You know who you are: the guy who can reel off exactly how many tens of thousands of twinkling bulbs there are engulfing his house; the couple with the electric meter about to vibrate off the wall every December, the fanatic with his own FM transmitter that broadcasts music perfectly synched to his 11 blinking Santas.

Once again, The Roanoke Times and roanoke.com are offering our readers a searchable map and database of holiday lights displays in the Roanoke and New River Valleys -- and beyond. And we need you folks with the lighting displays to populate it for us.

You can submit information about your display online using a convenient Web form. We're looking for your address, so people can find your lights, the times you have the lights on, and a description of what visitors will see.

You can even upload a photo of your display if you have one, though that's not a requirement. And if you want to shoot a photo, we have some tips on how to do it from one of our own staff photographers, Eric Brady.

Only a display's owner can submit info, but if it's your neighbor instead of you with all the lights, by all means, encourage them to submit their information.

Once you click submit, your information is instantly available to our visitors at roanoke.com in a searchable database.

So put down that extension cord and get clickin'.

But, at No. 7 on the list, the store on South Main Street, Blacksburg, Va, less than a mile from the Virginia Tech campus. The two other liquor stores in Montgomery County combined didn't do the volume of that store. That's just one example of the noteworthy juxtaposition of a number of those top-selling stores (as measured by gallons sold) with college campuses.

We put the top 50 stores on a map to see how many lined up near Virginia's 42 four-year residential colleges.

Check out the University of Virginia. Just down Emmett Street are two of the top 50 stores.

And it's not just the big universities. Longwood University, in Farmville, has about 4,000 students -- and one of the top 50 stores just a little ways down Main Street.

Along with the top liquor stores, we also mapped licensed alcohol sellers busted for selling to under-age buyers. State ABC agents routinely conduct under-cover inspections of places licensed to sell beer and wine by sending in operatives who are actually 17-19 years old to buy alcohol. The inspections are essentially random, but where they're conducted can be influenced by the availability of under-age operatives and they can also be prompted by citizen complaints.

Between July 2008 and June 2009, licensees failed inspections 483 times. In the same period, nearly 4,200 inspections produced no violations, so the mass of sellers are following the law.

With nearly 500 of those violations on our map, naturally they're all over the state, but you can see on the map that quite a few of the red Xs marking them are, again, near college campuses.

The 2009 data just came out today from the Virginia Department of Education, which we added to our existing database with the 2008 numbers.

Prior to that, Virginia calculated grad rates in a different way, so comparisons before that don't really wash. It's now called the "on-time graduation rate." There are break downs for subgroups including gender, race, homeless students, and more, and also break downs of diploma types.

Statewide, the grad rate improved from 82.1 percent to 83.2 percent. The drop out rate improved from 8.7 percent to 7.9 percent. Read the DOE news release here.

That’s 687,117 acres under easement out of 27.3 million acres in the state, according to data from the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation. (And it doesn’t include other kinds of protected lands, like national parks, national forests, state parks, wildlife refuges and so on.)

I learned all this doing data work for a story by Rex Bowman about Gov. Tim Kaine nearing his goal of preserving 400,000 acres during his term, which began in January 2006 and ends in January 2010.

The tally toward Kaine’s goal was about 352,000 acres as of September. Only thing is, as Rex and I discovered in analyzing the data on over 4,000 easements on record with the DCR, Kaine is including almost 50,000 acres put under easements during the last six months of 2005 -- when Mark Warner was governor.

Kaine’s people say they include that period because it’s the first half of the fiscal year, which runs from July 2005 through June 2006. But by that reasoning, they should have stopped counting toward Kaine’s goal on June 30, 2009, and they haven’t. So, really, Kaine is giving himself a 4-and-a-half year window, when his term as governor is only four years.

Still, it’s a major achievement, and one of the most significant of Kaine’s tenure. The number of acres protected by easements has nearly doubled during Kaine’s time in the mansion. Easements added during Kaine’s term add up to something nearly twice the size of Roanoke County.

Even Kaine’s nemesis, House of Delegates Majority Leader Morgan Griffith (R-Salem) called that a good thing – through while knocking Kaine for mathematical chicanery.

Where are all these easements? How convenient you should ask. In the process of working on Rex’s story, I developed a couple of maps that didn’t make it into the paper. I thought I’d share them here.

Here’s a density map colored by how many acres are under easement in each city and county. The numbers in the legend are numbers of acres. Note that the lightest color is for localities that have no easements.

Less useful, but just so you can see it, is this map, showing where the easements are. There are more than 4,000 easements, and zoomed out this far, they all run together, but you can still get an idea of where they are just by the density of them. That clump up there in Northern Virginia is on the border of Fauquier and Loudon counties.

My colleague, Jenny Kincaid Boone, has a story on what the change means in the Sunday, Sept. 27, Roanoke Times.

As part of that, we decided to look at which places had the farthest to go to become smoke-free. I obtained from the Virginia Department of Health, the agency that inspects restaurants, data including the smoking status of more than 16,000 full-service and fast-service restaurants in Virginia.

And it turns out that statewide, some 70 percent of those restaurants are already non-smoking. And the Roanoke and New River Valleys are just about there, too, with about 68 percent of restaurants smoke-free.

(One caveat about the data: the smoking status is based on what was recorded during a health department inspection, and some of the dates on these status are months old, and might have changed.)

We took the data and stuck it on a map to see just where the stragglers are. Now, 16,000 restaurants is a lot of points to map, so we rolled the data up into percentages for each city and county, and that's what you'll find on the map. It's a cool interactive, and you can make all sorts of changes to it, including changing which data is shown on the map. There are instructions at the bottom of the page.

It struck me that, really, there aren't any dramatic and obvious patterns to where non-smoking restaurants are. I thought maybe rural areas would have fewer non-smoking places. But look at Craig County. It has five restaurants, and all are smoke-free. Look at the Shenendoah Valley. The whole spine of it has a high percentage of non-smoking restaurants. My best guess on that is that it's influenced by Interstate 81, and the number of fast-food restaurants near interchanges. Fast food restaurants are routinely smoke-free these days.

Switch the map over to the percentage of restaurants which allow smoking in all areas. No great pattern there, either. I thought that the high percentages might correspond with heavy tobacco producing communities, but except for Pittsylvania County, that theory isn't really born out.

But maybe you'll see things that we missed. As always, let us know.

That same ratio seems to be playing out in Virginia.

Of the seven Virginia college and university presidents who either signed on to the initiative or said they support it in a survey by The Roanoke Times, six lead private schools, and just one is at a public university: Charles Steger of Virginia Tech.

“Unfortunately, as a large university, Virginia Tech experiences the problems associated with college-age drinking all too often,” Steger said in a statement submitted as part of the survey. “The 'binge drinking’ rate at Virginia Tech is 58.4 percent, far above the national average of 42 percent.

“The Amethyst Initiative, fundamentally, seeks to open a nationwide dialogue on misuse of alcohol. I signed the initiative to help facilitate this discussion. I applaud and support that effort.”

In all, 18 of Virginia’s 44 four-year, residential colleges and universities in Virginia completed all or part of the survey, and two more who did not complete the survey have declared their support for the initiative on the Amethyst Initiative Web site.

Five of the schools that responded to the survey said they oppose the initiative, three of them public schools.

Another eight schools said they were undecided in the survey, six of them public.

You can see the first wave of survey responses here. You’ll find an interactive map of all the schools we surveyed and the schools' unabridged answers to the parts of the survey related to our coverage so far in our Under 21 series. The series looks at the Amethyst Initiative and college drinking in general.

The survey responses suggest relatively weak opposition to the initiative, and a lot of indecision about it.

That’s especially true among the state’s taxpayer-supported public colleges, for whom the notion that the 21-year drinking age has led to more clandestine and heavier drinking and ought to be re-considered seems to be a touchy one.

As Longwood University in Farmville pointed out in its survey response, supporting a re-consideration of the legal drinking age can be more complicated for a school that depends on taxpayers.

“We answer to a higher authority and our number one priority has always been, and continues to be, the safety and security of our students,” the school said. “It’s a matter of trust between our students, their parents and us.”

The University of Virginia’s John Casteen, who also said he’s undecided, acknowledged in an address to parents in August 2008 that changing the drinking age to 18 would make life simpler for college administrators, who would then have student bodies almost uniformly of legal drinking age. But he isn’t convinced it would be a good idea on the whole.

“I’ve encouraged the people involved in this Amethyst Initiative … to lay out their evidence to show how they can assert that there is no appreciable difference between behavior at age 18 and behavior at age 21,” he said. “I fear sometimes that part of the motive here is to make the lives of college deans and dorm head residents, and so on, easier. I don’t think that’s the point. But I’m also perfectly willing to be persuaded by good evidence.”

Radford University’s Penelope Kyle found the same lack of compelling evidence reason enough to oppose the initiative.

“There is still no compelling evidence that clearly demonstrates that lowering the drinking age to 18 would, in fact, ameliorate problematic drinking behaviors of college students,” the university said in accounting for Kyle’s position.

While public colleges seem reluctant to sign on, three schools with religious affiliations who responded to the survey support the initiative.

Billy Greer, president of the United Methodist Church-affiliated Virginia Wesleyan, “believes that the proposed 18-year-old requirement for drinking alcoholic beverages is more in line with both the reality of what already occurs and the appropriate rights for that age individual,” the college said in its statement.

A number of religious schools that didn’t complete the survey, such as Regent University and Patrick Henry College, oppose drinking in general, regardless of age.

]]> http://blogs.roanoke.com/rtblogs/datasphere/2009/09/09/public-or-private-which-colleges-are-most-behind-reconsidering-the-drinking-age/feed/ http://blogs.roanoke.com/rtblogs/datasphere/2009/09/06/college-drinking-the-rules-and-who-might-want-to-change-them/ http://blogs.roanoke.com/rtblogs/datasphere/2009/09/06/college-drinking-the-rules-and-who-might-want-to-change-them/#comments Sun, 06 Sep 2009 09:00:56 +0000 Matt Chittum http://blogs.roanoke.com/rtblogs/datasphere/?p=470 Generally, the data you find in the DataSphere is found data. It's tables and spreadsheets and databases we've found on government Websites, or obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

But this summer, a database we wanted didn't exist, so we set out to build it ourselves. As part of our ongoing series on the Amethyst Initiative to re-examine the legal drinking age and college drinking in general, we sent a survey to 44 Virginia colleges to gather data on their alcohol policies, enforcement of them, the number of alcohol related disciplinary actions on campus, and each college president's position on the Amethyst Initiative.

The results are in, and you can see the first wave of data from the survey now. It's an interactive map with markers for each of the colleges we surveyed, a digest of part of their responses, and a link to their unabridged answers to some of the questions.

The map and data, along with all of our coverage in the series are collected on a site devoted to our series.

We sent the survey only to four-year colleges with on campus housing, whether public or private. In other words, schools offering some version of traditional campus life. Fewer than half the colleges completed the survey, while several more declined to complete for various reasons, but in most cases because of concerns about how the questions were phrased or that their responses would be handled fairly in being compared to other schools. The remainder simply didn't respond at all.

Still, there's plenty to be learned from the responses we did get. To begin with, we're looking at which school presidents support the Amethyst Initiative, and which don't. As you'll read in my analysis, the idea of re-considering the legal drinking age and possibly lowering it appears to be generating only weak opposition in Virginia. The largest block of those presidents whose positions we documented are undecided.

We're not done with the data, and the most interesting stuff may be yet to come.  With the next installment in the series, we'll be rolling out more of the schools' responses, and layering other data onto the map, such as where the highest volume liquor stores are located in relation to college campuses, where other alcohol sellers are located, and which of them have been caught selling to underage buyers.

In the meantime, post your questions and comments here. I'll be glad to get them.

Huh? Cave Spring is a small town? It’s a fine place to live, I’m sure, but a small town?

Money does this every year. They compile a list of America’s best places to live, and this year they chose to focus on small towns. They define that as “U.S. towns that have a population of 8,500 to 50,000.”

Cave Spring, according to the U.S. Census, had about 25,000 people in 2007.

But is a town only about a population count? That word, for me, conjures the image of a mini-municipality, with a Main Street and demi-downtown, rows of houses, and probably in rural surroundings. That’s not Cave Spring, but that’s only one subjective definition. Towns also typically have governments and borders. Cave Spring has neither.

In other words, it lacks the kind of independence and apart-from-the-worldness that a phrase like “small town” connotes.

Cave Spring, as defined by the U.S. Census

The Census Bureau has a word for a spot like Cave Spring. They call it a “place.”

All this goes to the meaning of Money’s findings. Per the magazine, they looked at the economy, jobs, crime, affordability of homes, how many things there are to do, schools, health care, diversity, weather and more.

It’s certainly valid to look at something where there’s a definitive answer for Cave Spring alone, like population and diversity. Money discarded towns that were 95 percent white or more. Cave Spring, according to the census, is 92 percent white.

You can certainly determine a crime rate or housing affordability for an area like Cave Spring, too.

But how do you evaluate the economy in a suburb like Cave Spring where few people work where they live? Does it make sense to talk about the economy of Cave Spring alone, when it’s really just part of the larger economy of the Roanoke Valley?

And how do you evaluate the quality of health care in Cave Spring, when really you’re talking about the quality of health care in the whole valley?

Even the schools are part of a larger system that serves both suburbs and rural enclaves.

“Lots to do” there? Well, it’s hard to tell how many people in Cave Spring limit their search for things to do to their neighborhood, but my guess is they get off their own street at least once in a while for shopping, entertainment, the arts, dining.

Oh, and you have to have a major airport within 60 miles. Congratulations, Roanoke Regional Airport. Money thinks you’re major.

Not to take anything away from Cave Spring or the folks who live there. Not at all. If a major magazine says part of the Roanoke Valley is one of the best places to live in the whole country, that’s something to be proud of.

But when you really look at the criteria, part of what makes Cave Spring a great place in Money’s assessment, is the bigger place that Cave Spring is part of.

That's something the whole Roanoke Valley can brag on.

In connection with Roanoke Times food writer Lindsey Nair's column today on sweetened iced tea, we're conducting a poll to help us determine where the oft-debated "sweet tea" line is. That is, where's the latitude north of which folks generally don't sugar their tea, and south of which, they like it tooth-rotting sweet?

It's a six question poll that'll take just a few seconds to fill out. No, it ain't what you'd call scientific research, but it does get at the geography of sweet tea, and because we also ask your age and where the tea maker in your family was from, it might also give us a glimpse into generational differences.

And those differences are bound to be there. It's hard to imagine the mass marketing of tea hasn't blurred the sweet tea line. In my house in Roanoke growing up, it was sweet stuff or not at all. Mom made it a couple of gallons at a time in the summer. Other than at the K&W cafeteria, home was the only place I got sweet tea.

Then comes fast food restaurants, the "Nestea plunge" (remember those commercials for instant tea?), and Snapple. Followed by Arizona and a bunch of other tea makers, and lately, sweet tea flavored vodka.

What has all that done to American tea drinking habits? Well, that's where you come in.

Check out the poll, add your spoonful of experience to the batch, and sweeten up this data.

After a couple of weeks, we'll produce maps or charts or graphics to show off the results.

That prompted us to wonder who these workers are, and what it's like to do this front-lines census work. Just a few weeks ago, there some 900 of these workers in the field in Southwest Virginia. Come spring 2010, more than 12,000 census workers will be back in the field following up on questionaires that weren't returned.

The result is a story that ran in Monday's paper. In case you missed it, by all means, check it out.

Here's the top of it, just for a tease:

The answer came to Hugh Hughes at church, via postcard.

It came to Margaret Cunningham through the car radio.

Each needed work, and each found it at the U.S. Census Bureau.

Hughes, 45, a cabinetmaker and father of four, got laid off from his last job in Lynchburg in December. "I got a turkey and a pink slip," he said.

About the same time, Cunningham, 49, a career human resources professional, was finishing up a master's degree at Radford University. "I graduated into an economy that was just sliding down the hill, no brakes."

In the car one day, she heard an ad for job openings at the census. She called the bureau right there from her cellphone.

Hughes saw the same call for workers on a postcard that arrived at Rainbow Forest Baptist Church.

Within a few weeks, both were temporary federal government employees, trudging through neighborhoods helping to confirm the address lists to which census questionnaires will be mailed in 2010.

"It's been a godsend to get some money into the house," Cunningham said.

Such are the stories of the happy collision of the 23rd decennial census and the worst economic downturn in decades. It's a $14.7 billion operation that over two years will need thousands and thousands of workers.

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