In, around, and about Blacksburg, the NRV, and SW Virginia
I’M CONSTANTLY SURPRISED by the proliferation of niche blog communities.
Blacksburg’s Mosaic Yarn Shop has an active group of employee and customer bloggers, both discussing their craft and organizing large projects. There will be a showing of 32 blankets created as part of their “Knitting for Healing” project (in honor of the victims of the 4/16/07 tragedy) tomorrow at Cassell. See more photos of their work on flickr.
BASIC GAME THEORY principles suggest that by letting the beavers get away with stuff, other woodland critters are more likely to make trouble.
IN THE STANDARD TAXONOMY of political discourse, chanting ranks just above mime.
ON BUYOUTS and Beamer.
PHOTOS of the drained Duck Pond on the VT campus.
I’M USUALLY A FAN of apathy.
This surprised me a little:
In the New River Valley, seven of 17, or 41 percent, of the races for the board of supervisors or the town council are contested this year.
It would be nice if the response to this phenomenon was to shrink the local governments a bit.
MMMM… bison.
IN RESPONSE TO the Montgomery County PSA’s annual “tell us about your backflow” event, a description of what a backflow device looks like.
CNN’S REQUEST FOR EARMARK INFORMATION from Senators is ignored by Warner and rejected by Webb. It’s a good thing these guys don’t work for us or anything, because then they’d probably have to tell us what they were up to.
(H/T InstaPundit)
UPDATE: In the interest of completeness, note that Rep. Boucher failed to respond to CNN’s request for earmark data earlier in the month.
WARNER AND WEBB both voted against cloture on the amnesty bill. Webb appears to be on the record supporting a “secure the borders first” approach:
The immigration debate is divided into three separate issues. How can we secure our border? What should we do about the 11 million undocumented workers? And, lastly there is the guest worker question. It is necessary to separate out the 3 issues. Approaching the issue using an omnibus bill that attempts to solve all 3 issues simultaneously creates a political stalemate that delays the border security solution. Once the border is secure we can develop a fair solution to other immigration issues.
Warner made a similar statement in the context of last year’s immigration bill:
From the outset of this debate, I stated my firm belief that any legislative approach to providing overall immigration reform must rest on the foundation that we secure our borders, and then deal realistically with the millions of undocumented workers who are already in our country.
It remains to be seen whether the depth of their convictions will get tested before the ‘08 elections.
(H/T From on High)
UPDATE: More details on Warner and Webb’s prior immigration votes from New River Valley News. I’m somewhat ambivalent about legally designating English as the official language (out of a general preference for fewer laws), but this comment is telling:
Some senators voted for Amendment 1151 and Amendment 1384 so they could prevent English from becoming the official language of the U.S., yet be able to tell voters they voted to make English the official language of the U.S.
ON MY LONG-TERM TO-DO LIST: Learn to play the bagpipes. If nothing else, it will make the kilt easier to explain.
WILLIAM MORVA TO BE SENTENCED on his original attempted robery charge today.
VIRGINIA TECH FRESHMEN can live off campus? In spite of the impressive rate of dorm construction over the past few years, the campus is still 450 beds short. Of course, if it’s just beds that are the problem, perhaps some old traditions could simply be revived.
COMING UP: The Ruritan’s Fourth of July parade. Details on related events from the CT. On the day we celebrate gaining our independence from Britain, what could be more American than a Beatles tribute band?
JOBS UP STATEWIDE, but down a little in the NRV:
The unemployment picture was mixed in Virginia’s 10 metropolitan areas. Six had lower unemployment compared with April, and three were unchanged. The jobless rate rose from 4 percent to 4.2 percent in the Blacksburg-Christiansburg-Radford area because of layoffs in the motor vehicle and furniture industries.