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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.)

Alumnus Phil Plaitt, whom we wrote about last Friday, used his “Bad Astronomy” blog on the Discover website to lobby for votes for the book. And Johnson herself penned a piece on the club for the current edition of Albemarle Family magazine,

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.

She also has two websites on fashion and beauty tips. There’s a Facebook page, and she has a YouTube channel, Brooklyn with Mahsa.

“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.”

The New York Daily News did a write-up, as has Saedi-Azcuy’s hometown paper, the Loudoun Times.

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 on iTunesU.

Read more about the stories featured in this week’s program:

• ‘Class Matters’ Lecture Series to Focus on Common Ground of Economic Issues (Claudrena Harold)
• Lineup Announced for 2010 “More Than the Score” Pre-Game Lecture Series (Althea Brooks)
• Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection Reopens Aug. 31 With New Exhibit (Margo Smith)

•Air Date: 9/1/2010

To download mp3, click here.

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.

Andrew Cedermark , U.Va. class of 2008, made his name with indie rock heroes Titus Andronicus, and is currently getting slobbered on by the likes of Pitchfork.com. Catch his perfect slacker shoegazer anthems locally while you still can!

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.

From the home office in the Fontaine Research Park, we offer the top 10 rejected functions for U.Va.’s brand-new iPhone app.

10. Committee to Pave the Lawn Donation Site

9. Thomas Jefferson Tombstone Cam

8. (Coach) Tony Bennett Sings the ‘Good Ol’ Song’

7. Parking-Ticket Lady Tracker

6. Football Locker Room Remote Air Quality Monitor

5. Lawn Streakers’ Lost and Found Clothing List

4. Dell Pond Fishing Forecast

3. Steam Tunnel Maps

2. Coach London’s In-Game Suggestion Box

… and the No. 1 rejected function for the Virginia iPhone app …

1. Video: Hokie Hoofers Teach ‘The Chicken Dance’

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.

(More, including a trailer, after the break …)

The show is a result of a blog Plait writes for Discover magazine’s blog site, “Bad Astronomy,” where he provides scientific understanding to assorted phenomena. In 1998, he launched a website, BadAstronomy.com, and later added the blog before it was picked up by Discover. Time magazine last year rated the blog among its “25 Best Blogs.”

Plait’s goal as “an astronomer on a mission,” with the blog and the show, is to “debunk all the junk science out there, and reveal the truth.”

Plait is an astronomer, lecturer and author. He worked for 10 years with NASA on the Hubble Space Telescope and for six more in astronomy education before becoming a full-time writer.

He is the author of two books, including, “Death From the Skies: These Are the Ways the World Will End …,” dozens of magazine articles, and “12 bazillion” blog articles, by his count. He describes himself as a skeptic who “loves fighting misuses of science as well as praising the wonder of real science.”

Plait said he got the teaching bug as a doctoral student at U.Va. For three years, he ran a nighttime lab for astronomy students, but his favorite experience was when the public was invited to peer through the telescopes at Observatory Hill and Fan Mountain. The questions he fielded put his talents to the test, he said, recalling an 8-year-old and his grandmother who tag-teamed him about black holes.

Visit his blog (and view the show’s trailer) here.

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:

1. Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.

2. Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, R.I.

3. Sewanee: The University of the South, Sewanee, Tenn.

4. Stanford University, Palo Alto, Calif.

5. Tulane University, New Orleans

6. U.S. Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, Colo.

7. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich.

8. University of Virginia, Charlottesville (really? Behind Michigan? Not sure I’m buying that one). The write-up cites Thomas Jefferson and the whole Academical Village thing, but it does throw a nice mention to the U.Va. Art Museum.

9. University of Washington, Seattle

10. Yale University, New Haven, Conn.

ShermansTravel explains its reasoning thusly: “The campuses at the head of the class combine factors like sublime natural settings, historic architecture, world-class cultural centers, and spirited sporting events – enough to justify swapping dorm rooms for hotel rooms!”

Personally, I think the U.S. Naval Academy and St. John’s College in Annapolis would make a nice dual entry, with their setting by the Chesapeake Bay. I’ve heard good things about West Point, though I have never been there. Who else has some ideas?

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 on iTunesU.

Read more about the stories featured in this week’s program:

• U.Va. Awarded $2.5 Million to Study and Prevent Elderly Drivers’ Motor Vehicle Crash Injuries (Donna Hearn)
• Worldwide, Women’s Income Brings Host of Benefits, U.Va.’s Blumberg Finds (Rae Blumberg)
• ‘From a Distance’: U.Va. Program Helps Sign Language Interpreters Hone Classroom Communication Skills (Kathleen O’Varanese and Laurie Shaffer)

•Air Date: 8/25/2010

To download mp3, click here.

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.

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.”

There’s much to ponder there.