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Tall pine, tall magnolia, 16th Street, GSO. For perspective, the fence in the background is just under 6' tall, and behind it to the right is the white wall of the Crash Craddock bridge.

More like this, please.

Snuzzfest West, tonight at the Blind Tiger.

Standing in Beijing, thinking about Greensboro:

I don't expect Rashad Young to spend a lot of time reading blogs -- he's getting paid to manage the city, not surf the Web. But I do want him to pay attention to what people are talking about, and to avoid sweeping statements that alienate those citizens who use the Web to exchange ideas on local politics.

He could learn something from the respect the Chinese pay to the social media they fear.

My newspaper is about government and the voice of the people, here and there. You can read the whole thing after the jump.

UPDATE: Robbie Perkins, on Facebook: "I believe [Young] will be scanning the blogs in a month or two..."

Scamming game-players on Facebook and other social nets?

Scroll down to "Examples of Scams" for examples of scams.

More here.

Lisa Scheer took this picture of a marooned chunk of ice near Sitka, Alaska, in 2003.

Nazi comparisons too much for Cantor. Good for him. Finally.

Dude, here's your recession.

This was silly at time, now it just seems quaint.

More Dem-on-Dem violence.

Much angst at Blue NC over Larry Kissell's performance in office.

I can understand the frustration -- these folks feel they made a real contribution to Kissell's election, they believe they were promised something, and his healthcare vote is a big disappointment.

They should be giving him hell.

But there's also an un-DeMinty perspective. Politics is the art of the possible.

Would they rather have Robin Hayes in office? Because that, not a truly reliable progressive, is probably the realistic alternative to Kissell; south-central North Carolina is not a liberal hotspot.

The perfect is the enemy of the good, and the good is sometimes the enemy of the best-you're-going-to-get.

The anger from the left is part of the process. Maybe it will do some good.

I've been thinking of starting a regular feature at this blog called "Big old trees."

It would consist of photos of trees that are big and old.

Joel Gillespie is on the job already.

I took the photograph at top left four years ago on 16th Street; click to enlarge.

That's a big old tree.

Big old trees, rocks, and creeks make me happy. Don't even get me started on waterfalls that tumble over rocks beneath big old trees.

Searching for pics reminded me that my Radio archives are about to die, taking with them not just thousands of reader comments but a lot of photographs.

I just saved the one at middle left -- a tree/rock/stream trifecta -- taken in Alaska in 2003.

I also like this one from the same trip, despite the lack of trees.

"I would compartmentalize the industry for the same reason you compartmentalize ships," Reed said in the interview in his office on Park Avenue in New York. "If you have a leak, the leak doesn’t spread and sink the whole vessel. So generally speaking you’d have consumer banking separate from trading bonds and equity."

What was good for Citigroup wasn't good for America. Or, ultimately, Citigroup.

Previously: Reed rethinks repeal of Glass-Steagall.

Too bad "Backlash" is already taken, because it would make a swell title for a Malcolm Gladwell book, in which he might address critics who say he fails to deploy "anything so mundane as a logical, well-supported or otherwise sound argument."

Gladwell promised readers mastery of the complex and competitive world around them, if only they would accept the facile conclusions he extrapolated from the findings of the many endearingly eccentric, iconoclastic scholars and researchers who were busy applying the scientific method to the investigation of everyday living.

The flogging of Gladwell is overlong (and aren't clichés banal by definition?) but the part about Chinese math skills and Matteo Ricci is pretty interesting.

I thought that GDS-Charlotte Latin championship game was physical, but this is ridiculous.

UPDATE: Feeding frenzy.

Cornyn wants the GOP to be a bigger tent. DeMint does not: "He's trying to find candidates who can win. I'm trying to find people who can help me change the Senate."

Previously, DeMint said he'd rather have 30 true believers in the Senate than 60 mushy conservatives. Me, too!

Following firebrands from South Carolina is a time-honored formula for success.

The economy was badly broken. We put a splint on the compound fracture. The economy has not healed.

It's really not that complicated. Jobs, stupid.

Recommended: Oracle Bones: A Journey Through Time in China, by Peter Hessler.

Divisible, apparently.

If for some reason you have not been hitting the refresh button to find out the latest on the turnout numbers for Tuesday's mayoral election -- the possibilities range from "depressing" to "slightly more depressing" -- you can click here for a summary of the reporting to date.

Jeter is what baseball people call a "can't-miss" prospect.

Good call, baseball people! 

Interesting to look back at the 1993 article by the N&R's Charlie Atkinson on the then-Greensboro Hornet.

Is it a stretch to say that Greensboro made Jeter, Rivera, Posada, and Pettitte?

Yes, it is. But let's say it anyway.

Rules for waiters. #77 is the cardinal sin. #4 makes up for a lot of things.

Previously: overwhelmed at Ruth's Chris.

Elijah reminded me at breakfast that it's Guy Fawkes Day.

He's a big fan of V for Vendetta.

I remember being very taken with GFD as a first-grader living outside of London. Just the name "Gunpowder Plot" is exciting for a six-year-old. Plus, bonfires and fireworks.

Lisa Scheer captioned this photo "woman with poodle at her residence in a Beijing hutong, October 2009," to which I would add only, yes, the woman dyes her poodle's ears.

Onerous copyright rules to go global? Background. An excited response. Discussion.

I was going to make a funny about us all doing the work of our laid-off colleagues, but it's built into the lede: "The productivity of U.S. workers surged in the third quarter at the fastest pace in six years as companies squeezed more from remaining staff to boost profits."

Doug H has to go and mention Pure Prairie league in the thread beneath my recent Buck Owens post, and now I'll have Amie stuck in my head all day.

I still know all the words.

I'll still know all the words when I'm in an old-folks home and they play the popular music of my generation on the loudspeakers in the dining room. I'll be dribbling gruel into my beard and not knowing my grandchildren, but I'll still yodel that penultimate "longer if I do-oo" right on time.

"If Lloyd Blankfein has any sense, he’ll retire quietly." Corzine and the Goldman Curse, which seems to end up haunting us common folk, too.

GBOE numbers seem to show turnout for GSO along with other Guilford County races. Anyone know the number of registered voters for the city alone?

UPDATE: Going by the numbers provided by alert reader Fec, voter participation in the mayoral race was 20.55% -- not very impressive, although slightly higher than the "about 18%" cited by the N&R, which may have been using the turnout numbers for the whole county.

UPDATE II: N&R repeats the 18% count in Thursday's edition, but it still looks to me that they're working off BOE numbers for all voters in Guilford County who had elections on Tuesday, not just those in GSO. The page linked in the first graf of this post includes several other incorporated areas of the county, and the summaries at the top of that page, including the 18% tally, conform to those totals.

UPDATE III: Amanda Lehmert says the paper is working off another set of numbers, from the state elections site, which show about 30K more voters than the Fec shows; by that reckoning, 18% is correct. 196,583 registered voters out of a population of 250K seems high to me. In any case, as Amanda says, "It seems as though there is something very off about the BOE's stats." Now we just need to figure out which BOE -- state or county -- is off the mark.

UPDATE IV: Citizen journalist Fec reports, "I called the Guilford BOE and they agreed the discrepancy is due to inactive voters." Leaving aside the sad fact that "inactive voters" describes 80% of the people in this city, and leaving open the question of definitions -- when is a voter technically deemed "inactive?" -- we are left to ponder the most accurate turnout number for Tuesday's mayoral election. Pending further information on that open definitional question, I'll hazard...20%.

"The basic theme of health care reform is that insurance would be mandatory, subsidized and regulated." A look at the substance of the House and (as-yet-unseen) Senate bills.

Gordon Smith, aka blogger Screwy Hoolie of Scrutiny Hooligans, won a seat on the Asheville City Council.

Nefarious, corrupt, unsavory bastards.

"Greensboro can be an ugly place politically," he says, redundantly.

Who ran Yvonne Johnson's get-out-the-vote effort? It didn't go so good.

More thoughts on a divided city, including a good comment on race from Roch.

The small banners fluttering above this Beijing street near the Ya Show market bespeak tradition, at least until you realize it's a Budweiser promotion for a Beyonce concert.

Small-tenters manage to hand GOP stronghold in NY to Dems. Not a good night for the Democrats at the state level, but "the one race where the Republicans consciously sought to nationalize the race was the one they lost."

"What bubble?" Rogers said, when asked if he agreed with Roubini's view. "It's clear Mr. Roubini hasn’t done his homework, yet again."

As usual, I'm hoping Roubini is wrong but burying canned goods in the back yard. After the last ten years, the words "What bubble?" should be cause for alarm.

I'd call this the WAR election, because it was decided by Wray, apathy, and recession.

A lot of voters were unhappy with the handling of the GPD mess, and a lot of those who weren't unhappy with it seem to have stayed home. A general sense that we need to get back to basics is in the air.

I wonder how a city that depends so much on property tax revenue is going to cope with home values that may not support current assessment levels, much less higher assessments and taxes anytime soon.

But we still passed, by a wide margin, a bond package to upgrade the Science Center. The tigers there are pretty great.

Goodness, this is exciting.

UPDATE: New mayor. Vaughan pro tem, Perkins and Thompson at large. Rakestraw over Landau. Change in land of the status quo.

I clearly punched the box for Bill Knight for mayor. The check popped up on Yvonne Johnson’s name. I called for the precinct worker and he explained how to correct. I contacted the BOE and they stated they have heard similar reports today and it was related to machine calibration.

Huh. Who knew?

TW also reports relatively brisk traffic at the polls in the Adams Farm area. There was no line this morning when I voted at IP Methodist, but volunteers said there had been a steady flow of voters.

Lisa Scheer took this pic recently in Beijing's Chaoyang district.