Towboats at Riverfront Park

Last spring, people who visited Harris Riverfront Park got to go onboard a few of the towboats that pass by Huntington every day. Most of them push coal that keep power plants and steel mills running.

This year, the boats return to the park, and there will be more of them.

Accordingto David K. Smith, president of the Huntington District Waterways Association, there will be at least two boats at the park each of the three days of the Port of Huntington -- Tri-State National Maritime Days Celebration on May 18-20. The J.S. Lewis, an old boat that dates back to 1931, will be there each day. The other boat will be a modern one, and it will be a different boat each day.

Last year's event was pretty interesting. If you can, check it out.

Dropping out

You've always got to be careful when you get news releases from a group promoting a cause, but one came in the e-mail a little while ago that interested me.

First, let's quote from the bottom:

More than 1 million American high school students drop out every year. That’s about one every 29 seconds or 6,000 who drop out every school day. Dropouts are more likely than high school graduates to be unemployed, in poor health, living in poverty, in prison, on public assistance, and single parents with children who also drop out of high school.

Now, from a little higher up:

As the 2007 graduation season gets underway in America, leaders of the May 9th “National Summit on America’s Silent Epidemic” will call for an end to the nation’s high school dropout crisis. Invited Summit speakers include, Mrs. Laura Bush, as well as Governors, Congressional leaders, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation CEO Patty Stonesifer, MTV President Christina Norman and those at the vanguard of education research – each referencing their hometown’s true, on-time graduation rates.

For the first time, the nation will have access to an online resource to be released at the Summit that reports the on-time graduation rate for every school district in the nation. The data will also show where (what grade level) each district is losing students, so communities can more effectively target solutions that reduce dropouts. Because inaccurate graduation rates have historically masked the magnitude of the problem, the new knowledge is expected to be a wake-up call for many communities.

The summit is being co-hosted by the National Governors Association, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, MTV, TIME Magazine, and Civic Enterprises, LLC.

Going to the summit might be interesting, but I want access to that database. I don't want something with a lot of pull-down menus. I want the files themselves so people like me can delve into the true numbers of high school attendance.

Take Cabell County, for example. You can figure that one-fourth of the freshman class at Huntington High or Cabell Midland High won't be around to graduate 12th grade. Some may move away, go back to private school or whatever, but a good number drops out.

And you know what? I'm glad some of them drop out. Some kids don't need to be in school. They don't want to be there. They contribute nothing. They refuse to accept the fact they need schooling.

Or a public school environment could be all wrong for them. Night classes for a GED might be better.

There could be some good reasons for dropping out. A lot of bad reasons, but some good reasons, too. For the kids' sake and the sake of the other kids who want to learn.

I want to hear what the summit has to say, but I want to get my hands on that database.

Odds and ends, 4/30/07

The folks at the IPCC are preparing their next report on climate change, and this one looks at how developing countries can avoid becoming like the United States and its horrible practice of burning energy, emitting carbon dioxide and increasing its standard of living and public health. Details in the New York Times.

###

No player for the Cincinnati Reds has worn Number 13 since Davey Concepcion retired. The Reds will formall y retire Concepcion's number this summer. It's about time.

I can never understand why Concepcion is not mentioned when the all-time great shortstops are discussed. His defense was pretty good, right? His offensive numbers might not be so great in this age of steroids and Little League-sized ballparks, but they were pretty good for his era.

###

I was at my mother-in-law's house yesterday and saw some outside work that needed to be done. So I did it. Big mistake.

I really like spring, but there's nothing like the day after that first day of extensive outside work to make you realize how inactive you were over the winter.

###

Apathetic and not apologetic

Way back in the 1970s, I was president of the Ohio University Apathy Club. I think.

I couldn't get worked up over where the lettuce in the cafeteria came from, and I couldn't get worked up over who was president of the university. I didn't really care about the quality of concerts that came to the Convo, mainly because I didn't have money to go to any.

So allow me to step into my role as a member of the Ohio University Apathy Club Alumni Association and proclaim my indifference to two burning issues of the day:

The Democratic presidential candidates had a debate on MSNBC last night. I didn't know about it until this morning when the folks at NBC News made it sound like a really big deal. Thanks for the hype, NBC, but nobody cares.

And Rosie O'Donnell is leaving "The View." It's a show I never watch, and O'Donnell has transformed herself into an entertainer I avoid. Even if she invited Sanjaya Malakar to be on her show, I wouldn't watch it.

In my next life, my name will be Jim Lyke, and I will be an optometrist. I will hire a teenage girl to be my receptionist. When the phone rings, she will say, "Hello. Lyke Eye Care."

And that will sum up my feelings toward presidential debates that occur more than a year before the election, and it will sum up my attitude toward entertainers who make a living spouting ignorant opinions.

Next topic, please.

Odds and ends, 4/26/07

In several editorials, I have said it’s easy for other parts of West Virginia to laugh at what happens in Huntington, but they had better be careful, because Huntington’s problems often show up in other counties. It looks like our Detroit drug gangs have discovered rural West Virginia now.

^^^^^^^

Huntington is about to build a skate park at Fairfield East Community Center. I don't know what it's going to have, but...

I've never understood the sculpture "Continuous Ascent" that used to be at the library and now is in front of the civic center. Maybe the skaters could find a practical use for it.

^^^^^^^

AEP has issued its first Corporate Responsibility Report, in which it addresses climate change, among other things. Get more information here. I haven't read the whole thing, but it looks like AEP is getting into retrofitting plants to burn more efficiently, planting trees in faraway places and buying offsets. That last one does nothing for me, as it brings up memories of Al Gore's new mansion. I plan to read the whole report as soon as I can get my hands on a hard copy.

If you're interested in the news release only, go here.

^^^^^^^

Something to think about when considering West Virginia's sales tax on food, and Ohio's lack of same:

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — This summer, Alabama and Mississippi are set to become the only states that apply their full state sales tax to groceries without any relief for low-income families, a distinction critics see as a holdover from their Deep South political past.

Arkansas had been in that category, but its Legislature recently voted to cut the state’s 6 percent sales tax in half for groceries. The tax break starts July 1.

All other states either exempt groceries from the sales tax, have a reduced tax on food, or provide a tax credit or rebate to low-income citizens.

West Virginia is gradually eliminating its sales tax on food. I myself don't like taxing something as basic to life as food. Part of me says it's not right to do that to our poorest residents. Then you ask yourself, if not for poor people, who would West Virginia have? We suffer from what I call the "Big Bottom." We have a greater percentage of people in the lower income brackets and a smaller percentage in the higher brackets.

But a sales tax on food still is just not right.

^^^^^^^

Talk about voter apathy. According to The Dominion Post in Morgantown, via AP, all of 1.55 percent of the city's registered voters participated in Tuesday's city election. All told, only 215 of almost 14,000 registered voters bothered to cast ballots.

In voters' defense, no one on the ballot had competition, so really, only a few people had to vote.

Hospital competition

Local hospitals must spend a lot of money on advertising, both in print and on TV. The one that catches my attention most is from Southern Ohio Medical Center at Portsmouth, Ohio. SOMC's most recent ads focus on its heart unit.

By coincidence (?), King's Daughters Medical Center in Ashland has announced it will open its new Medical Specialties office in Portsmouth on May 7. Why does KDMC need to be in Portsmouth if SOMC is so great? Why has KDMC had a clinic near South Point, Ohio, for several years when that clinic sits closer to Cabell Huntington Hospital than to Ashland? And why a few years ago did one St. Mary's Medical Center executive say he would fight any attempt by KDMC to open a clinic in Ceredo or Kenova?

It's all about market share -- keeping yours or grabbing part of your competitors'. I have no problem with hospitals competing for business. It's capitalism, after all, even in the nonprofit sector. If I were SOMC, I would be concerned that KDMC is about to open its second office in my home county. I would probably spend a lot of money on ads to remind my existing patient base that it can obtain cardiac care at home rather than going up to Ashland.

You have to wonder, though, when the arms race will end ... assuming it will.

A new Number 1

We knew it was coming. . .

TOKYO (AP) _ Toyota Camry, take a bow. Prius, bask in the limelight. Strong demand for those models helped propel the Japanese car maker onto the throne as the world's largest auto seller _ at least for the first quarter of 2007.

Through a shrewd combination of investing in environment-friendly vehicles, offering sharp new models and wooing drivers with brand power, Toyota has toppled GM from the top global sales spot for the first time ever, sales figured released on Tuesday show.

Whether it becomes the world's No. 1 automaker depends on annual worldwide vehicle production, rather than sales, and final bragging rights for that won't be decided until production numbers are tallied for the whole year.

But analysts say Toyota is advancing precisely in those areas that General Motors Corp. has fallen behind, making it likely that Toyota will snatch from GM the title it has held for 76 years. ...

GM said although Toyota won the first quarter, the fight for global leadership is not over for the year. A company spokesman said it would not chase market share solely to recapture the lead from Toyota, and it has no special plan to retake the lead. ...

While Toyota appears on course to supplant General Motors this year, GM's moves to boost overseas production could keep it in the running. The company's sales in China jumped 32 percent last year to 876,747 units, making it the market leader there, and it is also building a new factory in India, another market with tremendous potential.

But analysts note that Toyota's success required long-term planning and years of hard work.

When I bought my first car in 1976, there was a very strong anti-import sentiment in this area, even if Japanese automakers had surpassed Detroit in quality. Now, though, what's an import? And what do you do if your home region depends more on Toyota for jobs than all other automakers combined?

That's a stretch, because it takes in Georgetown, Ky., but not by much.

Fact 1: Toyota builds better cars than GM. That's why it was Number 1 for the quarter.

Fact 2: The United States needs for its transportation equipment industry to be strong. The question is how it does that if the industry insists on self-destructing.

Odds and ends, 4/24/07

So, are you right-eyed or left-eyed?

I'm left-eyed. I noticed it years ago. I always assumed it was because my left eye is stronger than my right eye. If it's rooted in brain chemistry, who really knows why my left eye is dominant, or -- according to this article -- it's likely that your right eye is dominant.

###

A few years ago, the Cabell County school system bought a lot of buses built by AmTran, now known as IC Corp. A few years after that, it bought buses from Blue Bird. Now it's buying from my youngest son's favorite company, Thomas Built Buses. We've even soon at least one of the new HDX series from Thomas Built here in Huntington. The HDX is Thomas Built's newest model in the Type D series, also known as transit type or, as my son calls them, flatnose.

The kid is seven years old, and his favorite reading material is literature about school buses. We have it from Thomas Built. I really need to contact IC Corp. and Blue Bird sometime to get info on their CE and Vision lines, respectively.

Tonight, we're going on a small expedition to get photos of school buses for a report he has to write for his first grade class.

I'd rather he be crazy about school buses than about baseball or hockey.

###

Odds and ends, 4/23/07

Over the weekend, my 13-year-old son and I mowed his grandmother's lawn. She has a big lawn, and we had to use a push mower. He's trying earn money for something he wants, so I let him do most of the work.

When it was all done yesterday, I noticed my arms and face were red. It was my first sunburn of the season. When I was my son's age, the first sunburn meant you were getting a tan. Natural tans were healthy. Now the fearmongers have us afraid of tans, because we might get skin cancer. My son takes after his mother's side, and his maternal grandfather died of cancer. But I don't want him to fear a bit of redness from the sun.

On a related note, I used his lawnmowing experience to tell of how when I was young, a teenage or adult male wasn't considered much of a worker unless his hands were calloused. Uncalloused men who lived in the country just weren't valued as much as men whose hands had callouses.

I-O-I

Remember the proposed intermodal container facility at Prichard? Container shipping is the big thing now, and lots of places want in on the action. The latest is Cleveland, as seen from this piece by the AP:

Port officials say container traffic would be a boon

CLEVELAND (AP) — Cuyahoga County port officials hope an increase in container ship traffic on coastal ports could pay dividends if the vessels can be lured to Cleveland.

The number of container ships — carrying cargo ranging from auto parts to patio furniture to clothing — is increasing 8 percent a year, but none if it heads to Cleveland’s port, which handles iron ore, stone and steel.

“The question is, do we want to be a significant maritime port or not,” said Adam Wasserman, who took over as director of the Cleveland-Cuyahoga Port Authority in February.

Within five years, Cleveland could raise its profile as a shipping center for container cargo if congestion at coastal ports worsens, said Stephen Pfeiffer, the port’s head of maritime operations.

The necessity for smaller ports to handle some of the load is inevitable, and smaller freighters could easily use the St. Lawrence Seaway to access Great Lakes ports, said Terry Johnston, administrator of the St. Lawrence Seaway Development Corp.

<-0->

The 40th anniversary of "Star Trek" was a few months ago, and the 30th anniversary of "Star Wars" is next month. I feel old.

>[]<

I've never been a fan of Katie Couric, but I don't want her to fail. Still, the media buzzards are circling over CBS News, where Couric supposedly is failing.

Some folks will say the day of the evening news is over. I'm not willing to go that far, but I never thought a news person should be a celebrity. One reason I don't like having my picture in the paper is that I don't want to be a local celebrity. I want my byline recognized, but that's about it.

Couric, on the other hand, has played the celebrity game for years. She has a great job, but until she can get the celebrity reputation behind her, it will be hard for some folks to consider her as the legitimate heir to the people who came before. They had their own problems, but none stemmed from being celebs.

Odds and ends, 4/20/07

Some folks say NBC should not have aired the Virginia Tech shooter's videotape, and that most other broadcast outlets should not have aired it repeatedly.

Can we use the same logic on another hate-filled group? I don't like the way some people define "hate" as "someone who disagrees with me," but there is one group that definitely qualifies as "hate" by any definition.

This group likes to picket the funerals of soldiers and Marines killed in Iraq. You have to admit, it gets its publicity. Now it says it plans to picket the funerals of people killed at Virginia Tech.

Until they actually show up and get the whatever beat out of them, can we please -- please -- just ignore them? No matter what they say they will picket, wait until they actually show up before they get any ink.

###

I was going to write a weekend editorial about the Virginia Tech murderer and warning signs and freedom and such, but I just couldn't do it. I feel as though there is something very important that I don't know.

As an editorial writer and an occassional blogger, I'm supposed to be the omniscient voice of God. But I can't step into those shoes. So if you all don't mind, I'll be human for a while until I have something of value to add to this particular conversation.

Methadone clinic, 4/20/07

Huntington Mayor David Felinton hasn’t come out and said it directly, but his actions in recent weeks give rise to this suspicion: He doesn’t want any methadone clinics in Huntington.

Last week, Felinton scheduled a public hearing for next month to discuss the impact of the Huntington Treatment Center, a methadone clinic at 135 4th Ave., on the surrounding community. The public hearing will be at 6 p.m. Tuesday, May 1, in City Council chambers at City Hall. It will take place during the council's monthly Public Safety Committee meeting.

Felinton has said for weeks that he favors shutting down the Huntington Treatment Center and moving it to another location because of complaints from nearby businesses and residents that patients solicit them for money, use parking spaces without permission and litter excessively, among other things.

The public hearing is one of the requirements needed for Felinton to declare the business a public nuisance. The city's legal department also is gathering data from the Cabell County 911 Center and local law enforcement agencies to see if there has been an increase in the number of emergency response calls to the area since the clinic opened in 2003.

"It's really not what goes on inside the clinic that is my concern," Felinton told Herald-Dispatch reporter Bryan Chambers. "It's what goes on outside. Nevertheless, the public hearing will provide an opportunity for people to speak for and against shutting it down."

Felinton also said this: "It's fine with me if the clinic stays in the city limits. ... But in a city of our size, it's difficult to see how that would be possible."

Felinton admits the practical effect of shutting down the clinic on 4th Avenue would be to force it to relocate outside city limits. He made no mention of any effort to help the clinic find an acceptable location within the city.

So much about this is disturbing. How many businesses or nonprofit organizations have customers, clients or patrons who consume large amounts of parking and litter? How many agencies attract panhandlers? How many bars attract people who litter or solicit for prostitution?

Why schedule a public hearing before the 911 Center compiles its information? How big a zone exists around day care centers and similar operations in which the city will limit certain businesses that otherwise comply with zoning laws?

Is this really not about methadone? Or is it about something else? Has he taken it upon himself to run a legal business out of town?

Who has casinos first, WV or PA?

Four West Virginia counties are gearing up for elections in June to allow table games at their racetrack casinos. West Virginia needed this, we were told, to keep ahead of Pennsylvania in the gambling arms race.

But if you don't absolutely have to have a human dealer or touch your equipment (or whatever the jargon is for cards, chips and dice), Pennsylvania may win the race:

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania’s gambling regulators on Thursday approved a new slot-machine that mimics table games, allows multiple players and features electronic video dealers that entice players with prerecorded lines like, “Come play with me.”

While Pennsylvania bans traditional table games like poker and blackjack that are run by a human dealer, a machine that offers the games can be legal if the odds are random and one player’s decisions do not affect another player’s odds.

The electronic table game, made by Las Vegas-based Shuffle Master Inc., could begin showing up soon at Pennsylvania’s four slots casinos.

Robert Soper, the president and chief executive of Mohegan Sun at Pocono Downs near Wilkes-Barre, said the company has no concrete plans to buy the games, but is very interested.

“It offers a new dynamic, a new form of entertainment,” Soper said.

Some say the Shuffle Master game essentially allows casinos in slots-only states like Pennsylvania and Delaware to circumvent state prohibitions on table games.

As Qui-Gon Jinn would say, "There's always a bigger fish."

Odds and ends, 4-18-07

One study shows the number of baby boys being born compared to girls is declining. The study lists environmental pollutants as a possible cause, and from this report, that's understandable.

What is not mentioned -- and I don't know if this could ever be documented -- is the number of boy fetuses aborted in the US and Japan compared to the number of girl fetuses. Previous studies have shown that in some countries that value boys over girls -- China and India in particular -- parents tend to abort girl fetuses so they can have boys.

I'd better stop there before I write something that really gets me into trouble before I'm prepared for it.

+=+

Oh, great. Everyone gets excited about ethanol whenever the pump price of gasoline approaches $3, and now ethanol is linked to a health hazard. Check it out here and here.

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I have never liked NBA officiating. A few years ago, I was at my mother-in-law's house, outside with the kids when someone watching a playoff game told me the Lakers were down by a large margin with less than a quarter to play. Don't worry, I said, the refs will make sure the Lakers win. And sure enough, they did.

A lot of game officials have a god complex. Yes, we should respect them, but we can't ignore the fact that some of them -- even at the high school level, as people in Huntington will attest -- do too much to influence the game. So it was good to see the NBA commissioner give a long-time ref the heave-ho for being a jerk.

If you want an analysis, try this piece by Michael Wilbon.

+=+

Today the Supreme Court released a ruling upholding a federal ban on the procedure known as partial-birth abortion. You can read an AP story on it here.

I was surprised at the outcome, but I was also surprised at the language used by the AP writer. I'm not used the the words that the writer used being found in a national story about abortion. To wit:

The procedure at issue involves partially removing the fetus intact from a woman’s uterus, then crushing or cutting its skull to complete the abortion.

Abortion opponents say the law will not reduce the number of abortions performed because an alternate method — dismembering the fetus in the uterus — is available and, indeed, much more common.

That language is pretty brutal, but it does fit with what we've all read about this procedure, which the medical community apparently refers to as "dilation and extraction."

A story on the Washington Post Web site has only one paragraph describing the procedure, but its language is not as grusome as the AP's. In fact, that paragraph quotes from the court opinion.

The story on the New York Times site uses this language to describe the procedure: "It involves partly removing an intact fetus, then destroying the skull to complete the abortion."

I prefer the language used in the AP article. It's not polite, but if accurate it describes the procedure and why so many people want it banned.

The part about dismemberment makes me wonder why more wire and national stories don't use that word. Is it inaccurate, or does it play into a news reporter or organization's biases?

You tell me.

+=+

A later AP story uses this language:

The procedure is formally known as dilation and extraction and is also referred to as late term abortion, D&X or Intact D&X. It involves dilating the cervix and removing the fetus.

Much less emotional, isn't it?

That was in a sidebar. The latest version of the mainbar had the original language.

Hang up the %$#@&^^ phone

I was driving down 8th Street hill a little while ago. I was behind a red pickup truck whose driver (male) was talking on a cell phone. I don't know if he wasn't familiar with the road or if he just wasn't paying attention.

Once we crossed the pink bridge, he couldnd't decide which lane he wanted to be in, so he straddled the line. He decided before we got to the red light. He took one lane, I took the other. He was still talking on his phone when a woman driving a car made a left turn from 13th Avenue onto 8th Street. She was talking on her phone.

I looked over at the walking track. A 20-something couple was walking hand-in-hand. He was quiet because he had no one to talk to. Even though she was walking and holding hands with her guy, the young woman was engrossed in a cell phone conversation.

I got back to the office and told a co-worker about this. He said he was up at Rotary Park the other day and saw a man playing catch with a boy. The man couldn't catch anything with his glove because he used his left shoulder to cradle the cell phone he was talking into. We knew which was more important at the time -- the phone or the boy.

I told my coworker of being at Harris Riverfront Park last fall. I watched as a woman pushed a kid of maybe two years on a swing. She barely knew he was there. The kid could have put a sack of flour on the swing and wandered off, seeing as how the woman's full attention was on her phone. From the look on her face, she wasn't dealing with any sort of emergency.

Can people just not be connected any more? Have we freely been assimilated into the Borg collective?

Or am I just an old coot?

Average age of death in WV counties

This is another in a series of looking at West Virginia and Appalachia statistically.

Where in West Virginia are you likeliest to live to a ripe old age? Try Grant County, where the average age at death in 2004 was 78 years.

The place where you die youngest? Clay County, at 67.2 years.

That’s not a totally accurate interpretation of data compiled by the West Virginia Bureau for Public Health, but it’s in the same county.

If you want to look at counties in our area:
Cabell, 73.3
Wayne, 70.1
Lincoln, 67.8
Mason, 72.6
Putnam, 70.5

Here’s a what-but-not-why: Five counties typically associated with coal production all had an average age at death of less than 70:
Boone, 68.9
Logan, 69.6
Mingo, 68.3
Wyoming, 67.7
McDowell, 68.1

Virginia Tech

There are some news stories that are so big, I just don't know what to say. The shootings at Virginia Tech yesterday was one of them. What can a guy like me say that's going to add to the conversation? There's already so much noise out there that we don't need any more.

I was waiting to see the gun people jump into the noise, and they surely did. Some folks say this is a good reason for concealed-carry permits, and some folks say this proves that more gun controls are needed.

I don't want to get into this debate right now. But sitting here in this chair, I find it repulsive that even before we knew anything about the gunman or the victims, some people were already trying to score political points on the gun control issue.

Vultures.

Birth dearth (again)

(This is one of several planned blog entries looking at West Virginia's past and future from a statistical point of view.).

About five years ago, the West Virginia Bureau for Public Health wanted to know what happened to all the people who should be living in West Virginia. Had the state not suffered a massive outmigration from 1950-2000, there would be about 600,000 more people living here now than there are, based on the number of births and deaths in those 50 years.

West Virginia's population is about 1.8 million. An increase of 600,000 -- more accurately, not having lost 600,000 to migration -- would be a jumpt of 33 percent in the state's population.

The BPH broke those numbers down by county. Cabell County had a natural increae (births minus deaths) of 28,659 in that time. Yet the population between the censuses actually went down. Based on that, the BPH figured Cabell County had lost 39,910 people to migration between 1950 and 2000.

Wayne County lost 10,293 to migration.

Let's take a moment and look at some other numbers and spin things forward. There are some really good stats on the BPH Web site. They will probably keep me going for a long time. But let's take one minute and look at birth rates. In particular, birth rates in major cities.

Huntington's birth rate per 1,000 population in 2004 was 12.2. That's better than cities in the Northern Panhandle, but it lags behind Beckley (18.4), Charleston (14.3) and Morgantown (18.5) among others. Morgantown's birth rate was second in the state, but it was blown clear out of the water by Martinsburg's birth rate of 28.7.

So not only does the Eastern Panhandle city have to deal with an influx of migrants into that area, but part of its growth comes from the natural increase of its residents.

Going back to the 50-year migration numbers, Berkeley County's growth from natural increase was about half of that from migration. So migration plays the major role, but natural increase is helping, too.

Jefferson and Morgan counties show similar trends.

Odds and ends, 4/16/07

Is China coming around on global warming and carbon dioxide emissions? Maybe.

To get one thing straight: I am willing to believe the world is getting warmer, although I wonder more about the distribution of temperature changes than I am about a global average temperature. I also think mankind gives itself too much credit for its impact on those changes.

Having said that, we probably do emit more CO2 and other such gases than we need to.

Getting China and India on board is vital to any efforts regarding climate change. That will do more than replacing all the light bulbs in every house in West Virginia.

***

Today is tax day. This year, in contrast with previous years, I filed my federal and state returns in February. So today, I can relax.

***

Here is a newspaper report that's almost a year old, but one that's still worth reading. According to The Indianapolis Star, universities and their students contributed about $1 billion to athletic departments in 2005. I note this because there are still people around here who think Marshall University football and basketball are money-making enterprises and help pay scholarships for nonrevenue athletes. Wrong. Even at Marshall, sports teams rely heavily on student fees and state subsidies. Take away the subsidies and football and basketball become club sports at Marshall.

Maybe I overstate it, but not by much.

***

I went to MSNBC.com to see how it was covering the Virginia Tech shootings. I scroll down the page and I see a news headline about the Pulitzer Prizes. And it's listed under... entertainment.

Newspapers producing serious stuff, and the Web site of a TV news operation lists it under entertainment. My suspicions of what these guys are and how they see themselves is confirmed.

Odds and ends, 4/15/07

A story on Page 1 of The Herald-Dispatch on Friday caught my attention. Not because of what was in it, but what wasn't in it.

It was an AP story, and the first three grafs follow:

SHANGHAI, China (AP) _ The list of Chinese food exports rejected at American ports reads like a chef's nightmare: pesticide-laden pea pods, drug-laced catfish, filthy plums and crawfish contaminated with salmonella.

Yet, it took a much more obscure item, contaminated wheat gluten, to focus U.S. public attention on a very real and frightening fact: China's chronic food safety woes are now an international concern.

In recent weeks, scores of cats and dogs in America have died of kidney failure blamed on eating pet food containing gluten from China that was tainted with melamine, a chemical used in plastics, fertilizers and flame retardants. While humans aren't believed at risk, the incident has sharpened concerns over China's food exports and the limited ability of U.S. inspectors to catch problem shipments.

Now compare that to this nugget from Voice of America:

And China has the deadliest coal mines of all. Last year, more than 4,700 workers died in mine accidents as Chinese mine operators pushed workers to meet booming demands for fuel.

And China wants to sell its cars in the USA? Those ought to go over as well as the Yugo if the safety record isn't any better than in the Chinese food and mining industries.

(One snide point. The CBS story notes that the name of the care likely will change if it's sold here. It's pronounced "JEE-lee," which is like "Gigli," the awful box-office bomb brought to us by Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez.).

=O=

One more thing, related to my recent rants about the cost of college tuition.

For people wondering about priorities at major basketball powers, try this piece from Cincinnati.

Odds and ends, 4/13/07

So WVU has a new president, and it's the guy who's politically well-connected.

This being West Virginia, that news is supposed to surprise me how?

*o*

The first thing I did after getting back to my desk yesterday after we were told Gannett had sold The Herald-Dispatch was to get on the Internet and find whatever I could about our new owners. The first thing I found was a news item from Reuters where Gannett had announced the sale.

Get this: At the bottom of the brief about one American company buying another was this line:

(Reporting by Avishek Mishra in Bangalore)

Outsourcing gone wild.

*o*

Speaking of WVU, that school's Board of Governors today approved a tuition increase of 5.5 percent for next year. WVU has a master plan to increase tuition 5.5 percent a year.

Someone tell me again how kids from families in the poorest state in the USA are supposed to deal with this sort of price increase? Oh, yeah, by going to school on the 10-year plan and borrowing money they won't pay off until middle age.

I have a dog in this fight. My oldest is in 9th grade. Right now, I'm more worried about the fact she has noticed she will be old enough for a learner's permit soon, so I'll be providing driving lessons. But worrying about paying for college is close behind.

Lucky for me, she has discovered the possibility of a Promise scholarship, but she really doesn't want to go to college in West Virginia. The chance of a free ride may change her mind.

*O*

See you next week.

HD sold

Soon I hope to have a post about a conversation I had today with someone who has an opposite view of global warming than what I have. But that will have to wait.

I have to do some research on Gatehouse Media, soon to be the new owner of my employer, The Herald-Dispatch. Check out www.herald-dispatch.com tonight for more on this.

Renewable energy in West Virginia?

This is part of a news release that came in my morning e-mail:

Washington, DC—Global warming pollution in West Virginia increased by 7% between 1990 and 2004, according to The Carbon Boom, a new analysis of state fossil fuel consumption data released today by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (U.S. PIRG). This is the first time that 2004 state-by-state data on carbon dioxide emissions have been released.

“Given the risks from global warming, it’s incredibly irresponsible to allow West Virginia’s global warming pollution to increase. It’s like the doctor telling you that you need to go on a serious diet, but instead you go straight for the Ben & Jerry’s,” said Rose Garr, mid-Atlantic field organizer for U.S. PIRG.

U.S. PIRG’s report comes less than a week after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a U.N. body charged with assessing the scientific record on global warming, released its consensus report on the current and projected impacts of global warming. The report warned of increasing droughts, floods, heat waves, water stress, forest fires, and coastal flooding in the United States but concluded that “many impacts can be avoided, reduced, or delayed” by quickly and significantly reducing global warming pollution.

“With West Virginia’s strong ties to coal production, it’s not going to be easy for our state to provide leadership in the fight against global warming. But considering the urgency and magnitude of the threat, we have to turn this challenge into an opportunity,” said Vivian Stockman of the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition. “If our leaders in Congress muster the will, West Virginia can be a leader in renewable energy production, creating both jobs and beginning to stabilize global warming emissions. The same billions politicians want to spend on coal-to-liquid – a Nazi-era technology that produces huge volumes of global warming gases – can be spent instead on renewable energy production."

That was the point where I was supposed to get on this blog and rant about what was said. But the reporter in me said I should call the OVEC people and hear what they have to say. So I e-mailed these to one of the people who sent the news release. I sent them in hopes we could get together and have a real discussion, because I often wonder how viable "renewable energy" resources are in terms of meeting our total energy needs.

What renewables? When someone tries to build a wind farm, they get shouted at for killing bats and birds. We have too many cloudy days for solar technology, which has its own drawbacks with hazmat concerns. And where in West Virginia will you build a hydroelectric dam that will make a significant difference in energy production? And where will we grow enough grain or cellulose for ethanol production?

We won’t mention building a nuclear plant in coal-dominated West Virginia.

Also, isn’t it inappropriate to link coal-to-liquid technology with Naziism? I mean, technically, isn’t Social Security a Nazi-era social program?

I sent this morning. I wanted to give the OVEC folks the courtesy of receiving the message before I posted this on the Internet.

Vivian Stockman called me at maybe 11:30 a.m. At the time, I was trying to get the Friday and Saturday editorial pages done, so we arranged for me to call her back at 2:15 p.m.

Which I did.

We had a pretty pleasant conversation. Stockman is a believer in developing alternate energy technologies. She says Ronald Reagan drove that research to Europe by taking the solar panels off the White House and ending subsidies for tech development in alternate energy.

And she is of the opinion that Bluestone, Sutton and other dams in West Virginia are fully capable of providing a good deal of hydropower, if the resistance of coal companies can be overcome.

Her view is that we can reduce our energy use by 20 to 30 percent through conservation and efficiences without sacrificing our lifestyles.

"It's definitely THE issue of our time," she sai9d.

As for the Nazi comment, she said the only two countries to invest heavily in coal-to-liquid were Nazi Germany and the apartheid government of South Africa.

"This is an antiquated technology used by desperate regimes," she said.

When I asked about whether that means Nick Joe Rahall and Joe Manchin are Nazis because they support coal-to-liquid, she wanted me to know that she was not calling them Nazis.

There was more, but the phone call ended nicely.

I have not had time today to check any part of Stockman's claims. Maybe someday soon, if I can get a few other things off my desk. I still have my doubts.

Later in the day, Stockman e-mailed me a Web site where she keeps tabs on renewable energy.

It's at www.ohvec.org/news_renewable_energy.html

Gone home

I'm taking a few days off. I'll be back late next week. I'll be sitting at home, trying to get my Jeep Cherokee (211,000 miles but not running at the moment) back on the road with some expensive repairs.

And I will have my vacation reading list:

Reason magazine, with an article on the nanny state.

A December 1999 study by WVU on long-term populations trends in West Virginia.

A blog piece on how scientists need to frame the topics they study as they enter public debate.

And, I hope, the summary of the most recent IPCC report on global warming or climate change or whatever it's called this week.

And I'll cast a few votes for Sanjaya Malakar.

See you next week.

Odds and ends, 4/6/07

I'm writing an editorial for weekend use on a new Ohio program that encourages middle-school and high-school kids to think about college. Ohio has a low percentage of college-educated adults. It ranks 39th among the 50 states and the District of Columbia. Kentucky ranks 49th, and West Virginia ranks dead lasat.

So that got me to thinking about my own kids. I can think of three major barriers to a college education.

First is academic preparation. My kids shouldn't have that problem, and if they do, it's their own fault.

Second is cost. Tuition is rising faster our family income. If Ohio and other states want more young people — older people, too — thinking about higher education, it must solve that problem, either through keeping tuition down or putting more money into financial aid.

Here's the one a lot of people don't talk about, but I have seen it drive many kids off the college campus in the first year. It's culture shock. Going from a small high school in southern Ohio to the main campus of Ohio State University is a bigger step than some students anticipate. College campuses are full of liberals and other folks that kids have heard about but not had to deal with. And there is the idea that college academic work is not like high school work. I speak of the different culture of college learning as opposed to the content.

I would like more people to talk about the last one.

*o*

I've given up on Britney Spears as the celebrity I can't resist. My new celebrity du jour is American Idol's Sanjaya Malakar. I actually cast three votes for him last week. (Now I'm waiting to see what telemarketing list I find myself on).

Think of this kid: He was put on national TV to embarrass himself, but he embraces his awfulness. He provides entertainment. He's even better than William Hung in that regard. I hope he wins the thing. If not, I hope he finishes second. He's more entertaining than the Tampay Bay Devil Rays.

*_*

It's been five years since I was up there, but one of the prettiest sections of the Ohio River is in Athens County, Ohio, where State Route 124 hugs the river shore. Few houses, lots of trees, a road beside the river -- what more could a guy who loves the Ohio River Road ask for?

Part of the road slipped into the river two years ago, and the Ohio Department of Transportation says it's about to rebuild it. Now I'll have to get up there this spring and take a look at the damage before the repair work begins. It gives the excuse to make a day trip to one of my favorite spots near here.

*=*


(More to come, I hope).

Can we ignore this person? Please?

I suppose I should come out and say something publicly about the grotesquely ignorant stuff that comes out of the mouth of a certain morning TV talk show host. But I won't except to say that people who obssess over what this ranter says serve her ends by doing daily reports on the outrageous things she says and how wrong she is.

The scary part is that some people believe her lunacy.

I won't mention her name. Everyone knows what it is. I'm not feeding her ego by saying it.

All I will say is that I plan to ignore it unless it goes too far overboard.

Odds and ends, 4/3/07

NEW YORK (AP) -- Justin Timberlake blames celebrity magazines for turning his personal life into juicy gossip fodder.

"I despise what they do," the 26-year-old singer tells Details magazine in an interview in its April issue.

And without them he'd be making as much money as a school teacher in West Virginia. I feel so sorry for the guy.

-+-

This morning's paper carried an AP story on how Gov. Joe Manchin signed a bill increasing the number of diseases newborn babies will be tested for from nine to 29. The AP story did not list the diseases. I looked the bill up on the Legislature Web site and I learned why.

For those who want to know, these are the diseases listed by the bill:

sickle cell anemia, congenital adrenal hyperplasia, cystic fibrosis, biotinidase deficiency, isovaleric acidemia, glutaric acidemia type I, 3-Hydroxy-3-methylglutaric aciduria, multiple carboxylase deficiency, methylmalonic acidemia-mutase deficiency form, 3-methylcrotonyl-CoA carboxylase deficiency, methylmalonic acidemia, Cbl A and Cbl B forms, propionic acidemia, beta-ketothiolase deficiency, medium-chain acyl-CoA dehydrogenase deficiency, very long-chain acyl-CoA dehydronenase deficiency, long-chain acyl-CoA dehydronenase deficiency, trifunctional protein deficiency, carnitine uptake defeat, maple syrup urine disease, homocystinuria, citrullinemia type I, argininosuccinate acidemia, tyrosinemia type I, hemoglobin S/Beta-thalassemia, sickle C disease and hearing deficiency.

-+-

There are probably newer numbers out there, but I came across these while looking up information for the previous item. The death rate for heart disease in Cabell County is about 20 percent higher than the national average.

That struck home with me because I'm in my early 50s. Both my parents died in their mid- to late 70s of heart disease. On my mother's side, an uncle died at 60 and a half-brother died at 62, both of heart problems. So I take numbers like this seriously.

It doesn't surprise me that our death rate from lung cancer is high, but it was interesting that our death rate from prostate cancer is lower than the national average.

Death from diabetes and strokes are high, while we're about 20 percent below average on homicide. That does not surprise me.

Anyway, those are some interesting numbers I'm going to have to think about.

(More to come later today)

THE most pretentious and most insecure name for a university

I'll probably catch grief for this, but I don't care anymore.

One thing I don't like about that big school in Columbus is how it calls itself THE Ohio State University, as if it's the only one. I guess it thinks we're too ignorant to know there are more than a dozen state-supported universities in Ohio. THE Ohio State University may be the biggest, but it wasn't the first, and in many disciplines, it isn't the best.

This came about because I caught the first three minutes and the last three minutes of the basketball game last night. I got to thinking about a family member who is a graduate of THE Ohio State University, especially as the starting lineup was announced for THE Ohio State University. The way they emphasize "THE" indicates there is an inferiority complex at work. I have heard that people at THE Ohio State University are jealous that the University of Michigan is considered a public Ivy and OSU is not.

Anyway, after the football championship game and the basketball championship game, maybe announcers can change that to "THE Ohio State University, a wholly owned subsidiary of The University of Florida."

I've read before that folks at Florida State have labored in the shadow of THE University of Florida for years. And I have heard that fans of Memphis resent Tennessee's status in that state. Just, I suppose, as our local greenbleeders in Huntington resent WVU.

And for now, that's all I have to say about that.

Business sites

I've said -- often -- that many of Huntington's problems would be solved if the city were a more desirable place to live and do business. Recently I had need to find a particular place up on Route 2 near that end of the Merritts Creek connector. When I started counting the number of businesses up there, I was surprised.

There were several businesses I recognized and some that I had never heard of before. All I had to do was drive a few small streets off Route 2, and I found them.

A generation or two ago, those businesses would have located in cities. But urban areas are not where a lot of these companies want to locate anymore. Someone would do the city a favor by finding out why.

Tamarack, 4/2/07

I spent several years covering politics. I spent several years covering business.

It was always interesting seeing businesspeople think they could run government as a business. It was sad to see politicians thinking they could run a business. Too many times, public money was wasted on well-meaning ventures.

Sometimes the intersection of politics and business results in millions of public dollars lost. That is the story of Tamarack.

Now that everyone has weighed in with their opinions about the West Virginia Turnpike and Tamarack, Gov. Joe Manchin is giving his.

The Legislature passed a bill requiring that it approve all future toll increases on the Turnpike. Machin vetoed that bill.

Last week, Manchin said he wants the Parkways, Economic Development and Tourism Authority to focus on maintaining the 88-mile turnpike. That would put the authority out of the economic development game and out of the arts and crafts business.

Manchin said he wants the state Department of Commerce to develop a plan to operate Tamarack.But the authority has a $10 million bond debt that has to be paid on Tamarack. It will have to find a way to pay off that debt before Tamarack’s ownership can change.

Tamarack was criticized in two reports issued early this year. The authority subsidizes Tamarack by about $2.5 million a year, most of which comes from Turnpike tolls. Tamarack’s goal of providing a showcase for the best arts and crafts of West Virginia is a laudable one, but it cannot keep losing $2 million to $3 million a year while parts of the Turnpike deteriorate from lack of maintenance.

The turnpike authority owns land it could sell. It could increase tolls for the first time in more than 25 years.

Things must change on the Turnpike. The best strategy is to get out of ventures that don’t pertain to operating a road, sell off property that is not vital to the function of operating a road, getting out of debt and removing the tolls.

Odds and ends, 4/2/07

So I walked into a discount store yesterday and saw a display for a new soft drink coming soon: Diet Coke with vitamins and minerals. I checked the Coke site on the Web and found these brands owned by the Coca-Cola Co.:

Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola Black Cherry Vanilla
Coca-Cola Blak
Coca-Cola C2
Coca-Cola Citra
Coca-Cola with Lemon
Coca-Cola with Lime
Coca-Cola with Raspberry
Coca-Cola Zero


caffeine free Coca-Cola
caffeine free Diet Coke/Coca-Cola light


diet cherry Coke
Diet Coke/Coca-Cola light
Diet Coke Black Cherry Vanilla
Diet Coke Citra/Coca-Cola light Citra
Diet Coke Sweetened with Splenda
Diet Coke with Lemon/Coca-Cola light with Lemon
Diet Coke with Lime/Coca-Cola light with Lime
Diet Coke with Raspberry
diet Vanilla Coke

These are just the Coke brands.

How many more are coming?

How many do we need? As many as we will buy.

=+=

In advance of the IPCC report coming out soon on global warming, here is the kind of science story I like to read. Actually, it's a news release, but it goes into much better detail than mainstream "March was warm, so that proves global warming" garbage we get from most media outlets.

It turns out that the parts of California that warmed the most in the last half of the 20th Century were urban areas. Parts of the state even had a decrease in average temperature. The primary culprit, other than urbanization, would have been long-term changes in the temperature of the Pacific ocean.

I plan to read this thing in more detail as I can.

=+=

There's a new faraway land where tech companies are outsourcing their work to. It's a place called North Dakota.

Demographically speaking, North Dakota and West Virginia share many similarities.

After that, I'll let you draw your own conclusions.

+=+

One last thing. Today is Opening Day for major league baseball, and I don't care.

Next president of WVU

There's some political infighting going on in Charleston that's spilling out into the public. It does not paint a good picture of higher education in West Virginia.

West Virginia University has long advertised itself as the state’s flagship university, where the best in educational opportunities for the best students are available. WVU is bigger and better than anything else in the state, and a lot of its graduates refer to it as "the university," even though there are several others in the state now.

WVU needs a new president. The leading candidate is someone more skilled in politics than anything else. This is good?

The person in question is Mike Garrison, a former cabinet secretary and chief of staff to former Gov. Bob Wise. Garrison, 38, is the youngest of the three finalist candidates and is the only one not holding an administrative-level position at a university. Garrison was chairman of the state Higher Education Policy Commission, before resigning a day before being named a finalist.

According to the Associated Press, since 2003, Garrison has been a lobbyist with one of the largest clienteles at the Legislature. As a lobbyist and a lawyer, he has represented the interests of several board and search committee members.

The possibility of Garrison’s being the next WVU president was the stuff of insider gossip and bickering until last week. Charleston media and bloggers were all over it. But it became more newsworthy when Judge Robert B. King of the 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals and a WVU graduate, wrote to the WVU Board of Governors about the presidential search process.

According to the AP, King’s letter said a number of people perceive the search process to be “preordained” in Garrison’s favor.

Several members of the search committee, including chairman Steve Goodwin, said they were disappointed with and insulted by King’s letter. Imagine that.

The search process has political fingerprints all over it. Garrison was a person from the Wise admininstration, and Wise kept a flock of Goodwin family people on the state payroll.

A couple of years ago, Marshall's Board of Governors had a choice of an academic or a connected person who desperately wanted the job. It went with the academic. Stephen J. Kopp appears to have done a good job so far. In conversations that have not become public yet, he talks as someone who knows what it takes to start programs from scratch. He knows the market that universities are in for students.

It's an interesting choice the WVU selection committee has, especially now that their hand has been exposed.

This won't be the first time a top job at an institution of higher education in West Virginia would go to a political person. Current WVU President David Hardesty has the same background, I believe. And at least one community college head got the job in part by being married to a high-ranking state official.

But do we want the top job at the state's "flagship" university to be as much a patronage job as a highway department truck driver? The WVU Board of Governors will have to answer that one.