Smog So Thick, Beijing Comes to a Standstill

Beijing calls a code red Tuesday for the very first time, finally admitting for once that its smog has gotten too dangerous to breathe.

BEIJING — Residents across this city awoke to an environmental state of emergency on Tuesday as poisonous air quality prompted the government to close schools, force motorists off the road and shut down factories.

The government, which for the first time declared a “red alert” over air pollution late Monday, even broadcast what sounded like bombing raid alerts in the subways — warnings telling people to take precautions with their health. Yet even with those extraordinary measures, the toxic air grew worse, shrouding this capital city of more than 20 million in a soupy, metallic haze.

Source: Smog So Thick, Beijing Comes to a Standstill

Democrats Could Pick Off Some Trump Supporters on Creators.com

Columnist Froma Harrop seems to be farther into the Clinton camp than my liking but she does have a point here about a blind spot among Democratic candidates when it comes to respect for ordinary folks. Dems can win back the disgruntled rural voters if they would only follow this advice.

Bill Clinton has that magic, no doubt. Hillary? I’m not convinced, whether or not Harrop says she should have excellent coaching.

Democrats routinely hold up polls showing that the American public favors their agenda. Yet time and again, politicians opposed to what the voters want win the elections. Here’s Trump appropriating some of their agenda while tacking on populist lunacy — and look how well he’s doing.

Here’s an explanation: People badly want respect, and liberal “leaders” tend not to be good at making ordinary folks feel respected — or even noticed. They come to the debate armed with logic, facts and historical analogies. But Republicans go for the gut. To do that, one has to understand what’s in the gut. Trump the salesman has an excellent endoscope.

Source: Democrats Could Pick Off Some Trump Supporters on Creators.com

Watch what happens when regular people try to use handguns in self-defense – The Washington Post

As I was saying.

In the wake of the Sandy Hook school shooting, the National Rifle Association proposed putting more guns in schools. After a racist shot up a Charleston prayer group, an NRA board member argued for more guns in church. And now predictably, politicians and gun rights advocates are calling for guns in movie theaters after a loner killed two people at a theater in Louisiana.

The notion that more guns are always the solution to gun crime is taken seriously in this country. But the research shows that more guns lead to more gun homicides — not less. And that guns are rarely used in self-defense.

Now a new study from researchers at Mount St. Mary’s University sheds some light on why people don’t use guns in self-defense very often. As it turns out, knowing when and how to apply lethal force in a potentially life-or-death situation is really difficult.

Source: Watch what happens when regular people try to use handguns in self-defense – The Washington Post

Meeting the Google Fiber team

This afternoon I got a sneak peek at the new Google Fiber building in downtown Durham, thanks to a friend who works there. I got to meet the Google Fiber team as well and they’re good people.

They’re still putting the finishing touches on their Fiber Space on the first floor so I wasn’t able to see that but news reports say Google expects it to open sometime this month. Indeed, when I visited there were two construction workers outside, busily working over a noisy table saw.

The word is their new Fiber Space in Raleigh will be amazing. Google loves the building! Large skylights have been added. Also, contrary to what you may have heard, Google did not kick out 518 West from the space. The building was put up for sale and Google bought it.

Beyond that, I know little more than you do about when fiber’s going where. I do know that whatever time it arrives on my doorstep it won’t be soon enough. I can’t wait to get my Google Fiber!

Combat veterans shoot down NRA ‘fantasy world’ of ‘good guys with guns’

The NRA loves to parrot the thinking that it takes a good guy with a gun to stop a bad guy with a gun. They say this because they want to encourage gun ownership and, sadly, many conservatives think that they can be the savior in the case of a mass shooting.

A journalist asked combat veterans how this would work out and predictably they were not impressed (see story below).

It reminded me of something that was emphasized time and again in my CERT training:

In a crisis, you will always fall back to your training.

Continue reading →

The King of Beers Wants to Push Craft Brews out of Your Supermarket | Mother Jones

What’s a brewer to do? How about brewing something its customers actually want to drink?

Pity Anheuser-Busch InBev, the Belgian-owned behemoth responsible for such beloved US beers as Budweiser, Bud Light, and Michelob Ultra. When InBev bought US beer giant Anheuser-Busch back in 2008, the company accounted for 49 percent of the US beer market, the Wall Street Journal reported. Since then, its US market share has dipped to 45 percent. Since 2005, sales of its big domestic brands like Bud have dropped 5.7 percent, even as craft-beer sales have rocketed up 173.6 percent. What’s a transnational, industrial-scale maker of flavor-light, marketing-heavy brews to do?

Source: The King of Beers Wants to Push Craft Brews out of Your Supermarket | Mother Jones

Computers getting more efficient all the time

I was chatting at a party Friday night with a gentleman who sells data center construction projects. He made the point that data center power consumption accounts for 4% of overall electricity consumption. What’s more, he said that this percentage is only going to go up.

I’ve been thinking for a while now about how cloud technologies are not only affecting our computing habits but also our power consumption. When the Internet Age first dawned, the backend of websites consisted of beefy servers that did all the work of serving up websites: databases to churn out data, a layer to render it (PHP, Java, etc.), and so forth.
Continue reading →

Saying hello to Isaac Hunter’s Tavern

Isaac Hunter's Tavern with roads overlayed

Isaac Hunter’s Tavern with roads overlayed

After staying up too late Thursday night searching maps for Isaac Hunter’s Tavern, Friday morning I pulled up a Google Search which corrected me on the actual location. My friend and fellow armchair historian, Mike Legeros, took my 2010 post and ran with it, connecting with Hunter descendent Betsy Hunter Amos along the way.

Betsy is a 7th generation neice of Isaac Hunter who connected with me via email shortly after my 2010 posts, offering photos and family history to fill in the blanks. What Mike and Betsy showed me was that the building I thought was the tavern is not the tavern at all. The real tavern is the building on the far western end of the property, not the ramshackle building I saw behind the home in the 1959 aerial photograph. The grand home itself was the home of Judge Biggs and went by the equally grand name of Hardimont. You can read more about it on Mike’s excellent website.

Tavern site as it appears today. Stones and bricks are on the right.

Tavern site as it appears today. Stones and bricks are on the right.


I visited the North Raleigh Hilton at lunch Friday to see what I could see. As Betsy said, the hotel library has a wonderful display of tavern photographs as well as artifacts from the tavern. One handy annotated photo showed how the tavern was originally positioned at the “top of the key” or driveway, across from where Hardimont was built. You can easily imagine it as it once stood between the “Lafayette Oaks” in the photographs. Judge Biggs moved the tavern out from in front of his stately home in 1936 and put it 100 yards west. It remained there until sometime in the early 1970s, when it was bulldozed.
Isaac Hunter's Tavern foundation stones

Isaac Hunters Tavern foundation stones


With a little time on my hands, I decided to venture into the woods behind the hotel to see if I could locate the old site. After a few minutes of wandering I came across a clearing. To the left of me was a few mounds of raised dirt. A closer look showed a pile of large stones and brick. It was the foundation of the old tavern!

I whipped out my cellphone camera and snapped photos of the bricks and stones. A concrete bench that once provided respite in the beautiful backyard gardens lay in sections to the left of me. Near it is a set of stones seemingly configured in a step formation. Could these be the old horse mounting stones that once stood outside the tavern?

Bricks from foundation of Isaac Hunter's Tavern

Bricks from foundation of Isaac Hunter’s Tavern


Broken bench from gardens, and are these the mounting stones on the right?

Broken bench from gardens, and are these the mounting stones on the right?


I quickly turned on my phone’s GPS and got a fix of the foundation site. After returning to work, I compared my coordinates to the historical photographs. Bingo, it fits!

For those who would like to visit what’s left of the tavern, it can be found at 35°49’52.3″ N 78°37’21.5″ W. Surprisingly, its last location is not on hotel property but the parcel directly behind it (roughly 900 St. Albans Drive), so if were bulldozed due to potential development that development never came. Perhaps it was demolished after being deemed a hazard.

Accounts say that local historian (and current Apex resident) J.C. Knowles was supposed to take ownership of the tavern but it was bulldozed before he got it. I will try to get up with Mr. Knowles to see what he might know or remember.

Gag Order Gone, Secrets of a National Security Letter are Revealed | FRONTLINE

An interview with Nicholas Merrill who, after 11 years of court battles, can now discuss the National Security Letter that the FBI gagged him with.

There are ways to legally compel information, they’re called warrants. Instead we have a security state that’s run amok. Funny how we don’t have much safety to show for the trillions of dollars we taxpayers have poured into the national security apparatus.

For the first time in 11 years, Nicholas Merrill is allowed to fully reveal the contents of a letter that came hand-delivered to him from the FBI.

In 2004, Merrill, then the CEO of a New York-based web-hosting firm called Calyx, received a so-called national security letter. The letter asked for what Merrill described as a significant array of information from the company, but because of a gag order, he was legally barred from even speaking about it.

“It was not a warrant. It was not stamped or signed by a court or a judge,” Merrill told FRONTLINE in the 2014 film United States of Secrets. “It was this letter demanding this information from me. And it also told me that I could never tell anyone that I had gotten the letter. It said that I could tell ‘no person.’”

Source: Gag Order Gone, Secrets of a National Security Letter are Revealed | FRONTLINE

Shady charity calling from 980-242-3241

I just got a mystery phone call from 980-242-3241, a number allegedly located in Charlotte, NC. A quick Google search shows that it is apparently a fake charity scam, asking for donations for breast cancer research. Comments on the 800Notes.com website indicate that the caller is rude and unprofessional.

If you get a call from these folks simply hang up. Don’t get scammed by an unsolicited phone call.