Fortune cookie wisdom...

A little call to journalistic arms, courtesy of my lunchtime fortune cookie today:

"Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth."

My condolences...

...to all the region's Jets fans. I truly thought this was going to be the storybook year for a group of fans who have been very patient.

Rest assured, you're going to be solid for many years to come.

And soon it will be time for my favorite sporting event of the entire calendar year, the greatest football tradition of them all, the event that I will look forward to for weeks in advance...

THE NFL DRAFT!

Seriously, I love it. It's such an exciting two-day event, with every team starting anew, getting something to be excited about, new faces. Can't wait!

Your MTA tax dollars at work...

Ever wonder what that new MTA tax levy is buying us on the East End?

Easy--less train service.

Suffolk County Legislator Ed Romaine and various other folks will hold a press conference on Monday to protest the MTA's decision to eliminate ALL train service between Ronkonkoma and Greenport, the North Fork line. The press conference will be at the Riverhead train station.

“First the state institutes a payroll tax to fund the MTA and now they are completely eliminating service to the North Fork? I’m at a loss for words,” said Romaine.

It begs the question: How long before the South Fork's meager service is trimmed back even further, or eliminated altogether? Perhaps then we'll at least get to drop the MTA tax...right?

Whither "teabagger"?

An interesting email exchange with a frequent (and provocative) commenter on the 27east website, AlwaysLocal, who protested the fact that we allow the term "teabagger" to be used on the website without pulling down those comments as either profane or insulting.

AlwaysLocal argues that the term refers to an obscene--and, as far as I'm concerned, very obscure--sexual practice, and thus should be outlawed from use on the site.

My answer: "Teabagger" is definitely something the mainstream media used in the early days of the Tea Party movement--clearly in a "nudge-wink" insider way. That was even more true when it came to left-leaning commentators, who seemed to gleefully adopt the somewhat derisive term for the followers of that particular movement.

But I think two things: a) the term was only recognized as insulting (because of the obscure sexual meaning) by a select group of the audience familiar with it, and b) it has become a much more common, and benign, tag to put on the movement's members. (Hmmm...can I say "members"?)

Thought I'd toss it out there: Anyone have any thoughts about this debate? My inclination is to allow the term to be used, but to keep an eye on the situation, and make sure we don't cross a line into something inappropriate on the site...

By popular demand...

I've read various estimates, but eMarketer estimates that there were 22.6 million active bloggers on the internet as of April. There are, obviously, even more blogs--ones that just sit dormant for ridiculously long periods of time. One study showed that only a little more than half of blogs are still active three months after launch, and the overwhelming majority have not been updated at all in the last six months.

I want to get on the right side of that equation.

I recently received a note from one of my seven(!) followers, chiding me for not posting after an initial flurry. I pledge to do something about that now. I'm going to try to post at least once a day...

So I'll open the resurrection of this blog by noting a press release from Suffolk County with a disarming artist's rendering of the H. Lee Dennison Building with proposed new solar cells in the parking lot. County Executive Steve Levy and LIPA President and CEO Kevin Law (formerly a member of the Levy administration) are going to unveil a plan Tuesday to turn seven of the county's largest parking lots into solar farms, with space underneath for cars to park. They're working with a California company, enXco, on the project.

Certainly, there are many questions left to answer, but I think this is a great proposal, and a hint at the future. I think in a decade this will be commonplace--solar cells will be everywhere, on every building top, above every bit of asphalt. I can't imagine why schools and government buildings aren't already adorned with solar cells.

One big question: When the solar cells proliferate, will they be "made in America"? Or China? I think that's the big question...