December 19, 2007Multiplying bearsJust a pause to say thanks to those of you who have submitted black bear sightings for our map of bears in unusual places around the region. I think I had five or six on there when I first posted the map in the DataSphere. There are now three times that. Some cool ones came in, too. Jason Ball, who lives in Amherst County not too far from Buena Vista, sent in three sightings, including a regular visitor who fishes in the pond on his property. Bruce Cody told of one invader who left claw marks 9-feet up a tree from trying to reach a bird feeder. Those are just a couple. Many more there of roadside sightings, mama's and babies in transit, and others. So, again, thanks, and keep 'em coming. December 18, 2007The story behind city quadrants and the crime reportRoanoke officials are not giving the city quadrant on addresses of crimes in news releases and in the police department's online crime report because City Manager Darlene Burcham doesn't want to further stigmatize certain parts of the city or further stereotypes about the quadrants. By quadrants, I mean the NW, SW, NE or SE you see on street signs or on the end of mailing addresses. Read about this city policy in Roanoke Times police reporter Reed Williams's story from today's paper. The story explores the tension between Burcham's desire not to perpetuate stereotypes and the need to give the public complete -- and unconfusing -- information about crime in the city. Continue reading "The story behind city quadrants and the crime report" » December 17, 2007Recycling data in the newsRecycling data for Virginia localities posted in the DataSphere is getting some interest in the print edition of The Roanoke Times. Check out Duncan Adams' story on the rates, which has a particular focus on Floyd County's rate of 11 percent. That's well below the state mandated rate of 25 percent. That's from Sunday's paper. Today's edition brought the opinion of our editorial staff on the rates. "Virginia cities and counties could do much better. But as long as the state sticks to expectations set nearly 20 years ago, there is little reason for localities to try," it reads. December 14, 2007Roanoke crime report is back onlineThe Roanoke police department resumed posting a crime report on its crime analysis page Thursday afternoon. Find a link to it and other online crime reports from the region in the public safety section of the DataSphere. The report lists only more serious, or Part I, crimes, such as homicide, forcible rape, burglary and motor vehicle theft, and ony for the current two-week period. There is no archive. The report was taken down about two weeks ago so it could be revised. It returned with essentially the same information, but with a few changes. The address of an offense is given in a block number and street name, only now the quadrant of the city (SW, NW, SE, NE) in which a street is located is no longer given. Previously, the information was presented broken into four sections according to the departments patrol zones. The zones roughly, if not exactly, corresponded to the city's quadrants. It's now a single list. Any thoughts on the changes? Is the report useful information to you? December 12, 2007Where 315-pound offensive linemen come fromIt's not like you pass them on the street every day, so where do these monsters who play football at Virginia Tech and UVa come from? And who's coming to play next year? Turns out Roanoke Times sports writer Doug Doughty keeps up with this stuff, and thanks to him we now have those answers in the DataSphere. You can search a small database of recruits by both the Hokies and the Cavaliers major football programs, and see the name, position, school, hometown, height and weight of the 28 players committed to Tech and 14 committed to UVa for 2008 (plus one for 2009 at Tech.) You can see the same data displayed on an interactive map, too. Those who pay close attention to college recruiting know that Tech more or less owns Virginia. Look at the map and that fact leaps at you in burgundy and burnt orange. The Wahoos find their players in more far flung places, its plain to see. What other patterns do you see, sports fans? December 11, 2007Recycling rates are back -- and rightWe've reposted our database of recycling rates for Virginia's 74 municipal waste handling agencies. We took it down last week after being alerted to errors in the data by the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality. The errors were ours. Turns out that the numbers were correct, but they weren't matched up with the correct agencies. So have at it again. December 7, 2007Recycling rates didn't seem right because they weren'tWhen something doesn't seem right, well, sometimes that's because it's just not right. A few days ago I made a post questioning the validity of numbers in a database we posted in the DataSphere. They showed an enormous increase in the amount of municipal waste produced in Roanoke from 2005 to 2006. I was right to question the numbers -- they were indeed wrong -- but I should have looked to myself for the source of the error. I'm still not sure how it occured, but it seems the data table for 2005 is garbled. The rates shown for Roanoke City are actually for Buckingham County. We'll get it straightened out, but in the meantime, we've taken down that database. My apologies for the error and the confusion. December 5, 2007Recycling: How green is your county?New in the Datasphere, recycling rates for the 74 Virginia municipal entities that handle your trash. Our Roanoke area agencies all recycle something within a few percentage points one way or the other of a third of all their solid waste. The source is the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality's annual recycling reports, which are compliled from reports made by the municipal agencies themselves. But some of these numbers, quite frankly, seem hard to believe. They range wildly, from a rate of 7.6 percent in Northampton County to a rate of 55 percent in the town of Vienna. Can a locality, even a small one in a progressive, wealthy part of the state that produces just 12,000 tons of trash a year really recycle more than half of its waste? Part of the explanation lies in the agencies' ability to get credits added to their rate for recycling of private waste and for waste source reduction efforts. Then there's things like these numbers. Roanoke had a dramatic increase in the rate from 23 percent in 2005 to 37 percent in 2006. That sounds great, but the numbers also show reported total solid waste of 15,000 tons in 2005 compared to 80,000 tons in 2006. What? There are similar increases in Roanoke County. It all seems to suggest some change in calculations. I can find no accounting for it in the text of the 2006 DEQ report. We couldn't have a 400 percent increase in garbage from one year to the next, could we? I hate to undermine the reliablity of data I've posted in the DataSphere. Maybe there are good explanations for all this. Still, if something smells funny about the state's report on garbage, you ought to know. |
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