Speedway, 1/31/08

Marathon came out with its fourth-quarter and yearend earnings report today. I looked through the numbers to find out what was going on at Speedway.

As noted in an earlier post, Speedway stores make more money on the merchandise inside the store than they do from the gasoline they sell. Gasoline is the hook to get customers inside the store. Here are numbers from the fourth quarter:

Profits from sales of gasoline and other petroleum distillates: $95 million.
Sales from general merchandise: $172 million.

Merchandise carries a profit of about 25 percent. The percentage profit on gasoline isn't nearly that much, otherwise we'd be paying about $1.45 a gallon ($1 for the gasoline plus 45 cents in taxes).

So gripe about gasoline prices all you want. It's not the gasoline that convenience stores are making money on. It's the candy, the cola and the beer.

WV in the national election

I was chatting with a former colleague the other day when talk got around to which presidential candidate is likely to carry West Virginia this fall. Now that we're down to two on the Democratic side and two on the GOP, here is how I would guess the election would go if it were today:

Clinton-McCain: McCain
Obama-McCain: Obama
Clinton-Romney: Clinton
Obama-Romney: Obama

In other words, I don't think Romney could persuade enough Democrats here to vote for him, even if he went up against Clinton. McCain and Obama are too much of a mirror image for Democrats to cross over. But McCain could probably take her. And I think Obama is the strongest of the four when it comes to West Virginia voters.

My former colleague thinks West Virginia as a whole is not ready to vote for a black or biracial person. My thinking is that enough people will "pull the rooster," as our senior senator would say, to overcome that way of thought.

Or am I wrong in any of this?

John Grisham knows about Don Blankenship

It seems the famous author modeled the story of his latest novel after Don Blankenship's successful effort four years ago to get Brent Benjamine elected to the state Supreme Court.

From the Today show Web site:

The story plays out with a chemical company found guilty of dumping toxic waste and liable for the deaths of scores of people in a fictional Mississippi town. The owner of the company tries to get out of paying a $41 million settlement by spending millions to help elect a justice to the Mississippi Supreme Court that will swing the appeal the other way.

When Lauer asked if such a story was far-fetched, Grisham said, “It’s already happened.”

“It happened a few years ago in West Virginia. A guy owned a coal company. He got tired of getting sued. He elected his guy to the Supreme Court. It switched 5-4 back his way and he didn’t worry about getting sued.”

I didn't see the segment. If you want to read the story about it on the Today show site, click here.

Instant replay fails

NFL and NCAA football are for intellectual (never mind; see below) when it comes to the spelling bee. But even then, there can be disputes when instant replay is called into action.

FAIRVIEW, Ala. (AP) — Krystian Doss says he knows how to spell “kudzu,” and he’s positive he got the word right during the Cullman County spelling bee. Just like in the NFL, though, the final call came down to a video replay.

Christiana Oanca was named the winner of the annual competition on Monday when judges determined Doss spelled “kudzu” with a “c” where the “z” should have been. After an initial protest they reviewed a video of the event — a byproduct of a past miscue.

Doss was named the runner-up, but he isn’t budging on whether he was wronged.

“I know I spelled it right,” said the boy, a student at Good Hope Elementary School.

Doss was on stage when the judges asked him to spell “kudzu.” The boy responded right away, said father Kevin Doss.

“He did not hesitate one bit, he knew that word and he spelled it correctly,” Kevin told The Cullman Times.

Judges didn’t hear it that way, however. They said Krystian spelled the word incorrectly — and that led to a review. While “c” and “z” can be similar sounds when voiced, the judges said the video upheld their belief that he got the word wrong.

Following Krystian’s elimination, Christina won the bee by correctly spelling “cilantro.” She now is eligible to go on to the state bee in Montgomery. ...

Denise Schuman, the system’s elementary curriculum coordinator who oversees the annual spelling bee, said the video recording was reliable “because you can see the facial movements and sounds and everything.”

Unfortunately, problems have mired past spelling bees.

Organizers began videotaping the competition a few years ago after a TV station’s videotape revealed that a contestant who was declared the winner actually had misspelled a word. ...

The first expression I wanted to use above was "girly men," but the more I thought about it, it can be interpreted as an anti-gay slur, so I will delete it from future use. Is "wimps" okay?

Textbooks for real kids

My favorite textbook in my elementary school years was fourth-grade history. Rather than tell of how Columbus discovered the New World and people migrated to America and all that stuff, it told the story of the United States as a series of biographies. One chapter told the life story of George Washington, one of Abe Lincoln, and so on.

Years later, after decades of being told I had no chance of really understanding science, I happened across a copy of "Coming of Age in the Milky Way" by Timothy Ferris, on our book review table. I picked it up, took it home and read amazing stories of the people who made the discoveries that gave us the science we have today. Ferris related the true story of why religious authorities censured Galileo, the tragic story of Johannes Kepler (my favorite, for some reason) and the odd case of Isaac Newton.

In 1990, my wife enrolled in a physics course at Marshall based on the CalTech science show "The Mechanical Universe," which told the stories of great physicists and used computer graphics moving numbers around on calculus equations. I didn't understand all of the math, but I learned a lot from watching the shows we taped off the air. I can even explain a few of the basics of Newtonian mechanics and Einsteinian relativity now.

So why not introduce schoolchildren to science through the stories of the great scientists? Now, someone has written a series of middle school textbooks that does just that.

The story about the series is in the Washington Post. Here are excerpts from that story:

To middle school teacher Chad Pavlekovich, most science textbooks are dull and lack the context students need to understand scientific principles. That's why he is exposing students in the town of Salisbury on Maryland's Eastern Shore to three new textbooks that are unorthodox in concept, appearance and substance.

The "Story of Science" series by Joy Hakim tells the history of science with wit, narrative depth and research, all vetted by specialists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The first book is "Aristotle Leads the Way," the second is "Newton at the Center" and the third is "Einstein Adds a New Dimension." The series, which has drawn acclaim, chronicles not only great discoveries but also the scientists who made them.

"These books humanize science," Pavlekovich said.

"We teach students this equation and this theory or this topic and that idea, but we never discuss the scientist behind it or how that scientist made the discovery," he said. "It helps students to understand how they struggled and overcame great obstacles to do what they did." ...

Scientists and educators say that there are many ways to teach science but that Hakim's approach makes sense.

"If you talk to any first-rate scientist about a particular development, you will very quickly hear a narrative, because the way good scientists think about developments in their field is in terms of stories," science writer Timothy Ferris said. "Telling a story reminds you of how you got to your present state of knowledge," he said, and scientists constantly test whether those steps were reliable.

I will try to get a review copy of one of those texts. It sounds like the best way to introduce children to what science really is. Too many kids think science is memorizing a lot of knowledge that has been gained. It's not. Science is the process of gaining that knowledge.

Too many texts that I have seen kill curiosity and wonder. Perhaps the books described in the Post article will kindle, not kill, the love of learning.

Odds and ends, 1/28/08

From the "What Took You So Long?" Department:

The Associated Press
Heeding a steady drumbeat of sexual misconduct cases involving teachers, at least 15 states are now considering stronger oversight and tougher punishment for educators who take advantage of their students.

Lawmakers say they are concerned about an increasingly well-documented phenomenon: While the vast majority of America’s teachers are committed professionals, there also is a persistent problem with sexual misconduct in U.S. schools. When abuse happens, administrators too often fail to let others know about it, and too many legal loopholes let offenders stay in the classroom. ...

Some states are looking to increase penalties, expand background checks or broaden their ability to police charter schools for abuse, like Indiana, Massachusetts and Utah. Kentucky and South Carolina are considering making it illegal for teachers to have sex with older students.

Several states are tackling a major problem — the loopholes that allow problem teachers to move from one school district to another, or from one state to another. The AP investigation found that what education officials commonly call “passing the trash” happens when districts allow a teacher to quietly leave a school, or fail to report problems to state authorities, or fail to check with state authorities before hiring a teacher, among other glitches.

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On something totally different, the Census Bureau has gone through its 2002 economic census and ranked states in various categories. West Virginia leads in total receipts for coal production. It also leads in per capita recepits for death services.

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Am I the only one getting tired of seeing Miley Cyrus' face all over the place?

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COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Wendy’s International Inc. will scrap its eight-month old advertising campaign — much of it built on young men wearing a red wig with braided pigtails — amid continued weak sales, the nation’s third-largest hamburger chain announced Monday.

The campaign, which debuted during the season finale of “American Idol” in May, has generated attention, but hasn’t translated into improved sales, the company said.

“It was a love it or hate it kind of spot,” said Bob Holtcamp, Wendy’s vice president of brand marketing.

You mean someone loved it? I always wondered what the point was. I hated it.

I know Dave Thomas is dead and Wendy's can't air those old commercials. But whoever thought up this campaign with the men in the wigs sure turned off a lot of people like me.

Seriously, who "loved" these ads?

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LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Ashland Inc. says that its first-quarter earnings fell from a year ago due to the sluggish economy and a tax adjustment stemming from the sale of its highway construction business.

Ashland used to be a big-name company: refining, marketing, construction, chemicals and such. Over the years, it came to be a collection of subsidiaries, some of which had synergies with one another and some of which were out in left field. At one time, the company was almost like a mutual fund that had heavy investments in dissimilar industries.

The Tri-State lost a lot when Ashland decided it was too big for this area. Now you have to wonder what the company would have been like had it stayed. And what impact a greatly reduced Ashland would have here today.

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National election stuff

Read this, then allow me to ask one question:

WASHINGTON (CNN) — John Kerry, the Democratic Party's 2004 nominee for president, took aim at Bill Clinton Friday, telling the National Journal the former president does "not have a license to abuse the truth."

The Massachusetts senator, who endorsed Barack Obama's White House bid earlier this month, said Clinton's criticisms of the Illinois senator have been "over the top," and suggested the former president is getting "frantic."

Targeting Clinton's recent spate of attacks on Obama, Kerry said, "I think you had an abuse of the truth, is what happened. …I mean, being an ex-president does not give you license to abuse the truth, and I think that over the last days it's been over the top. ..."

Did Kerry just call Clinton a liar?

I was sad to see Dennis Kucinich pull out of the race. We all knew it was coming, but it still saddened me. I don't agree with a lot of what Kucinich says, but I give the guy credit for being who he is.

People say they don't want their politicians flipflopping, but look who are getting ahead: Hillary Clinton, Mitt Romney and John McCain, all of whom are known for major changes of mind.

I don't like Hillary. It's not because of her positions on issues, although some of them do concern me. It's not because of her pandering. It's a matter of trust. I can't run down a list of 100 things that are important to me and determine which candidate matches my preferences. There are so many things that will happen, such a list would be useless.

It comes down to who I trust to make the big decisions. Who do I want standing up to the bad guys in other nations and in our own? It's not Hillary. Likewise, I have a hard time going with McCain for the same reason. Yes, he was a war hero, but that's only part of what you want to see in the president of the United States.

Unless things change, I guess I'm stuck, eh, unless it's Romney-Obama.

Oh, another reason I don't like Hillary. I want nothing to do with what's being called the Clinton Restoration. Bill has gone off the deep edge. He's descended into the mud pit where former presidents don't belong. Sooner or later, he will get angry at the wrong person, and he will be taken down a notch or two. He will think he's dealing with a local yokel reporter, but that person will put him in the place he deserves to be. May that day come soon.

Also, I don't want another Bush or Clinton in the White House in my lifetime. And I want to live a good, long time.

Odds and ends, 1/24/08

A letter to the editor received this morning used a variation of the phrase "Don't drink the Kool-Aid," a reference to the mass suicide at Jonestown.


The phrase is a popular one, but slightly inaccurate. The members of the People's Temple didn't drink Kool-Aid laced with poison. They drank Flavor Aid.


Just another example of common knowledge that is wrong.


My favorite example of such is people who say, "The exception proves the rule." But exceptions don't prove rules. They disprove them. Unless, that is, you use "prove" in the King James Bible sense of "test." If you say, "The exception tests the rule," you are more accurate, but you don't sound as smart.

Speaking of which, in three years we shall read and hear all sorts of 400th anniversary of the King James Version. Get ready for all sorts of newspaper articles about the Textus Receptus and all sorts of other stuff you may never have heard of before about the King James Version and the Bible itself.

Then most people will forget about all this until the 500th anniversary in 2111.


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One bad thing about the fight against global warming and for energy independence is that it's making some things worse. Take biofuels, for example. What could possibly be wrong with biofuels?

BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) -- The world's rush to embrace biofuels is causing a spike in the price of corn and other crops and could worsen water shortages and force poor communities off their land, a U.N. official said Wednesday.

Workers in North Sumatra pile up palm oil fruit, which can be used to make biofuels.

Speaking at a regional forum on bioenergy, Regan Suzuki of the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization acknowledged that biofuels are better for the environment than fossil fuels and boost energy security for many countries.

However, she said those benefits must be weighed against the pitfalls -- many of which are just now emerging as countries convert millions of acres to palm oil, sugar cane and other crops used to make biofuels.

Making ethanol from corn is not a great idea. From grass, maybe. But not from corn or other food grains.

Roots of our sense of community

So I was shooting at Kenova's Virginia Point Park one gray, overcast day, and I saw this cell phone tower on a hill at Catlettsburg, Ky., and below it I saw this steeple. From that came thoughts of how the architecture is the same, but they both represent how people form community today vs. yesterday.

I'll go back and get a better picture when conditions improve and I have the time.

Odds and ends, 1/23/08

Wow. If only stuff like this could happen here.

Entire staff of underperforming Cincinnati school to be replaced

CINCINNATI (AP) — The entire teaching staff of an underperforming elementary school in Cincinnati is being replaced, along with the school’s principal.

Officials say Taft Elementary has not met standards for nine years, and students score about 20 points below the district average on standardized tests.

Taft Elementary is one of the smaller public schools in Cincinnati, with about 240 students in kindergarten through eighth grade.

The school’s principal and 11 teachers will finish out the school year.Officials say several measures short of housecleaning have been tried to improve performance at the school. But the president of the Cincinnati Federation of Teachers says nothing has worked.

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In all the talk about state Supreme Court Justice Spike Maynard and Don Blankenship, I knew something was missing, but I didn't remember what it was until I saw where Justice Larry Starcher wants a full investigation. Bingo! I remembered Starcher has not exactly been impartial toward Blankenship in the past, either. Lucky for me, the AP filled in a few holes in my memory, although a fuller explanation would show that any investigation of the justices' relationship with Blankenship should include Starcher's past comments, too.

Here is the relevant but sketchy section from an AP story:

Lawyers for Massey have not ruled out pressing for Starcher’s recusal, citing his series of public comments attacking the company and Blankenship.

Some of those remarks targeted the multimillion-dollar 2004 ad campaign bankrolled by Blankenship that likely aided the defeat of then-Justice Warren McGraw, a Democrat, by Republican Brent Benjamin.

Benjamin declined on Friday to withdraw from the case after lawyers for Harman invoked the 2004 campaign. As acting chief justice, Benjamin appointed Cookman to replace Maynard.

Maynard and Starcher are both Democrats and their 12-year terms end this year. Maynard has announced plans to seek re-election, while Starcher has said he will not run.

I will have more thoughts on this in a few days, I hope.

UPDATE: Headline from a Wall Street Journal article that uses the West Virginia Supreme Court case as its hook: "Need for recusal by judges can wind up clearing a bench."

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A new study of California temperatures shows that state is heating up. Researchers attribute the change to greenhouse gases and urbanization.

A previous study released last March and noted in this space shows that urban areas contribute to the heating up of California, although part of the state has recorded lower temperaturs in the past 50 years.

The urbanization part creates a conflict that someone may want to address somehow. Urbanization contributes to climate change. To combat that, we should move people out of cities and into urban sprawl. To accomplish that, people will have to consume more energy, which contributes to greenhouse gases.

Okay, I'm a bit facetious here. Long term, we should encourage people to move back to the land to backwater places such as North Dakota and West Virginia where fewer people really want to live nowadays.

Fight global warming! Move to West Virginia! (That slogan's not going anywhere).

We also need to replace a lot of meat in our diets and ...

But that's a topic for another day.

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January is Blood Donor Volunteer Month. It is also Stalking Awareness Month.

The only logical conclusion is that someone is trying to tell me that vampires really exist.

Odds and ends, 1/22/08

Here's a great phrase: Cell phone jail. It describes how people with cell phones are locked into contracts with carriers, and how those contracts are heavily weighted to favor the carrier.

You can read an article about it here.

I have a regular cell service and I own a disposable phone. The disposable needs to be reconnected, as I have let its service lapse. I gave my daughter a disposable, and she hates it because it's so easy to use up all her minutes. But that's budgeting, you know?

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According to Fortune magazine, small employers are having a hard time determining who is eligible for overtime and who is exempt. Their advice: Hire a good lawyer.

As one former manager here used to tell young reporters who worked too many hours off the clock, Gannett is a big company with lots of money. It does not need your charity.

I had to explain to the youngsters every now and then that it may help their careers a bit, but they expose the company to some pretty steep penalties by trying to help out off the clock.

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Why spending too much time watching Wall Street would drive me crazy:

Around 10 a.m., I checked stocks of companies that have a significant presence here in the Tri-State. With exception of a couple of smaller bank companies, everyone was down. Some were down in the 6 to 7 percent range compared with the close of business on Friday.

So at 1:30 p.m., what's going on? Some of those stocks that had tanked in early morning are now up from Friday. One example, picked at random: AK Steel, which was down about 7 percent at 10 a.m. was up 7 percent at 1:30 or so.

Like I say, paying this much attention must drive some people crazy. But some people really get into it. They would be like the people who watch the pro football games so they could watch the play of the offensive line.

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There's a piece in today's Washington Post about the business of being Britney Spears. It's hard to believe that so many people still pay her to show up. Here in Appalachia, we have something called self-respect.

Although the article deals mainly with Britonomics, it does end with this paragraph that puts a more human side to America's favorite train wreck:

It is one thing to do an economic analysis of Britney Spears and still another not to see her as a sad, updated version of the lumpy prizefighter from more than one black-and-white movie. She's taken too many punches and soon those who have attached themselves for the ride will drop off. As Portfolio shows, the Britney Industrial Complex represents an economic truth -- as good a reason as any for economics to be called the dismal science.

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Wall Street has closed for the day. Final numbers aren't in, but several of our local stocks ended the day up. And several ended down. A mixed day.

Bank stocks were up overall, as were transportation. Manufacturing was mixed. Utilities were down.

It could all change tomorrow. As I said earlier, pay too much attention and you will go mad.

Parable of the peregrine falcons

According to a story provided by The Associated Press, six young peregrine falcons were transplanted to West Virginia while young. They grew up here, and when they reached maturity, they left. Some are way down south, while others are not far away in neighboring states.

So far, there is no word that any hue and cry has arisen on why our young falcons don't want to live in West Virginia. And there is no word that Gov. Joe Manchin plans to force them to repay their PROMISE scholarships if they don't move back to the state soon.

You may draw any other conclusions that you want.

Excerpts from the AP story are below.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — Six radio transmitter-packing peregrine falcons released in the New River Gorge in July have traveled nearly 53,000 miles, and are roosting in such far-flung locales as a 17-story building in Greensboro, N.C., and offshore oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico.

The falcons were part of a group of 24 young peregrines released in the gorge as part of an ongoing reintroduction effort for the species, which is rarely seen in the Eastern United States.

The birds had been taken from nests on busy coastal area bridges in Virginia and New Jersey, where their chances for survival were considered virtually zero, to a cliff-top release site in the National Park Service-managed New River Gorge National River. There, they dined on human-supplied quail as they adapted to their new environment and learned to fly and hunt on their own.

All 24 of the falcons survived their early weeks of flight training in the gorge, and as anticipated, left Southern West Virginia to roam the East.

“All the birds that were equipped with transmitters kept them, until about two weeks ago, when one of them disappeared near Savannah, Ga.,” said Matt Varner, wildlife biologist for the National Park Service. “We don’t know if he lost his radio pack, which sometimes happens, or died.”

Signals from the transmitters are periodically relayed to a satellite, then bounced back to a receiving station and recorded for tracking and analysis purposes.

The farthest traveling peregrine was Falcon 41300, the lone female equipped with a transmitter, who traveled northward to Canada and northern Michigan before heading south to the Gulf Coast, covering 11,060 miles since July. These days, she is spending her time near Mobile, Ala.

Logging the fewest flight miles (6,373) was Falcon 8175, who lingered in the Pittsburgh area before finally heading south, crossing a stretch of the Atlantic between Charleston, S.C., and Jacksonville, Fla., before arriving in his current hunting grounds in the Tallahassee, Fla., area. ...

The three falcons now hunting along the Gulf of Mexico have been tracked more than 100 miles offshore, where “we think they may be roosting at night on oil rigs or ships,” Varner said. ...

Plans call for continuing the reintroduction effort for at least another two years.

“We hope to get some of these birds back to the gorge,” Varner said. “If we find nesting falcons here later this year, we may not release any new juveniles to avoid conflict between the young birds and the nesting falcons.” ...

To follow the movements of the New River Gorge falcons, visit the New River Gorge National River’s peregrine Web site at www.nps.gov/neri/naturescience/peregrine—2007.htm.

A few more pics, 1/21/08

Cincinnati has its famous Purple People Bridge. Huntington has its infamous pink bridge. And a week or so ago, I looked over the hill while driving up Ohio 7 toward my ancestral homeland and noticed that Crown City has a yellow bridge.

Someday I'll have to call the Crown City mayor and ask, why? It may be strictly utilitarian, or there may be an aesthetic reason behind it.

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This has to the most worn-out stop sign in Lawrence County, Ohio.

A couple of decades ago, this road had a stop sign with black letters on a yellow background. When I was there a few weeks ago, it was gone.

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And here's why you have to shut off your pop-up flash when taking pictures of livestock in early morning light.

You don't want light bouncing off their retinas. I call this critter the atomic cow.

Teacher shortage, teacher pay

Which is worse: Having no chemistry teacher in a high school, or having chemistry taught by a teacher who has had little training in the subject?

In West Virginia, the solution is to throw whatever warm body is available behind the desk so you can say you offer a class in chemistry.

Bill Rosenberger, a reporter for The Herald-Dispatch, had a long story in Sunday's edition focusing on teacher pay.

"When we have 56 percent of our chemistry teachers not certified in chemistry, that's a real problem," Hale said.

Hale being Judy Hale, president of the American Federation of Teachers - West Virginia.

I'm not worried so much about the teaching of chemistry as I am the teaching of science in general. Science, like math, should be a discipline in which the knowledge we have is secondary to the way that knowledge was acquired. When we have a shortage of people who teach subjects that rely heavily on critical thinking skills, the entire community suffers.

A former supervisor here at The Herald-Dispatch once told me the biggest problem she had with young reporters fresh out of college was their deficiency of critical thinking skills. You hear stories of phys ed teachers who don't want to be laid off, so they use their seniority to claim jobs teaching subjects they really don't know that much about. Back in the 1980s, Anna Whitehead, a member of the Ironton Board of Education, used to complain about the number of former coaches in that Ohio city's school system. It seems the district always needed a volleyball or soccer coach. It would hire a teacher who could also coach. As soon as the teacher received a continuing contract, said teacher lost all interest in coaching.

Back to my main point: I would have more sympathy for teachers' pay raise requests if they would give up some of their union rhetoric and adopt some market strategies. If there is a surplus of elementary ed teachers and a shortage of middle school science teachers, then there should be some pay differentials to encourage some elementary teachers to consider teaching subjects where there are shortages.

And maybe school boards should not be allowed to have a teacher in a classroom when a teacher is not certified to teach that subject.

On second thought, forget that. It assumes the education and training of children comes first. We all know it's the teachers' morale and equality among peers that takes precedence.

Odds and ends, 1/18/08

At a buildingwide employee meeting yesterday, some of us learned that a new reporter is a WVU graduate. Naturally, we had to tease her.

"Are you going to Michigan?"

"I hear you got your degree even though you only finished half the course work."

You get the idea.

Considering what's happened surrounding the selection of a president, the football coaching situation, the governor's daughter, the party school reputation, the history of burning couches and everything else, it must stink to be outed as a WVU grad.

But hang in there. My alma mater has made news in the past couple of years with lax computer security and with a plagiarism scandal in the engineering school. As long as these things are disposed of quickly and with honesty, they will pass and people will forget them.

That second part -- honesty -- is always the hardest part, though, isn't it?

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The First Amendment wins one.

MARIEMONT, Ohio (AP) — Political campaign signs are going to be up in the Cincinnati suburb of Mariemont longer than some people had wanted.

Officials have decided not to fight a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court.

The village had an ordinance limiting the display of signs in residential yards, and that had been construed to mean that political signs could be displayed for only 30 days before an election. And there was a limit of one sign per yard.

Mayor Dan Policastro says the restrictions actually were aimed at real estate and other commercial signs. He says if somebody wants to keep a campaign sign out all year round, other residents will just have to live with it.

Ron Paul supporters rejoice.

Bobby Fischer is dead

My all-time favorite chess player (but not favorite person) has died.

REYKJAVIK, Iceland (AP) - Bobby Fischer, the reclusive American chess master who became a Cold War icon when he dethroned the Soviet Union's Boris Spassky as world champion in 1972, has died. He was 64.

Fischer died Thursday in a Reykjavik hospital, his spokesman, Gardar Sverrisson, said. There was no immediate word on the cause of death. ...

He renounced his American citizenship and moved in 2005 to Iceland, accepting an offer of citizenship from the country still grateful for its role as the site of his most famous match.

Fischer had been detained for nine months detention in Japan for trying to leave the country using an invalid U.S. passport. Japan agreed to release him after he accepted Iceland's offer of citizenship.

Fischer told reporters that year that he was finished with a chess world he regarded as corrupt, and sparred with U.S. journalists who asked about his anti-American tirades.

"The United States is evil. There's this axis of evil. What about the allies of evil - the United States, England, Japan, Australia? These are the evildoers," Fischer said.

As a teenager, I tried emulating Fischer's attacking style of play, but it just wasn't me. I later learned to use more subtle strategies. His book "My 60 Favorite Games" remains one of my all-time favorite chess books, and I still have my copy in my basement somewhere.

I played chess in college, but I gave it up my senior year to concentrate on graduating. Sometimes I play games against my computer, but I have to put the computer on the lowest setting to have any chance of winning. I have a hard time dealing with the Berendregt (?)variation of the Ruy Lopez, the Giuoco Piano or the Queen's Gambit Declined in the opening, and I have a rough time with bishop-and-knight endgames. What came so naturally in my youth is so hard now.

Playing chess competitively requires too big an investment of the ego. My vanity has better things to do nowadays.

Fischer was great for the game, but his personal demons got the better of him after he reached his ultimate goal.

Odds and ends, 1/17/08

So far I have received two letters to the editor from people about Huntington Mayor David Felinton's weight-loss surgery. They ask why he went to a hospital in Ashland, Ky., to have the surgery done when we have two perfectly fine hospitals here in Huntington.

Neither letter writer had a Huntington address. One was from eastern Cabell County, and one was from Lawrence County, Ohio.

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Regarding the Spike Maynard-Don Blankenship vacation, in which a justice of the state Supreme Court vacationed in Europe with a coal executive who had a multimillion dollar case pending before that court:

What is it about West Virginia that the words "ethics," "propriety" and "common sense" are removed from the dictionaries owned by public officials?

Jerry Mezzatesta. Mingo County in the 1980s. Arch Moore. Wally Barron. And still to be decided is the validity of an MBA "earned" by the governor's daughter 10 years ago when there were not records from the time that she earned the credits she needed.

At least people in Ohio voted out the Republican Party when it engaged in similar shenanigans. In West Virginia, you punish such corruption by re-electing it.

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The Reds begin spring training in 30 days and a few hours. I like the spring training time of year. I would love to go to Florida and watch a few games. Not because of the baseball. By the time February gets here, I am really tired of cold weather, gray skies and leafless trees. And I like spring training games a lot better than regular season games. I don't know why unless it's because it's more fun following games that are meaningless. No emotional investment or anything.

A recession coming?

NEW YORK (AP) -- The bill for America's excessive borrowing during the housing boom has arrived, and more people are having trouble paying it.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Wells Fargo & Co., two of the nation's biggest banks, on Wednesday joined a growing chorus warning that the subprime mortgage mess is just the start of a sweeping lending crisis. And some fear that consumers falling behind on all kinds of loan payments could tip the economy's scale toward recession.

Strapped consumers are having a tough time making payments on credit cards, home-equity loans, and even for their cars. This has caused three of the top five U.S. commercial banks that have already reported damaging fourth-quarter results to set aside some $12.5 billion to cover future loan losses -- and that number will likely grow as the year wears on.

Problems in the subprime mortgage market are rapidly spilling over into other areas of the economy. No matter what the experts call it -- a recession, slowdown or even the makings of a depression -- it's clear banks are under mounting pressure to be more cautious about lending.

Wow. Do you think? After all those years of giving credit cards to people who shouldn't have had them and of fueling the housing bubble by handing out mortgage loans to anyone who walks in the door, do you think anyone at these megabanks ever stood back and said, "Wait a minute, guys, we're doing something wrong here. This is going to crash on us, although hopefully not until I've cashed out and retired"?

Although I have benefited from some of these loose lending policies -- and been hurt by them, too, because of my own mistakes that I am paying for -- it still seems that the old way was the best. You save 20 percent for a down payment. And you give out credit cards only to people who can pay them off.

That's the way it was when banks were locally owned and when their officers were more likely to be held accountable for bad decisions.

I do not feel sorry for these banks. I am angry that they have been so foolish that they are selling large percentages of themselves to foreign investors. How long will it be before Americans don't own their banking system anymore?

As a side note, let me for one moment defend my former employer, Gannett. While many in the newspaper industry considered Gannett to be evil incarnate, one thing the company did right was to budget in a way that its properties did not overspend in good times. A lot of papers in other companies hired newsroom staff left and right in good times, and those same papers had to announce large numbers of layoffs when ad and circulation numbers dropped. Gannett, being the local-level pennypincher it was, avoided the hills and troughs by operating as though every year was a bad year. There were no hills -- only one long trough.

Yeah, Gannett knows how to waste money at the corporate level, but that's common among Fortune 500 companies.

But no company escapes the economy forever, and even some larger Gannett papers have had some layoffs, I have heard.

Cars and school grades

I don't know what's happened to Joe Manchin. He's riding a wave of popularity, and he's tossing out nanny state ideas that really irritate some people.

One recent example is the idea that the state will suspend a kid's driving license or not allow the teen to get a license in the first place if his or her grade point average drops below a C.

Some problems with that:

What does a school grade have to do with driving ability? I was a good student in high school, but I was a terrible driver. I recognized that fact, which is one reason I didn't bother getting my license until I was half past 21. That and the fact I had nothing to drive and no reason for ID.

Do schools want to send lists of names to the DMV every six weeks? Why add this burden to school administrators, who have more important things to worry about?


Will Manchin come back and also try to tie driving privileges to school attendance, community service or some other worthwhile goal? Where does it end?

Here is the most troublesome part to me: Why should the DMV have access to any of my kids' school records? Who else will have access to them as school performance and attendance is tied to other privileges that really have nothing to do with education? Whatever happened to privacy?

Summary: Understandable ide, but still a bad one. State Sen. Bob Plymale said he wants to see the details. If I were a cynic, I would interpret that as meaning he hates the idea, but he's not going to say so openly. Maybe Plymale is receptive. Here's hoping he and other legislators don't bother putting this on their agenda.

A few pictures

Things are a bit slow today, and I'm taking tomorrow off. So rather than opine at length, I thought I would post a few pictures and add a few comments:

There are still some old-time country stores around if you know where to look. This one is in Wyoming County, W.Va.

Kids exploring the river bank where the Big Sandy empties into the Ohio.

Hey, even deer want to watch TV once in a while.

When I was a kid in the 60s, I saw flatbed trucks like this GMC all the time. Now, I rarely do. Funny what 40 years of rain and salt will do to steel. This one is on a farm on Route 75 near Kenova. I don't know what year this truck is.

666 is here

According to the editing function of this blog, this is post number 666.

It's the number of antichrist or Satan, I think. I do know that the Cabell County Schools transportation superintendent skipped "666" when assigning numbers to school buses because she didn't want the grief she would get from parents whose kids had to ride it.

When Bob Withers was a copyeditor here, I turned in a story that measured 66.6 inches. He told me he would change it somehow in order to correct the inch estimate.

Because 666 is linked so closely to evil, I have scoured our letters to the editor and listened to talk radio. I herewith give you the four most evil influences in our world today:

665 -- Odds and ends, 1/11/08

You don't mess with a successful brand name. You don't want to alienate your good customers.

Unless you can make a lot of money.

CLEVELAND (AP) — The field known as “The Jake” is no more. The home of the Cleveland Indians now will be called Progressive Field.

Car insurance company Progressive Corp. and the American League team have come to terms on a 16-year naming rights deal for the 42,000-seat downtown ballpark.

The park had been known as Jacobs Field since it opened in 1994, named when the team had been owned by Cleveland-area businessman Richard Jacobs. Progressive will pay $3.6 million a year for the rights.

I have no particular love or hate for the Indians. I root for the Reds on the rare occasions when they field a major league team. But this is too much.

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CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — Congress is giving West Virginia an extra $41 million in federal highway funds in the next fiscal year.

U.S. Sen. Robert C. Byrd says the additional funding includes $15.7 million for Corridor H, $3.9 million for the Coalfields Expressway, $7.8 million for State Route 9 in the Eastern Panhandle, and $7.5 million for State Route 2 in the Northern Panhandle.

Byrd says West Virginia will receive a total $356.1 million in federal highway funds in the next fiscal year.

Whatever happened to improving Route 2 between Huntington and Point Pleasant? It has the bad luck of being in two Congressional districts, two House of Delegate districts and two Senate districts. In each case, the representatives of one district aren't friends or allies of the other. On top of that, the demand for improvements waxes and wanes.

Maybe my grandchildren will see a better road up there, one that will attract private investment. Or maybe their grandchildren.

###

Speaking of which, we don't need as many new four-lane roads in this area as people think we do. I mean, has anyone seen the money that's being wasted on four-laning Route 10 between Logan and Man?

I would be content if the state would dedicate some money to widening some existing two-lane roads and straightening some curves.

664 - Global warming and Jay Rockefeller

On the countdown to 666 posts, we're at Number 664 . . .

Jay Rockefeller was in town today wrapping up his weeklong tour of West Virginia. Notice he saved the best for last.

We talked about a lot things. I was encouraged when he said global warming is real and must be addressed, but he said it will be solved through research and innovation. I was glad to hear that last part. No one government will "solve" this problem through fiat, regulation or taxation.

People can argue (and they will argue, endlessly) whether man is responsible for whatever climate changes the earth is experiencing. But the alarmists and the deniers can agree that we are polluting too much and we must find ways to generate energy in cleaner ways.

The question will be the expense of installing all this technology once we develop it.

The solution to global warming (assuming one is needed) lies with engineers, not with politicians.

Old-time obits

A year or so ago, my brother the family geneaologist gave me a copy of the obituary/news story from a hundred years ago that detailed the demise of one of our ancestors. Some quotes from the Gallipolis Daily Tribune:

(WARNING: Contains violent images)

... He had been drunk all day Sunday and had rolled his coat up and put it under his head for a pillow and laid down along side the track just off of Fourth Avenue, back of Mrs. Mitchell's, along side the Pine Street cemetery.

The engineer saw him as the train rounded in close toward the depot, but could not stop his train. The wheels did not hit him but some projecting bar from the axle did, and his skull was so badly crushed that the contents of his skull all ran out where he lay.

... He is supposed to be about 45 years old and left beside Hugh, brothers Joseph and Edward, the latter at the Athens Hospital. (Note: I assume that refers to the former warehouse for the mentally ill, a truly horrifying place by today's standards) ...

...He was industrious and clever when sober, but was addicted to drink. ...

We don't write news stories or obits like that anymore.

Don't break the Promise

So Gov. Joe Manchin has floated the idea of tying Promise scholarships to recipients' willingness to live or work in West Virginia after receiving their degrees. I have a few thoughts on that, and I'd like to get some of yours:

-- This sounds good for the interior counties, but in the border counties, it's close to impossible to implement honestly. A person can live in Huntington and work in Ashland, or he can work in Huntington and live in Proctorville.

-- It sounds to me like the guv wants to reduce the Promise payouts.

-- Promise is funded through those video poker machines you find in every neighborhood. In 2001, then-Gov. Bob Wise made a deal with the public. If he could get rid of gray (illegal but in the open) machines and replace them with state-regulated machines (remember "reduce, restrict, regulate," or something like that), then he would see to it that our best high school graduates would get free tuition in college. Because a lot of kids qualified for Promise, the state has been raising requirements in order to keep its costs down.

-- When my 10th-grade daughter heard about Manchin's idea, she wondered if she would even bother applying to Marshall. So far her choices have been Marshall (she lives close to it) or Ohio State, where she would try to live with her one of her favorite aunts. If West Virginia is closing off this pay-for-achievement program, why bother even looking at Marshall, she asked.

-- Video lottery sunsets in 2011 or 2012, and some places are trying to get rid of it even earlier. Kanawha County wants to eliminate video lottery in favor of sending its resident gamblers to the dog track casino. If there is sentiment against renewing video lottery, then the state will either have to eliminate Promise or find another funding source.

-- Although the original deal was Promise-for-video lottery, the Legislature keeps finding new uses for video lottery revenue. Perhaps Manchin has ideas for other use of Promise money, and he needs to restrict the Promise payouts to do them.

We'll have more reporting on this in The Herald-Dispatch soon. I have a hard time believing Manchin's proposal will get a lot of support unless he's got a tasty carrot in there somewhere.

Rust Belt thinking

West Virginia will play a negligible role in this year’s presidential primary process, but it could still be vital to both major party candidates should we have another close election, as we had in 2000 and 2004.

But what about 2012, when whoever is elected this year is likely to run for re-election? Based on an analysis of population trends by Election Data Services and Polidata, two Washington-area demographics firms, the Mountain State will still be necessary in a close election.

According to the firms’ analysis, West Virginia should retain its three seats in the U.S. House of Representatives after the 2010 census is completed and the federal government divides the 435 available seats. Kentucky also should retain its six seats, while Ohio could lose two seats and drop to 16.Among the other states, Texas could pick up four seats, Florida and Arizona two and North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Utah, Nevada and Oregon one each.

Like Ohio, New York could lose two seats, while Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Illinois, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Louisiana and California could lose one each.

Many of the states that could lose seats are like West Virginia in that their traditional economies have been heavily invested in smokestack industries. West Virginia is striving to be more like the Carolinas, where financial services and newer industries are driving the economy.

At its heart, however, West Virginia remains committed to the old manufacturing economy, even though that’s not coming back. The state cannot shake its anti-business, anti-risk attitude. It has a very hard time accepting new ideas and new ways of doing things.

But let's face this fact: No one is going to build a big steel mill along the Ohio River and employ 3,000 people. Those days are over. But people want those smokestacks to come back, just as some people in Huntington want the city to revert to its 1950s self. That’s not going to happen.

That’s why a couple of items mentioned by Gov. Joe Manchin in his State of the State address on Wednesday could be steps toward joining the newer economy. Manchin’s program includes $50 million for higher education research, which he hopes will grow to an $100 million fund once state money is matched with private donations. He also wants to allocate $30 million for job training centers at community and technical colleges.

Is this realistic, or is it pork? We'll have to wait and see.

One thing is sure. We can’t wait for someone from outside to invest billions in new old-line manufacturing. Success in the future economy depends on intellectual capital. That includes strengthening research efforts at the state’s universities, and it means a well-staffed and adaptable community and technical college system to provide workers with skills the future economy will need.

Will West Virginia as a whole recognize that need? And if we have the resources for job training, will we take advantage of them?

One thing I know. We can't expect to benefit from the new until we're willing to give up some of the old.

WV academic achievement gets an F

I have three children in Cabell County public schools. One is in high school, one is in middle school and one is in elementary school. In the 11 years I have been so close to the school system, I have seen things that have pleased me greatly and things that have disappointed me severely.

Having said that, let's move on to this story from the AP:

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — A new national study praises West Virginia’s education policies with an A grade, but gives the state’s schoolchildren an F for classroom achievement.

Though the state is succeeding in setting high standards, students aren’t yet achieving high academic marks, according to Education Week’s “Quality Counts 2008” report released Wednesday.

Nationally, the state’s eighth-graders rank 47th in math and 43rd in reading, while fourth-graders rank 40th in reading and math. Those rankings are based on cumulative student scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress test from 2003-2007.

Overall, the state’s grade of B-minus topped the national average, a C. High marks in standards, assessment, accountability and the state’s policy of financial equity provided a counterbalance to the low achievement numbers.

“West Virginia is very low-performing when you look at K-12 achievement, and that’s not going to surprise a lot of people,” said Christopher Swanson, one of the study’s authors and director of the editorial project at the Education Research Center.

“Unfortunately, we have to be patient if we want to see wholesale and very visible improvements to achievement. It can happen, but it takes time.”

In five years, West Virginia’s schools may be substantially improved if they follow current policy mandates, Swanson said.

In five years, my 10th grader and my 8th grader should be out of the public schools, and my 2nd grader should be in middle school.

I really wish I could put my finger on exactly what it is that bothers me about the public schools. I wish teachers knew more about their subject areas and I wish they could be held accountable, but the big deficiency is in how to get kids to want to learn. As they say, you can lead a kid to water, but you can't make him think. And even kids who do want to learn can be stymied by the system's desire to teach to the middle.

I will have more on this in an editorial running in the next few days.

Why WV has an infinitesimal GOP

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — Republicans in the House of Delegates hope to persuade fellow legislators to abolish West Virginia’s business franchise and grocery taxes and allow for the nonpartisan election of judges.

The items are among two-dozen in an agenda that House GOP members unveiled Monday. The 60-day regular session begins Wednesday.

Other goals include requiring a two-thirds majority to pass any future tax hikes, and a law to limit government growth to the rate of inflation.

Those items may require a constitutional amendment. Another proposed amendment would ban same-sex marriages.

West Virginia has been reducing the food tax and the franchise tax, which is based on a business’ net equity.

Republicans hold 23 of 100 seats in the House.

Oh how I wish this state had a viable second party. If this is the best the state Republican Party can dish out, no wonder it has as much chance of being influential as I do winning Miss America.

What should Republicans work on? How about the conservative/libertarian mantra of smaller government? Of fiscal responsibility?

Why not hit the Democrats on public school education by going for school choice and teacher (and administrator) accountability?

Yeah, yeah, take the sales tax off food, but get rid of the (Narf!) personal property taxes on cars and dogs. Give us something we can be excited about. Really, who in West Virginia even knows there's such a thing as a corporate franchise tax, and if they know about it, how many can accurately explain it?

Why isn't the party hitting Manchin with some low blows on his daughter's MBA? Why is it giving everyone involved in this a free pass? That's what big-time politics is, right? Scandals, quotes out of context and low blows?

West Virginia needs a viable second party. As long as the Republicans talk more about franchise taxes and nonpartisan election of judges than things people actually care about, they have forfeited the right to claim to be a viable second party.

Odds and ends 1/4/08

Something I need to ask about sometime:

Why are there so many branch banks around this area? There's one at 1st Street, and there's one being built on Pullman Square. In the past few years, 5/3 has added several. Go into any large food store, and you'll likely see a branch bank.

The obvious answer is that they make money. But how? And why now?

Remind me to ask a banker or other authoritative source that question sometime.

###

This was on cnbc.com. It's an interview with CSX Chief Michael Ward:

“But we’re expecting great growth in the coal market especially in the export market. The value of the dollar and the ocean freight rates have made American coal very attractive in Europe. In addition we’re seeing great growth in the ethanol business.”

Okay, because of the falling dollar, American coal is cheaper. The ethanol thing bugs me, though. I can't help believe that much of what's driving ethanol is political rather than economic, at least as far as using it for a motor fuel is concerned. The fact CSX is having "great growth" in the ethanol business makes me wonder what's coming. Let me do some research and think on that one for a day or two.

###

Uh-oh. Will people start looking at grocery retailers the same way they look at oil companies?

NEW YORK (AP) -- Consumers' willingness to spend more for food has been something of a pleasant surprise for supermarkets.

Although Wall Street analysts and investors worried last summer that grocers' sales and margins would shrink under the weight of food inflation, a review of the latest financial reports shows those concerns haven't played out. In many cases, supermarkets performed better toward the end of the year with profits climbing, revenues improving and share prices rising.

"Overall, it appears the supermarkets have been successful passing cost increases through" to consumers, said Morningstar analyst Mitchell Corwin.

If grocery stores posted milk prices on big signs outside the way gasoline retailers do, how would people react to changes in the price of milk, bread, eggs and breakfast cereal?

I'm serious. Granted, I can't fill the tank on my Ford Escape for less than $40 now. Granted, I buy a lot more gasoline in a week than I do milk. But I spend more each week on groceries than I do on gasoline.

Just asking. Maybe the populist John Edwards or newly minted populist Mike Huckaby can take this one one.

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One more thing about the previous item.

I pulled up the third quarter 2007 earnings statement for Marathon Oil. According to the numbers on that statement, Speedway earned about a 25.3 percent profit margin on general merchandise sales in its stores in the first nine months of 2007. In those same nine months, the company reported a profit of 11.15 cents per gallon.

11.15 cents is far, far from a 25.3 percent profit margin. Even if you add the 23.17 cent-per-gallon profit for refining and wholesaling, it's still far below 25.3 percent.

I am so in the wrong business, 1/3/08

CLEVELAND (AP) — Cleveland has prepared for its evening of Hannah-monium.Miley Cyrus -- TV’s “Hannah Montana” -- brings her sold-out concert tour to Quicken Loans Arena, which says all 16,000 tickets for Thursday’s show are spoken for.

... Two mothers say they brought their daughters from Athens, Tex., because they could get tickets for the Cleveland show for $65 each. They say resellers wanted $1,500 for upper-level seats in Dallas.

What mistake did I make in my past to not be (a) a teen singing sensation (b) a concert promoter or (c) a bankruptcy lawyer? The third one has nothing to do with the other two, but I saw some of the legal bills during the Special Metals bankruptcy case, and I want at least one of my three kids to become a bankruptcy lawyer so they can support me in my old age.

But concert promoter or ticket scalper sounds pretty good, too.

P.S. If, when I was 13, if I had told my parents I wanted to see John Hartford in concert and the only show I could afford was in Texas, they would have told me, sure, let's go.

Sure they would. As my mother often said, some people have more money than they have sense.

More reporting on coal

I want to do some original reporting this year on coal. It could be for this blog and its 14 readers (yes, we're up to 14 now). Or it could be for The Herald-Dispatch opinion pages.

Back in my reporting days, I always resented it when a big-city newspaper or tv show parachuted in and did a story about this area and then left.

I'm seeing a lot of that now with coal. Just before the Sago disaster, but particularly after, metro papers discovered that coal mining causes problems for the poor folks in Appalachia.

The most recent example I know of was this one in the Boston Globe. (Found courtesy wvablue.com).

This article appears to touch a lot of bases well. I recommend it. It avoids stereotypes that people used in the 1980s to describe Appalachia and the Ohio Valley.

There will be more of this type of article. We need them, from inside Appalachia and outside.

As I've said before, it seems as though we can't live with coal but we can't live without it.

Yeah, that's really deep. But I have a lot of thinking to do this year about coal. Any reasonable input is welcome, whether you're a coal executive or a tree hugger.

Jet planes and global warming

You know how a lot of global warming "deniers" like to talk about how "chickengreens" such as Al Gore talk a good talk about being carbon-neutral, but they continue to fly around the globe?

At Science Daily is an article about how aviation may affect global climate. The best sentence:

Scientists estimate that the effect of aviation emissions on the climate is up to five times the impact of emissions occurring on the ground.

So allow me to toast the Lear jet liberals who scold me about driving a four-wheel-drive SUV on hilly, snowy roads while they in one airplane flight probably produced more carbon dioxide than my late, lamented Jeep did on one year.

Before they talk about buying carbon offsets, I have a lot of trees on my property. I hate to cut any of them. I like trees. We need more trees. They inhale carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen.

If you're going to scold me for owning a Jeep, scold Brazil for allowing the destruction of the Amazon rain forest. And scold yourself if you don't have enough trees in your front yard.