Blogs

Durham County is currently vetting its newest comprehensive plan, which is to guide city/county development decisions through 2030. If you don't think this is an Orange County story, take a look at their plans for the borderlands between the county line and I-40, particularly that chunk of space bordered by 54, 40, Old Chapel Hill Road, and the county line: a couple square miles of medium to high density housing where currently there are woods bordering one of the waterfowl impoundments, more commercial development along 54, and much much more!

And remember, the farm that abuts Meadowmont is in Durham County.

Discuss!

Folks may have heard that Orange County School Board Chairman Keith Cook cribbed his commencement speech delivered at Orange County High School last week. This is a serious infraction given the problems with plagiarism among students and the efforts by teachers to prevent it. Cook surely ought to be a role model in such matters.

Perhaps even worse than Cook’s plagiarism is his continuing denial of it. He initially denied it to the Herald reporter. Moments ago, he told the WCHL reporter that it was not plagiarism because he did not know who wrote the speech and that what was important was the content. He might talk to any English or history teacher to find out just how important they would consider the content if a student turned in a speech by Donna Shalala.

Meanwhile, Eleanor Murray embarrassed WCHL by repeatedly agreeing with Cook that it was inadvertent plagiarism. Yet Cook admits to making a web search for “graduation speeches” and making liberal use of the one he found. That is intentional plagiarism even if he did not trouble himself to find out who the author was.

In addition to the many things the Herald-Sun does every year to get information to voters, they have now implemented candidate blogs. This is a great idea and it's a good compliment to the forums, editorials, and online "votebook" the Herald already provides (see below).

Greensboro journalist/blogger Ed Cone has some great insight and commentary about the candidate blogs. He has been evangelizing for political blogging for a while, so he should know! I think this is an innovative step for the Herald and I'm glad to see them do this. I hope candidates will take advantage of this unique opportunity to communicate with their potential supporters and constituents.

new user registration form, but then I remembered how many times the Herald's telemarketers called me, for years, trying to get me to subscribe. (After I had unsubscribed due to the H-S's conservative politics.) I'm going to think twice before I give them my phone number again.