Global warming and Billy Donovan

This month's Discover magazine came in today's mail. I was surprised that it had a lengthy interview with Henrik Svensmark, a Danish cosmoclimatologist who has done experiments to test the idea that solar cycles are responsible for the recent bout of global warming. It has to do with the sun's magnetic field keeping out cosmic rays, meaning fewer clouds form to reflect sunlight back into space.

This theory has been around for a while. It's a good counterpoint to the idea that all global warming is caused by humans.

Do a search of Svensmark's name and you'll find plenty of articles about his work.

The magazine also has a short article on the adoption of the word "thagomizer" by paleontologists. If you have to ask, you never read "The Far Side."

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I have the TV on while I type, and a crawl says Billy Donovan is leaving the University of Florida to take over the Orlando Magic. Even though I didn't get all worked up about where Patrick Patterson chose to play his college ball, I'm glad now he didn't choose Florida. As far as I'm concerned, the players Donovan recruited should be allowed to transfer out without having to sit out a year. He made a deal with them that he would coach them, then he reneged. The NCAA would never agree to this, but that should free his recruits for this year.

Local legislators shun junket to Puerto Rico

For once, let us praise all members of the Legislature hailing from Cabell and Wayne counties. According to an article in today's Charleston Daily Mail, about half the state Senate and several member of the House of Delegates are attending a state government conference in Puerto Rico. As it happens, attendance is not taken at any of the business meetings. During their off hours, when they're not learning about state government, legislators can play golf, lounge on the beach or have fun at a casino. The Daily Mail published a list of legislators who have been cleared to go to the resort at state expense, and no one from Cabell or Wayne counties is on it.

Thanks, local legislators, for not abusing the public treasury this time.

The corridor

According to Site Selection Magazine, two of the 10 largest industrial capital projects in development in Ohio are in this area. The list shows Sun Coke at Haverhill, Ohio, as being the fourth-largest at $225 million and the proposed Buckeye Ethanol plant at South Point, Ohio, as the sixth-largest at $150 million.

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Here is one part of the Q & A that the magazine had with Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland:

SS: How can Ohio change the perception of national site selectors who may still see Ohio as a Rust Belt State?
GOV. STRICKLAND: We need to understand the destructive nature of self- fulfilling prophecy. We need to focus on our strengths rather than our past. We need to develop a new and stronger Ohio brand. It must reflect a genuine change of attitude on the part of the business and political leadership in Ohio.

I have commented before about Huntington's inability to look to the future. It chooses to complain about the past. Mention any thing remotely associated with change in Huntington and people will start griping about the mall or the routing of Interstate 64. This town just cannot look ahead. Too many people are afraid of letting go of the past. The mall and the interstate are where they are. Live with it.

Likewise, too many West Virginians, it seems, derive their identity from the past and not the present or the future. I didn't see so much of that in southern Ohio, where I grew up. Granted, southern Ohio didn't have nearly as colorful a past as southern West Virginia did, but people didn't base what they were on who did what a hundred years ago.

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Back to the topic at hand, the corridor from South Point, Ohio, to Wheelersburg, Ohio, could see some significant industrial investment in the coming decade. We could have a similar corridor between Lesage and Point Pleasant, W.Va., but that region lacks some of the utilities you find in the one in Ohio. People talk about the great sites up there, but few people seem to do anything to improve them.

I'm glad the hazmat incinerator and the pulp mill didn't go up there. We don't need that kind of "development." There are clean industries that could use the sites in that area. But there's no desire on the part of the leadership of this area to see that something happens. Maybe it's because the WV corridor crosses too many political jurisdictions -- legislative, congressional, county. But that's true in Ohio, too, but the Lawrence and Scioto county people manage to work together.

So while the Ohio corridor could land a second power plant and the ethanol plant to go with the second battery of coke ovens at Sun Coke, the Route 2 corridor in West Virginia doesn't even get lip service.

Odds and ends, 5/29/07

If you want to read a different take on the conversation going on about illegal immigration, go to www.ejectejecteject.com and read the first item.


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There's an attractive high school pole vaulter in California who has attracted a lot of unwanted attention on the Internet. Things like this is why I try to monitor my kids' Internet usage. I don't always succeed, but I try.

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My mother used to say that some people have more money than they have sense. Here's someone who has more time and money than she knows how to use productively:

LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. (AP) — A suburban Atlanta mother who believes the best-selling Harry Potter books promote witchcraft said Tuesday she may take her quest to ban the writings from her county schools to federal court after a state judge rejected her latest effort.

Laura Mallory, who said two of her four children attend public schools in Gwinnett County, told reporters it may be time to rethink her arguments with the help of an attorney.

“I maybe need a whole new case from the ground up,” said Mallory, who was not represented by an attorney at the hearing.Her comments came after Superior Court Judge Ronnie Batchelor said evidence previously presented by Gwinnett County school officials supported their decision not to remove the books from school libraries.

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WV education spending, 5/29/07

The topic on average spending on public education by state drew several responses. I figured it would be easier to start a new comment so we can keep it going longer.

“Average” expenditures per student are a good start, but only a start. Those numbers came out just last week. That’s why I posted them. To me it’s always been interesting to see that West Virginians are willing to give up a greater share of their incomes to pay for education.

But when you get down to it, “average” doesn’t tell you that much in itself. It’s the distribution that counts. It’s like someone who used to work for the Huntington District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers asked me once: Did you hear about the man who drowned in a lake that has an average depth of six inches?

When I see things about WESTEST scores or ACT scores, usually the mean or median scores are released, but not the distribution. I want to know if most scores are above average or below average, and I want to know how those scores are distributed.

But “average” is the quickest and easiest to calculate, and it’s a good starting point for getting into the rest of the numbers. For example, how much money is spent on special education? How many students are in special education classes vs. the national average? On benefits, how much of that is health benefits and how much is pension?

It will take me a while to dig into the numbers. It’s Tuesday afternoon, and my week gets really busy from 10 a.m. Wednesday through 6 p.m. Friday.

Saving the world, one unnecessary jet flight at a time

From today's "Climate Capsule," e-mailed here by the National Wildlife Fund:

Pelosi Visits Warming Arctic
Ahead of next week’s Group Eight Summit , House Speaker Nancy Pelosi led a congressional delegation to Greenland.

Pelosi reported that her delegation “ saw firsthand evidence that climate change is a reality; there is just no denying it. It wasn’t caused by the people of Greenland, it was caused by the behavior of the rest of the world .” According to scientists, the amount of ice released from Greenland has increased dramatically in recent years.

While in Greenland, Pelosi also met with Germany’s Environment Minister, Sigmar Gabriel. Gabriel and Pelosi agree that industrialized nations must take joint responsibility for global warming pollution.

My question is, how did they get there? By jet? Do they have any idea how much more greenhouse pollution a jet generates than teleconferencing does? So we have to destroy the environment so we can agree to save it?

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While we're on the subject, Vivian Stockman of the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition sent me a link to a story in today's New York Times about efforts to acquire supersize federal subsidies for coal-to-liquid plants. Click on the graphic and see how much greenhouse gases these things could put out.

As I've said before, I'm a skeptic on global warming. I have no doubt that the earth could be getting warmer, but I resist the idea that mankind is totally responsible for it. There are too many natural causes to consider. And I resent statements such as, "The debate is over." Sounds way too domineering for my taste.

However, having said that, I see no reason to greatly increase the amount of pollution we put into the air, soil and water unless there is a much greater increase to the public good. I grew up in a house heated by wood and coal. Electricity is better.

We need some alternate fuel production for national defense if for no other reason. I am willing to deal with the pollution from a couple of coal-to-liquid plants if they will keep the planes, ships, trains and trucks moving in a national emergency. We must be self-sufficient in some industries: steel, food, medicine and energy among them.

I'm not that concerned whether the liquid fuel comes from coal or cellulose, but we need it.

WV education spending

The Census Bureau has released detailed information on public education revenue and spending in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. You can read more about it here. But if you want some comparison numbers relating to West Virginia pulled out, check out these:

Category, WV rank, WV per pupil, US average

Revenue; 24th; $9,637; $10,159
Revenue from federal sources; 9th; $1,178; $923
Revenue from state sources; 25th; $5,752; $4,774
Revenue from local sources; 40th; $2,707; $4,463

Total spending; 32nd; $9,005; $8,701
Instructional spending; 17th; $5,454; $5,303
Instructional, salaries only; 31st; $3,328; $3,677
Instructional, benefits only; 4th; $1,748; $1,135
General administration; 16th; $238; $168
School administration; 23rd; $495; $487

The first conclusion is that teachers gripe about their pay compared to the national average, but they have no complaint about their benefits.

More on this at a later date, I hope.

Thoughts as Memorial Day approaches

When I was a child, I had a hard time understanding my mother's dedication to Decoration Day. We always went to the cemetery as a family that day while she placed flowers on the graves of her parents, brother and others. It wasn't until I lost my own parents, friends and siblings that I understood why she made sure they were all taken care of that day.

I don't spend the day at the cemetery placing flowers on everyone's grave, though. The best gesture I saw of something like that was a year or two ago, when my wife and her sisters visited their father's grave. He spent as much time as he could outdoors. One of my sisters-in-law picked some wild flowers along the road and laid on his grave. That to me was more fitting to the man than buying an arrangement from a florist. A man who spent his life in the woods probably wouldn't appreciate greenhouse-grown flowers, but he would appreciate something from the woods themselves.

Too many people I know are in cemeteries now. Last week, I learned that one of my best friends from high school and my early 20s died a couple of years ago from a brain tumor. I learned that another of my high school friends died about 15 years ago from getting ahold of some illegal drugs that were too strong.

My wife might tell me that some of these people aren't really gone. My daughter has a lot in common with my mother, even though they only knew each other for 15 months. My older son is a lot like his maternal grandfather and his maternal grandmother's father. My youngest child has the disadvantage of being a lot like his father except that he's a lot better looking and a lot smarter.

Beyond that, I don't know what else to say.

Future of news jobs

Here's another place I can cross off my list should I decide to look for another job. The San Francisco Chronicle is cutting its newsroom staff by 25 percent. It seems the paper could be losing as much as $1 million a week. For reference, I'm not privy to The Herald-Dispatch newsroom budget, but from what I've heard in the past, I would say we don't spend that much in a month.

The news business is changing, as everyone can see. I would tell a young wannabe journalist that a newspaper is a great place to get a start, but I don't know that I could recommend it long-term for a career. I don't have that many years left -- maybe 20, depending on how much college financial aid my youngest can get. (Note to commenters: Don't get started on this one again. I'm not approving those comments on this thread.). But for a 20-something or even a teen looking to get started in journalism, I would recommend a few years at a newspaper with a long-term goal of getting into on-line.

The future of newspapers probably lies in the GateHouse Media model: Smaller markets that are underserved by metro papers and broadcast media. These markets are where advertisers need the local paper. At least they do now. Between now and when I retire at age 75, it will be interesting to see how all that changes.

A lot of bloggers in what's known as the Pajamas Media say they hate the mainstream media, but most of those bloggers would be totally lost without the news and information provided daily by the MSM. But there should be good opportunities for straight reporters in the online world of the future. The business model might not be there yet, but someone will find the right market.

KineticPark, 5/22/07

The problems at Huntington’s KineticPark make me wonder why people in politics want to dabble in real estate with public money.

If KineticPark was such a good idea -- providing a place for local high-tech startups -- then private money would have built it before the government did. You can look across the road at the convenience store, two fast food places and two motels to see that private money moves much faster than government money does.

One question I wish I had asked way back when KineticPark was getting started: How many high-tech patents have been issued to people with Huntington addresses in the past five years? And what makes us think the manufacturing of those patented produces and processes will be done locally?

I don't know if asking those questions would have made any difference. By the time the public was informed about plans for KineticPark, things were under way.

Government is good at doing things where it can compel people to be customers. Schools and roads come to mind. Government cannot, however, compel companies to locate on a sheared-off hill top on the outer edge of Huntington.

And that is KineticPark’s primary failing so far.

The original dream was to have Amazon.com’s East Coast customer service center at KineticPark. A building with Amazon’s name facing Interstate 64 would have given KineticPark instant legitimacy. But Amazon chose instead to remain anonymous on the upper floors of a renovated building in downtown Huntington. No Amazon, no instant legitimacy.

For years, the main marketing effort was a “For Sale” sign that was moved around KineticPark. Like a Hewlett-Packard executive would drive by, see the sing and set up a regional office there, I guess.

The more time goes on, the less I want government to spend less time in the real estate development business and more time in the business of providing basic services.

Computer viruses and gasoline prices

Everything is behind schedule today. My computer came down with a virus, trojan, whatever this morning. Every time I went to a certain Web site, by browser crashed and my machine locked up. It took IT a while to figure it out. In the process they upgraded my browser to the newest version, which is taking a little getting used to.

Anyway, I went out on lunch hour to pay some bills. My needle was sitting on empty when I pulled into the parking spot this morning. I was short on cash, so I go to the bank to withdraw $40. I tell the teller I'm buying $30 worth, which will be about half a tank. I get my money and go to the convenience store. I pull up to a pre-pay pump, go inside and give the guy $30. I come back out and as I reach for the 87 octane button, I see the price was $3.449 a gallon. I look at it a couple of times, but the number never changes. My $30 bought e 8.698 gallons. While I'm out and about, I see most stores have gone to the higher price, which was about 20 to 30 cents higher than yesterday. But Go-Mart had gone up only to $3.339. Now we wait to see what the prevailing retail price is tomorrow.

Speaking of which, it's 3:33 now. Who knows what 3:44 will bring.

OVEC, 5/21/07

Some folks with the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition have responded to something I wrote on May 9. If you can't find the original post to see it and their responses, you can see it here.

I may have more to say on it later, but not today.

Odds and ends, 5/21/07

So, bowing to the inevitability that people would get tire of his act, Donald Trump says he's cancelling his reality TV show, hoping no one notices that NBC already did it for him.

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You can swoon over Mariah and Whitney and Xtina, but give me Julie Andrews.

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Want to make money from climate change? Get into the business of measuring carbon in soil so you can sell carbon credits.

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End of the school year

Kids in Cabell County have 13 more days of riding the school bus, but I can't help but think that for all intents and purposes, the school year is over.

The WESTEST was last week. Now most of the business of school days will concern themselves with end-of-the-year matters. In my family's case, that will mean wondering if my daughter will have take her HHS finals because she stayed home two days last week rather than spreading strep throat around the freshman class. And it means my first grader will sing in his school's spring music program on Tuesday, when most parents would rather be home watching Blake and Jordin to toe-to-toe on American Idol. (I think it's been settled. The producers chose Jordin as their winner a long time ago, and the whole season has been for appearances and cash flow.).

Experience from last year tells me the serious part of the school year is over.

So pardon me if it's hard for me to get excited about anything to do with the remainder of the school year other than paying for school lunches.

Daylight Saving Time

Before DST this year, it was no problem at all to get my first grader to do his nightly reading. As soon as DST started and he realized he had another hour of daylight to play in, he lost interest in book stuff. He'll get it back soon.

I've talked with a co-worker who has a nephew at the same school that my son attends. Her nephew also has a problem with doing book work when the sun is shining.

Another reason to oppose expanding DST.

FWIW, I remember back in 1974 when they experimented with DST year round as a way of saving energy. I had an 8 a.m. class during winter quarter. For a couple of weeks, I walked to class in the dark and it was still a little dark when I got out at 9 a.m. Five days a week. Ugh.

Weather swings

Today I wore a jacket to work for the first time in weeks. Unusual cold snap, I said to myself. Then I thought back.

In college in the 1970s, I usually wore a jacket to early morning classes until Memorial Day weekend.

In the 1980s, I noticed we had frost where I lived up to the first full week of May.

It's been a long time since I scraped frost from a windshield in May. I wonder which is the unusual weather, that of the 1970s and early 1980s or that today.

On the same subject, I don't recall many 15-below nights when I was growing up in the 1960s. We had some in the 1970s and 1980s, and I can recall maybe three in the 1990s. We haven't had one of those for a while, for which I am very grateful.

Frank McCown

Frank McCown, a judge in Lawrence County, Ohio, Common Pleas Court, died Wednesday. According to the Ironton Tribune, McCown died at home after a battle with lukemia.

I covered Lawrence County for The Herald-Dispatch for nearly 10 years, and I talked with McCown many times. He was good to deal with. He had a good sense of humor. The worst part of being in one place so long is that you see people like these pass, and you are sorry that the young ones who follow in your place will not know them.

What will the basketball player do? (continued)

Blogger isn't letting me post a long reply to oldnumber7, so I've started this new topic to see if we can do it from here. So click on "comments" and let's get to it again.

West Virginia, the least "American" state

Here's a shocker: West Virginia's population looks least like the national average of all 50 states and the District of Columbia:

WASHINGTON (AP) — White, rural and homogeneous. New Hampshire and Iowa play big roles in choosing presidential candidates but don’t look much like the rest of the country.

A better bellwether might be Illinois. It’s the most average state, according to an Associated Press analysis of data from the Census Bureau.

Illinois is the fifth largest state, with a big city in Chicago, rolling countryside in the south and a lot of sprawling suburbs. ...

The AP ranked each state on how closely it matched national levels on 21 demographic factors, including race, age, income, education, industrial mix, immigration and the share of people living in urban and rural areas. The rankings were then combined to determine the state that best mirrors the country as a whole.

Illinois was followed by Oregon, Michigan, Washington and Delaware. West Virginia was the least typical state — poorer, whiter, more rural — followed by Mississippi, New Hampshire, Vermont and Kentucky. ...

I have no intention right now of delving into the AP's methodology. But I do believe that this is a result of the economic malaise (to borrow a phrase from Jimmy Carter) that afflicts this state. As I've written before, we have so few immigrants here because there is so little money here and so few opportunities here. And, I dare say, immigrants -- legal or otherwise -- probably aren't as welcome here as they are elsewhere.

Back in 1982, I interviewed the colonel in charge of the Huntington District office of the Army Corps of Engineers. He remarked that he sensed locals didn't entirely trust him because he was from outside. There was a strange inflection in their voices when they asked, "You're not from around here, are you?"

Thoughts?

Two school-related items

ONE
I have been informed by more than one person in the Cabell County school system -- people who are in a position to know -- that the county's policy on attendance and final exams could change for the next school year. Existing policy allows students with good attendance to skip their finals, although they still must attend school on those days. One of the proposals being considered would require that all students take final exams regardless of attendance. There could be a decision before the end of June. The final decision involves a vote by the Faculty Senate.

TWO
I find it amusing that the new middle school to replace Cammack and West should be called “Huntington Middle School.” I assume this came from the same group of parents who tried without success to resurrect the old Pony Express name and colors for the new school. If you take the enrollment for the new school from this past fall (556), it barely edges Beverly Hills (531) as the largest in Huntington. Enslow Middle, also in Huntington, had enrollment of 246. So assuming Beverly Hills and Enslow are consolidated in a couple of years, will that new school be named “The Real Huntington Middle School”? Or will it be called "Huntington East Middle School," completing the process of bringing back the old high school names?

What will the basketball player do?

At the risk of offending half the readership of The Herald-Dispatch and probably half its management, I hereby declare that I really don't care where Patrick Patterson plays his college basketball. Don't blame those end-of-the-world headlines on me.

I do care, however, about how many other graduating seniors at Huntington High -- and Cabell Midland and Spring Valley and Fairland and South Point etc -- get full rides through college because of academic performance or need.

Those folks will make a bigger difference to this region than any one basketball player will, unless said basketball player turns pro, rakes in hundreds of millions and invests it back into this area in terms of business creation or contributions to worthy nonprofits.

So pardon me if I can't go all crazy about where any one basketball player, whether from Huntington or elsewhere, chooses to attend college. I am knee-deep in helping my own kids figure out where the best colleges are for them. We have to figure out what they want to study, what kind of environment they want and need to be in, how we will pay for it -- you know, all the fun stuff.

I've explained to them that there is no one "best" college. They need to find the best one for them.

And I do care about the continuing erosion of the Promise scholarship program. Let's save that for another day. Joe Manchin should be rolling through town for the annual Promise photo op tour. We'll save it for that day.

Business reporting, then and now

It was back in 1990 that I became a business reporter for The Herald-Dispatch. I had covered Ohio for the paper from 1979 to mid-1989, after which I was brought against my will to Huntington to cover City Hall. Except for one misspent year back on the City Hall beat — again against my will — I covered economic news for The Herald-Dispatch up until I took over the editorial page in late 2004.

Those 13 years covering business were pretty good. But they saw changes in Huntington. The person covering business now has a different environment to work with, and it’s not a better one.

Back in 1990, Huntington had its own company whose stock was traded on the New York Stock Exchange. That was Ashland Coal, which later merged with Arch Mineral Corp. The new Arch Coal put its headquarters in St. Louis.

We had the Ashland Oil Inc. headquarters. Ashland Oil was a big player in the community. But when beancounters took over from the petroleum engineers, management decided the company was too cool for the Tri-State, so it left for a few floors in a Covington, Ky., high-rise.

We had some West Virginia-based banking companies such as Key Centurion. Key Centurion is long gone. It was acquired by Banc One, which itself was bought out by Chase.

In losing the headquarters to those companies, we lost a class of talented people who gave their time and money to the community.

There are some folks in town who are probably glad those rich middle class people are gone. I’ve never understood the attitude of some people in Huntington that people who wear white shirts and ties are inherently evil. The idea that anyone would want to make a profit is repugnant. But I hear that line of thinking a lot.

Huntington won’t come back until it can be the home of some prosperous, visible businesses. There are some successful homegrown companies here, but they don’t want to attract the attention of union organizers or insurance salesmen.

We need more people in the managerial classes. We are weighted too heavily on unskilled and low-skilled labor. We need a better diversity in our work force.

KineticPark was supposed to be home to regional offices of major corporations. None are out there. It would be good to know why and what we can do about it.

Actually, we do know why, but we don't like to talk about it. This region -- for whatever reason -- lacks the entrepreneurial spirit it once had. Disagree? Tell me one significant, growing business other than retail or medical-related that has started up here in the past 10 years. And it is not attractive to outside companies looking for places to put headquarters offices. Even with Yeager Airport less than an hour away, air service in and out of here is not the best.

So we plod along.

Odds and ends, 4/10/07

CONTINENTAL, Ohio (AP) — A 14-year-old boy who had often been bullied was arrested Wednesday after a threat was found on a bathroom wall at a northwest Ohio school, authorities said.

The Continental High School student, whose name was not released, is expected to be charged in juvenile court Thursday, said Putnam County Sheriff James Beutler.

Continental police Chief Arnie Hardy said the threat at the middle/high school building involved violence and named more than one person.

The sheriff said the student does not have access to items necessary to carry out a threat and that there appears to be no immediate danger to the school or any student.

So, what happens to the bullies?

This afternoon, this news release came in from the Ohio Department of Education:

Columbus – The State Board of Education will hold its monthly meeting May 14-15 at the Ohio School for the Deaf, 500 Morse Road in Columbus. On Tuesday morning, the Board will adopt an anti-bullying policy. House Bill 276 mandates that the State Board develop such a model policy to assist school districts with the creation of their own policies to prevent harassment, intimidation or bullying. The new policy was put together in collaboration with the Attorney General’s Office, Ohio Resource Network, Ohio Commission on Dispute Resolution and Conflict Management, and the Ohio Department of Education. It was also evaluated by students, parents, educators and community agencies.

Not knowing the circumstances of what happened at Continental High School, I'm in no position to say whether this new policy would have helped. Bullies are part of life in school, but if it gets to the point where the bullied kid threatens violence and is arrested, something has gone way, way wrong.

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My favorite blog line today, courtesy West Virginia Blue:

"Manchin bagged a turkey on May 5 -- just like he will when he runs for re-election."

Does the Republican Party have anyone who can give Manchin even the slightest bit of a scare next year?

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In case anyone cares, today is the 15th anniversary of the happiest day of my life up to that point. My daughter was born on Mother's Day in 1992. She was a daddy's girl in the womb. When I would come home from work and say something, she would start jumping around at the first sound of my voice. And she was all mine from the moment she was born.

Of course, she's a teenager now, so I'm all sorts of things to her: a wallet, annoying, someone to rely on, someone to hug. You know how it goes.

Happy birthday, Hannah. And no, you can't have the family car as soon as you get your driver's license.

Odds and ends, 5/9/07

WASHINGTON (AP) — Rep. Nick Rahall and other Democrats lambasted the Bush administration Wednesday for what they called its repeated misuse of science for partisan purposes.

I'm glad no administration before Bush ever did that, and I'm sure no Democratic administration ever will.

Tell me again why most people don't care about half of what comes out of Washington.

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NITRO, W.Va. (AP) — Tri-State Racetrack and Gaming Center said Wednesday it will spend $250 million to upgrade its facility if Kanawha County residents vote to allow the track to host table games.

The Nitro track plans to build a 250-room hotel and conference center, 12,000-seat event hall, parking garage and spa if voters approve the table games measure during a June 9 special election, said track general manger Cathy Brackbill. The track is owned by Michigan-based Hartman & Tyner.

If I'm not mistaken, the track needs to have the hotel to qualify to have table games. So the track really isn't offering that much. It's just doing what it has to do to get the games.

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PRATT, W.Va. (AP) — The town of Pratt is looking for a few good political candidates.The filing deadline for next month’s municipal election has already passed and the Kanawha County town doesn’t have a full slate of candidates.

Only two people signed up to run for mayor and one for council on a ballot that should elect five council members, a mayor and a town recorder.

Pratt has about 538 residents, according to the 2005 Census Bureau estimates. It is the 157th largest incorporated community in West Virginia out of 234 for which the Census Bureau provided estimates. When communities get that small, does incorporation really benefit anyone?

Back a few years ago, when the regional airport debate was going on, I remember being at a meeting or a news conference in Charleston where the county commissioners brought as many Kanawha County mayors as they could to speak against the airport. I want to think the mayor of Pratt told how no one in his community wanted to see the airport built.

It just goes to show how much influence Pratt has compared to Huntington. Pratt's 500 people didn't want the airport, but Huntington's 50,000 did. The airport wasn't built, so Pratt must have a whole lot of power somewhere.

OVEC, 5/9/07

Whatever happened to the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition?

Yes, OVEC and its members are still here, but the group’s focus has changed in the past few years. What got the founders excited no longer interests OVEC members.

Try these first few paragraphs of an AP story that moved yesterday evening:

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — A coalition of environmental groups called on the United Nations Tuesday to take a stand against ecologically destructive coal mining practices in Appalachia, saying that state and local governments were not paying attention.

The groups from Tennessee, West Virginia and Kentucky asked the U.N. Commission on Sustainable Development, which is holding its annual session through Saturday, to shun coal in favor of policies promoting renewable energy and cuts in fossil fuel consumption.

The delegation told reporters outside the U.N. that coal extraction has destroyed more than a million acres of forests, 500 mountains and 1,000 miles of streams in recent years in Appalachia.

“We need the help of the U.N. to expose and bring an end to coal mining abuses,” said Larry Gibson, a board member of the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition in Huntington, W.Va.

I remember sitting in a news conference at the Cabell County Public Library back in 1989, listening as people talked about how the BASF pigment factory here in Huntington was burning a byproduct known as aniline in its boilers. That was around the time OVEC became a force in what little environmental movement existed in this region.

Later, OVEC would fight plans by BASF to build a paint factory and an accompanying hazmat incinerator and landfill at Haverhill, Ohio. It would fight the proposed pulp mill in Mason County, W.Va.

But OVEC really got excited over air pollution from the Ashland Oil refinery at Catlettsburg, Ky. Ashland Oil was the boogeyman of all boogeymen. That fight went on for years.

But then OVEC and the rest of Appalachia discovered mountaintop removal mining, thanks to an article in U.S. News & World Report titled “Shear Madness.” Ashland Oil put its refinery into a joint venture with Marathon Oil Co. OVEC had a new boogeyman in Massey Energy. It eventually forgot the refinery, presumably because all the problems there had been solved.

As the American Lung Association released its rankings of air pollution in various metro areas on Tuesday, May 1, I wondered about OVEC. By noon that day, we had received nary a word from the group about how bad the air quality is in the area of OVEC’s birth.

One of our reporters contacted OVEC for a comment, but the spokesperson was concerned mainly with mercury emissions from smokestacks.

Despite all this, OVEC people still get upset over the location of a school in Raleigh County that most parents are fine with.

We need some sort of citizens group here in the Tri-State to monitor the environment and keep the bureaucrats honest. OVEC once filled that role. It still has an office in Huntington, but apparently it’s more worried about environmental problems miles from home than those on its doorstep.

Bring back the space

When did Huntington’s South Side neighborhood become the Southside?

Old-timers here at The Herald-Dispatch — and we are becoming fewer every year, it seems — always put the space in there. The neighborhood is, after all, on the south side of Huntington.

But somehow some folks started dropping the space. The Cabell County Board of Education is thinking about naming the new elementary school in the neighborhood “Southside (no space) Elementary.” Monday afternoon, I saw a TTA bus with a sign saying it was going to the “Southside.”

And yesterday morning, I picked up The Herald-Dispatch and there on the front page was a reference to the Southside neighborhood.

When did people decide to drop the space, and why wasn’t I invited to the meeting where it was discussed?It’s South Point, Ohio, not Southpoint. The bottom of the earth is known as the South Pole, not the Southpole. For now, anyway.

It’s like dropping the “of” after the word “couple,” as in, “I saw a couple dogs in the park.”

Names can confuse people at times. Is it Greenbottom or Green Bottom? Cross Lanes or Crosslanes?

Here in Cabell County, is it Hite-Saunders Elementary or Hite Saunders? I’ve seen it both ways, even at the school itself.

We do know it’s Point Pleasant, not Pt. Pleasant. It’s Fort Gay, not Ft. Gay.

At least we were able to settle the Merritts Creek vs. Merrick Creek debate a few years ago.

About 25 years ago, I was talking to an older resident of the county between Huntington and Charleston. I asked where he lived, and he said, “Putman County.” I had heard that some people said that, but that was the first time I had heard it said.

Back to the South Side. What do the people who live in the neighborhood think? Do they want the space, or are they comfortable with one word? What goes on the new school could settle things or bring even more confusion to the language cops in the newsroom and elsewhere.

It would be good to settle this before the school board decides on a name.

Odds and ends, 5/7/07

Bureaucrats and do-gooders can nag us all they want about using public transportation, but there's nothing like high gasoline prices to get people on the bus:

CINCINNATI (AP) — Since gasoline topped $3 a gallon, many commuters have left their cars at suburban park-and-ride locations and are taking the bus to work.

The number of long-distance commuters taking Metro buses jumped last month, with overall ridership up 8 percent on express routes of 25 miles or more, the Southwest Ohio Regional Transit Authority said Tuesday.

One route from the West Chester area north of Cincinnati had a 19 percent increase, compared with April 2006, the bus operator said.

Total ridership on express routes reached 36,088 last month.

Fares for many long-distance commutes are $2.50 one way, which would be less than the cost of gasoline for many cars traveling 25 miles. Bus riders also save the cost of parking downtown, generally between $3 and $10 a day.

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If you're like me and you like following population trends, try this, where Michael Barone looks at the trends in major metro areas and how that could affect the next couple of election cycles.

Okay, few of you are like me. But scan it anyway.

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This is from an e-mail from the National Wildlife Federation:

WRDA to Include Language on Global Warming?

Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Russ Feingold (D-WI) will offer an amendment to the Water Resources Development Act that would require the Corps to account for the impacts of global warming on the nation’s flood, storm, and drought risks. The amendment will ask that water resources policy consider the future impacts of global climate change-related weather events, such as increased hurricane activity, intensity, and storm surge, sea level rise, and associated flooding.

So, how will rebuilding the two locks at the Greenup Locks and Dam affect global warming, hurricane intensity and sea level rise?

Years ago, I think it was MAD magazine that had a cartoon where a bailiff asked a person in a witness chair, "Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God?" and the man replied, "If I knew the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, I would be God."

Methinks the senators are carrying this global warming accountability thing a bit too far.

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Here's something I discovered in our archives while looking for something else: This summer marks the 10th anniversary of the closing of Nick's News and Card Shop in downtown Huntington. The premises were used for a while by another magazine shop, but it wasn't the same as Nick's. Nick's had been in business something like 50 years.

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And one more thing.

I see from today's legal ads that Marshall University is advertising for bids to build two parking areas. One is on the south side of 6th Avenue between 18th and 19th streets. The other is on Commerce Avenue at 202 Elm Street. I assume that second one has something to do with replacing spaces lost for construction of the Engineering Lab building.

If Toyota gains, someone falls back

Here in West Virginia, we like to talk about the success of the Toyota Motor Manufacturing West Virginia factory at Buffalo. But for every engine made at Buffalo, one is not made somewhere else. Today, that somewhere else turned out to be a town near Cleveland:

DETROIT (AP) — Ford Motor Co. said Monday it will close its casting plant in Brook Park, Ohio, near Cleveland in 2009. The plant employs 1,218 hourly and salaried workers.

The company also will shutter Cleveland Engine Plant 1 in Brook Park for at least a year starting in two weeks. It employs 577 workers. A second engine plant at the complex just west of Cleveland will remain open.

The casting plant is the 10th facility to be closed as part of Ford’s “Way Forward” restructuring plan in which the company said it would close 16 facilities by 2012. The company already had announced nine of the closures.

Ford, which lost $12.7 billion last year and $282 million in the first quarter, is in the midst of slashing thousands of jobs and rolling out new products in response to lower demand for its older vehicles. ...

The engine plant makes 3.0-liter V-6 engines and was being retooled to make a larger 3.5-liter engine. But Ford said the plant was not needed due to market conditions and because the same engine already is made at a plant in Lima, Ohio. ...

“You have to align your capacity with the current demand that you have.”

Drought in the Southwest

Normally, I don't like to take apart what other media folks say or write. It's too easy to mangle what someone says. I know because it's happened to me. Sometimes I've taken criticism that was deserved and sometimes I've taken what was not deserved. But it goes with the territory.

Today, allow me to quote from a piece that aired on West Virginia Public Radio yesterday afternoon. The program is called "Living on Earth," and one segment had to do with water scarcity in the desert Southwest.

First, the newsreader says this:

But now there's trouble in the Southwest. The region is suffering through its eighth year of drought with little or no relief in sight. For much of its water the Southwest relies on the Colorado River to brings snowmelt from the Rocky Mountains. But snow patterns are changing and the Colorado is carrying a lot less water than it did a century ago. Overall it seems global warming is hitting the region harder than just about anywhere else in the country.

So it's the fault of global warming, which many people think is something that started a couple of decades ago, right? A few seconds, and the newsreader says this:

Scientists now believe that the West was settled during an unusually wet period. The people who built these reservoirs had unrealistic expectations for how much rain and snow would fall each year. Recent climate models predict further drying, less precipitation for the Southwest.

So we're not talking about global warming, but a decades-long change in rainfall and snowfall patterns, right? Maybe not. A few more seconds, and the newsreader says this:

Rising temperatures are already shrinking the mountain snow pack, which feeds Western rivers through the summer. In the future, by summer's end, there may be no more snow to melt.

How about this? You don't build your house right next to the creek in West Virginia and expect a lot of sympathy when you get flooded out after every heavy rain. Likewise, you don't move millions of people to the desert and allow them to recreate suburban Chicago.

When I listen to stories like the one mentioned above, I want to know which is it: global warming-induced weather changes or a simple natural cycle. Droughts have afflicted many regions of earth over the past few millennia, but not all were attributed to global warming. Global warming has become the easy source of blame for what may be natural cycles. That's why people like me doubt a lot of what we hear on the subject.

Fast food in the Tri-State

In case you wonder why so many fast food chains have so many stores in the Huntington-Charleston corridor, this may explain why. It seems the Huntington/Charleston market tied for third on an industry survey of people who eat at fast food places a dozen or more times a month.

You can take it from there -- good or bad.

Global warming, 5/4/07

The more I read about global warming, the less argument I have with scientists on either side of the debate and more with reporters who cover it. And people like me who talk about it.

Take this AP article as posted on cnn.com:

The document made clear that the world has the technology and money to decisively act in time to avoid a sharp rise in temperatures that scientists say would wipe out species, raise ocean levels, wreak economic havoc and trigger droughts in some places and flooding in others.

"Made clear"? Whatever happened to, "If your mother says she loves you, check it out."

I've been reading as much as I can about the science of global warming, and it truly is confusing: ocean currents, tipping points, methane, the Icelandic low, solar cycles and more. I've tried to stay away from interpretive pieces that take dogmatic positions and get as close to the source material as possible. In this politically charged debate, that's not always easy.

I resent people on one side saying the debate is over, and I resent people on the other side describing talk of global warming as "junk science."

I've glanced through the IPCC report that came out today. I hope to read it this weekend around chats with visiting relatives from out of town. While some of the people who put it together think it's a brilliant document, sitting here in the American heartland, I have to take a different view from what I've seen.

It's easy to call for more centralized planning and more investment in sequestration (where would that money come from?), but the small part I've scanned looks incompatible with the modern American capitalist economy.

But let me look at the whole thing over the weekend.

We made Leno's headlines!

For those of you who didn't see it, The Herald-Dispatch made Leno the other night.

Gasoline prices up again

Speedway bumped its prices in this area up 2o to 30 cents a gallon today. It's charging $3.199, up from the $2.899 I paid yesterday. If your needle's on empty and you need a fillup, that extra 30 cents per gallon on 15 gallons equals... $4.50.

This could be seen coming a mile away, thanks to our friend in Venezuela and the upcoming summer driving season. I feel sorry for a coworker who's driving to South Carolina tomorrow to visit family and for some of my own family driving up from down south this weekend.

I try to buy gasoline on Tuesday or Wednesday to beat the price increase. If you need gas soon, wait a day or so if you can. Just as prices soar on Thursdays, they tend to go down a day or two later as the market adjusts.

According to my records, way back in August 2005 this area had a record gasoline price of $2.459. Less than two years later, we would consider that a great bargain.

Heart disease in Appalachia

Way back when I was in college, a topic of discussion in my Appalachian politics class was whether southeast Ohio was really part of Appalachia or if Appalachia ended at the Ohio River.

I don't remember the consensus, but I do know that a lot of people from my part of southeast Ohio died of heart disease, including both my parents and at least one brother.

Heart disease runs in my family, so this article from the AP today hits home:

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — Doctors, lawmakers and specialists are launching a large-scale public health network to change one of the stark facts of Appalachian life: residents here are 20 percent more likely to die from heart disease than the rest of the country.

The goal is to focus attention and money on preventing cardiovascular disease in the 13 Appalachian states, especially their poor, rural and underserved areas.

The task won’t be easy. States in Appalachia lead the country in heart disease risk factors like smoking, obesity and lack of exercise, and those factors could partly come from long-held cultural practices and beliefs.

(Comment: A contributing factor is that we don't enjoy as much of self-destructive behavior as other regions of the country. Also, it could be genetic.).

That’s why the two-day conference that began Thursday isn’t just aimed at doctors and specialists, but at lawmakers and even historians, who can explain the unique characteristics of the region and how a public health network could be created here.

Ultimately, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — one of the organizers of the conference — sees a pan-Appalachian effort focused on improving the overall rates in America by focusing on the region where heart disease is most severe. ...

Four of the five states with the highest rates of common heart conditions are in Appalachia, according to the CDC. West Virginia is the highest in the country, with about 10.4 percent of adults reporting a common heart condition such as coronary heart disease, compared to a national average of about 6.5 percent.

Four Appalachian states also rank in the top five for the highest rate of cardiovascular disease-related deaths, according to the American Heart Association, which also sponsored the conference.

I'll have to dig into this more.

Gambling arms race

This is not to pass judgment on gambling. It's just a comment on the gambling arms race among states. This is from the Christian Science Monitor:

Three decades ago, there were no casinos outside Nevada, and only 13 states ran lotteries. Today 19 states support commercial gambling in densely populated markets near interstates, 28 states host Indian casinos, 41 run lotteries, and 43 allow track-side betting. Even so-called riverboat casinos have expanded rapidly as states lift wager limits to permit casinos they couldn't sanction on solid ground. Only Utah and Hawaii still ban gambling.

No matter how you feel about gambling, it's hard to argue that the arms race goes on. Where is the saturation point, and what do we do when we reach it? I still wonder if tables games at the four West Virginia racetrack casinos will be as great as proponents say it will be. I could be wrong, of course.

Jupiter

Want to see the latest photographs of Jupiter from up close, namely the probe that's on its way for former planet Pluto? Click here.

Venezuela, oil imports and the Catlettsburg refinery

We know $3 gasoline will be here before Memorial Day, but could it go even higher?

Venezuela is taking control of its biggest oil field from the international companies that have developed them.

Chavez is worried about keeping the big oil companies as minority partners. Industry experts say the state oil monopoly, Petroleos de Venezuela SA, doesn't have the expertise to transform Orinoco's tar-like crude into marketable petroleum.

But multinationals pumping oil elsewhere in Venezuela, one of the leading suppliers of oil to the United States, submitted to state-controlled joint ventures last year because they were reluctant to abandon the profitable operations.

Gasoline prices are driven by world news. If a truck driver gets the hiccups in Kuwait, the pump price goes up 10 to 20 cents a gallon in Huntington. We'll have to see what happens Thursday, when prices usually jump, if not before.

For what it's worth, Venezuela is the fourth-largest supplier of imported oil to the United States, after Canada, Mexico and Saudi Arabia. However, our imports from Venezuela have been trending down. According to the federal Energy Information Administration, American refiners imported about 1.1 million barrels of crude oil from Venezuela in January. Except for a three-month period in late 2002 and early 2003, that was the smallest amount imported from Venezuela in at least 14 years.

According to the EIA, the Marathon Oil refinery at Catlettsburg, Ky., did not use any Venezuelan oil in February. About 49 percent of the imported oil refined at Catlettsburg came from Saudia Arabia, with 26 percent from Nigeria, 22 percent from Kuwait and 2 percent from Canada. Those percentages are based on preliminary reports for February. Final numbers were to have been released last Friday but have been delayed.

In January, the refinery's imports came from Iraq, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

I'm a bad person

I wasn't going to post anything today so I could catch up on some things and prepare a nice long post for later in the week, but as I was editing the Thomas Sowell column for tomorrow's paper, I just had to get this paragraph up:

"Global warming" seems to be joining "diversity," "gun control," "open space" and a growing list of other subjects where rational discussion has become impossible and where you are considered a bad person even for wanting to discuss it rationally.

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And one more, from the AP today:

BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) — As delegates to a climate conference here debate how to reduce greenhouse gases, one of the problems — and a possible solution — lies in the rice fields that cover much of Thailand, the rest of Asia and beyond.

Methane emissions from flooded rice paddies contribute to global warming just as coal-fired power plants, automobile exhausts and other sources do with the carbon dioxide they spew into the atmosphere.

In fact, the report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change meeting this week in Bangkok concludes that rice production was a main cause of rising methane emissions in the 20th century. It calls for better controls.

“There is no other crop that is emitting such a large amount of greenhouse gases,” said Reiner Wassmann, a climate change specialist at the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines.