Watching the cars go by

The Intelligent Transportation System Center is the strangest room of the Public Works building on Fourth Street NW. The exterior of the building suggests no particular purpose; same goes for the beige interior. Moreover, the ITSC is dark, the only sources of light coming from two walls holding eight monitors, each portraying a city intersection, […]

Charlottesville’s deadliest roads

Charlottesville registered no traffic fatalities in 2006, but eight people died on Albemarle County roads. The ages of those killed stretch from 17 to 84, but in five of these cases, the passenger killed was under 24. A few of the accidents yielded no proof of cause, but analyses of tire marks, car positions and […]

Free, enslaved first builders honored

Toward the end of his annual State of the University speech last month, President John T. Casteen III said, “[There is] substantial interest in the efforts that we’re making now to acknowledge the role of enslaved persons and other workers who contributed to the construction of this University and you’ll see more of this roll […]

Judge hears arguments in Bowers case

Fifteen minutes before a 1pm hearing in Dena Bowers’ $1 million wrongful firing lawsuit, UVA administrators and their attorneys were downright giggly. Chief Financial Officer Yoke San Reynolds and UVA

Vinegar Hill resurrected online

Before it was demolished in the late 1960s, Vinegar Hill was black Charlottesville’s cultural and commercial hub from Reconstruction through the Jim Crow era. The neighborhood was declared “blighted” during the ill-conceived urban renewal movement of the Civil Rights era. For the next 20 years, Vinegar Hill remained a vacant lot, the blunt legacy of […]

James Baker coming to Miller Center

President Bush may not be the only one “staying the course.” The Miller Center of Public Affairs (www.millercenter.virginia.edu) at UVA announced last week that it has assembled a National War Powers Commission, a bipartisan panel designed to examine constitutional allocations of power during war. Former secretaries of state James A. Baker III and Warren Christopher […]

Parents busted for child abuse

Two Augusta County teenage girls, ages 15 and 16, have been removed from their father and stepmother’s custody. Those guardians, Steven Tomlin, 35, and Heather Tomlin, 27, have been charged with two counts of cruelty and injury to a child. According to Augusta police investigator Paul McCormick, police received a call from a school friend […]

Legislature fights crime

In general, the State of Virginia is known for dealing with criminals, shall we say…effectively. During this last General Assembly session (www.legis.state.va.us), lawmakers did find a few ways to make our streets a little safer and would-be felons even more jittery. Here, four passed bills that will help the state fight crime. Albemarle Delegate Rob […]

Aged witnesses cling to false memories

As age advances, memory declines. Old news? Perhaps, but a recent UVA study suggests that the issue may not be quite so simple. The study, “I misremember it well: Why older adults are unreliable eyewitnesses,” finds that older adults are not only more error-prone when remembering details—they are also extremely confident of their mistaken recollections. […]