Good morning, RVA! It's 54 °F, and it sure is warm out there today. Expect highs near 80 °F, possibly a bit of rain this morning, and clouds throughout the day. Throw your socks in the garbage; it's spring time!
Water cooler
City Council meets today / tonight for a budget work session as well as their regularly scheduled meeting. Of note at the informal meeting: a presentation on GRTC's specialized transportation services issues, which I take to mean CARE, CARE Plus, and C-VAN services. For the past several months there have been consistent complaints at Council meetings about the quality of these services. See! Civic involvement can have real results! Of note at the regular meeting: an ordinance to publish fiscal impact studies on the city's website, a change in how tax exemptions are handled, and, of course, the ban on fracking within the Richmond City limits. The show starts at 6:00 PM and you can/should follow along on #rvacouncil on Twitter.
In awesome PDF news, the City's Public Art Commission has released the draft of the Public Art Master Plan (PDF). I haven't had a chance to dig through the plan yet but am totally...planning...on it. As with all releases of exciting city-owned PDFs, there is a slate of public meetings (beginning this Saturday) that you can attend to give your feedback and talk with the PDF creators.
Ned Oliver and Ali Rockett have an interesting story in the RTD today about the police shifting their limited budget funds from body cams to ShotSpotter. I liked this advice from a UVA professor, "any department considering ShotSpotter should insist on owning the data produced by the system in its city and a one-year control study to determine its effectiveness." Gunshot data from one of the city's more violence-prone neighborhoods would certainly be an interesting dataset to look through, but would it tell you anything worth the price tag? I dunno, but that's what the study is for!
VCU has a Historical European Martial Arts club!?
If you're interested in political process and machinations, this piece from Politico about how the republicans fudged the bucket on healthcare is thrilling.
I enjoyed this quick piece in the NYT about a dead simple way to "turn your wishes into reality." I'd add one bit of extra advice, taken from David Allen's _Getting Things Done_: When you make your list of wishes, write down the very next action that would bring you closer to making that wish a reality.
Sports!
In tournament news, we have our Final Four: #7 South Carolina, #1 Gonzaga, #3 Oregon, and #1 North Carolina.
- Kickers defeated Harrisburg, 1-0, in front of a record-setting crowd.
This morning's longread
Inside Enya's Irish Kingdom
Guys, Enya!!
Enya has what Americans would call resting bitchface, mixed with a general shyness, which has led many commentators to call her aloof or snobby. In person, it just feels like she’s operating on an entirely different wavelength — like everyone else is speaking in the crazy, sped-up sound of nightmares, and only Enya’s figured out the right pacing. She pauses, always, before answering; she rarely inserts herself into a conversation, and she feels no need to fill silences.