Former UNC-Chapel Hill professor indicted in academic scandal

Orange County District Attorney Jim Woodall has charged former UNC professor Julius Nyang’oro with obtaining property by false pretense for accepting money for a class he didn’t teach.

Julius Nyang’oro, the former chairman of the Department of African and Afro-American Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, was indicted Monday by an Orange County grand jury on a charge related to an academic scandal at the school.

Nyang’oro could face up to 30 months in prison if he is convicted of obtaining property by false pretense, which is a felony. Investigators said he accepted $12,000 for teaching a class that never happened.

The university reclaimed the money through garnishment of his final paycheck.

While I am mad as anyone that UNC condoned cheating, I think the false-pretense charge is ridiculous. You would have a harder time convincing me that UNC didn’t know this was going on, that UNC wasn’t fully aware of what Nyang’oro was doing, than convincing me that Nyang’oro somehow hoodwinked the university. These things don’t happen in a vacuum. The professor has done this work many times before with no compensation. It was the university’s idea to pay him this particular time and by then it should have been “caveat emptor.”

Again, I can’t stand cheaters and I think the book should be thrown at UNC for their misdeeds. However, this charge won’t result in justice. It will result in quite an interesting trial, though, as Nyang’oro and his attorney summon some very uncomfortable witnesses to testify at his defense.

via Former UNC-Chapel Hill professor indicted in academic scandal :: WRAL.com.

Oakwood North progressing

The Oakwood North subdivision is progressing nicely, though the schedule is quite aggressive. The first two homes are due to be built by February, which doesn’t leave a lot of time. Crews have cleared and graded the property and septic lines have been installed. The cut-through has been cleared and work has now begun to connect the Edmund Street end to State Street. A crew was working yesterday on a wall on the back of the second lot. I assume this is part of the temporary retaining pond but it could be a drop in elevation (the tree protection area is right behind it).

A huge pile of tree debris remains on the property. I heard the tree stump grinder, a huge machine, was busy working on the pile when the cutter surface shattered, sending metal shards flying. The contractor has been working to repair this machine, causing a many-day delay in removing the debris.

This week, KB Home put up its sign at the edge of the property, announcing the subdivision. Strangely, the sign is angled towards Edmund Street rather than State Street, where it would gain more visibility.
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The HTML blink tag is officially dead

One of the notable events of 2013 that has largely escaped notice is the official death of the HTML blink tag. As of August’s release of Firefox 23, Mozilla has officially dropped support for the tag, arguably the most annoying web element ever invented.

When Mozilla released Firefox 23 on Tuesday, the updated browser put an unofficial end to one of the annoyances of the early Web—the “blink” tag.

According to the release notes for the new browser, Firefox 23 completely drops support for the “blink” element, preventing browsers from rendering text that, well, blinks.

via The blink tag is finally dead, killed off by Firefox 23 | PCWorld.

The Jesse Ford Taylor Plantation and Lotus Villa

Belvidere Park and Woodcrest neighborhoods recently had a neighborhood get-together where I shared some of the history of the community. I had learned much of this at the East CAC’s “history night” at our October 2009 meeting, when a descendant of the Taylor family shared a family history.

I’d had this history tucked away in paper form ever since that 2009 meeting. At the recent get-together I decided I needed to share it with the neighbors. Putting our new multi-feed scanner to use along with some optical character recognition software, I reformatted the document into one much more easily read. As far as I know this document does not exist anywhere else on the Internet.

Here’s part of the rich history of East Raleigh: the story of the Taylor Plantation and Lotus Villa as told by Eliza Lindsey Baucom in 1956. Read it all here [PDF}.

No, dogs are NOT people

This is not a person

This is not a person


At a dog adoption event last weekend, the governor’s wife, Ann McCrory, explained her philosophy about training dogs. She said “consistency is key.”

“It’s no different from raising children,” she said, “making sure they eat properly and don’t go into the kitchen like my husband and take chocolate chip cookies by the handful.”

Now, I have a lot of sympathy for Mrs. McCrory; it can’t be easy being an introvert in such a high-profile position not of your choosing. I also know this might have made sense in its particular context. Yet with all due respect for Mrs. McCrory, she has no experience with raising children and has no real idea what she’s talking about.

Back during a May public hearing on Raleigh’s dogs-in-parks problem, one speaker ended her statement with this gem. Whatever points she had just made in her statement flew completely out of my mind:

“Remember, all dogs are people in innocent little fur coats.”

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Blog Crossed Buns: Deconstruction of a Hack

Last week, I noticed an attack against my webserver very similar to this one. It doesn’t appear to have been successful, which is good.

Like any fellow server maintainers out there, I know that I will occasionally be the target of an anonymous persons ire. This week it was my turn. I run an Apache server with PHP for my personal projects, nothing important. I also run a number of apps to help me manage my server, like BASE to monitor my snort logs overkill for a personal server, yes I know, and phpMyAdmin to manage the database portion.

I made the mistake of thinking that one of my apps was secure, and the further mistake of not updating it to the most recent version of an app. I blame my busy schedule with school and work for not keeping it more up to date. Today, phpMyAdmin was the culprit.

via Blog Crossed Buns: Deconstruction of a Hack.


Update: Here’s code similar to that which someone attempted to post to my site. And here’s another site which got hit in a similar way.

Raleigh’s special events office

The city recently created a special events office, coming in response to the Color Run fiasco, among others. I think this is a wonderful approach, as I think Raleigh should do its best to accommodate the growth of running in our city. Hopefully with staff dedicated to managing events, we can find a way to let runners run and showcase more of our city to the participants.

Busy week

Well, last Thursday I caught some kind of cold thing and the massive cold front passing through that day squeezed my sinuses something fierce. My body went berzerk over the weekend and I wound up missing a day and a half of work. I swear the stuff I’m dealing with must be Gulf War Illness (GWI) and I intend to get things checked out as soon as I can.

Anyhow, in spite of my being knocked for a loop earlier this week, I managed to help get Little Raleigh Radio over the first FCC hurdle in its quest to get an LPFM license. The filing window was supposed to be Thursday but got extended until Friday. Ours got filed Thursday evening and it looks good.
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Questions about ‘60 Minutes’ Benghazi story go beyond Dylan Davies interview; CBS conducting ‘journalistic review’

When you’ve got a big story, making extraordinary claims, you’d better make sure you’ve got your facts straight. That CBS News failed to do this is troubling and absolutely inexplicable.

CAIRO — When “60 Minutes” apologized for featuring in its report on Benghazi a security contractor whose story turned out to be a lie, it said it had been “misled.” But a close examination of the controversial piece by McClatchy shows that there are other problems with the report, whose broadcast renewed debate about one of the most contentious events in recent U.S. diplomatic history.

In an email Wednesday, CBS declined to respond to questions about the accuracy and origin of some of the other aspects of the report. But it said that it was undertaking “a journalistic review that is ongoing” – the network’s first acknowledgement that concerns about the report may go deeper than just the discredited interview with security supervisor Dylan Davies.

via CAIRO: Questions about ‘60 Minutes’ Benghazi story go beyond Dylan Davies interview; CBS conducting ‘journalistic review’ | Middle East | McClatchy DC.

Georgetown Researchers Discover Two Forms of Gulf War Illness

A recently released Georgetown study may help explain why veterans with Gulf War Illness have such a wide variety of physical complaints – researchers have determined that there may be two forms of the illness.

A research team at Georgetown University Medical Center GUMC published their findings online today in PLOS ONE. The study suggests the illness varies depending on which brain regions show atrophy.

via Georgetown Researchers Discover Two Forms of Gulf War Illness – Georgetown University.