Odds and ends, 12/31/07

Here it is, the last day of 2007. Things are a little livelier downtown than they were a week ago on Christmas Eve, but it still seems awfully quiet.

I had a thought earlier today. State and city employees usually get Election Day off, right? Well, those days always fall on a Tuesday, so using the precedent established for Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve, will public employees get the Monday before Election Day off, too?

And what happens in 2008, when Christmas falls on Thursday? People get Thursday off, and they get the preceding Wednesday off, too. There's no reason to make people take a vacation day or a personal day to work the one Friday after Christmas, so they can have it off, too. That leaves us with a two-day work week -- Monday and Tuesday. We all know you don't get as much work done on Monday and Tuesday as you do in five days, and we all know these people will want to travel, so let's give them those two days off, too.

The same goes for the following week for New Year's 2009.

So let's go ahead and plan to give public employees two weeks off at the end of next year, paid and without their having to take any vacation or personal time.

Am I jealous? You bet I am.

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For those who find this sort of thing interesting (and I doubt that very many people do, but I do), here is the most recent West Virginia hog inventory, courtest the U.S. Department of Agriculture:

Inventory of all hogs and pigs on December 1, 2007, was 9,000 head, down 18 percent from December 1, 2006. Of the 9,000 head, 2,000 were for breeding; unchanged from 2006. The breakdown of the remaining 7,000 market hogs and pigs was as follows: 1,000 head were under 60 pounds; 2,000 were from 60-119 pounds; 2,000 were froim 120-179 pounds; and 2,000 were 180 pounds and over.

Annual pig crop totaled 14,400 head, 6 percent below the 2006 pig crop. Sows farrowing from December 2006 through November 2007 totaled 1,900 head, down 14 percent from the previous year. Pigs per litter averaged 7.58 pigs, up 8 percent from the 2006 average which was 7.00 pigs per litter.

I remember an old album song from Tom T. Hall called "Four Hundred Hogs." The story line was that an old farmer was in the hospital, but he was worried about his hogs. The chorus went something like:

Four hundred hogs, they just standing out there.
My wife can't feed 'em, and my neighbors, they don't care.
They can't get our and roam around like my old huntin' dogs.
Here I am in this dang bed, and who's gonna feed them hogs?

I got to ask Hall about that song when I interviewed him on his tour bus at Camden Park in the 1980s. He said he receives several requests to sing that song in concert, but he didn't.

I have no idea if Tom T. Hall is alive and well in Branson, Mo., or what he might be doing nowadays. I only know that the state hog inventory brought that song to mind.

Anyway, Hall's gifts as a storytelling singer are forgotten today. And that's a dirty shame.

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At this time of year, deep thinkers and newspaper people are supposed to come up with Top 10 lists of news events and pop culture. Here are my Top 5 pop culture events of 2007:

2. Jamie Lynn Spears' mother says she still plans to release her book on Christian parenting. Many people think this is an incredibly stupid idea, considering Jamie Lynn and Britney. But anyone can be a good parent to a perfect child. Being a good parent to a spawn of Satan, now that's hard. Maybe Ms. Spears can enlighten us where her daughters fall on this scale and what lessons she has learned. But I still won't buy the silly thing.

3. Lindsay Lohan makes me feel so good that none of my kids want to be child stars for Disney or Nickelodeon.

4. Disney child (if 21 is a child) star what's-her-name puts out a news release saying she's having nasal surgery to correct a deviated septum when everyone knows she's going in for a nose job. She comes up with her big, cute nose that fit her face being whittled down to something smaller than a cub reporter's first paycheck. Another reasonably attractive Hollywood person succumbs to mutilation in the quest for perfect looks to keep an acting career going. (I just remembered. Her name is Ashley Tisdale.).

5. "Spider-Man 3" comes out, and I wonder why some of the classic comic book characters (Spider-Man, the Incredible Hulk, Batman) are not taught in college literature classes for the amazing pieces of fiction they are.

Oh, did I forget Number 1? That would be . . .

1. "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" comes out and actually gets my 13-year-old son to read a book. The kid even stayed up late at night reading it. Now he's reading "The Hobbitt," although I don't know if he's doing it on his own or for school. I don't care. At least he's reading.

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See you Wednesday. I have to take my eight-year-old to see "Alvin and the Chipmunks" tomorrow, so I can't vouch for how good I will feel at the end of the day. My kids are amazed when I tell them I remember the original Alvin show on TV in the late 1950s or early 1960s.

WVU bowl tickets

From the AP:

MORGANTOWN — West Virginia University may have to eat $1 million worth of tickets to the Fiesta Bowl.

WVU spokesman Matt Wells says fans bought about 8,500 of the 17,500 tickets allotted to the university. Another 1,500 were given to players’ families, the marching band and other groups.

While WVU is saving some tickets for last-minute sales, Wells says the university returned about 7,000 tickets to the Fiesta Bowl before Christmas.

If no one purchases the 7,500 remaining tickets, he says the university will have to pay about $1 million for them.

Last year, the university sold about 15,000 tickets to see the Mountaineers play Georgia Tech in the Gator Bowl.

Wells says Florida is within driving distance for most West Virginians, while Arizona is not.

Still, WVU should make a profit. If the Big East operates like other conferences, all the money from bowl games goes into a pot that will be divided among all members. And I can't see the Big East sending WVU less than $1 million from the proceeds.

But even if the bowl revenue distribution is greater than $1 million, that's still some money to eat. The question is whether anyone will buy those unused tickets that WVU sent back. I have no idea if the Fiesta Bowl will sell out, as it is the day after New Year's.

But it's a nice problem to have, making only, say, $3 million instead of $4 million. I'm sure the folks at Marshall would love to have to deal with such a disappointment.

Stable

The Census Bureau released its annual population estimates this week. As of July 1, 2007, the bureau estimates the population of West Virginia as 1,812,035, an increase of 3,691, or 0.2 of 1 percent, since the 2000 census.

The further you get from the decenniel census, the less accurate the numbers are likely to be. But let's assume these numbers are correct.

What they tell me is that the state's population is stable. Duh. What they do not show is the distribution of the population. Those come later. But we know from other sources that the population in the Eastern Panhandle and Potomac Highlands is increasing, while the number of people living in the southern coal counties and the Northern Panhandle is decreasing.

The Eastern Panhandle and Potomac Highlands aren't growing because they have an influx of industry. They grow because they are close to areas of Virginia and Maryland that are growing, and people are choosing to live in West Virginia rather than in those two states.

What about political influence? If the Eastern Panhandle and Potomac Highlands (let's call them EPPH) are growing so much, why do coal counties still dominate the Legislature? In part because even with their growth, EPPH still have less than half the population of coal counties.

Here's the breakdown, from 2000 to 2006:

Coal counties -- down 19,097 to 558,193 in Kanawha, Wayne, Boone, Raleigh, Logan, Mingo, McDowell, Wyoming, Fayette and Mercer counties.

EPPH -- Up 34,253 to 246,736 in Jefferson, Morgan, Berkeley, Hampshire, Mineral, Hardy, Pendleton and Grant counties.

I had to go by county rather than parts of counties. Otherwise only parts of Kanawha and Wayne counties would be on the coal counties list. But you get the idea. If you take out Kanawha and Wayne, the coal counties would still be at 324,127, or more than EPPH.

At the present growth rate, you could expect EPPH to catch coal counties (minus Kanawha and Wayne) by the 2020 census. That assumes a flat growth of 5,708 per year in EPPH and a flat decrease of 1,697 in coal counties.

Play with the numbers however you want, but I don't see EPPH overtaking coal in a decennial census before 2020.

Right now, I'll let the political junkies describe how the reapportionment will go in 2011.

Worms, academic cooperation and working today

Please do not ask me to explain, but I have no doubt that this person is on to something:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Roundworms may infect close to a quarter of inner city black children, tapeworms are the leading cause of seizures among U.S. Hispanics and other parasitic diseases associated with poor countries are also affecting Americans, a U.S. expert said on Tuesday.

Recent studies show many of the poorest Americans living in the United States carry some of the same parasitic infections that affect the poor in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, said Dr. Peter Hotez, a tropical disease expert at George Washington University and editor-in-chief of the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases.

Writing in the journal, Hotez said these parasitic infections had been ignored by most health experts in the United States.

"I feel strongly that this is such an important health issue and yet because it only affects the poor it has been ignored," Hotez said via e-mail.

He said the United States spent hundreds of millions of dollars to defend against bio-terrorism threats like anthrax or smallpox or avian flu, which were more a theoretical concern than a real threat at present.

"And yet we have a devastating parasitic disease burden among the American poor, right under our nose," Hotez said.

No one likes to talk about parasitic worms, but they are a real health problem in many areas. For many years, I have not doubted that worms infect a lot of people in Appalachia, but it's something we don't talk about because we don't want to face it.

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According to an article in The New York Times, some leading universities are setting up interdisciplinary institutes so scholars from several academic disciplines can cooperate on studies as equals.

Here is an excerpt:

So more universities are setting up stand-alone centers that offer neutral ground on which engineering students can work on alternative fuels while business students calculate the economics of those fuels and political science majors figure how to make the fuels palatable to governments in both developing nations and America’s states.

“We give professors a chance to step beyond their usual areas of expertise, and we give students exposure to the worlds of science and business,” said Daniel C. Esty, director of the year-old Yale Center for Business and the Environment, a joint effort between the School of Management and the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.

For what it's worth, this should be done within academic majors, too. One thing I have noticed in my own education and in others' is that many young people have no idea of the business behind the professions they enter. How many new teachers understand the intricacies of school financing and budgeting? I certainly hope more than the next: How many young journalists know much about the business end of their chosen field? Not many. Few know what a publicly traded company is, about earnings statements, about how stockholders expect a return on investment, etc. Their minds are filled with the ivory tower view of journalism, but they have never sat in a lecture by a business professor who explains how businesses operate in the real world.

A class in the business of journalism should be required of everyone entering this field. I can't speak about existing standards for training in other professions or trades, but such classes should be required in them, too.

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You know, working on the day after Christmas is like working on the day after Thanksgiving. No one really wants to be here. We all would rather be able to take the week off with our families. But someone has to put out a newspaper.

See you tomorrow.

Surburban spawl and global warming

One more thing before I get out of here for a day or two.

Urban sprawl continues, researchers have found. How about that?

Earlier this year, a study in California showed that urban parts of that state have had an average increase in temperature over the past 50 years while the rural areas have actually seen their temperatures decline.

There's your solution to global warming. Get everyone out of the city and spread them throughout the rural areas evenly, expect where you need farmland. Call it the Cabell County/Huntington model.

Dublin, Ohio vs. Huntington, W.Va.

According to an article in Sunday's Columbus Dispatch, efforts by the city of Dublin, Ohio, to land good new jobs is paying off.

The gist of the story: Dublin may soon be home to the nation's first particle-therapy cancer center. In addition to that, OhioHealth will open its $150 million Dublin Methodist Hospital next month, Nationwide Children's Hospital opened a medical office building next to its Close to Home Center in 2004 and construction of the $300 million particle-therapy center could start next spring.

So Dublin's getting all that and KineticPark has a doctor's office. Knowing that it takes money to make money, I decided to compare the two cities. I knew Dublin was affluent, but the numbers show something.

Population
Huntington: 51,529
Dublin: 31,478

Metro area population
Huntington (Huntington-Ashland): 315,538
Dublin (Columbus): 1,540,157

Median household income, 1999
Huntington: $23,234
Dublin: $91,162, or about 3.92 times that of Huntington

Pct people age 25+ with at least a bachelor's degree
Huntington: 22.4
Dublin: 64.7

Number of owner-occupied households paying $10,000 a year or more in real estate taxes
Huntington: 18
Dublin: 198

Number of owner-occupied households paying no real estate taxes
Huntington: 158
Dublin: 0

Yes, it takes money to make money. Money flows to money. And here in Huntington, we don't gotta lotta money.

We can talk all we want about biotechnology and attracting new jobs. We need more than wide, tree-lined streets and a church on every corner. We need more than a few new programs at Marshall. What we need is a community that is attractive to people with money to invest. There is a reason companies in the old economy invested heavily in this area a few generations ago, and there are reasons that companies in the new economy aren't doing that today.

The sad truth is that it will take a generation or two to turn this around. That assumes we can do that.

Local Top 10 stories for 2007

We're getting close to the end of 2007, so it's time to make the usual look back. I have no idea if The Herald-Dispatch will do a Top 10 news list for 2007. So let me tell you what would be on my list if I were to vote on it today:

1. Emmons fire.

2. Heroin overdose deaths.

3. After a two-year lull, murders in Huntington, including the missing Marshall student.

4. Traffic increases at Tri-State Airport.

5. Homeless "Tent City" cleared from Harris Riverfront Park.

6. New police chief in Huntington changes way things are done.

7. Marshall football frustration.

8. David Felinton to face at least two tough challenges in bid for third term as Huntington mayor.

9. Traffic accidents kill Cabell Midland High School students and recent Huntington High school grads.

10. The Herald-Dispatch changes ownership and reverts back to local control after 35 years of chain ownership.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Lists like these usually tell you more about the people who make them than they do about the items on the list itself.

As usual, feel free to challenge me on this list. If you can talk me into it, I'll make changes.

Amazon.com moving corporate HQ

But only to another neighorhood in Seattle.

From a company news release:

SEATTLE - December 21, 2007 - The city of Seattle, Amazon.com, Vulcan Inc. and Schnitzer West today announced that Seattle's South Lake Union neighborhood will be home to Amazon.com's new corporate headquarters.

"Amazon.com is one of those great Seattle success stories and I'm pleased the company has decided to stay right here in its hometown," said Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels.

The new headquarters will be on a bus line and will be eco-friendly. But what else would you expect from a company in the Pacific Northwest?

I should wait for more news to come out on this, but I have to wonder...

I visited Amazon.com headquarters in the spring of 2000, just after the company announced it would put its East Coast customer service office in beautiful downtown Huntington. Back then, the corporate offices were in a building known as Pac-Med, I think. What struck me was how company founder Jeff Bezos wanted to remind people of the company's roots in his garage. Most desks were doors supported on file cabinets. Everything was as unpretentious as it could be.

But with the move to the new, taller buildings, the question is whether Amazon is leaving its unpretentious roots behind.

FWIW, last month I made my first purchase from Amazon.com. Dealing with them, even when I had a complaint about the delivery of my order, was easy. They handled my complaint quickly and with a minimum of trouble.

Government work

Here in Huntington, the mayor is about to enter contract negotiations with the unions representing most city workers. One thing some of the workers are talking about already is how they took no pay increase in part of the 1980s in exchange for good benefits.

Well, that was 20 years ago, and they have had a number of raises since then, and they still have cheap insurance.

What I want to know is, how many of those city workers were working for the city in the 1980s when the benefits-in-lieu-of-wages deal was reached? And how many were hired since then fully knowing what the pay would be? If more were hired after, then wouldn't the "benefits instead of wages" argument be weaker?

Sometime -- I don't know when, but sometime -- people who don't work for the government are going to look at the insurance, pension, holidays and other benefits that government workers get. Those people will want to know why government workers have it so much better.

I know I do. And I'm already wondering if I can get a job with the state of West Virginia, Ohio or Kentucky about five to 10 years before my projected retirement so I can take advantage off that system.

Here at The Herald-Dispatch, there is no pension. When Gannett sold us to GateHouse last year, one of the first things that was said in an employee benefits meeting was that GateHouse would not offer any sort of pension. Gannett paid each of us a lump sum to put in our retirement nest egg. When GateHouse sold us to Champion a few months later, Champion said the same thing. It offers a 401(k), but no pension.

Sooner or later, someone with a bigger megaphone than I have will notice the disconnect between public sector benefits and private sector.

A carbon-neutral college

This one kind of conflicts me. On the one hand, it sounds like a guilt-assuaging, conscience-appeasing measure. On the other hand, the idea of carbon offsets points out something we should be doing anyway: investing in environmental-friendly technology and planting trees.

It's a free country, so I offer no criticism of what the College of the Atlantic is doing.

BAR HARBOR, Maine (AP) _ Tiny College of the Atlantic, with 300 students and only one major, human ecology, has become the first U.S. "carbon-neutral" campus, school officials said Wednesday.

The private college said it has offset emissions of 2,488 tons over the past 15 months by investing in a greenhouse gas reduction project in Oregon. The cost: about $25,000 (euro17,379).

The term "carbon neutral" refers to the practice of balancing the amount of carbon dioxide released into the air with the amount being removed from the atmosphere, either by using renewable energy or through carbon offsets elsewhere.

The announcement culminates an inaugural promise the school's president, David Hales, made in October 2006 to make the campus carbon-neutral by this month.

"We have much more to do to directly reduce our emissions, but it is satisfying to know that the last 15 months of College of the Atlantic's contribution to the increase of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere adds up to zero," Hales said.

The school is among more than 450 universities and colleges to take "net-zero" pledges through the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment program.

To become carbon neutral, the college is buying carbon offsets through The Climate Trust of Oregon. The trust is reducing carbon dioxide emissions by optimizing traffic signals and managing traffic flow in Portland, Oregon, which shortens the amount of time cars spend idling at traffic lights.

Another World War I era veteran dies

One of last remaining U.S. World War I veterans dies

NORTH BALTIMORE, Ohio (AP) — The last World War One veteran in Ohio — and one of three known remaining U.S. veterans from World War I — has died.

J. Russell Coffey died Thursday at the age of 109, according to a funeral home.

The obituary released by Smith-Crates Funeral Home in North Baltimore, about 35 miles south of Toledo, did not say where Coffey died or what he died of. He had been living in the Blakely Care Center, a nursing home.

Coffey, born Sept. 1, 1898, didn’t see action overseas. He enlisted in the Army while he was a student at Ohio State University in October 1918, a month before the Allied powers and Germany signed a cease-fire agreement.

Coffey played semipro baseball, earned a doctorate in education from New York University, taught in high school and college and raised a family.

He drove his car until he was 104. He lived on his own until three years ago.

The other known surviving American soldiers are Frank Buckles, 106, of Charles Town, W.Va., and Harry Landis, of Sun City Center, Fla., according to the Veterans Affairs Department.

Funeral services for Coffey will be held Saturday, according to the funeral home.

The town where I grew up had several World War I-era veterans, although I don't know how many actually served overseas in the war itself.

News stories like this make you pause and reflect on the various things from your childhood that you have lost. Such as two of the three houses I live in during my youth are gone. So is a barn that my father owned. And all my ancestors.

That last one was the hardest. My brother the geneaologist says that most people don't become interested in their family backgrounds until they are in their 50s, and by then it's too late. Most of the people with the knowledge they seek are gone. I'm glad that in 1987 I took my mother on a trip to visit her sister. I took my camera and tape recorder to ask my aunt about growing up on an Ohio River junk boat (similar to a shanty boat, but with a commercial aspect) and to record her playing "Beautiful Dreamer" on an organ my grandparents bought then they married in 1900. The organ was powered by two foot pedals.

Anyway, I hope there is apporpriate note made when the last World War I veteran passes.

East End bridge

Some trips you never forget. My trip nearly nine years ago to the top of this thing -- the East Huntington bridge -- was one of those. The big surprise was when we got to the top. This railing came maybe up to my waist. For some reason, I developed a severe fear of heights once I got up there. After we crawled through what seemed like a hole in the floor, we were on this roof with a railing that seemed like it wouldn't support me. I know that was wrong, but when you develop sudden acrophobia.

But the view was great.

The view has changed since then. The bypass was built around Proctorville, Ohio, seen here on the right. But it was amazing.

Another great high-altitude view is from the roof of the West Virginia Building. I saw the first two phases of the demolition of the old Sixth Street Bridge from up there. You can see for miles.

Odds and ends, 12/20/07

First, this little news item:

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - Former Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey has apologized to Barack Obama for any unintentional insult he committed by raising the Democratic presidential candidate's Muslim heritage while endorsing rival candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Kerrey sent a letter to Obama on Wednesday, lauding the Illinois senator's qualifications to be president and saying that he never meant to harm his candidacy. Kerrey told The Associated Press in a telephone interview that he sent the letter on his own and had not spoken to Clinton or her campaign about the comments he made Sunday in Iowa.

This is why I spent more years as a business reporter than a political reporter. The business world is full of politicians, but they're a better class of politician.

Smear someone, let it circulate, then apologize. But the smear remains in people's minds long after the apology.

Pretty good game, huh?

Tell me again why so many people prefer "none of the above"?

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I still have not bought a vehicle to replace my Jeep. I never thought I'd miss the Jeep, because I always thought I would drive it until it fell apart. But I did get more than 217,000 miles out of it before someone came around a curve on my side of the road. The best thing about the Jeep was that it was paid for. I still have the insurance money in the bank, but I'm still paying on the car my wife drives. And I drive it now, too. Two people, two jobs, one car. It can make for some rearranged schedules.

She wants a van. I can live with that, but I don't want to "settle" for something. And I don't want a big payment. She will "settle" for a new or nearly new Kia Sedona van. I would settle for a Volkswagen GTI.

She wants us to get another vehicle yesterday. I'm looking more toward the end of January.

Meanwhile, I'm still a little sad when I see a picture of the old Jeep.

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And now a quote from syndicated columnist Walter Williams on one of my favorite subjects:

Few people appreciate the implications of poor math preparation. Mathematics, more than anything else, teaches one how to think logically. As such, it is an important intellectual tool. If one graduates from high school with little or no preparation in algebra, geometry and a bit of trigonometry, he is likely to find whole areas of academic study, as well as the highest paying jobs, hermetically sealed off from him for his entire life.

I love arithmetic, algebra and geometry. Some day I will graduate to trig and maybe calculus, then ordinary differential equations and partial differential equations. If I get really bold, I'll try to decipher one of my wife's old textbooks: Mathematical Methods for Physicists.

Talk about a middle-aged fantasy.

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Today's message from the Libertarian Party:

Washington, D.C. - Among the regulations packed into the newest energy bill that just passed Congress this week, a ban on the incandescent light bulb will officially end what Edison started 130 years ago.

"If you outlaw light bulbs, then only outlaws will have light bulbs," says Libertarian Party Executive Director Shane Cory."The ban on incandescent light bulbs may seem almost comical," says Cory, "but it raises several red flags on the level of government intrusion in people's lives. From the toilets in your bathroom to the lights in your ceiling, there are very few consumer products free from some form of government regulation. I seriously doubt regulating light bulbs was intended to be a necessary-and-proper role of the federal government."

Incandescent light bulbs will begin to be phased out in 2012, with a complete ban finalized in 2014. Manufacturers will be forced to switch to compact fluorescent (CFL) bulbs, which can cost more than six times as much as the common incandescent bulb. While CFL bulbs are much more energy efficient, to maintain the bulb's longevity and achieve maximum efficiency, consumers must adhere to proper operating suggestions made by Congress, such as leaving the bulb turned on for at least 15 minutes."

Not only do consumers have to alter how they use light in their houses, they must also take a number of precautions with CFL bulbs that were unnecessary when using incandescent bulbs," says Libertarian Party Media Coordinator Andrew Davis. "Because of the toxic levels of mercury in CFL bulbs, consumers will need to check with their waste management providers for proper disposal methods, and consumers will also have to research how to clean up broken bulbs. These bulbs may save energy in the long run, but at a great inconvenience to the consumer."

I myself am switching all the bulbs in my house from incandescent to CFL, but only because I want to save money, not because of a Congressional mandate.

I've already stated my many thoughts on global warming. Using CFL bulbs in my house is an economic decision, not one based on ecologically virtuous living. That is how global warming will be solved, not from a top-down mandate.

Or am I wrong?

Academic superstars on the Internet

Someone pointed me in the direction of some coursework and lectures at Yale that are available for free (but not for credit... what a pun) on the Internet. And now The New York Times writes about professors at various universities putting themselves on the Internet and becoming academic stars.

Earlier, the Times wrote about how some companies are outsourcing their research work to universities and what that means to the schools in dollars and cents. I know I saw it, but I can't find the link.

In both cases, it sounds like something Marshall needs to look at.

(For what it's worth, I don't use "outsourcing" to describe sending work to other countries. I call that "off-shoring." I believe my usage is more correct technically.).

One more thought: All this reminds me of a 1980s-era show on PBS called "The Mechanical Universe" in which a Cal Tech physics professor uses the best computer animation of the time to explain basic physics. You can find the episodes on the Internet. I have almost all of them on VHS, and they remain some of my favorite vidoes. They even got me to understand the basics of relativity, and if I watched them again, I could explain some of the math, I'm sure.

Wolverine yellow

I'm not all that torn up about Rich Rodriquez's new job. However, if I had been at the news conference where his hiring was announced, I would have asked this question: For some home games next year, will the Wolverines wear a version of those awful ugly all-yellow outfits WVU wore? When I caught parts of those games on TV, those things hurt my eyes. That's why I wish WVU was playing Oregon in the Fiesta Bowl or wherever they're playing -- two teams that can put on some ugly threads.

Marshall football attendance: Good or bad?

Sports editor Rick McCann gently chided me today. It seems that in a recent post, I used the word "anemic" to describe Marshall University football attendance. So I did some checking and some wondering if "anemic" were the appropriate word to use.

This year, Marshall football set a record with an average attendance of 30,020 per home game. Throw out the WVU game and the 40,383 who watched it, and Marshall still set a record with an average of 27,947.

Okay, attendance was up this year. But I still maintain that Marshall doesn't sell enough tickets to make the football program self-supporting, let alone put it in position to support other sports at Marshall.

I guess I could do some research on other schools -- Ohio State, WVU, Kentucky, Louisville, Cincinnati, Memphis, Southern Mississippi, Central Florida, Alabama-Birmingham -- to determine what their attendance is and which of those programs make money. But I won't. It's not worth it at this point.

Feel free to differ.

Needed: A tax on meat and dairy products

The global warming crowd has left Bali, intent on depriving me of ever owning another SUV again.

I sympathize with the desire to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, but not on concerns of global warming. It makes sense to invest in cleaner technologies as they become available.

But do a search sometimes using the terms "greenhouse gas methane" and see if you don't start asking yourself why you always hear about carbon dioxide rather than methane.

I was going to write a long post on this topic, but I can sum it up in a few words: If the world is really serious about getting control of climate change, it will have to move toward a meat- and dairy-free diet. And it will have to do something about methane coming from landfills.

A tax on meat and dairy products? It would have to be pretty high to reduce consumption of these products, but it must be done if we are truly serious about combatting global warming. Changing the light bulbs in my house ain't gonna do it. If we're going to do it, we have to do it.

Begging for people to buy football tickets

A few years ago, I wrote a package of news articles about how much money it really cost lower-tier schools such as Marshall University to play in football bowl games. It's hard for schools that don't have megahuge fan bases to make money. To play in a bowl, you have to agree to buy a lot of tickets and re-sell them. Every seat you don't sell, you eat.

This comes from the AP today:

BOWLING GREEN, Ohio (AP) — Bowling Green is hoping that Ohio State fans will help it avoid getting the bill for a bunch of unsold tickets for the Falcons’ bowl game in January.

The school is reaching out to fans traveling to New Orleans for the national championship game and asking them to think about going to see Bowling Green play the night before in nearby Mobile, Ala.

Bowling Green also is asking its supporters who can’t make it to the GMAC Bowl to buy tickets anyway and donate them to underprivileged children in Mobile.

Many bowl games require schools to sell a set number of tickets and cover the costs of those tickets that aren’t sold.

Bowling Green agreed to sell about 7,500 tickets for the GMAC Bowl at $45 apiece.Three years ago, the Falcons played in the game and sold just 1,500 tickets and had to pay about $280,000 for unsold tickets. ...

You can read more here if you like.

One thing my series did was lift the myth that football pays a lot of bills at Marshall. In truth, in the days of the Mid-American Conference, Marshall athletics received a lot of state subsidies -- even the football team. I don't know about now, but I can't believe the football team is self-supporting, given the anemic fan turnout.

But why should fans pay their hard-earned money to support a mediocre program? Doesn't that enable mediocrity? But that's a discussion for another day.

Dangers of pink jails

TROY, Ohio (AP) — Inmates at the Miami County Jail in Troy are under orders to paint the cellblocks pink to test the sheriff’s theory that the color will have a pacifying affect on prisoners.

Sheriff Charles Cox says he’s entering the academic debate over the color pink’s calming abilities.Jail administrator Dee Sandy says the first time the sheriff mentioned the concept to her, she thought he was joking. Not so. She ended up picking a shade of purple for the jail bars.

Previously, the jail’s walls were cream-colored and the bars were painted blue.The jail, about 20 miles north of Dayton, houses up to 111 inmates.

Uh, I may be wrong, but I think this was tried here in Cabell County about 20 or 30 years ago. The sheriff had the walls of the drunk tank painted pink in order to calm people picked up for public intoxication. What happened was that instead of calming drunks, the pink walls actually agitated them, so the walls were repainted a different color.

To each drunk his own, I guess.

As for stone-cold sober me, I don't like pink walls. My office walls are white. I would prefer three walls of light gray with one wall of a plum or mauve for contrast and to make the room appear larger. About three inches down from the top of the mauve wall, I would like a two-inch stripe of gray matching the other walls. My window sills could be white for more contrast.

That would be too much for jail cell, though.

Why editors should stick to editing (Updated)

(See UPDATE at the bottom of this entry).

I may need to get back into Gannett someday, so I'll be careful here. But not much.

I tend to stay away from instant analysis, because many of our first impressions of great historic events often are wrong. But it has been great entertainment: listening and reading as folks on the right side of the political spectrum have gone after Carolyn Washburn, editor of the Des Moines Register, for her "moderation" of the political debates in Iowa. The part about asking the Republicans to raise their hands on global warming and Fred Thompson's response was a classic.
Washburn's performance has been panned. I'm almost sorry I didn't see it, for the same reason I'm sorry no satellite TV channel carries reruns of "Samurai Pizza Cats." Some things are so bad, they're good.

There is a reason newspaper editors should avoid this sort of self-important stunt. Editors edit. At the executive level, they worry about having enough pages to print the news. They continually count how many writers, photographers, artists and editors they have at their disposal. They manage budgets. They control gung-ho reporters who want to get everything in print, no matter who it may offend. They set policy on naming crime victims in print. The tell photographers they need to shoot more horizontal photos and fewer vertical ones. And in Gannett, which owns the Des Moines Register, they write reports on all of the stuff that corporate finds important but about which customers care not one bit.

When we at The Herald-Dispatch feel the need to have a public forum to discuss a topic of public interest, such as the safety of Interstate 64 or the problems with vagrants taking over a park, we cooperate with a television station. The TV folks are much better at putting a face to the events. Channel 3 anchor Tim Irr is much more skilled at speaking before a crowd and moving things along than one of us print jackals. A lot of us are in newspapers because we have the perfect face and voice for print.

The Des Moines Register and its editor got the publicity they wanted. The amount of publicity, at least.

As I said in the title line, editors should stick to editing. Just because you have been anointed a manager by a corporate executive does not necessarily qualify you to move into the show-biz side of this business.

UPDATE: Every Friday, Gannett sends out something called Newswatch, an in-house newsletter for newsroom managers and serfs. Last week's issue had an article from the Des Moines Register's editor and opinion page editor telling of how planning for this debate started a year ago. Yes, they had a whole year to plan it and perfect it.

Here is the first sentence of that article:

The staff of The Des Moines Register is honored and humbled to be at this place at this time.

Here is the last paragraph of that article:

Through this all, we have applied a combination of traditional approaches and new digital techniques to help readers track all of this and learn about the candidates. It’s great to use new tools to meet the needs of readers in new ways. It’s also critical to deliver on readers’ need for us to be a credible expert in such an important and complex time.

For what it's worth, this week's edition of Newswatch did not have anything on the debate.

You can find an index of Newswatch articles here.

I would love to be a fly on the Register's newsroom wall this week to hear what everyone is whispering. I would put a news person's ability to gossip up with anyone else's.

Forgotten but not gone

Editors try to stay on top of things, but there is one good source of news they tend to overlook: the legal ads. Usually the things are dry, but sometimes there are nuggets in them.

Like this: In today's paper, there is a large legal ad for Telecom*USA* notifying its West Virginia customers that it plans to increase rates on its 10-10-987 calls from 4 cents a minute to 6 cents.

I read that and I thought, 10-10 numbers are still around? I had totally forgotten about them. I succumbed to progress and got my first cell phone about seven years ago. Because it had local and long distance wrapped up in one plan, I have pretty much forgotten about long distance calls on land lines, and I had certainly forgotten about all those 10-10 numbers until I saw this ad.

But they must still be in business in West Virginia. I wonder who uses them.

Pit bulls in Rome Township

Over in Lawrence County, Ohio, the Rome Township trustees are considering an ordinance that has drawn fierce opposition everywhere else it has been tried. According to a legal ad on Page 7D of the Wednesday, 12/12 The Herald-Dispatch, the trustees are considering a resolution "prohibiting the ownership or harboring of pit bull terriers and other vicious dogs within the limits of Rome Township." Three readings are scheduled: Dec. 18, Jan. 22 and Feb. 26.

I remember covering proposals like this back in the mid 1980s. Based on those experiences, the resolution will go nowhere. Someone will fix on the legal definition of "pit bull terrier." Someone else will ask why one breed is being singled out. Another will ask why they can't just ban vicious dogs with no reference to breed. And a parliamentarian will say a resolution has no binding legal authority; for that you need an ordinance.

So far I've not heard anything about this resolution. Perhaps we will soon.

People have been fighting this battle for 20 years. I can understand the goal, but I don't see how the ban can be legal. But that's why they hire lawyers.

The three-legged stool just lost a leg.

Although I share few political views with syndicated columnist Marie Cocco, she does write about some things that other columnists don't and that I find interesting and needful to be said. This coming Sunday, we'll probably run her column on how 401(k) plans may have a fatal flaw, based on a Government Accountability Office analysis.

I can't go too much into it here, because the release date for the column has not arrived, but I will say that we have to re-think our retirement strategy. That Gannett pension I was going to receive died the day Gannett sold The Herald-Dispatch to GateHouse. Even before Gannett handed over they keys to the front door, GateHouse came in and told us our pensions were history. It said Gannett would provide us with a lump sum for us to invest.

My sum was okay, but I was hoping for more. The GAO report mentions problems low-income people have with accumulating enough money for a retirement nest egg. Believe me, it's not so easy for supposedly middle class people, either. I remember in my younger days reading a MAD magazine article on how to know if you suffer from middle class poverty. It was funny then. It's not so funny now.

I'll have more after the column's release date. If you want to read the entire GAO report -- it's about 65 pages of a PDF file -- go here.

A few years ago, I wrote a news article that talked about the three-legged stool that people were supposed to rely on for retirement: Social Security, employer pension and personal savings. For more and more people, that second leg is gone. And given the strains on the system, that first leg might not be as sturdy as we have counted on.

At an editorial board meeting today, I said I and others like me might have to weigh our options and look for government jobs soon. I need to work for government long enough to qualify for one of those generous pensions. Private employers are getting out of the pension business, leaving government as one of the few offering pensions to relatively new workers.

Gun-free zones need to be held accountable?

I got a news release from an outfit called gunlaws.com. An excerpt:

The Gun-Free-Zone Liability Act of 2008 doesn't prevent public places from posting signs that ban the civil right to keep and bear arms. The zones however are known to be dangerous, as recent shootings at Virginia Tech and an Omaha shopping mall have demonstrated. The proposed law only addresses the negligent nature of such zones, making those responsible for disarming innocent bystanders liable for damages. It has no direct cost to government.

According to leading experts, "gun-free zones" are fraudulent, because no alternate means of security is provided, and even FBI-certified firearms owners cannot enter. This leaves only the criminal element armed, and free to wreak havoc without a meaningful deterrent.

Concealed-weapon laws enacted in most states were designed to counteract random shootings, but are defeated by the recklessly created zones that are anything but gun free.

At this time, I pass no judgment on either gunlaws.com or its proposed legislation. I merely pass this along go get people to think.

I have no idea how much traction such an idea regarding the liability of "gun-free zone" owners or managers would get if a legislator were to introduce it. My first guess would be "not much."

But it does address a question I've wondered about: How many people who walk into "gun-free zones" are worried about their safety and packing something the rest of us can't see? How many Marshall students walk onto campus each day with a pistol under their hoodie? How many people are walking around the Huntington Mall with a concealed weapon?

Mail Pouch barns, 12/12/07

I had to go to Kenova on Tuesday on a day off, and I found this Mail Pouch barn on W.Va. 75 just east of Shoals (I think).

There was another one over toward Kenova, but the Mail Pouch part had a roof overhang. It was in the shade on a sunny day, and my camera was not set to compensate. Plus I had the wrong lens on the camera for the kinds of photos I ended up shooting that day. Just my luck -- travel light and pack the wrong lens.

School Building Authority politics

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — The state School Building Authority will begin interviewing county superintendents about their needs projects on March 17, months after the process usually begins.

The delay is intended to give county boards time and incentive to approach their state representatives about funding needs during the upcoming legislative session. Applications for SBA money are usually heard in November.

So much for any pretense that the SBA gives money to the most deserving projects. Money goes to the legislators who exert their influence best. At least the SBA admits that now.

Freeway access ramps

Earlier today, a tractor-trailer went off an interstate bridge or bridge ramp and fell 70 to 100 feet into the Kanawha River.

That brought to mind two similar accidents of recent months. In November 2006, a school bus went off a ramp in Huntsville, Ala., falling about 70 feet nosefirst and killing four high school students.

This March, a charter bus carrying members of the Bluffton University baseball team went off a ramp or bridge in Atlanta, killing six people. Bluffton University is near Toledo.

And that brings to mind this passage from the Ohio Department of Transportation inspection report of the Ironton-Russell Bridge, dated Nov. 6-9, 2006:

The guardrail is insufficient. The guardrail is low on the Kentucky Approach at the left turn in
the northbound lane onto the bridge. In its current condition, this guardrail may not be able to
restrain a vehicle at this location.

You can't base public policy on three accidents and one waiting to happen. It would take an engineer to answer this question: Were these bridge approaches designed with modern vehicles in mind? I'm no expert in large transportation vehicles, so I have no idea how trucks and buses at modern speeds, wheel design and whatever else would act if they encountered one of these guardrails.

I do hope, though, that someone asks the questions and gets a good answer.

Odds and ends, 12/7/07

I admit I don't follow politics as much as I should. But this talk about this Obama guy not deserving to be president kind of stumps me. Some folks in the Clinton camp say Obama wrote something in kindergarten or third grade saying he wanted to be president of the United States someday, and that shows he has so much ambition that he cannot be trusted with the office.

Putting aside the irony of a Clinton making such a statement...

What's wrong with a kid wanting to be president, anyway? Back in kindergarten, my second-grader said he wanted to be president and then come home and get a job driving a school bus. He's given up on the president part now, but it's probably just as well. A five-year-old with big dreams... so dangerous.

The older I get, the more I understand why my parents had a hard time with politics.

###

I'm tired of crack journalism. I mean the addicting stuff that makes you feel good for a while because you're not Britney, then you crash when you realize that she still has a lot more money than you. I'm tired of dealing with national news organizations that drop everything when a small-town white woman turns up missing. And I hate it when we see endless reruns of tape of a hot woman teacher who has been accused of having sex with her middle school students.

Please don't ask me to explain how these local stories turn into national ones. I'm feel sorry for the families of missing women or boys who have been taken advantage of, but folks, we have enough of these local problems in our own town.

The bad thing is, stories like these pay the bills for the networks. Why do you think Greta van What's-Her-Name is still on the air? There must be a group of people who follow these stories. Perhaps the networks should check to see if their customers all snacked on lead paint chips when they were kids. It makes me sorry I pay DirecTV to bring me these "news" channels.

And the morning network show that I watch isn't much better.

No wonder I tell my kids to avoid a career in network broadcast journalism if this is where the industry is going.

At the risk of repeating myself, I will try to put this is a more eloquent form. Unless michelle or tanstaafl or someone beats me to it.

Silver Bridge, part 4

(This article originally ran in The Herald-Dispatch on Dec. 28, 1999, as part of a package looking back at the 20th century).

There was no way to know the Silver Bridge was in danger of falling without taking it apart.

At 4:58 p.m. on Dec. 15, 1967, the bridge was filled with rush-hour and Christmas shopping traffic. A steel pin in the superstructure broke, a joint flew apart and the bridge fell into the cold Ohio River, carrying 46 people to their deaths.

Over the next few days, recovery workers pulled bodies and vehicles out of the Ohio.

The collapse shocked Point Pleasant, W.Va., and Gallipolis, Ohio, the two communities connected by the 39-year-old bridge. It also spurred the nation into re-assessing how it maintained and inspected bridges.

The Silver Bridge was a type of suspension bridge. Instead of using woven steel wires to hold up the roadway, it used what were called eyebars. They were assembled similar to the way a bicycle chain is. If one link fails, the whole chain does.

That's what happened that night in Point Pleasant.

The Silver Bridge had not received a thorough inspection since 1951. The problem that led to the collapse could not have been detected with the technology available in 1967.

But the disaster did spur changes in inspections. Now bridges are inspected at least every two years. Those with problems are inspected at least once a year, and sometimes more often. That was the case with the old 6th Street Bridge in Huntington, which was replaced in 1994 by the new Robert C. Byrd Bridge.

Wilson Braley, district administrator for the West Virginia Division of Highways, said the Silver Bridge collapse spurred the legislation requiring frequent inspections.

"To say that we do not have bridge problems is an exaggeration, but we very much know the condition of our bridges. That in itself is a comforting thought. When I first went to work here 25 years ago, when the inspection program was in its infancy, we found deficiencies we didn't know existed," Braley said.

But now, with the frequent inspections, highway officials aren't surprised, Braley said. The inspections find deterioration the bridge engineers expect, but they seldom find anything that is unexpected, he said.

"There hasn't been a surprise in years around here. We know the condition of our bridges," Braley said.

But that didn't happen overnight. Getting a good handle on the condition of every bridge in the state took about 10 years, Braley said.

Some bridges have their weight limits lowered after inspections show significant deterioration. Most of those bridges will be gone soon, Braley said.

"There is a goal now to have all significant posted bridges replaced by the year 2007. That's not to say every posted bridge. There are a few covered bridges we will not tear down, and a few bridges there's no need to replace," he said.

That's why the Blue Sulphur Bridge and the Inco Bridge in Cabell County are being replaced now, and the U.S. 60 bridge over Twelvepole Creek is scheduled to be replaced, Braley said.

Two years to the day after the Silver Bridge collapse, the new four-lane Silver Memorial Bridge opened. It was the first four-lane bridge over the Ohio River between Parkersburg and Cincinnati.

It may be hard to believe, but soon the Nick Joe Rahall II Bridge between Huntington and Lawrence County, Ohio, will be as old as the Silver Bridge was when it fell. That bridge received an extensive repair and repainting job that kept it closed for most of last year.

Memories of the Silver Bridge remain in Point Pleasant. Last year, crews were ready to demolish the old Shadle Bridge over the Kanawha River between Point Pleasant and Henderson but delayed their work a day so it would not fall on Dec. 15.

Silver Bridge, part 3

One thing many of my coworkers put up with is my fondness for bridges. The things have fascinated me for decades, and whenever I have the chance, I write about them.

A few years ago, I was talking with a West Virginia bridge engineer and he mentioned something in passing about how the cables on the East End bridge vibrated at times. It wasn't something that endangered the bridge, but it could cause serious maintenance problems someday. So I did a piece about how engineers had to deal with this problem in cable stay bridges. As part of that, I got to climb to the top of the bridge and see the world from up there. My advice, if you have any touch of fear of heights, think twice if you're ever invited. Then accept, but be careful once you're up there. The view is wonderful.

It's hard sitting here, watching other people do straight news stories on the events of nearly 40 years ago. I'll be writing several opinion pieces leading up to the anniversary. And I'll probably type in a couple of stories I did 20 years ago for that anniversary. They were pretty good, in my humble opinion. (And humble it is. I have worked very hard to be humble, and I am very proud of my humility. In fact, I'm probably the most humble person I know, and I don't care who knows it.).

So be prepared for a few more Silver Bridge pieces. It's something that has weighed on my mind for months, and it's about to come pouring out now.

###

If the Silver Bridge collapsed today, the 24-hour cable news channels would be all over it. There would be satellite trucks at both ends of the bridge and news helicopters flying everywhere. The national media would parachute in and tell us what this all means, when even the people who know most about bridges wouldn't know what it all means -- not yet, at least. Talk radio would blame the disaster on Bill Clinton (probably) or George W. Bush (less likely).

Before long, people would complain about the intrusiveness of the news media. They would complain about how rude the media people are.

Someone would install a Webcam on a nearby building in Point Pleasant so the world could tune in and see what was happening in the recovery efforts in real time. Bloggers would dissect every word that is reported and every document that is generated in hopes of catching someone in an inaccuracy or an outright lie.

West Virginia would put up a Web page to pass along information as soon as it became official. Crisis counselors would be called in to help students in nearby schools cope with the tragedy.

There would be fund drives set up to provide money to families of the victims. There would be concerts to raise more money. And the personal injury lawyers would have a field day.

Politicians and "activists" would feel obliged to comment, even if they had no idea what they were talking about. Newspaper editorials would demand thorough investigations. Congress would have its own investigations. Some nut case would develop a theory that someone high in government sabotaged the bridge to further his own evil plan. Said nut case would develop a Web site and gain instant credibility among people who don't trust the government.

We would have too many public opinion polls to count. On a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being not at all and 5 being very safe, do you feel safe driving over the bridges in your area? What do you think caused the collapse: poor design, poor construction methods, poor maintenance, heavy traffic, don't know.

The magazines at the checkout line would look for heroes and for people with tragic tales to tell.
We would be inundated with more information than we could absorb. Locals would know what is true and what is not, but they would be ignored.

Utimately, the name "Silver Bridge" would carry a brand identity, the way "Sago" does.

Would any of this be better than the way the news was covered in 1967? You tell me.

New stats on births

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention came out with some new stats today regarding births in 2006.

Here are a couple that caught my eye:

In the US, about 10.4 percent of births in 2006 were to mothers under 20 years of age. In West Virginia, the number was 12.5 percent. High: New Mexico, 15.7. Low: New Hampshire, 6.1.

In the US, about 38.5 percent of births were to unmarried mothers. In West Virginia, about 37.9 percent. High: New Mexico, 51.2 percent. Low: Utah, 18.8.

Having babies while young and unwed is a prescription for poverty. That's not a self-righteous judgment; it's just fact.

Back in the mid-1980s, I went to Floyd County, Ky., to do a story about a woman who started a medical clinic to help people who lived in generational poverty there. A social worker gave me a tour of the area. She pointed to this house and that where teenage girls became pregnant, figuring the extra mouth would lead to more welfare benefits. I haven't been back since welfare reform, so I have no idea how those people are doing now.

But the babies born that year would be in their 20s now, and there's a good chance many of them are in the same boat.

Don't play poker with veterans in Dallas

If a bunch of guys want to get together at their local VFW and play poker, knowing that 10 percent of the pot goes to the VFW, what's the harm? According to the Dallas Morning News, police there raided at least one VFW post in their investigation into illegal gambling.

It's good to know that in Dallas, unlike Huntington, there are no drug murders or violent crimes to deal with and police can concentrate their efforts on preventing veterans from playing poker for money.

The link is here.

Let's see, at this VFW, the house keeps 10 percent and the players keep 90 percent. In a state lottery, the state keeps 50 percent and the winners get 50 percent, but about 50 percent of a big jackpot is taken in income taxes, so in a state lottery like Powerball, the house gets 75 percent and the winning player gets 25 percent.

No wonder these guys were playing poker.