Tuesday, July 18
Ralph Sampson’s trial date postponed
Former UVA basketball star Ralph Sampson has a few more weeks to get his defense together in his perjury case. Sampson, who faces charges for lying about his finances in a child-support case, was set to go to court this week, but it turns out a pregnant witness in the case was due to give birth this week. Sampson’s new court date is set for September 7.
Oh, that wacky George Allen
Today’s online version of The American Spectator posts a story detailing the youthful indiscretions of Virginia’s junior senator (and Republican presidential hopeful) George Allen. While in high school, Allen took some time out from chawing on his t‘baccy and sporting a Confederate flag to tag the school with some anti-white graffiti the night before a basketball game against a mostly black team. (Yeah, we don’t get it, either.) Allen says he was “rebellious” as a kid, according to his PR man, and regrets “that school prank.”
Wednesday, July 19
Bruce Arena gets a second chance
The New York Red Bulls, a Major League Soccer team, have hired ex-UVA coach Bruce Arena—recently fired as the head of the U.S. national team—to rebuild their struggling squad, The Washington Post reports today. Up until this year, Arena has had a golden coaching career—he’s won national titles at both the collegiate and professional level (including five with UVA) and holds the record for most wins of any U.S. national coach, going 71-30-29 in 130 games. Arena’s peak came in 2002, when he led the U.S. to a surprise quarterfinals appearance in the World Cup. That honeyed glow faded, however, with this year’s disappointing World Cup performance: The U.S. team scored just one goal in three games. At his first Red Bulls news conference, Arena said that the U.S. soccer team won’t win consistently at the World Cup until 2018. Hmm… Embittered much?
Thursday, July 20
Virginia man chooses electrocution
Brandon Hedrick, 27, was executed in the electric chair tonight around 9pm at Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt, Virginia, the Associated Press reported. He is the first U.S. prisoner to be electrocuted in over two years, and the first Virginian since 2003. Inmates in Virginia can choose to be electrocuted or die by lethal injection. Hedrick’s lawyer said Hedrick chose the chair because he was “spooked” by reports that lethal injection is extremely painful. Hedrick’s appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court was rejected, as was his request to Governor Tim Kaine for clemency. He was sentenced to death for raping, sodomizing and shooting 23-year-old Lisa Crider in Lynchburg in 1997.
Friday, July 21
UVA grad to crew for Columbus Shuttle Mission
NASA announced today that UVA alum (and former Detroit Lions wide receiver) Leland D. Melvin will be part of a six-man shuttle mission set to visit the International Space Station (they’ll be delivering the European Space Agency’s Columbus Laboratory). Melvin, who was born in Lynchburg and received a degree in materials science engineering from UVA, will be the flight’s Mission Specialist. It will be his first spaceflight.
Saturday, July 22
Playing dress-up
The Tiny Miss Virginia Pageant took place at the Doubletree Hotel in Charlottesville this weekend, the Staunton News Leader reported. Winners from seven age categories, from six months to 19 years, strutted their stuff and showed their budding feminine graces. The pageant website says it “prepares young ladies for Miss America and Miss USA-type pageants.” (Wait, they’re not the same thing?) Tiny Miss Virginia contestants compete in beauty, talent and swimwear, just like the big girls! (Nothin’ quite like an 8-year-old wearing lipliner and a one-piece.) Amongst all of the frills, white-bowed shoes and plastered smiles, pageant parents were in seventh heaven.
Sunday, July 23
One Percent lightly praised
UVA graduate Ron Suskind’s critical examination of the Bush Administration’s responses to 9/11, The One Percent Doctrine, received a belittling, but on the whole positive, review by The New York Times Book Review today. The book takes its title from Dick Cheney, who once said that a threat must be considered real even if it has only a one percent chance of happening. Primarily sourced from accounts of former CIA Director George Tenet and his team, Suskind’s book earns praise for shedding light on a tight-lipped Bush Administration, and is called “an easy and worthwhile summer read.” On the down side, the book’s relatively spare sourcing leads the reviewer to label Suskind “flank steak to [Bob] Woodward’s sirloin.”
Monday, July 24
Kicking the Bell Curve
Folks at UVA’s psych department are all a-twitter today over a Sunday New York Times Magazine article that adds new fodder to the nature-versus-nurture debate. Recent research apparently shows that environment has more to do with intelligence than we thought. Many books, like 1994’s The Bell Curve, have argued that I.Q. is genetically determined. But 
French researchers Christiane Capron and Michel Duyme saw I.Q. shifts in adopted kids who were brought into families from different social stratum. Kids who were adopted into richer families had elevated I.Q.s, while children adopted into poorer ones scored considerably lower. Other research estimates that children who grow up in homes with professional parents hear 32 million more spoken words by the time they’re 4. Eric Turkheimer, a UVA psychology professor, was quoted in the article, saying kids who grow up with fewer opportunities can’t “max out” their intelligence. “If you have a chaotic environment, kids’ genetic potential doesn’t have a chance to be expressed,” he says.