And what it would say if it wasn’t.

The State of the State makes one want to cry for help.

I am sorry to report that one of my tater tots has died. I don’t know what caused the problem, but it doesn’t look like the dreaded late blight (especially since the one right next to it is doing fine). It all started after a heavy rain which flattened the plant. Some of the stalks [...]

I have no idea whether systemic sexual harrassment is going on in the athletics fundraising department at Binghamton University… but I have even less of a clue as to why anyone would get excited about Binghamton University athletics. (I guess it doesn’t excite too many people, so they seek excitement in other ways?) It seems [...]

I have sometimes considered where in New York (or the Northeast) I might like to live if I weren’t living in Syracuse. It might seem crazy, but in addition to the usual factors (jobs, politics, weather etc), I find myself considering the history of a place. To me, it’s like the character of the landscape, [...]

Wilmers quits ESDC (HT Buffalopundit)… Just one year after becoming the state’s economic development czar, Robert Wilmers is stepping down from the post, the latest in a growing line-up of officials departing the Paterson administration. Wilmers, who is also chairman of the Buffalo-based M&T Bank, made his resignation known in a letter to Paterson, a [...]

I watched part of ABC’s Earth 2100 last night. It struck me as this generation’s version of The Day After… soon to be distributed on DVD with study guides to cowering junior high school classes nationwide, although with wind farms and skyscraper-top gardens filling in for “duck and cover.” In the end of the story, [...]

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 what resulted. [...]

A few weeks ago, the New York Regional Interconnect finally threw in the towel on their plans for a monstrous power line running from Oneida to Orange counties. This marks the end of a three-year battle by a consortium of citizens to turn back the project. EveAnn Schwartz and Chris Rossi of Stop NYRI, the [...]

I watched and read the news yesterday about the rampage shooting, and along with the horror of watching the death toll go up, there was the sorrow that this was such a terrible way for the world to hear about Binghamton. It should not have happened this way. I also watched the afternoon press conference, [...]