Forrest McDonald, historian who punctured liberal notions, dies at 89
New York Times – Jan. 22
Forrest McDonald, a presidential and constitutional scholar who challenged liberal shibboleths about early American history and lionized the founding fathers as uniquely intellectual, died on Tuesday in Tuscaloosa, Ala. He was 89. The cause was heart failure, his daughter Marcy McDonald said. As a Pulitzer Prize finalist in history and a professor at the University of Alabama, Dr. McDonald declared himself an ideological conservative and an opponent of intrusive government. (“I’d move the winter capital to North Dakota and outlaw air-conditioning in the District of Columbia,” he once said.) But he refused to be pigeonholed either as a libertarian or, despite his Southern agrarian roots, as a Jeffersonian.
Cooking class offered January 26 at UA
Tuscaloosa News – Jan. 22
People who want to learn about cooking fundamentals can attend Crimson Kitchen, the first of a series of classes offered by Bama Dining. The first class, “Learn Your Mother’s Sauces,” will be held from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. on Tuesday at Fresh Food Co., 500 Margaret Drive, on the University of Alabama campus. The class will be taught by five Bama Dining culinarians who will show participants how to make five basic sauces, velouté, béchamel, tomato, espagnole and hollandaise, which can be used to create a variety of different dishes. Register now at bamadining.com. There is a fee of $40 and a limit of 50 participants. Those who have registered are required to check in at the Fresh Food Co. at 7:45 p.m. on the night of the class. Ingredients, cookware, utensils and aprons will be provided.
UA’s Bama Dining to launch a series of cooking classes
ABC 33/40 (Birmingham) – Jan. 21 (Live Interview)
The University of Alabama’s Bama Dining Program is launching a series of cooking classes, and Chef James Rose joins us now in the kitchen to get us prepped for these classes.
Tuscaloosa News – Jan. 22
We are (yet again) the champions: Because football season is never really over, just over there, the celebration continues for the University of Alabama’s 16th national championship Saturday, beginning at 11 a.m. with a short parade from Denny Chimes to the north steps of Bryant-Denny Stadium at the Walk of Champions. Head coach Nick Saban, Crimson Tide players, staff, athletics director Bill Battle and others will show up for the party. The school will give away 10,000 championship posters and 5,000 championship promotional items during the day’s events. The celebration is of course free and open to the public. . . . Words, words, words: UA can produce excellence in areas other than sports, as you’ve probably guessed. Confirm that with Friday’s reading by MFA readings by Chris Emslie and Jenifer Park, 7:30 p.m. at Egan’s. UA’s MFA Creative Writing Program keeps the Friday night venues moving, from town to gown and back again, with readings thus far ranging from Morgan to Green Bar to Sella-Granata Art Gallery to Loosa Brews.
Winter weather to affect Alabama
WVUA (Tuscaloosa) – Jan. 21
UA student and Wisconsin native, Laura Neumann, says that when she first got to Alabama, she found the fear here of something so familiar to her humorous. “I understand when it’s like you are getting two feet of snow in one snowfall. That’s a big deal. Or even three feet of snow. But, like, oh we’re just going to have a dusting of snow and we’re going to shut the entire state down?”
UA holds class on Cyber-Force Security
WVUA (Tuscaloosa) – Jan. 21
Several people spent some time today learning all about the cyber world.The Bryant Conference Center on the University of Alabama campus hosted a one-day class titles, “Cyber-force security: risk and mitigation.” The course provided a basic level of cyber-security with topics that included historical and current threats.
Overseas military will be able to cast vote online
WSFA-NBC (Montgomery) – Jan. 21
Speaking of security and fraud risks, Matthew Hudnall, deputy director for the Center for Advanced Public Safety at The University of Alabama, says now is the time to take the risk. “It’s really about give-and-take, in that in order to trailblazer this new platform we really have to accept some degree of compromise when we talk about security of the system, because if we wait around for a perfect system we’ll never get there.” Army Veteran Jason Sellars is assistant director of VA Certification at UA. He’s used paper absentee ballots in the past. He believes the online version will be more efficient.
WTVM-ABC (Columbus, GA) – Jan. 21
UA School of Social Work holds symposium on aging
WVUA (Tuscaloosa) – Jan. 20
The University of Alabama School of Social Work hosted a discussion on aging this afternoon. The speakers covered subjects like caring for older adults, legal and protective services. The event was named after Dr. Allen Kaufmann who was honored during the event.
Why DuPont shrunk its Central Research Unit
Chemical & Engineering News – Jan. 22
Less than a week after DuPont announced its merger with Dow Chemicalon Dec. 11, DuPont managers told scientists at DuPont Central Research & Development in Wilmington, Del., to halt all laboratory work. The researchers were to label unmarked samples and leave everything else in place. Severe and unprecedented cuts, the researchers were warned, were coming. . . . Leading-edge chemistry flourished at CR&D. “It was, for many years, arguably the world’s center of fundamental research in organometallic chemistry,” noted Harvard chemistry professor George M. Whitesides recently in an essay in Angewandte Chemie International Edition (2015, DOI: 10.1002/anie.201410884). Influential carbene chemistry specialist Anthony J. Arduengo III, now at the University of Alabama, began his career at CR&D in the 1970s. So did Massachusetts Institute of Technology chemist and Nobel Laureate Richard Schrock.
Reducing the Cost of eDiscovery Through eNeutrals
Texas Lawyer – Jan. 21
As evidenced by Chief Justice Roberts’ 2015 Year-End Report on the Federal Judiciary, eDiscovery has clearly become the dominant factor at the courthouse, and as the Chief Justice pointed out, the 2015 Amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (effective Dec. 1, 2015) are directed at trying to rein in the exploding cost and complexity of litigation. Regardless of whether you graduated from law school 30 years ago or last year, every lawyer involved in litigation has had to learn about electronic evidence, like it or not. Further, those lawyers who are not computer technology savvy find that eDiscovery is more of a challenge than those lawyers who feel at home with computers. . . . Allison O. Skinner is a partner at Skinner Neutral Services in Birmingham, Ala. and teaches eDiscovery at the University of Alabama as an adjunct professor. She is also co-founder of the American College of eNeutrals.