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Since the already shaky economy began to rattle to pieces in October, about 1,000 people in Southwest Virginia have been laid off by 16 companies across 32 locations.  See the shape of where jobs are disappearing on our layoffs map. Get the number of jobs lost, the number left, and links to stories in The Roanoke Times about the layoffs.

The bulk of the jobs lost are in manufacturing, but some are in technology. Most are rank-and-file workers, but some are management. Word of other layoffs, sent by readers who don't see them on the map, is still coming in. I added two layoffs to the data today that were confirmed after hearing from readers about them.

I put the map together after watching -- with horror, like most people -- the rash of layoffs being reported in The Roanoke Times. I thought it would be useful to track the job losses, and see what it looks like when you plot them on a map. What areas are getting hit the hardest?

WVTF, our local public radio station, ran a story on the map Friday. Rick Mattioni did the interview and put together the story. He was also gracious enough to send over the audio. Here it is if you want to give a listen:

You only have to poke around the DataSphere for a little while to figure out I love Google maps, and partly because I'm so dependent on them to give you, gentle reader, a geographic look at data sometimes.

Google just seems to jam out great new stuff all the time -- Google Earth, Google Chat, and now the Google video chat.

The latest Google thing we in the Roanoke area ought to be checking out is it's "Street View" images of Roanoke. Just go to maps.google.com, search on an address, and if there's a street view there, you'll see a link to it in the info bubble that pops up. Click that, and you'll be transported to that spot photographically. From there you can pivot in any direction, 360 degrees. You can look straight up, or straight down. Notice the arrows on the roadway. Click one to move forward.

I played with this a while yesterday. Naturally, I plugged in my home address to see if my house was there. It was, in an image shot, apparently, on a spring day, while we were all gone. Neither of our cars was in the driveway. Well, that's cool, right?

I mean, this is not only a visual document of pretty much every square inch of roadway around here, but it's also a snapshot of the second in time when a particular image was taken. You can see cars on the road, pedestrians on the sidewalk, notice the weather.

On the other hand, it was kind of creepy. It made me feel vulnerable somehow, made my private life feel a little more out there than I really wanted it to be.

Now, as a journalist, I defend the right of any documentarian to take photos in a public place like a city street. This newspaper depends on that.

On the other hand, this feels invasive somehow. I'm all about more information, but do we really need this much information?  Granted, there's not a minute level of visual information in these photographs. You can see people in some places, and you can zoom in, but not to a great extent before the image begins to deteriorate. I've been trying, and I've yet to be able to really see a face or make out a license plate. But is there still potential for abuse here? Could people use this to gather information about you for nefarious purposes?

No doubt, the technology is amazing, but this puts me in mind of something I ask myself about putting data on the web. I'm all about data, and the more the better, but all journalists, including data editors, ought to be frequently asking themselves,  "Just because I can, does that mean I should?"

What do you all think? Go play with this new toy, and if you think about it, report back here.

When you think of corrupt spots on the U.S. map, you might naturally think of Illinois. And certainly moreso with the arrest of Gov. Rod Blagojevich on federal corruption charges this week. Or maybe you think of Florida. Plenty of shenanigans down Miami way over the years, right?

But where would you put Virginia? I've lived here my whole life, and while journalists love a good corrupt official to chew on, I don't think of my homestate as a place with a steady diet of crooked officials.

But one study by a publication called the Corporate Crime Reporter ranked Virginia 12th, at least among the 35 most populous states in the union. Louisiana was first, followed by Mississippi, Kentucky, Alabama, Ohio and finally, at #6, Illinois. Florida was 8th.

CCR took a report from the U.S. Justice Department on prosecutions on federal corruption charges and calculated a rate of the number of charges in a state from 1997 to 2006 per 100,000 residents.

Here's a look at the number of convictions in Virginia's two federal judicial districts by year from the DOJ report:

U.S. Attorney's Office	1997	1998	1999	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006	Totals
Virginia, Eastern	9	32	17	22	22	17	8	21	23	38	209
Virginia, Western	2	2	8	7	3	13	3	16	2	13	69

That's a total of 278 convictions over 10 years, which is way more than I would have imagined. The vast majority, though, are in the Eastern District. (This comes from a set of tables at the end of the DOJ report, by the way.)

By comparison, Illinois had 524, Louisiana had 329, and Florida had 809. Florida's Southern District had the most of any judicial district with 574.  Washington D.C. had 390, but the city's too small to make the top 35 considered, plus it's the nation's capital and is rather more overrun with public officials to begin with.

We should bear in mind that the numbers reflect not only the level of corruption, but also the interest of particular U.S. Attorneys in these kinds of cases, those same prosecutors' ability to get convictions, and other factors.

And, what the numbers don't reflect is similar kinds of cases that go through state courts. Think of Roanoke City Councilman Alfred Dowe, who double-dipped on his expense reimbursements, and whose case is before state courts. And then there's former Henry County Administrator Sid Clower, who took taxpayers for over $800,000, and was prosecuted in state court, but also picked up some charges at the federal level.

On the upside, those kinds of cases are fairly rare around here. And if you're still looking for comfort, at least our governor's name is not on the lips of every blogger and late-night comedian in the country. And if that's still not enough, be glad our governor doesn't have that peculiar hairstyle. I can stomach Gov. Tim Kaine's energetic eyebrow as long he's not selling off senate seats.

If you're thinking the answer is bus exhaust, that smell from the cafeteria on fish stick day, second-hand smoke or maybe pot, you've got some other things to consider, according to USA Today.

The national newspaper has released a special report called "The Smokestack Effect: Toxic Air and America's Schools," which documents air quality around 128,000 public, private and parochial schools. You can search the newspaper's database to see how your school ranks. Enter the name of a specific school, search by your locality, or an entire state. Results are mapped.

And, if you're kids go to a school in Dublin, Va., or the Raleigh Court/Virginia Heights area of Roanoke, prepare to be disturbed. Read more »