Good Morning, RVA: Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!

It’s a chilly Monday morning.

October 6, 2014; 7:01 AM • by Ross Catrow

Photo by: Creativity+ Timothy K Hamilton

Good morning, RVA! It’s 47 °F right now, but by the time you pack up and head home this afternoon, the temperature will have climbed almost 30 degrees into the mid-70s. Bring a coat, but don’t forget it on the coatrack this afternoon.

Water cooler

Four Virginia breweries took home medals at this past weekend’s Great American Beer Festival. Devils Backbone won four medals, including a gold for their (absolutely delicious) Schwartz Bier. Hardywood, the only RVA brewery to medal, brought home a gold in the American-Style Fruit Beer category for their Raspberry Stout.

The RTD has a rad story about James River Hikers’ plan to build a boardwalk over the mud pit you have to cross to get to Texas Beach. You know the one, at the bottom of the stairs? Anyway, the rad part is that they plan to use a bateau to get the heavy materials to the worksite.

WTVR gets the quote we were all thinking about when we heard the open-carry gun loonies would be “marching” through Church Hill. From resident Dean Starook: “What are they trying to educate us about? We know about guns. Why don’t they go walking through Windsor Farms or some other wealthy neighborhood? We don’t need this.”

A twelve-year-old boy was sent to the hospital after he was shot while ridding his bike. A nearby argument between two men spun out of control when one of them pulled out a gun and began shooting. The boy was shot in the crossfire.

Sports!

• Nats lost the first two games of the series against the Giants this weekend. They’ll try to save the season today at 5:07 PM.
• Hokies cruised to a victory over UNC, 34-17, despite injuring all of their running backs in the process.
• Wahoos continued their winning ways (a weird thing to say), beating Pitt, 24-19.
• Washington faces the Seahawks tonight at 8:30 PM on Monday Night Football.

This morning’s longread

Why I Just Asked My Students To Put Their Laptops Away

A professor at NYU a writes about his new policy to ban laptops and devices from the classroom. The bit about the “second-hand smoke effect” is super interesting.

Over the years, I’ve noticed that when I do have a specific reason to ask everyone to set aside their devices (‘Lids down’, in the parlance of my department), it’s as if someone has let fresh air into the room. The conversation brightens, and more recently, there is a sense of relief from many of the students. Multi-tasking is cognitively exhausting – when we do it by choice, being asked to stop can come as a welcome change.

This morning’s Instagram

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October 6, 2014 7:01 AM 0