In response to requests from WRVU executive board members, the Vanderbilt Student Communications Board agreed that they would not make any conclusions about if or when they will sell the broadcast license of the station until at least January 2011 in a meeting on October 6.

Decision on WRVU sale postponed until next semester | InsideVandy

"The average American doesn't realize how much of the laws are written by lobbyists"

Yeah, thats true - people probably don't understand that. Congressional offices don't have enough staff to write the reams of legislation they put through. Those guys are merely a deliberative power brokering process. The actual law writing gets done across the street by lawyers who, incidentally, make a lot more money. People talk shit about lobbyists, but lobbyists are basically how laws get made. Should Congress employ more staff and pay them more? If they tried, everyone would be up in arms that they are becoming corrupt! For all the talk about "special interests" I'm not aware of anyone who has a serious proposal for an alternative.

But this article has more juicy nuggets:

"Google policy is to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it," he said. Google implants, he added, probably crosses that line.

At the same time, Schmidt envisions a future where we embrace a larger role for machines and technology. "With your permission you give us more information about you, about your friends, and we can improve the quality of our searches," he said. "We don't need you to type at all. We know where you are. We know where you've been. We can more or less now what you're thinking about."

Creepy line? Crossed it.

Google's CEO: 'The Laws Are Written by Lobbyists' - Derek Thompson - Technology - The Atlantic

Your Time is the most valuable thing that you have. There is nothing more important than how you spend your time.

This is the main website organizing a response to attempts to take down WRVU. There is a blog article about where responses from the community should be directed.

Save WRVU 91.1 FM | Keep WRVU on the air

Historically, independent and local radio have tended to go hand in hand; a station that focuses on community events and local artists is independent by virtue of the fact that their main concern is serving their community, not serving their own interests.

Local corporate radio is an impossibility – corporate radio is interested in reaching as many people as possible, because higher ratings translate directly into more money from advertising. It follows, then, that a corporate radio entity will broadcast content that appeals to a broad audience; whether or not that content is local is moot.

With perhaps a few exceptions, local Internet radio does not exist, because Internet radio simply isn’t tied to geography the same way that broadcast radio is.

If Marshall McLuhan is to be believed, the medium cannot be separated from the message that it carries, and I think that this holds especially true in this case. Internet radio potentially allows anyone to broadcast great content from anywhere in the world, and this is a good thing. Yet, when I tune into a stream online, I don’t get the same feeling as when I turn my radio dial to KWUR 90.3 or KDHX 88.1 in St. Louis.

The loss of KTRU and WRVU is a loss for the entire communities of Houston and Nashville, one that cannot be amended by a switch to online radio.

And so this isn’t, or perhaps shouldn’t be, an issue of money, but rather one of values. I value local, independent radio and the freedom of expression that it provides, and I’m sure that the staff at KTRU and WRVU do too. Rice and Vanderbilt do not, but they should. The sale of KTRU’s and WRVU’s broadcast licenses – or that of any local, independent radio station – is a nasty thing any way you look at it. Radio is, by and large, controlled by a few companies who don’t give a fuck** about diverse opinions or interesting music, and taking away one of the few stations that does is shameful and truly reprehensible.

The death of a community radio station « KWUR.COM

The trouble started when USC's director of student media, an administrator by the name of Chris Carroll, had been surreptitiously monitoring the station and recording examples of what he deemed unacceptable music.

(Acting in a strikingly similar fashion at Tulane University in 1991, he succeeded in pulling the plug on the Crescent City's WTUL, whose rabble-rousing DJs reportedly made WUSC's look like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.)

This guy is now running WRVU. He already cracked down on community DJs at the station and has now moved to shut the station down completely.

According to [VSC chairperson Mark] Wollaeger, VSC staff registered the domains so that feedback could be sent directly to VSC. Wollaeger acknowledged that in retrospect, he believes that registering the domains was a poor decision by VSC. VSC director of student media Chris Carroll can be held accountable for the registrations, according to Wollaeger.

Its a double cross! This could not be more transparent!

Asked whether the sale of the license could be averted if a donor, or group of donors, were able to pay the station's roughly $15,000 yearly operating costs — effectively paying WRVU's way to keep it on the air — Wollaeger said no.

How the fuck does that make sense?!

If this isn't about the financial viability of the station than there is no other possible explanation - this is an assault on our Constitutional Rights! I am fucking furious about this.

Student media at WRVU taken over by serial enemy of college radio

Last Thursday, the station known to generations of Nashville listeners as 91 Rock shocked fans and staff alike with an announcement dropping the bomb: VSC was considering "the migration of radio station WRVU to exclusively online programming and the sale of its broadcast license." Citing declining revenues (via print ads in the Vanderbilt Hustler, which underwrite WRVU's programming) and a concern for the future viability of all Vanderbilt media, the press release presented the idea as exploration only — i.e., not necessarily a done deal. But those opposed to silencing the venerable station's FM signal couldn't help feel the move was all but finalized, save a buyer and a price.

As they began to mount a counterstrike against the proposed sale, organizers found that the domain names savewrvu.org and savewrvu.com were already taken. Not only were they registered by proxy (meaning that the name and contact of the registrar remain hidden) but they were registered on Sept. 7 — nine days before the VSC announcement. And both sites re-directed to the official announcement page on insidevandy.org, indicating that the VSC board not only had anticipated how the news would be received, they had sought to outmaneuver their opposition by taking away its first move.

Thats downright shady!

WRVU was an important part of my teenage years and I certainly do not want to see it go. The Music City needs a real college radio station as an alternative voice to the industry there.

As Vanderbilt Student Communications considers taking WRVU off the airwaves, an outraged community mobilizes | Features | Nashville Scene

As far as I'm concerned, it's a damned shame that a field as potentially dynamic and vital as journalism should be overrun with dullards, bums, and hacks, hag-ridden with myopia, apathy, and complacence, and generally stuck in a bog of stagnant mediocrity. If this is what you're trying to get The Sun away from, then I think I'd like to work for you.

Hunter S. Thompson's brutally honest Canadian job request

For the second year in a row, using exclusive data developed by Dr. Andrew Schiller's team at NeighborhoodScout.com, and based on FBI data from all 17,000 local law enforcement agencies, WalletPop reveals the top 25 most dangerous neighborhoods with the highest predicted rates of violent crime in America.

25 most dangerous neighborhoods 2010

Taxpayers should get a receipt so they know what they're paying for, a think tank called Third Way argues in a new paper.

Here's a sample from the group. It includes federal income tax and FICA, which funds Medicare and Social Security. Details are here.

What we pay for provides a view of this.

Thanks For Paying Taxes. Here's A Receipt. : Planet Money : NPR