The Dolphins signed Karlos Dansby. The Jets signed Antonio Cromartie. The Pats locked down Tully Banta-Cain and Vince Wilfork.
The Bills interviewed a guard from the Chiefs, and signed a journeyman right offensive tackle from the Raiders. Woo-hoo.
Buffalo Bills Free Agency Fever! Catch It!
In a city like Buffalo, with a rapidly shrinking population and over ten thousand vacant homes, you know what we really need? New housing construction!
This week, the Buffalo News is running a series of articles on real estate development in the city, the majority of which is heavily taxpayer subsidized. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.
The general theme of the articles is that the subsidies work, somewhat, but that the subsidized housing still has a pretty high foreclosure rate. And, more importantly, it’s not drawing people back in from the suburbs. Rather, neighborhoods like University Heights are heading downhill because their more stable inhabitants are leaving for places like Sycamore Village. And as usual, pastors like Pridgen and Stenhouse are in the middle of everything taking their cut.
It’s got to be an interesting line to walk as a developer. You can’t build anything too expensive, because in a city where you can buy a nice old house in a good neighborhood for $80k, you’re not going to be able to sell a McMansion in a former slum for $250k. And you have to make the housing available for all different income classes, or it just turns into a gated community and doesn’t help the surrounding neighborhood. It’s a fine line.
Your assignment for today: Compare and contrast The 1812 Overture and Stairway to Heaven.
And…go.
Let’s hear it for the wonders of social networking. A gunner in the Israeli military has been removed from combat duty and sentence to ten days in jail for posting details of a planned West Bank raid as his Facebook status.
And people wonder why the US military was so hesitant to give access to social networking sites to their soldiers in the field. Just when you think someone wouldn’t possibly be dumb enough to, oh, post troop movements on the Internet, it happens.
IT World is the sort of IDG trade rag that starts showing up in your mailbox about thirty seconds after you get your first job in the exciting world of high technology. Still, though, they do have an interesting article or two every once in a while.
Vivek Kundra, the Federal CIO, was talking at a Washington state college about some of the inefficiencies in the federal government that could be addressed with a better IT infrastructure and workflow.
It takes the Veteran’s Administration 160 days to process benefits for veterans, he said. “That’s because the Veteran’s Administration is processing paperwork by passing manila folders from one desk to another,” Kundra said. Sometimes that involves sending a folder via UPS to another office.
That’s okay, though. I hear they’re on the edge of a major breakthrough – something called a “Facks” machine. I hope I spelled that right.
Another day, another set of protests in California. This time it was students rallying on UC campuses and trying to block freeways in protest of state funding cuts for public higher education.
It’s weird, isn’t it? You set up something like Prop 13 to cap property taxes, which limits the amount of money the state has to work with, and then continue spending like a drunken sailor on shore leave. Eventually you run out of money. That’s just odd.
Oh, well, at least everything is okay here in the Empire State. After all, the governor’s attempts to address the ridiculous budget crisis here – a budget that, constitutionally, must be passed on April 1 – have been completely derailed by claims that he may have accepted free Yankees tickets. Let’s just worry about that for a while. The nine billion dollar deficit will just take care of itself, I guess.
Anyone got a fiddle?
Orange, California is locked in a legal battle with a homeowner. The issue? The couple pulled out their traditional front yard and replaced it with wood chips and drought-resistant foliage instead.
Personally, I think it looks nice in the photo accompanying the article. And I’m impressed that they cut their water consumption by 75%. The neighbors aren’t complaining. But the law says that 40% of the yard be landscaped predominantly with live plants, and so they’re headed to court.
Complete lunacy.
An excellent post on the Smoking Gun:
In a bold and bizarre attempt to destroy evidence seized during a federal raid, a New York City man grabbed a flash drive and swallowed the data storage device while in the custody of Secret Service agents, records show.
That’s going to hurt. Soon.
On a significantly less offensive note, here’s an interesting link.
This fellow took the Time Magazine list of the 100 best English language novels, and went hunting for unflattering reviews of them on Amazon. Classic.
My personal favorite is a review of Lord of the Flies:
“I am obsessed with Survivor, so I thought it would be fun. WRONG!!! It is incredibly boring and disgusting. I was very much disturbed when I found young children killing each other. I think that anyone with a conscience would agree with me.”
Who says the American educational system is failing?
An adjunct professor of art at Towson University has been fired after referring to himself as “a nigger on the corporate plantation” in a discussion about the representation of power in art.
The firing occurred summarily, over the telephone, and with no formal hearing. I don’t think the college could have reinforced his point any better if they’d set out to do it.
Speaking as a sometime adjunct, it is truly amazing how much colleges depend on us and yet how little regard we are held in.