Comet Holmes should be easily viewed tonight, even with the naked eye, but I prefer binoculars. With last night's cold front clearing the air, all you need is an interest and the willingness to go outside after dark.

Here's a good Link

I bet the Tamke-Allen Observatory folks are all over this one.

I guess everybody in Tennessee Municipal government isn't clueless, after all.

Link

This is really good information from a comment that I thought should be brought to the front page:

Did you know that the GED test is given to graduating high school seniors each year and is normed so that 40% CANNOT pass the test? What does that mean to employers hiring someone with a GED? You are getting an employee who can read, write and do math at a level that is perhaps higher than most graduating seniors.

www.roanestate.edu/adulteducation

Our County Commissioners are members of the Tennessee Municipal League which is opposing open government.

They are backing changes to the Sunshine Laws which would essentially allow
backroom deals to be legal. Where do our Commissioners stand on this?

The Knoxville City Council is voting on a resolution, supported by Mayor Haslam, that opposes changes to the law which got the Knox County Commission sued for back room deals.

If the City of Knoxville can conduct government in public...Why can't Roane County?

I was thinking about the Constable situation and it boils down to a couple of things for me, but mostly about "Decision making capability" and its relationship to the job.

Near as I can tell...None of the folks involved seem to be able to make a good decision in a rational manner.

We have various decisions from the County Commissioners, Attorney, etc., etc.. But the real decision making instability seems to be centered around one person.

Our "Once, Ex, and possibly Future" Constable essentially says he should still be in his job because he couldn't actually figure out how to resign properly...

(Uh...He's the one with the gun, right?)

RB asked ((link...)) about my views on how to bring up performance in math-related school subjects. Here you go, RB, and thanks for asking! :)

The things one must do to bring up "math" performance in middle and high school are dictated by the nature of the "math" tasks themselves.

Congratulations are in order for Steve Scarborough. The Roane County News, Friday edition, indicates that it is now official: he has been named as a "Legend of Paddling" by the American Canoe Association. If you're reading, congratulations, Steve.

P.S. I couldn't find the article on the Roane News site, but you can still buy the dead tree edition today to read it.

I'm in Florida for a Board meeting, picked up USA today and there were these two stories. So doing he right thing not only makes your community a better place to live...It saves money!

Hundreds of cities and counties are trying to curb bright lights, and at least a dozen states — California, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Maine, New Jersey, New Mexico and Texas among them — have lighting laws covering highways and state projects.

Cites find Dark Skies save money!

Fans of Dark Skies

The pervasive aquiescence to Corporate monopolies is really messin' up this country and taking Roane County with it.

"In South Korea, for instance, the average apartment can get an Internet connection that's 15 times faster than a typical U.S. connection. In Paris, a "triple play" of TV, phone and broadband service costs less than half of what it does in the U.S."

Broadband Internet will supercede all other forms of communication in the next few years except where it is purposefully held back by monopolistic greed.

Read More

Did you know...

We have a Literacy Council in Roane County? Did you know they actually meet? Did you know they need us to make an impact on Adult Education in this county?

Well, I found something that I can offer that will probably even appeal to the real progressives here (who, I don't believe, think I'm one of them, but that's OK). [I'm grinning, kids!]

Are we in danger of losing patriotism in favor of nationalism?

The County Commissioners Association voted to support changes in the Sunshine laws that essentially gut them. Any meeting would be ok to hold in private unless there was a quorum of commissioners present.

That's absurd and spits in the eye of the concept of open government.

Senator Randy McNally of Oak Ridge is opposed to the very idea. A round of applause to Rnady!

Ok, Senator Kilby...How about you?

Representative Ferguson?

And how about the Roane County Commission...Are you guys trying to hide from the people of Roane County or will you support open government?

Somebody needs to make some phone calls!

Well, the Founding Fathers all had strong backgrounds in the classics. They KNEW what had made governments rise and fall throughout history. They knew WHY republics are as fragile as they are glorious. They knew that the art of politics involved getting one's hands dirty - in the sense of digging in, not in the sense of corruption.

Did the little newspaper go?

We're working on our spam problem.

It looks like we're being spammed from Eastern Europe by way of New York, so I guess Roane County can take pride in the fact that the former Balkan States know about us.

Death to the Spam-o-Fascists!

Halloween in East Tennessee is a cause for great public arousal and activity on the streets. If only we could get this many people active in public discourse instead of "Ritual begging" as it's called.

But where did it come from? Well it probably doesn't have much to do with the Devil:

Read More

Rockwood and Midway High Schools aren't looking good in the dropout rate category.

Both of them lose more than 40% of their students before they graduate. For years I've wondered how they could have 40% go away and still manage to report a 75% graduation rate, still well below the 90% graduation rate goal even so.

I know they teach math to the kids...But what about the Administration?

Ok, this is totally off the normal topics but I thought it was interesting.

Sclerochronologists are scientists who study the growth and age of clams using annual growth lines in the shell in much the same way as dendrochronologists study the growth of trees using tree-rings.

They dredged up a really old clam...Over 400 years old.

"According to the Guinness Book of Records, the existing record for the longest-lived animal belongs to a 220 year old Arctica clam collected in 1982 from American waters. Unofficially, the record belongs to a 374 year old Icelandic clam which was found in a museum. Both these records appear to have been eclipsed by the latest specimen, whose age, between 405 and 410 years, has been assessed by counting the annual growth lines in the shell."

So should the headline read, "Oldest living animal killed by Scientists"?

Am I the only one seeing this? Or do others experience it, too?

The Tennessee Valley Authority is expected to file an application, perhaps as early as Tuesday, with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build two new nuclear power reactors at a site in Alabama...

The TVA operates six nuclear reactors. It restarted its Browns Ferry Unit 1 reactor in Alabama last summer after a lengthy shutdown. In 1996 it began operating Unit 1 at Watts Bar in Tennessee, the last new nuclear reactor to come on line in the United States, although its license application predates the Three Mile Island accident.

Via TPM

Monday developments in the Houston case.

BTW...Glad to see RCN putting things up on its web site so we don't wait for Damon's story until Wednesday.

Education Week has a live chat on school size coming up, and gives some good links to recent background articles on current thinking on this topic. From EdWeek's newsletter today:

The RoaneViews story that got picked up at TennViews.com was about Keep Roane Beautiful.

(I think other counties might be a tiny bit jealous)

Now it's up to us to follow through and get Roane County recycling efforts developed into something more meaningful.

And if you have time...surf around the list of Tennessee blogs and see what good people are thinking.

Roane County is in the news again, in a tale of law enforcement, wiretapping, and alleged drug dealing and murder. :( See this article in at KnoxNews.com: (link...)

One local resident commented to me that it might be a long time here before another wife informs on her husband.

-- OneTahiti

I had mentioned yesterday that we had the hounds running after some folks out here in Glen Alice. Two young men were run down, shackled, handcuffed, and given a nice ride in the back of a Blue light special with a Rhea County label on it.

They were allegedly stealing copper and got seen. Then they got smelled by a bloodhound and then they got handcuffed, after a nice outdoor adventure involving two county lines, the railroad bridge over WhitesCreek, and some new patrol car ruts through the back pasture of a neighbor's farm.

When I heard the names I was saddened for the families.

Saw a City Council member or two from Roane County in the crowd at the Tennessee Theater last night. I didn't turn around to see if they were singing along with everyone else on "Wagon Wheel" but I give them credit for going to see Old Crow Medicine Show anyway.

Hey neighbors,

Keep Roane Beautiful needs your help. We have received some money ($10,000 from Keep America Beautiful and Waste Management) to start curbside recycling in Roane County. We are looking at beginning in one city, as it stabilizes we will move to a second city and so on. This project would be an asset to the community. It would allow the community to offer an amenity to it's residents. Eventually, it would put money back in the budget. It helps reduce waste sent to the landfill. It will draw a lot of attention to that community as this was one of only 15 grants issued nationwide by KAB and Waste Management.

So here is where we need your help.
What communty do you live in? Do you recycle already? Do you use bags, boxes or special bins? Would you be willing to pay a small fee ($5 - $10) as a deposit on bins? If you are a part of your local government, would you support a recycling initiative for your community if there was no burden on the budget?

Just gathering thoughts,
Wendy @ KRB

So the Ethics Board takes complaints, deliberates in secret, decides whether a complaint is or isn't valid, and buries the ones that it wants to?

Mentor and enabler of RoaneViews, Randy Neal, has founded a new site for all of Tennessee folks hungry for something besides the onesided news continuosly fed by the mainstream media folks in our state.

It will focus on Progressive views and news and I'm honored that I've personally been invited to write and post at TennViews.com, along with a very fine group of writers from the Tennessee Blogosphere.

Randy is a long time blogger and is well respected, not just in East Tennessee, but far and wide as a fair, thoughtful, and accurate, observer of our world and how it affects "We, the People."

I have linked to TennViews.com on the right and will put up the fancy button, just as soon as I can figure out how to do it.

I drove out my driveway and came upon a Rhea County sheriff Deputy and asked him if he was lost.

Apparently(as of 10:30 am) they have a manhunt going with dogs and everything.