time to bring back the Big Four tourney.

So many sad elements to this article about the events leading up to the death of Tyler Clementi, and also a reality check about the durability of instant messages and other seemingly ephemeral online activity.

Is PIMCO too big, and too big too fail?

I've bored you before with my boyhood love for the Baltimore Colts, which was rooted in my parents' tenure in Charm City during the greatest of the Johnny U years, and by the same logic there was no way our family was not going to see Diner when it came out. Apparently not that many people rushed to theaters at the time, but the influence of the film is said now to be substantial.

Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three
(which was rather late for me) -
Between the end of the "Chatterley" ban
And the Beatles' first LP.

--Philip Larkin

Some people still haven't gotten over it, says Nancy Cohen:

It was sex: feminists, and gays - not abortion - that fueled the rise of the Right...

...The Republican party is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of the sexual counterrevolution.

Simplistic and tendentious (even the author acknowledges the power of moneyed interests and their crucial alliance with the bedroom police) but also, at a moment when contraception is a hot topic, worth discussion.

Previously: Contra-contraception, pill protests, local support.

UPDATE: Yet more.

I didn't go looking for Skip Stam to try to gay-marry him, but he came looking for me anyway.

Reader Patrick understands the political strategy behind my emphasis on civil unions and the messy consequences of North Carolina's proposed gay marriage amendment, but he doesn't like having to play that game.

What explains the magic of Adele's song? Though personal experience and culture play into individual reactions, researchers have found that certain features of music are consistently associated with producing strong emotions in listeners.

Interesting, but she could have just written in it in D minor.

When you see someone claiming that an Indian restaurant in GSO is better than Saffron, you have to wonder, wait, does this person have some sort of weird problem with Saffron?, because Saffron has been the best Indian place in town for some time now, but, no, the Facebook comment by friend GM about Tandoor India Cuisine on West Market includes the disclaimer "and Saffron's very good," so I'm going to try it.

Small group meetings, South Elm development, and noise ordinance news in this week's memo from the Manager.

There's also a section on libraries in the digital age, to which Nancy Vaughan responds:

I never questioned "why there is still a need for public libraries in the age of digital information." I have not spoken directly with Sandy Neerman. My comment to a member of the library board, during a discussion on the proposed Lake Jeanette library, was that I hoped we were preparing for a new kind of library, one that could compete in the digital age and that I thought we need to be prepared with new technology and greater download capability. She said that she would pass my concerns along to Sandy Neerman and that Sandy would call me.

From a paper out of UNC School of Law, Potential Legal Impact of the Proposed Domestic Legal Union Amendment to the North Carolina Constitution (link to PDF): 

The language of our Amendment would restrict protections for all unmarried couples – whether they are straight or same-sex.

In addition to prohibiting same-sex marriage, the Amendment:

• would prohibit North Carolina from passing civil unions in the future;
• would bar the state from creating a domestic partnership status for same-sex couples that would give them some lesser range of protections than married couples;
• would eliminate the domestic partner insurance benefits currently offered to their employees by a number of local governments, including Chapel Hill, Durham, Greensboro, and Mecklenburg and Orange Counties.

In addition, courts could interpret the language of the Amendment to restrict many more protections for unmarried couples, whether they are straight or same-sex. The problem is that no one can say for certain how many more. In prohibiting state validation or recognition of “domestic legal unions,” the proposed Amendment would introduce into the Constitution a phrase whose meaning is unclear, which has never been used in any prior statutory law in North Carolina or interpreted by our courts, and which has never been interpreted by courts in any other state. Given how courts have interpreted amendments in other states, it is very possible, however, that courts would interpret the Amendment to bar the state from giving any protections to unmarried couples – straight or same-sex – based on their relationships.

Prior to rewatching This is Spinal Tap last night I would have estimated that 20% of the things I say regularly -- "too much perspective," "I envy us," "I'm just as God made me, sir," to name a few -- come from that movie.

Upon review, it's more like 35%.

Nearly ten years ago, a lament for Ziff Davis, then struggling with debt piled upon it in a $780 million buyout deal that closed approximately 15 minutes before the tech bubble popped. Somehow the company held on for more than a decade, but no more.

Yet, the protests continue, propelled by housewives, Sunday school teachers, real estate agents and grandmothers. A rally in January drew about 50 people to the airport, and roughly the same number attended a vigil near the state capitol in Raleigh.

At the Smithfield protest, they carried signs that read “Crime Scene,” “No More,” and “Who Would Jesus Torture?” They displayed the battered visage of a man believed to be one of Aero’s former passengers. And they cheered when one speaker, the chaplain of nearby Duke University’s campus chapel, called for eliminating a moral blight that “rots our country’s heart.”

The war at home over rendition.

The news here is not that an advocacy group has trouble getting polling data and other facts right, although that is true.

The big story is that the group does not want to acknowledge the full meaning of the issue it advocates: The proposed marriage amendment would make civil unions unconstitutional in North Carolina.

That's huge. A lot of people who oppose gay marriage might well support civil unions. While such unions are not now available to North Carolinians, this amendment takes them off the table for the future. It's a zero-compromise solution.

This needs to be discussed whenever the amendment is discussed.

Calling people haters for supporting this amendment isn't going to win the vote. The real haters won't mind, and there are plenty of people who don't hate gays or see themselves as hateful who feel strongly about the definition of marriage they know and support.

But making civil unions unconstitutional could be a powerful wedge issue.

That's why the supporters of the amendment do not want to talk about it, and why people who oppose the amendment should make sure it's a major part of the debate.

You know that old footage they showed last night of Jeff Capel making the long shot at Cameron and all the Dookies going nuts?

The famous Stackhouse dunk they replay all the time was from the same game, which Carolina won in double OT. It was a classic chapter in the rivalry, one of the most exciting games I've ever attended, and obviously it's celebrated and discussed all these years later.

A lot of people may forget that the game meant nothing in the larger context of the season. Dook was having an awful year, UNC was on its way to the Final Four.

The same is true of the legendary 8 points in 17 seconds game from my youth -- a good team beat a bad team, with minimal consequences, while just down the road State had a truly great team that ended up with a national championship (autographed article courtesy of Dr. John Hayes, who saved it as a boy and has kept it to this day).

But in the parallel universe many of us inhabit, those meaningless games and others like them belong to the ages. And no matter how this year's teams fare in March, when the rest of the world is keeping score, for Dook and Carolina fans Zeller's tip and Rivers' three will live on, and on, and on. Another famous comeback has been added to the eternal loop.

That's what makes last night so horrible for Carolina fans. It's already taking on the contours of myth, and it's going to be part of the lore.