Atlanta
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A handy link for househunters
It seems that one can search country property records online, Dekalb County (Georgia) is here.
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Your tax dollars at work
In the form of a brazen retirement scam at the Fulton County Clerks office. Basically the old clerk retires and her successor hires her back at $55 an hour.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution learned through open-records requests and interviews that Hicks is working without a contract, that her new job has no written goals or deadlines and has delivered no tangible work product in six months of employment.
All this and the roads aren’t fixed.
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Tuesday link clearing festival
- Noir is a new club/restaurant in Atlanta that just opened up, decorated entirely in a film noir motif. They have movie nights too. Sounds perfect for me. The AJC review is here.
- WikiBroker and Zillow seem quite handy as well. The Zillow link is set to where I am thinking about moving.
- Robert Patterson (a blogger new to me) posts this excellent link to the Battle of Algiers.
- The Chinese ARE building the first affordable electric cars! Which is one of my predictions from a while back.
- Curiously underreported story about Global Warming.
These graphs were created by NASA’s Reto Ruedy and James Hansen (who shot to fame when he accused the administration of trying to censor his views on climate change). Hansen refused to provide McKintyre with the algorithm used to generate graph data, so McKintyre reverse-engineered it. The result appeared to be a Y2K bug in the handling of the raw data. . . .
NASA has now silently released corrected figures, and the changes are truly astounding. The warmest year on record is now 1934. 1998 (long trumpeted by the media as record-breaking) moves to second place. 1921 takes third. In fact, 5 of the 10 warmest years on record now all occur before World War II.
- PurpleSlog responds to my 8 Random Facts Question. His blog tagline is now “Accepting the World As It Is Until Robots Get Better”
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Jury Duty Again!
And only two years after the last time.
And question #4 on the questionnaire (along with name, address, etc) is “Are you Hispanic?”
Weird.
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Saturday link roundup
- A nice how-to on HDR photography
- Survivorman is blogging again!
- The greatest living American you’ve never heard of.
- The world’s stupidest Fatwas, my favorite –
Many Muslims believe that unmarried men and women should not work alone together—a stricture that can pose problems in today’s global economy. So one Islamic scholar came up with a novel solution: If a woman were to breast-feed her male colleague five times, the two could safely be alone together.
The injuction against the Polio vaccine is scary though.
- It seems that tires will outlive us all
- More on the Kathryn Johnson case
- A Slate article on the ethanol haters, of which I am one. He leaves out the fact that creating ethanol takes more energy than it produces.
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Quick Thursday links
- The linguistic capabilities of the candidates
- A story about the old Pullman yards I explored a few months ago. Photo gallery here.
- ASP.net and Validation Groups – I can’t believe I didn’t know about this earlier.
- The NYT breathlessly points to a supposed new trend in econ departments. Intelligent Design is a new trend in biology in the same way I suppose.
- E-Prime is the way to go
- Austin Bay has seven possibilities for Iraq. Number one is the most likely I think.
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A good time was had by all
My first ever gig at Limerick Junction was a success. Everyone seemed to have a good time. The songs “I Miss Ronald Reagan” (written by Tommy Womack) and my song “Heroin and Cheetos” seemed to go over particularly well. My would-be guitar showcase of Bonaparte’s retreat fell a bit flat. The room sounds noticeably different when full than when half full and that threw me off a bit as the set progressed.On the whole a good night. The A-Sides rocked as usual. The photo was taken by my brother, who also recorded the show.
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Come see me play tonight
If you’re in Atlanta come out and see me play in my first ever scheduled gig this Sunday at Limerick Junction Pub. I’ll be going on at 8:00. Atlanta legends the A-Sides are the headliner.
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Local drug war update
Today’s newspaper brought mixed results. The Atlanta Police Department does seem to be cleaning itself up, indeed, much more than I expected. However, I haven’t read anything about any sort of judicial accountability; they’re the ones who approve the warrants, seemingly without even looking at them.
Rant Starts
Meanwhile, people like this guy send exactly the wrong message with his “How not to get busted” DVD series. The point of drug legalization is not to evade the law or get high, it’s to live in a free society where people can make their own mistakes and take responsibility for them. Instead we revive the notion of demonic possession in the form of “addiction” which is a “disease”, which is at the same time pitiful and criminal and a reason to treat us all like children in the hands of an all-knowing state.The end result of protecting people from the consequences of their actions is to fill the world with fools, and that seems to be what we’ve done.
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Starting somewhere
I came across an interesting article on AJC.com about a couple in Grant Park trying to erect a windmill on their own property. For those who don’t know, Grant Park is a tony neighborhood near the center of Atlanta that prides itself on diversity. Like most areas that pride themselves on diversity, it’s composed largely of childless college-educated types who overwhelmingly vote for the Democratic party.
Needless to say the neighbors are contesting the windmill. While they’re organized enough to put together a website, they don’t seem to be organized enough to utilize the Coase Theorem. Needless to say, I’m for them erecting the windmill on their own property.
Before anyone asks, wind power is usually much more efficient (per dollar) than solar energy, and also has a much lower starting price. Also, modern windmills are geared to prevent fast rotation which protects birds.