Jarrett House NorthNow with 80% less politics!

AdamG at Universal Hub coins what I believe is a new term: the French Toast Alert System, which shows the urgency of your need to run to the store to buy milk, eggs, and bread to wait out a coming snowfall. Heh. Be sure to read the comments where the system is defined.
And yes, it [...]

An editorial in the Cavalier Daily, UVA’s student newspaper, yesterday called one of the University’s secret societies on the carpet over past actions. The outcries are getting louder over this society, ranging from allegations of racism to statements that the Shadows were formed to “stop the integration of women into the University, to uphold a [...]

WSJ: Trappist Command: Thou Shalt Not Buy Too Much of Our Beer. The article makes me want to hunt down some Westvleteren 12 for my birthday, as do the comments on BeerAdvocate.

A quickie for tonight: just saw in my alumni newsletter that Lou Bloomfield, UVA Physics professor famous for his “How Things Work” class and textbook (as well as for developing algorithms to bust plagiarized term papers) is going to be co-hosting the TV show “Some Assembly Required” on the Discovery Channel. Some star professors are [...]

As if the loss to Va Tech wasn’t bad enough, now this: University students charged with abduction (see also WaPo article). This is the definitive proof that curriculum standards at UVA are relaxing; back in my day toolies wouldn’t have had time to go to Northern Virginia, much less to kidnap someone and hold them [...]

Which, you know, kinda sucks, since Elliott’s music was pretty pivotal to the whole movie, and it really launched him past hipster obscurity to a wider audience. So let’s do the retrospective:

Elliott Smith left the band Heatmiser in 1994 because he was tired of having all his songs played like big rock songs, and went [...]

There were two spectacularly wonderful things that I found online yesterday:

Guardian: Undercover restorers fix Paris landmark’s clock. This isn’t a new story, but the acquittal of the members of the Untergunther on trespassing charges is. And the concept of people breaking in to fix broken things is one of those delightful moments that makes you [...]

It’s been a while since I checked in with many of my Seattle friends, so I received a positive surprise when I checked Tom Harpel’s Flickr site and found information about the new Onalaska album, You and the Fishermen. Released something like five years after To Sing for Nights, the new release came out in [...]

Well fought, Virginia, but in the end we were outmatched. Someday I want to play against Virginia Tech and have enough TDs to post the rest of the tracks from that 1947 album, but not this year.
Now what I want is for Virginia Tech to steamroller Boston College. Why? Because it’ll make a whole lot [...]

Well, that took a while, but what a series of plays by Virginia! And that was one time that “run it up the middle,” that old George Welsh standby, paid off for the team.
The song for this touchdown is a colorful one, and the 1947 Glee Club omits most of the colorful verses, but you [...]

On a couple of nice plays, the score goes 14–13 as Virginia takes the lead. This is the lead off song from the LP reissue of the Songs of the University of Virginia album:
Cavalier Song, Virginia Glee Club and UVA Band (1947) – Download 3.7 MB MP3

First UVA score of the game with just a few minutes left to go in the first quarter. Here’s another track from that 1947 album in honor of UVA getting on the board: “Hike, Virginia” is another fight song, and it looks like Virginia could use the encouragement.
Hike, Virginia, Virginia Glee Club and UVA Band [...]

I need to watch the UVA–Virginia Tech game. Nice that ESPN is already giving the Cavs no respect; we’ll see how it goes. I’m afraid to make a prediction, though; I’ve been wrong too many times before this season.
In honor of the game, here’s a little team spirit from 1947. This is ripped from that [...]

I’d love to be able to blame a caloric coma on my posting drought, but of course that would only explain yesterday and today, and not Tuesday or Wednesday. What can I say: work, like sand, piles up against the breakwater of a vacation as though it is determined to fit the same volume of [...]

And no, not that Beowulf, though I confess the release of the movie got me off my duff to start this project. And not even the Seamus Heaney translation. No, I’m talking about the real thing—the original Old English poem, as it was meant to be experienced—read aloud, in this case, by the great Old [...]