Category: Guest Contributors

Guest Contributor – Jason M – 01NOV2021 – Insights Into Atlanta – Part 2

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I lived in Buford (North-eastern Atlanta suburb, for those not familiar…about 25 miles from the Atlanta city limits) for 18 years, and I worked in Sandy Springs for 13 of those years.

The fact that it is Buckhead that is trying this is interesting. Depending on where lines are drawn, wouldn’t Buckhead be completely surrounded by the Atlanta city limits? Essentially a separate city inside the city? Regardless, if I were driving this in Buckhead, I’d be setting up working sessions with the people in Sandy Springs that successfully incorporated in 2005. I know it’s a different scenario, but there are probably a number of experiences that could help those in Buckhead avoid some mistakes along the way.

I would also imagine that the city of Atlanta will fight this with all they have. Despite their efforts, they lost the potential to annex a very lucrative area when Sandy Springs incorporated. Sandy Springs is an affluent area with nice neighborhoods and industry, and Atlanta had been trying, unsuccessfully, to annex the area since the 1960s. Corporate headquarters for UPS, Newell Rubbermaid, Cox Communication and several others are located in Sandy Springs, along with the executives that work for those companies and all the money that they earn.

Buckhead makes Sandy Springs look like chump change. This will be interesting to watch even after moving to NC a couple years ago.

Guest Contributor – TomD – Insights Into Atlanta

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Tom | Flickr

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Above, going through Buckhead on Ga 400 a couple of weeks ago.

I grew up in metro Atlanta and spent most of my life there up until a few years ago, but never within the City limits.

The big deal there now is that the richest subdivision of the city, Buckhead, is trying hard to secede from Atlanta in order to form it’s own police force and may well succeed. (I think I’ve never previously managed to get both secede and succeed in the same sentence.) The chaos, murder, car jackings, rampant shopliftings and police stand downs really didn’t play well with the folks over on Blackland Rd near the Governors Mansion along with their $50k-$100K per year property tax bills for their “houses”.

If Buckhead pulls it off, it will play the devil with Atlanta’s tax base. It would take away around 15% of the population of Atlanta City but maybe up to 60%+ of the property value. That’ll teach them to screw with the goose that laid the golden egg! Just try looting a few $billions in “tax” from the inner city neighborhoods. Fat chance of that.

BTW: The City of Atlanta is just a niche in Greater Atlanta, with a population of around a half million in the 7 million person by 10,000 square mile metro area.

Guest Contributor – Jason M – A Plug for a Friend’s Book – The Body Man by Eric Bishop

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Hi Photog…

Here is a link to a website for a friend of mine from college…

http://www.ericpbishop.com/about-eric.html

His debut novel, “The Body Man,” will go on sale beginning on November 11, 2021.

You can either post this or not, I just wanted to get you the link since it sort of lines up with the crime dramas you mention.

Jason M

Guest Contributor – TomD – The Whichness of What

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That presumes the universe can be comprehended by us. I suspect that the ultimate reality is buried beneath increasingly bewildering layers far beyond our comprehension.

We made it past Newtonian physics to Einsteinian relativity and are still wandering around in Quantum. Who says it ends there. With the colliders, every time we think we are at the base of things, entirely new classes of “fundamental’ particles are found. They are now looking for the building blocks of quarks. We’ve made it to Planck scale and declared it to be the finish line. Yeah?

I remember the quote but not where it came from. A maybe fictional religion hypothesized that the world was on the back of a turtle. A priestess (I think) was questioned as to what the turtle was standing on. Her reply was something like, “I see where you’re going with this young man but it’s turtles all the way down.”

Now there is talk that we are 3 dimensional shadows on a 5 dimensional brane. (as in membrane, not brain). Or maybe the universe is an infinite computer running a program. Or maybe every point in spacetime exists simultaneously and forever like a slide in an infinite stack illuminated occasionally by consciousness.

I think that not only do we not have a clue but aren’t capable of having a clue. So shut up and have a beer.