Live at Obama Rally!!
April 19, 2008
T minus two hours!
TONIGHT!! Smoke the Groove and Max Jones at Maennerchor
April 19, 2008
The music will start at 10PM and the party will actually go until 1AM. A change of schedule due to the Obama rally right around the corner.
Hello Harrisburg! Do you Twitter??
April 18, 2008
So it seems that Twitter has arrived in Harrisburg. I was first turned onto this new serivce last summer. Its part blog, part text message, part social network, part something entirely new. After checking out its features, I was intrigued about the possibility of Twitter, but I didn’t know anyone else using it, so I moved on for the time being. That all changed earlier this month when, out of no where, Twitter seemed to march into the burg. Now, a core group of Harrisburg bloggers and tech industry types have jumped on and are running with it.
What was this impetus for this local surge in interest? My research has traced it to Daniel Victor, a Patriot News reporter who actually seems to “get it” in terms of the impacts of social media on traditional journalism. He started a all-out “one-month twitter twial” in an effort to see what would happen. Well, so far, so good…
I gotta say, this is a communication tool that is really cool, and I cannot wait for it to expand outward from the small cirle of locals who are currently trying it out. So, I encourage you to give it a go, as we see where this grand experiment takes up.
Pennsylvania is a Metro State – America is a Metro Nation
April 10, 2008
Today, Bruce Katz was in Harrisburg to meet with policy makers and community leaders to discuss An Economic Plan for the Commonwealth: Unleashing the Assets of Metropolitan Pennsylvania. I was privileged to hear a customized version of his Metro America presentation, with specific slides for Pennsylvania. Afterward I joined him in a casual reception and conversation. Rather than paraphrase his thesis hear, I think I’ll just have Bruce share it in his own words. Below are four youtube videos, totalling just over a half hour in length. Just start it.
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
When considering these ideas, remember that “metro” is not a synonym of “urban”. In fact, many metro areas contain urban, suburban, and rural landscapes. A good example of this is Lancaster county, which lies entirely within one of the 100 metro areas that Bruce is discussing, farmland and all.
Harrisburg Holds Up to Foreclosure Crisis
April 8, 2008
Real estate web site hotpads.com introduced an interesting feature to their real estate mapping software for visualizing foreclosure rates called the foreclosure heat map. It combines the number listings of foreclosure properties with the total housing units by state, county, or zip code. Drilling in on Harrisburg reveals a pleasant picture:
click for full size image
There’s Harrisburg, clearly below average. That tip of red at the bottom of the image is the tip of a region of above average foreclosure rates in York County.
Outside the Hil-ARR-eee Event
March 11, 2008
Overflow crowd at the Forum on Harrisburg. Loudspeakers are set up for
those milling about outside. Jersey Mike is inside providing the play-
by-play.
Police Claim Bootleg Bust; the rest of us groan
February 21, 2008
It’s time for Middlesex Township Police to proudly step into the spotlight. They busted the most treacherous of criminals, the bootlegger. This guy had 1,520 bootleg DVD movies and 1,578 counterfeit CDs!! Three cheers for this diligent detective work.
In other news, everybody else in the world, besides that poor sap and the Middlesex Township Police, just downloads their music via p2p networks.
Seriously, I feel bad for this guy for actually believing that there is still a market for this bootleg stuff, and I feel bad for the cops who are pretty delusional in thinking that they made a difference in anything.
Just Say No to Telecom Immunity
February 21, 2008
When a government official tells a business to break the law, the business’s obligation is to the law. Therefore, we need to allow the courts to determine if the law was broken.
That’s me at the 56 second mark. Unfortunately, my sign is not very readable in the compressed YouTube video.
Here is the photo with a readable resolution:
If you feel strongly about this, I urge you to sign the petition.
In case you missed it, Governor Rendell made some highly racially charged comments to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in reference to Senator Obama and Rendell’s opinion of how Pennsylvania voters will react to him. Here’s the recap:
You’ve got conservative whites here … who are not ready to vote for an African American candidate. I believe, looking at the returns in my election, that had Lynn Swann been the identical candidate that he was — well-spoken, charismatic, good-looking but white instead of black — that instead of winning by 22 points, I would have won by 17 or so. I think there was that factor there. And that exists, but on the other hand, that’s counterbalanced by Obama’s ability to bring new voters into the electoral pool.
After the fact, Rendell defended his comments:
I regret saying it because of the way it was interpreted. Remember — I always tell the truth. Maybe I’m wrong, but I tell what my experience has taught me.
Wow. Where to begin? To summarize, Rendell thinks that some Pennsylvanians are racist and won’t vote for a black guy. That’s how he feels about it, and he always speaks the truth. To be fair, some Pennsylvanians are racist and probably won’t vote for Obama because of his race. As I understand it, Pennsylvania is one of the few remaining states with active branches of the KKK. So sure, I’ll give him that point; Pennsylvania, unfortunately, does have some racists. I’d imagine that every state does. But, Rendell, you shouldn’t have said that.
And you really shouldn’t have followed it up with your analysis of your campaign with Lynn Swan. From his comments, we are to believe that 5% of Rendell’s votes in the last election were because the other guy was black. On other words, Rendell thinks that 5% of Pennsylvania voters are racist. There is no proof of that, and, in saying so, our governor slapped the face of all Pennsylvanians.
Barack Obama has united people and put up big numbers across the country in a diverse array of states: northern and southern, coastal and inland, urban and rural, diverse and homogeneous. Rendell doesn’t think he is up to the task for Pennsylvania. I can’t wait for Senator Obama to prove him wrong and win Pennsylvania in both the primary and general election.
Changes at Karns Quality: The Evolution of a Blog
February 13, 2008
I started this blog in 2004 as a experiment. At that point, I was two years out of college, I had been living in Harrisburg for a year, and I was about to leave for seasonal employment in Oregon. In a sense, I was all over the place, and I was having difficulty keeping in touch with friends and family. Karns Quality Blog was born out of this difficulty. Blogging was still new to me and to the world, and I decided to experiment with it as a means of keeping in touch.
What began as coverage of my adventures in rock climbing and travel slowly evolved over the years as I became more interested in and committed to the Harrisburg community. Over that same time, I also discovered that my friends and family were not reading my blog with the consistency that I imagined (if they were reading it at all).
As I have explored the communication medium known as blogging, I have also discovered some insights as to what it takes to develop and maintain an audience. Imperative in that task is staying on topic. To that end, I have decided to formalize the natural trend that has been occurring around here. Karns Quality Blog is now officially a blog about Harrisburg written by me Josh Karns, Harrisburg resident and voice of reason.
In formalizing this new format, all this Harrisburg (and Pennsylvania in a broader sense) are fair game. I will be covering community development, politics, the music scene, special events, oddities, rants and rave, and onward. I will continue to occasionally publish stories about my rock climbing exploits, especially within the greater Harrisburg region. Additionally, I will occasionally discuss items of national importance that I feel are particularly relevant or that I believe I have some valuable to share.
I’ve set a goal for myself of four posts a week. It will be a challenge to meet that, but I believe in setting the bar high. Many of the posts will probably be photo posts of interesting visuals that I spot around town. Others will be more textual. My purpose is not (and never has been) journalistic reporting. I’ll leave that to The Patriot. Rather, I will provide analysis, commentary, and opinion on the stories that I see around me. My goal is to advance discussion, to push the public discourse in directions that I believe will benefit this community. As always, it will be an experiment.
