Winners

United States Navy Capt. Randall M. Hendrickson, who grew up in Marquette and graduated from Iowa State University, commands the U.S. Navy cruiser that shot down the disabled spy satellite above the Pacific Ocean last week. Hendrickson has been the skipper of the USS Lake Erie since 2006. Nice shot captain.

Former University of Iowa student Diablo Cody took home an Oscar Sunday night for “Best Original Screenplay” with “Juno.” While the rest of the world is caught up in only a segment of Cody’s past — that of her moonlighting role as a stripper while writing the hilarious memoir, “Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper” and her work as a phone sex operator — Cody has credited her time spent at Iowa for helping hone her writing chops.

Thanks to the financial contributions of the Iowa-based dental malpractice insurance carrier Professional Solutions Insurance Co., several area school-aged children will receive free dental care. The insurance company has funded a second Smile Squad Mobile Dental Clinic, a program sponsored by the Des Moines Health Center, a United Way agency that made its debut earlier this week at Brubaker Elementary School in Des Moines. The traveling clinic will visit approximately 30 schools per year in Dallas and Polk counties and provide onsite dental services to about 1,000 children who are referred for dental care. The custom-built RV is equipped with two state-of-the-art exam rooms, a digital x-ray machine and lab.

The Ankeny chapter of the American Culinary Federation (ACF) won the Central Region Chapter of the Year award earlier this month at the ACF’s national convention in Kansas City. The Ankeny group won for “its exemplary performance within the community and to the culinary industry over the past year,” contest officials said. The ACF, established in 1929, is considered to be the premier professional organization for culinarians in North America, with a membership of more than 20,000 people.

The Mid-Iowa Health Foundation (MIHF) will provide a record number of gifts in 2008 for several local non-profit programs and services. MIHF officials say they will provide 45 grants totaling $760,474 to non-profit agencies in central Iowa that support “vulnerable and underserved population,” including Hospice of Central Iowa’s Patient Financial Assistance, Orchard Place’s Child Guidance Center for Behavioral Therapy, the YMCA’s Trim Kids Program and Youth Emergency Services & Shelter of Iowa. Since its beginning in 1984, Mid-Iowa Health Foundation has awarded more than $14 million to more than 100 central Iowa non-profit groups.

Losers

In a battle similar to the VHS and Sony Betamax video wars of the 1980s, Toshiba said last week it will no longer develop, make or market HD DVD players and recorders, handing a victory to rival Blue-ray disc technology in the format battle for high-definition DVDs. Last month, Warner Bros. Entertainment announced it would join Sony Pictures, Walt Disney Co. and News Corp.’s Twentieth Century Fox in promising to release only Blue-ray movie discs that are backed by Sony and Matsushita (Panasonic) Cos. Both HD DVD and Blue-ray deliver crisp, clear high-definition pictures and sound, which are more detailed and vivid than existing video technology. They are incompatible with one another and neither plays on older DVDs players, but both formats play on high-definition TVs.

If you care, The Des Moines Register’s Susan Patterson Plank, vice-president of marketing and digital development, was interviewed last week on television [slow news day?], stating that the newspaper was dropping its daily television guide from its anemic Iowa Life section, but keeping its Sunday edition pullout guide. In place of the daily television listings, she promised more local content. But at last check, the space that normally occupied the listings housed a small “Tonight’s TV Best Bets” section and half-page house ads promoting The Register’s online dining guide and RAGBRAI apparel. So much for local content, eh? Looks like The Register has given its remaining customers one more reason to toss it aside by 8 a.m.

The Iowa Stars, the American Hockey League affiliate of the Dallas Stars, announced they will move to an Austin, Texas, suburb within the next few years, but that a new AHL hockey team might replace the Stars as early as next year. Let’s hope the next team finds a way to fill the empty seats — no matter how many are curtained off to make the place look fuller.

Gov. Chet Culver might have single-handedly killed the 1-cent statewide sales tax to pay for school construction last Friday when he announced he is open to allowing the money intended for schools to be spent on educators’ salaries and other educational needs. The tax money is now used to pay to build new schools and renovate old ones. People opposed to the sales tax have said for months that once the state got the money they would use it for whatever they wanted and not for school construction. Looks like they were right. CV

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