Rotors: I, II, II at M, B, M

J Q W Z D V

K K

P D H

M M D Q S

D I

P N X K X

Q A X Q

E T N

L T A H S A

A Visitor from 1919

I got a thin, well-worn penny in change at the Safeway this noon when I bought my little salad. It looked elderly to me, so I shuffled the other quarters and dimes out of the way with a slight shake of the hand that cupped the change. When I saw the coin clearly, I was looking at the "tails" side and saw the twin wheat sheaves. I knew I had an early one. This coin is from 1919, which makes it one of the oldest I've seen.

Oh, For Jack's Sake!

Sometimes a headline is just perfect:

Suit tries to put the 'Christ' back in 'Halloween'

This was the headline on an AP story on the News Journal web site this afternoon. A family in suburban Philadelphia are suing school officials because their 10-year old wasn't allowed to dress as Jesus Christ for Halloween.

The school has a policy against promoting specific religions, according to the story, and "the boy and his mother are Christians who object to the pagan elements of Halloween."

If I may be multiply politically incorrect for a moment, let me say that here we have dueling stupidness.

Christian fundamentalists, please calm down. It's Halloween. Just a day when kids put on costumes and ask for candy. Grow up and let the kids be kids.

School administrators, settle down too. If the boy wants to dress as Christ, let him. If he's proselytizing and annoying the other kids, I suspect they'll sort the little prick out in their own way. There's no reason to let this escalate into a media case.

This is just so stupid. And now we have a story for everyone to comment on. This will not go well.

Though it does give me a great example of what depresses me about the anonymous commenting on the News Journal web site. Someone calling him- or herself SaneHatter had this to say:

GOOD! About time people of Christian faith stood up to the anti-christian morons in this country with their hypocracy and whinny crybaby I'm offended crap. God bless you son, may you win many times over.*

I followed the links back to the whole wonderful collection of SaneHatter's thoughts. This is a very unpleasant and angry person.

* (No, I did not bother to edit for spelling or grammar)

SiriuXM? I Say "Yes!"

There's word this evening that Sirius and XM, the two satellite radio competitors, plan a "merger of equals." Looking at this from a purely personal standpoint, I think this could be a very good thing.

Sirius and XM said as a result of the merger it hoped to offer listeners an "a la carte" option, allowing them to pick and choose the channels they wanted, such as Sirius' "Martha Stewart Living Radio" or XM's "Theme Time Radio Hour" with music legend Bob Dylan.

I like this idea. I chose Sirius based on their jam-band and NPR offerings. I regret the fact that all the baseball games are on XM, now maybe I will have a chance to get those as well.

Some object to this merger based on the idea that it would create a monopoly which might result in higher costs to consumers. That's a valid concern, but I think it would be worth it if we, as listeners, get a wider range of choices.

Our First Husband/Wife Blogging Combo?

I was pleased last month to discover Dino's Journal, a blog by an Indonesian gent who has moved to Newark to work on his MBA at the University of Delaware. This week-end, my internet drift-net caught a post by Dina Hakimi, who had posted a photo of Lehigh Road, in Newark.

Her "About Me" includes a note that she is from Yogyakarta, Indonesia. How many Indonesians, and from that city, I wondered, can there be in Newark?

So I read on and discovered that Ms. Dina is married to Mr. Dino. He refers to her as Mita and includes her in his blog-roll.

It has me wondering whether there are any other husband/wife bloggers in Delaware.

Meanwhile, it will be interesting to read the impressions of two very new newcomers to our little state.

Photo-Haiku #1

Ocean Beach, Winter.
Three shells washed onto the sand.
Wind blows. Time passes.

Is It Something About Places Called Delaware?

My standing Google search for Delaware mentions turned up a posting from a blog called "I Live in Delaware County" today that had me fooled for a moment. I thought I'd discovered a new Delaware Blog.

The title -- Sounding off on "Sound Off" -- threw me off.

One of Delaware's two daily newspapers, the State News, features a regular "Sound Off" column in which readers can call in, anonymously, and comment. It's a good example of just how foolish you can be when you are speaking anonymously.

It turns out that the Daily Times in Delaware County features that same low level of public input. At least according to one Delaware County blogger:

Sound Off is supposed to be a part of the paper that gives a chance for the "people" to speak. The problem with that concept, however, is that the average person is completely stupid and misinformed and basically just wants to read their messages in the paper the next day.

That sounds so familiar, though I will admit that I haven't read the Sound Off column in the State News for years. I can't take it. I do still read some of the comments on the News Journal's web site, though it pains me.

Here's an example:

What a friggin moron. Gives a false name, most likely an undocumented alien, and a total moron to boot. Why is it that the second I read " a Georgetown man", did I suspect he was going to be hispanic. Go figure.

If nothing else, having a look at some of the comments in Delaware County's paper makes me feel a bit better: it's not just here.

Milestone

I rolled 66,666 miles on my Prius yesterday during the Commute from Hell. I knew I would. But I also knew that I was not going to want to try to catch the moment of sixes with my camera, given the weather and the state of the roads.

So, while I sat, stopped dead in traffic, south of Dover, I took a blurry shot of 66,652 miles. I figure we can all agree to mentally add 14 when we see this photo.

The Commute From Hell

Something bad happened on Route 1 where it crosses the St. Jones River this evening. As a result, my Dover to Lewes commute -- usually 45 minutes -- took about three and a quarter hours.

I knew it was going to be a slow ride when I was leaving Dover. There had been an inch or so of wet snow during the day. As the afternoon turned to evening, there was sleet and freezing rain. The roads were slick.

Coming up onto State Route 1 from Route 113, there were two spin-outs. It looked like some folks had tried to go too fast. By the time I passed the main entrance to the Dover Air Base, it was clear that things were slowing way down.

I was behind a tallish pick-up truck, so I couldn't see ahead. Soon we were nearly at a full stop. Half an hour, we had crept forward until I was at the big sweeping right-hand bend, just past the airbase. That gave me a view ahead. I could see flashers on the bridge and traffic just squeezing by in one lane.

An hour later, just as I was approaching the bridge, I found that the Fire Police were turning us back and sending us north again.

I made a pit stop near the base entrance -- bathroom, dinner, and a cup of coffee -- and compared notes with other roadfugees. A state commuter van-full of DelDOT folk had heard that it was a multi-car pile-up, with injuries and maybe a fatality. I hope not.

From there, I joined a slow crawl of commuters headed down Alternate 113 towards Little Heaven. When we rejoined the main highway, there was plenty of traffic. I couldn't tell whether the bridge had re-opened or not.

As I headed south, the road got less slick. It was clear that the weather down this way was more rain than snow for most of the day.

I walked into my house at about 7:45. I had left the office at 4:30.

Incorrect? Incorrect Like A Fox!

Like many other people in attendance at the Lewes Fire Hall the other night for a public meeting on the update of the Sussex County Comprehensive Land Use Plan, I was astounded by a claim made by Rich Collins, the sunnily optimistic conservative spokes-speaker of the pro-development lobby in Sussex County:

Mr. Collins, who also represents the Positive Growth Alliance, said the problem may be that Sussex County isn’t growing quickly enough. He based that on estimates that show the county population is rapidly growing older and the death rate is exceeding the birth rate. (From Sussex’s land future debated, by Michael Short, Sussex Post)

This report, while accurate, doesn't convey the full extent of what Mr. Collins claims. What he said was, "growth may not be our problem, maybe the lack of growth" is the problem.

If you listen to the county's MP3 of that part of the proceedings (About a minute or two in), you find Rich quoting from the latest Delaware Population Consortium population projections series. He points to the projected amount of population growth, which the Consortium reports in 5-year increments, and says, accurately, that the amount of new population added to the county is projected to drop from 17,867 new residents added between 2000 and 2005 to 12,055 new residents added between 2020 and 2025.

Mr. Collins' conclusion? "Now, I don't have my calculator, but thats, what, about a 33 percent decline in growth."

Rich is either very adept at math on the fly, or he did the calculations before-hand and his aw-shucks act is just that.

What those numbers represent is a 32.5 percent difference between the rate of growth over the last half-decade and the projected rate of growth 20 years from now. The difference is largely due to the fact that, as a retirement area, eastern Sussex County will continue to have a declining birth rate and a burgeoning death rate. That's just demographics. What will keep population change on the positive side will be continued strong migration into Sussex County.


In fact, if you look at the whole of the Consortium's projections, you see that Sussex County is expected to grow by almost 73,000 people between now and 2030. That's a 40 percent growth in population and equal to moving all of the current population of Wilmington, plus a few neighborhoods worth of Elsmere, into Sussex.

I hesitated to write about this. I'm employed by the State Planning Office, which is often at odds with Mr. Collins. I would have let it go had it not made it into the news reports. My motivation to address this is mostly because I also serve as the secretary of the Delaware Population Consortium and take some pride in the work that that group does. I feel a responsibility to step in when it looks like the Consortium's projections are being mis-used.

Mr. Collins may simply be mistaken; he may simply not understand the data he is looking at. But I don't think so. I think Rich is trying to muddy the discussion and sow seeds of doubt about the extent of the problem facing Sussex County.