| Ignoring The Mtn. no longer viable option
If ever the annual Mountain West Front Range Kickoff Luncheon needed the comic relief of former Air Force coach Fisher DeBerry, it was Thursday. The stalemate in satellite distribution of the league's dedicated cable-only network, The Mtn., is no laughing matter. MWC commissioner Craig Thompson didn't address the issue in his formal statements, although he discussed it after the program. "I know that Dish and DirecTV have at any given time about 100 proposals sitting on their desk," Thompson said. "Why is The Mtn. any different than the fourth cooking show or the third QVC jewelry show? They have to make a determination. How they make a determination is 'Will I lose subscribers if I don't have it or will I gain subscribers if I do have it?' " To that end, he is delighted with an online petition (addthemtntosatellite.blogspot.com) that has collected nearly 9,500 signatures from across the country.
Black Studies Movement Building
Since 1976, the accomplishments of prominent African-Americans have been celebrated each February during Black History Month. But Rochester City School District officials say that isn't enough. They met Thursday with local scholars, activists, teachers and students to discuss plans to add an African and African-American curriculum in all city public schools. School board member Van White is the man behind the idea. “This is a cultural change for the district," White explained. “So this isn't just one classroom where you're going to find this being taught, this should be taught in different ways throughout the district at kids levels K through 12." Some African-American culture is being taught in city schools. But it's a small portion of the history and social studies curriculum.
Editorial Roundup
Excerpts from recent editorials in newspapers in the United States and abroad: Aug. 27 Ocala (Fla.) Star-Banner, on the sentencing of convicted child killer John Evander Couey: For more than 45 minutes on Friday, Circuit Judge Ric Howard clearly, dispassionately and meticulously laid out the facts surrounding the kidnap, rape and murder of little 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford. For observers, it was an agonizing, tear-inducing ordeal to hear how a small child could be so mercilessly brutalized and killed. ... When Howard finished, after time and again dismissing defense counsel's reasons for sparing Couey, he just as calmly dispatched the 49-year-old defendant to Florida's death row where this man, who two years ago became the poster child for a sex-offender scare that unsettled an entire nation, will await his much justified demise.
iCook
If the Web has shown us anything, it is that we are not alone in our pleasures. Whether those are hip hop polka or competitive origami or classic casseroles, the Web has brought together like-minded folk and fostered their interaction. Web sites like Friendster, Facebook and MySpace pioneered this social networking for the mainstream (as adult sites did for the racier precincts of cyberspace). Now, popular food and cooking sites like Allrecipes.com, Chow.com, Epicurious.com, and MyRecipes.com have begun upgrading their social networking capability with expanded profiles, new methods for rating and sharing recipes, user blogs and videos, and browsers that organize users geographically by interest. In other words, Seattle haggis lovers, unite! "Food sites are particularly well suited for social networking because they focus on a particular niche or interest," said Dr.
Child predator guilty on 5 counts
"It was too many times too often," the 17-year-old girl told jurors Thursday when lawyers asked her how many times she had been sexually assaulted by Orlando Villa, starting when she was 7 years old. The assaults allegedly continued for about 40 weeks, while the two families lived next door to each other in Waukegan, and ended in June 1997 when the girl's single mother, who worked for the Lake County Health Department, moved them away. The girl and her mother came to the Lake County Children's Advocacy Center late last year, prompting an investigation and the state's attorney's office prosecuting five charges of predatory criminal sexual assault of a child. The jury deliberated for approximately three hours Thursday and found Villa guilty on all five counts.
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