Crime Maps

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Last Friday evening I received an email from Nathaniel Eliason of Hypothesis, a Winston-Salem-based web design firm, and in it he pointed me to winston-salem-crime.com which is a crime map that his firm designed for residents of Winston-Salem.  He must have also emailed Esbee because she posted it as well, and to be honest I guarantee you they got a lot more traffic from her than they will from me. By coincidence I stumbled across a Oakland crime map callled Oakland Crimespotting developed by Stamen Design. 

It’s interesting to see two firms using their expertise to provide a public service and at the same time show off their capabilities, and I do think this is a public service because it’s far easier to understand the crime data when you can see it presented graphically on a map.  Not sure why the city doesn’t offer this service themselves, but since they aren’t I’m glad someone’s doing it.

Evolution of a Great Young Man

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Michaelaugust07cropped2
Our oldest, Michael (pictured to the left), is 15 as of yesterday.  Below you’ll find pics of the boy who’s too quickly becoming a man.  Be fearful since he’s driving in less than a year, but also know that he continues to amaze his parents every day.  I doubt we could be prouder of what he’s continuing to make of himself and I know we’re both grateful for the kind, big-hearted young man he already is.  Happy b-day big guy.

Related: Last year’s birthday.  It all still applies, but even more so.  You’ll notice that I’m back to calling him Michael since his efforts to get us to call him Mike have failed miserably at home.  Also, if you don’t think kids change fast just check out the picture of him in last year’s post, taken in July, 2006 and the picture above which was taken in August, 2007.  I think he’s grown a foot.  The pictures below are Michael as a toddler, on his 7th birthday, on horseback in the summer of ’03 and Christmas, 2004.

MichaelbandwMichaelbday7    
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P1010143

links for 2007-09-07

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One More Sign of My Generation Gappage

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Rex Hammock loves Google Earth.  In his post about how cool the newest version of what he calls the "Best Program Ever" he writes this:

Not quite so significant, but really cool, the new version has a hidden feature, not publicized by Google: An F16 flight simulator, as described by a student in South Africa.
It was discovered by someone who — and hats off to you people who do
such things — held down the keys, Ctrl+Alt+A (or, if you’re running OS
X it’s Command+Option+A). I’m sure, if you’ve grown up playing
videogames or coding software, or whatever, you may think to click
Ctrl+Alt+A when you’re trying out software, but I’m always impressed
when I hear about the games developers play and the users who ask
themselves, “I wonder what will happen if I do this…?”

I think anyone who has a kid that plays video games has experienced a similar phenomenon.  On the rare occassion that I sit in with my kids to play X-Box they’ll invariably point their avatar towards some inanimate object, say a big rock, then press the A, B and Z buttons simultaneously which causes their avatar to do a flip while busting a massive fart that causes the rock to melt and reveal a hidden passage.  I ask them how they figured this out and they always say something like, "Well there’s no other way off this level so I figured there must be some way to get to the other level.  On my other game, ButtBlaster 5.0, if you hit A, B and Z you get a nuclear fart that kills the Super High Priest of Poop and those same guys made this game so I figured I could try the same thing on the rock."  This is said in about two nano-seconds as they can’t afford to be distracted from their conquest by actually engaging in thoughtful conversation (I’m convinced that commas aren’t used in communication by anyone under the age of 25) and after my brain has caught up with what they’ve said I decide that:

  1. My kids are destined to be much more successful than me.
  2. I need to leave the room immediately, grab a beer and do what any self-respecting American male over the age of 40 would do: watch football on that totally retro TV.

Self-Help Founder’s View on the Subprime Mess

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Patrick Eakes, a blogger in Greensboro whom I greatly respect, points to an interview with Martin Eakes, co-founder of Self-Help, in which he discusses the subprime mortgage conflagration.  It’s a Q&A that offers the clearest reasoning I’ve yet read about why some subprime borrowers truly are victims:

Q. Why should anybody, other than those who got the loans, care about subprime lending?

A.
The real damage from a foreclosure is not just to a family that loses
its home, but also to a neighborhood where the family is located.
Nobody wants to live near a boarded-up vacant house. … You have this
spillover effect from foreclosures. That spillover effect is really
quite deadly and causes a spiral that we have to concerned about.

Q. What about personal responsibility? Don’t those who took subprime loans bear some burden?

A.
The mortgage loan process is so complicated today. There is not a
person in America who can honestly say they read every legal form at a
home loan closing. Every borrower, if they’re honest, will tell you
they had to trust some adviser, whether an attorney, broker or lender
to guide them through the mortgage process. … They trusted the wrong
person and got a loan unsuitable for any human being that breathes.

I’m
in no way defending borrowers who lie or cheat or engage in fraud. …
But it really makes me angry when I see people blame the victim. That’s
just not the truth of what’s going on.

Oh, and one more thing: he thinks that the worst is yet to come in the subprime market.

FYI, here’s some info about Self-Help from their website:

Our Mission

Creating and protecting ownership and economic opportunity for
people of color, women, rural residents and low-wealth families and
communities.

The nonprofit Center for Community Self-Help
and its financing affiliates Self-Help Credit Union and Self-Help
Ventures Fund provide financing, technical support and advocacy for
those left out of the economic mainstream. Since its founding in 1980,
Self-Help has reached out to female, rural and minority borrowers
across North Carolina, in Washington, D.C., California, and many other
states.

  • We help borrowers nationwide to build wealth through ownership of a home or business.
  • We strengthen underserved communities by financing nonprofits,
    childcare centers, community health facilities, public charter schools
    and residential and commercial real estate projects.
  • We operate a secondary market program that enables private lenders to make more loans in low-wealth communities.

Over time we have learned, and demonstrated, that low-income
borrowers pose no greater credit risk than others. Our borrowers have
proven their determination to repay their loans, build their
businesses, improve their communities, and build wealth through home
equity.

 

Dear Hilliard Ohio School Administrators, Can I Buy You an Ounce of Common Sense?

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Some high school seniors in HIlliard, Ohio pulled off a new rendition of an old trick at their school’s football game.  In a nutshell they tricked fans of their rival school’s team into holding up black and white plackards in three sections of the stadium that spelled "We Suck" instead of the promised "Go Darby" (see video below). A similar trick was pulled on a much larger scale, and stage, at the 1961 Rose Bowl and in 2004 at the Yale-Harvard game.

The kids who planned this little senior prank said they expected punishment, but they got more than they bargained for.  Three days of in school suspension and a ban from all school activities for the remainder of the fall semester.  I buy the three days of ISS but banning them for the rest of the fall?  This is one of those pranks that should be held up as the right way to carry on a long-standing tradition of senior prankage.  No one got hurt, no animals were treated cruelly or unusually, and they didn’t damage any property so why the extreme punishment measures?

By comparison let me share some high school pranks from my day:

  • My freshman year the seniors planted a tree on the fifty yard line of our arch rival’s field the night before the big game.
  • That same year another school painted our school’s press box.  This was considered a particularly big deal since every summer the rising seniors painted the press box themselves.
  • If I remember correctly my brother’s freshman year was punctuated by the hanging of an animal, I believe a goat, from the school’s flag pole.

Property damage and animal cruelty were features of these pranks.  By comparison the kids in Ohio pulled off a prank that was benign and actually required a lot of thinking.  I expect they’ll go on to achieve greater things than any of their school’s butt-puckered administrators have.

Croc Hunter, Winston-Salem Style

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Esbee, a.k.a. Life in Forsyth, shares an email from Wake Forest News Service that warns folks about a two foot alligator in Lake Katherine at Reynolda Gardens.  The university police ask that you stay away from the gator and if you do see it to call them and report its exact location. 

To heck with that.  Daddy needs a new pair of shoes so I think it’s time to go hunting. 

But no, it seems I’m too late.  The butler did it (from the W-S Journal):

Van Walls, a butler
at Graylyn International Conference Center, across from Reynolda House,
found the alligator on the center’s driveway Sunday afternoon. He
spotted it after a woman came in saying she had just seen it crossing
Reynolda Road.

“It’s the only guest I ever had hiss at me before,” Walls said.

Walls threw his dress coat over the nearly 2-foot-long alligator before grabbing it by the back of the neck and tail.

Then he put it in a box and took it home.

He started calling such places as the N.C. Zoo near Asheboro in search of someone to take the critter…

Meanwhile, Wake
Forest University police had been on the lookout for the alligator
since Friday, after officers verified a reported sighting and spotted
it themselves.

It was seen soaking up some sun on a log in a pond on the grounds of Reynolda House.

Walls didn’t know
that authorities were looking for the alligator until a supervisor told
him yesterday that university officials sent a campuswide e-mail out
about the search for the alligator.

Walls then told campus police that he had the alligator.

Police alerted Matt
Craven, a local wildlife rehabilitator, who had been trying to catch
the alligator. Craven, who specializes in rescuing and moving reptiles,
went to Walls’ house last night and got the alligator, which appeared
to be healthy.

He then went back to
the Wake Forest campus to show the alligator to university police
before taking it to his home in Mocksville.

Man this story has everything.  It’s wild enough that there’s an alligator strolling across Reynolda but who knew that we still have butlers around?  And then the dude catches the gator and takes it home, but doesn’t know that Mocksville’s very own croc hunter is out looking for it so the school ends up sending out an alert warning people to look out for the man-eater. Well, maybe that’s a stretch.  Take a look at the Journal’s pic (taken by Walt Unks) of the critter and decide if you think it a man eater or an ankle biter:
Wsgator