I figured that it would have been fun to do a little piece on the most common vehicle models in Tompkins County. Unfortunately, the statistics carried by the NYS Department of Transportation and the DMV only keep in track of the types of vehicle (basically, there are about 51,000 registered private vehicles in Tompkins County). Checking with the state department of finance didn’t reveal much, nor was there anything on the U.S. census data website (which is unusual, given that the census page usually has billions pf pieces of seemingly useless data). This is made even more frustrating when you consider that some states actually do bother to keep in track of this data, or that MSN had a “most popular vehicle by zip code” article that covered ten zip codes and then offered no means for anyone to check their own zipcodes. Lame.

It’s not like one can sit next to a window and keep track of the number of vehicles passing by. A green 2002 Honda Accord looks like any other green 2002 Honda Accord for the most part, so there’s little ability to distinguish whether two cars of the same make are genuinely unique or if it’s the same person driving by twice. Plus, most of the students driving around town aren’t registered through Ithaca zipcodes, they’re registered through their family’s permanent addresses (so, all those Audi A6s and BMW 3-series you see buzzing around campus are probably registered in Westchester, northern New Jersey or any token upscale suburb in the northeastern U.S.)

That being said, I’m willing to take a few somewhat educated guesses of the most commonly registered vehicles in Ithaca.  For one, the ubiquitous Volvos that can be found in the Ithaca area. If any particular models stand out, it’d probably be the 240 models from pre-1993, 800 series models from the mid 1990s and maybe some of the 900 series models of the later 1990s.  I’d be impressed if anyone travelling through the greater Ithaca area can go five minutes on the road without seeing the pride of Sweden in the next lane. Not to say that Volvos don’t have their attractions. They’re known for their safety and for great heating systems that prove useful for Ithaca’s long winters. Plus, in terms of cars defining people, Volvo tends to be one of those brands popular with the college faculty crowd, i.e. liberals with higher incomes.Volvos are so ingrained into the community culture that the Ithaca festival features a Volvo ballet, where they decorate the cars in “tutus” and perform on city streets.

Another brand of vehicles popular with the collegetown crowd would be Japanese automaker Subaru (fun fact of the day:  Subaru is the Japanese name for the Pleaides star cluster. This becomes readily apparent once you consider the Subaru emblem). The most popular model by my guess would be the Outback wagon of the mid 2000s or the post-2000 Subaru Forester.  What makes Subaru popular is that it tends to attract the same New Age crowd that Ithaca tends to attract. To quote a Denver paper that noted they were the most popular car in college town Boulder:

“More hip than a mini-van. Very useful. Great in snow. It’s a cool station wagon. Minivans aren’t cool. We know that. The Outback has all of the safety that an SUV doesn’t have and all the utility that the Camry does have. So I see it as a common middle ground kind of ride. It’s kind of like pilates mom instead of soccer mom…”

Lastly, if you consider things from a county level, then somewhere in the top five there have to be at least one of two truck models. Ithaca town and city make up about half the county’s populations, and probably less than half of the registered vehicles once you consider those that walk, bike or use public transit. The surrounding towns are more rural areas where agriculture is king, and many of these residents use Ford F-150s or Chevy Silverados to get around. Case in point, look in Alpha Gamma Rho’s parking lot, and you’ll see twenty trucks, five SUVs and an old Chevy Cavalier.

Seeing as their are no readily available figures, I’d love to hear other opinions on this one. Priuses, Accords, Saabs maybe? Write in and let me know.

So, pardon the extraordinarily long break. Finals and research brought much of my outside life to a screeching halt, so this blog had to take a backseat for a couple of weeks. Oddly enough, site statistics didn’t really go down a significant amount, which probably says something about the consistent use of the historical info on this blog.

Anyways, during my holiday shopping, I happened upon a new little book that I felt the need to add to my collection. The book, Surrounded by Reality: 101 Things You Didn’t Know About Ithaca, NY (But Are About to Find Out) by Michael Turback, is a nice little book detailing some of the history and sights of the area. Some of the book entries share the same information that has previously been shared on this blog, but there was some new information to be garnered from its pages.

A lot of the book focuses on Cornell. Things that a lot of Cornellians already knew about the founder and A.D. White, but also some more obscure details. For example, a real description of Zinck’s. Theodore Zinck ran the “Lager Beer Saloon and Restaurant” out of the Hotel Brunswick at 108-110 N. Aurora (just off the current-day Commons) starting in 1880. Contrary to modern day bar-hopping, Zincl, while described as being a fatherly and caring figure who treated his customers with “Prussian high-handedness”. Customers could be thrown out of his bar, however, for drunkenness, bawdy songs, or derogatory references to the German Kaiser. The first Zinck’s operated until about 1903. That year, a typhoid epidemic rages through the city and claimed 85 lives, including Theodore Zinck’s daughter. Despondent, he drowned himself, effectively shutting down Zinck’s first incarnation. The bar reopened under his name in 1906 (which would be incredibly tasteless if he wasn’t regarded so affectionately), and continued in operation in some form in different names and places up to about 1967. Although, with the coming of the new Hotel Ithaca, it appears we may continue the local tradition of naming revered watering holes after a suicidal barkeep.

Another detail that the book referenced was the freezing over of Cayuga Lake. Cayuga Lake is about 435 feet deep, so usually the massive heat storage of the water keeps the lake from completely freezing over during the winter. However, that isn’t to say it can’t happen. Since 1796, the lake has frozen over about ten times (1796, 1816, 1856, 1875, 1884, 1904, 1912, 1934, 1961 and 1979). Wells College are small and formerly all-female school located further up the lakeshore in Aurora, has a school tradition where if the lake is discovered to be frozen over, classes are cancelled for the day (there is no such tradition for IC or Cornell). According to the book, during the 1875 freeze one athletic young woman at Wells decided to celebrate the day off by skating down the lake and back. Not too shabby, once you consider that the lake is just under 40 miles long.

One last one for the road; most Cornellians are well aware of the legend that if a virgin crosses the Arts Quad at midnight, Ezra and A.D. White will step off their pedestals and shake hands in the center of the quad. Wll, as it turns out, Ithaca College has their won virginity legend. Outside of Ithaca College’s Textor Hall stands a 10-foot high ball sculpture mounted over a small pool of water. Their campus legend states that if a virgin ever graduates from IC, the “Textor Ball” will fall off its pedestal and roll down South Hill. According to Wikipedia, Ithaca College has 49,570 alumni, and I’m willing to bet most of them are from after the school’s 1960s expansion and relocation.

This is okay:

Baking Pies is an Acceptable Stress Reliever From Finals

This is not okay:

http://www.theithacajournal.com/article/20091208/NEWS01/912080330/1126/news/IC+student+charged+with+arson+on+campus

An Ithaca College freshman has been charged with arson following an investigation into a series of fires in trash and recycling bins near residence halls, the college announced Tuesday.

No one was hurt, but the fires destroyed the receptacles, according to the college.

Alexander Carfi, 18, of Roslyn Heights, was arrested by the college Office of Public Safety and charged with one count of fourth-degree arson, a class E felony, and one misdemeanor count each of criminal mischief and reckless endangerment. He was arraigned in Ithaca Town Court and released on his own recognizance.

The charge relates to a fire reported at 2:58 a.m. Nov. 9 that damaged the northern exterior of Emerson Hall. In consultation with the Tompkins County district attorney’s office, the college is considered misdemeanor-level fifth-degree arson in other fires: 4:14 a.m. Sept. 7 and 12:29 a.m. Sept. 9 at Emerson Hall, 2:36 a.m. Sept. 30 at Landon Hall, and 2:45 a.m. Oct. 21 at Clarke Hall. Suspicious fires were also reported in the early-morning hours of Oct. 5 in the fire lane between Landon and Bogart Halls, and on the east side of Eastman Hall.

Carfi, who lived in Emerson Hall, has been removed from campus, according to the college. The investigation, conducted with assistance from the Ithaca Fire Department, is continuing and additional criminal charges are possible, according to the college.

***

I.C. seems to just have really bad luck with anything fire-related. During the summer of 2008,  I had the luck (good or bad?) of being one of the hundreds if not thousands of spectators who watched the roof of the brand new I.C. business school catch fire when embers from fireworks lit up the grass roof during the 4th of July festivities.

In conclusion, make pies, not fires. Hopefully we’ll get a real entry up sometime soon.

Sorry folks, I’m currently caught in a flood of research and finals. New entries will be coming in after a few more days.

For almost every day of the past semester, there has been something in the news about proposed budget cuts or streamlining of the university in the name of efficiency. The AEM (Applied Economics and Management) Program is probably the biggest target of the streamlining arguments, and not without good reason. Someone could effectively obtain a business major through AEM in CALS, PAM in Human Ecology, or by concentrating on a particular field within the Hotel School. The engineering school has a program set up with CALS where engineering students can minor in business through AEM.  Some aspiring entrepreneurs take classes at the Johnson as undergraduates. Point is, anyone whose interested in business (if at least because of the big financial rewards) can do so.

AEM hasn’t always been the fast track to I-banking as it is often seen today. The AEM of competing business fraternities, Wall Street ambitions and pre-MBAs is largely a recent phenomenon.The history of AEM shows how much of a radical departure the program has made in recent years, and thankfully a professor emeritus of the department recorded it in a written book about the history of the department that is available online in its entirety.

AEM started in CALS for good reason — it was first known as agricultural economics. The program has its earliest roots from around 1903, when Ag school dean Liberty H. Bailey hired Prof. Thomas Hunt, who taught the first courses on farm management. By 1907, Hunt left to become a dean of the Penn State Ag school and George Warren took over most of his duties, becoming a full professor of the Farm Crops and Farm Management Department by 1910 (the sister department at the time was Rural Economy). George Warren by and large shaped much of the early development of the program, hence Warren Hall’s dedication to him when it was built in the early 1930s. In 1919, the two sister majors were merged into one department to be called Agricultural Economics, as ordered by the Board of Trustees.

For the next several decades, Ag Economics was a major usually taken by farm kids who planned on going back to the farm or engaging in some other form of agricultural operations. By the 1970s, the program had begun to diversify somewhat, and by the 1980s the program offered a substantial number of courses that didn’t focus as much on the agriculture portion of ag economics (mostly these new offerings were in environmental and managerial economics — the managerial portion could be seenm as a predecessor to today’s AEM). To reflect this, the department changed its name to Agricultural, Resource, and Managerial Economics (ARME) in 1993.

Unfortunately, the book ends off in early 2000, and a lot has changed in the past nine years. The program changed its name from ARME to AEM in 2000.  The undergraduate business program was accredited in January 2002. Doing this required a significant financial infusion on CALS’s part, one example being the hiring five key staff members that were required for full accreditation (for ratio purposes and course requirements needed for accreditation). Depending on the year, AEM has offered anywhere from six to ten concentrations, some ag based and some not. This is where the blurring has resulted from.

So, we have the kids who come straight from the farm and want to pursue agricultural objectives. That’s right in line with CALS’s objectives. But then you have the kids who are completely set on Wall Street and Wharton. the ones who scowl when you mention that CALS is state funded or poo-poo most of their intraschool brethren (I know that they’re not all like that, but all it takes is a few to set a bad example and garner a poor image). The department has definitely become more diverse, but some argue that it comes at the cost of diluting the mission of the school (of course, who am I criticize when CALS also includes atmospheric science [meteorology, which grew from crop and soil science], landscape architecture and and communication)?

Should AEM be streamlined? It would seem appropriate when you consider the variety of business programs Cornell offers. But to be frank, CALS does not give a damn what Cornell as a whole thinks when it comes to AEM. CALS invested heavily in the program in the late 1990s and early 2000s to get it accredited and propel it into the top ten in recent years. Why would they let someone deprive them of lucrative business majors (who become lucrative alumni) after they worked some hard to lure them into the program? This is more of a problem than people seem to realize. Unfortunately for me, my adviser rants about AEM’s high-and-mighty attitude roughly twice a week, so I won’t be an end of those complaints anytime soon.

As anyone who doesn’t live under an Ithacan rock knows, Cornell had its much-publicized and anticipated match against Harvard on the ice of Lynah Rink last night. Much to Cornell’s delight, the Big Red skated to an impressive victory over the Crimson, with a final score of 6-3.

I feel like I’m one of a handful of undergrads on this campus who really doesn’t give a damn.

Not that I don’t have respect for athletes at Cornell. I give them by full respect. It’s just that I have never followed sports, with the slight exception of cross country and track back in junior high and high school because I was on the team (and let’s be honest, they’re just not the same when it comes to skill or competitive spirit). I’m content to sit back and watch everyone else get excited, because I’m just disinterested in Cornell sports. I’m never sat all the way through a Cornell game in any sport.

So, unsurprisingly I never mention sports on this blog, unless there’s historical worth to mentioning it. Which I can briefly do now.

Back in the day of the university founding years, the big sport for students to follow was crew, aka rowing. A.D. White was a member of a rowing club during his own collegiate years at Yale (Bishop 33). The first boating clubs formed in 1871, and a regatta was held the following spring (if you could call it that). The first big victory came at Saratoga in 1875, much to the joy of the school and the town (story goes that A.D. White broke into McGraw Hall Tower and rang the chimes himself). Baseball and football were vague diversions, not even intercollegiate until 1874 (Bishop 134). Cornell actually had its own rules of football that no one cared about, so the university didn’t take a substantial interest in football until about 1886. The Cornell Atheltic Association formed in 1889 (296). The first athletic area, built in the same year, was off campus on what is now the site of Ithaca High School, and was called Percy Field after the donor’s son, who was at the time a student athlete at Cornell. Hockey was recognized in 1900, basketball a year later. Lacrosse started up in 1885, but was  like clothing fashions among students, coming back into and going out of style every few years.

Hockey was originally played on Beebe Lake. The idea of bringing it to Cornell came from a professor of engineering named Johnny Parson. Hecne, the establishment of the Johnny Parson Club. When the lake began to melt, the team would use the Ithaca city ice rink. The team won what might be its first intercollegiate championship in 1911 (417).

So, Bishop’s history of Cornell only mentions hockey twice, and was published in 1962, suggesting the sport was still on the periphery of athletics at that time. That was also the same year that underdog Cornell outplayed perennial powerhouse Harvard. Things started to get more interesting when the Harvard/Cornell hockey rivalry started to heat up in 1973 with Harvard’s tossing off a chicken at Cornell goalie Dave Elenbaas, as a knock against the Ag School (of course, nowadays we can depend on our alumni to knock the ag school). So Cornell students responded later that month by throwing fish onto the rink. As the decade wore on and Harvard’s program weakened, the Big Red wasn’t content to let things slide, so the rivalry has been intensified since the incident.

So that’s why Cornell-Harvard tickets can be so expensive, and why this one game is as close as Cornell gets to the storied rivalries of Big Ten schools. Some of us are more into it than others though.  

I do not condone sneaking into private property to take construction photos. That being said, if I receive them I’m more than happy to post them as the ones seen below. Most of the photos would appear to be of the parking structure in the lower floors of the building. Too bad some of the exterior photos are a little blurry.

So, I first thought about writing an entry on the Sun because of fortuitous circumstances. I happen to write in some small capacity for the Sun, but with the exception of one person (to my knowledge; most everyone else couldn’t care less), no one at the Sun knows that I write this blog. Occasionally, someone will ask ”when was Mann Library built?” or “when is Milstein Hall supposed to finish construction”, and it’s really tempting to put in my two cents, but  for the most part I focus on my work and leave when I’m done.

Regarding the Sun itself, the newspaper is based out of the former Elks Lodge building on the 100 block of West State Street, a block west of the Commons. The building itself dates from 1916, and the Sun renovated the building and moved into the 7,000 sq. ft. building during 2003 (prior to that, thsun rented space around the corner on Cayuga Street). The Sun is totally independent of the university, which is great because the school paper of the university I worked at this summer was nothing more than a mouthpiece for the administration and its cultish president, but I digress. The original Cornell newspaper was The Cornell Era, which was founded in 1868 and named as such because it marked the beginning of a great new era. Much to the Era’s chagrin, the Sun appeared on September 16, 1880, in the format of a four-page pamphlet-sized newspaper (Bishop 206).  The Era eventually became more of a literary magazine and shut down permanently in the late 1940s. The Sun has operated continuously since its founding.

The building itself is an interesting place ot visit. The main work area on the first floor has private offices, and a general work areas for contributors and writers filled with newspapers and article drafts from previous days. The upstairs has a spacious and stately wood-trimmed great room, which I suspect was probably used as a cermeonial/banquet room back when it was the Elks Lodge. I’ve never felt compelled to take photos inside the building, mostly because of the stares I would probably get.

Bishop, Morris. A History of Cornell. New York, New York: Cornell University Press, 1962. ISBN 0-8014-0036-8

So, yeah, it’s been cold. Unpleasantly cold. Coldest October in years cold. But what makes me really uncomfortable is the thought of snow is October. While snow in October usually has no impact on the upcoming winter, it still serves as a psychological bitchslap to most of the students, and to many of the local who are accustomed to waiting until November to see the first notable snowfalls.

Then we have this message from the Ithaca Journal:

Storm coming to Twin Tiers could bring snow

There’s a couple of very scary things associated with that message. For one, we still have leaves on the trees. Trees don’t stand up very well if they have both a fair amount of snow and foliage on them at the same time. There was a very nasty snowstorm that hit Buffalo a couple of years back that brought the city to its knees in October because it dumped  two feet of snow, and all the trees basically snapped under the weight. As I recall, some places were without power for two weeks, and the storm damages were estimated between $150 and $200 million.

Fear factor aside, the possibility of snow in Ithaca in October is a lot more uncommon than it used to be. Climatologically speaking, Ithaca averages about .4 inches of snow in October. In reality, we’ve only received measurable snow once this decade, and that was .3 inches on October 30, 2008. Prior to that, we have to go back to October 31, 1993, which received 3.7 inches, and .1 inches on October 29, 1990. That’s it for the past twenty years (to be fair, October 22-23, 1988 received 6.5 inches of snow). I took the time to check the following winter after 1993 and 1988; 1989 was about 3 degrees above normal; 1994 was one of the coldest winters reported in several decades. Yeah, I still have fingers crossed for El Niño.

Point is, we’ve rarely seen October snows. Especially before the 20th. You have to go back to 1974 to find a pre October 20th snowfall day on file.

So, Ithaca is in a valley, which makes it a kinda crappy place for snowfall because they tend to be slightly warmer, and it doesn’t experience an upslope effect like Cornell’s campus does. Unfortunately, the Ithaca weather station used by the NRCC is on Game Farm Road, which is off of Route 366 as you’re heading out towards Dryden.It’s about 1000 ft. in elevation, and the snow line so far is predicted to be about 2000 ft, and that is subject to change.

I’m really not interested in seeing snow this month. But it’s not like any of us have a say in what the weather does.

EDIT: So Ithaca recorded 1.6 inches, setting a record for the earliest snow over 1” in over 120 years of data. Other parts of the county received as much as 3”. Northern PA recorded as much as 8”, and widespread power outages and minor damages were reported.

Global warming completely aside, I think it might be worth noting that Ithaca can expect a warm winter for 2009-2010. This is because we’re in the middle of an El Nino year.

For those living under a rock, El Nino (or as meteorologists know it, the el Nino Southern Oscillation, often reduced to ENSO) is the much publicized periodic change in atmospheric and oceanic conditions highlighted by the shift of the eastern Pacific Ocean water temperatures to much warmer than usual conditions (typically most apparent off the coast of Peru). The effects on the Atlantic will lag somewhat behind the Pacific.

Well, El Nino conditions started to kick in during this past summer, around June. One effect that El Nino years (as they tend to last 12 to 18 months) have is that the Northeast is much warmer than usual during the winter. To illustrate this, I pulled the data for the last few El Nino years (Winter 06-07, Winter 02-03, Winter 97-98, and Winter 94-95, Winter 91-92) from the Northeast Regional Climate Center.

Month/Year Anomaly

Dec 2006 +8.0 F

Jan 2007 +5.6 F

Feb 2007 – 7.1 F

Dec 2002 -2.2 F

Jan 2003 -5.6 F

Feb 2003 -3.0 F

Dec 1997 +2.3 F

Jan 1998 +8.4 F

Feb 1998 +7.8 F

Dec 1994 +4.4 F

Jan 1995 +7.1 F

Feb 1995 -2.7 F

Dec 1991 +2.0 F

Jan 1992 +3.0 F

Feb 1992 +2.0 F

Data from pre-1995 is only available to those with research accounts. Thankfully, my senior thesis research has allowed me this perk. Anyways,  4 of the past 5 El Nino seemed to follow the typical pattern, and 2002-2003 did not. To be perfectly honest, that year is still under study as no one can really seem to explain what happened. A prevailing theory for a while was that it was another osciallation (the Pacific Decadal Oscillation) having an impact on El Nino, but that theory developed a big hole in it after a fairly typical 2006-2007 El Nino year. It takes 20-30 years for the PDO to change phases, so 2006-2007 should have been much the same, but it wasn’t.

Keep in mind this is all relative. Five degrees above normal during the coldest time of the year (late January) means a high of 35 and a low of 19. So don’t get too comfortable.