The subject of the proposed Wildcat Coal Lodge, which may take the place of the Joe B. Hall Wildcat Lodge, which houses the UK basketball players, made its way to the Rachel Maddow Show. And Rachel and her guest, the sports editor for The Nation — you probably didn’t know The Nation had a sports editor — are among those who are less than thrilled with the idea. ( Best news is now I get to tag Rachel Maddow.)
Hat tip to Doc Purcell.
The Joe B. Hall name issue has the most merit. The rest of the arguments are just silly. Coal is a rock – not a company or an evil tycoon. Coal is still an economic force in Kentucky despite the desire to “green” our energy. I don’t care if it is run on solar power and called “coal.” In fact, I think that would wonderfully ironic.
Gee, class envy on MSNBC. Who’d've expected that?
Good job Dr Todd – now we are national jokes!
I don’t necessarily agree with Rachel Maddow much, but I must admit, this sets a poor precedent. If someone gives money to the University and they want to honor him or his family by naming a building after the donor, fine. But this seems more like a commercial. Not sure that belongs on a University campus.
I mean, taken to the silly extreme, what if the owner of Trojan Condoms donates money to UK, and demands they name one of the dorms, Condom Hall.
I hope UK says no to this demand.
Who CARES what Maddow thinks?? Her show is so low rated and only watched by far left wing nuts (not the regular nuts- the FAR ones). They will disagree with ANYTHING unless it fits their agenda.
It is time people stopped letting what they do be dictated by a very small group of people who think they know what we need.
First let me say that I am against renaming wildcat lodge. With that in mind, the majority of this man’s opinion is that industry and brand names will adorn college dorms. Last I checked, Coal isn’t copyrighted or trademarked. If in fact they were going to rename wildcat lodge the Speed stick lodge, then I doubt it would be garnishing national attention. Coal in itself is a controverial topic around the nation, and putting the Coal brand name and its Silky Smooth Electricity (phrase copyrighted 2009)on a dorm is the only reason the “sports editor” is talking about it.
It’s a bad idea to take Joe B Hall’s name off the dorm, but not for the reason’s this man stated. Industry and brands already sponsor so many college programs that his arguement is old news. (And he really needs to come up with his own jokes instead of taking them from Kentucky Sports Radio).
FYI: Maddow has viewers. More viewers than Larry King, at least last week. This from the New York Times’ Daily Politics blog:
For the first time, MSNBC’s “Countdown with Keith Olbermann” beat CNN’s prime-time highlight, “Anderson Cooper 360,” and Sean Hannity’s and Rachel Maddow’s programs both finished solidly ahead of “Larry King Live” in the prime-time hours.
The University wants a new residence hall. OK. The donors want the word coal in the name. OK. Traditionalists want to continue to honor Joe B. Hall with the name. OK. Instead of going with the crazy, Joe B. Hall Wildcat Coal Lodge, just keep it simple and name it Coal Hall. That should satisfy everyone.
I’ll say this one more time. Coal is not a company name. It is a rock found in the ground (in Ky, quite a bit of it). It is like naming the lodge after bluegrass, or limestone, or oak trees or catfish. Do companies sell bluegrass? Yes, in seed and sod forms. Limestone, oak trees and catfish? Yes. He isn’t asking for the company name – just the raw material that is later sold as a product by lots of companies.
The more I think about it, this is an interesting request in some ways. He is actually asking that a raw material that he (and lots of competitors) made money from be honored in the name. It is like Zales asking that a building it sponsored be called “Gold” or “Diamond” rather than the company name. Actually, diamond would be no good b/c coal can become a diamond.
is it just me or does the picture look like a bad Saturday Night Live sketch?
she might have more viewers than larry king but i have never heard of her until today.
Wow!! More people commented on this than watch MSNBC.
Maddow, Olbermann, and King – a triumvirate of morons.
Derek:
You can disagree with Rachel, but she has a Doctor of Philosophy in Politics from Oxford. They hardly give those out to morons. Try being a little more informed next time, champ. I’m ashamed to have the same name as you.
Rachel Maddow’s comments were far more interesting when she was a guest panelist arguing with one surly Pat Buchanon–or someone of his ilk– than now, when she has to manage an interesting talk show. She just doesn’t get it done–at least for me. And just what is her interest in the “Coal Lodge?” Obviously nothing more than to promote the environmental agenda. Her guest did bring up one interesting point, though. Joe B. Hall should not be disrespected in any way by the University nor the people of the Commonwealth. He was the perfect coach for UK during his time. He recruited fine players, was the first to really open up recruiting for black players in the Commonwealth as well as the region, extended the basketball program to the entire state, and maintained the program at the highest level. He was one of our finest coaches, and all UK fans need to remember that and appreciate the man.
HEY DEREK TOO: The reason Dr.Maddow is a moron is because she believes in the MYTH OF RENEWABLE ENERGY. Come on now DEREK TOO her PhD is in POLITICS. HEY DEREK TOO if you are not a moron you will be able to understand the comments below about the MYTH OF RENEWABLE ENERGY that the MORON DR MADDOW BELIEVES.
Pimentel is convinced, based on his research that when all fourteen types of energy inputs are included in the production of biofuels — especially ethanol from corn — that there is a net energy loss, not a gain, however modest, as others contend. He sees ethanol production as “relatively energy intensive.”
Pimentel is just a pessimistic about wood waste and switch grass, neither of which he contends are positive energy producers when compared to oil and gas.
The term “Renewable Energy” is commonly used these days and everybody seems to have a pretty good idea what it means or stands for. Instant associations of this term include solar power, wind power, hydroelectricity and perhaps biomass and biofuels. Renewable Energy is heralded as the saviour of our planet for a power hungry civilization who is currently burning fossil fuels to meet an ever increasing power demand. But is it true that we could go about business as usual, continue on the same road of ever increasing energy demand, if only we switched to 100% Renewable Energy? To answer this question, let’s go back to the basics of physics: consider, energy cannot be produced, generated, recycled or renewed. It can only be converted (from one state into another). However, every time we perform a conversion, it comes at a cost called entropy, which is a loss of useful or available energy. In thermodynamics, energy is made up of two components: entropy and enthalpy. Entropy is diffuse heat energy, many times associated with waste heat from mechanical or chemical processes and represents – to the largest extent – the useless component of energy that is unavailable to carry out work. Entropy is also associated with the level of disorder in a system. Enthalpy on the other side is the useful (non-diffuse) energy component that we can readily use to carry out work. Thermodynamics teach us that every time we use enthalpic energy (eg change it from a state of stored chemical energy into mechanical work) the total entropy of the system in which it occurs (our planet) increases. The larger the energy potentia, the larger is the amount of useful work we get from it. And here we are at the core of the problem: the entropy of a system (heat and disorder) increases over time as enthalpic energy is spent. This process is irreversible and forever reduces the usability of useful energy that remains. For this reason, fundamentally and despite popular believe, there is no such thing as “Renewable Energy”. Out of all sustainable energy initiatives available, the drastic reduction of our energy demand, also know as “demand side abatement” is the single most important one. If we continue to increase our energy consumption, even if we use “renewable” sources exclusively, we will necessarily also continue to increase the entropy, waste heat and resulting temperature in our planet’s atmosphere. Before we started burning fossil fuels, our planet was in good balance between the sun’s radiation absorbed and the heat earth re-radiated into space. This balance depends on many factors, including the gas composition of the atmosphere and cloud cover, however their individual roles and interdependencies in context with radiation absorbed and re-radiated are complex and still poorly understood. As we are running out of time to fix the problems associated with climate change, we cannot afford to take new chances and make assumptions about the safe and abundant use of “renewable” energies. Instead, we should take the more conservative view that we live on a planet with limited, finite resources, the use of which produces an ever increasing entropy. Since this process is irreversible, the best strategy for us is to reduce our energy consumption and thereby extend our lease.
Cornell professor Dr. David Pimentel’s address to the Sustainable Energy Forum’s 2006 Peak Oil and Environment conference.