Since the automatic spending cuts known as sequestration started in 2013, the budget deficit has gotten smaller. But it’s still hundreds of billions of dollars. Sequestration just nibbled at it. At the Pentagon, sequestration forced cuts in training. It meant deferred maintenance, and it limited pay increases. Jim Savage, who teaches politics and public policy at the University of Virginia, doesn’t think much of sequestration.“When you rely upon across-the-board measures, it’s usually the sign of weak management," he says. "It’s also anot...
Married couples can apparently test whether or not they are still in love by asking each other two simple things. University of Virginia economists Leora Friedberg and Steven Stern analysed data from a relationship survey of 4,242 couples that was originally conducted in the 1980s. The original researchers asked couples two questions: How happy are you in your marriage relative to how happy you would be if you weren't in the marriage? and how do you think your spouse answered that question? Participants were asked to grade their answer on a scale of 'much worse' to 'much b...
Martha A. Derthick, a political scientist whose trenchant analyses of typically impenetrable subjects like Social Security, federalism, deregulation and tobacco litigation were praised as “masterful” and “definitive,” died on Jan. 12 at a hospital in Charlottesville, Va. She was 81.
(By Jack Hamilton, assistant professor of American studies and media studies at the University of Virginia) For all our talk of balls lately, one of the weirdest aspects of football is how few people who play the sport have anything to do with them. The vast majority of people on a football field are not supposed to touch the ball; in fact, there are people who play the sport for a living who, if all goes according to someone’s plan, will never lay hands on a football for their entire career. A hugely significant amount of football, the sport, occurs in almost total abstraction to f...
(By Mark Edmundson, who teaches at the University of Virginia and is the author of Why Football Matters: My Education in the Game) What do we talk about when we talk about football? It’s worth asking the question now because, in the past few weeks, there has been more public talk about the game than at almost any time one can remember. We have the deflated balls that (maybe) brought the New England Patriots a significant advantage in a critical play-off game. We have the shrugging Coach Belichick, cowled like a monk in his hoody, saying he did nothing, nothing, nothing wrong. (...
Work is progressing on the University of Virginia’s Rotunda, with workers removing the old, weathered column capitals. Capitals are the uppermost, load-bearing portion of a column. Their replacements were carved in Italy from Carrara marble, famous for its blue-gray hue. They will be installed in February.
Two legislators from Northern Virginia are teaming up to eliminate wording in a state law that exempts the working papers and correspondence of public university presidents from public disclosure. Republican Del. David I. Ramadan, of Loudoun County, and Democratic Sen. J. Chapman Petersen, of Fairfax, have filed bills that would delete the exemption from Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act. The issue came to the fore this fall in the wake of Rolling Stone’s now discredited story about a gang rape at the University of Virginia when university President Teresa A. Sullivan invoked t...
Erin Dyer, a sorority sister and a junior at the University of Virginia, wrote this (very lightly edited) piece after she was told that she and other sorority members on campus would not be allowed to attend fraternity parties on Saturday night. It reminded her of the lyrics to a Beyoncé song: If I were A Boy. Because I am a woman and a member of the Greek system at the University of Virginia, I am not allowed to enter into a fraternity house for a celebration of any sort on January 31st, also known as “Boys’ Bid Night”. If I were a boy, I would have the privilege o...
Presidential approval ratings were found to correlate with lower gas prices, although the two “are not perfect reflections of each other,” according to a 2011 examination by the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. The center found the correlation to be true for presidents Jimmy Carter, Obama and George W. Bush. Gas prices leveled somewhat this week, stopping a record four-month daily decline.
On Jan. 29, 1845, a haunting ode about a bird that drives a poet to madness made its debut in the New York Evening Mirror.The poem, of course, was "The Raven," written by former Richmonder Edgar Allen Poe. The poem, with its refrain of "Nevermore," went on to become an American classic.
Two industry powerhouses – America Online Co-Founder Steve Case and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina – made a splash recently when they led a report,“Can Startups Save the American Dream?”I very much like this report from the University of Virginia’s Miller Center and the ideas in it. However, they missed a significant piece of the answer. While the report focuses on how entrepreneurs can kick-start the economy, it overlooks what we need to do to support the angel investors who fuel the entrepreneurs creating our country’s jobs and innovati...
(Commentary by Kyle Kondik, a Political Analyst at the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia) Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, elected to a third term earlier this month, often notes that the presidential cycle is harder for his party than midterms because the electorate is more diverse and Democratic. “For us to win a presidential election, we have to be just about perfect, and the Democrats have to be good,” he told Kyle Cheney of Politico.
Proponents of same-sex marriage contend that most of the state bills are almost certainly unconstitutional. And even in conservative-dominated statehouses, the chances of passage are unclear, given disagreements within the Republican Party on whether same-sex marriage should be a priority issue. Some experts say they could face sharp rebukes from judges who have ruled in favor of same-sex marriage.“I think they’ll be angry,” said Risa L. Goluboff, a law professor at the University of Virginia who studies American legal history. “I think they’ll see this ...
The existence of love and its nature is something that has troubled philosophers for centuries, but a pair of scientists believe they have a set of questions that yield "clear empirical evidence" of it, or at least whether your relationship will end in divorce. They are: 'How happy are you in your marriage relative to how happy you would be if you weren't in the marriage?' and 'How do you think your spouse answered that question?' University of Virginia economists Leora Friedberg and Steven Stern asked this to 4,242 couples twice, six years apart, and analysing th...
Chris Ali, a professor of Media Studies at the University of VirginiaAli joins Coy to discuss media studies in higher education today, the SONY hack, the wonders of the CBC, net neutrality and much more.
Fredericksburg had the largest percentage of population growth among Virginia localities for the past year, a feat it has achieved three of the last four years.The city’s population increased 16.2 percent between the April 2010 census and estimates made on July 1, 2014, according to data from the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service.
According to a new report, Charlottesville's population is booming despite the fact that Virginia's population is hardly growing at all.We've reached the halfway point of the decade, so it's time to take a look back at the last five years to see how the numbers have changed. One group at the University of Virginia looks at the number of births, deaths, school enrollment, drivers licenses issued, and housing to estimate populations.
At the University of Virginia, which has been having a very public debate about its culture, a powerful national group of sororities is trying something new for this weekend: Banning its members from partying with fraternity men.
The University of Virginia has contracted with an international security firm to guide vulnerable students to safety in neighborhoods near campus. The university says the unarmed security guards will be called ambassadors. The ambassadors may help walk students home, call a safe ride or wait with them at a bus stop. The ambassadors may also call a rescue squad if medical attention is needed and they will have a communications link to the emergency dispatch center.
A Charlottesville nonprofit is celebrating a groundbreaking event after 14-years of preparation. The Building Goodness Foundation (BFG) partnered with students from the University of Virginia School of Nursing to build a new medical clinic in San Sebastian, El Salvador.