September 15th, 2011 issue #1037
September 15th, 2011
Glitchy system: Inside the student software debacle
Why did Albemarle County school officials commit nearly $2 million to a software system that has proven faulty, despite multiple complaints from teachers that using it was a "waste of time," and an admission from one County school official that it was "glitchy, to say the least"? At a time when school systems are facing budget cuts, losing teachers, and seeing classroom size increase, spending on technology has soared. Indeed, terms like "digital learners" and "data driven education" have captured the imaginations– and purse strings– of school administrators.read more
4Better Or Worse
The week in review
Most epochal: The 10th anniversary of September 11. Most torrential: A five o'clock thunderstorm September 12 brings hail, a tree on top of a car on JPA, and a stalled car ...
The Dish
Street cred: West Main relaxes
West Main– from the infamous cop-hits-wheelchair man intersection to the one just before the once-controversial dusty Amtrak parking lot– was the site of the se...
Question of the Week
Real Estate - $old
Barry's bargain
7/19/11 Julie Neuman to Donald Nathan, 108 Village Court, $260,000, Charlottesville John Patteson to Alexander Ix III, 146 Burnet Street, $302,500, Charlottesville Richard ...Real Estate - On the Block
Mortgage deduction: Should this sacred cow be slain?
There’s been a fair amount of coverage recently regarding the proposal to abolish the mortgage interest deduction (MID) currently offered to homeowners on principal resid...Real Estate Property auctions
Property auctions
September 15 at 4pm at the Albemarle Courthouse Property: 4365 Taylor Creek Road, Afton Debtor: Page E. Turner Amount owing: unknown Bidder brings: $10,000 Info: Mark B....
Art Features
Meaningful gestures: Maeda reveals a playful heart
An old theater exercise has actors repeat a short sentence over and over, each time emphasizing a different word to shift the sentence’s meaning and impact. Japanese call...
DR. HooK
Not leopard skins: Pillboxes can prevent medicine flubs
Amy Winehouse, Heath Ledger, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix– so many people have overdosed on drugs. In The Rose, Bette Midler’s character swallows pills like a hypogly...
Movie Reviews
Gone viral: 'Contagion' a horrifying possibility
A black screen. The sound of a harsh cough. We are already alert when, soon after, we see a bartender pick up a customer's coin and then punch numbers into a cash register....
Music Features
We're going to need a bigger bulb: An interview with Pretty Lights [plus: free tickets!]
Colorado-based electronic musician Derek Vincent Smith is putting a fresh face on the term "vintage" with his project, Pretty Lights. Even if he's been producing hip-hop in...
News
Buffetted: Weschler to invest for Warren's shareholders
An owner of the Hook is Omaha-bound. And this isn't a baseball story. Ted Weschler, 50, until now a quiet giant in the hedge fund world, has been hired as part of a new gen...Kathryn's law: Harrington supports campus cop demotion
The days of campus police leading murder and rape investigations are coming to an end if the parents of slain Virginia Tech student Morgan Harrington have anything to say a...
Oh, Snap! Halfaday gym ownership claim refuted
Back in the spring, after James Halfaday announced a run for City Council, he met with a reporter at Snap Fitness and acted like he owned the place, and, actually, claimed ...
Peer review: Serial peeper goes to grand jury
The young woman was lying in her bed talking on her cellphone when she noticed a head outside her basement window. The head seemed to be sideways on the ground, looking in ...
Ravens Roost: Rock-climbing death deemed accidental
What may be Virginia's most beautiful Blue Ridge Parkway overlook was also the scene of one of its most tragic accidents, the June 15 rock-climbing death of Alabama residen...
W'boro spectacle: After sparks, Cline memorial sparkles
The installation of a dramatic memorial to 9/11 caused a spectacle of its own Friday afternoon after a support cable touched a live power line, sending up sparks and plungi...On Architecture
Retail migration: Could Stonefield threaten Barracks?
Last week, we looked at store vacancy data for the Downtown Mall, completed in July by the City's Office of Economic Development, but what about the City's other retail cen...
The Brazen Careerist
Uncovered: Negotiate insurance as part of salary
We knew a year in advance when my husband's job would end. So he conducted a typical job hunt for a while, but his searching went into overdrive when we found out that our ...
Sports Doctor
Fanning flames: Can't 'true fans' just get along?
Not too long ago it was considered bad form to discuss politics or religion in mixed company. It’s a common, widely held belief, referenced by everyone from Mark Twain to...
Strange But True
Hirsute: Abras Syndrome kinda grows on you
Q. Only about 50 cases of Ambras Syndrome have been reported since the Middle Ages. How does this dramatic hereditary condition manifest itself?–W.M. Jack
Online only
Bald eagle on 9/10
On a day when the streets of nearby Washington teemed with machine gun-toting officers and traffic diversions to ward off any 9/11 weekend terror, a juvenile bald eagle ent...
Car extrication in Greenwood
A car driven into a drainage ditch at the Rockfish Gap Country Store in Greenwood gets extricated by a passing samaritan in a big blue pickup truck.
Sunken deer
A deer that died of unknown causes lies submerged in a tiny pond on private property in the West Leigh subdivision during the 2009-10 hunting season. As they did that seaso...Table of contents
COVERGlitchy systemWhen Albemarle County schools adopted the SchoolNet data management system, administrators touted it as a high tech tool that would increase efficiency. ...Facetime
Horsin' around: Galloping Grandfather keeps on riding
Harry de Leyer can fly. Photos of him soaring over seven-foot jumps atop champion steeds line the walls of his trophy-filled farmhouse in Dyke. A painting of him over the f...
Letters
Flaws a masterful exposé
Congratulations. With your July 28 cover story "FLAWS," in which you describe the dredge/dam issue, you demonstrate again why you are by far the most important local news r...Hook has the real skinny
Being from New York I am a life long cynic and suffer from a terminal degree of sarcasm. It does my heart good to read the real skinny as to what goes on behind the stories...
Reagan cartoon tasteless, insensitive
I saw the tasteless cartoon about Ronald Reagan "rising from the dead following the prayers of 'Tea Baggers'" for the 2012 Presidential campaign, on page 44 of the [July 21...
Trader Joe's looks like a mausoleum
After viewing the artist's rendering of the new Trader Joe's [Aug 18: "First view: Designers reveal look for Trader Joe's, Stonefield"] all I can think of is a community ma...Black and White
Woolen Mills Chapel
Near the end of Market Street in Charlottesville.~Commentator Bill Emory puts up a new photo nearly every day at billemory.com/blog.
Full Stories List for September 15th, 2011 issue #1037
4Better Or Worse
Question of the Week
Cover Stories
On Architecture
Art Features
Real Estate - $old
Black and White
News
Music Features
Letters
The Dish
The Brazen Careerist
Real Estate - On the Block
Movie Reviews
Real Estate Property auctions
Sports Doctor
Strange But True