Citizen 1,235,824

Hello all! I'm doing a test and if you're online at this moment, I'd appreciate you checking out this experimental live stream of the public hearing of the South Fork Rivanna Stewardship Task Force . I'll have it on and would appreciate any feedback. ( Click here for the stream in iTunes, Winamp, anything else you want ) Update: The event is now over, and the live stream is off. I'll leave the link above, because I plan on using it more often in the days and weeks to come. Check it out. Listen in. Tell me what you think.

Tonight only, I am using my experimental feed to play the music of the Fundamental Grang. This was an experimental electronic noise group that formed in Calgary. Alberta . I have the sole archive of the material, and am pleased to be able to use my live stream to play it for you. It's worth it to take a make a note of this feed . If you listen, you will hear a lot of interesting things. If you have questions about what you hear, let me know on the blog. But for tonight only, the Fundamental Grang!

A rare night off. No work. Taking a break this week. I watched television and it felt kind of historical. Here's what I watched: Saturday Night Live on Thursday night: Not as good as last week's, sort of lackluster with mistakes and no Tina Fey as Sarah Palin. Still, it's unusual to watch a show trying to move outside of its usual territory. Live television in prime time excites me. Life On Mars: Second episode. Still following the template of the British show, but I'm hooked because of all the subtle differences. It's like a cover version of a song you like that takes the melody into new places. Red Sox beat the Rays: This is the first baseball I've watched all year. I've been kind of done with baseball, but I flicked through and ended up rooting for the Red Sox. They were down 7-0 and came back to win 8-7 in the ninth. How did I forget baseball? McCain on Letterman: I've not watched Letterman on television for years, but this was must-stay-up televisio

Disclaimer: For the sake of this post, I define television as episodic filmed entertainment. Sound simple enough, right? Anyway, what I want is easy access to British comedy on the Internet. I've been able to watch most of Peep Show , all of I'm Alan Partridge , and a lot more. My cousin helped me get Black Books , and of course, Spaced is the high point. People my age, British people my age, making hysterical comedies. But now, I want to devour Green Wing. I was able to watch the first 2/3's of the first episode, but that appears to be all that is on YouTube. I want to watch the whole thing, or at least, have an easy way to buy the episodes. I know little about the show, but in a post on i09 about the potential of Johnson from Peep Show (Paterson Joseph) being the next actor to play the title role in Doctor Who, I decided to check it out. I did not like it at first, but after watching the two available clips from this first episode, I can certainly see myself falling i

Heroes is either one of the best or one of the worst shows of all time, depending on the week. The show about people with superpowers had a very strong first season, followed by a lackluster second season. The third season has gone back and forth. But, the fifth episode was a return to form, I think. The show is often criticized for having a ridiculously large cast, as well as an inability to have killing characters off actually mean anything. But tonight, it all seems to be fitting together. It's like all of the awful exposition is actually creating something that's interesting.

Elizabeth McCullough of cvillewords.com is one of the real forces behind the Charlottesville Podcasting Network these days. She's recording four or five events for us, and this week I'm in her debt for bringing us the audio from author Tim Lewis launching an ambitious work at the New Dominion Bookshop . The Virginiad is a collection of new poems about Virginia history since 1607. I listened to the podcast of him reading from the works the other day, and I really enjoyed what I heard. I'm going to have to go back and listen to more in order to have it sink in.

This week, Radio 4 had a documentary on the role that race is playing in the Presidential campaign. " Soul and Skin " is a 23-minute piece by Rob Watson that he recorded from interviews he conducted in Richmond. You can take a listen to it until Friday, when it will be replaced by something else. I thought it was worth mentioning because it's odd to hear the BBC reporting in our backyard.

If I had a radio station, I'd play songs by the Streets all the time. The Streets is Mike Skinner, a geezer from Birmingham who made music in his flat living with his parents while working as a fast food restaurant. Somehow he got discovered, and I came across him several years ago when I lived up on Pritchett Lane thanks to NPR. Fresh Air had a bit about the Streets, played the songs, and I was very skeptical after hearing the review. I thought, gosh, I could do that. A few years previous, I had been a singer in an improvisational punk rock band, but I let that go in order to do move with someone to Canada. In the meantime, I had moved back here sort of as a default, and moved to Charlottesville for a job. And, wasn't doing any music of any sort except some electronic stuff that I had no audience for at all. So, I was skeptical, but I've been a subscriber to Rhapsody for over five years now, and so I decided to take a listen. The tracks were absolutely incredible to me,

Former Governor Jim Gilmore on his campaign for Senate Posted using ShareThis

I got to say, I'm really enjoying the new version of Facebook . A lot of people were dead-set against it because it hid all the cutesy-stuff like Green Happy Flowers and How Educated Is Your Hamster applications.  What they did, I think, was to make it much easier to tap into the real resource on Facebook - people you've met in real life that you know. I have 150 or so friends in Facebook, and the new updates make it much easier to have conversations with people. In this past week, I've had a quick discussion on superhero television as well as a conversation about the way Americans should conceive of government. These conversations have occured with former co-workers as well as people from my school days. It makes me feel connected, and maybe a little less scared of being alone in the world. Of course, it is a little weird being friended by strangers I barely know. Yet, even some of those folks I send messages back and forth with. Why not? That's what it's there for

Okay. I'm trying it. I've suspended my disbelief. I'm watching the American version of "Life on Mars" because I was in front of the television anyway. The Thursday Saturday Night Live was something I had to watch.   In case you're wondering, Life on Mars is the show about a detective from our time who gets hit by a car and finds himself waking up in 1973.  It's a fish out of water story, as well as a police procedural. The British version starred John Sim as Sam Tyler, the cop who doesn't know why he's trapped in the past. Philip Glenister is Detective Gene Hunt, who is much more violent in the original. The show existed for two series of eight episodes, and wrapped up nicely, if not a bit confusingly. It's aired on BBC America, so a lot of Americans have seen it.  This is the second version of the American pilot. The first one didn't test well. The guy who played the transporter guy on Star Trek: The Next Generation was Gene Hunt, but

As the financial crisis deepens and we all find ourselves wondering when we're going to feel the big impact, this video somehow cheers me up and reminds me it's all going to be okay, somehow. Even though the setting for the video is pretty grim. I don't really know this band, Bright Eyes , but I think I'm going to watch all of their videos. Then I'll buy their albums. Then I'll go see them. And that, my friends, is my plan to jumpstart the economy.

A few weeks ago, I blogged about BBC Radio 4's " America, Empire of Liberty " series on American history. I noted that I enjoyed the use of actors to read excerpts from historical passages. It's a technique I stole a few years ago for a documentary I did on Virginia's literary history. But, the Independent's radio critic isn't a big fan : Every time we get to an excerpt from a letter or a speech, up pops some actor or other putting on the appropriate voice: Edmund Burke is Oirish, George III gets a terrible stutter, southern gentlemen sound like the supporting cast in 'Gone with the Wind'. I understand the impulses to break the monotony and identify the characters, but against the background of Reynolds' downbeat narration it just sounds hammy. At times, it gets as annoying as a Woman's Hour serial: and that is not an insult I fling about lightly. I disagree with Robert Hanks, because I think it makes the pieces a bit more entertaining to l

I've been fortunate to work with two arts groups in the last week to produce a couple of long arts discussions for various communities. First, I helped my friend Jeff Cudlin with a podcast on a panel discussion called " From the Gallery to the Street: Artists Talk Politics ." Jeff is the Director of Exhibitions at the Arlington Arts Center, and someone I've known since I was 6. Everything I am today, I owe to Jeff. Hence, the free labor. Second, I recorded a talk for the Piedmont Council of the Arts for their recent "Creative Conversation" on Arts Education And Our Community . I'm not pleased with the sound quality, but I'm incredibly impressed with the turn-out and I applaud PCA for their work on this front. I think they're going to pull a lot of things together, and I'm glad to be able to do my small part. Podcasting may not necessarily be a mass medium, but it's a great way to connect people together. When I look back at the last thre

I wish I'd been an engineer. My dad is one, but I don't think he ever sufficiently conveyed to me what he did. From an early age, I was pretty convinced that he drove trains. Somehow, that mental image stuck and I never quite made the connections I needed to understand why math and science were so important. I wish I had been able to take a look at something like this from the National Academy of Engineering when I was 10 or 11. I would have liked to have had more direction when I was younger. What are the grand challenges for the future, and how can they be solved? Make solar energy economical Provide energy from fusion Develop carbon sequestration methods Manage the nitrogen cycle Provide access to clean water Restore and improve urban infrastructure Advance health informatics Engineer better medicines Reverse-engineer the brain Prevent nuclear terror Secure cyberspace Enhance virtual reality Advance personalized learning Engineer the tools of scientific discovery In these

I am proud that for three and a half years, I have been running the Charlottesville Podcasting Network . The site is my public service towards the community. My income comes from my job at Charlottesville Tomorrow as well as my business, Wordcast Productions. I love what I do, though I wish I had more time to run the website. Right now, CPN is my third priority, work-wise. My day job always come first, and I'm incredibly blessed to have it. I am learning so much about how this community works. I am doing the best journalism of my life, as we continue to learn to craft a new way of reporting. If you want to know what's going on in regional growth and development, then take the time to sign up for Charlottesville Tomorrow or listen to us in iTunes . However, sometimes I wonder if the folks at Spicy Bear are right . Should I look for a buyer for the Charlottesville Podcasting Network? The answer, of course, is a no. If I have created any value, it is certainly not commercial. I