• Asides

  Snap o' the day: Beetnix video
  Beside the under-construction Landmark Hotel, Damani Harrison of the loally-based hip-hop group Beetnix prepares to shoot a video tonight on the Downtown Mall. Shortly before 7pm, using a none-too-loud boom box to keep time, the band— “one for the money, two for the brain, three for the pain”— walked the Mall rapping “Citizen Kane.” (0)

  Rove's Kaine critique gains new irony with Palin pick
  Atlantic Monthly editor Andrew Sullivan points out on his blog today that former White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove’s assessment of Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine (D) as a vice presidential candidate has new meaning now that Rove’s party will soon nominate Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) for the same office. “With all due respect to Gov. Kaine, he’s been a governor for three years,” said Rove of Kaine on CBS’s Face the Nation on August 10. Palin has been Governor of Alaska for 21 months. Rove continued, “[Kaine] was mayor of the 105th largest city in America. And again, with all due respect to Richmond, Virginia, it’s smaller than Chula Vista, California; Aurora, Colorado; Mesa, or Gilbert, Arizona; North Las Vegas, or Henderson, Nevada. It’s not a big town.” Before becoming governor, Palin was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, which had a population of 5,470 in the 2000 Census, compared to 179,790 in Richmond. # (0)

  Reservoir logs: 4" rain erases 4' reservoir gap
  Why did recent deluges knock less than two feet off the Sugar Hollow Reservoir water deficit while erasing the entire four-foot deficit at the mammoth South Fork Rivanna Reservoir? The latter reservoir can corral so much water because it has a 259-square-mile watershed, with multiple streams and rivers gushing into it. Sugar Hollow, by contract, has less than a tenth of the watershed: just 17.5 miles. Ironically, the 4.37″ of rain, as measured at the airport by the National Weather Service, began falling Wednesday, August 27, just a day after the waterworks, the Rivanna Water & Sewer Authority, issued a press release urging conserving but emphasizing calm by noting that there was less than a 1-in-10 liklihood that reservoirs would remain below 80 percent capacity. The waterworks was right. (0)

  Snap o' the day: High-rise act
  Two construction workers balanced this morning atop the recently poured columns for the third-level deck of the Landmark Hotel on the Downtown Mall. The $30 million 9-story luxury hotel is scheduled to open in July 2009. (0)

  Couric ranks 62nd on 'Most Poweful Women' list
  In its annual ranking of the “Top 100 Most Powerful Women,” Forbes ranked CBS Evening News anchor and UVA alumna Katie Couric 62nd among all women worldwide. That’s one better than Couric’s previous year standing of 63rd, but still not high enough to top Meredith Vieira (#61), the woman who replaced Couric as co-host of NBC’s Today when Couric quit the morning show to become network TV’s first solo nightly news anchor in 2006. Coming in at #1 for a third year in a row was German chancellor Angela Merkel. # (1)

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