EdCone.com

Said I would not carve a pumpkin, what with the empty nest. '

Did, though.

Out of candy already. 

As I've said here in years past, there are a lot of polite kids in this town.

Stravinsky scholars seem to be a congenial bunch these days (in contrast with, say, Shostakovich scholars).

Much as I love that parenthetical note, the real value of the article to readers in this area is the reminder of what's coming up in Chapel Hill.

If I was with the Obama campaign or a friendly SuperPac, I'd be running ads with clips of Christie and Romney this weekend, maybe especially in eastern NC, Tidewater VA, and Florida.

Lisa Scheer took this photo in late July on the now-devastated boardwalk at Seaside Heights, NJ.

Some of the more better photos of NYC post-Sandy are here.

I've got a staff meeting at Hanover Square next week, starting to wonder if it's going to happen.

It is past time to end welfare as we know it.

Seaside Heights, NJ. now and a few months ago.

I get the impression that people who minimize the potential problem of rising sea levels picture standing water on what is now dry land, when the more immediate danger is increased flooding and a storm surge with a greater reach.  

Here I disagree with Romney -- disaster relief is exactly the kind of thing the federal government should be doing in a big way, because the feds can marshal assets and focus them on hard-hit regions in a way that states lack the scale to manage. Romney is right that there's a moral question, but he's on the wrong side of it.

Livingston High School's second-most-famous grad gets it.

The camera doesn't lie, but pictures (and people) might tell a fib or two.

The real pics and videos are plenty bad enough.

When I was a kid my dad and I were driving down Country Club Drive and I remarked that some people own really nice houses, and my dad said that some people live in really nice houses, but you never know if they really own them. 

Anyway, "Right away he discovered that wealthy repo subjects can brawl like longshoremen."

Obama campaign has not given up on NC, says early voting and registration numbers are looking positive.

Elon poll says it's tight.

Previously.

60 Minutes visits Randolph County.

A somewhat more nuanced view of our region than one often finds on teevee, even if they spend a chunk of their time in Kernersville.

More from the BizBlog.

Luna looking for the Frankenstorm this morning in GSO.

To her credit, she is looking north. 

Our trips to the Jersey Shore usually include dinner at Vic's in Belmar, and dinner at Vic's usually includes a debate among my wife's extended family about the place of Vic's in the hierarchy of Best Pizza Places in New Jersey. Opinions are divided, derided, and defended. I come away full and with a list of places I keep meaning to try before the next summer's meal at Vic's, but never do. 

Whatever, Lisa's cousins just shipped us a couple of pies from Vic's, and I'm pretty sure I know where the best pizza in Greensboro was at lunchtime today. 

DGI 411, food truck rules, East Greensboro development, and more in this week's report from the City Manager.

GSO Farmers Curb Market will be held at the Coliseum this Saturday to accommodate A&T homecoming.

A friend brought us some PJ's cheesecake the other day. FB tells me it's available at the GFCM. Get some.

It's harder than it should be for veterans to find jobs. [Video below not loading on all my devices/OS; click here if that happens to you]

[T]he public has no way to independently verify that the machines are working properly. The public has been stripped of its ability to have independent, verifiable confidence that when a vote is made, it will be tabulated and recorded properly. Trade secret law means that we must trust the vendors when they say that their machines are free of error, bias, flaws, and security loopholes. Trade secret law effectively means that independent researchers who want to test voting machines and assure that they are operating properly cannot do so without the permission of the vendor—or risk being found to have misappropriated the trade secrets themselves.

Elon's David Levine on the misapplication of trade secret laws and the risk to the democratic process. 

As someone who has been following the problems with electronic voting machines for almost a decade, I will say that a local FB meme I saw today (OMG machines changing Romney votez to Obama!) seems unlikely. UPDATE: Turns out the story had some basis in fact, but the local BOE says it was no big deal. I would tend to believe them, but that's not going to make everyone comfortable, and that's the point of this post and the many that precede it (follow links at "following," above) -- we need a verifiable system, not a Hey, Trust Us system.

The Meming of the President.

I wonder what Richard Dawkins thinks of the devolution of his neologism.

Not that it doesn't have some relevance to politics.

Mocking WFMY's DigTriad site is a local pastime only slightly less popular than ignoring WFMY's DigTriad site.

Now it's gone national. 

Lots of qualifiers apply to any analysis of last night's strong debate for Obama -- most people don't vote on foreign policy, it's late and voters have made up their minds, the incumbent almost always has the advantage on this topic -- but this clip not only made Obama look like the alpha of that very small pack, it also was the rare LOL in a fairly dull teevee show: 

The Bryan Series wasn't awful enough, so they're bringing in Tina Brown.

Collecting Matisse and Modern Masters, which opens soon at the Nasher, is worth the short drive to Durham (my thumbnail review of the show is here). Meanwhile, the Weatherspoon will have a parallel exhibition even closer to home.

McGovern believed "that history would prove him correct in his opposing not only what he called 'the tragically mistaken American war in Vietnam' but also the American invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan."

Panthers fire Hurney. Justified, but still scapegoating. 

Iran looms just as large over western Afghanistan as Pakistan does over the east — and nowhere is this more keenly felt than in Zaranj, where the land beyond the wall can represent anything from benevolent neighbor to malicious oppressor. But while Pakistan’s machinations in Afghanistan often feel obvious, Iran’s have proved far harder to discern. 

Ahead of the big debate on foreign policy, a reminder that these issues are really incredibly simple and also always fit comfortably with US needs and narratives.

In honor of Duke's dramatic win over UNC last night, which ends the school's epic bowl-eligibility drought, a look back at the year they played the Rose Bowl in Durham.

My grandparents and some other GSO bon vivants took a train to California for Duke's 1939 Rose Bowl appearance. A different era in more ways than one.

The Post RUCO Study Committee, food truck sign-ups, and more in this week's report from the City Manager.

My baby child and I early voted this afternoon. Her first election. There was a short line when we got to the old court house and a longer one when we left. The spouse of a prominent local Democrat told us he felt good about Obama's chances in Guilford County, but then again this slice of real America was never his problem.

"Amtrak can’t exist without government support."

Neither can highways and airports. 

I drive and fly to a lot of places that I'd be quite happy to reach via train, if train service was better.

I'm a card-carrying member of the federal income-tax paying 53%, and I want more trains.

Romney's redeployment of assets from NC seems like a reasonable calculation, given his needs elsewhere and apparent strength here¹. My (entirely unscientific) analysis of the Mittenization of our state includes: Residual energy and organization among conservatives after the May primary vote on Amendment 1, and possible erosion of enthusiasm for a newly pro-gay-marriage Obama among black voters in the wake of same; stubbornly high unemployment; a gubernatorial race in which GOP candidate Pat McCrory seems a near-inevitable winner²; the slow and to a meaningful degree self-inflicted death of the old Democratic machine; and frustration among Democrats who see the new GOP-drawn voting maps creating insurmountable odds.

¹Obama's ground game made the difference here in 2008, but by the thinnest of margins. If his team can repeat the feat this year, someone should write another case study.

²I'd guess that a lot of Democrats are pretty comfortable with the assumption that McCrory, a sensible Guilford County native, will govern more like he did as Mayor of Charlotte and less as the hard-liner he's pretended to be on the campaign trail. Ditto for Romney, for that matter.

I'm a believer in the ongoing value of print, but the ongoing value of newsweeklies in print has eluded me for some time.

Newsweek quit trying to be serious a while back, and now they've made it official.

N&R rounds up its judicial endorsements here, with some background from Doug Clark on how the choices were made. Doug seems to know as much about North Carolina judicial politics as anyone, which comes in handy during these confusing elections. Still hoping the paper will liberate his column on Supreme Court hi-jinks from the GPV. 

Scarce an evening has passed since 1996 that Lisa and I have not sighed, in unison, words of gratitude for the Defense of Marriage Act, without which our own fortress of connubial bliss surely would have fallen to the rampaging hordes that assail it.

We somehow survived our first seven years of wedded life without DOMA, but we grew accustomed to the mighty battlements that kept our marriage secure for for so long. Now we must carry on alone. We are pondering a moat.

I think of this literally every time I play golf. 

I hit a lot of traps. And, also, I like open-faced sandwiches. They are a subcategory of lunch that deserves more respect.

Anyway, today I came up with a perfect open-faced sandwich recipe:

-- Have my mom make you a brisket.*

-- Eat some for dinner, then save the rest in the fridge for a couple of days.

-- Nuke and serve over fresh white bread.  

*Availability of my mom not guaranteed, you may need your own brisket source.

Funny, less funny reactions to Romney's affirmation of his commitment to affirmative action.

Also, the debate-prep staffer responsible for Mitt's gotcha! fail on Libya just sent me a resume.

From our occasional series on Bad PR Pitches, an email sent to me this morning by a well-known Silicon Valley publicity firm, which begins, "Hi Steve" and concludes "Thanks Steve! Looking forward to hearing back soon!"

If they know me, er, Steve well enough to address us by our first name(s), they should know we think exclamation points have no place in professional documents.

N&R editorial page is doing serious good work with its ongoing series on local judicial races. 

It would be useful to collect them all at one link. UPDATE: Done.

Also, I hope they post Doug Clark's excellent column about the buffoonish ad for Newby's Supreme Court campaign -- it deserves state-wide readership.

Previously: "Maybe we shouldn't elect our judges?" Can't find my older posts about an alternative system that also sidesteps some of the political games with appointed seats, will keep looking; you can search for Rachel Lea Hunter posts on your own.

Alex McFarland, who kept an office in Greensboro earlier in his career, is said to have played a key role in exposing the controversy now engulfing Dinesh D'Souza.  

I'm still trying to figure out what it means for someone to be an anti-colonialist in 2012, much less why that would be a bad thing.

An obit for Otis Hairston, Jr. 

I knew him a bit via Lisa, with whom he worked on a project documenting the history of the Warnersville neighborhood he did so much to preserve and commemorate.

Good to see one of my favorite provocateurs getting some press, and surely email hell is real, but while I acknowledge being old and stuck in my ways I also think email has real advantages and, also, I have no interest in living my whole life in public, er, social spaces.

And: Kids, lawn, off.

Rethinking RTP.

The shift in corporate strategy and worker preference represents a real opportunity for downtown GSO. It's great that we have the Gateway research park, but we also have other baskets in which to put our eggs.

That day when you need a haircut but can still pull off the shaggy look:

Your weekly report from the City Manager awaits your perusal. 

Discussions about the highest and best use of the large property now serving as the county prison farm should be held in public, and promises to potential tenants should not be made in the dark. Big tracts of land are scarce around GSO, and we should make sure this one isn't wasted on some hasty scheme.

So far, the process seems to have been done exactly wrong. 

[I]n the super PAC era, even a publicly disclosed seven-figure donor is able to get lost in the crowd. Ahmed provides perhaps the best example of how much can remain unknown about the individuals having the biggest financial impact on the political process. Even after embarking on a political spending spree, his public profile has remained virtually nonexistent.

Even if we accept pipers calling tunes, we should know something about the pipers.

...adding, political giving is not the same as charitable giving.

My guess is that this trend will continue.

There were always unbelievers in the pews, because organized religion was the hub of social, cultural, and intellectual life. If you didn't go, you missed out. Religion was entertainment (read some early American sermons, consider the origins of rock and roll). Church was the beta version of Match.com. And the pressure to belong was intense, to the point that it persisted over many decades even as science claimed cosmology and people got more options on the all those other fronts. 

Now the taboo against being irreligious or unchurched has faded to the point where those things have momentum of their own.

While looking for something else I found this old column about optimism and the economy. I'm probably less optimistic now than I was 30 months ago about some things (financial reform, the death of market mythology) but I'll stick with my larger point, no matter who wins the White House.

Orcism.

I hadn't realized the extent to which Tolkien's bad guys (or versions of them) permeate pop culture.

My earlier take on the subject, which pushes the race/religion angle back a few centuries before the origins suggested in the post.

More here.