Category: Science & Technology
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Map of the Day: Average Broadband Speeds
While Virginians beat themselves up over Medicaid expansion, slow economic growth and the McDonnell corruption trial, here’s a morsel of good news: According to Akamai’s latest “State of the Internet” report, Virginia has the highest average broadband speeds of any state in the nation — 13.7 Mbps (megabytes per second). That’s world-class, exceeded only by…
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Confessions of the Tic-Tac Man
By Peter Galuszka On afternoon last week, I was leaving the seventh floor courtroom at U.S. District Court after Judge James Spencer called for a break. Jonnie R. Williams Sr., the prosecution’s star witness against former Gov. and Ms. McDonnell, had been on the stand for hours, playing various roles as remorseful solicitor, confident businessman,…
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Diet Denier
Perhaps you could call Nina Teicholz a “diet denier.” The journalist and author of “The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Health Diet,” is part of the growing backlash against a half century-long orthodoxy that aimed to limit fat and cholesterol in the American diet. That orthodoxy, which ruled the medical establishment and the…
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How Not to Shift From Coal
By Peter Galuszka Coal is rightly the scourge of environmentalists. Economic pressure is on to shift to cleaner natural gas made plentiful by controversial hydraulic fracking. Political pressure is on to replace fossil fuels with renewables such as wind, solar and other methods. In Virginia, Dominion, the state’s largest utility, relies for 46 percent of…
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Does Virginia Want to Be a Wireless Friendly State?
States and regions that want to stay in the vanguard of economic growth need to expand their broadband infrastructure. Mobile data traffic will increase 13-fold between 2012 and 2017 by some estimates. To accommodate that growth, the wireless industry will have to build new cell towers, distributed antenna systems (DAS) and other infrastructure. However, permitting and regulation…
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More Defense Cuts Plague Virginia
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in Business and Economy, Demographics, Economic development, Energy, Environment, Federal issues, Government Finance, Infrastructure, Labor and Workforce, Land use & Development, Money in politics, Politics, Science & Technology, Social Services and Entitlements, Taxes, Transportation, UncategorizedBy Peter Galuszka Virginia continues to see painful military spending cuts in the aftermath of the years’- long U.S. intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan. Among the latest news is that the Army may cut 3,600 jobs at Ft. Lee, ironically the site of a recent and large expansion, by 2020. That could result in a…
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McAuliffe Hits Private IT Outsourcing
By Peter Galuszka Just a decade ago, privatizing and out-sourcing traditionally government work was all the rage. Virginia’s Democrats and Republicans alike saw a philosophical advantage in fending off Information Technology, road maintenance and other work to for-profit, private companies who supposedly – if you believed the hype then –could always do things better, faster…
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Finally, Some Sense on Climate Change
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in Consumer Protection, Demographics, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Energy, Environment, Federal issues, Health Care, Infrastructure, Insurance, Land use & Development, Media, Money in politics, Planning, Politics, Property rights, Public safety & health, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Science & Technology, Social Services and Entitlements, UncategorizedBy Peter Galuszka Pulling the state’s head out of the sand, Gov. Terry McAuliffe has reversed his predecessor’s policy on addressing climate change. He has reestablished a 35-member panel to see what the state can do to deal with what many scientists believe is an impending crisis. McAuliffe revived the panel first created by Democratic…
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Two UMW Daughters of the ’60s
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in Business and Economy, Crime, Corrections, Law Enforcement, Economic development, Education (higher ed), Environment, Federal issues, Government workers and pensions, Gun rights, Health Care, Housing, Immigration, Infrastructure, LGBQT, Media, Money in politics, Planning, Politics, Poverty & income gap, Property rights, Public safety & health, Race and Race Relations, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Science & Technology, Social Services and Entitlements, UncategorizedBy Peter Galuszka Just a few days ago, Elena Siddall, a Mathews County Republican activist and Tea Party Patriot, posted her account on the Rebellion of being a social worker in New York in the 1960s and the wrong-headedness of Saul Alinsky, a leftist organizer who had had a lot of influence back in the…
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Denying Truth on the Outer Banks
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in Business and Economy, Children and Families, Consumer Protection, Courts and law, Demographics, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Economic development, Energy, Environment, Federal issues, Government Finance, Infrastructure, Insurance, Land use & Development, Media, Money in politics, Planning, Politics, Property rights, Public safety & health, Science & Technology, Social Services and Entitlements, Taxes, UncategorizedBy Peter Galuszka North Carolina’s Outer Banks have always been a touchstone for me – in as much as anyone can associate permanence with sandy islands being perpetually tossed around by tremendous wind and water forces. The Banks and I go back to 1954 and Hurricane Hazel when I was an infant. They mark many…
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Harnessing Citizen Science
This first section of this post by James A. Bacon is cross posted from the Datamorphosis blog… Recent years have seen the rise of what European Union officials are calling “citizen science,” a phenomenon in which amateurs, enthusiasts and others acting in a non-official capacity collect data (usually environmental data), participate in the design of projects…
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Heroin: New Scourge of Suburbs
By Peter Galuszka Heroin always seemed to be the drug of fast-living artists or the inner city poor. Not any more, thanks to a shortage of prescription drugs such as oxycodone. Not only is heroin making a comeback in its tradition haunts, it is moving into the affluent suburbs. That was the case on May…
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Nash Nails Neanderthal GOP
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in Business and Economy, Consumer Protection, Demographics, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Economic development, Energy, Environment, Federal issues, Infrastructure, Land use & Development, Media, Money in politics, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Science & Technology, Social Services and EntitlementsBy Peter Galuszka Imagine Norfolk spending $300 million for light rail only to have it covered in salt water. Or consider that Virginia’s statewide mean temperature has risen 0.46 degrees Fahrenheit per decade since 1975. Or that, due to carbon dioxide emissions, the sea level on the Virginia coast is expected to rise by two…
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Brat and Cantor: Two Unsavory Choices
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in Business and Economy, Courts and law, Crime, Corrections, Law Enforcement, Demographics, Economic development, Education (higher ed), Education (K-12), Electoral process, Energy, Environment, Federal issues, Government Finance, Government workers and pensions, Gun rights, Health Care, Housing, Immigration, Infrastructure, Insurance, Labor and Workforce, Land use & Development, LGBQT, Media, Money in politics, Planning, Politics, Poverty & income gap, Property rights, Public safety & health, Race and Race Relations, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Science & Technology, Social Services and Entitlements, Taxes, TransportationBy Peter Galuszka The hottest political race coming up is the Republican primary this Tuesday involving the 7th Congressional District now represented by Eric Cantor, a powerful conservative who is House Majority Leader and could possibly one day be Speaker of the House. His opponent, college professor David Brat, has gotten much national attention because…
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Thank God for Obama’s Carbon Rules
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in Business and Economy, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Economic development, Energy, Environment, Federal issues, Infrastructure, Labor and Workforce, Land use & Development, Media, Money in politics, Planning, Politics, Public safety & health, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Science & TechnologyBy Peter Galuszka At long last, President Barack Obama has released proposed new pollution rules that would target shutting or cleaning up coal-fired electricity plants to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 30 percent over the next 16 years. The plan gives states the initial responsibility for coming up with regimes to reduce carbon through state-run…