In, around, and about Blacksburg, the NRV, and SW Virginia
WHERE THE WOMEN ARE. Note the small red blob on Roanoke. A more detailed map here reveals that Montgomery County fares less well. (Not a surprise to alums of VT Engineering.)
There’s a lot of other interesting stuff on the strange maps site, including these maps that link states to countries with similar characteristics.
WELCOME BACK PICNIC for VT alums and Hokie fans, August 12 at Cassell.
Also: Confirmation that Tech will play in the Great Alaska Shootout.
UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE: RTD’s Barticles stumbles upon a solution.
On a related note, Brink Lindsey offers this bit of reality:
On the one hand, since 1960 federal tax receipts have bobbed around between 17 and 21 percent of GDP (the current ratio is 18.5 percent). On the other hand, projections based on historical trends show that Medicare and Medicaid spending will skyrocket from 4.2 percent of GDP in 2005 to 11.5 percent in 2030 – a jump of over 7 percentage points. Unless, against all odds, Americans prove amenable to massive tax hikes of historically unprecedented and economy-crippling proportions, our commitments under existing health-care entitlement programs are going to have to be thoroughly restructured (i.e., reduced).
It’s hard for a small town to reinvent itself as a tourist destination when its main attractions are falling apart.
I’m generally skeptical of attempts to re-brand remote historical places as tourist attractions, but stories like this are still sad.
YESTERDAY was Cost of Government Day, for both the US and the state of Virginia. Assuming that your income in spread evenly thoughout the year, you get to keep the fruits of your labor for the rest of the year. Well, except for property tax. And sales tax. And, for some, local income tax. And hidden costs of subsidies, tariffs, regulations, and other market distortions. But other than that, it’s all yours.
PANDAPAS POND in black and white.
Just up the road a bit, the RT has an interesting piece on the natural cycles of Mountain Lake:
Scanland said surveyors in the 1700s reported the lake to be as large as 50 acres, while surveyors in the 1800s reported it as only a pond (the former name of Mountain Lake was Salt Pond).
This proves that the lake is a natural oddity that will have its ups and downs, Scanland said.
Though the lake is half-empty, Scanland prefers to look at it as half-full. He said he is confident the water will return again: “You just have to look back and say, ‘Nature is the one that’s in control of Mountain Lake.’ “
Long-term variability in natural systems is a concept that too often gets treated as heresy these days.
ON THE LOCAL HEALTH CARE FRONT, more good news: A new Carilion Medivac base moving to a site just outside of Radford.
(Earlier health-related news here.)
VIRGINIA tops Forbes’ list of best states for business. Virginia Virtucon opines:
My guess is, business likes to be left alone and the divided government we have right now makes sure that almost nothing except that for which there is broad consensus gets done.
The “Business Cost Ranking” score is troubling, but probably also represents an opportunity for regions of the state that are less “blessed” with cost-inflating boondoggles and local governments that try to micromanage development.
CNBC has been working their way through a similar list this week. I believe Utah (#2 on Forbes’ list, #3 on CNBC’s) was today, so perhaps Virginia will be up either tomorrow or Friday.
CELLULOSIC ETHANOL PRODUCTION research moves forward at Tech:
The partnership, first established in 2005, seeks to find methods of producing ethanol from cellulosic biomass by focusing on four areas: steam explosion for pre-treating the biomass; advanced enzymes for hydrolyzing steam exploded biomass; a composite predictive model coupling with economic analysis; and finally scaling up of steam explosion, hydrolysis and fermentation.
This is particularly useful in light of the potentially devastating side-effects of the current corn-based ethanol mania, which is essentially based on the brilliant idea of losing money while burning food.
WILD PINK. I had seen these in the woods by the house and along the Huckleberry Trail, but never bothered to find out what they were. (I suspect that these may actually be Fire Pink — Silene virginica — rather than Silene caroliniana. But my expertise on plants, and living things in general, is about nil.)
The Blue Ridge Gazette is a great source for a daily dose of frequently stunning photography from around the region.
PATHETIC SCORES on earmark (pork) reform for Virginia’s senators. John Warner ambles across the finish line at 25%, voting in favor of three of the twelve recent amendments aimed at reform. I first assumed that Jim Webb’s score of 0% was a data fault, caused by his relatively recent entry into the world’s greatest deliberative body. It seems, however, that he simply failed to get out of the gate, having voted against reform on each of seven opportunities.
This sort of thing is indicative of the political class’s growing arrogance and contempt for voters and taxpayers. Perhaps the problem is that the latter has become too small a subset of the former.
(H/T: InstaPundit)
HOKIE BASKETBALL: Lots of questions.
This would be interesting:
Greenberg said Tech might play in the Great Alaska Shootout, held Nov. 20-24 in Anchorage. Plans could be finalized in the next two days. The 30th annual tournament’s field already includes Washington State, Butler, Texas Tech, Gonzaga, Michigan, Liberty and Western Kentucky. If the Hokies play in Alaska, they will have a short turnaround before their Nov. 28 game at Penn State in the ACC/Big Ten Challenge.