New Year’s Eve revelry on the Ave in the University District got a little out of hand with cinderblocks thrown through Orange King, Magus Books and Starbucks’ windows. Not, by far, the most traumatic event to go down in the University District during the holiday.

presumably this dog has a real name.

The University of Washington’s football team has yet to win a game this season. Perhaps sensing the shape of things to come, the official Husky mascot (an Alaskan Malamute called Whitepaw’s Arlut Spirit of Gold Dust, a.k.a. “Spirit”) suffered a “shoulder injury” and has avoided leading the team out of the tunnel, wandering the sidelines, feigning interest in the game, and napping under the bench. Maybe his absence is the cause of the team’s ill fortunes or perhaps he simply couldn’t bear bear to spend his sunset years watching a losing team.

Either way, the school was already on the lookout for a replacement to replace Spirit upon his retirement at the end of the season. In parallel with the search to select a new dog, the athletics department has been polling fans to choose its new name. My assumption that the name should reflect the actual dog just shows how little of collegiate mascotry I comprehend.

The field has been narrowed down to three names: Spirit, Sundodger, and Dubs. [gohuskies] Although it’s very “the king is dead, long live the king” / “Snowball Two” I have to say that given the options rechristening this new dog with the old one’s name is the least objectionable.

UW President Mark Emmert has notified members of the UW community that yesterday’s death by fire has been labeled a suicide. No comment on whether a note or other indicators had been found.

This tragic event was witnessed by many students and faculty of the University of Washington during a break between classes and there are counseling services available for those who feel the need to see someone about the situation. There are also many sources of help for those who are depressed and/or suicidal.

I’m even on campus and didn’t hear about this until I checked online. A 61-year old man apparently doused himself in gasoline and lit himself on fire in the middle of the UW’s Red Square. Bystanders grabbed jackets and fire extinguishers to put out the flames, and the man has been taken to the hospital for severe burns. Let’s hope he’s ok.
Ref.

In an email from Eric S. Godfrey, Vice Provost for Student Life, we now know that the victim was a former UW employee who has passed away from his injuries. There is still no motive or cause yet disclosed for the fire.

I ran across a live social experiment today at the University of Washington. A ladder was set up across the path with two options: go under it or hop the barrier and avoid it. Overall, most people walked under the ladder (oblivious or knowingly) though a few folks made a beeline for the barriers.

Standing Room, from the Seattle Municipal Archives

It’s that time of year again: yesterday was the first day of the University of Washington’s fall quarter. For many would-be students, both new and old, Wednesday meant packed buses, route delays, and even missed courses. A pile-up on the routes to the UDistrict as everyone tries to figure out which classes they’re taking impacts not only undergrads, but also those who teach them — faculty and grad students alike. A colleague of mine was almost late to her first day of language teaching, due to the 43 from Capitol Hill being 30 mins delayed due to increased traffic. Today, one day into the quarter, the 65 was not picking up passengers between 55th street and campus, due to overcrowding on non-articulated coaches around 9am. There seems to be a ‘capacity valley’ in the curve of distance from campus: if you’re distant enough from the UW, you’ll be assured of a seat, but by the time you get closer to campus, even standing room might be gone.

Metro does put more buses in place in sync with the academic year, but perhaps extra steps could be taken during the first week of classes, when nobody’s schedule is fixed yet and everyone is flooding on to campus to sit in on multiple courses.

photo via macarthur foundation

Earlier this month the Stranger crowned their latest crop of local geniuses with $5,000, a cake, and a big party at the Moore. Today, Seattle has another “genius” in our midst thanks to the MacArthur Foundation’s new list of fellows, each of whom receive $500,000, paid quarterly over five years [macfound]. At least a half-million hearty congratulations, then, to University of Washington geomorphologist David Montgomery[#], whose studies of the earth’s surface and environmental change have considered the local, global, and interplanetary level put him in good company with the music critic, saxophonist, fiber artist, urban farmer, fiction writer, epigrapher, and others who won this year’s grants. [#]

In addition to being an inspiring award, it also sounds like the makings of the best cocktail party ever.

We (ok, I) love paleontology gossip [mb], and today the science blogs are full of it. A couple of years ago paleontologists in North Carolina found what they thought might have been soft tissue in some T. rex bones [sciam]. But now a team of researchers led by the UW’s Thomas Kaye are reporting that they think the soft tissue is actually a bacterial colony that mimics the properties of flesh [sciam].

“Kaye and other researchers first used a scanning electron microscope to probe the inner, cave-like chambers in dinosaur bone samples and noted striking similarities to the biofilms they reared and reaped from a bucket of pond water. The original dinosaur flesh-finders relied on a different approach, namely bone-dissolving acids that left behind bits of pliable material later characterized as soft tissue remnants. Kaye’s team duplicated this technique as well, and found that iron deposits, thought to be from prehistoric blood cells, were instead natural mineral formations called framboids.”

The original research team, at North Carolina State University, is having none of this bacterial sludge nonsense, pointing out that the UW’s study doesn’t address the recent genetic analyses of the goop that say that the T. rex’s closest living relative is the chicken. (Which, maybe they didn’t point that out because it’s a little embarrassing for the dinosaurs…)

In any case, it looks like this is shaping up to be an east coast vs. west coast paleontological throwdown. If only questions of science could be settled via dance-off.

This summer is the winter of independent cafes’ discontent. First Broadway loses Vivace to the transit bulldozer, and now the UDistrict’s own Allegro is facing a construction challenge of its own: While the location itself is not threatened, the empty lot across the alley is being developed. This will mean a severe change of atmosphere for the business, which has no frontage on the Ave itself and instead opens onto the alley between that street and 15th. Although we’ve known this was going to happen since 2005, seeing the construction fences up on the old parking lot still comes as a shock, and if the eventual construction ends up being six stories as planned, that corner is going to look a lot different in a few years.

As the blogosphere crowdsources a definitive list of which locations Starbucks will be closing as part of its 600-store retrenchment, University Village mall just celebrated the opening of its fourth store, an expansion and refurbishment of the previous SBC location inside the QFC supermarket. The new store — a licensed one by the looks of it — joins the large central location at the mall, the smaller branch in the Crate & Barrel building, and the licensed location inside the Barnes & Noble. Fiddling while Rome burns, or a sign of things to come as UVillage prepare for a major expansion?