How Our Paper Is Recycled

Published by Waldo Jaquith on February 27, 2008 in General News. 5 Comments

Speaking of recycling, Scott Weaver surveys the state of C’ville paper use and recycling in the current C-Ville Weekly. Despite being in the thick of the electronic age, the amount of paper being used continues to climb. Though, interestingly, the amount of newspaper being processed by the RSWA is actually dropping.

I chalk it up to old folks (as does Weaver). I bought a laser printer a year and a half ago and I haven’t even burned through the demo cartridge that came with it. It’s been out of paper for two months, but I haven’t bothered to buy paper.

X Lounge Spams Thousands of UVa Staff

Published by Waldo Jaquith on February 27, 2008 in Law and Justice and UVa. 31 Comments

In one of the stupidest moves I’ve seen a local business make in a long time, the X Lounge blanketed UVa with spam today, apparently sending thousands of e-mails to UVa employees. The 7.1kb message appeared to originate from The Event Company, who shares an address with the downtown restaurant. The e-mail didn’t even make a gesture at compliance with the CAN-SPAM Act, the federal law that makes precisely this sort of thing illegal. It appears that all e-mail addresses were harvested from UVa’s online staff phone book, which is maintained for the convenience of employees. I received the e-mail via a UVa address that I do not use for anything. I don’t give it out, I don’t send e-mail under it, and the only place it’s listed anywhere is in that UVa LDAP directory.

The X Lounge can expect a pretty stiff upbraiding from UVa’s network administrators tomorrow. If they’re lucky, they may get off with reimbursing the university for their bandwidth costs. But if they catch the UVa postmaster on a bad day — and with the number of complaints bound to roll in, it may be a bad day tomorrow, indeed — they may find themselves on the wrong end of a formal complaint to to the Federal Trade Commission.

Writing a script to dig through UVa’s staff directory and then sending e-mail to every one of them is both illegal and a really, really bad idea. It takes a special kind of stupid not to know that.

Serial Rapist DNA Lawsuit Dismissed

Published by Waldo Jaquith on February 27, 2008 in Law and Justice. 21 Comments

The lawsuit over the serial rapist DNA testing has been dismissed, CBS 19 reports. Larry Monroe filed a lawsuit against the city in 2004 after being compelled to submit to DNA testing on the basis of his race and sex, even seeking class action status a year later. CBS 19 does not, oddly, say why the suit was dismissed, but does point out that Monroe can still appeal.

It was just yesterday that Nathan Antonio Washington was sentenced after being arrested on the basis of DNA evidence, though that DNA evidence did not result from the widespread testing of black men. The woman who gave police the crucial tip received a $60,000 reward today.

“No Trespassing” at Forest Lakes

Published by Waldo Jaquith on February 27, 2008 in Development and Transportation. 35 Comments

Steve Ashby writes:

The Forest Lakes Neighborhood Association has placed NO TRESPASSING signs at two extremes of the walking trails behind Baker-Butler Elementary School in Proffit. These trails provide access to the school from four subdivisions (Jefferson Village, Chesterfield, Langford Hills, Forest Lakes North) and Proffit Road. The signs prevent legal pedestrian access to Forest Lakes and force non Forest Lakes middle school students from healthy bicycle/foot access to Sutherland Middle School onto buses. The option to bike on Proffit Road and U.S. 29 is just too dangerous for our kids. The streets in Forest Lakes are state-maintained, public rights-of-way. All this seems down right unneighborly.

I have made a short and silly VodCast, “Noise in the Wood“, about this development-developement.

Serial Rapist Sentenced

Published by Waldo Jaquith on February 26, 2008 in Law and Justice. 21 Comments

Nathan Antonio Washington was sentenced to four life terms this afternoon, Rob Seal writes in the Daily Progress. Just before his sentence was read, the notorious serial rapist said to the judge: “I didn’t mean for these things to happen they way they did. I had no self-control. I always thought I was good, until I was tempted.” Oddly, he only pleaded guilty to five rapes, with Seal writing that “a sixth attack will not be pursued.” Lab results will show whether he should also be charged with a 1997 rape in Waynesboro.

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