Month: September 2008

I have a personal and rather embarrassing standard for Metallica. It hinges on one question: Does the song lend itself to the daydream in which I stand on a stage, 32nd-note riffs sparking from my guitar, and snarl vocals that proceed to both impress and frighten the crowd, which—incidentally—is composed in equal parts of people I would like to impress and people for whom I have a great hatred.

The majority of Death Magnetic, when held up to this ridiculous yet reliable standard, succeeds admirably.

The band’s 10th studio album, produced by Rick Rubin, was hailed as a return to Metallica’s speed metal days long before it was released in September. And it is. Gone are the bluesy, wandering melody lines that populated the Load albums, as well as the pop-song structures of the Black Album that seemed content with a single riff. Mostly.

Because while Death Magnetic brings back galloping riffs and sonic fury, there are moments when shades of Metallica’s more recent, sludgy past pop up. And they’re not all bad.

Vicious tempos and start-stop precision made Metallica famous way back in the days of tight jeans and mullets. The 2008 Metallica reaches back for both (tempo and precision, not tight jeans and mullets). But they combine them with some of the more “Mama They Tried to Break Me” moments of the ’90s. It works on songs like “The Day That Never Comes” and “Cyanide.”

Instead of relying on those alt-metal years, Metallica uses them to do something they haven’t done for the last decade: write songs with multiple movements and complex arrangements. Or, put another way, songs that make you want to drive fast and punch concrete.

But for all the celebration of Metallica’s return to its first-four-albums form, there is an aspect that didn’t come back. Lyrically, it may be time for fans to learn to live without the Master of Puppets-era James Hetfield.
 
The lyrics for Death Magnetic came solely from Hetfield, and thank whatever deity for that, given the low points from the group’s previous album, St. Anger. Clearly, though, Death Magnetic still exists in that nebulous, post-recovery mode of self-evaluation.

Hetfield was clearly at his best when writing in a persona—songs like “Disposable Heroes,” “One” and “Creeping Death.” But those are nearly 20 years in the past. The songs we’ve got now aren’t bad if one can forgive the occasional poetic inversion for the sake of rhyme, the more-than-occasional metal cliché and the phrase “forever more.”

There are bright moments, of course, songs like “The End of the Line,” where Hetfield is back to barking lyrics and sounding like the same lead man whose staccato shouts on “Creeping Death” hit like spears.

If the early Hetfield of Master of Puppets was metal’s Hemingway, sparse and violent in nature and subject, then the post-recovery, pushing-50 Hetfield is someone different, more personal, drawn to assaying an interior world. It’s just good to hear him do it at this tempo again.

Innovation and entrepreneurship are compatible business models. UVA Darden School of Business Professor Andrea Larson is at the forefront of a new movement to implement strategies to solve the conflict among economic growth, the ecological system and public health. “It’s innovation that drives our economy forward,” says Larson. “It’s innovation that tries to create a better life.” Larson says the cost of this discrepancy falls disproportionately on the people who don’t have enough resources to correct it.

In April 2008, Darden Dean Bob Bruner announced a new sustainability initiative. Part of the initiative focuses on the school’s goal to become a zero waste, carbon neutral enterprise by 2020. The school is also focusing on the curriculum: Darden has established a faculty task force to determine and recommend strategies on how to incorporate sustainability issues into the learning experience. The school’s goal is to become a top 10 school for teaching and research that integrate a sustainability mindset by 2013.

Leading the efforts is Erika Herz, who was hired in 2007 as the manager of sustainability programs.

“The initiative is the recognition that sustainability issues are everywhere,” says Herz. “We have to know how to balance the social and environmental challenges and the business opportunities they present.”

Currently, approximately eight courses on sustainability are electives only available to second-year MBA students. Larson teaches two such courses, and she has included a sustainability aspect in her classes for about 10 years. In her “Sustainable Innovation and Entrepreneurship” course, Larson focuses on the nexus of business and natural resources. The course objective is to inform students on the changing dynamics of global nature-human interdependences.

She hopes that the task force will quickly integrate sustainability into Darden’s first-year curriculum.

Darden’s willingness to jump on the green/sustainability bandwagon has followed what one management consulting firm has recognized as the new frontier.

A 2007 McKinsey & Company study of CEOs found that 95 percent of them believe that they are now a part of a greater social contract and that corporate entities are expected by society to increasingly assume public responsibilities.

According to a 2007 ranking by the Aspen Institute thinktank, the percentage of schools that require students to take a course dedicated to business and society issues has increased to 63 percent in 2007 from 34 percent in 2001. Stanford was ranked No. 1 in student opportunity, student exposure, course context and faculty research. Darden ranked No. 24, followed by Dartmouth and Duke.

Both Herz and Larson agree that the 2013 date is a reachable and stimulating deadline. “It’s just a matter of willingness to make these issues a priority, to put resources behind it,” says Larson.

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Holly Edwards remains undecided about whether to vaccinate her teenage twin daughters against the human papillomavirus (HPV).

“I am not convinced,” said Edwards, registered nurse, city councilor and perhaps most important, mother, as she spoke to an audience made up mostly of women on September 23 at McLeod Hall in UVA’s School of Nursing. She was one of three members of a panel discussion on HPV and cervical cancer sponsored by the UVA organization Feminism is for Everyone (FIFE) and the Charlottesville chapter of the National Organization for Women.

HPV is the most common sexually transmitted disease (STD), with more than six million new cases each year and about 10 deaths among women every day. The Gardasil vaccine, manufactured by Merck & Co., is an extra step in the prevention of cervical cancer if coupled with pap smears.

Edwards is among many who still have questions about a vaccine that, starting next year, will be required for all sixth grade girls in the Commonwealth. Virginia is the only state in the nation with the mandate, but it has a relatively loose verbal opt-out policy for parents.

“I am leery of the political will that deemed the vaccine mandatory,” said Edwards, who points out that gatherings like this one are “absolutely necessary” to educate parents and girls about public health. And discussion, she says, is a key component to having a healthy society.

Fellow panelist Dr. Mark Stoler recognized that mandates go against the idea of freedom, but “to protect the population, the mandate is the only way to do it.” Stoler acknowledged the need for men to also be vaccinated, because HPV can result in anal and penile cancer, but focused on the need to educate the masses on the primary targets of this type of cancer and the importance of the vaccine.

“Cervical cancer is a particularly nasty cancer,” he said. “It’s a cancer that occurs in younger women and women who are in the prime of their lives, who are taking care of their children. This is not a cancer of old age.”

But researcher and freelance journalist Cynthia A. Janak, who has been writing about the side effects of the vaccine, said that the risks connected to Gardasil are too great for a mandate.

“It’s very dangerous,” she said. In her research, Janak found that many young women who got the vaccine suffered from fainting, nausea and debilitating migraines.

Panelist Dr. Jennifer Young, fellow in Gynecologic Oncology at UVA, encouraged all mothers to vaccinate their daughters for the simple fact that at least 50 percent of sexually active men and women acquire genital HPV infection at some point in life and the cure can be long and painful.

“Imagine having to be in stirrups with a microscope in between your legs for 20 minutes —not fun,” she said. Young also said the mandatory vaccine could reduce the billions of dollars spent each year on curing genital warts, one of the linked effects of the HPV virus.

Nora Eakin, 19, vice chair for FIFE and UVA student, decided to get vaccinated but understands the frustration of parents who are forced to make a decision. “There is definitely not enough information on sexual health around,” she says. “I am not sure if people around campus know about HPV and the vaccine.”

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Worked for the county for: 2 years

Resides in: Albemarle County

Job title: County registrar, overseeing the election process.

Best of times: The end result. “The best is having people registered and hopefully we’ve kept the process as smooth as possible.”

Worst of times: Election day. “Things get pretty hectic. The phone is ringing off the hook, and there are always hundreds of questions to be answered. And of course, it is a very long day—from 5am to 9pm or later.”

Strangest moment on the job: “I have less stories compared to some of our other people. So I know I’ll have some good ones if I stick around long enough.”

If he were a superhero, he’d be: The Green Lantern. “Always liked him, but it’s been such a long time, I can’t remember why.”
 

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