Howardcounty

As noted by HoCo Rising, Calvin Ball recently proposed allowing Howard County Council members to serve four terms instead of three. The usual opinionating ensued; speaking for myself, although I’m not a huge fan of term limits I don’t think they’re illegitimate either. In essence they’re an expression of voters’ distrust of politicians and a blunt instrument by which voters try to compensate for perceived flaws in the political system. Since the political system does have flaws and politicians do act out of self-interest, we can forgive voters for being attracted to the idea of term limits. ...

As some of you know, I like to learn new things. For example, I’m trying to re-learn some of the statistical knowledge I’ve forgotten over the years, and as a side project to that I’m learning the computer programming language Python (partly because it’s used by many folks who do scientific programming, and partly because it’s useful for other reasons). I’m also learning some about mapping and geographic information systems (GIS) as a follow-on to my research on Howard County Council redistricting. ...

Some people are fond of using the term “statist” to describe their political opponents. (I’ve never heard of anyone using it to describe themselves.) For example, in response to a HoCo Rising post on a fundraiser held by Howard County council member Courtney Watson, Bill Bissenas commented that both Watson and Guy Guzzone (her rumored opponent in the next county executive race) are “statists of the highest order,” in Watson’s case “despite [her] efforts to convince folks otherwise.” In response to which Dave Bittner asked Bill, “you use the term, ‘statist’ a lot. Could you define it for me?” ...

Technology and education is a funny topic. On the one hand technological innovation in education holds out the promise of helping students learn better and teachers teach better. Improving the productivity of teachers in particular I think is key to addressing long-term educational budget issues in Howard County and elsewhere. On the other hand, there’s probably been more hype, blather, and outright b******t associated with technology in education than most other subjects. Every new technological innovation with some sort of educational application, from television to social networks, gets hailed as the one true path to revolutionizing education. (For example, I just got the latest issue of Wired magazine, in which a Stanford professor claims that Internet-enabled online learning will lead to there being only ten institutions in the world delivering higher education–all the rest having succumbed to the gale force winds of creative destruction.) ...

As reported by the Howard County Times, county executive Ken Ulman “decided not to sign” the council redistricting bill passed by the Howard County Council by a 3-2 vote, and as a result the original plan proposed by the redistricting commission will become law (per the Howard County charter). I’ll leave it to others to comment on the whys and wherefores of Ulman’s decision (except to say that he’s been taking a fair number of politically contentious stands for a man who supposedly wants to be elected governor). I will however note that this is not the first time a county executive has found himself in the middle of controversy relating to Howard County Council redistricting. ...

I’ll interrupt my blog hiatus briefly to note today’s article in the Howard County Times, “Coming soon to Howard County: a digital school system.” The headline is a bit forward looking, as what is happening seems to be equivalent to the Howard County Public School System dipping its toe into the water of online education. This is an area of long-time interest to me, and I’ll be watching to see where HCPSS goes with this. ...

The gist: I spent 100 hours writing a book that sold 10 copies; you should too. As I’ve previously written, my biggest project of 2011 was finishing my blog series on Howard County Council redistricting and publishing it as an ebook, Dividing Howard. Viewed from a conventional perspective this was a total waste of time: I likely spent over a hundred hours of my spare time creating a book that thus far has sold a total of ten copies to people other than me. Yet from my perspective it was a great experience and more than exceeded my own goals for the project. If you’re a local blogger on Howard County or other topics, or just someone who likes to write, I suggest you consider following my example. ...

Following my review of my 2011 Howard County blogging and related activities it’s time for a look ahead to 2012. I did a similar preview last year and will use it as a guide to what I’d like to accomplish this year. As I noted in my last post, my posting frequency (and hence my traffic) declined somewhat last year. I would not be surprised to see that trend continue this year, possibly to the point where I’m posting only once every two to three weeks. Part of that is due to wanting to devote more time to my ongoing math study, and part to needing to do more background research on the topics I want to cover here. ...

Last December I took the opportunity to review my Howard County-related blogging in 2010, and I thought it would be fun to repeat that for 2011, including presenting some site statistics and links to posts I think are worthy of note. My biggest project of 2011 was my finishing my blog series on Howard County Council redistricting and publishing it as an ebook, Dividing Howard. My main goal in doing this was to learn how to create and self-publish an ebook, and having the material mostly already written made it relatively easy to do this; the goal of creating the book also motivated me to finish the series of posts. Given the specialized topic I expected that I’d be able to count the number of copies sold on the fingers of one or two hands, and that expectation has been met: As of today I’ve sold ten copies to people other than myself. Adding to that the three copies I bought myself in order to test the buying process, my total royalties thus far are $26.54; I’ve rounded up and donated $30 to Voices for Children. ...

This is my fifth and final post in Dividing Howard week on my blog, as I discuss some topics related to my new book on the history of county council redistricting in Howard County, Maryland, and the broader events of Howard County politics from 1960 on. Previous posts discussed the role of Columbia in spurring creation of a county council, the struggles of Howard County Republicans under the council district system, the problems with gerrymandering of council districts, and whether it’s possible to make redistricting less political. In today’s post I consider whether it would be preferable to go back to the previous method of electing council members at large. ...