Category: Blogs and Blog Administration
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RIP Sugar Bacon
After suffering a severe stroke, my stepmother, Marguerite “Sugar” Bacon, died two days ago at the age of 87. She and my dad had been married 60 years, and after my dad died two months ago, she missed him terribly. I don’t believe in heaven, but if I’m wrong, I’m pretty sure she’s with him…
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Note to Readers — Another Misfire!
I’ve been working on a four-part series about Virginia higher-education policy since the enactment of the 2005 Restructuring Act. In juggling and updating different pieces in WordPress, I accidentally hit the “Publish” button for one of them. I have taken the piece offline, but email subscribers will get a copy in their in-boxes. While the…
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College Graduation Rates and SAT Scores
John Butcher, of Cranky’s Blog fame, is turning his analytical gaze from K-12 schools to higher education. In his latest post, he explores the strong correlation between a Virginia public institution’s six-year graduation rate and the average SAT scores of its student body, as seen in the table to the left and the plotted chart below…
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A New Sponsor for Higher-Ed Journalism
I am pleased to announce that Partners 4 Affordable Excellence @ EDU has begun sponsoring Bacon’s Rebellion effective January 1 this year. Under terms of the agreement, Bacon’s Rebellion will provide in-depth coverage of higher education issues in Virginia, with a particular emphasis on the cost of attendance of Virginia’s public colleges and universities. Partners 4 Affordable…
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Note to Readers
Good news! We think we have restored the Bacon’s Rebellion blog to full functionality. Things should be working more smoothly now. However, we’re still suffering after-effects of the Denial of Service attack and our efforts (far more complicated than we anticipated) to migrate the blog to a faster, more secure platform. What’s in it for…
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Bacon Takes Aim, Shoots Foot
My apologies to the Department of Environmental Quality, the Dominion Pipeline Monitoring Coalition, the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, and most of all readers: Late yesterday or early this morning I accidentally published a rough draft of an article about environmental regulation of natural gas pipelines in Virginia. That draft was incomplete. I still had reporting to do,…
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Back in Action… Almost
It’s been a remarkably long and arduous process to restore the Bacon’s Rebellion blog after it was knocked out by a denial-of-service attack a month ago. For two weeks, it was literally impossible to access the files, and I continued publishing the blog only by jury-rigging a new, bare-bones website. Then, in the two weeks…
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The Disintegration of Newspapers Accelerates
by James A. Bacon The disintegration of the newspaper industry is accelerating. Even as the global advertising market is expected to grow 4% this year, spending on newspaper print ads is expected to decline 8.7% in 2016, according to estimates from GroupM, an ad-buying firm, as reported by the Wall Street Journal. That would be…
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Blog Update
The old server that served Bacon’s Rebellion at Hostmonster.com is still out of condition, the victim of a “denial of service” attack. The server hosted multiple websites, so there is no evidence that Bacon’s Rebellion was the target of the attack. It has been nearly a week now but Hostmonster still has not resolved the issue.…
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Making Progress
Got email restored to my PC — not my laptop or tablet, but I’ll worry about them later. Apparently, my Outlook 2010 is too old. I’ll have to upgrade to the new subscriber-based Outlook. Anyway, the email setup process is so complex that I never could have gotten as far as I have without extensive…
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Bacon’s Rebellion — Down but Not Out
The Bacon’s Rebellion blog and email account crashed Friday morning, and I’m working on getting them back in working order. According to my web host, Hostmonster, the server where the blog resides is “under attack” by unknown parties, and no one is sure when they can solve the problem. Because Hostmonster was so unresponsive and…
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CURA’d Bacon
Bacon’s Rebellion is pleased to announce a partnership with the Center for Urban and Regional Analysis at Virginia Commonwealth University’s L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs. CURA conducts research on housing, poverty, economic development and other topics relating to the prosperity, livability and sustainability of Virginia communities — the same topics that…
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Jim Bacon nominated for Nobel Prize
Stockholm Syndrome – In dramatic news the Nobel Foundation today announced that James A. Bacon has been nominated for the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his groundbreaking economic work – Boomergeddon. Nobel spokesman Lars E Faire said, “Of course we nominated Bacon – just putting a picture of a detonated atomic bomb on…
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On the Road Again…
It is spring vacation, which means the Bacon family is on the move. I’ll be reporting in this week from one of the country’s great historic walkable and historic cities. – JAB
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Citizens Take on Crony Capitalism in VA Beach
by James A. Bacon Arlington County had its $1 million bus stop scandal. The City of Richmond had its mayoral cronyism scandal. Now Virginia Beach has its Cavalier Hotel redevelopment scandal. The FBI has undertaken a criminal investigation of a vote by Councilman John Uhrin in favor of providing $18 million in city funds to…