Courtesy of XKCD

UVA Rooms on the Lawn

Lawn Rooms

Via UVAToday Blog there was a good article in the Richmond Times-Dispatch on Friday about some minor historic renovations that are being down to the 104 rooms on the Lawn and Range.

Today Visits UVA

The Today show visited UVA! Watch the video.

Nemesis Ad

I have a "Nemesis Ad". Every time it comes on , I cringe. It has a woman on it that talks about having to "cath" with this deep Southern accent. It is really creepy!
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P.S. When I just spell checked this post, "cath" flagged as a non-existent word. Hah! I thought so!

US Rowing Team

In my class at UVA is a member of the US rowing team that went to China! What an honor to share a class with such a highly accomplished young woman. UVA is such a good school.

Happy Autumn

Happy autumn 2008!!!

Invisibility

On The Today Show they were just talking about the various Peter Petrelli action figures. Apparently there is an invisible one. Al Roker said, it is actually a bomb as it must be an empty box. That made me think of a part of one of the Harry Potter books where the bookstore got in the book for one class, The Book of Invisibility but then they could never find them.

The odd thing is, we actually have a working model of invisibility, something akin to an invisibility cloak. Sometimes I think my glasses have become invisible because i can't find them without wearing them!

CERN (or LHC) Rap

Here is a great educational rap song about the Large Hadron Collider!

http://www.vimeo.com/1431471?pg=embed&sec=1431471

Esh Is Home

Esh is home tonight, and tomorrow, we will drive Ian back to UVA. He got a raise. $13 per hour is not bad for a first job at 16! He is enjoying school a lot. His Sanskrit teacher he says is the best teacher he has ever had. He has study groups for two classes. He looks great and seems happy. The dorms are hot but cooler weather is beginning to happen.
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Gravity adds:

Esh is also listed as a teacher in the conceptual physics class for which he is a grader!
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October adds:

Esh slept 10 hours too
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Gravity adds:

It was nice to have him home but also to see that he was eager to get back to School and friends.

Cavalier Daily Online

The Cavalier Daily is now online.. Enjoy comics, commentaries and news stories on your PC!

http://www.cavalierdaily.com/

New UVA Blog

UVA has a new blog -- a news blog. We have added it our links.

http://uvatoday.org/blog/

Women and Blacks

I remember Nicelle Nichols saying years ago that she as very proud of being on Star Trek because it portrayed her as a powerful black woman who was an officer on a space ship; this was true. As I mentioned before, Gravity and I are watching old Mission Impossible TV shows; we are on season two. Towards the end of season one I began to realize that these old shows (1966 to 1973) do an even better portrayal of blacks, and additionally, women. The members of the MI team are all totally professional -- no even hints of romance. Greg Morris, the shows' black team member, is the master engineer and gadgets whiz -- an absolute genius who can make and create anything based on principals of physics and chemistry. The teams' woman (played by Barbara Bain) portrays a former model with an eidetic memory and who never needs to be rescued by the men. She thinks fast and quickly with brilliance. Both women and blacks are portrayed in a more flattering light than often done today when few shows don't eventually run amok with romance. The new MI movies pale in many ways to the old shows with the shows' plot lines being based on valor, honesty and love of country; and the focus on a team instead of one man (yuk - Tom Cruise). Please someone, turn the old shows into current MI movies!

Nightly Glow

For the past week (amazingly enough it has been a week!), there has been a nice warm glow in the kitchen at night when we go to bed. The oven light switch no longer works; and, believe it or not, the oven bulb is still working! It makes sense that it could break as it is a simply on-off mechanical switch yet neither of us has heard of the switch breaking before. A new one is on order so it will either be fixed soon or the bulb will burn out and then it will get switched. in the meantime, if we sneak down the stairs, we might find three cats basking in the glow at 2 AM.

Irony

Gravity and I are still watching old Mission Impossible shows. the one tonight is about counterfeiting money. Martin Landau explains to a corrupt banker that he has created the counterfeit via a computer, by copying. Ha! Could this show be where all of the counterfeiter got the idea? [Of course, Greg Morris was sitting inside what was supposed to be a computer. Peter Graves fed sheets into the front of the "computer, Greg Morris then took printed sheets from a stack done ahead of time and fed them out of the front of the "computer". It was hysterical!]
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Gravity Adds,

In my computer, when it is working well, I have a small gnome.
When it is not working well I have a gremlin.

That explains it all!

Hanna

Tropical storm Hanna was just rain here; not even much rain. Too bad Haiti can not say the same. We will have to see what Ike brings. It is not expected to be bad here at all; just rain. We can use the rain. It might allow to plant more azaleas in the front yard, under the trees.

Hospital Shock

We have had a shock. It used to be that any doctor at a hospital was considered to be on the hospital staff. If a hospital participated with your insurance company, everyone that you would see also participated with your insurance company. This is not longer true. Every doctor is billed separately. Some may be on your insurance plan, and some might not. This includes all of the doctors who operate behind the scenes, that you never see or can talk to like pathologists. The response from the hospital as that the patient must ask the doctor whether that doctor participates in their insurance plan. Okay...so I have been in a car accident and am taken to a hospital by ambulance. Exactly HOW am I supposed to ask the doctors if I am unconscious? Our medical care is broken and needs to be fixed. Our current method of separate billing organizations is incredibly inefficient and expensive. Time for socialized medicine and I never thought I would say that but things are spiralling out of control. Speak to your US Senator now.