SamPratt.com

Catskills bearing Irene’s brunt

At (p.m.) last night in Hudson, a patron at the bar was predicting authoritatively that today's storm would hit the Catskills much harder than Columbia County, due to the mountains’ elevation and terrain.

Seems he was right... While Hurricane Irene mostly has not lived up to its advance billing on the eastern side of the Hudson River, the same cannot be said for the western side. Facebook and Twitter are replete with pictures of semi-submerged cars, homes and businesses in places such as Arkville, Catskill, Cornwall, Tannersville and Windham.

Notably, flooding—not wind—is the problem. From the looks of things, many creeks in Greene, Ulster and Delaware counties have risen to, or above, the tops of their banks.

A liveblog over at the indispensable Watershed Post is filling up with alarming reports of roof rescues and (disputed) tales of dam ruptures, and is well worth a check-in: click here.

New (old) media

Over at his Seeing Greene blog, Dick May has leaked the widely-rumored news about three new (and alliteratively-named) newspapers coming this Fall to Columbia and Greene counties and also the Catkskills:

Veteran journalist Paul Smart has announced plans to launch a trio of “independent community” newspapers. [...] In times past Mr Smart edited The Mountain Eagle and The Phoenicia Times, as well as operating The Olive Press [...] He envisions a September 8 launch for three bi-weeklies that are stuffed with local news: The Catskill Current, The Hudson Harpoon and The Mountaintop Meteor.

Appearing (per above) every two weeks, word is that ad revenues are already flowing in nicely.

Berkshire & Ulster population changes

I’ve had several requests for charts showing population changes for Berkshire and Ulster counties, similar to the ones already posted here for Columbia, Greene and Dutchess. Here you go:

If you want to work with the raw data, here it is as a PDF. As ever, this info is presented with the caveat that population figures, taken in isolation, should not be interpreted as a measure of prosperity.

For example, though Berkshire County is widely regarded as more prosperous than Columbia, their population fell slightly over the past decade, whereas Columbia’s stayed essentially unchanged—up by two residents. (Meanwhile, half of the entire Berkshire population loss is attributed to Pittsfield and North Adams, which are very different in character from much of the rest of the county.) Such trends ought to be examined in a fuller context of other demographic data and on-the-ground observations.

A power line runs through it?

Plans to lay a 335-mile, 2,000 megawatt transmission line from Canada to New York City and Connecticut were just announced, with a major portion of the line proposed to be buried in the muck of the Hudson River starting near Selkirk and Castleton south to the Bronx.

Calling the project the Champlain-Hudson Power Express, developers at Transmission Development Inc. (TDI) are making a public presentation from 6-8 pm next Tuesday (March 9th) at the Holiday Inn Express at 300 Broadway. The project would involve burying four five-inch-diameter cables in the River, skirting the PCB cleanups now underway north of Albany. A PDF document showing the full route can be downloaded by clicking here.

TDI’s principle backers are The Blackstone Group based on Park Avenue, a major investor in Hilton Hotels, Orbitz.com, Michaels craft stores, and various communications companies. The company has been the subject of several recent controversies, outlined here by CNN. Among other things, Blackstone owns Sea World, where a trainer was recently drowned and mangled by a killer whale. Billionaire CEO Steve Schwarzman also came under fire for his $3 million birthday party in 2007 before the stock market crash.

The Catskill Daily Mail repeats unchallenged TDI’s claim that "neither commercial nor recreational current use of the Hudson River will be affected by the line’s presence." (Note the word “current,” which would suggest it might affect future uses.)

Shelter from the Storm

The Hudson Valley Press is reporting that community shelters have been set up in Athens, Taghkanic, Kerhonkson, and Hurley for those without power and needing to get warm. Click this link for details.

[UPDATE: The Taghkanic shelter has closed, evidently because power is restored in most, though definitely not all, of Columbia County.]

Meanwhile, friends in Spencertown report that they are not only without power, but that trying to get through to NYSEG to report their outage is nearly impossible; all they get is a recording. Another friend suggested trying their Clifton Park office at (518) 664-9534. Still another had some success in the past with dialing NYSEG’s (800) number, then pressing the button for “no” when asked if you’re calling about your service address. (Ah, the joys of an emergency in the era of automation...)

Central Hudson (according to the Daily Freeman) is giving out bottled water and dry ice at various distribution points to residents without power in Dutchess, Greene and Ulster counties.

National Grid maintains a Storm Outage page and maps of where power is out, plus estimates of restoral times. But of course those without power probably aren’t reading this.

Hudson homophobia hits Wikipedia

The Wikipedia page for Hudson periodically comes under attack by various cranks and historical revisionists. Most recently, it’s become a target of gay-bashing.

Since Wikipedia pages can be edited by anyone, and with a fair amount of anonymity, so the accuracy of such entries depends on the vigilance of other users. The theory is that over time, an entry becomes increasingly useful and accurate as many different people offer info and corrections—eventually producing a result as good or better than an old-fashioned encyclopedia.

The downside to this otherwise powerful model is that it opens up entries to the whim of irresponsible or even hateful individuals, whose identities are pretty well cloaked.

Most recently, an anonymous contributor added this to the Hudson page:

This city is also home to a sub culture of free spirited homosexuals that look like they came straight out of a gay pride parade and are proud to show you their genitals[.]

And also this:

As of the census of 2000, there were 7,524 people, 2,951 households, and 1,590 families residing in the city, about 50% of this population is homosexual and enjoy dildos especially big black/pink ones,all of these people can be found in pictures on GayHudson.com and they love to hang out near Mexican Radio and M[---] P[-----], who by the way gentlemen, is single. You can find him on eharmony.com.

The name above has been redacted, as it appears someone is either trying to “out” or play a prank on him, but the unredacted entry can be found via the page’s edit history.

While Wikipedia entries can be made anonymously, a little sleuthing turns up a few clues which at least might point eventually to the perpetrator. Anonymous contributors to Wikipedia are tracked by their Internet Protocol (“IP”) number, which gives clues as to what internet service they use, and sometimes their location.

The homophobic posts above were made by someone with the IP number 24.161.65.13. Using various web tools, I’ve determined that this is someone using Time Warner’s Road Runner service. That Road Runner internet traffic is routed through Saugerties, but the user could in theory be somewhere nearby in the region.

Taking a look at 24.161.65.13’s other recent postings on Wikipedia shows that s/he has also recently made edits pages for several other towns in Ulster and Greene counties much in the same gay-bashing vein, along with some racist content as well:

[Freehold] has the ZIP Code 12431, and it is also the home of the sexual predator R--- C---------- and its own fire district.

[Glasco] The people who edit wikipedia suck major dick and don't understand when people are trying to have fun and they are trying to compensate for their small penises and/or smelly vaginas

[Kingston] It has recently been taken over by monkeys who like to steal peoples cars and shoot each other.

[Saugerties] The population was 19,868 at the 2000 census this includes F---- G-------, a Brett Favre lover who is actually quite beastly.

Again, the names above have been redacted, but are archived in Wikipedia’s page edit history. The general tone of these posts suggest that the author(s) may be young, maybe teenaged. Searches on the names targeted in his/her/their Wikipedia spree may provide further clues as to the online vandal’s identity, as two of the three names mentioned correspond to relatively recent attendees of the public high school in Greenville. (Anyone with further information about these events should contact me via email.)

The good news is that Wikipedia’s self-policing policy works. Other registered users, such as Vipinhari, have undone the homophobic vandal’s posts, and blocked his/her IP address. Unfortunately, someone committed to such hate speech can continue their activities by switching to another computer at a different location, so continued monitoring of these pages is crucial to Wikipedia continuing to offer helpful and accurate entries.