B-sides, demos, outtakes and rarities from Thursday’s National Biological Armageddon Facility hearing hearing.
• The AJC’s Ken Foskett picked up on something I may have missed: it looks like the cost of building the NBAF rose from $525 million to $680 million. The higher figure is found here (click on site cost analysis and scroll down to page 27) in virtually illegibly small type buried at the bottom of an otherwise redacted chart. I guess that explains how I skipped over it, and why AJC reports make the big bucks. The Homeland Security guy I talked to today plead ignorance and said he’ll get back to me. I should have something for y’all early next week.
• I hung out with Bill Felber, a reporter at the Manhattan Mercury who’s done a great job capturing the feel of these hearings, and we handicapped the finalists chances. We agreed that Texas and Mississippi are 1A and 1B. He called Kansas a close third; I accused of him of being a homer. We also agreed that Athens is a longshot and North Carolina is out of it.
• Plum Island is out of it, too. A Homeland Security employee told me that site was placed on the list as a formality only because it’s the home of the Plum Island Animal Disease Center than NBAF will replace. If it had gone through the selection process like the other finalists, it never would’ve made the list. But safety is the No. 1 priority, haven’t you heard.
• UGA students proved once again that they don’t deserve a seat at the grown-ups’ table. “Look around you,” undergrad Laura Fleury said. “There are hardly any students here. That’s because they have no clue.” That quote is in the running for understatement of the year. Fleury bragged that her anti-NBAF Facebook page has more than 200 members. The page says Ebola, smallpox and anthrax will be studied at the lab. Next time you might want to get the facts before you make a fool of yourself, Laura.
Let there be light
You can look here to see whether any streetlights in your neighborhood are getting turned off in the Great Budget Crunch of 2008.
What you won’t be able to see, though, is whether your neighborhood is a high-crime area that might benefit from streetlights.
For weeks, Athens-Clarke Commissioner David Lynn has been asking staff for crime data maps he can lay on top of the streetlight maps, but for weeks the information is not forthcoming. He said he was so frustrated that he might file an open-records request, but he finally got what he wanted on Thursday.
Ironically, the police department recently unveiled a new Web site that combines Athens crime stats with Google Maps software to pinpoint the location of every crime in the city.
It makes one wonder why Lynn couldn’t get the information he’s looking for.
The jury is out on whether streetlights – or the lack thereof – have any impact on crime. I’m putting the Loopwabian Nation to work. Any studies you can dig up or anecdotes you want to send my way, hit up my in-box. It’s about time y’all got off your lazy behinds and pulled your weight around here.
The Michael Phelps of fundraising
Jim Martin’s Senate campaign came up with a clever Olympics-themed conceit in a Friday press release accusing Saxby Chambliss of being beholden to the dread “special interests.” They awarded medals to the industries – agribusiness, insurance, real estate, health care and oil – that contributed the most money to Chambliss' campaign.
No response yet from Team Saxby, but I’m sure it’s something along the lines of “Oh yeah? Well, you get the gold for supporting terrorism, and we’re going to use this small fortune on TV ads comparing you to Black September.”
On second though, I’m not so sure Team Martin wanted to wade into this water cube.
- Blake Aued's blog
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I'm moving to Texas
...and I always wondered why students received no respect when I went to UGA. That higher price tag is good news for whatever contracting firm wins the bid to the build the facility, wherever it goes. If it comes to Athens, that's great - more construction jobs. If not, well, add another expense paid by the federal government that you and I pay for.
If anyone needs me
I'll be at Popfest.
Don't forget your scarf.
Also, you'll want to roll up your pants cuffs or they won't let you in.
Looks like Laura Fleury has
Looks like Laura Fleury has no clue.
I just don't get some folks in Athens. They're all for creating new bus routes to get the homeless and unemployed from place to place. Yet when an opportunity to give jobs to some of those individuals, they scoff at it and grab their torches and pitchforks.
Laura Fleury really showed
Laura Fleury really showed herself to be foolish, and in public too. If that is the caliber of argument, no wonder the M & Commish aren't paying attention to them.
I really don't think NBAF will go to Mississippi; they don't have the human capital infrastructure to create the research synergy necessary.
It won't go to Kansas either, and I don't think it'll stay at PI either.
My money's on Texas, but San Antonio has rather a dearth of synergistic possibilities too.
If I were a betting (wo)man, I'd say the order is:
1) Texas
2) Athens
3) NC
4) Kansas
5) Mississippi
6) PI
Blake, Streetlights don't
Blake,
Streetlights don't matter or at least not enough to work about.
Here are a few bits from a couple of articles:
"At most, streetlighting was held to have a marginal and even then contradictory influence on the problems of crime and fear that people face." (Pain R, MacFarlane R, Turner K, Gill S, 2006, "‘When, where, if, and but’: qualifying GIS and the effect of streetlighting on crime and fear" Environment and Planning A 38(11) 2055 – 2074).
"Criminal activity did decrease disproportionately in the target area after intensive streetlight installation, but this decrease must be viewed as part of a general decline in the area over a longer period. Caution also must be exercised in attributing the cause of the post-installation decreases to the lights alone." (E B LEWIS ; T T SULLIVAN. "COMBATING CRIME AND CITIZEN ATTITUDES - A STUDY OF THE CORRESPONDING REALITY." JOURNAL OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE Volume:7 Issue:1 Dated:(SPRING 1979) Pages:71-79
Don't be a punk and copy that last bit into an article before the but...
I also want to vent a little on this streetlight topic. Blake you were at the commission meetings when they discussed this stuff.. you boss man who wrote the harsh editorials was even at one of those meetings so I hear. So why I ask do you (the ABH not Blake) not saying anything until this cut gets implemented. Anyone with an IQ of 35 or above would know the complaints to such a policy. But what does the ABH do, they fan the flames. This could have been discussed more by the paper. It was discussed in the meetings, the commissioners knew it would be popular, but there was no public outcry then. But now that we have to take our medicine for not wanting higher taxes we have a bunch of whiners. Either you get higher taxes or you get few streetlights. Sure they could have got rid of a fire truck instead, but the first time a house burnt down it would naturally be the fault of the cut (even if that truck doesn't put out house fires..only apartments and big box stores).
"But now that we have to
"But now that we have to take our medicine for not wanting higher taxes we have a bunch of whiners. Either you get higher taxes or you get few streetlights."
Somebody gets it and tells it the way it is.
Budget cuts
I wrote three or four articles about the budget cuts back in May, but with a list of about 100 there wasn't much I could do except hit the high points. I did mention streetlights, along with fireworks and a few others I expected to be controversial.
Not a single person got in touch with me to ask me for more detail about any of the cuts, so I could only assume that no one cared. On the other hand, I received dozens of calls and e-mails both for and against the poverty initiatives and the proposed tax hike.
For some reason people didn't start freaking out about the fireworks until weeks later. Same thing with the streetlights. I guess people pay more attention to word of mouth than the newspaper. I'm sure there are other ticking time bombs as well. I will be writing next week about how police plan to deal with the gameday traffic enforcement cuts (another thing mentioned in past articles but ignored) and that will cause mass panic as well. Then around October/November it'll be the leaf-and-limb cutbacks, also mentioned more than once.
Love for the Loop
“Though many students may be uninformed about the NBAF, deliberately trying to mislead other students into opposing the NBAF through scare tactics and falsehoods is downright embarrassing,” Red & Black columnist Chris Chiego writes.