Happy times at Stanford University by UVA’s former “Green Dean.”
PHOTO BY ANDREAS Brændhaugen

In a recent article in Fast Company magazine, “Green Guru Gone Wrong: William McDonough,” staff writer Danielle Sacks goes to great length— over 6,500 words, actually— to dismantle locally-based architect William McDonough’s nearly mythic status as a visionary green architect. As Sacks points out, UVA’s former “Green Dean” was Esquire’s 2005 “Big Thinker of the Year” and one of Time’s “Heroes for the Planet,” but then she proceeds to do a “demolition job” on McDonough, as Treehugger.com characterized it.

At the start of the piece, McDonough is seen palling around with the likes of Cindy Crawford, Goldie Hawn, Universal Studios president Ron Meyer, fashion designer Tom Ford, and billionaire Richard Branson, while he makes everyone swoon with his theories of a waste-free world. By the end of the piece, however, Sacks has McDonough struggling like a dolt to put up a patio umbrella at a mansion in Maine that one of his famous friends has let him use.

“Sweaty and breathless, McDonough finally flips the umbrella upside down onto the deck. “Snap this until it snaps into that,” he instructs me, pointing to a wooden lever. He is crouching over as if he were inspecting some kind of beached specimen, his hair like a tuft of grass atop a windswept rock. It’s hard not to wonder, even with Al Gore’s Hollywood engine behind him, whether this is really the man to lead the next industrial revolution. Or whether, as McDonough says, rising with a gasp, “there’s an easier way to do this.” (more)

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Smoke detectors are not all created equal. A detector test conducted by the Hook with assistance from local fire officials revealed in June that ionization models may not activate until it’s too late to escape.
FILE PHOTO BY JEN FARIELLO

A creative smoke detector promotion by Albemarle County Fire Department yielded free pizza for lucky— and safety conscious— Domino’s Pizza customers last week. The October 7 promotion promised customers of the Seminole Trail store a free pizza if a county firefighter riding along with the delivery driver determined that all of the home’s smoke detectors were functioning.

Barber says three firefighters teamed up with three delivery drivers from 4-7pm and served up about a dozen free pies.

“I would have liked to have gotten more houses, but overall I’m pleased,” says County Fire Marshal James Barber, who adds that the department deliberately limited the scope of the promotion because it was their first attempt and they didn’t know how strong response would be. Barber expects the department to repeat the promo in about six months, and says that “hopefully, it’ll be expanded.”

Despite the relatively low number of pizza calls, to the firefighters’ delight, the detectors were working at almost every home they visited. “We replaced two batteries,” says Barber, “but every home we went to, the detector basically was functional.”

Barber says the firefighters answered residents’ questions about detectors (more)

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The wife of Augusta County Sheriff Randy Fisher smelled smoke before the smoke detector sounded during a September 22 fire at the couple’s residence, according to Mike Fisher, Chief of the Dooms Volunteer Fire Company in Augusta.

At around 12:30am, Mrs. Fisher was awakened by the smell of smoke. She “went down the hallway to the kitchen thinking neighbors were burning something,” says Chief Fisher (no relation to the Sheriff). “When she came back up the hall to the bedroom, the smoke detector sounded. Her husband was working downstairs, and she yelled for him to come back upstairs.”

The Fishers escaped from the house with their two dogs, but by the time firefighters responded, the flames had spread from the attic– where an electrical fire likely started, according to Chief Fisher– into the main living area.

In most Augusta County fire investigations, fire officials determine the type of detector present, says Chief Fisher. The detector at Sheriff Fisher’s home was completely destroyed, says Chief Fisher, so identifying whether it was photoelectric or ionization was impossible. Chief Fisher says he didn’t see any other smoke detectors present in the house.

Sheriff Fisher has not returned the Hook’s repeated calls.

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Smoke detectors are not all created equal. A detector test conducted by the Hook with assistance from local fire officials revealed in June that ionization models may not activate until it’s too late to escape.
FILE PHOTO BY JEN FARIELLO

Last week, the Albemarle County Fire Department announced a smoke detector promotion in which anyone ordering pizza from Domino’s Pizza on Seminole Trail on Tuesday, October 7 between 4 and 7pm will receive a free pizza if a firefighter riding along with the delivery driver determines all smoke detectors in a customer’s residence are functioning. If any of the detectors aren’t working, the customer pays for the pie but gets a free detector.

There was just one problem with the creative promotion: the department made no mention of the type of detector that should to be present in order to receive the free pie.

Not anymore!

At the Hook’s request, says Albemarle Fire Inspector Joseph Gould, the department will now not only check if the detectors are functioning but will also identify the type of detector. Homes equipped with battery operated ionization detectors, even if they function, will be offered the combination detectors that are supplied through the county’s free detector program. Residents of homes with hardwired ionization models will be educated on the need to replace their detectors.

As the Hook has reported on extensively, ionization detectors– the type found in at least 90 percent (more)

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Dan Doernberg’s new program aims to help voters cut through political spin.
FILE PHOTO BY JEN FARIELLO

Cutting through the spin of political campaigns can make one’s head spin, but thanks to Albemarle resident Dan Doernberg, founder of Fairness.com, voters across the country will have a new tool just in time for the final head-spinning stretch of the presidential race.

Dubbed “CriTweak”— a combination of critique and tweak— the tool is a computer program that Doernberg hopes will revolutionize the way people read and comment on online articles and documents. Instead of the typical commenting format, in which readers post comments at the bottom of the page, CriTweak allows users to comment on specific passages simply by mousing over them, and to see what other commenters have posted on those same passages without leaving the page.

“If someone lays out an idea or something in a speech, a reader might think, ‘That’s a really good idea, and I’d add this implication,’ or say, ‘don’t forget about this aspect,” says Doernberg. “It’s meant to both be critiquing things you don’t agree with and amplifying and expanding ideas that you do like.”

The program is already up and running at electiondocs.com and features 400 searchable documents– speech transcripts and news articles relating to the election. Doernberg says the full transcript of the first presidential debate will be online at the site in the near future and ready for commenters. (more)

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In his own words, for nearly 15 years Boston Deputy Fire Chief Jay Fleming has been on a “one man mission” to change the type of smoke detectors used in American homes.

Not anymore. Last week, nearly 300,000 troops joined Fleming’s battle when the International Association of Fire Fighters became the first major American fire organization to formally endorse photoelectric smoke detectors and, in the process, to formally condemn ionization detectors, which Fleming argues are responsible for at least 10,000 fire-related deaths since 1990.

“We’re making progress!” Fleming says of the resolution– co-sponsored by Fleming’s Boston department, Local 718, and the Professional Fire Fighters of Vermont– that passed unanimously by voice vote last week at the IAFF’s annual convention in Las Vegas.

Professional Fire Fighters of Vermont president Matt Vinci is also thrilled that the resolution passed. “It’s an issue that firefighters (more)

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Daniel Widdowfield will appear in court Monday, August 4 for a bond hearing.
COURTESY OF UVA POLICE

Today UVA police announced the arrest of 24-year-old Daniel Wayne Widdowfield, a shop worker for the UVA athletics department, on three felony charges of contacting someone he thought to be a female minor for sexual purposes. Apparently, had Widdowfield been successful in his alleged solicitation, the girl would not have been the first to become acquainted with him.

A look at Widdowfield’s profile (log-in required) on social-networking website Facebook.com reveals that, while Widdowfield has yet to be convicted of anything, he counts at least 100 local underage girls among his 219 “friends,” including students from Albemarle, Monticello, Western Albemarle, and Charlottesville High School. In fact, according to Widdowfield’s profile, a rising sophomore girl from Spotswood High School in Rockingham County became friends with Widdowfield just before noon today, and on Tuesday he “sent a (more)

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In the Hook’s quest to learn more about the ubiquitous but overhyped type of smoke detector now getting worldwide scrutiny, we decided to conduct another test. Although this type— ionization— has been widely faulted for its failure (which the Hook witnessed first-hand) to promptly detect smoldering fires, we’ve been told it actually catches a common kitchen combustion rather quickly. Thus the toast test.

As the video shows, the detector in question, a 7-year-old, hard-wired ionization unit erupted into noisy sirens before we could even spot a wisp of smoke or turn on our video camera. We turned the toaster off a full 28 seconds of cooking time later, and still the toast, as seen in the photo, is barely singed. (We subsequently burned the toast, and the competing technology detector, the photo-electric, soon sounded.)

Prompt detection of kitchen combustion might seem to be a good thing. Nope. According to Adrian Butler, co-founder (more)

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A bill which would have eased environmental restrictions for a controversial wind farm slated for construction in Highland County has stalled in committee. As previously reported in the Hook, Senate Bill 324, introduced by State Senator Frank Wagner (R-Virginia Beach), would have exempted all electric facilities that generate and distribute renewable energy with a capacity of no more than 50 megawatts.

The bill would have affected the proposed wind farm planned for the mountainous rural area 70 miles northwest of Charlottesville in Highland County. If completed, the project would be the state’s first utility-scale wind generation facility. Highland New Wind LLC, the company planning the development, has faced harsh criticism from (more)

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You’re on notice, Charlottesville Internet file swappers– the Bedford County sheriff’s department may be watching you.

According to Sheriff Mike Brown (left), who directs the federally funded Southern Virginia Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, his office has monitored the hard drives of thousands of Virginians sending or receiving child pornography, including 243 in Charlottesville. (There’s a Northern Virginia operation of the same name, but Brown’s task force handles Southern and Central Virginia.)

Brown says 20,000 computers statewide are swapping child porn files, and he ranks Charlottesville in the top 20, ahead of Lynchburg (139) and Blacksburg (121), but behind Roanoke (406), and nowhere close to the state leader, Virginia Beach, with nearly 2,000. Nationally, Virginia ranks 8th in child pornography consumption across the Internet, he says.

“It’s epidemic,” says Brown. “There have been (more)

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