Chef Bin Lu didn’t grow up learning how to cook. In fact, it wasn’t until he started college at the University of Virginia that he started to really even think about it.
Every morning, [UVA Law alumnus] David M. M. Taffet gets up at 6:30 a.m., takes a walk and spends time journaling. About 8:30 a.m., he wakes his wife, Christie Zwahlen, with a fresh cup of coffee in bed, where they talk about the morning he’s had and the day ahead. The couple founded JukeStrat, a consulting company focused on social impact – helping companies identify, develop and expand opportunities to engage in purpose-driven work that creates lasting change in the world – in corporate and nonprofit entities.
As the Nov. 2 election results kept trickling in late into the night, Del. Todd Gilbert [a UVA alumnus] and his staff were particularly interested in the results. With a flip of a few seats, Gilbert – the Republican who has represented the 15th District since 2006 and served as Minority Leader since 2020 – had a good chance of becoming Speaker of the House of Delegates, the most powerful position in the legislative body.
Phillip Jefferson, a professor and administrator at Davidson College in North Carolina, has largely served as an academic since 1990, when he earned his doctoral degree from the University of Virginia.
American forward [and former UVA star] Daryl Dike signed with West Bromwich Albion of the second-tier English League Championship on the first day of the winter transfer window, agreeing Saturday to a 4 1/2-season contract.
The Los Angeles Dodgers’ Chris Taylor brightened up a young fan’s holiday recently when he made a virtual visit to Children’s Hospital LA. Taylor, a former star for Cox High in Virginia Beach and the University of Virginia, appeared on screen to chat with a young fan who told Taylor he was happy the utilityman re-signed with the Dodgers. He also congratulated Taylor on winning the World Series with the Dodgers in 2020.
For the second straight year, Ronde Barber is a finalist for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. The former Cave Spring High School, University of Virginia and Tampa Bay Buccaneers star was among the 15 modern-era player finalists for the class of 2022 announced by the hall of fame Thursday.
Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health [and a UVA alumnus], has retired after 12 years, one of the longer terms in that position. Perhaps not many people know or care, but projects he and his colleagues have researched over the years have touched us all.
NASA’s new administrator (a UVA Law grad) discusses the space race with China, UFOs, billionaire ‘astronauts’ and building a ‘mission control’ for climate change.
(Commentary by Chloe Sparwath, fourth-yeart student) The statements, “Happy Holocaust” and “Peace be upon Hitler,” sound like Nazi propaganda from 1940s Germany. But they’re not. These are comments posted in 2021 on the TikTok page of 97-year-old Holocaust survivor, Lily Ebert. According to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, antisemitic hate crimes have doubled since 2020. Each of these incidents occurred in the United States of America over the past year. Why has there not been more outrage and media coverage?
Research by Elizabeth W. Dunn at the University of British Columbia and colleagues, published in the journal Social Cognition, suggests that men and women react quite differently in the short-term to receiving good and bad gifts. To test their theories, Dunn and colleagues set up two experiments, each with a twist in their tail. In the first experiment participants (students at the University of Virginia) were sat down to chat with a new opposite sex acquaintance for four minutes. After this they were asked to select a gift for their new friend from a list of gift certificates for a variety of...
The Village’s Environmental Advisory Board held an education-focused meeting Dec. 8 at Village Hall, in which current and former Garden City High School and college students participated, discussing their interests environmental and life sciences. Caroline Flanagan is attending the University of Virginia. She was working on her final project for “Sustainable Energy Systems,” overseen by her college professor who is a subject expert who is in consulting work on gas utility lines and local projects.
It’s just more of the same, said University of Virginia swimmer Abby Kapeller, who was in Minnesota to spend the holidays with her family in Excelsior. “As athletes, we’re more cautious,” she said. “If you get COVID, the whole team shuts down. So, while I’m home, I won’t see friends who aren’t vaccinated. I don’t want to bring COVID to my team. It just feels like it never stops,” she added.
“We are standing in a park where the city is still refusing to address systemic issues,” Bryant, now a student at the University of Virginia, said the day of the removal. “... The work of removing the statues is only the tip of the iceberg. There’s so much work left to do to address affordable housing, to address policing [and] to address the wealth gap.”
Another Muscatatuck regular who has an established routine is Dave Carr. What he has done for years – and did so again this year – is travel from the University of Virginia, where he works, to southern Indiana to visit relatives over Christmas and then shoot over to the refuge. Carr is 40 years into his Muscatatuck ritual, but when the birders collected at 7:30 a.m., he wasn’t terribly optimistic about how well everyone would fare in the rain. “It is pretty disappointing,” Carr said of journeying a long way only to be partially stymied by poor weather.
During her inauguration week lecture, Stony Brook University President Maurie McInnis discussed her research in Richmond and Charlottesville. Louis Nelson, a former colleague of McInnis at the University of Virginia, where he is currently vice provost for academic outreach and professor of Architectural History, sang her praises. She is “one of the most impactful social historians of the American South at work today,” said Nelson, who co-edited the book “Educated in Tyranny: Slavery at Thomas Jefferson’s University” with McInnis. Her “scholarship has forged a path toward the truth telling that...
(Commentary) In November, I heard Gary Gallagher, UVA professor of history emeritus, speak at the 158th commemoration of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address at Gettysburg National Military Park. Gallagher’s initial point was arresting: He’s wearied by people remarking that our current context is unprecedented and insufferable, and it’s not. Why, compared to the darkness of the Civil War, our darkness is a pittance.
National party leaders, operatives and analysts are watching closely for clues about what works and what doesn’t. “You could make the argument that Pennsylvania is arguably the most important presidential swing state now,” said Kyle Kondik, an election analyst at Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia. With Florida, in many eyes, shifting reliably into the Republican column, Pennsylvania has the most electoral votes of any other battleground.
“I think the Republicans should be good in VA-05 at least for the early part of this decade,” said Kyle Kondik with the UVA Center for Politics. “If you have a pretty Democratic-leaning environment in a future election, the district may be competitive.”
Political analyst Larry J. Sabato, director of UVA’s Center for Politics, encouraged NASCAR to reject the plan. “‘Let’s Go Brandon’ is nothing more than a rude middle finger to President Biden by Trump supporters – and there’s no question NASCAR fans are disproportionately pro-Trump,” Sabato wrote in an email exchange. “For the most part, NASCAR has admirably tried to disassociate itself from partisan and racist nastiness, so let’s hope they do the right thing and nix this sponsorship deal. . . . This is not the image NASCAR should want to project.”