Echoes of Christmas

Today at 11CST WKMS starts holiday programming with Echoes of Christmas. Dale Warland and co-host Brian Newhouse draw from over twenty years of annual Christmas Concerts by one of the world’s great choirs, the Dale Warland Singers.  Warland says this about the program: “There is a magic about the music of Christmas, and choirs seem to express it to a T. There’s also such a wealth of great choral music some of which we hear frequently, but there are also some gems that people don’t know about. We want listeners to enjoy a range of this wonderful music.” 

View the full holiday schedule here.

For more about the Warland singers, visit their website here.

Tobacco Barns on Morning Edition

Noah Adams visited the Commonwealth in this morning’s story and took some gorgeous photos.  You can read the summary, listen to the full story, and see the photos here.  Sadly, I couldn’t find any pictures of Betty King of Lexington’s Tobacco Barn House.  Anyone out there ever seen a tobacco-barn-house before?  Seems like it’d be a bit drafty….

Obituary for the VHS

Hollywood’s Daily Variety has published an obituary proclaiming the passing of a technological icon: the VHS tape.

Hear NPR’s 1972 broadcast on the invention of VHS here.  Officially, VHS wasn’t marketed til September 1976, but the technology was developed in late 1971.  Other interesting tidbits:

• VHS does not stand for Video Home System or any similar phrase.  It’s Vertical Helio Scan, indicated the way the magnetic tape is read.
• The distinctive font used in the VHS logo is called “Lee”. It was created in 1972 by Leo Weisz for Visual Graphics Corporation (VGC).
• Of special note is the format of the VHS logo. In a “true” VHS logo, the horizontal bar of the “H” extends slightly to the left-hand side of the letter.
• In the late 1980s, Tandy marketed a computer data backup device based on recording to VHS tape.

Few companies are releasing new movies to VHS, but don’t throw out the VCR yet – many classic titles haven’t made their way to DVD format. 

3 chances to Give the Gift of Life

Today is the first of 3 days you can give blood in Calloway County. Today you can give at the Hazel Baptist Family Life Center, 2-7PM. Tuesday and Wednesday you’ll be able to give blood at the Murray State University Curris Center, 10AM – 3 PM. 
Donors must be healthy, at least 17, weigh at least 110, not have given blood in the last 56 days, and show ID.  Giveways will also be there, along with a drawing for a $50 gift card, and refreshments will be served. 

Feed me!

If you use an aggregator, you can subscribe to the WKMS Feedback Feed here.

Baking by Senses

Texan Emily Smith just shared her love of baking on This I Believe.  What’s more, she’s shared her secret recipe on npr.org. For Dorothy Smith’s Molasses Cookies and her Pecan Pie, or to hear Emily’s essay, click here.  Don’t forget that you can contribute to This I Believe online any time by visiting thisIbelieve.org.
Anyone else in the sharing mood?

Early Signs: Reports from a Warming Planet

Airing today at noon!

The early signs of climate change are showing up across vastly differing landscapes: from melting outposts near the Arctic Circle to disappearing glaciers high in the Andes; from the rising water in the deltas of Bangladesh to the “sinking” atolls of the Pacific. Reports from a Warming Planet takes listeners to parts of the planet where global warming is already making changes to life and landscape. The reports demonstrate how climate change is no longer restricted to scientific modeling about the future… it’s happening now.

Last fall, a team of eleven young reporters, led by veteran environmental journalist Sandy Tolan, gathered in a classroom at the graduate school of journalism at the University of California Berkeley. Their assignment: to identify the places around the world where global warming is already making changes to life and landscape.

The team spent the first few weeks poring over thousands of pages of documents on the science and politics of global warming. They made lists of the dozens of places around the world where they might investigate. The science advisor and co-teacher was climatologist John Harte, of U.C. Berkeley’s Energy and Resources Group. Under his guidance, the team focused on two conclusions of scientists around the world: first, that the earth’s atmosphere is growing warmer; warmer than at any time in recorded history. And second, that this warming is driven in large part by the burning of fossil fuels.

Climatologists have essentially reached consensus on both points. The intergovernmental panel on climate change, more than 2000 scientists working in more than a hundred countries, has concluded that global warming is happening and is driven largely by humans. So the team decided not to focus on the false balance in much of the U.S. media – the “Is global warming real?” debate that gives equal weight to unequal sides. Instead, the team took it as a given that the world is heating up and focused on the impact, in human terms, of a warming planet.

At the end of 2005, the team of reporters set out from U.C. Berkeley to eight places around the globe and came back with stories about how global warming is already changing people’s lives.

 

The Democrats Won, but Did the Middle Class?

Big question, isn’t it?  The headlinejumped out at me from the WKMS front page this morning (read the article here).  Here’s a bit from the article:

“Maybe I’m just too cynical. We hope things will change, but I’m not banking on it. Too many of these people have never even been middle class,” said Bagent, 38, a hospital clerk.

…

“If they’re able to deliver on some of those promises, then I think they’re going to win even more converts for the next election. The trouble is it’s a lot easier to say we’re going to make life better than it is to get into Congress and actually make life better.”

It’s a big “if,” and the number one topic in the news lately.  What do you think?  Are Democrats going to make good their promises over the next two years, or, as Jenny Bagent says in the article, are too many of the politicians too far from ever even living the middle class life? 

Paducah Symphony Orchestra – Mozart & Mahler

Mozart’s Divertimento in F, K. 138 and Mahler’s Symphony no.5 are both on now.  Get your Mozart fix for the next two hours on the air or streaming at http://www.wkms.org .  You can also read  program notes online here. 

Have You Googled Yourself Today?

A quick Internet search of your name might surprise you. It’s been said that once something’s on the net, it’s there forever. Those Old party pictures and embarrassing stories posted by a friend aren’t just flotsam on the web, they may be keeping you from a job. In a recent survey, one in 10 hiring managers say they rejected candidates because of things they found out about them on the Internet. 1 in 4 confirmed that their companies look up information on potential employees online.

Morning Edition today has a story on how to help clean up your online reputation. It highlights Michael Fertik’s ReputationDefender.com. This site digs through everything about a client on the internet, then urges webmasters to remove unwanted content. Attorney’s are at the ready if they don’t.

Read more or listen online here.