One of the fun little rituals at the Dean Dome in recent years was Danny Green's pre-game dance to "Jump Around." Green was all business on the court, a key member of a great team, but his dancing added to... [...]
"Sometimes the future is easier to predict than the present." In my newspaper column, trying to figure out when a decade ends and what happened while it lasted. Farewell to a tough decade Edward Cone News & Record 12-6-09 It... [...]
RIP Harry Helms, who posted as LasVegasHeel on the IC board. He wrote this fan's note at his blog earlier this year: Last night was the last time I will ever get to see Carolina play. I watched it quietly... [...]
"Mr. Matsdorf said Ms. Hanes was recommended for the United States attorney position solely on the basis of her credentials, which included being the girlfriend of the guy who nominated her." The original statement left off the part after the... [...]
Give the people what they want: During Ramadan, Burger King offered a special sultan menu featuring dishes popular in the Ottoman years. In the television commercial promoting the meal, a turbaned Janissary — a member of an elite group of... [...]
Correction of the week: "A Nov. 26 article in the District edition of Local Living incorrectly said a Public Enemy song declared 9/11 a joke. The song refers to 911, the emergency phone number." [...]
I guess the new De Niro flick is not quite Goodfellas: "The queasiness produced by this sentimental weepie builds into a wave of nausea during its interminable finale." Bonus: Best bad films of the decade. [...]
Profile of a late-term aboritionist. Dr. Carhart has also begun performing some abortions "past 24 weeks," he said in an interview, and is prepared to perform them still later if they meet legal requirements and if he considers them medically... [...]
The proximate cause of the online war and legal proceedings between bloggers Jeff Martin and Mary Johnson was a comment left by Martin at a site maintained by Mike Baron. Baron is Greensboro's former water conservation manager. He maintains that... [...]
"The boom was fueled by easy credit, a poorly regulated market overrun by speculators, and cheerleading from Dubai officials." Typical left-wing hackery by the Wall Street Journal, not even mentioning the Community Reinvestment Act. [...]
"This business/news integration is a progressive step and is strongly supported by the news leaders of both the Sports and Entertainment segments." Oy. [...]
"Much of Mackintosh on the Lake, the massive upscale community that straddles the Alamance-Guilford line, is in foreclosure and will go on the auction block in about five weeks after its developer defaulted on loan payments." More here. "Mackintosh developer..." [...]
Redbird Round, featuring Alice Gerrard, Laurelyn Dossett and Diana Jones, will play Triad Stage on Weds 12/9 at 7:30 PM. Get your tix here, then listen to them a couple of days later on TSOT, then follow them around while... [...]
My upcoming newspaper column ends with the prediction that the banksters will eventually blow things up again. Damn early deadlines, otherwise I'd think about taking out the "eventually" and putting in "soon." So the plutocrats, it seems are going to...' [...]
Clemson is still Clemson, and the Big 11 finally wins a series against the unformidable ACC. Watching Dook-Wisconsin was a win-win: you were going to get an ACC victory or a Dook defeat, and go to bed happy either way.... [...]
Fec reads Taibbi: "Barack Obama, a once-in-a-generation political talent whose graceful conquest of America's racial dragons en route to the White House inspired the entire world, has for some reason allowed his presidency to be hijacked by sniveling, low-rent shitheads." [...]
"Am I the only idiot around who still doesn’t quite get [Botticelli's] popularity?," asks Kimmelman, before explaining that popularity pretty well: Yes, he’s a beautiful painter...And his appeal to traditional connoisseurs is obvious. It grows out of his lyrical humanism...' [...]
More on the media-golf complex: The Tiger Woods that was constructed for corporate consumption was spotless and smooth, an edgeless brand easily peddled to sheikhs and shakers... ...Anything dissonant was dealt with quickly and mercilessly. Tiger's caddy, an otherwise unemployable... [...]
Worst press release of the day (so far): As the CEO behind largest paid mobile community (sic) [name of company and CEO redacted] would like to offer your readers tips on what to look for if suspicious that your partner,... [...]
The mortgage industry in 32 words: When Wall Street stopped eating Big Shitpile, all the action just went to the FHA. Too much policy has been about propping up home prices, instead of letting people keep their homes. [...]
California property tax rates will reset downward due to falling home prices. "Although that may bring a small smile to the faces of home-owners, it's downright bad news for the local governments that rely on property taxes to fund everything..." [...]
In need of a soporific after an exciting night at the Dean Dome, I watched a repeat of the outgoing City Council's swan song, and I found Mike Barber's arguments for the swim center compelling. It seems entirely fitting that... [...]
In my youth, North Carolina had some of the nation's worst liquor laws. Somewhere there exists a photograph of my father attending a costume party as a bottle in a brown paper bag, which was how people used to get... [...]
A good discussion in the comments here about the proposed hotel for South Elm and Lee. Stormy asks the question on my mind: "Where is the independent study to support the need?" If there's a business case for the hotel,... [...]
Worst press release of the day (so far): How to Make Your Holiday Party Pay Networking Guru [name redacted to avoid giving him publicity] offers 5 Key Tips to network at any event successfully. [...]
CNN picks up the Mark Horvath story (link via the indispensable CMF): Horvath videotaped more than 100 homeless people along his journey, which took him to more than 20 cities. He encountered several disabled people, including a woman named Cotton... [...]
Counterinsurgency Lite: can a comprehensive strategy work if it's not implemented comprehensively? A lukewarm response. Just three years ago, COIN was itself an insurgent philosophy. UPDATE: The old mindset at work: "Bin Laden expected to die...But [the] vast array of..." [...]
Irony unintended: "The Nakheel 3.17 percent bonds, known as sukuk, [are] governed by Shariah laws barring investors from profiting from the exchange of money." How a country where lending at interest is verboten managed to run up enough debt to... [...]
Golf, a big business that takes itself too seriously and the press not seriously enough, has a problem: "The traditionally conservative golf media and Tour are, not surprisingly, skittish about reporting this story...Golf Digest, one of the largest golf publications..." [...]
The legitimate question of the day is, "Is a 0% funds rate creating the next financial bubble, and if so, will the Fed and other central banks raise rates proactively – even in the face of double-digit unemployment?" No, replies... [...]
If you apply the famous Kübler-Ross model (aka the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance) to public perceptions of the economy, where are we now? I still see a fair amount of denial, at least about... [...]
"The cracks in Dubai’s property sector were showing long before last week...The most conservative estimates put the supply of new houses coming onto the market over the next two years at 40,000. According to other estimates, up to 25 per..." [...]
Something I learned while reading the chart in the preceding post: there is a Wade Hampton County in Alaska. Growing up in North Carolina, I've known people and places named for the Confederate general, but Alaska? I know you're all... [...]
I'm sure the deep thinkers at the Cato Locke Heartland Enterprise Institute are picking apart these numbers even as you read this post, and writing policy papers pointing out that many of those implicated deserve to be poor anyhow, but...' [...]
NYT follows yesterday's article on the ethanol glut with an op-ed against raising ethanol mandates: Allowing a higher percentage of ethanol in gasoline will not make us less dependent on such foreign energy sources. It will not help the environment.... [...]
"This is what is commonly referred to as default." Overhyped, overbuilt...who woulda thunk it? This guy, who adds: "This is not a garden-variety recession and recovery. It is a recession within a longer-term depression. And while we are in a..." [...]
"The City of Pittsburgh has agreed to pay $50,000 to a man who sued after being issued a disorderly conduct citation for gesturing offensively at a police officer." More: "[C]itizens of a free country are not required by law to..." [...]
Allegedly concerned about the deficit, but unwilling to do something about it: "Most have not been aggressively pushing cost containment proposals." More: A cynic may suggest they were never as fiscally conservative as they let on. Some have preferred repeating... [...]
"SECURE OUR U.S. BOARDERS," shouts the George Hutchins Meetup page. Regardless of your stance on other issues, surely we can agree that Americans who abide by the terms of rental agreements deserve a measure of security. Hutchins is featured prominently... [...]
Despite repeated claims to that effect, I'm guessing that George Hutchins is not the Republican who can beat David Price in 2010. Atrios: "Geocities called. They want their website from 1997 back." That design critique, while accurate, doesn't begin to... [...]
"It's your birthday!" announces that #34 is to receive a random strip-down and cavity search to be performed by a leering, rotund officer. Tweets allegedly from imprisoned Pulp Fiction screenwriter Roger Avary. [...]
Has it really come to this? Your dog is not a person, it is a dog, and that is a good thing. As previously noted, "to anthropomorphize her would be to waste an opportunity." Your child is a person, but... [...]
"Florida real estate" was synonymous with "scam" by the 1920s, I think. We are not always a nation of fast learners. [N]egative equity "is an outstanding risk hanging over the mortgage market," said Mark Fleming, chief economist of First American... [...]
What the people who are flipping out about the treatment of Palin should be asking themselves is what it means when it's not just jerks like us but everybody piling on against Palin. For those of you who can't connect...' [...]
"The Online Media Legal Network (OMLN) is a network of law firms, law school clinics, in-house counsel, and individual lawyers throughout the United States willing to provide pro bono legal assistance to qualifying online journalism ventures and other digital media..." [...]
Guy can't even hike the Appalachian Trail without getting in trouble. Our former governor has serious, if more prosaic, air travel issues of his own.' [...]
Reader M got a rate increase on her latest bill from Time Warner Cable: As I received no prior notice, I called FCC, who told me they do not regulate Time Warner, I should call the Franchising Authority listed on... [...]
Church-state separation is a common metaphor in journalism, where it refers to the wall between editorial and publishing concerns. I wonder how that worked at the Washington Times, which allegedly got more than half its operating budget directly from Rev.... [...]
Zynga has created a 'Cash Cow' in FarmVille! Even viewed through a "may be valued" filter, and with a skeptical eye to the "66,841,884 monthly active users" claim on FB, the growth is pretty startling. Thnx to alert reader G... [...]
Even as Treasury officials are racing to lock in today's low rates by exchanging short-term borrowings for long-term bonds, the government faces a payment shock similar to those that sent legions of overstretched homeowners into default on their mortgages. The... [...]
"People generally have this idea that the wisdom of crowds is a pixie dust that you sprinkle on a system and magical things happen," says Aniket Kittur, an assistant professor of human-computer interaction at Carnegie Mellon University who has studied... [...]
Just to clarify after yesterday's cryptic post about disgusting leakage: I am one of the few North Carolinians who does not have syphilis. I just have a cold. [...]
In this episode, Matlocke uses his folksy wisdom to control the federal judiciary. Hagan had just been elected to the Senate. That Saturday morning, Clifford walked into her living room and told her that the 15-seat 4th Circuit Court of... [...]
My newspaper column continues the occasional Thanksgiving tradition of listing, alphabetically, things and people for which I give thanks. Reasons to be thankful Edward Cone News & Record 11-22-09 Hard times give us perspective on the things that matter most... [...]
I'd set the exemption a little higher than the $2 million proposed here, but the larger ideas work pretty well. There is a big difference between wealth acquired through hard work and creativity and wealth bestowed as an accident of...' [...]
What I actually went to China to do: look serious during the simultaneous translation while waiting to use that mic in my hand. Only conference I've attended where speakers got boutonnières, and my speaker pass read "Distinguished Guest."' [...]
"I needed to sort through the lives of these men I loved, to follow the trails of their daily lives." Joe Killian eulogizes his grandfather and his uncle, fishermen lost at sea. UPDATED link now open to everyone. [...]
I was grateful for "Damn the Torpedoes" when it came out, both for the music and the message that rock was not yet dead, and I'd put this on my list of best-ever videos, and Benmont Tench is a great...' [...]
Just a bad plan all the way 'round: "Arnholt said that banning the media would not only be illegal, but it would not solve concerns about a political incident because so many people have personal blogs, post video to YouTube...'" [...]
Kay Hagan, in a statement released today: "We have taken a critical step forward in the process of getting a bill to the President's desk." Full statement after the jump. UPDATE: Richard Burr is less enthusiastic. Apparently the Democrats and... [...]
Guitarist in the backing band is Jimi Hendrix, 1965; allegedly the oldest known footage of him performing. What a difference two years can make. Thnx to PLN for the link. [...]
File footage, the propagandist's best friend, again. Left, a huge pro-Palin crowd prepares a human sacrifice in protest of the recent Newsweek cover. [...]
"It's going to be a holy war," Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) said Wednesday evening. Wow. I thought it was going to be a debate over health care legislation. I am totally underdressed. [...]
"Mr. Griffin expressed exasperation at investors' desire to keep dissecting last year's disaster, comparing their fascination with people's inability to look away from a car crash." So a hedge fund blows up. It happens! And it wasn't even their fault:... [...]
More on the rise of outside-in technology, from Google CIO Ben Fried: "My bet was that some of these fast movers will sit on a rocket to the C-suite. Some of the people from that generation are going to be..." [...]
Smelly from the get-go, ripening as we go along, and I'm not sure we've really had an honest conversation about operating and maintenance costs. I like the idea of a swimming facility for Greensboro, and I don't have a problem...' [...]
UPDATE: A commenter says preservationists have tried to put money behind their efforts, but have been rebuffed by the developers. City Council vote for rezoning at Elm and Cornwallis fails to meet the margin dictated by protest petition law. Another... [...]
"Time management isn’t my forte. As I’ve said before, I’m naturally lazy, a time-waster, someone easily distracted by opportunities for fun and inactivity." More evidence: She could have just written "I'm a journalist" and gotten on with her day...' [...]
Situation getting weirder at the troubled Washington Times, where long-standing claims of independence from its controversial owner are being challenged: The former editorial page editor of the Washington Times has filed a discrimination complaint against the paper, saying he was... [...]
LNC posts a profit, assisted by an asset sale. Dennis Glass is talking about repaying $950 million in TARP funds as early as next year. Meanwhile, other life insurers face big problems with commercial real estate. [...]
Sexist coverage of Palin? I'm flummoxed by the idea that Democrats (or liberals, or non-supporters of Palin) fear her. They may fear the idea of Palin in the White House, but I'd guess most prospective opponents would welcome her as... [...]
Saw these guys near Beijing's Fourth Ring Road last month, asked if we could take a picture. I like the simple shot at left, but dude really wanted to pose for one, too (click images to enlarge). [...]
Prime plus 21.99%? That's a lot of interest rate. Maybe they don't want people using their cards. I've been paying more often with cash during the Great Recession, even though I always clear my Visa balance each month. It just... [...]
The Greensboro Urban Ministry needs help to help those in need -- and the needs this year are pressing. Attending Thursday night's Feast of Caring fundraiser at First Baptist Church on Friendly is one way to support the organization. [...]
"Now it becomes an issue of, all things being equal, the will to win, a level of stability in the brain to be able to counter and not give up, and frankly, if you watched this game, luck." Page head... [...]
The financial crisis started with Americans buying homes they couldn't afford. It is ending with the government struggling to sell buildings it never wanted... ...Taxpayers will be grappling with this flotsam for years to come, one example of how the...' [...]
Buy something at Barnes & Noble through Thursday, tell the cashier in Greensboro it's for Christ Community Preschool or enter the Bookfair # 10022275 online, and the school gets a share of the proceeds. [...]
My standard caveat with this guy: hope he's wrong, notice he's been right a lot. The jobs just are not coming back. There's really just one hope for our leaders to turn things around: a bold prescription that increases the... [...]
O'Reilly: "We're heading into a war for control of the web. And in the end, it's more than that, it's a war against the web as an interoperable platform." Related: Zittrain on the generative web. [...]
Second thoughts on effigy burning, or maybe first ones: "The chairman of the Danville TEA Party Patriots said Sunday he was unsure about whether the group will continue with its planned effigy burning of Rep. Tom Perriello, D-5th District, and..." [...]
