The top story on today’s UVA Today is about a children’s bilingual astronomy picture book produced as an outgrowth of the “Dark Skies, Bright Kids” outreach program being run by U.Va. astronomy professor Kelsey Johnson and many student volunteers.
I’d like to highlight something from deep down in Fariss Samarrai’s story: the group is trying to win $25,000 in funding from Pepsi to get more copies of the book printed, with the goal of increasing its distribution around the local schools and possibly around the state. (Click on the link above; you can vote up to 10 times a day.)
There will be a U.Va. grad on “The Apprentice” when it debuts Sept. 16 on NBC.
She is Mahsa Saeidi-Azcuy, 29, who earned an undergraduate degree in biology at U.Va., then went on to get a film degree from the New York Film Academy and a law degree from Brooklyn Law School. She’s now an assistant DA in New York.
“The Apprentice” is a reality-style game show in which 16 contestants vie for a job with the Trump Organization. Each week, one or more are elimnated, with Donald Trump himself issuing the dreaded line, “You’re fired.”
Check out the new episode of the UVA Today Radio Show, a weekly five minute segment on WTJU radio. Look for new editions of the show every Wednesday at 11:55 a.m. on WTJU. Afterward, all of the segments will be posted oniTunesU.
Read more about the stories featured in this week’s program:
We get a lot of e-mail here at UVA Today headquarters seeking publicity for this or that — well, maybe not a lot, but some — and it rarely makes it verbatim into the News Blog. But today, we make an exception.
This from the very enthusiastic Nick Rubin, over at WTJU (with a couple of minor edits):
U.Va.’s eclectic community radio station WTJU — on the radio at 91.1 FM and streaming live on the Internet at wtju.net — welcomes students back with a free concert in the U.Va. amphitheater, featuring three bands from Charlottesville whose reputations far exceed the boundaries of the World-Class City.
Invisible Hand, led by C’ville native Adam Smith, have been called the best, best-looking and hardest-working band in town, infusing tight, catchy, art-rock hooks with furious energy. They will rock your face off, grow you a new face, and rock off your new face.
Caninos are a bona-fide U.Va. band! Fresh-faced gentlemen who seem like your unassuming classmates until they transform into irresistible pop-country-rock charmers. Show up to wish them well before their NYC gig opening for Pavement! No lie!!
Kick off your Labor Day weekend with free rock in the amphitheater, this Friday, Sept. 3, from 5-7:30 p.m.!!
No word yet whether Student Health will offer face transplants afterward.
This just in from UVA Today science correspondent Fariss Samarrai:
University of Virginia alumnus Phil Plait, who earned a Ph.D. in astronomy in 1994, is hosting a new television series that premieres this Sunday at 10 p.m. on the Discovery Channel.
The show, “Phil Plait’s Bad Universe,” examines question related to astronomy, putting assorted claims to the test. The first show is on asteroid impacts.
There seem to be dozens of college rankings out there, many of them appearing in August. This one, though, is truly skin-deep.
A website, ShermansTravel.com, included U.Va. as one of its “Top 10 College Campuses to Visit” in rankings released Tuesday. (Oddly enough, the site seems to have used only used one photo, from No. 4 Stanford, to illustrate its website, though an accompanying slideshow has shots from each school.)
The complete top 10, and a few more comments, after the break:
Check out the new episode of the UVA Today Radio Show, a weekly five minute segment on WTJU radio. Look for new editions of the show every Wednesday at 11:55 a.m. on WTJU. Afterward, all of the segments will be posted oniTunesU.
Read more about the stories featured in this week’s program:
The Dirt, a publication of the American Society of Landscape Architects, on Tuesday published a long-form interview with Kristina Hill, who chairs the landscape architecture department at U.Va.’s School of Architecture, on her ideas about managing the effects of climate change. It’s an interesting read.
Hill notes that Americans — and by extension, their political leaders — seem to be less concerned about the effects of climate change than Canadians and Europeans, and suggest that preparations to mitigate those effects may be lacking.
Meredith Woo, dean of the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, made some interesting remarks to incoming students and their families on Saturday, which she has posted on her blog.
She recalled the experiences of noted American historian Henry Adams, and his observations about the quickening pace of American life at the turn of the 20th century. Adams fancied himself as being more of a creature of the 18th century than the 20th, and wondered about his place in the world — much as the students’ parents may be marveling at the pace of change in the 21st century and wondering if they will be able to keep up with their children and their children’s children.
“Adams heard the roar of the rushing waterfall at the turn of the last century. I hear it today, coming even faster, bringing with it a similar fear, terror, and exhilaration at the speed of new knowledge,” Woo said. “In what complexities will the Class of 2014 think? We don’t know, but we do know they will be twenty-first century men and women, people for whom (quite unlike us) the twentieth century is of the past.”
Here’s something that should reassure those “Velcro parents” a little bit, from the Washington Post’s “Campus Overload” blog: A new study from the National Communication Association finds that more than three-quarters of peers would at least try to prevent a female friend from embarking on a drunken sexual encounter with a stranger, and in some cases would directly try to prevent it.
Guanxi is one of those culturally significant words that can’t be adequately translated without losing some of its rich and layered meaning. As I learned from Wikipedia, Guanxi is about one’s social network (encompassing the concepts of relationships and connections), and one element of Guanxi is the power of a social network to perform action. (I invite our readers to better explain this concept.)
Chen’s engaging essay discusses how, in some ways, the increasing “connectedness” provided by cell phones, Facebook, Twitter, etc. actually can impair people from forming meaningful relationships through the chance and routine encounters of daily life on Grounds. Promoting such face-to-face contact was one of the goals of Jefferson’s design of the Academical Village, and “we could foster a stronger sense of community at the University if people take the effort and time to show more compassion and build personal relationships.”
Chen’s essay is not available online except in the PDF of the full issue of V Ke, so we have reproduced it below. Enjoy.
“Got Guanxi?”
by Paul Chen
In the world of cell phones, Facebook, Twitter, and text messaging where superficial networking prevails, building deep personal relationships through old school communication becomes particularly important because relationships not only preserve our humanity but also help us succeed in life. Continue reading…
There will be a U.Va. grad on 
We get a lot of e-mail here at UVA Today headquarters seeking publicity for this or that — well, maybe not a lot, but some — and it rarely makes it verbatim into the News Blog. But today, we make an exception.
This just in from UVA Today science correspondent Fariss Samarrai:
Meredith Woo, dean of the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, made some interesting remarks to incoming students and their families on Saturday, which 
Every issue of 