Census worker Bill Sparkman’s hanging death has been ruled a suicide.

Jake has the details. We’ll have a report from Tony McVeigh soon.

The Kentucky Department of Public Health has teamed up with the Kentucky Pharmacists Association to buy a mobile pharmacy unit.

From Business First:

The trailer will allow Kentucky Pharmacists Association member pharmacists to provide volunteer services such as patient care and counseling, immunizations, public health education, medication preparation and dispensing.

It seems like I’ve been seeing a lot of mobile medicine vehicles lately. Specifically, I see sedans marked that are marked with mobile dentistry lab information. Are these travelling dentists? Has anyone else seen one?

I know there are mobile dentists, but I’ve only heard about trailers that are essentially mobile offices that provide service. Maybe these are support vehicles. Either way, it seems like mobile dentistry could be a booming business in Kentucky, given the state’s notoriously bad record for oral health.

Wayside’s decision to rent hotel rooms rather than wait for a decision on shelter zoning has always had political ramifications, even though it’s not a political move.

On State of Affairs last week, the C-J’s Dan Klepal said that the hotel move will likely become an issue in the mayor’s race…and it only took a weekend for that prediction to come through. Republican candidates Chris Thieneman and Hal Heiner seem to agree on the ends, but disagree on the means. Rick Redding has more on the differences.

Here’s what we’re working on today:

I’ll cover Congressman Yarmuth’s check presentation to YouthBuild.

Stephanie will get tape on the H1N1 schools plan and TARC’s proposed cuts.

And we’re all preparing stories for the Holiday weekend.

If you buy psuedophedrine in Kentucky, there’s a computer system that keeps track of it. If you buy too much, the computer (and, more importantly, the police) decides you’re probably making meth.

Governor Steve Beshear has touted this program’s effectiveness, and now psuedophedrine manufacturers agree. They’ve helped put together the National Precursor Log Exchange, which helps officials track purchases nationwide, if state law allows for it.

The program might help identify possible meth dealers, but LMPD Sgt. Stan Salyards told the C-J that NPLEx is just one tool, and still requires police work and officers on the street.

Okay, so they’re not unkillable, but wild rats in urban environments are hard to eliminate. Cats don’t catch them very well and poisons haven’t been working, either. The urban rat is crafty, and apparently very likely to overrun Louisville.

From Smithsonian:

Glass – who started off studying cotton rats in the Midwest – traps the animals with peanut butter baits and monitors the diseases they carry. (Hantavirus, once known as Korean hemorrhagic fever, and leptospirosis – which can cause liver and kidney failure – are of particular concern.) Lately he’s been interested in cat-rat interactions. Cats, he and his colleagues have noticed, are rather ineffectual rat assassins: they catch mainly medium-sized rodents, when they catch any at all. This predation pattern may actually have adverse effects on human health: some of the deceased mid-sized rats are already immune to harmful diseases, while the bumper crops of babies that replace them are all vulnerable to infection. Thus a higher proportion of the population ends up actively carrying the diseases at any given time.

[edit]

Even the poshest neighborhoods are afflicted: rats, Glass says, gravitate to fancy vegetable gardens, leaving gaping wounds in tomatoes. (Celery crops, one assumes, would be safer.) Recent surveys suggest that the rat populations of Baltimore neighborhoods haven’t changed much since the Hopkins studies began in the 1940s.

About three weeks ago, State of Affairs did a show on the death penalty. Over a Depth Reporting, Mark has taken the last words of Texans put to death (the last words were posted on a government site?!) and run them through a visualization tool.

Check it out here.

For your weekend enjoyment, we bring you a topic that dominated conversation in the newsroom Friday afternoon.

The Large Hadron Collider is operating again, but it won’t stop sabotaging itself from the future.

What’s that? Well, two well-renowned scientists say it’s possible that malfunctions at the LHC are caused by the future. They say the collider could do something that can’t happen, so it must be stopped.

For example, if the Higg’s boson is discovered and this somehow leads to (non scientific explanation) time travel, then someone could create a time paradox. To prevent this or any other scenario for the destruction of the universe, the LHC must not be allowed to continue. But no one is sure what the LHC will discover. No one (or thing) but the future, which is stopping the LHC.

If this worries you, then follow the LHC scientists on Twitter. That way, you’ll know when the universe crumbles as the result of an unreconcilable paradox.

Here’s what we reported on today:

• Corrections Department Releases Cause of Northpoint Riot
• Republican Todd Lally Joins 3rd District Race
• U-of-L Football Team Faces USF in Tampa
• More Federal Oversight of Surface Mines Proposed
• Health Care Forum Fosters Reform Dialogue

Are you the type of person to laugh at economic news? When Planet Money comes on the air, do you stuff $50s in your ears and light your cigar with a burning copy of James Surowiecki’s latest column? Ha! What recession?

Well, if you’re like that, or if you just love bourbon, retailer Neiman Marcus has a package you may be interested in.

From My Loueyville:

Specifically, the Maker’s Mark Masters Distiller package offered on page 58 of this year’s Neiman Marcus Holiday Fantasy catalogue. Here’s the description.

“Any whisky aficionado will tell you it is perfection in amber. Maker’s Mark® Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whisky is handmade in small quantities of just 19 barrels, each batch distilled and aged with the same exacting standards the Samuels family has passed down for seven generations. As Master Distillers for a day, you and a friend will have an all-access VIP experience like no other, with Master Distiller Kevin Smith as your host. You will participate in the unique whisky-making process step by step, for an insider’s look at how every detail makes every glass a special occasion. This gift experience includes a two-bottle memento of the rarest Maker’s Mark bottles ever: Two golden bottles will be etched with your likeness and dipped in gold wax with 24-kt. gold flecks. You’ll also get to hand dip six of your own 375ml Maker’s Mark bottles in signature red wax and take them home. The experience includes luxury accommodations in Louisville and a gourmet dinner hosted by Bill Samuels, Jr. (the top dog at Maker’s Mark).”

The cost? $7,500.

Today’s State of Affairs will feature…

From WFPL:

Rick Howlett

Stephanie Crosby

Me (Gabe Bullard)

From the C-J:

Dan Klepal

From LEO:

Phillip Bailey

Jonathan Meador

The popular location-based social network FourSquare is available in Louisville. How long has it been here?

You can join and earn points and badges (redeemable for web credibility) for visiting local businesses. Businesses in some cities have taken advantage of FourSquare’s devoted following by offering specials (discounts, free drinks, etc) to high profile users.

You can join FourSquare here. But will you?

This post comes from WFPL’s Stephanie Crosby.

Many of us frequent certain websites throughout the day to keep up with what’s going on in the world. Today, while browsing the featured stories on Yahoo.com, I saw a photo of that oh-so-familiar shot from Indiana: the Louisville skyline. Underneath those glistening buildings were the words “U.S. Cities With The Most Smokers”. And one click away was the information that was surprising and not-so-surprising.

According to the CDC:

The Smokiest U.S. Metro Areas % of Population who are Current Smokers

Wichita Falls, Texas 30.9

Hagerstown, MD/Martinsburg, WV 28.9

Huntington, WV/Ashland, KY 27.9

Louisville, KY 27.5

Winston-Salem, NC 25.3

That’s right. Our smoking rate is higher than that of a town sometimes referred to as “Camel City” because of the city’s prominent tobacco industry. And our friends in eastern Kentucky are smoking even more.

The CDC report also found that for the first time in a decade, the national smoking rate increased from 2007 to 2008.

Some silver lining? The smoking rate of young adults (18 to 24) fell 3.6%.

National Geographic has launched an interesting web feature. They asked senators to to draw their home state and point out at least three areas of interest.

Since Senators aren’t generally elected for their artistic abilities, it’s easy to forgive some inaccuracies. Georgia Senator Saxby Chambliss, however, seems to have confused his home state for Mississippi, which is all the way on the other side of Alabama.

(via Wonkette)

You know those browser games you love playing at the office home? Well, now you can destroy your productivity and act out violent conspiracies about the New World Order.

Mother Jones is reporting on the Obama Coup game:

It’s January 2011. The GOP is about to assume control of both houses of Congress—having been voted in by a public deeply suspicious of Democrats after President Barack Obama conducted clandestine talks with President Felipe Calderon of Mexico and Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada. But two days before the new conservative majority is to be sworn in, Obama announces that this Congress will not be seated, that the United States (a creation of “racists and warmongers”) will be replaced by a North American Union, that the US Constitution will be dissolved, and that private ownership of firearms will be outlawed (as part of a United Nations treaty banning firearms globally). In response, millions rise up, and the Revolution begins.

But why should paranoid Obama-haters have all the fun?

…the site’s designers despise Democrats and Republicans, and they will show their political balance next week, when the site introduces an “Ambush Bush” scenario, which will give players the chance to hunt down the ex-president in Texas.

Maybe we should all stick to Gears of War.

This isn’t entirely about Louisville, but it is interesting.

Depth Reporting (which is based in Louisville) has a piece about how presidents get the news and what that means. Notably, Richard Nixon avoided the media and relied instead on his advisors’ reports.

The summaries were prepared by staffers Lyndon K. (‘Mort’) Allin and Patrick Buchanan. Although the summaries were advertised as the best way for Nixon to get an objective, cross-section of news coverage, they often were written in a way that fueled “the president’s already burning resentments and biases,”

I interviewed Bill Maher recently (disclosure, WFPL is sponsoring his December 5th show) and he warned (in a joking but serious way) about mainstream media that now caters to existing biases. A person can spend the entire day only hearing people he or she agrees with. Opinion isn’t news and facts aren’t opinion, but the difference is hard to tell sometimes.

Some folks say this is fine. They argue that a news consumer should be savvy enough to know a reporter’s bias and cynical enough to seek out the other side. While media access is faster and easier than ever, I think this worldview ignores the fact that not everyone is as media literate as most reporters and media theorists. It also makes people work harder to get fair news, thereby allowing reporters to get a lazy and loose in their presentation of facts. If everyone presents a different side, what inspiration does a journalist have to present them all in one piece?

I don’t know where media is going, and while there are a few troubling trends, I’m not hiding in the basement and cradling my Marshall McLuhan books just yet. Are you?

I haven’t been doing daybooks recently because nobody reads them. What can I do to make these more lively? Feel free to discuss the stories we’ll be covering.

Should I drop the daybook posts?

Anyway, here’s what we’re working on today:

The vice-president of Ghana has a press availability at the Seelbach. I’ll talk to him.

U of L provost Shirley Willinhganz will be available at the student center to discuss new smoking restrictions. Stephanie will be there.

Stephanie will also  get reaction from E-on on today’s release of the PSC report on the ice and windstorms?

I’ll cover tonight’s Metro Council meeting.

Kristin will cover the healthcare discussion at the Science Center.

Rick is reporting on the FAA glitch that’s causing flight delays.

Today on SOA: “Louisville Neighborhoods”

Here’s what we reported on today:

• Wayside Granted Hotel Permit
• KY Lawmakers Hear Testimony of Ohio River Locks and Dams
• JCPS Planning H1N1 Vaccine Clinics
• Great American Smokeout Is Thursday
• Downard Authors Mayoral Succession Resolution
• State Departments Working to Update Unemployment System
• FEATURE - PSC Prepares Disaster Report

According the Courier-Journal, Wayside has earned the necessary permits to operate the old Hotel Louisville with rooms going for one penny per night.

I’m waiting on a call back from Nina Mosely and we hope to have a story on WFPL today.

A discussion of race and politics. It should be very interesting to hear scholars revisit the topic 10 months after Obama’s inauguration. Listen and call in.

It was widely agreed that the election of Barack Obama in November 2008 was a historically significant moment. The United States had its first African-American president, and it seemed even those with political differences knew that meant something. But what exactly did it mean? On Wednesday we’ll look at how Obama’s election and presidency has changed the conversation about race in this country – and how it hasn’t.

Jake is reporting this latest move from the Associated Press:

…it’s extra-sad with the news that the Associated Press has laid off Joe Biesk, a veritable fixture of Frankfort.

As a reporter, I often end up trudging through heaps of buzzwords and odd phrases. I’m not a linguist, so I’ve never thought any sudden prevalence of doublespeak constitutes an actual trend. But there are trends in language (and in how its interpreted), and there was a discussion of one on the radio today: word counting. Pundits of late have been playing pop psychologist by analyzing a speaker’s use of first person pronouns or the prevalence of imperative words in legislation.

This is how some observers have backed up their arguments that Sarah Palin and Barack Obama are narcissists or that the health care overhaul plan is too over-reaching.  Geoffrey Nunberg cut such arguments down to size today in a commentary on Fresh Air.

George Will said that Obama was inordinately fond of the first-person-singular pronoun and described him as ego tripping when he used those pronouns 26 times in his speech to the Olympic Committee at Copenhagen.

But everybody uses those pronouns a lot. They account for around six percent of our everyday conversation. The question is whether Obama uses them any more than other politicians do. At the blog Language Log, the University of Pennsylvania linguist Mark Liberman compared the transcripts of Obamas press conferences with those of his three presidential predecessors. It turned out that Clinton and the two Bushs all used first-person pronouns anywhere from 50 to 70 percent more often than Obama does. And Obama used the pronouns even less frequently in the Copenhagen speech that Will saw as the peak of presidential preening.

Give it a listen for full effect.

Here’s what we reported on today:

• Jackie Green Says He’ll Run For Mayor
• U of L Smoking Ban Begins Thursday
• March of Dimes Gives Kentucky ‘F’ in Premature Births
• Night Racing Dates Announced at Churchill Downs
• Another H1N1 Vaccine Clinic Set For Louisville

Update: Here’s the story from WFPL’s Rick Howlett.

Activist and cycling advocate Jackie Green is running as an independent for mayor. From his website:

Louisville will meet the challenges of the twenty-first century by:

developing a great public transit system before building any new Ohio River bridge
establishing an urban services boundary
investing in our urban center
creating a city center that is liveable, not just a place to work and then party til dawn
investing in the liveability of our established neighborhoods
reducing public infrastructure subsidies for new fringe neighborhoods
improving housing within our neighborhoods
investing in the education of our children, not in a fleet of school buses
making our streets safe enough to walk and bicycle
giving school assignment preferences to students who will walk and bicycle to school
developing a low energy, a clean energy, diverse, strong economy
reducing our local economy’s dependency on cheap, plentiful fuel
reducing mobile source pollution of air and water
reducing impermeable surfaces
increasing urban gardening
supporting and diversifying regional agriculture
leading state government to change law and funding mechanisms supportive of this agenda
backing up our unequivocal message to Frankfort with unwavering commitment within Metro government

Professor and coffee shop-owner Nimbus Couzin is also running as an independent.

An ordinance is in the works to limit the amount of time motorists can idle their cars in Louisville.

From the C-J:

City officials say Louisville — despite some improvements — is still in violation of ever-tightening federal clean-air regulations.

“An idling ordinance would help with that,” said Bruce Traughber, the city economic development director. “We are required to take action.”

Failing to produce a new enforceable clean-air initiative could trigger a loss of federal highway dollars or prompt the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to require more emission cuts from industry, confirmed Lauren Anderson, executive director of the Louisville Metro Air Pollution Control District.

Traughber said city officials have just begun trying to line up support for idling rules, and have only sketched out a draft ordinance, saying it would focus on excessive idling, though he declined to make the draft public or provide many details. However, a local work group that studied the idling issue generally defined excessive as more than five minutes for cars and trucks.

Officials are considering a one-year grace period to get everyone acquainted with the restriction.

Debate in the C-J comments is split (and angrily so in many cases). What do you think?

This graph (via Wikipedia and Sociological Images) shows commuting habits in major American cities. New Yorkers are the least likely to commute alone in cars, and Oklahoma City residents are the most likely.

Louisvillians are less car-reliant than residents of Indianapolis, Memphis and Nashville, but we use public transit less than workers in Charlotte, Los Angeles or Las Vegas. Here’s a high-res image.

Okay, we’re not picking on Ayn Rand, but it’s worth mentioning that there’s a new Peter Bagge comic about reactions to Rand’s work.

Bagge is a successful cartoonist who does regular comics for Reason Magazine. Both Bagge and Reason are libertarians. Bagge is willing to go after anyone, especially himself, for getting too tyrannical about liking, or disliking, Rand.

You can read the comic here.

Joe Ley, who owns Joe Ley Antiques on Market Street, has hired Village Solutions to develop a long-term plan for his property.

From Broken Sidewalk:

Connectivity will be emphasized.  Like the concept plan at both the Creation Gardens site and at Gill Holland’s planned farmers’ market on Jefferson Street, reuse of the alleyways is strongly considered.  Hill says Billy Goat Strut could provide a great pedestrian texture to the area and activate an otherwise underutilized space.

Broken Sidewalk previously declared that Nulu has landed.

More than any other individual part of Louisville, Nulu has emerged as the urban neighborhood in only a matter of years.  The signs are all around from new businesses to new public and private development, to grand visions and green aspirations.  The neighborhood that was born as a gallery district is organically transforming into a well-rounded urban place with emphasis not only on art but also sustainability, food, and community.

It seems like every time I go to or through Nulu, I see something new coming up. (Lots of rhymes in that last sentence.) Do you live in the area? What does it need, if anything?

This post comes to us from Arts & Humanities Reporter Elizabeth Kramer.

The Clifton Center was packed a week ago Saturday — jam packed for the latest collection of dance put together by Moving Collective. It was the eighth show for the group that was founded in 2005. The dance organization brings dancers and choreographers from here and from as far as Minneapolis and New York City for these performances, which are usually twice a year. It’s stated mission is to promote work by independent choreographers and contemporary dance in region. Saturday that mission was achieved. Just stepping into the auditorium, there was a high buzz that eclipsed the atmosphere of any Moving Collective performances I’d attended before.

It made me wonder if this could mean even a small swell of new dance enthusiasts or just more curiosity about dance. Sure, we’ve read the articles about the popularity of Dancing with the Stars and So, You Think You Can Dance. Both trade mostly in well-worn languages in dance — ballroom dancing moves, spins popular in hip hop, etc. We know the moves when we see them, and they definitely have their place in the culture. But the language of contemporary dance, which Moving Collective champions, is something different. It’s a language we often learn by seeing familiar moves or even hints of them in a piece or where movement makes us pay attention to space around a dancer and even think about motion and space in relation to ourselves.

Michael Kaiser recently had this to say in a Huffington Post article entitled Why I Worry about Modern Dance: “Modern dance depends on new voices, new vocabularies, new works.” The über arts administrator, who is now president of The Kennedy Center, previously led the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and Kansas City Ballet out of life-threatening deficits.

Well, Moving Collective is definitely doing its part to bring new dance to Louisville. And it includes many young choreographers and dancers who’ve studied at respected contemporary dance departments at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Given that, surely interesting ideas percolating at those schools are filtering into Louisville. (For example, Tere O’Connor, who works largely in New York but is also a tenured professor at the University of Illinois, is often named as one choreographer producing some of the most interesting work today.)

On the big-name level, the language of dance permeates the community through what the Kentucky Center brings to town. It includes companies of choreographers who constitute some of the most established voices — Alvin Ailey, Mark Morris, Paul Taylor and Merce Cunningham (who died earlier this year followed months later by the death of Pina Bausch). And this month, the center adds Bill T. Jones to its roster by hosting his company performing the new work Fondly Do We Hope… Fervently Do We Pray, which was inspired by Abraham Lincoln and created for the 2009 bicentennial. These aren’t necessarily new voices, but they are definitely important parts of the development of American dance in the past 50 years.

But the Kentucky Center also has brought us new voices. In August 2007, it presented Mikhail Baryshnikov’s project, Hell’s Kitchen Dance, which spotlighted upcoming choreographers and an ensemble of young dancers from The Juilliard School and New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. And this past May, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater packed the center for two evenings for performances celebrating its 50th anniversary. While the company has more than 79 dances by its founder, it also showcases work by upcoming choreographers and did in Louisville when it presented Mauro Bigonzetti’s Festa Barocca.

And even though ballet is not always thought of as contemporary, the Louisville Ballet is definitely part of the conversation, given the work it has commissioned. The company’s brought in new voices including Lila York (Celts) and Val Caniparoli (Lambarena). And next month, Caniparoli’s voice will be articulated again through the company’s new Nutcracker. And the ballet definitely has the kind of new voice Kaiser advocates in Adam Hougland — the company’s principal choreographer whose Rite of Spring premiered last April and included a title role with guest artist and New York City Ballet dancer Wendy Whelan.

While Kaiser expresses his concerns about new voices, I wonder about new audiences for dance — particularly in Louisville. There are encouraging signs. I’ve heard several reports that Arts Rush tickets for dance performances are among the highest in demand since many performing arts groups started offering them about a year ago. And then there’s the stunning turnout for the recent Moving Collective performance.

Turnout could prove healthy in December for The Louisville Ballet’s premiere of its new Nutcracker. The company’s been heralding the production for the nearly two years since it scored its largest corporate grant for the production ($1 million from Brown-Forman Corp., which is why the new company is calling it The Brown-Forman Nutcracker).

But I do wonder about the turnout for the new Bill T. Jones piece. While almost anyone on the street could say they’ve heard of the Louisville Ballet, many would be hard pressed to tell you about Jones and his work. (Jones won a 2007 Tony for his choreography of Spring Awakening, but more people will know the musical because of music by singer-songwriter Duncan Sheik.) So, only at the time of the Saturday performance of Jones’ work will we know how many will turn out to see this new dance about Lincoln.

But overall, it’s encouraging for any dance enthusiast to see the relative variety of dance (relative to the size of Louisville) on the city’s stages. And this is true especially during the current recession, which has put the squeeze on dance companies, some which were once wealthy. Recent research (PDF) by Dance USA, an organization for non-for-profit professional dance with more than 400 member companies, finds several major companies have laid off dancers (New York City Ballet, Miami City Ballet and Nevada Ballet Theatre) and a few companies canceled scheduled upcoming performances in mid season. Dance USA found that this is being driven by cut backs in contribtions from foundation and coporations, but also losses of 5 percent or more in ticket sales (41 percent of reporting dance companies).

NOTE: For more about dance, tune into State of Affairs tomorrow (Nov. 17) with guests choreographer Bill T. Jones; Moving Collective director Theresa Bautista; and Bruce Simpson, the Louisville Ballet’s artistic director.

PHOTOS – Top: Syncopia (2007); Choreography by Keesha Beckford and Anna SapozhnikovAll. Photo by Kevin Flores. Middle: Image of Fondly Do We Hope… Fervently Do We Pray; Choreography by Bill T. Jones. Bottom: Image of the Louisville Ballet’s Brown-Forman Nutcracker.

See a video of Bill T. Jones on Fondly Do We Hope… Fervently Do We Pray

You may have missed this Courier-Journal story from Friday night/Saturday. Ron Mills, the director of the Division of Mine Permits, has been fired by the Beshear administration.

If you missed it, that may have been the point. The news came down Friday.

After the state hired new mine permit review employees, this move may seem surprising. Tom FitzGerald with the Kentucky Resource Council says this.

FitzGerald…said he believed the action was taken by the Governor’s Office to placate coal interests that want to expedite the permitting process for mining operations.

“Ron Mills has done a superlative job at the Division of Mine Permits, and for that he has been fired,” said FitzGerald, said.

From Beshear’s office:

Kerri Richardson, spokeswoman for Gov. Steve Beshear, released a statement later Friday that said “All decisions regarding personnel matters are handled at the cabinet level,” and referred questions to Energy and Environment Cabinet Secretary Len Peters.

Peters declined to be interviewed, said cabinet spokeswoman Ricki Gardenhire, who confirmed late Friday that Mills no longer worked for the cabinet and had not resigned.

And FitzGerald also weighs in on Beshear’s new mine inspection hires.

FitzGerald said this action, which was praised by coalfield legislators of both parties, was troubling because it will increase the number of permits issues without increasing staff to inspect and oversee the environmental effects of the mining.

“The firing of Ron Mills is the second of two very troubling events …” FitzGerald said. “We will now become a permit mill.”

When I talked to Beshear about the new permit employees he expressed frustration over the federal government’s delays in approving some mining operations. The delays are over environmental concerns.