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Guilford County Planning Board procedures, schedule, etc.
links for 2009-05-06
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Category Archives: Uncategorized
How Times Have Changed for Counties in NC
There's a cool graph at the Institute for Emerging Issues that shows changes in North Carolina counties from 1970 through 2030. The categories are population, population density and per capita income. What's really cool about the graph is that you can set it to play and it shows you how each county has changed in relation to the others over time. So you can see that a handful of "urban" counties were pretty much clustered together in terms of population in 1970, with Mecklenburg having 350,000 residents, Guilford 290,000, Wake 230,000, Forsyth 220,000 and Cumberland 210,000. Then in the 80s and 90s Mecklenburg and Wake literally exploded in population and that trend is expected to continue so that by 2030 Mecklenburg will have 1.39 million people and Wake will have 1.46 million people. Compare that to 590,000 for Guilford and 440,000 for Forsyth and I'd say we'll be living in a bucolic paradise by comparison.
The comparison of per capita income is also interesting. Here are the numbers in 1970
- Mecklenburg $4,300
- Forsyth $4,200
- Guilford $4,100
- Wake $4,000
- Cumberland $3,200
and compare that to today:
- Mecklenburg $48,600
- Wake $43,200
- Forsyth $38,500
- Guilford $38,500
- Cumberland $36,700
and 2030:
- Mecklenburg $77,200
- Wake $66,700
- Cumberland $61,100
- Guilford $58,100
- Forsyth $56,800
Things don't seem to be trending well for Forsyth, huh? Actually that's kind of simplistic thinking because you also have to take into account cost of living and I suspect that if Mecklendburg and Wake have almost 1.5 million residents apiece the cost of living there will be sky high. Of course that helps explain why the income for some smaller population counties like Orange and Chatham are expected to be higher than the counties like Guilford and Forsyth; work in Wake but commute from a more sedate county like Chatham (sedate being a relative term). Huh, sounds a lot like the Northern Virginia I left five years ago.
Headline of the Month Goes to WXII.com
The following headline appeared on WXII.com on December 27, 2008:
NC Man Turns Himself In After Beating Death
Personally, if I'd just beaten death I'd have gone out celebrating.
Sponsor JonLowder.com
There’s no simpler way to reach the most influential people in Forsyth County than sponsoring JonLowder.com. You can email me for details or connect with me at any of my online hangouts:
College Student Beats Old Incumbent for County Treasurer
A Dartmouth College junior and Democrat beat a 68-year old Republican incumbent to be treasurer of Grafton County, N.H. One deciding factor? A $51 ad on Facebook.
The defeated incumbent ain't happy and called the college kid a "teenybopper" and said she'd only won because "brainwashed college kids" had voted for the Democratic ticket. The college kid's reply: "I took advantage of new media, and she did not."
Hat tip to Ed Cone for the lead.
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Blog Action Day
One of my daily business reads is Web Worker Daily. Today they are participating in Blog Action Day (BAD) and their post about their effort is here. The theme of this year’s Blog Action Day is poverty and the folks at WWD turned their attention to Africa and I thought this excerpt to be very telling:
When it comes to web working, Africa is
one of the last frontiers. In most sub-Saharan African countries,
people tend to use mobile phones more than the Internet for
business-related activities and communications. Factors contributing to
this are high illiteracy rates and linguistic diversity. In addition,
the high cost of bandwidth and lack of infrastructure are a serious
problem. Many African countries also lack workers skilled enough in
information and communication technologies (ICT) for web working to be
a viable option. These factors are obstacles to adoption of the
Internet as a tool for business, but access to computers and the
Internet would contribute greatly to overcoming the obstacles that
hinder their adoption and use in the first place.
Humanitarian and international development
organizations know this, and are making efforts to get the continent
connected with the objective of reducing poverty, as illustrated by
this strategy of the UN Economic Commission for Africa:Access to Information > Knowledge
and Capacity > Innovation > Productivity > Growth >
Employment > Poverty Reduction
Later in the post the author goes on to describe some initiatives like One Laptop Per Child and Appfrica International that are trying to enable Africans to use IT to better their lives economically. Very interesting stuff.
According to the BAD site there are over 11,000 sites participating in the initiative. If you see one that is doing something you think is really interesting let me know in the comments or by email at jon.lowder AT gmail.com.
links for 2008-09-24
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A former teacher writes a book about how the education system is failing children. Sounds like it might be a depressing, but important read.
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A "hyperlocal" news site that's really a simple WordPress blog that has taken off.
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More humor re. the government's proposed bailout of the greedy bastards, er, Wall Street.
links for 2008-09-23
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Like shopping at thrift stores? Like bidding on eBay? Then you'll probably love Goodwill's online auctions.
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The number of households with parents or adult siblings moving in has grown quite a lot. Leading the way are parents moving in with their kids, up 67% to 3.6 million.
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A satirical take on Paulson's bailout request written as a Nigerian scam email.
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Diamond and Kashyap on the Recent Financial Upheavals – Freakonomics – Opinion – New York Times BlogWhat all this financial sector meltdown stuff means from the folks at Freakonomics.
links for 2008-09-22
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Workouts that don't require a gym. Includes yard work and prisoner workouts.
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Liking what Mark Cuban has to offer. I'd read his blog a while back but forgotten about it. Really glad I re-found it. This post is his suggestion on how to tax capital gains above a certain amount, or as he calls it "got lucky" money.
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I like Mark Cuban's take on the risk-reward decoupling in recent American biz history, and how that's contributed to a lot of the companies' failures. His suggestion of not allowing officers and boards of companies to be paid with stock (i.e. paid in cash only) is a good one I think.
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Attention all counterfeiters: head to Food Lion, or at least the one in Roanoke Rapids. That's where a clerk accepted as payment a $200 bill with George W. Bush's picture on the front and a picture of the White House with lawn signs in front of it on the back. Oh, and you'll get change too.
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Jeff Jarvis does a great job of explaining how his interests and those of his insurance company and health care providers are misaligned, and how things could be so much better for everyone. Of course his argument applies to everyone in the US health care system.
Befuddled 