Tuesday, October 19
Bush’s beady eyes
A tour bus featuring a giant picture of President Bush and the line “Yes, Bush Can! ’04” rolled into town today, coming to a halt at an environmentalist rally near the UVA Rotunda. Two men in suits emerged from the bus to loudly voice their support for the President. Though many passers-by took the display at face value, the bus and its occupants are part of a rolling joke by accomplished performance artists who mock the Bush Administration. Let in on the gag, Elliot Haspel, a UVA junior, says “I would’ve gotten it if I stood here for five minutes because I noticed [Bush’s] eyes were evil,” gesturing at the bus. Indeed, the likeness of the President had been distorted with beady eyes. Taking a break from the faux-stumping, Mike Bonanno, 37, a New York City-based filmmaker and professional satirist, says the parody’s goal is to expose the administration’s policies, such as the Clear Skies Act, which he says are presented in direct contrast with their actual goals. Bonanno and crew later cued a massive cloud of fake smoke from the bus, which elicited giggles from Haspel and other students.
Calling the shots
The NCAA today announced that Craig Littlepage, UVA’s Athletic Director, would head the Division I Men’s Basketball Committee during the 2005-06 school year. The Committee makes the all-important call of which teams gets into the NCAA tournament and how to seed the teams.
Wednesday, October 20
Diploma dispute
Virginia Gov. Mark R. Warner recently trumpeted the fact that 94.3 percent of Virginia’s high school seniors earned their diplomas this year, proving, the Guv said, that the SOL standardized tests did not create a “graduation crisis,” as some critics had warned. Today, a nonprofit group challenged Warner’s claim, arguing that fewer students are receiving “regular diplomas.” The group, Parents Across Virginia to Reform SOLs, said 10.5 percent of this year’s seniors received some form of modified or special diploma, up from 3 percent last year.
Thursday, October 21
Amber Alert arrives
At a press conference held today, local officials announced the details of a new, regional Amber Alert system for Charlottesville,Albemarle County and UVA. The program, named for a 9-year-old Texas girl who was kidnapped and murdered in 1996, creates a “uniform method” for getting the word out about abducted or kidnapped children.
Friday, October 22
Tuning into big bucks
The share price for Saga Communications, the Michigan-based broadcast firm that announced on Oct. 13 its intention to purchase WVIR, WWWV and WQMZ, was today holding steady at about $16.90, down only slightly in the nine days since the purchase announcement. According to a recent report in Billboard’s Radio Monitor, a trade publication, Saga CFO Sam Bush says his company is paying “inthe low $20 million range” for the three Charlottesville stations, owned by Eure Communications. The terms of the deal have not yet been officially released, pending FCC approval of the sale.
Saturday, October 23
Cruising in Chapel Hill
After losing badly to Florida State University last weekend, the UVA football team today rebounded by walloping conference patsy Duke 37-16. Senior Alvin Pearman, who started over Wali Lundy at running back, rushed for 223 yards in the victory—one yard short of a UVA record. The Cavs’ next game is against a struggling Maryland team, which comes to town on Nov. 6.
Sunday, October 24
Burglary suspect shot in county
Robert Lee Cooke, 30, was shot twice early this morning when Albemarle police responded to a suspected house burglary, reports Claudia Pinto in The Daily Progress. Police say Cooke fired shots during a foot chase, hitting and killing a police dog. Cooke was in critical condition after the shooting. Andy Gluba, the K-9 officer who responded to the burglary call, is on paid administrative leave while Virginia State Police conduct an investigation.
Monday, October 25
Weed makes the pitch
In a final push before the Nov. 2 election, Democrat Al Weed, who is challenging Virgil Goode Jr. for the Fifth District seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, is taking a “Quality Jobs Tour” through depressed Southside, Virginia. Weed is holding press conferences today in Danville and Martinsville to talk about the area’s unemployment woes and his plans to expand health care coverage. In Martinsville, which leads the state with a 17.5 percent unemployment rate, Weed will meet with former Pillowtex employees outside of their shuttered factory. In a recent debate, Weed said: “I don’t think Mr. Goode is to blame for unemployment rates on the Southside.” But Weed has been sharply critical of Goode’s votes on economic policy and his stance on health care.
—Written by Paul Fain from local news sources and staff reports.
Pregnant pause
UVA scientist uncovers secrets of sperm
Male contraceptive options are decidedly old school. Besides getting a vasectomy, if a guy wants to keep his sperm in check, he has the choice of abstinence or condoms—both pregnancy preventing methods that date back hundreds of years.
But according to Dr. John C. Herr, professor of cell biology at UVA, modern male contraceptives are on the way.
“I’m very hopeful that male contraception is going to be here within four years,” Herr says.
Herr says Chinese scientists are leading the way in making the first wave of drug-based male contraceptives a reality. Herr and the lab he directs at UVA, the Center for Research in Contraceptive and Reproductive Health, are in the forefront of research on the second generation of male contraceptives. One promising method, pioneered by Herr, could temporarily shut down a man’s sperm production. To develop and eventually market such a drug, Herr has partnered with Schering AG, a major German pharmaceutical company.
Herr says he can’t elaborate on how this male contraceptive works, or what sort of drug form it might take, citing the proprietary nature of drug development.
“The drug stuff is all under wraps,” Herr says.
Herr is also working on other sperm-based technologies, including a home fertility kit for men called SpermCheck, which may eventually find their way to drugstore shelves. To help bring SpermCheck and other patents to the marketplace, Herr founded a local company called ContraVac, Inc. The company employs five people and includes a lab on W. Main Street, according to Ed Leary, ContraVac’s chief financial officer. On October 13, ContraVac received an award from Virginia’s Center for Innovative Technology for the big-ticket commercial potential of its products.
The SpermCheck kit is startlingly simple looking, and the beige contraption fits easily in the palm. The home fertility test requires only a drop of semen—obtained in a manner familiar to any man. Inside the little device, the semen comes into contact with two antibodies that have been designed to discern the presence of sperm. Herr says the fertility kit can easily and cheaply tell, to an extremely high degree, whether a man is, in essence, shooting blanks.
“It’s so sensitive, that we can detect 100,000 sperm [per milliliter],” Herr says. If that number sounds high, consider that a milliliter of semen typically contains 150 million sperm and a single drop more than 7 million of the little wigglers. If a man produces fewer than 5,000 sperm in a drop of semen—a level that SpermCheck can detect—he is totally infertile, Herr says.
So what’s the value in determining male infertility?
For starters, countless medical resources are spent on counteracting female infertility. But though Herr says studies show that as much as 40 percent of infertile couples are struggling to conceive because of problems rooted in the man’s testicles, “infertility is perceived to be a female problem.”
By determining that male infertility is behind conception woes, SpermCheck would help avert unnecessary tests on women. In addition, Herr says, SpermCheck would show whether a vasectomy or male contraceptives have been successful in suppressing sperm counts. Since it usually takes several weeks for a male contraceptive to take effect, SpermCheck could show when a man’s swimmers were no longer doing their thing. As a result, Herr says this accompanying diagnostic “is going to be key in bringing about the advent of male contraception.”
But when a male birth control pill is available, will men actually want to take it?
Apparently so, says Herr, citing several studies.
“By and large, there’s about 40 to 50 percent of the men, across many cultures, who are willing to use the contraceptive,” Herr says. “They feel it’s their turn to become part of the equation.”
Herr’s many discoveries regarding men’s fertility have a common origin in his study of sperm proteins, which he began in 1978. Most of the 10 million or so human proteins, the building blocks of cells, exist in all tissues in the body. But Herr has found several proteins that exist solely in sperm. Armed with these proteins and the human genome, Herr and 35 colleagues in his UVA lab are able to use “reverse engineering” to clone genes and begin designing drugs that specifically target sperm development.
In the hallway outside Herr’s cramped office hang several photographs of sperm. Herr points to red splotches on the surfaces of the depicted sperm, each of which marks one of the sperm-specific proteins he has found.
“We’re interested in finding proteins that human beings make that no one has ever harvested before,” Herr says.—Paul Fain
Here comes the sun
Old SNL building to get a facelift
Daylight has always been a problem for the former SNL building on the Downtown Mall, which was built as a department store in 1955. Department stores eschew natural light so as to better control the lighting on clothes and other wares, leaving the SNL building with small windows that resemble portholes on a cruise ship.
But the building’s owner, music promoter and über developer Coran Capshaw, aims to let the sun shine in the space. Within one month, work will begin on “an enormous” window on the Fourth Street NE side of the building, says architect Robert Nichols of Formwork Design, who is working on the project.
“It’s a huge change. It’s a significant amount of work,” Nichols says of adding the window, which will fit glass and aluminum in a giant 60’x60′ space to be opened in the side of the building. Nichols says another, smaller window will be added on the Mall side of the building, and the Fourth Street entrance will also be spiffed up.
Capshaw bought the building and an attached annex on Fourth Street from database company SNL Financial for $2.8 million. The deal closed in August. Nichols says the 40,000 square foot space will feature a mix of office and retail, with a single retail tenant and/or restaurant on the first floor.
“They’ve got a few things in the air,” Nichols says of potential tenants, but declines to divulge any specifics.
The annex on the side of the building will also see action in coming weeks. Artist Rob Tarbell will kick off an exhibit in the space, dubbing it Gallery 111—the digits in homage to the annex’s address—on November 5.
“The gallery is essentially me,” says Tarbell, whose exhibit will be entitled “Bird by Bird by Bird.” Tarbell says he’s taken the approach of finding an unused space and treating it as “an actual gallery” in other cities, including his native Dayton, Ohio.
“Basically it just comes from the concept of do-it-yourself,” says Tarbell, who has had his work featured among ArtInPlace pieces and in the former City Centro, which was located in the first floor of the SNL building. “I want to get other artists involved.”
Tarbell says he approached Capshaw about creating the gallery, and secured a temporary deal for the space.
“He’s allowing me to use it for a while,” Tarbell says.
Laurel Hausler of Nature Visionary Art says she’s glad to hear that Capshaw has plans in store for the annex and the larger brick behemoth, which sits just across the street from her gallery.
“I just hope that Fourth Street becomes more of a special draw,” Hausler says. —Paul Fain
The morning after
Must-have gizmos for surviving the election
With predictions of doom and gloom raining down on the electorate during these last days of the campaign like so many laser-guided bombs, it’s hard to know exactly how to survive the apocalypse should The Other Guy win this thing on November 2. If flight out of the country isn’t an option for you, consider stocking your bunker with an End of the World Survival Kit, available in either the Kerry Wins or Bush Wins variety. —C-VILLE editorial staff
If John Kerry wins…
Our Survival Kit for Conservatives will help you endure life once America’s Most Liberal Senator becomes President.
Secretary of State Hanoi Jane’s “Diplomacy of Steel” videocassette
Adjusting to John Kerry’s New World Order of global capitulation is hard work. Learn how to lose your swagger and get your internationalist freak on with this 60-minute workout video. Special features include instruction on how to flex your bi-lateral muscles and how to unwind from the contortions of relentless flip-flopping.
No Burger Left Behind redeemable vouchers
Major shake-ups are due for school lunches when Kerry and the Big Ketchup lobby control Congress. Regulations will stipulate that every student’s burger receive a healthy dollop of Heinz Tomato Ketchup—newly reclassified as a vegetable. These vouchers will help schools shoulder the price for the mandatory ketchup shipments.
Osama-B-Gawn Fly Tape
Hear that buzzing noise? It’s the annoying din of evildoers, right outside your front door. Osama-B-Gawn brand pest control now offers a solution, perfect for every home and suitable for all decors, in the form of easy-to-roll tape that will help you catch those pesky, border-crossing terrorist folks who can be such a nuisance to freedom-loving Americans.
French-English dictionary
English-only speakers will be at a severe disadvantage when they try to sort out their giant tax forms while on the phone with a swarthy IRS official, newly imported from Marseilles or Gay Paris. Interpret government documents with greater confidence after you pick up a few phrases, mon ami. Convenient travel size fits neatly in your new Euro-trash jacket.
If Bush wins….
Survive four more years of the GOP with our Survival Kit for Liberals.
“What Would Jesus Do?” Legal Handbook
Our President has the digits for the Big Guy Upstairs programmed into his cell phone. But the sodomites, nonbelievers, harlots, Philistines, Babylonians, stray sheep and other sinners who unfortunately slink around this great land will need extra help to know their legal rights. Free bag of stones with every purchase. Act now and receive a four-year supply of shame!
Big Brother Ashcroft’s Home Wiretap Kit
There is no “free” in freedom. Your friends and neighbors are keeping tabs on you, so who’s watching them? Prove your patriotism (and collect juicy information on the desperate housewives next door) with this easy-to-assemble homeland-security must-have. Free lie detector set if you catch your spouse muttering pro-terrorist sentiments, like “Maybe rich people ought to pay more taxes,” or “I support health care for all.”
Executive Model MP-7 submachine gun, autographed by the President
Liberty is on the march. With new investment opportunities opening up across Iran, Syria, North Korea and France, the discerning American businessman will want this vital (compact, fully automatic and armor piercing) tool as he teaches reluctant locals about the value of free markets.
Murdoch-B-Gawn tinfoil hat
News media are increasingly consolidating and ramping up their effort to disseminate a simple, fair-and-balanced message. Technology is also moving forward, with innovative programming from Fox News now available via microwave frequencies that enter the brain without the unnecessary medium of a television, radio or newspaper. The hands-free news is available 24/7, with a new-improved slogan: “We transmit, you believe.” If you’d rather not, though, protect your brain from the Murdoch Factor with this stylish, lightweight hat.