As election day dawned in Western North Carolina, a double rainbow graced the sky over West Asheville’s 16th Precinct. And for the folks waiting in line to vote, it was a fitting symbol: The stormy campaign season was almost over; the end was near. After months of hype, a record number of voters turned out … Read more
“A landslide devil seems to laugh at human incompetence.” That quote, attributed to a Japanese soil engineer, proved a fitting way for Richard Wooten of the North Carolina Geological Survey to introduce his presentation at an Oct. 19 forum at A-B Tech. The roughly 100 people who heard Wooten’s explanation of why landslides occur learned … Read more
Put that PC to sleep A personal computer seems so clean. No gas-guzzling engine spins its hard drive; no trees need to die to produce its paperless documents — just plug it in and play in the stream of electrons. But when the source of those streams is a coal-fired electric power plant, your computer … Read more
Media culpa It’s Nov. 3, and in my opinion, the butterfly ballot of the 2004 election has been the confusion caused by the inadequacies of the mainstream news media. Today’s media has done an impeccable job of distorting and obfuscating the information we need to properly understand current events. Twenty years ago, the media analyzed … Read more
Has anybody noticed that Asheville’s getting flatter? This is not a new phenomenon: In the 1920s, E.W. Grove took down a big hill to build the Grove Arcade and used the dirt to fill in a ravine that is now Coxe Avenue. Longtime Montford residents remember another ravine that once lay behind the homes on … Read more
