Category: Blogs and Blog Administration
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VaNews, the New Power Broker in the Virginia Media Landscape
When David Poole launched the Virginia Public Access Project’s VaNews digest of news articles about Virginia politics and policy, he had no way of imagining that things would get so complicated. As other news aggregators do, VaNews rounded up the top stories from Virginia’s newspapers, television stations, and selected online publications, excerpting headlines and lead…
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Report to Agitators, Bomb Throwers and Rebels
Many thanks to the readers who contribute monthly to Bacon’s Rebellion via the subscriber button atop the left-hand column. I want you to know how your donations have contributed to the blog. First, we have migrated Bacon’s Rebellion to a new hosting platform that promises much faster page-loading speeds. If you found the blog frustratingly…
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New Chapter for Bacon’s Rebellion
Today marks the end of a three-year era at Bacon’s Rebellion — the final day of Dominion Energy’s sponsorship of reporting and commentary on energy issues in Virginia. Dominion and I are parting on excellent terms, but I have decided to let the sponsorship expire in order to take the blog in a new direction.…
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A Newer, Bigger, Shinier Command Bunker
Bacon’s Rebellion is moving its hidden underground command center to a new, undisclosed location today. This massive logistical effort will entail a temporary diminution of insurgent activity. But have no fear, the blogging of the rebellion will resume shortly.
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Welcome Steve Haner to Bacon’s Rebellion
I’m pleased to announce that Stephen D. Haner is joining the ranks of Bacon’s Rebellion contributors. An occasional guest columnist in the past, he will become a more regular presence on the blog. Steve brings a unique perspective to public policy in Virginia. He started his career as a journalist. When I first met him…
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Still a Few Slots Open for the Big Bacon Fry
The political discourse in the United States just gets nastier. People in the other political tribe aren’t just misguided or informed by different values, they’re ignorant, stupid, lying, evil people out to ruin the country. If you’re a Bacon’s Rebellion reader, you’re probably just as tired of the hyperbolic rhetoric and personal vilification as I…
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Groupthink Leads to Polarization… Which Leads to Foaming at the Mouth
From “Republican Like Me: How I Left the Liberal Bubble and Learned to Love the Right,” by Ken Stern, former CEO of NPR and lifelong Democrat (excerpt published in the Daily Beast): We are becoming angrier and more polarized not because of increasing issue disagreement but because we are increasingly participating in groupthink. When all…
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You’re Invited to the Big Bacon Fry
Politics is nastier now than at any time in forty years. As University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato recently opined, at least in the 1960s and ’70s the country fractured over monumental issues such as Civil Rights, the Vietnam War and Watergate. Today, the animus is largely personality driven, mostly involving the person of…
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Five More CURA Studies!
Both Virginia Commonwealth University and I have fallen down on our pledges to promote the Virginia-focused public policy work of the university’s Center for Urban and Regional Analysis (CURA). Since last I highlighted one of CURA’s studies on Bacon’s Rebellion, the center has published five more without any notice on this blog. Hopefully, we have…
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Bacon Bits: Coal Ash, Eclipses and Online Learning
Moon as energy conservation device. During the solar eclipse Monday, local temperatures dropped five to six degrees and electric consumption reported by Bristol Virginia Utilities, which serves Bristol, Va., fell five megawatts — or about 7.6%. So reports the Bristol Herald-Courier. Dominion launches coal ash study. Dominion Energy has hired AECOM, a multinational engineering firm,…
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I’m Going Cyborg, Baby!
Part man, part machine — that’ll be me in about six or seven hours. I’ll be checking into Saint Mary’s hospital to get a new ceramic-titanium hip to replace the flawed model that my DNA bequeathed me. I’ll be out of action for a few days, and I expect my blogging productivity will be diminished for…
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A Substation in Time Saves Nine
The 2013 sniper attack on Pacific Gas & Electric Company’s Metcalf transmission substation was a wake-up call for the electric power industry. A team of riflemen knocked out the facility near San Jose, Calif., by firing upon and severely damaging 17 transformers. Thanks to redundancy in the grid, PG&E was able to prevent blackouts by…
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Living the Good Life… for a Week
This is the view this morning from our beach cottage in Emerald Isle, N.C. The weather is beautiful. I’m guessing that my blogging will be spotty this week, but I will check in sporadically.
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Note to Agitators, Bomb Throwers and Rebels
For a couple of years now, two to three dozen readers of Bacon’s Rebellion have been contributing faithfully to the upkeep of the blog through small monthly contributions. I want to thank them for their loyal support and report to them what I’ve been doing with the money. Twitter fail. In concert with a push…
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The Biggest Screw-Up in the History of Bacon’s Rebellion
A monster apology to readers as well as to everyone in Virginia’s higher ed industry. I have screwed up with the publishing system of this blog, but never before on the scale and magnitude of the disaster that befell Bacon’s Rebellion this week. I have taken down all four articles in the four-part series on…