Promising Noises from Nashville

"You've got UTK, which is a legitimate research university, then you've half a dozen others who are little UTK wannabes or little Vanderbilt wannabes, and they're busy growing their graduate programs," Bredesen said. "And most states that are considered to have good systems, they've really got a good, clean separation between the graduate-oriented research universities and the state schools. … Just how you do that is kind of the political trick in all of this."

"Creation Care"....

...a.k.a. religious environmentalism in Tennessee.

Looks like it might make the difference in the TN House in pushing through a ban on mountaintop removal at elevations over 2000 ft :

http://www.metropulse.com/news/2009/mar/25/mountaintop-removal-gains-momentum-faith-issue/

Heidelberg University opens US presence in New York

[Heidelberg University Alte Aula]

http://www.uni-heidelberg.de/presse/news08/pm281010-01engl.html

Nobody told them there is already a presence in Knoxville (Dennis, Roland, Benjamin, Barmak, Xiaohu, Krishnan, Jiancong, plus regular visitors etc....)?

Second Governor's Chair Announced

It's taken a while to find the second GC but I'm happy to see Alexei Sokolov will be joining us:

http://www.utk.edu/news/article.php?id=4956

Alexei and I have strongly overlapping interests in biomolecular dynamics.
See, for example:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18500904?ordinalpos=5&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

Aldi Opens in Knoxville

http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2009/mar/07/aldi-opens-in-knoxville/

..an excellent German concept!
I was always appalled at Walmart's inflated prices........

Bredesen: Stimulus means Tenn. colleges won't need deep cuts

Temporary relief....

http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2009/mar/09/no-headline---030909webstim/

....but given what might be miserable non-stimulus-related TN state revenues for FY09 one fears for 12 months time? The natural (but, of course, impossible) reaction would be to save some of the stimulus money for even rainier days, until we start to see where the bottom of the recession might be located.

Monstrous Kraken supercomputer up and running at ORNL

http://www.oakridger.com/localnews/x1959835750/Monstrous-Kraken-supercomputer-up-and-running-at-ORNL

..so powerful, it is rumoured to be capable of predicting the existence of Jack Daniels whisky and the Tennessee Walking Horse from the Big Bang in less than a millisecond! (with a nod to Douglas Adams)