Monthly Archive for August, 2006

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Does Virginia really have a State Climatologist?

Published by Waldo Jaquith on August 10, 2006 in Politics, UVa and Weather. 16 Comments

Charlottesville City Councilor Kevin Lynch has been quite taken with the story of UVa Professor and State Climatologist Patrick Michaels taking money from utilities. He raised some interesting questions in his comments on the story, and ended up spending a great bit of time investigating the history of Michaels ostensible position as State Climatologist. Funny thing — it sure looks like he is not, in fact, State Climatologist. What follows is Kevin’s article on the topic, the first in a two-part series.

Continue reading ‘Does Virginia really have a State Climatologist?’

Two School Board Election Systems Recommended

Published by Waldo Jaquith on August 7, 2006 in Education and Politics. 13 Comments

The Charlottesville School Board Election Task Force has recommended that we either modify our at-large election process for the school board or move to a mixed-ward system, John Yellig reports in today’s Progress. The group presented six options back in May, and has simply removed four of those options. The model most like our current at-large system would require that four of the seven seats represent four residential districts of the city. The mixed-ward system would elect three members at large and four by ward. It sounds the same, and that’s because it just about is: the only difference is that, apparently, residential districts would be drawn differently than wards.

Now it’s up to City Council to consider the task force’s recommendations and determine how future elections should work.

Meadowcreek, Not a Parkway?

Published by Waldo Jaquith on August 4, 2006 in Development and Transportation. 19 Comments

Opponents of the Meadowcreek Parkway — myself included — have long complained that the road is just a wedge that would be used to pry open the park and develop the land. But proponents came up with the parkway concept, meaning that the road would travel straight through the park without any possibility of intersections, driveways, etc. Now WINA reports that “an unnamed developer is offering to pay for a section of the Meadowcreek Parkway that goes through his land…in exchange for having access to the road for a project he’s planning.” My supervisor, Ken Boyd, says it’s worth considering, because it would save the county the expense of buying any of his land for the right-of-way.

Even ignoring the abdication of the parkway concept, accepting such a proposal would be against the entire point of the road: an A-to-B, no-delays-possible express route from downtown to uptown. It’s allowing development that has made the 29 250 bypass steadily less effective — every traffic light, feeder road, fast food joint and gas station creates cross traffic and the very delays that made people want to bypass 29 250 in the first place. Why would we do that to the Meadowcreek Parkway?

This is why we can’t have nice things.

Historical Posting, Comments Rates

Published by Waldo Jaquith on August 3, 2006 in Site News. 5 Comments

I was crunching some numbers on historic cvillenews.com comment rates today, so I figured I’d stick ’em on a graph and share them, on the off chance that anybody cares. This first one has two Y axes, plotting both the number of blog entries each month and the number of comments each month, spanning from the site’s 2001 beginning through July. It’s on a log-lin scale, with both Y axes logarithmic. You can click on it for an enlarged version.

Graph

This second graph, likewise log-lin, plots the X:1 ratio of blog entries to comments, again aggregated by month. A 1:1 ratio would mean that blog entries that month had, on average, one comment. A 75:1 ratio would mean that blog entries averaged 75 comments.

Graph

It’s interesting that, as time goes on, the fluctuation of comments more accurately trends the fluctuation in blog entries — that’s me learning what people like to talk about and focusing on posting those sorts of stories. Stepping through some of those comment peaks, generally they reflect some sort of big event going on — the coal tower killings, the 2002 City Council elections, the group of CHS students attacking UVa students, etc.

Albemarle County Fair Underway

Published by Waldo Jaquith on August 3, 2006 in General News. 16 Comments

Pirate ShipThe Albemarle County Fair is on. Though as Christina Tkacik says in today’s Progress, the heat isn’t real conducive to attending the fair, I say that just means you need to get another Sno Cone and hop back onto a fast-moving ride. My wife and I went last night (and I took some rockin’ pictures) and checked out the livestock and produce, did some people watching, played with baby ducks, shared a funnel cake and checked out all of the rides. It’s just 10 minutes south of town. Admission is $6 for adults and $2 for kids. It runs through Saturday.

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