Last spring, residents of the near western burbs of Onondaga County had a little problem with something they called “The Noise.” After many months of forum-based fretting, angry phone calls, e-mails, and media coverage, the annoying sound finally disappeared (for the most part). Syracuse Energy Corp. (Suez), the co-generation plant in Solvay, […]

The long-anticipated $2 million restoration of the Nine Mile Creek Aqueduct at Camillus Erie Canal Park is a “go.” This was what it looked like on Saturday. They are now just starting to place the watertight layer of boards on the floor. When it’s finished in October, it will be the only […]

NYRI won’t stay dead.
Phil posts on gay marriage. He thinks some Democrats are batting for the other team.
Neighbors of the Onondaga Nation is trying to get the Syracuse Common Council to adopt a Resolution of Respect for and Reconciliation with the Onondaga Nation.
The location of Mordor having already been discovered, here are the Mines […]

Wolfram Alpha is a new site that advertises itself as a new way to search for data in a computational manner. You can input natural-language queries in a variety of subjects, including Census data. Since secession is all the rage these days, I thought I’d plug some questions into the system and see […]

On New Year’s Day 2008 I posted about what sort of young people might be coming back to the Syracuse area in the future. In yesterday’s New York Times was a revealing look at what is happening to real families during a real economic fading, and what it’s like when economically broken young adults […]

First it was the Upstate Republicans making their noises. Now the grunts are being heard from Long Island, as you might expect. There are three New Yorks, after all. (Or perhaps 19 million New Yorks…?) The MTA bailout has proven to be gasoline on this flickering little flame.
Article IV of the […]

The state Senate has a snazzy new website (same old address). It’s a big deal for the new Senate Democratic majority, with some new features - but what about the minority senators? Are they getting the same bells and whistles on the site?
Judging from John DeFrancisco’s section on the new site, it looks […]

The Post-Standard has an important and very welcome front-page story today about elevated levels of lead and arsenic found in some community gardens in the city of Syracuse. (One of the beneficial side effects of the paper’s shrinkage: a front-page story really stands out and focuses the attention.) Although some of the contamination […]

This is pretty unbelievable:
Former Schenectady city schools director of facilities Steven Raucci was indicted Wednesday on 26 counts, including terrorism and arson charges, one dating back to 1993.
Among the 26 allegations are two counts of first-degree arson and one count of terrorism, all top-level felonies carrying maximum sentences of 25 years to life in state […]

The Syracuse International Film Festival finished its latest run this past weekend and there is good news!
The whole goal of the Syracuse Film Office is to get more films made in central New York — and it’s already making progress. “We had a Hollywood group, they were looking for a series of highways with […]