Archive for Misc.
Hey, Hey, Busy, Busy
Posted by: | CommentsHere’s a quick note to mention the City Council meeting in East Asheville tomorrow night and also my imminent departure for parts unknown.
Tomorrow night (Tuesday, 8/31) at 6:30pm, the Asheville City Council will convene at Groce United Methodist Church in east Asheville for a special meeting. You’re invited. I talked about taking Council “on the road” during my campaign, so I’m thrilled to have been one of the advocates for this event. Chris Pelly is an east Asheville neighborhood leader and has been instrumental in getting this meeting scheduled.
East Asheville residents are making it abundantly clear that they want more multimodal infrastructure, particularly sidewalks. A study showed that E. AVL has only 9% of the city’s sidewalks. This is due largely to post-war construction and the love affair with the automobile, but it’s time these neighborhoods got retrofitted for better and safer pedestrian mobility. We know that all of Council is very interested in seeing more sidewalks across the city, so I’m hoping east Asheville residents will show up with their ideas about how we ought to pay for them.
A comprehensive multimodal transportation system is vital to Asheville’s health and economic development. Sidewalks, bike lanes, transit, greenways, and roadways must work together to offer maximum safety, convenience, and choice.
On another note – I’m going away for a week to celebrate my 40th birthday (it’s on September 5th). I’ll be cruising out of town on Wednesday morning and returning a week later. Thank goodness for good friends willing to house-sit and look after our two big hounds while we’re away.
More upon my return. Consider this a week-long open thread for your amusement.
Asheville City Council Live Chat for 08/24/2010
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Asheville City Council LiveChat hasn’t been working for most people, so today I’m introducing a few changes.
ACC-LiveChat is envisioned as a dynamic on-line conversation within the community about local issues important to our city. To make this happen, I used a tool called “CoverItLive.com” to create a chat-room. It was hoped this platform would enable a cross-blog, non-partisan, tool Ashevillians could use to communicate with each other and elected officials.
While at first meeting with initial success, CoverItLive.com’s moderation queue feature creates unreasonable delays for comments. This killed most conversations before they started. Despite several attempts at fixes – nothing has worked.
Therefore we are going to try a new way to make ACC-LiveChat work. Instead of a chat-room, we’re going to use a Twitter-based tool called “Twub” and this blog’s native comments feature.
Details and video web-streaming after the jump:
John Armor, author & Republican activist, passed away this morning
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John Armor (aka: Congressman BillyBob) died this morning of colon cancer at St Joesph’s hospital in Asheville, NC. He was 67.
We disagreed on every possible political issue – but I liked him because he was a decent man, an attentive husband, and an excellent writer who loved his country.
John was a lawyer, a writer, and Republican activist. He wrote 8 books on a range of topics from fiction, to the Japanese American internment camp at Manzanar, to term limits, to his most recent work: These Are The Times That Try Men’s Souls – an annotated version of Tom Paine’s most famous writings. (He was particularly proud of this last book.)
I first met John Armor in 2006 during his run in the Republican primary against congressional incumbent Charles “Chainsaw” Taylor. For those of you who don’t know: Taylor was a corrupt local politician who wasn’t known for dealing kindly with opposition. It took a lot of guts for John to step up to the plate and challenge him.
At the time I was an active progressive blogger at Brainshrub.com. (Now defunct) John was the first Republican candidate in NC11 to agree to a sit-down interview with bloggers. You can read about the interview here. I was stuck my his sincerity, intelligence, and willingness to listen to viewpoints different from his own.
Armor ran for congress again in 2008, then settled into retirement. He remained active in the Republican party and occasionally played the character of Benjamin Franklin. You can enjoy one of his performances here. (Show starts at 3:33 seconds)
I visited John in the hospital less than 48 hours ago. He was in high-spirits after his latest surgery, and doctors had given him an optimistic prognosis. His wife Michelle by his bedside, he joked that regardless of the outcome the doctors work on his colon had made him “A Perfect Asshole.”
We talked about local politics, about the governments role in infrastructure, and about his life in general. John was a man who talked the talk and walked the walk. He cared deeply about his community, and left the world a better place than he left it.
RIP John. You were one of the few hard-core conservatives I could talk too without raising my blood-pressure.
- pvh
America The Lost
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(Crossposted from the Huffington Post)
After last year’s summer of discontent, I looked back on America’s response to September 11:
A flood of post-September 11 articles asked how the attacks happened, what we would do next, and why terrorists hate us. One savvy pundit asked, Would America keep its head?
We invaded Iraq on trumped-up intelligence. We conducted illegal surveillance on our own citizens. We imprisoned people without charge, here and abroad. We rendered prisoners for torture and tortured others ourselves in violation of international law. All the while, millions of staunch, law-and-order conservatives supported and defended it, and still do. Vigorously.
Did America keep its head? Uh, no.
After an earlier national tragedy, the 1986 Challenger disaster, the broadcast networks filled air time by bringing on psychologists. How absurd it seemed to have TV psychologists telling us how we should feel about it and explain it to the kids. Today, of course, absurd is the new normal. Today we have the conservative Mighty Wurlitzer going all E. Power Biggs on America, telling us 24/7 not how we should feel but whom we should fear. And week by week it is becoming increasingly hard to keep up with whom the home of the brave is supposed to fear.
Rational
Posted by: | Comments“Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite-sex couples are superior to same-sex couples.” – Judge Vaughan Walker in his decision (pdf).
Asheville City Council Live Chat for 08/10/2010
Posted by: | CommentsIt’s Asheville City Council LiveChat time.
Normally, I use the first few sentences of this post to comment on various aspects of our community. But today I want to address a technical issue: The extremely long lag-time between when you post a comment, and when it shows up in the chat-box.
This is not only frustrating to you, the user, but to me as well. The lag-time discourages conversations, and encourages people to suspect comments are being censored.
I’ve been researching why this happens – and as best I can tell, it’s due to the duel authentication systems in place to discourage trolls. (EG: A Facebook login and an optional open login.)
Since I don’t know which system is causing the delay, I’m going to run an experiment for the next two sessions: This week, there will be an open login – next week will be limited to Facebook logins.
Therefore, there is no moderation this week. Yeah, you read that right. All comments go from your brain, to your fingers, to the chat. Let’s see what happens.
Council’s agenda and supporting documentation can be found here. Those of you new to ACC-LiveChat, be sure to review the guildelines and instructions.
LiveChat box and live web-streaming is available after the jump:
Moogfest 2010 Lineup Announced!
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Some of the artists you’ve probably heard of. Some you haven’t. Some are completely overrated *coughGIRLTALKcough*.
A: None of them are Devo. (Swing and a miss, Mr. Sandford.)
[UPDATE - Devo just got added to the lineup. Good call, Mr. Sandford. You know we love you.]
(Sadly, none of them are Keith Emerson, either. He was Paganini to Robert Moog’s Antonio Stradivari, after all.)
All of them are interesting, at the very least.
If you can afford those rather exorbitant ticket prices (I have to work that weekend and I’m not going to pay $75 just to be able to see one band after I get off work), by all means, enjoy! Or make your own fun that weekend – Casiopalooza, anyone? Seriously.
A Fundmental Right
Posted by: | CommentsTed Olson takes Fox News’ Chris Wallace to school. Watch. Learn.
August 6th, 1945
Posted by: | CommentsToday marks the 65th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima which killed,
within the first 2 months after detonation, 160,000 people with nearly half that number dying within the first day. It marked the first time an atomic blast was used against human beings ; the second happening 3 days later on August 9th.
Things to Read
Posted by: | CommentsThe Science edition
Who says NASA can’t do anything right?
The rover was designed to work on Mars for three months, but was mobile for more than five years.
I so want one of these.
Another reason Google Earth is fun.
It is good to know that BP has multiple ways to kill us all: link
We all need a cool hobby.
Have yourselves a happy Monday. If you need me I’ll be by the pool.
