Fresh Loaf

JIM MARTIN: Soundly defeats Vernon Jones to win the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate; will face Saxby Chambliss in November.

TED JACKSON: There’s a new (Democratic nominee for) sheriff in town.

CLAYTON: Kem Kimbrough beats controversy-prone Sheriff Victor Hill for the Democratic nomination.

DEKALB CEO: Burrell Ellis beats Stan Watson and, with no Republican contender in the race, is the new CEO.

EX-BIN LADEN DRIVER: Found guilty today in the first Guantanamo war crimes trial.

SEA TURTLE NESTS: A record number have been found in Georgia this year.

ARBORING A GRUDGE: The New York Times reports on former Atlanta senior arborist Tom Coffin, who was fired July 29 for pointing out to his bosses the under- or nonenforcement of the tree ordinance in certain parts of the city.

WILLIE B.: The subject of a new documentary produced by Andrew Young.

UGA: Named by Sports Illustrated as the magazine’s preseason No. 1 and featured on one of five regional covers this week.

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VOTE: No one else is going to, so your vote will count that much more. Click here for CL’s voter guide.

DON’T DRINK THE WATER: A toxin found in Mars’ water dims scientists’ hopes of finding life there.

DOCK BLOCK: More than 2,300 private docks were built in coastal Georgia between 1996 and 2006, and each one can reduce biomass production by 30 percent below it due to blocked sunlight. Researchers are thus studying four types of docks that allow sunlight through.

NEW GRADY CEO: Says changing “the aura” will be the difference at Grady; plans to buy upgraded medical equipment, identify the top 10 financial issues and streamline processes in an effort to attract more insured patients to the beleaguered hospital.

WI-FI IN THE SKY: Delta plans to start offering Wi-Fi on all its domestic flights by next summer, but it’ll cost $10 for three hours or less and $13 for longer flights.

FIELD TRIPS: Georgia schools considering canceling them to save fuel.

TAILS WAGGING DAWGS: Mark Richt discusses the slew of arrested and penalized players this offseason; he and top players echo the line that they won’t be a distraction for long.

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ABRIDGE OVER STUBBLED WATER: Georgia Agriculture Commissioner Tommy Irvin is instituting Razor-Free Fridays, asking male ag employees to conserve water by skipping shaving.

BAT SIGNALS: A graduate student’s research uncovers an unknown population of about 900 Rafinesque’s big-eared bats living in South Georgia bottomland forests; scientists had previously spotted just 17 of the bats in all of South Georgia and thought they lived only near the coast.

ECO LOCATION: The Golden Isles are popular with ecotourists.

CLAYTON: Embattled Clayton Sheriff Victor Hill has responded to a former employee’s election-season lawsuit by filing a flurry of 30 defenses. Also, the county school board will outline at a meeting Friday why SACS shouldn’t revoke the school system’s accreditation. Read more about Clayton’s panoply of problems in this week’s CL cover story by Thomas Wheatley.

A FEATHER IN THEIR CRAP: Stephen Colbert called Canton, Ga., “crappy” on his show Monday night, leading defensive city leaders to invite him to visit, hoping to salvage some positive publicity.

T-STORMS AND ASTHMA: Are apparently correlated, according to a joint study by UGA and Emory researchers.

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BARACK IN IRAQ: Obama visits Basra and meets with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in Baghdad’s Green Zone today as part of a three-senator congressional delegation.

DON’T SHIVER ME TIMBERS: The Christian Science Monitor reports on former pirate community in South Florida and how it’s keeping out big development.

NEST EGGS: Researchers are cracking open sea-turtle eggs in South Georgia to glean genetic information, which they say doesn’t significantly affect the number of hatchlings since hatch success is only 60-80 percent anyway.

KINGS CRABBY: The recent lawsuit filed against Dexter King by his siblings highlights a growing rift among MLK’s kids.

LEFT BEHIND: Schools await evaluation results to see if they’re in compliance with No Child Left Behind.

UGA: Bracing for potential layoffs to accommodate state-mandated budget cuts.

LIL SCRAPPY: Arrested for lil scrapping.

HELLO, DOLLY: Tropical storm could become hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico Tuesday.

PINOCHLEHEADS: Meet in Riverdale for a tournament.

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OBAMA: Will hold a town hall meeting at McEachern High School in Powder Springs Tuesday that’s open to the public, although no more tickets are available.

THIS BUD’S NOT FOR YOU: Anheuser-Busch continues to fend off the hostile takeover bid by Belgian beeremoth InBev, which wants to replace the American company’s board of directors.

BUZZ KILL: While Georgia has mostly avoided colony collapse disorder, the phenomenon continues in 24 other states and could spread here, scientists say. UGA will spend the next four years studying disappearing bees as part of a $4.1 million research grant.

BEAR MARKET: Bear populations are up in North Georgia.

SWAMPWISE: Clayton County’s 140-acre manmade wetlands water-treatment site, which treats 10 million gallons of water a day, has become a model for such facilities, drawing visitors from as far as Australia, Mexico and Newfoundland.

THAT’S SO RAVEN: Commerce man is training two ravens to be the official mascots for the Baltimore Ravens, the first task of which will be doing a season-opener stadium fly-through in front of 70,000 fans on Sept. 7.

WILY COYOTES: Berry College biologist is studying the behavior and ecological role of urban and suburban coyotes.

BRAVES: Beat the Astros on Teixeira’s 17th-inning, bases-loaded RBI single in the longest game in Turner Field history.

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HERSH REALITY: Seymour Hersh writes in the New Yorker that the United States is covertly preparing the battlefield in Iran.

MUGABE: Sworn in as “president” of Zimbabwe following his “win” in the “election.”

UGA IV: Will be buried in Sanford Stadium in Athens today.

CUMBERLAND ISLAND: Wildfire has consumed more than 1,600 acres.

MARTA: Time flies when you’re having gun.

OBAMA: To visit Atlanta July 7, part of his campaign’s strategy to reclaim the South for Democrats.

WRECKLESS ABANDON: A leaking shrimping boat off the Savannah coast becomes the first ship destroyed under legislation passed last year allowing authorities to seize abandoned vessels.

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PETS AND DEBTS: The NYT reports on foreclosures and layoffs leading Georgians to part with their pets, which is overcrowding no-kill shelters.

CRESCENT BOON: In trying to draw more attention to Georgia’s life-sciences corridor between Atlanta and Athens, the state has dubbed the region the “Innovation Crescent.”

CLAYTON: Two candidates for the school board have prior arrest records — one was busted for selling cocaine when he was 22 and the other was charged with two misdemeanor counts of deposit-account fraud two years ago.

SURGE: U.S. Government Accountability Office reports that soldiers with injuries and medical conditions that should have prevented them from being sent to war were nonetheless deployed from forts Stewart, Benning and Drum to Iraq and Afghanistan as part of last year’s troop surge.

DYLAN: The Georgia Aquarium’s former celebrity sea turtle, who was rescued a decade ago on Jekyll Island as an infant, will be released back into the wild near Brunswick Monday.

COLLEGE WORLD SERIES: UGA loses to Fresno State in the rubber match.

TURNING OVER A NUDE LEAF: A Savannah man is released from jail, then rearrested less than a mile away walking naked down a busy road.

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EVERGLADE PLUG-IN: United States Sugar agrees to sell 187,000 acres in the Everglades, and all of the company’s other assets, to the state of Florida for $1.75 billion, which will allow natural water flow from Lake Okeechobee to Florida Bay for the first time since the 1890s.

OBAMA: Leads McCain in two polls by more than 10 points, although June poll results rarely hold steady through November. Hillary Clinton begins campaigning for Obama today. Obama asks his supporters to help alleviate some of her campaign debt.

UNIONS’ UNION: Delta and Northwest pilot unions agree on a joint contract.

CYBER RATTLING: Atlanta is the 10th-largest cybercity and largest in the Southeast.

COLLARED: Police pull over and arrest an Atlanta man in Macon driving a U-Haul loaded with $150,000 worth of Polo shirts that had been stolen in Valdosta.

GAS PRICE WAR: Two gas stations in Buford are in an arms race of affordability, with a gallon dropping as low as $3.45 over the weekend.

DOG BEAT DOG: Fresno State downs UGA to tie the series at 1-1; Game 3 to decide the national champion is tonight at 7.

JOHN THOMPSON: The Clayton County corrective superintendent says he was misheard in the video he posted online Monday, that he said Clayton schools “had a very slim chance” of maintaining accreditation, before he became superintendent, not “have a very slim chance.” Two Board of Education members back up the misheard version, saying Clayton will not maintain its accreditation.

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BOWEN OUT: HUD approves of the Atlanta Housing Authority tearing down Bowen Homes in northwest Atlanta; AHA says renovating the housing project would cost $100 million and tearing it down will be less than $6 million.

UGA: Beats Fresno State in Game 1 of the College World Series; now one win away from winning the national championship.

SHELL SHOCK: Four advocacy groups have filed an emergency petition to the Georgia DNR seeking to repeal the state’s turtle collection law, arguing turtle species are dropping due to unrestricted trapping.

TRAIN TAX: MARTA holds informational meeting in Gwinnett about moving rail service into the county; Gwinnettians will vote on the measure, which would be funded with a 1-cent sales tax, on July 15.

CODE RED SMOG ALERT: Atlanta’s now in the red in more ways than one.

EVIDENCE: The zebra found grazing in an I-75 median in April will be recuperated enough for public viewing July 12.

COLOR GUARD: Don Imus says he only asked “what color” Adam “Pacman” Jones is to make the point that Jones has been unfairly targeted by police in his six arrests since 2005. It might have been clearer if Imus had actually said that instead of just, “Well there you go. Now we know,” after being told Jones is black.

CLAYTON: Superintendent John Thompson, who one month ago said Clayton County Schools would meet the SACS mandates by July 15, now says the school system has a “very slim” chance of maintaining accreditation at all. Who cares, though — I want to know how John Thompson’s spirits are holding up:

“After talking to all the politicians, people and powers that be, we have a very slim chance of maintaining accreditation at all. It could have dampened my spirits, but it did not.”

Whew.

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GEORGE CARLIN: Dies at 71.

SLOW AND STEADY: The Obama campaign gingerly courts the black vote in states where high black-voter turnout could make the difference, while trying to avoid giving the appearance of exploiting race.

2 FAST 2 USURIOUS: Atlanta Progressive News reports that Atlanta-based CompuCredit is being sued by the FDIC and FTA for $200 million on charges it deceived and took advantage of its customers.

UGA IN CWS: The final, best-of-three series begins tonight at 7.

GRAVY TRAIN: The recently Sonny-approved notion of commuter rail would be a boon for smallish towns along the proposed Atlanta-Griffin and Atlanta-Athens rail lines.

STATE OF THE ARTIFACT: Archaeological-artifact poaching is on the rise in Georgia, according to a DNR official.

THE BEE’S KNEES: This week is the national Pollinators Week, created to raise awareness of the ecologically critical, and quickly disappearing, insects that pollinate crops and flowers.

FUEL OF ROCK: More below-the-radar touring bands are canceling tours as gas prices make going on the road cost prohibitive.

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CLINTON: With hopes dwindling despite winning Puerto Rico, her campaign sends e-mails to staff summoning them to NYC Tuesday night and telling them their roles in the campaign are ending. The campaign is silent as to whether this means her campaign is ending.

ON THE HALF SREL: UGA’s nationally renowned Savannah River Ecology Lab soldiers on with fewer than half its scientists despite the Bush administration cutting its funding eightfold last year.

LOW WITH THE FLOW: Beginning Sunday, all houses sold in DeKalb must have low-flow toilets.

DIPLOMA KILL: Clayton’s corrective superintendent scraps seniors’ diplomas because they don’t have his name on them; printing company offers to waive reprinting fee due to error.

TAKEN FOR A RIDE: Athens’ homeless population, which was 462 as of January, is partly fueled by resource-strapped rural police departments driving their homeless residents there under the premise of better opportunities, Athens officials allege.

BONES TO PICK: The Augusta Chronicle profiles Dr. Rick Snow, the GBI’s first full-time forensic anthropologist, who has 62 sets of nameless remains to identify.

“MAKING NEWS”: TV Guide Network reality show about Savannah’s low-rated WJCL/Fox 28 local news station debuts Wednesday night at 8.

WACHOVIA CEO: Asked to retire by the board of directors. AccessNorthGa brightens my day with presumably unrelated keypads and police lights.

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CRITICS AT BAY: Florida Sen. Bill Nelson tours the Apalachicola Bay to survey the effects of retaining more water in Lake Lanier, and says he’ll push for a National Academy of Sciences study of how low flows affect the river ecosystem.

LIGHT AT THE END OF THE FUNNEL: 2008 could be a record year for U.S. tornadoes, and while meteorologists aren’t sure why this year has been so tornadically prolific — including the twister that caused $40 million in damage in north metro Atlanta last week — the good news is that tornado season usually starts sputtering out in June.

BORDERS SKIRMISH: City Council President Lisa Borders writes a letter to her councilmates asking them to be nicer to the mayor.

HAWKS GM SEARCH: As is becoming typical of front-office searches in Atlanta pro sports, Cleveland’s Chris Grant withdraws himself from consideration after being offered the general manager job.

UGA EXPANDING IN GWINNETT: With the Brain Train struggling to gain traction, UGA just starts filling the gaps between Athens and Atlanta with itself.

ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL: Piedmont Park may soon install wells for water independence, pending a decision by the state Environmental Protection Division.

CAUGHT LEAD-HANDED: Two studies link children’s lead exposure 25 years ago and increased impulsive and criminal behavior in adulthood.

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MONEYMAKER SHAKEN: McCain, having just lost a major fundraiser, will turn to the Republican Party for funds to combat the Obama fundraising onslaught this fall. Clinton is expected to win Kentucky tomorrow, will likely be nullified by Obama winning Oregon.

CLAYTON: Students in accreditation-endangered schools can soon apply for corporate-funded scholarships to attend private schools, thanks to a new law.

YERKES: Researchers have successfully bred monkeys that have Huntington’s disease to study potential treatments for afflicted humans.

17-YEAR ITCH: Brood XIV cicadas that have been feeding underground on tree roots for the last 17 years are now emerging from Georgia to Pennsylvania to start mating.

MEDICAL TOURISM: Norcross startup testing the waters of flying patients to India or Thailand for discount medical procedures.

SLUDGE FUDGED? Lawsuit alleges UGA used false data in research that showed spreading sewage sludge on dairy pastures is safe for dairy cows.

PERRY THRUST: City of Perry is moving toward powering its mowers and off-road equipment with vegetable oil.

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MOTHER’S DAY TORNADOES: Twenty-three people are killed nationally by an estimated 47 twisters from Oklahoma and Missouri to Georgia, making this year the worst so far for tornadoes since 1999. At least one person dies in Georgia as six tornadoes hit through midstate.

EXECUTIVE PRIVILEGE: A Valdosta Daily Times reporter, who was one of five media monitors of the execution of William Earl Lynd last week, writes of the experience.

THOMAS GOWN AFFAIR: Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas gives UGA’s commencement speech over the weekend, recalling how Georgia was still too segregated for him to attend UGA in the ’60s.

SCHOLARBLIND: The AP profiles the valedictorian of this year’s Morehouse graduating class, who’s white.

CORN IN THE USA: By July, the entire Southeast gasoline pipeline will be using E10, which is at least 8 percent ethanol.

CAN’T ARGUE WITH RESULTS: Jonesboro High School’s mock trial team wins its second consecutive national championship.

SHADY ROVE: MC Turd Blossom has a new gig as FOX News “pundit.”

CROWS TERRIFIED: Northeast Georgia town trying to break Guinness World Record for “Most Scarecrows in One Location,” with 4,000 scarecrows by Sept. 1. No one so far has had the heart to tell Hoschton that this will not, in fact, make the town a “household word.”

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HAWKS POPULI: Philips Arena pulsates as the suddenly unstoppable Joe Johnson leads the surging Hawks over the heavily favored Celtics to tie the series at 2-2. They’re in Boston Wednesday and back here Friday.

TAYLOR BENNETT: Ga. Tech QB transfers to La. Tech. He’ll be playing for Vince Dooley’s son and La. Tech’s mascot is also the Bulldogs, so page-view-hungry websites come up with misleading-but-not-untrue headlines like this:

JEREMIAH WRIGHT: Doing his best to keep Obama out of the White House. CNN has this bio of the ravin’ reverend. ATLMalcontent is justifiably worried that Obama is showing a Kerryesque lack of anger over this.

JIMMY CARTER: On “The Daily Show” last night.

NEED FOR SEED: UGA anthropologists’ Southern Seed Legacy protects heirloom varieties of old and disappearing Southern crops such as the plum granny and the turkey craw bean.

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CAMPAIGN IN THE NECK: Clinton wins Pennsylvania by 10 points, likely meaning we get to delight in this campaign all summer.

SPECIAL K: Smoltz gets 3,000th strikeout, Braves lose.

CHAMBLEE SIX: Sextet of Chinese immigrants who subdued and hogtied an international fugitive in February are now giving away their $10,000 in reward money.

CIVIL UNIONS: Delta and Northwest pilots unions to resume negotiations about merging their workforces.

DAVID POLLACK: Retires from the NFL at age 25 due to the neck injury he suffered two years ago.

DOUBTING THOMAS: UGA President Michael Adams defends his choice of Clarence Thomas as the 2008 commencement speaker amid faculty complaints that the university’s sexual harassment problems this year make Thomas a bad choice.

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UNHAPPY AS A CLAM: Mussels, north Floridians will suffer from Corps of Engineers’ new water proposal, says a Florida congressman, while Lake Lanier Association president says the plan doesn’t go far enough.

LEGAL INJECTION: SCOTUS dismisses challenge to constitutionality of Kentucky’s lethal injection procedure, freeing up other states to kill their prisoners again. Two Georgia death-row inmates are now back on track to be executed.

SEPARATE BUT DIESEL: Ga. DOT explains the problems with bringing truck-only lanes to Atlanta, while the idea’s sponsor stubbornly soldiers on.

BURDEN OF PROF: Two still-unidentified Ga. Tech professors are being investigated for fraud and theft.

LEATHERHEADS: Georgia State is expected to announce today its plans to start a football team in 2010. AJC’s Tony Barnhart lists five things the Panthers must do to succeed. Around this time last year, Mark Bradley wrote why they won’t succeed.

LACROSSE-CULTURAL: Toli, the 500-year-old Native American predecessor of lacrosse, is big in Athens, where on Saturday UGA’s team will host the 21-time world-champion Conehatta Skunks, who are Choctaw.

THE PAYBACK: The Augusta Metro Spirit lists what will be available at James Brown’s estate sale in August.

PRO-STRIFE: Yale art student artificially inseminates herself “as often as possible,” takes drugs to induce miscarriages, collects the blood, and presents it along with videos of her miscarriages as her senior art project.

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ITP TORNADO: Downtown F-2’s damage rattles hospitality industry, street closings and debris cause isolated traffic problems downtown this morning.

OTP TORNADO: Two killed by separate F-3 northwest of the city. A photo from the home of Bonnie Turner, one of the casualties, was carried 129 miles by the storm, landing in Cornelia, just west of the South Carolina border.

LANIER: Up 3/4 of a foot from Friday.

WAYNE CLOUGH: Steps down as Tech’s president to lead troubled Smithsonian.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT: Medical College of Georgia neuroscientist studies memory formation.

DEANGELO HALL: Trade to Oakland seems likely.

HOW ABOUT: Them Dogs. SEC championship, NCAA berth bolster Felton’s job security.

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The Athens Banner-Herald’s Blake Aued writes of a Classic City event on Thursday where scientists, academics and writers gathered to discuss global warming’s effect on Georgia. Their take: Even if we act now, we’ll still see drastic changes to our state, including an encroaching coastline, permanent drought, and perhaps the most frightening vision of all … we’ll be more like Houston.

This quote by James Porter, an ecologist at the University of Georgia, really stood. He was speaking about how scientists feel a sense of urgency the more they learn about global warming.

“I’m a heck of a lot less worried about terrorism than I am about carbon dioxide,” he said.

For CL’s take on what Georgia might look like globally warmed, click here.

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UGA-GEORGIA TECH GAME: Coach Chan Gailey’s “Kill the Bulldogs with kindness” game plan didn’t work out.

(photo by Joeff Davis)

The rancor wasn’t as overt as in 1893, when a mob of knife-wielding, rock-throwing Georgia fans chased the victorious Georgia Tech football team back to its train, but the bitterness both sides have accumulated over the last 114 years was palpable during the UGA-Tech game Saturday at Midtown’s Bobby Dodd Stadium.

Though their team lost 31-17 to their intrastate rivals, Tech fans refused to go quietly. When throngs of Bulldogs’ fans left their seats at halftime to watch the Kentucky-Tennessee game on the small TVs in the stadium concourses, Jackets’ fans interjected with repeated renditions of “Rocky Top.” Several Tech partisans even reached up and switched off the TVs. When Tennessee’s eventual victory, which knocked UGA out of SEC championship contention, was announced over the PA, Tech fans cheered. (Many more cheered today upon hearing of head coach Chan Gailey’s departure. Gailey was fired two days after losing his sixth straight game to UGA.)

Incidentally, the supercompressed jockeying for TV-viewing angles in the concourse was lousy for the blocked-off concessioneers, but it was a boon for stadium frotteurs. “This is the most action I’ve had all year!” one smarmy fan announced to those crowded around him.

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A new study shows American colleges and universities are abjectly failing when it comes to teaching students about our country’s history.

The Intercollegiate Studies Institutes gave a 60-question, multiple-choice test to 14,000 students at 50 institutions of higher learning across the country — including the University of Georgia and the Georgia College and State University.

Nationally, students scored a big, fat “F” on their knowledge of history, answering an average of 54.2 percent of the questions correctly. At UGA, scores were above the national average, though not by much. UGA students had an average of 57.76 percent, while Georgia College students had a dismal 43.68 average.

(The test is online and you can take it yourself; I scored a passing grade of 70 percent.)

Of the colleges that participated, Harvard students had the highest average, 69.5 percent. UGA was 17th on the list; Georgia College ranked 43rd.

What does this show? Are we now at the point where we’re essentially teaching kids to pass standardized tests? Is history even relevant and meaningful to kids in the Internet Age? (more…)

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A pep rally is in order.

Turns out my alma mater, Lassiter High School, the gem of east Cobb, is this year’s top feeder school to UGA. Go Trojans!

That a school of wealthy, largely white students sees fit to open its doors for even more wealthy white students is a point of pride at Lassiter.

From the AJC:

“That means we’re doing our jobs,” Lassiter Principal Chris Shaw said.

“Most of our students are born and raised here, and we do everything we can to prepare them.”

I don’t know this Chris Shaw guy (a fellow named Jimmy Carter was principal when I walked the hallowed halls), but I can vouch that these recent graduates will be fully prepared for the Athens scene — ready to attend as many football games or listen to as much Of Montreal as the curriculum requires.

(more…)

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Doug: We don’t know how to have fun and all we do is study, and that’s just not how it is. The difference between us and Georgia students is that we’re smart and still know how to have fun. They don’t have our style or our flair. And there’s everything to do in Atlanta. We have all the sports teams, the best places to go, the clubs. There’s nothing to do in Athens. They have bars. They party too much. We know how to balance it.

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Brooke: That we can’t interact with a lot of people. That’s a lie. I have a lot of friends, and we do things with a lot of schools and a lot of churches. With all our networking, we get a lot done. It’s a misconception that we don’t function socially. We make fun of ourselves a lot. But we have to spend a lot of time studying. We can’t just spend all the time partying. Our attitude is different. A lot of people [at Georgia] can be spiteful.

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Nik: People think we’re all nerds, but our campus is full of people who love football, who love sports. I’m a student from California, so Georgia Tech was one of the few schools in the country that had that perfect balance between athletics and academics — similar to schools like USC. We are smarter and better than those guys in Athens. We’re going to be their bosses one day and that’s all that matters. And we do have a lot of girls on campus. We get girls.

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The Department of Energy awarded the University of Georgia and the Georgia Institute of Technology, partnered with other research labs and universities, a cool $125 million over a period of five years for the development of one of three bioenergy research centers.

Says Alan Darvill, head of UGA’s team:

This research, which uses biotechnology approaches to reduce the high cost of processing plants into biofuels, has the potential to make ethanol a significant replacement for fossil fuels for this country’s future energy needs.

Read more.

Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman explained the center’s mission to the Associated Press:

These centers will provide the transformational science needed for bioenergy breakthroughs to advance President Bush’s goal of making cellulosic ethanol cost-competitive with gasoline by 2012, and assist in reducing America’s gasoline consumption by 20 percent in 10 years.

Read more.

The center will be based at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory at the University of Tennessee.

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