Results tagged “uw”

Sunday afternoon felt a bit like that October day in 1995 when the Cleveland Indians snuffed out the Mariners “Refuse to Lose” fairy tale run. Remember little Joey Cora weeping in the dugout after the game, being consoled by then-Mariner Alex Rodriguez? After the final whistle, we felt a lot like that, except we were in a half-empty bar (not a dugout), being consoled by a half-empty beer (not a prick).

When they’re not doing that, presumably they’re making out with mirrors or enjoying the smell of their own farts. Hell, even a columnist for The Oregonian did a Top 10 list of why Duck fans suck. (We can only imagine how bad our hubris would have to be for Steve Kelley or Art Thiel to ever turn on us.)

Please forgive Seattlest for the horrible attempt at a punny play on words headline, but we spent most of Thursday watching a spaceship balloon drift across Denver. So now our brain is dead.

If you missed any of this weekend’s football action, certainly the resulting sonic booms from Montlake and SoDo caused a noticeable vibration in the rock you’re living under.

Seattlest had barely dried our tears from last weekend’s Huskies and Seahawks losses when we learned Wednesday that The Sporting News ranked Seattle an abysmal 52nd place on its 2009 list of Best Sports Cities.

Since well before last November’s election the term “socialist” has been tossed around American politics like a schoolyard (or Cold War) epithet.

To be a Seattle sports fan this weekend was to rediscover that we indeed had a functioning heart.

This weekend the Seattle sports world parachutes into a Midwestern hot pocket as footballers Sounders FC, Huskies, and Seahawks play within about 300 miles of each other in Indiana and Ohio. Their respective opponents are tough. We're hoping at least two, if not all three squads win, because we think imbibing is much more fun in victory than in defeat.

KOMO reports that UW is testing out the use of the Amazon Kindle in their classrooms this fall. The University's Computer Science & Engineering Department will give every CS&E graduate student a Kindle DX, which will replace textbooks and research papers in their first-year courses. Kindle-edition textbooks and other materials will also be given to them free of charge. Amazon's sending Kindle DXs to six other universities throughout the United States. UW will be the first to get the book-killers.

Isn't the first day of college supposed to be about getting lost on campus and desperately searching for a classroom you should have been in twenty minutes prior? Nowadays, UW freshman have it way too easy with their new fancy-schmancy University of Washington iPhone app (and a mobile phone site no less!) that was launched yesterday. TechFlash reports that not only does the mobile mommy app provide a campus map, it also offers sports scores, a course catalog, school spirit-inspired wallpaper, and personalized class schedules. We can only assume herein marks the end of the dorm room dry erase board era.

Publicola got their hands on a UW research poll that shows leftward-leaning Mike McGinn "leading" in the mayor's race among Republican voters. McGinn's got 15 percent to Nickels' 10 percent. McGinn says the appeal is due to his "fiscal conservatism" in being against the deep-bore tunnel. That said, the poll's 600 people surveyed left Nickels in the lead, with Mallahan, Donaldson, Drago, and McGinn each divvying up about 10 percent.

• West Seattle Blog is hot on the story of illegal clam diggers along Beach Drive who were caught earlier today with over 100 clams.
• UW President Emmert put his foot down, denying the request of the Students for Civic Engagement on Homelessness to bring Tent City 3 on to the University of Washington campus.

In addition to the latest birther video, Ye Olde Huffington Post has a piece today on the top cities for eating local, and--citing Cafe Flora and Art of the Table--currently Seattle ranks 5th, behind San Francisco, New Orleans, Portland, and Albuquerque. If you'd like to vote our town up (or down), be our guest. HuffPo also invites readers to participate in a mapping project by sending in photos and info of their favorite spots to get locavore grub. And in the final mention, they link to the Princeton Review's rankings of universities, in which UW was one of the fifteen schools named to their 2010 Green Rating Honor Roll.

The news that the UW Autism Center is getting a new director, Wendy Stone--who wrote the book on autism (the one titled Does My Child Have Autism?)--provoked just two comments on the Seattle Times story, one of which says, "So many of their good providers have already left and joined the Seattle Children's Autism Center." We didn't know Children's had an autism center. (Actually, neither does Children's--if you do a search for "autism center" at the Children's site, they reference the UW Autism Center.) So what gives? Anyone know if there's really that much of a difference?

SDOT has issued a traffic advisory that lasts from noon to 6 p.m. and also announced that Montlake Boulevard will be closed from 1:30 to 5:30 p.m., so getting from say eight-tenths of the city to the University Village to buy flip flops and $8,000 patio ensembles will basically end for the day. That’s okay. Those attending the graduation will take up all the Village parking spaces anyway.

BURLESQUE ON THE BIG SCREEN: Northwest Film Forum will be showing A Wink and a Smile only until the 21st, so if you're interested in learning more about the lives of some of Seattle's finest burlesque dancers, we encourage you to get out and see it before it's too late! The documentary follows ten ordinary women attending Miss Indigo Blue's six-week program at the Seattle Academy of Burlesque, where they are transformed from their daily lives into beautiful bombshells who are not afraid to show off their skills and new-found empowerment.

Today, the University of Washington announced that due to large budget cuts, they will be discontinuing its men's and women's swimming programs effective immediately. The UW talking heads say the cut comes because the $1.2 million swimming program is the priciest ticket in the department (for real?) and is nearly half of the $2.8 million UW athletics needs to cut from its budget. The UW will honor the scholarships of those swimmers who stay. In March, the men's swim team (est.1932) finished 16th in the NCAA Championships, their best finish in 30 years.

Man, why does the state gotta hate on education? First 6,000 newbie teachers get axed and now UW unveils the $73 million worth of university budget cuts. How it looks: admin is screwed, but to help academic units, UW will dip into its $10 million "rainy day" reserve fund. Academic priority went to the university's money-making programs, surprisingly, that do the most teaching. Buh-bye law, hello psychology! Now for the five or six remaining faculty and handful of students, it's not great news. Especially for the 300+ freshman not getting into UW this fall. (Curse you, algebra!) Here are the big cuts that academic programs will leave at the guillotine: Arts and Sciences ($10.5 million), Medicine ($5.3 million), Engineering ($4 million), Business ($1.9 million), Law ($1.6 million), and Ocean and Fishery Sciences, Nursing, and UW Graduate School ($0.9 million each).

BALLET (PREL-jzoh-cahjz): Not your average night at the ballet, as the evocative Ballet Preljocaj (choreographed by company founder Angelin Preljocaj) company will perform Les 4 Saisons--a UW World Series debut. Choreographed to the bright and rhythmic music from Vivaldi, Les 4 Saisons provides a playful, colorful, and unconventional interpretation through dance.

Local researchers and science geeks are totally geeking out right now, as $21.5 billion of the stimulus dollars, dedicated solely to research and development, is now up for grabs. Scientists from across Washington, including the big shots at UW, WSU, Children's, and Fred Hutch have all applied for funding, and will continue to keep their fingers crossed for months until they hear who gets a slice of the stimulus research pie. Signs point in a positive direction, as one local laboratory focused on energy efficiency research was awarded $124 million in stimulus bucks already. The Pacific Northwest is expected to receive some funding (=more jobs), including dollars for biomedical research, volcano monitoring, and earthquake studies.

"Before you slip into unconciousness, I'd like to have another kiss." by The Fruit Tht Ate Itself-, from the Seattlest Flickr Pool.

You know times are tough when it affects the long-standing tradition of collegiate football. Word is, the gritty football rivalry between Washington and Washington State may take their annual Apple Cup football game to Seattle's Qwest Field. With the anticipated UW lay-offs and WSU cutting out the freshmen, it's no wonder why they are in talks to move the game, as it will allow the schools to split the millions of dollars generated from beer sales the game.

Last week, Seattlest editor-in-chief MvB set off a healthy discussion of the impacts of the governor's proposed 28% tuition rate hike. Today, the good folk over at Publicola take up the debate, linking to a nice piece from the Washington Policy Institute [PDF] on the "high-tuition/high-aid" model. The idea is that by transferring the cost from the state (through funding) to the students, the university in the process increases aid disbursement, and by developing financial aid programs actually low-income students, who wind up with more access to financial aid. Unfortunately, it turns out that's largely b.s.

The survey will be conducted throughout certain pockets of the city; volunteers are asked to avoid drunk people (there goes Belltown), don't wake anyone up, and knock only once on campers and cars before they begin gathering additional information about the needs and issues that the homeless face to find permanent housing.

"The Reading Room" by Weston Hutchins (westonh) , from the Seattlest Flickr pool

Seattlest's new roving correspondent Roger van Oosten just sent us this report from the Husky sidelines.

So we've been reading in the Seattle Times that Governor Gregoire thinks a 28 percent tuition hike over two years is firm but fair, the editorial board seconds the motion (Ryan Blethen is a Cougar, we note in passing), and the UW's Mark Emmert praises this kind of "flexibility" on tuition because the UW is currently "one of the best bargains in the country." The actual tuition price would shoot up between $1,300-$2,000 over two years, though there's the usual promise of financial aid to defray, etc. We want to point out two things: 1) student loans don't make things less expensive, they make them more expensive, and 2) it's awesome that the primary stakeholders here, the students, are being circumvented in this discussion.

This is fascinating, and thanks to the Big Blog's Scott Sunde for bringing it up: UW researchers have discovered that people with autism have a more intense response to looking at faces than the average Joe. The more social impairment, in fact, the more intense the response to someone's face.

Sign, signs, everywhere a sign. Unemployment leads to fewer traffic jams. Glad we could help you out with that. Over in Perugia, Italy, investigators on the stand today said Amanda Knox turned cartwheels at the police station. And down in the deep blue sea there's a groovy new species of fish that a UW scientist named psychedelia. We'll smoke up to that.