Flares over Raleigh attract no 911 calls

After learning from the Raleigh Fire Department that the flares I saw on the night of September 28th didn’t belong to them, I thought I’d reach out to the Raleigh-Wake 911 center to see if any calls had come in about the flares.

I got a response today from deputy director Walt Fuller who checked the records for downtown calls and turned up nothing:

I went back and looked into CAD and I saw several calls in the downtown area but they mostly security checks, traffic stops and other normal incidents. I saw no calls of the nature you mentioned.

Continue reading →

“We Hate Teachers” signs

Photo from New Raleigh

Photo from New Raleigh

Yesterday I drove through Raleigh’s Five Points neighborhood when I noticed a handful of signs tacked onto the utility poles. Usually these are advertising home-buying services, or fix-your-bad-debt services, but these were different. They say “We Hate Teachers – NCGOP” and below this is a phone number of 1-800-ART-POPE. I hear these signs are popping up all around Raleigh, with another group around Wiley Elementary.

I don’t know who created or posted the signs and I have my doubts they’ll do anything useful. I don’t think Art Pope hates teachers and the N.C. GOP doesn’t,. either. Still, I did chuckle at the audacity of it all.

Raleigh ‘Color Run’ race leads to dyed houses, towed cars

Looks like Colin Campbell at the N&O has picked up on the Color Run story.

By the way, I’m up to 16,045 page views now. Word has really gotten around.

Residents of the historic Oakwood neighborhood are fuming after a recent “color run” left brightly colored powder on houses, and some people’s cars were towed from outside their homes.

The Color Run is a for-profit 5k race where runners are doused with dyed starches along the route. They are held in dozens of cities across the country each year, billing themselves as “a race that celebrates healthiness, happiness and individuality.”

via RALEIGH: Raleigh 'Color Run' race leads to dyed houses, towed cars | Wake County | NewsObserver.com.

My Raleigh picture shows up on WTVD

WTVD_Raleigh_pic

I noticed in WTVD’s story on Raleigh’s new city manager that the station is using my public domain picture of downtown Raleigh for its graphics about the city of Raleigh. Also, during my city council appearance last month I was amused to see my picture now displayed on the city’s projector at the beginning of the council session.

It’s pretty awesome that I’ve got people seeing Raleigh the same way I do!

Residents seeing red after Raleigh ‘Color Run’ | abc11.com

Ed Crump with WTVD just ran a story on Raleigh’s Color Run fiasco (and nice headline, Ed. Sounds kinda familiar …)

RALEIGH (WTVD) — Some residents of historic Oakwood in downtown Raleigh say they are annoyed by the noise and mess left from last weekend’s “Color Run.”

Runners and volunteers played loud music and threw colored powder as part of the 5K event at Halifax Mall on Sept. 28.

However, some residents said they were really upset when their cars were towed off the street with less than 24-hours notice.

via Residents seeing red after Raleigh 'Color Run' | abc11.com.

The Snowden files: why the British public should be worried about GCHQ | World news | The Guardian

Good stuff from the Guardian.

There is a revealing moment in the most recent piece written for the Guardian by Sir David Omand, former head of GCHQ. He said that “the real debate we should be having … is about what privacy in a cyber-connected world can realistically mean given the volumes of data we hand over to the private sector in return for our everyday convenience, and the continued need for warranted access for security and law enforcement.”

That’s a total non-sequitur: Omand seems to think that just because we hand data over to Google and Facebook the government automatically has the right to access it. It’s as if, thanks to a global shortage of sticky gum, envelopes can no longer be sealed, so as a result the government awards itself a new right to mass-intercept and read everybody’s letters.

via The Snowden files: why the British public should be worried about GCHQ | World news | The Guardian.

Pine tree mystery

Dying_Pine-20131003
Over the past few weeks, I began to notice that nearly all of the pine trees surrounding my office are starting to turn brown. This seemed quite unusual to me. I would expect one or two to occasionally die but for nearly all of them to be suffering made me wonder if there might be something serious going on.

I decided to send the North Carolina Forestry Service an email with some pictures and see what they said. I got a call back this morning from Randolph Harrison, the ranger for Wake County, giving me the scoop.

Harrison told me he had visited the site and checked out the trees. The main problem, he said, was that the pines are too close together and competing for sunlight. He said that being so low near Crabtree Creek probably saturates the soil around the pines’ roots. Pines don’t do well where there’s flooding, he said.

I had wondered if the trees might be under attack by pine beetles but Harrison said he hadn’t seen any evidence of that. “Believe me,” he laughed. “if you’ve got a pine beetle problem you’ll know it!”
Continue reading →

Color Run post attracts attention

I’m overwhelmed. Really. My post about the Color Run has gone viral with over 6,400 page views already, simply from posting a single link on my Facebook timeline. My webserver’s been buzzing ever since. Apparently I’ve struck a chord.

I understand the Color Run company is aware of it, too. Should they reach out to me I’ll be happy to share their perspective, too.

Activate Good responds

Activate Good

Activate Good


The director of Activate Good, Amber Smith, reached out to me almost immediately after my Color Run post, having been alerted by a mutual friend. We chatted some this afternoon about the run and the aftermath.

It seems Activate Good was given the same deal that most other charities get from Color Run. That is, they got a donation based on the number of volunteers they provided. Activate Good contributed over 180 volunteers and performed a lot of the heavy lifting for the run, including the “color toss.” Amber says their volunteers were not involved in the clean up as that was done by others.
Continue reading →

Flare flare are you tonight

Ok, so the title is a reference to a staple of the old Hee Haw show.

After speculating that the flares I saw Saturday night might have been launched by the Raleigh Fire Department to gauge the wind currents before the Wide Open Bluegrass fireworks that night, I reached out to department officials this morning to learn if the FD did this sort of thing.

I got a call back this afternoon from the official who approved the city’s fireworks permit and we had a good chat. He told me they don’t normally launch anything to gauge the wind but rely on observed conditions and the weather forecast. He said that the location I guessed the flares were coming from would’ve been too far away from the fireworks site to be useful, anyway.

The bottom line is that the mystery flares are not the work of the fire department, after all. Now I’m really going to have to work to track this thing further.