Category Archives: Science & Technology

The Learn-What-You-Need-When-You-Need-It Education Model

Posted on December 30, 2020 by | 8 comments

by James A. Bacon

I stumbled across an ad on the Washington Post website that attracted my attention. AWS (Amazon Web Services) was advertising its cybersecurity certification training.

Click on the ad and you land on an extensive website promoting the company’s cybersecurity curriculum. “Start your security training journey,” proclaims the header.

Explore the paths to building security skills with this introduction to AWS Training and Certification. … Discover on-demand digital and live classroom training opportunities for all skill levels or roles. … Learn more about the comprehensive security curriculum designed by AWS experts.

The goal of AWS, the cloud subsidiary of Amazon, is to develop a cadre of IT professionals certified to use the AWS platform. What particularly intrigues me is how the training curriculum differs from conventional courses in Virginia’s community colleges and four-year institutions. The fact that classes are delivered in both digital and in-person classroom formats is the most obvious but least interesting difference. Continue reading →

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Posted in Education (K-12), Science & Technology

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Virginians Are Loading the COVIDWISE App. Does It Make a Difference?

Posted on December 14, 2020 by | 12 comments

by James A. Bacon

Virginia leads the nation in the percentage of citizens who have downloaded the COVIDWISE smart phone app that alerts users when they might have been exposed to the virus, reports Virginia Business.

The state has spent $1.5 million promoting sign-ups. Jeff Stover, executive adviser to the health commissioner, says that downloads have been averaging 2,000 to 5,000 per day. Nearly 900,000 people, 10% of the population, how have the app.

Stover cites a model by Google, Stanford University and Oxford University that predicts if a locality has a 15% app adoption rate, infections can be reduced by about 8% and deaths by 6%.

Could COVIDWISE partially explain the lower rate of spread in Virginia, even as the virus induces panic in other states? According to Statista, Virginia had the 8th lowest rate — 3,303 confirmed cases per 100,000 population — among the 52 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. Continue reading →

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Posted in Public safety & health, Science & Technology

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EPA: PM 2.5 At Current Levels is No Threat

Posted on December 10, 2020 by | 157 comments

Source: EPA Website.  Click to expand.

By Steve Haner

“Everything is a poison, nothing is a poison. It is the dose that makes the poison” – Paracelsus (1493-1541 AD)

A micron is a tiny thing. A grain of beach sand is about 90 microns, and a human hair 50 to 70 microns in diameter. In the coming session of the General Assembly, you are about to hear that micron-sized particles are sickening and killing you. Do not believe it.    Continue reading →

157 Comments

Posted in Energy, Environment, General Assembly, Regulation, Science & Technology, Taxes

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Northam Administration Information Technology Failures Continue

Posted on December 1, 2020 by | 138 comments

Image by Mediamodifier from Pixabay

Help! WJLA is reporting that the State of Virginia is using a 35-year-old computer system to process unemployment checks. The system has buckled, leaving 70,000 Virginians without their unemployment benefits.  In a stunning admission, Bill Walker, Director of Unemployment Insurance with the Virginia Employment Commission says, “We are right at the first of July now” when asked how far behind the process stands.

It seems obvious that ineffective processing of unemployment claims disproportionately impacts less affluent and minority Virginians. Yet this issue has been missing from the Ralph Northam COVID-19 updates I have watched.  Those press conferences have included discussions of the presidential election and a description of court cases involving Confederate statues but nothing about the real pain that the ineptitude of the Northam Administration is visiting on 70,000 Virginians, including many people of color. Continue reading →

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Posted in Efficiency in government, Governance, Science & Technology

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Shellenberger’s “Apocalypse Never” Lessons for VA

Posted on October 26, 2020 by | 56 comments

HarperCollins, 2020

“Climate change is real but it’s not the end of the world.  It is not even our most serious environmental problem.”

By Steve Haner

That statement opens the dust jacket summary for “Apocalypse Never:  Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All” by Michael Shellenberger, once named “Hero of the Environment” by Time magazine. It remains the number one best-seller in Amazon’s Climate or Environmental Policy category, competing with alarmist sermons such as “The Uninhabitable Earth” by David Wallace-Wells and “How To Avoid A Climate Disaster” by Bill Gates. Anybody interested in the topic should seek it out.

The themes of the book also align well with views previously featured from a 2019 newspaper column by retired University of Richmond biology professor, R. Dean Decker. Both are totally at odds with the wild predictions of Climate Armageddon that drive the Virginia Clean Economy Act, the upcoming Virginia debate over the Transportation and Climate Initiative carbon tax, and just about every Democratic political campaign in the Virginia and the U.S.

Shellenberger’s book is particularly important for the debate over carbon taxes such as the TCI compact, and the VCEA’s energy cost inflation, because with his worldwide experience and perspective he has seen the interrelationship of income poverty, energy poverty and damaging environmental exploitation. Saving the Earth and its flora and fauna require energy sufficiency – from more than just renewables – and energy-intensive modern agriculture.  It requires wealth and economic growth.  Continue reading →

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Posted in Disasters and disaster preparedness, Energy, Environment, Flooding, Regulation, Resilience, Science & Technology

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Does Northam Have a Plan to Battle a COVID Resurgence in Virginia?

Posted on October 25, 2020 by | 29 comments

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

by DJ Rippert

The second (or third) time around. America’s polarized political situation has all eyes on the upcoming presidential election. Millions are voting early and millions more will vote by mail. There is a good chance that the final results will not be known on the morning after Election Day. If true, America’s attention will be riveted on the election through November and quite possibly into December. Meanwhile, COVID cases are surging in the U.S. and parts of Europe. Yesterday, the U.S. recorded 906 COVID-related deaths. That number had been averaging between 700 and 800 since early autumn. Virginia’s record in managing COVID has been mediocre to date. Not terrible but not great either. The state ranks 30th in per capita COVID-related deaths. Over the last seven days Virginia has recorded the 21st most cases of COVID among U.S. states. As evidence of a resurgence of COVID mounts, Virginians ought to wonder whether the state is ready to react to such a resurgence if it occurs.

Continue reading →

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Posted in Disasters and disaster preparedness, Health Care, Science & Technology

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Our Technology Future: SkyNet… or the Stone Age?

Posted on August 22, 2020 by | 21 comments

I’m having a bad day. First I couldn’t figure out how to auto-post Bacon’s Rebellion posts to Facebook. OK, I’m technically challenged, so I’ll hire someone to do it. Then I updated WordPress, which I do know how to do, but all the comments disappeared. I didn’t know how to fix that but, thankfully, my Internet host provider did.

Now my iPhone battery has died.

It’s the old Can’t-fix-A-because-of-B, and Can’t-fix-B-because-of-C problem.

To get a new battery installed, I went online to set up an appointment at the Richmond Apple Store. To set up an Apple store appointment, I needed to schedule an appointment online. When I tried to schedule an appointment, Apple asked for my username and password. I provided those. Then Apple required a double authentication. It wanted to send me a verification code to my iPhone. My iPhone was dead, so I couldn’t get the code.

Apple offered these three alternatives: Continue reading →

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Posted in Science & Technology

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The Tell Tale Heart: Racism in Richmond Medicine

Posted on August 19, 2020 by | 27 comments

By Peter Galuszka

On Saturday, May 25, 1968, the Medical College of Virginia, now part of Virginia Commonwealth University, made medical history.  A surgeon recruited from Stanford University a couple of years before successfully transplanted the heart from one middle-aged man to another.

MCV officials in Richmond officials were ecstatic. Organ transplants were a hot, fairly new surgical procedure. Once stuck in the junior varsity leagues of medical training and research, MCV was basking in glory from media coverage.

There was one peculiarity that no one seemed to notice. The name of the heart donor was missing. As it turned out, the donor was Bruce Tucker, a Richmond Tucker happened to be African-American.

Tucker had suffered a serious brain injury from a fall the day before. He was taken to MCV. Hospital officials made a perfunctory search for his relatives. Tucker’s brother was desperately looking for him and his business card was in Bruce’s pocket. No one found it.

So, after Bruce was pronounced dead, his heart was removed and placed in the chest of Richard G. Klett, a white business executive from Orange. This shocking story is well documented in a highly readable book by Richmond author and journalist Chip Jones that has been just published by an imprint of Simon & Schuster. Tucker’s brother finally located hospital officials who started talking about an autopsy and that he needed to find a funeral director. Continue reading →

27 Comments

Posted in Courts and law, Crime , corrections and law enforcement, Culture wars, Health Care, Race and race relations, Science & Technology

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About that Shiny New Contact Tracing App…

Posted on August 6, 2020 by | 32 comments

by Kerry Dougherty

After months of being next to last nationally – in COVID-19 testing – Virginia is finally first in something:

A brand new contact tracing app.

Yippee!

“Virginia officials on Wednesday launched a smartphone app that uses Bluetooth technology to alert people when they have come in contact with someone who has tested positive for COVID-19,” reports The Richmond Times-Dispatch. 

“The app, COVIDWISE, is the result of a collaborative project between Google and Apple, which have been in talks with Virginia and other states to develop and roll out the app for months.

“Virginia on Wednesday became the first state to fully launch an app with this particular platform.”

The governor unveiled the app along with a public relations campaign: “Add Your Phone To The COVID Fight” to persuade Virginians to download the free software that will alert them when they’ve been in contact with someone who tested positive for the virus, even if that contact was weeks earlier. Continue reading →

32 Comments

Posted in Science & Technology

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Construction: Virginia’s Quiet, Strong Man

Posted on May 27, 2020 by | 18 comments

Scene from Micron’s $3 billion construction project in Manassas. Photo credit: Inside NoVa

By Peter Galuszka

For all the complaints about the COVID-19 pandemic in Virginia – the shut-down restaurants and (temporarily) closed beaches – one industry has been working steadily and quietly all along – the state’s construction sector.

Builders haven’t missed much of a beat since the “state at home” orders started going out a couple of months ago.

In Pentagon City, works still progresses on the two, 22-story towers for Amazon’s new eastern headquarters. In suburban Chesterfield County near Richmond, workers toil adding new drain pipes and four-laning once- rural roads. Four-story apartments overlooking Swift Creek Reservoir are taking shape for the over-55 crowd.

At a loud and garish protest next to the State Capitol against Gov. Ralph Norham’s work-stoppage plans last month, Mark Carter, a contractor from Hanover County, made his views known. “We‘re still working,” he told me. “I’m not for Trump and I’m not a Democrat. People need to work.”

In Virginia, some are. After all, New York state and Boston stopped construction work due to the pandemic. Continue reading →

18 Comments

Posted in Agriculture & forestry, Blogs and blog administration, Budgets, Business and Economy, Consumer protection, Culture wars, Demographics, Economic development, Energy, Entrepreneurialism, Environment, Federal, Individual liberties, Infrastructure, Land use & development, Poverty & income gap, Property rights, Public safety & health, Race and race relations, Science & Technology, Social services, Taxes, Telecommunications, Transparency, Transportation, Unemployment

Reopening: Know and Avoid the Risks

Posted on May 18, 2020 by | 29 comments

Musical chairs goes viral

By DJ Rippert

The Bromage Broadcast. Erin Bromage is a professor of biology and a blogger. She will tell you that she’s not an expert epidemiologist but she recently wrote a blog entry that proves she is an eloquent writer when it comes to explaining the physics of Coronavirus to the layman. As Virginia reopens after the lockdown people will have to make personal decisions about what activities to undertake and what activities to avoid. Ms. Bromage’s plain English explanations make a good starting point for making such decisions.

Continue reading →

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Posted in Disasters and disaster preparedness, Health Care, Science & Technology

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WTJU Podcast: COVID-19 and the Economy

Posted on May 7, 2020 by | Leave a comment

By Peter Galuszka

Here’s is the twice-monthly podcast produced by WTJU, the official radio station of the University of Virginia. With me on this podcast  are Nathan Moore, the station general manager, and Sarah Vogelsong, who covers, labor, energy and environmental issues across the state for the Virginia Mercury, a fairly new and highly regarded non-profit news outlet. Our topic is how Virginia is handling the economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Posted in Agriculture & forestry, Bacon and pigs, Blogs and blog administration, Budgets, Business and Economy, Consumer protection, Culture wars, Disasters and disaster preparedness, Economic development, Education (higher ed), Education (K-12), Efficiency in government, Elections, Electoral process, Energy, Entitlements, Entrepreneurialism, Environment, Federal, Finance (government), General Assembly, Governance, Government Oversight, Gun rights, Health Care, Housing, Immigration, Individual liberties, Infrastructure, Insurance, Labor & workforce, Media, Money in politics, Not-for-profits, Open Government, Planning, Politics, Poverty & income gap, Property rights, Public corruption, Public safety & health, Race and race relations, Regulation, Science & Technology, Social services, Taxes, Telecommunications, Transparency, Transportation, Unemployment

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Screwing Workers On Safety and Liability

Posted on May 4, 2020 by | 24 comments

A GRTC bus driver in better times

By Peter Galuszka

At 4:30 a.m. on April 27, about 100 workers of the Greater Richmond Transit Company — half of the total – failed to show up for work.

Worried about the health of its membership, Local 1220 of the International Amalgamated Transit Union demanded additional safety measures such as full personal protection equipment, time and a half hazardous pay, limits on the numbers of passenger and testing.

GRTC management threatened to fire workers who stayed away from work but agreed to talk. A resolution may come at a May 19 board meeting.

Indeed, stories are showing up throughout Virginia and across the country as workers most likely to be exposed to COVID-19 often have the least protection and no guarantees their employers will provide testing, hospitalization and sick pay.

In Timberville near Harrisonburg, workers at a Pilgrim’s Pride poultry plant worry that they are required to work at less than six feet –- considered safe distancing –- from each other. In Norfolk, non-union workers at a General Dynamics ship facility were required to do electrical work until they refused, citing exposure threats and a death. Continue reading →

24 Comments

Posted in Bacon and pigs, Budgets, Business and Economy, Consumer protection, Economic development, Environment, Federal, Finance (government), General Assembly, Health Care, Individual liberties, Money in politics, Public safety & health, Regulation, Scandals, Science & Technology, Social services, Transportation

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Why Northam Is Such An Important Governor

Posted on April 28, 2020 by | 32 comments

By Peter Galuszka

This is a bit like throwing chum at a school of sharks, but here is my latest in Style Weekly.

I wrote an assessment of Gov. Ralph Northam that is overall, quite positive. My take goes against much of the sentiment of other contributors on this blog.

They are entitled to their views but, to be honest, I find some of the essays shrill and not really fact based. If Northam wants to delay elective surgeries at hospitals for a week or so, some want to empanel a grand jury.

An acute care health facility in Henrico County becomes one of the most notorious hot spots for coronavirus deaths and it is immediately Northam’s fault even though the care center has had serious problems that long predated the governor’s term in office.

He’s a trained physician who served as an Army doctor in combat during the Iraq War yet he is vilified as being incompetent and incapable of understanding the COVID-19 pandemic.

It’s like the constant repetition of the “Sins of Hillary” on Breitbart and Fox News about emails and Benghazi.

Like him or not, Northam is bound to be one of the most consequential governors in Virginia history given the gigantic problem of the pandemic. He’s not a showboat salesman like Terry McAuliffe nor a smarmy, small-time crook like Robert F. McDonnell.

Anyway, here’s the piece.

32 Comments

Posted in Abortion, Agriculture & forestry, Budgets, Business and Economy, Consumer protection, Defense, Energy, Environment, Federal, Finance (government), General Assembly, Governance, Government Oversight, Government workers and pensions, Gun rights, Health Care, Immigration, Individual liberties, Infrastructure, Insurance, Labor & workforce, Land use & development, LGBQT, Media, Money in politics, Not-for-profits, Science & Technology, Social services, Taxes, Telecommunications, Transparency, Unemployment

Photo Project Spotlights Pipeline Impact

Posted on March 31, 2020 by | 1 comment


By Peter Galuszka

Veteran photographer Karen Kasmauski, who grew up in Norfolk, has a brilliant online project that shows the human and environmental impacts of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline.

She is a senior fellow with the International League of Conservation Photographers, a non-profit group that funded her project that centers mostly in rural Nelson and Buckingham Counties that would be dissected by the natural gas pipeline.

She combines spectacular aerial photos with deep close ups of people.

One of her subjects is Ella Rose, a retiree who lives in a small house in Union Hill. She was living a quiet happy life in her natural setting until she got a letter from Dominion Energy stating that they would be routing the ACP about 150-feet from her house.

Union Hill is a touchpoint for pipeline controversy since it is largely African-American community that ACP officials have selected for a compressor station. It is one of similar localities that seem to be targeted with other loud and disruptive equipment along the pipeline route. Continue reading →

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Posted in Agriculture & forestry, Consumer protection, Courts and law, Disasters and disaster preparedness, Economic development, Energy, Environment, Infrastructure, Land use & development, Regulation, Science & Technology

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