88.1 WVPE Public Radio

What is blogging?

2009-04-07T06:13:00.000-07:00

Blog is short for "Web log."

2009-02-13T15:26:00.001-08:00

Lift Every Voice: Celebrating the African American Spirit

2009-02-13T15:14:00.001-08:00

WVPE is proud to be a media sponsor for Lift Every Voice: Celebrating the African American Spirit, a concert celebrating Black History Month presented by IU South Bend on February 21

What the tax cuts might mean to you

2009-02-02T11:05:00.000-08:00

"The credit would essentially work as a payroll tax credit equal to $500 a year for individuals and $1,000 for couples. And the money could be delivered fairly quickly simply by having employers reduce the tax withholding in a person's paycheck...

Assuming a worker gets a paycheck every two weeks, a $500 tax break amounts to $19.23 extra a paycheck. A $1,000 break for couples is the equivalent of $38.46 per pay period."

Read the whole article at CNNMoney.com

Interview with Ira Glass

2009-01-29T07:43:00.000-08:00

The Onion's A.V. Club has an interview with the This American Life host.

Muji Chronotebook

2008-11-19T12:11:00.000-08:00

The new non-linear datebook.

A Jack Cheng commenter says "you can call Muji Times Square (212)382-2300 and they’ll ship it to you. The notebook itself costs $4.95."

SNL

2008-10-20T09:21:00.000-07:00

In case you've missed any of the Saturday Night Live skits that have cause the purported "Tina Few Effect," you can catch them for free (and legally) at hulu.com.

Oh, and you can watch the presidential debates there, too.

Frontline

2008-10-20T07:33:00.000-07:00

PBS's Frontline has produced an excellent program called "The Choice 2008" which goes into detail about both McCain and Obama.

Bail-out?

2008-09-29T12:02:00.001-07:00

The financial crisis seemed to be a ticking bomb that was set to blow at 12am this morning. What does it mean that a resolution has not been met? What are the other options?

Hey, I can't answer these questions, but here are articles about the proposed rescue plan written by people smarter than me:

Economist
Newsweek
Forbes
BusinessWeek
The Wall Street Journal makes you log in, so I'm not linking to them.

Please share if you have any cool online sources for bail-out news/plans.

Indiana Debates

2008-09-29T11:45:00.000-07:00

It is hard to NOT be up-to-date on the presidential race, but the race for governor of Indiana is also taking place. The Indiana Debate Commission has the debates online for you to view.
If you have another site that has good local information, please share it!

Men and Women are different

2008-09-18T09:13:00.000-07:00

In case you missed this story last week, women are more prone to sports injuries than men:

Tim Hewett, of the Sports Medicine Biodynamics Center at Cincinnati Children's Hospital, says that just after boys go through puberty, they tend to get a big power burst.

"They get much bigger gluteal muscles," he says, "and much bigger hamstring muscles."

But with girls, there's not as much of an overall power spurt. Growth during this stage, for girls, is concentrated in only a few muscles.

"Women tend to be very front dominant," Hewett says. "They use their quadriceps, the big thick muscles in the front of the legs."

This means that women's bodies don't fully activate the muscles on the back side, namely the hamstrings and the glutes.

On the soccer field or basketball court, Hewett says, this is a problem. First, the imbalance of muscle use — something Hewett calls a "muscle turn-on pattern" — ends up putting stress on the ACL.

The ACL is a major ligament that runs through the center of the knee, linking the upper leg bone with the lower one. Tearing an ACL, which female athletes are up to six times more likely to do than men, is brutal. It's an injury that can keep players out of their sports for an entire season.

The Bush Doctrine

2008-09-12T06:59:00.000-07:00

Just in case you didn't know what it was either, this is how Wikipedia defines it:

The Bush Doctrine is a phrase used to describe various principles of United States president George W. Bush, created in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks. There are many and varied elements to the phrase. It is sometimes described as the policy that the United States has the right to treat countries that harbor or give aid to terrorist groups as terrorists themselves, which was used to justify the invasion of Afghanistan.

Later it came to include additional elements, including the controversial policy of preventive war, which held that the United States should depose foreign regimes that represented a supposed threat to the security of the United States, even if that threat was not immediate (used to justify the invasion of Iraq), a policy of supporting democracy around the world, especially in the Middle East, as a strategy for combating the spread of terrorism, and a willingness to pursue U.S. military interests in a unilateral way. Some of these policies were codified in a National Security Council text entitled the National Security Strategy of the United States published on September 20, 2002. This represented a dramatic shift from the United States’ Cold War policies of deterrence and containment, under the Truman Doctrine, and a departure from post-Cold War philosophies such as the Powell Doctrine and the Clinton Doctrine.

Obama on SNL

2008-09-12T06:27:00.000-07:00

US Magazine reports that the Democratic presidential nominee will be on this Saturday's season opener of Saturday Night Live.

Don't you love Terry Gross, Thomas Friedman, NPR ... and WVPE

2008-09-08T11:43:00.000-07:00

This is an unsolicited (I promise) email from WVPE listener Melissa Kinsey:

I hope you had the chance to hear Terry Gross on Fresh Air today ... she interviewed Thomas Friedman about his new book, "Hot, Flat, and Crowded". Can't wait to read it. Friedman wrote "The World is Flat" - which has become a staple when teaching college business courses. His down to earth writing style can even make economics & statistics interesting. (!) This time he has taken on the need for an American Green Revolution.

The interview addresses MANY of the challenging topics our SBRT organizational team talk about all the time - such as:
- working around the preconceived notion that global warming is warm & fuzzy & nothing to be concerned about
- the lack of credibility given to "green" issues ... "tree hugging / birky wearing / etc ...
- the challenges of working with legislators & how to we begin to make a difference
- examples of current legislation to be aware of - tax incentives both for & against green energy development

It's a great interview. As usual - Terry asks all the right questions.

If you didn't hear it today - they will probably post the transcript by tomorrow.

Melissa.

The audio from the story is here.

Here's a sample of what Friedman writes ...

The core argument is very simple: America has a problem and the world has a problem. America's problem is that it has lost its way in recent yearspartly because of 9/11 and partly because of the bad habits that we have let build up over the last three decades, bad habits that have weakened our society's ability and willingness to take on big challenges. The world also has a problem: It is getting hot, flat, and crowded. That is, global warming, the stunning rise of middle classes all over the world, and rapid population growth have converged in a way that could make our planet dangerously unstable. In particular, the convergence of hot, flat, and crowded is tightening energy supplies, intensifying the extinction of plants and animals, deepening energy poverty, strengthening petrodictatorship, and accelerating climate change. How we address these interwoven global trends will determine a lot about the quality of life on earth in the twenty-first century.

I am convinced that the best way for America to solve its big problem the best way for America to get its "groove" back is for us to take the lead in solving the world's big problem. In a world that is getting hot, flat, and crowded, the task of creating the tools, systems, energy sources, and ethics that will allow the planet to grow in cleaner, more sustainable ways is going to be the biggest challenge of our lifetime. But this challenge is actually an opportunity for America. If we take it on, it will revive America at home, reconnect America abroad, and retool America for tomorrow. America is always at its most powerful and most influential when it is combining innovation and inspiration, wealth-building and dignity-building, the quest for big profits and the tackling of big problems. When we do just one, we are less than the sum of our parts.

Conservative Feminism?

2008-09-08T08:23:00.000-07:00

I caught an interesting segment on yesterday called Sarah Palin: New Face fo Feminism?

"Stanford University historian Estelle Freedman, author of No Turning Back: The History of Feminism and the Future of Women, and host Jacki Lyden discuss whether a conservative such as Palin can be called a feminist in 2008."

What do you think a feminist and can a feminist be conservative?

The Merriam-Webster definition of feminism is: the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes.

So a feminist believes in equal rights regardless of gender. Therefore a feminist can be a man or woman, believe in government funding for social programs...or not. He or she can be pro-gun, anti-abortion, or for school prayer.

However, top many people the word "feminist" conjures up a very specific image and description. How would YOU describe a feminist?

Whoa, baby!

2008-09-03T06:54:00.000-07:00

How is the media handling the Palin pregnancy? It seems to be sensationalized in the celebrity/tabloid magazines like People and Us Magazine, but NPR isn't going into depth about it. What have you noticed?

My personal view can best be expressed through a friend's words: Gov. Palin needs to explain her staunch support of abstinence-only sex education in light of her 17-year-old daughter's pregnancy. Your thoughts?

Politics and Religion

2008-08-22T08:12:00.000-07:00

If you didn't catch the Diane Rehm Show on Tuesday, you should check it out. Her guests represented various viewpoints on the subject.

It just so happens that the Pew Research Center released a study on More Americans Question Religion's Role In Politics yesterday. The survey found that "a narrow majority of the public saying that churches and other houses of worship should keep out of political matters and not express their views on day-to-day social and political matters."

During the Tuesday DR Show, a listener called in with a very interesting comment. He said that Americans were more afraid of Atheists than Muslims. One of Rehm's guests confirmed that.

A 2005 study by Pew reports that, indeed, Americans are wary of Atheists.
Jews: 77% of those surveyed expressed overwhelmingly favorable opinions of Jews
Catholics: 73% favorable
Evangelical Christians: 57% favorable
Muslim-Americans: 57% favorable
Atheists: 35% express favorable opinions of atheists; 50% have a negative opinion of atheists.

A woman's place is in the kitchen. Still?

2008-08-13T08:21:00.000-07:00

A friend sent me a link to this online series called Target Women. This short bit shows commercials of mothers fullfilling their duty of cooking for their family.

Bike Riding

2008-08-11T12:39:00.000-07:00

I caught this story in yesterday's South Bend Tribune. I had no idea they had electric mopeds.

Scooter crazy: Motorists save by leaving car at home, riding on two wheels

Religiosity?

2008-08-07T09:23:00.001-07:00

Alex Chadwick asked about Senator McCain's "religiosity" on today's Day to Day. That is a new vocabulary word for me.

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
re·li·gi·os·i·ty
/rɪˌlɪdʒiˈɒsɪti/
–noun
1. the quality of being religious; piety; devoutness.
2. affected or excessive devotion to religion.
[Origin: 1350–1400; ME religiosite religious + -itās -ity]

Paris Hilton's Response to McCain

2008-08-06T12:48:00.001-07:00

Yahoo News has some behind the scenes info on Paris Hilton's video response to McCain's Anti-Obama ad.

Ira Glass instructional video

2008-07-09T09:10:00.000-07:00

Lifehacker has Ira Glass on Getting Creative Work Done. In instructional video about the crative process.

LaPorte, Indiana book

2008-07-08T12:59:00.000-07:00

Jason Bitner's new collection of found portrait photographs from the Midwest's Frank Pease. LaPorte, Indiana is a major cultural excavation and an opening into these lives, into this town, and into the heart of our nation.

The book is here.

Some photos are here.

Driveway moment in the Niles Star

2008-07-07T12:56:00.000-07:00

Marcia Steffens, associate editor of the Niles Daily Star and editor of the Cassopolis Vigilant and the Edwardsburg Argus, wrote a lovely column in last Wednesday's paper about listening to "This I Believe" on WVPE.

You can read it here.

The "This I Believe" segment is here.

Notre Dame prof on Fresh Air

2008-07-07T10:19:00.001-07:00

From the Fresh Air website:

Stock and bond funds in 401(k) accounts took a hit this past quarter, and many are worried about their retirement funds. Economist Teresa Ghilarducci addresses financial concerns about retirement and offers her own solution to the pension problem.

Ghilarducci is a professor of economic policy analysis at Notre Dame, where she specializes in pension benefits. She is also the director of the Higgins Labor Research Center and a Wurf fellow at the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School.

Her latest book, When I'm Sixty-four: The Plot Against Pensions and the Plan to Save Them, proposes that pensions should be managed by the federal government rather than Wall Street.