Problems With the Popular Dead
While most of us are aware of the problems of heavy traffic at the Pere Lachaise cemetery with throngs of people visiting the graves of famous people like Jim Morrison, cemeteries like that or Cincinnati's Spring Grove Cemetery are pretty much set up for a good bit of traffic.
Smaller cemeteries, like Clark County, Ohio's Myers Cemetery in Pike Twp. aren't set up for heavy traffic. After the interment of Clark County Deputy Suzanne Hopper, their gravel roads haven't been able to hold up to the heavy traffic of mourners. They sought relief from the Clark County Sheriff's department and Sheriff Gene Kelly with the Clark County Engineer's office responded providing 4 truckloads of gravel that had been swept off public streets to resurface the roads in the cemetery incurring no capital costs to taxpayers.

Hey, Gingrich, SHUT UP !

	Iowa	New Hampshire
Romney	24.6%	39.3%
Paul	21.4%	22.9%
Santorum	24.5%	9.4%
Gingrich	13.3%	9.4%
Huntsman	0.6%	16.9%
Perry	10.3%	0.7%

Blogger formatting is weird.....

THE EDGE OF REALITY

Can you imagine Elvis teaming up with Roky Erickson?
Anyway, I think this song is the new anthem of this blog. This is pretty much the way we dress & light the place at Blogging Isn't Cool HQ, already, so….

Library Censorship
A reader found a library in Salem, Missouri blocked her access to sites concerning astrology, occultism & Wicca on their public computers. When she asked for permission to access the sites, the librarian told her she could allow specific sites (no blanket access to specific search terms) and that she would also be obligated to inform the police of the reader's actions.
I can get blocking some content to minors, like stuff about drinking blood & maybe sex magic, but astrology & ancient religions ?
heck, the library probably has dusty old books on these subjects sitting around that they don't even know about.
The real scary part about this is the notion that the librarian felt compelled to inform the police about somebody accessing sites about faith, spirituality & history.

The Hill blogpost here.

Bold Political Prediction #1
After extensive study, the Blogging Isn't Cool staff concludes that Jim Berns will defeat Sandra Queen Noble for the Libertarian nomination for Ohio's 1st Congressional district in March.
Stay tuned.

See and hear the candidates !
Noble

Berns

COA T Endorsed Councilman Proposes Redundant Government Spending
COA T's junior mule on Cincinnati City Council has proposed the city solicitor provide ethics training for council members. The solicitor already does this but what the heck…
Smitherman claims such training is common in the "professional" world. No matter that city council positions are considered part time (& pay 180% of Cincinnatians median wage). But, just as every initiative COA T proposes, his legislation is aimed at increasing spending & making government more expensive and a greater burden on the taxpayer.

Fishwrap article here

Blurry Camel-Back Cricket Moon

Top Chef Meets Carl's Jr.

yeah, I know it's old but it's the only one in the series with an actual foodie.
and chicks with scars are hot….

Fun in the 2nd Century
After inspecting the wall at Carlisle, as Severus returned to the nearest guest house not only as victor over die Caledonians but also having established a permanent peace treaty, he wondered what omen would present itself. Just then, a black soldier, who was a well-known buffoon and regarded himself as a bit of a joker, came up to him with a wreath of cypress. When Severus, thoroughly disturbed at being presented with a funeral garland and by someone of the colour associated with death, angrily ordered him to be removed from his sight, the man jocularly remarked, "You have been everything. You have conquered everything, now may the conqueror be a god." When Severus subsequently reached town, and wanted to perform a sacrifice, owing to a mistake on the part of a local soothsayer, he was first taken to the temple of the goddess of war, and then supplied with sacrificial animals that were black. He abandoned the sacrifice in disgust and retired to the local imperial residence, only to find himself, through the negligence of the temple attendants, pursued right to the door by the herd of black cows.

Historia Augusta Severus XXII. 4-7

Kid Monzel
Profile in Bankruptcy

When Chris Monzel ran for a county commission seat, he claimed the county budget could be met by finding efficiencies in the county's spending.
Since then he has suggested one time fixes of selling assets at fire sale prices which has state & county auditors raising their eyebrows. He has added new bureaucracy instead of streamlining bureaucracy. He has stomped his feet and resisted offers from the city of Cincinnati to cut costs at MSD. He has threatened lawsuits & raised MSD rates.
The guy has nothing. He offers no vision, no leadership and no ideas.

What's Inside a Blog ?
Stateside Associates named The Cincinnati Enquirer's "Politics Extra Blog" the best local political blog for Cincinnati. But is it really a blog? Or is it more like the old newspaper "Extra" as it's name implies?
Wikipedia points out:

Although not a must, most good quality blogs are interactive, allowing visitors to leave comments and even message each other via GUI widgets on the blogs and it is this interactivity that distinguishes them from other static websites.

So, technically, it's a blog, I guess, but the lack of dialogue with the authors seriously detracts from it being any kind of "best" blog bigtime. In my book, the dialogue is the most important part. The Enquirer's political blog is one of it's worst blogs along those lines. When the author just tosses out posts in an attempt to stir up the locals, it is just tantamount to Erisean trolling - not good blogging at all. Campbell & Kiesewetter respond to posters, dunno about the sports or arts guys.
Furthermore, the free exchange of thought is hampered as cincinnati.com limits participation to people who are signed up with a 3rd party service that many people don't use for political discourse.
The Cincinnati Enquirer has been able to publish "extras" forever but has opted not to. As it contracts out printing to Columbus printers, that ability will be completely gone. I certainly use the cincinnati.com Politics Extra "blog" feature for information that I post & comment on here but I routinely interact with commenters here. It's a "best practices" kinda thing. For a great example of "blog" interaction along political lines, The Cincinnati Asylum, The Daily Bellwether or, to a lesser degree, Cincinnati Blog are great examples. The Cincinnati Enquirer is still the best news source in town but their political blogging sucks big hairy wet ones.

Channel 9 Meltdown

In John Kiesewetter's blogpost, Did you see the Ch 9 News meltdown?, he mentions WCPO's Ignite system. Since the guys at cincinnati.com are hyperlink challenged, here's what he was talking about, Grass Valley Ignite.
These systems are pretty intense, you can get your mitts on some low end stuff, sans robotics, at Media Bridges if you want a taste.

Modern Mall Mayhem

As the spectre of bestial savagery & violence permeates the malls like the piped in music, law enforcement & mall security are rising to the occasion to keep the places safe for consumers.
The Interstate 675 Organized Retail Crime Group (I675ORCG) is compiling data and talking with mall security around the nation to find ways of battling the growing problem.
Are the retailers themselves to blame?

"I don’t quite understand why retailers do it this way because it does create a very dangerous environment when you get so many people lined up to purchase a pair of shoes," Miami Twp. Police Maj. John DiPietro said.

Or is it the manufacturers?
DiPietro has created Power Point presentations for the I675ORCG.
Havoc hankering juveniles use high tech communication devices and state of the art satellite technology to pinpoint exact times and locations for their surreptitious attacks. Highly trained mall security specialists have had some success banning the teen terrorists outright.
But how safe are the parking lots ?

Noose Son story here

Multilingual Signage

Some folks on Cincinnati city council want to put multilingual signage in the downtown area. A big question is - what other languages should we post? Spanish is becoming more popular around here. The current mayor has been courting China relentlessly. The city has a strong German heritage. On top of that, Cincinnati has sister cities in Zimbabwe, Japan, Ukraine, France & Taiwan. To accommodate all those languages, we're gonna need some big-ass signs.
A better idea would be to license Alien Technology® like what John Carpenter used in the hit movie, They Live so we can just put up one sign & then distribute Alien Technology® sunglasses to the foreign devils.
With any luck they can do color nowadays.

COA T's witch hunt of Cincinnati councilwoman Laure Quinlivan has netted them a cool $10,000. That is, they have drained the city's coffers of $10,000. The altruism of these guys cannot be exaggerated. What's ironic about COA T's hatred of Quinlivan is that councilwoman Quinlivan has done more to encourage entrepreneurship & create jobs than COA T's mule, councilman Charlie Winburn, who even has his own custom made "jobs committee".
What will this award mean to city services? If another tragedy occurs due to a fire station brownout, it will most assuredly be on Mark Miller's bloody hands.

Timelines

As the dreaded PhaseBuch rolls out it's new Timeline feature that pretty much nobody likes, Google has decided to kill it's very nice Timeline feature. Beloved by students, teachers, sports fans & history geeks, it apparently had no value for the Google overlords.
The world has gone mad.

2011 Reading List
What I read last year
or - why this blog sucks....

• Over the Rhine When beer Was King
• Secret Agent 666
• Romania An Illustrated history
• Pirates of the Barbary
• Vamp - The Rise and Fall of Theda Bara
• The Rise and Fall of Downtown
• Ridgewood in the Country Club District
• Proposals for Downtown Cincinnati
• The Constitutional Origins of the American Revolution
• Johnny Comet
• Hypatia of Alexandria
• Reckless Endangerment
• Edmund Burke: A Genius Reconsidered
• The Teaching of the 12
• The Civil War in Kentucky
• The Last Frontier - The Roman Invasion of Scotland

Top 7 Days of the Week
1. - Friday
A kind of cathartic release day. It's really no different from any of the other weekdays but, it kinda is.
2. - Saturday
A whole day to yourself, except, of course, you've put a ton of things off all wek to do on the weekend so it's probably going to be filled with more work than what you did all week.
3. - Sunday
A whole day to do all the crap you didn't do Saturday.
4. - Wednesday
Hump day & I still think it's spelled funny.
5. - Monday
A fresh start to the work week.
6. - Tuesday
Has a fresh youngish, invigorated feel week after week after week….
7. - Thursday
It's almost Friday.

~This one is for the stockholders~

Nimbys & Numbers
CMHA wanted to spend $640,000 to renovate a uilding on Cincinnati's west side. The building has 12 units. They moved the current residents out & now the usual loudmouths are promoting the demolition of the building saying too much subsidized housing is concentrated in their community.
Nevermind this:

it [Westwood] now has about 1,100 subsidized housing units, or about 6 percent of all it's housing units. That’s less than subsidized housing’s 11.5 percent share city-wide

My question is, why does it cost so much & why move the residents around like cattle? That cost comes out to $53,000 per unit. Habitat for Humanity could build a whole house for that much. People routinely renovate their homes without moving out of them.

The Fishwrap's not very in depth article here

The Bacon's take here