http://www.theresnothingtodohere.com Thoughts and News on the Wars for New Appalachia Wed, 06 Aug 2008 14:14:11 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Tribal gaming and police officials popped a cheating ring at Harrah’s Cherokee Casino, which offers digital blackjack and a digital game based on baccarat. I didn’t know you could arrange to cheat electronic games in a casino setting. Indeed, according to the Asheville Citizen-Times, Cheating in the traditional sense is impossible because the ... http://www.theresnothingtodohere.com/?p=421 The Knoxville News-Sentinel has got a good read today about the moonshining legacy of a family that lives near Townsend, Tenn. The story takes a good look at how moonshining has gone from a business to a historical curiosity and tourist draw, as the hook is that Mike Williams is loaning ... http://www.theresnothingtodohere.com/?p=420 Three years ago we linked a story when NC Attorney General Roy Cooper promised to take the Tennessee Valley Authority to court over air pollution. The actual lawsuit came in 2006, four years after North Carolina started to clean up its own act with 2002’s Clean Smokestacks Act. The case has ... http://www.theresnothingtodohere.com/?p=419 Inspired by the Michael Vick dogfighting case, the Virginia state legislature earlier this year passed a bill that tightens penalties for animal fighting across the board. That includes cockfighting, which had been technically legal — but only as long as it didn’t involve attendance fees, gambling or the transfer of any ... http://www.theresnothingtodohere.com/?p=418 Marvin “Popcorn” Sutton, who has lately made a career out of his reputation as a moonshiner, has been arrested and jailed for making untaxed whiskey near Parrottsville, Tenn., about 50 miles east of Knoxville. According to The Asheville Citizen-Times: Undercover agents with the Tennessee Alcoholic Beverage Commission said they bought large amounts ... http://www.theresnothingtodohere.com/?p=414 A writer over at Democratic partisan site Raising Kaine suggests that “Appalachia is the absolute KEY area to electoral victory for [Democratic presidential candidate Barrack] Obama.” The writer claims that by swinging Appalachia, Obama could win West Virginia, Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and maybe even Kentucky and Tennessee. The entry ... http://www.theresnothingtodohere.com/?p=416 An article by Christopher Leinberger in The Atlantic posits that, with a one-two punch of the housing slump and skyrocketing fuel costs, suburban housing communities built fairly recently could become the nation’s next wave of slums: For 60 years, Americans have pushed steadily into the suburbs, transforming the landscape and (until ... http://www.theresnothingtodohere.com/?p=417 The New York Times picked up an eastern Tennessee story about local politics Monday. One might wonder, “Why is the ‘Gray Lady’ writing about the Knox County Commission?” The answer would be that there’s so much color in local political bodies, particularly in Knox County, that it allows writer Dan ... http://www.theresnothingtodohere.com/?p=413 I’ve been reading former Sleater-Kinney guitar player Carrie Brownstein’s NPR blog semi-regularly the last few weeks. On Monday she mused on the sound of “local” bands, and how that relates to where they’re from. In particular she wrote about Bob Mould from Husker Du, and that while he hailed from Minneapolis, ... http://www.theresnothingtodohere.com/?p=412 Evan Eisenberg write an interesting spiel for webzine Slate that looks at what “Into the Wild” has to say about the concept of wilderness. He writes not only about the differences between the book and movie, but also factors a William Cronon essay into the mix. The result is fairly ... http://www.theresnothingtodohere.com/?p=411