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Showing posts from February, 2008

What kind of a solar system will my kids know?

Late night surfing, and I came across an article on Discovery about how a group of Japanese scientists believe there's a planet about two-thirds the size of Earth floating around out on the far edge of the solar system . As I'm reading this, there's another article that says Mercury has a tail made up of sodium atoms that is about a million miles long . There's a pretty astonishing picture out there. This comes on the heels of all the discoveries being made about Titan (shown in false color at left) , which might have more oil than the Earth. Pluto is no longer a planet , Mars has two active robots crawling across it, and Dr. Who is a hit again. Okay, that last one may be in a slightly different category, but there's a connection. Excitement about one can spill over into the other. I get much more excited about what may lie out there in the universe if I can imagine some of the most far-fetched possibilities. In Britain, at least, 1/6th of the population tunes in

A plug for hooville.net

I'm a big proponent to the interconnected community that comes through having so many bloggers who aggregate through cvilleblogs.com . I've met many people this way, and feel blessed to live in a place where there's a healthy discussion going on all the time about all sorts of things, from transportation costs to whether or not Oxo's moment has faded. But there's a forgotten corner of Charlottesville's online community. Earlier this month, Hooville.net ran a poll asking the handful of users if the board should stay or go. As I write this, the vote is 7 to 1. I voted to keep it, because I sometimes like using local bulletin boards that are self-contained. The audience there is a little older, it seems. Have you been? Do you post on message boards that aren't blogs?

Wake Up Call Oscar preview show

Today on WNRN's Sunday Morning Wake-Up Call, Rick Moore had three guests on to talk about tonight's showing of the Oscars. Take a listen . I've not listened to the show yet today, but I plan on doing so while I walk to the University of Virginia for a recording gig I'm doing there at 3:00. I'd better get walking! Why not take a listen yourself, and add a comment? Have you seen any of the movies? Are they too dark? Did Transformers get shafted? Let us know.

YouTube video entries are posted

Earlier this month, I produced a story on the Jefferson-Madison Regional Libraries first-ever YouTube contest. Teenagers were asked to produce a video to promote the Big Read event. This year, the community is reading To Kill A Mockingbird. Take a look at some of the entries here .

Our adventure downtown, courtesy of CTS

My two and a half year old daughter and I went for a quick two hour trip today. I had to go back to the office to get some things I had left behind. Later on tonight I am going to try my hand at creating some odd music for my secret podcast, and I needed the microphone cable. So, we left the house, went to the office, went to McGuffey Park, and stopped in for a quick snack and beverage at Court Square Tavern. The total trip was about two and a half hours, and my wife is grateful that I was able to give her and the baby some rest. The most excellent thing about this adventure was that we were able to do the whole thing on the bus. We left our house, and within five minutes were sitting on the number 4-B to downtown. Ten minutes later, I'm walking up the very steep hill on High Street to the park, where we played in the sand for about forty minutes. The park still looks pretty good, but the hill leading up to the slide appears to be eroding a little bit. Then we walked to Court Squar

Let's Google our way to the moon!

I would be remiss if I didn't mention somewhere that the Charlottesville Podcasting Network was denied the ability to record an event this week featuring top officials from NASA. I'm an avid supporter of the space program, and had looked forward to sharing the talk with the public. Now, yes, the event was private, and the sponsors did invite me to record. And yes, NASA, I guess, had the right to deny the event from being recorded. So, I didn't press the issue. But, I think people should know that one of our high-profile federal agencies prevented the raw recording of one of their events. They'd like to control the spin, I guess, and have control over how the message of space exploration in the 21st century is put out there. NASA does great work, but its main challenge is to overcome the appearance that it is bureaucratic, waste-filled, and irrelevant. I do not know enough about NASA to make a judgment on these things, but I also know I did not get the opportunity this

Blogs I read

So, I've crossed over the 300 feeds threshold on Bloglines. Thankfully, I have them split into categories which I look at on an informal tier-basis. ADMIN, of course, comes first. This includes the Charlottesville Podcasting Network , Charlottesville Tomorrow , Charlottesville Tomorrow's Calendar , and a whole bunch of secret feeds. This is where I look to make sure the things I'm working on are getting out to the world. BLOGS is my informal category of blogs I look at because they're blogs. Some of these are big ones like Boing Boing , and others are ones I read because I sort of know someone who writes one. The World's Fair fits into this category. It's a smart blog about science issues. I don't read every article, but I read the headlines to know what's going on. There's also Hatchets and Skewers , which is an art criticism blog written by my friend Jeffry Cudlin. One of his newer posts talks about his latest appearance on WAMU's Kojo Nnamdi

My memories of Mitch Van Yahres

I'm new to the Charlottesville scene, relatively speaking. In 2001, when I still lived in Roanoke, I drove up here to interview Mitch Van Yahres. He was the Delegate who had introduced the legislation to express the state's "profound regret" over its role in the eugenics movement. I was a reporter for WVTF working on a documentary project on eugenics. The legislation had passed, and I was doing a series of stories, retracing the excellent work of Roanoke Times reporter Mary Bishop. When I worked at Court Square Tavern a few years later, I waited on him on several Saturdays. He and his wife would come in, and they would enjoy themselves. I never reminded him of the interview I did with him. That didn't seem appropriate. I believe he was still in the General Assembly at the time, and I didn't want to bug him. I stayed up tonight to produce Coy Barefoot's tribute show to Mitch Van Yahres, so take a listen if you're interested in knowing more his life .

Clinton and Obama on the Charlottesville Podcasting Network

This year's race for the Democratic nomination is the most exciting of our lifetime, and Tuesday's Virginia primary could have a bearing on the race. We didn't really know that this past fall, when both Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama appeared in Charlottesville to raise money. Did they think that Virginia would factor in at this time? Well, here we are on the eve of the primary, and cvilleblogs.com is filled with people discussing which candidate deserves to be the nominee. Is there anyone left who has not decided how they will vote? If you want to hear what each candidate had to say, we have the audio of each event at the Charlottesville Podcasting Network. We had hoped to have John McCain, but that event got canceled. If you have a couple of hours, go and listen, and let us know what you thought. We are trying to see if we can get a recording of the Hilary Clinton event on Monday. Check back here for news on that.