Today’s challenge: to reorder the news to put the most interesting (to me) on top.

Dolphin finds one of Navy’s missing devices

Dolphins with frickin' laser beams on their flippers (Wikimedia Commons).

The front page of the Pilot should have carried the headline: NAVY DOLPHIN RESCUES ROBOT. Instead, we get some story about paying patients to take their medicine (yawn). This illustrates pretty clearly what’s wrong with our local print media outlet. Given the choice to report on a local story about a real live dolphin rescuing a real live robot, with all its potential for pathos, action and drama, they opt to deliver a bland health care piece, picked up from The New York Times.

A story about a dolphin rescuing a robot is worthy of a two-hour Hollywood action extravaganza. You’ve got compelling characters: the zealous but unpredictable dolphin, the sexy female trainer with a heart of gold, the skeptical general who doesn’t believe the animal can do it, the crafty and potentially malicious robot. You’ve got epic underwater action, with an entire military flotilla deployed to capture a robot. You’ve got a riveting search and rescue, and a happy ending. All the elements for a Pulitzer-prize-winner (or Academy Award) are there, ready to rock the front page like Phish at nTelos Pavilion. But no. The Pilot put this gem on page 3 of the Hampton Roads Section, as if it didn’t even matter.

They don’t even mention the dolphin’s name. Although we do learn that he (she?) is from San Diego.

Goin’ phishing in Portsmouth

Tonight the nTelos Pavilion in Portsmouth will host 7,000 fans of Phish, the exuberant jam-band from Burlington, Vermont. I’ll be taking the ferry, along with hundreds of other freaks and weirdos (I mean that lovingly) from Norfolk to Portsmouth tonight at about 6pm to join the invasion of Olde Towne, where thousands of hungry stoned people will be hunting for calories. I expect to wait in long lines no matter where we decide to eat.

Then we’ll wander over to nTelos and sit in the grass and groove with the Phishheads. Maybe it will rain. It will probably be hot. Either way, I plan to have fun like I’m 20 again. I’ll sway and sing along until the sun goes down, and end up lying on my back on a blanket with my head on my wife’s tummy, staring and the purple sky while the show rocks to a conclusion. In the end I’ll join the exodus that will sit in the tunnel for 45 minutes while the buzz from the show slowly fades to be replaced by the frisson of frustration in traffic. It’s going to be great.

New Speed Limit for Shore Drive

The 35MPH speed limit kicks in on Shore Drive today. I was a very small part of the movement that started arguing for this about 2 years ago. Real credit goes to Tim Solanic over at ShareShoreDriveDay.net, and the many other neighborhood activists who together lobbied the city to calm traffic on a street busy with pedestrians and cyclists, as well as cars.

The comments on the Pilot are full of grumblers who can’t be bothered to slow down a bit to protect the lives of legitimate road users, but it’s good to see some speaking up for the slower and more vulnerable people who walk and ride on Shore Drive. It’s an important reminder that going faster is not always progress–sometimes improvements come from slowing down.

Afr’Am Fest in payment dispute

This article requires a critical reading–the real story is in the subtext, not the text. The ostensible point of the piece is that the organizers of the Afr’Am fest in Norfolk are dirty deadbeats for failing to pay the off-duty police officers who worked the festival in May. The story appears to have been inspired by a call from the lawyers for the police officers who wanted the paper to publicize this injustice.

However, the way I read this, it’s actually Afr’Am Fest that’s getting jerked around by city, which appears to be trying to ruin their festival. Construction at Town Point Park moved them off of Memorial Day last year, the date which they had always held the festival and packed the park. This year a new regulation put in place by Norfolk City Manager Regina Williams banned events that charge admission on holiday weekends at Town Point Park, forcing Afr’Am to hold the festival on May 21-23. Not surprisingly, “attendance was sparse” at this year’s event.

Now the city is telling Afr’Am to stop charging for the festival altogether, to pick smaller acts, cut costs and stage a smaller event. What exactly is going on here? Afr’Am had been the second biggest annual festival in the city each year, behind only to the massive Harborfest. They had a working business model that involved charging admission for nationally known acts, for which thousands of attendees were willing to pay. The city keeps throwing up walls, forcing changes, and tearing this thing to pieces. This is starting to look suspiciously like a bias.

Norfolk is a city that needs to do way more, not less, to celebrate it’s black population. Afr’Am fest seemed like one of the few grass-roots efforts of the African American community that had started to gain some traction and grow into something noteworthy. It will be shameful for Norfolk if the city cannot reverse this tacit bureaucratic campaign against the festival and doesn’t help it, or at least allow it, to return to its former glory.

Norfolk moves to condemn last 4 spots for ODU project

The latest move by the Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority to condemn property for ODU is in response to a change in the national eminent domain laws that will go into effect after June 30. This deadline forced the city to move more quickly than it had planned so that it could take the properties under the current statute.

The result is that the two companies on the land, Norfolk Machine and Welding, Inc., and Norva Plastics, will be forced to sell and relocate sooner than they had wanted. The city will pay their relocation expenses, but I can certainly understand how this will be disruptive to their business. Overall, however, I’m happy to see the continued expansion of ODU.

McDonnell predicts budget surplus for 2010

Finally, there’s a very short piece about yesterday’s announcement by Governor McDonnell that he expects Virginia to achieve a budget surplus by the end of the year, instead of the $4 billion deficit that had been projected. That’s some serious cost cutting, and his fiscal prudence should be commended. Now I wonder, with teacher layoffs and grave reductions to school budgets, did he have to cut so much?

And finally finally, a nod to Dr. Evil, who would have been as thrilled as I am about today’s top story about the exploits of a cybernetically-enhanced marine animal.