Community-focused posts
There are 776 posts filed in Raleigh (this is page 72 of 78).
Just found out Wake Forest Basketball coach Skip Prosser died this morning.
Aside from perhaps cutting jimmy-punching player Chris Paul too much slack, I thought Coach Prosser was mostly a class act. My thoughts go out to his family, players, and fans.
I’m slow finding out about this, but ten days ago Wakemed and UnitedHealthcare apparently kissed and made up after UHC’s dropping the hospital from its coverage left many patients hanging.
Once I got laid off in May this became a non-issue for me, ironically. Still, its good to see that UHC recognizes the valuable care Wakemed provides. After the movie Sicko came out there is no doubt in my mind who the good guys were in this matter.
I’m considering starting a non-profit dedicated to reminding people of the wonders of sharing. As kids, we’re taught to share, and kids seem to understand the power of sharing. Yet there are many industries today trying their hardest to make sharing out to be a bad thing. I hope my non-profit might remind people of the amazing power of sharing.
Of course, I don’t know the first thing about running a non-profit, and only some idea of what I hope it might accomplish. It just seems like the right message at the right time, I guess. I figure things will solidify more as I progress.
Want to help? Share your thoughts!
I once read a book called The Hot Zone by Richard Preston, a true story of an Ebola outbreak in Northern Virginia in 1989. I think its one of the most terrifying books I’ve ever read, particularly since I lived nearby around that time. So maybe I’m just being overly paranoid, but I’m not too keen about our government’s potential plans to set up a bioweapons lab in Butner. The NBAF would be playing with fun stuff like anthrax, Ebola, avian flu, and other deadly pathogens right on our doorstep.
The Butner facility is being deemed a replacement for the aging Plum Island facility in Long Island, NY. Plum Island has generated a lot of attention with books like these, detailing alleged safety violations at the bioweapons facility.
Hey, I like job growth as much as anyone. I just don’t like the potential of infecting the local population with some plague in order to get it. I’m thinking the NBAF is one Yankee transplant to which we can say “no, thanks.”
I said last February that Jim Black should go, and now he will go … to prison! Black got his just desserts today when he was sentenced to 63 months in PMITA prison.
He earned it, too. Today’s paper says he took not just $50,000 in bribes, but $500,000 in bribes. That makes Meg Scott Phipps look like an amateur.
What we still don’t know is which lobbyist wrote the check. Come on, Jim. Who’d you sell us out to?
I was shocked to learn yet another of my cartoonist heroes has died a tragic death. Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Doug Marlette, author of the Kudzu comic strip, died in a car wreck today. He was 57.
While I thought Kudzu seemed stale as of late, it was the coolest thing back in 1986, my junior year of high school. This was Kudzu’s “moon pie” phase, a schtick that wound up decorating the signature pages of my South Meck High School yearbook. Continue reading
Raleigh’s water restrictions go into effect today. If you’ve got an odd-numbered address you can water Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. If you’re even, you water Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday. Monday is the day of waterly rest.
Seeing how these restrictions apply to all the other municipalities that are on Raleigh’s water system, I’ve often wondered how enforcement works. Continue reading
The nearby Mallinckrodt plant had a sulfuric acid spill this morning, prompting police to advise residents within a half-mile radius to stay indoors this afternoon. The fear was that rain would react with the acid (which it does violently, apparently), causing toxic fumes. We’re about a mile away, but that is still a little too close for comfort.
Continue reading
The world’s tiniest violin plays as embattled Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong is disbarred. I don’t believe he ever stopped thinking a rape actually took place.
In other news, the North Carolina State Bar actually does something useful.
Back when we lived in Garner our neighbor, mayor Don Rohrbaugh, tapped me to sit on Garner’s land-use rewrite committee. Over the ensuing months I learned more than my fair share about zoning rules and planning. While educational, the whole process made me question the value of zoning and appearance laws. How does one even measure their success?
Raleigh’s neighbor Cary is known for strict appearance rules. The stores that populate Cary’s strip malls all must look the same. The many neighborhood homeowners’ associations mindlessly dictate mailbox dimensions. Even a shiny diner can put the city into a snit. With this in mind, I found Cary’s latest push to be highly amusing. Cary has finally decided that more of the same isn’t necessarily good. While most people can see the wisdom in that, the way Cary is going about it is what I find amusing: they’re going making more rules! Town planners are actually drawing up anti-monotony rules.
I’ve got two questions about this whole process. Number one, did it ever occur to Cary’s leaders that maybe the reason the whole city (er, I mean town, though this “town” happens to be the third largest in the state) looks the same is because of its stuffy planning rules? Might a better approach to be … oh, I don’t know … maybe to get rid of some rules, rather than create ones that contradict the previous ones?
Number two, are there really people in Cary who are just now figuring this out? Cary’s been this way for years and a lot of Caryites seem to like it this way. If you don’t want a cookie-cutter house complete with an approved mailbox, why in the world did you move to Cary? What did you expect?
Now there are some cool neighborhoods in Cary where houses don’t all look the same. Its the newer neighborhoods that give it a bad name: large subdivisions with each house looking the next in a cul-de-sac hell. Its going to take more than more silly rules to fix that.
