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I got the chance to tour the Nussbaum Center for Entrepreneurship's new location on Elm-Eugene Street in the old Carolina Steel Building.

The renovations are n't complete just yet for a targeted June 8 opening date, but it's very impressive all the same.

Most notable about the new site, which was donated by D.H. Griffin Construction Co., is its visbility off a busy street.

It has a prominent, standalone profile that it lacks in the current location off Yanceyville Street.

It also has a number of features that should please present and future tenants.

The mean season is here.

Look no further than revelations of a super PAC’s plan to attack President Obama in a hard-edged campaign that evoked race and Jeremiah Wright and would have used a black conservative surrogate to help convey the message — “an extremely literate conservative African American.”

Thankfully, Mitt Romney today did the same as John McCain rightly did in 2008; he repudiated the strategy, which was being considered by TD Ameritrade billionaire founder Joe Ricketts, whose family also owns the Chicago Cubs.

I don’t hold out much hope, though, that this won’t be a long, ugly campaign with North Carolina on the front lines.

Ricketts said today that he joined Romney in rejecting the racially charged approach.
Sounds like damage control.

Meanwhile, brace yourself. Or find a cave somewhere.

With the power people like Ricketts have to spend all they want through super PACs, anything is possible.

The familiar sound of screeching tires and a sickening thud shook me from my afternoon routine today.

It occasionally does. My office faces East Market Street, which has its share of fender-benders. If I don’t see them, I hear them.

This one sounded worse than most. And it was.

I went outside to see.

A Jeep SUV had flipped over, I was told by a co-worker, and then back upright after a collision at Market and Church streets.

It rested in a beauty salon parking lot, with pieces of it strewn like bread crumbs along the pavement, including what had been the passenger-side mirror.

A crowd had gathered on both sides of the street.

Firefighters and EMS crews arrived in minutes and had to pry open the door to free the driver.

As the second of two fire engines arrived, a the driver of a passing car seemed to panic and didn’t stop. She sped through the intersection, almost grazing the big red truck.

Only minutes later, another thud, at the other end of the block, Market and Davie.

A black car apparently had run a red light and plowed into a red Chevrolet.

I could hear children crying.

The young driver of the black car, whose front end was mangled beyond recognition and dripped fluid onto the pavement, bent and stared at the ground. Then skyward.

“I can’t believe I did this,” he said.

Two women and a little boy and girl stood nearby. Both children were trembling and crying, but everyone seemed OK.

I couldn't say that for sure about the other accident.

A passerby already had phoned the police. He didn’t have to explain much. We were up the street from the first wreck.

The young man said he saw the blue lights ahead at the first accident scene and took his eyes off the traffic light. “I was thinking, I need to change lanes,” he told me.

I had held out hope that Facebook was a kindler, gentler place for community dialogue because the commenters actually reveal their names and faces.

Generally speaking, I still believe that's true.

But not all the time, as this exchange at Progress for Greensboro attests.

An aberration, I hope.

During my daily morning runs, I see many things I hardly notice from the car:

A pretty, brown-and-white cat that ducks into the manhole in front of my house.

Drivers still blithely running stop signs.

School kids trudging to the bus stop with bulging backpacks that seem weighted with bricks.

The house across the street that has been rendered lifeless and hollow by foreclosure.

There was once was a nice family living there, with two boys and a love of grilling on the deck.

Now there’s a unkempt yard and dark silence.

Neighbors take turns mowing the grass, though they’ve been told they’re not supposed to. But if they don’t, the place becomes overrun with tall weeds, dandelions and wildflowers.

The bank doesn’t seem to care.

A group of young people once pitched a pair of tents and camped overnight in the back yard. I guess they considered it an adventure.

Around the corner is another empty house with a ragged lawn that no one, so far, has bothered to cut.

The windows are plastered with terse, official notices, creating a bulletin board effect.

On the side of the house is a remnant of what used to be, a makeshift plywood booth with a hand-painted sign in big black letters across the top: “Alex’s Lemonade Stand.”

Wonder where Alex is now.

Most of the Amendment One signs are gone now, except for a few defiant light-blue ones against.

In the beginning, those signs far outnumbered their dark-blue rivals for the amendment, which passed Tuesday, and which mandates constitutionally that North Carolina recognizes marriage only between “one man and one woman.”

But over time, as more and more signs sprouted, the “pro” signs gained ground. Neighbors opposed neighbors. I wondered whether they talked about it while trimming hedges or picking up the mail.

A long, long time ago, I was an English and journalism major at UNC-Chapel Hill. But I do recall taking at least a pair of African American Studies courses.

Later, while in graduate school,  I taught an African American Studies course on the black press that was cross-listed with the School of Journalism.

I remember challenging and engaging faculty in those courses. You earned the grade you received and you were expected to work hard.

I remember strong leaders who helped build an African and Afro-American Studies curriculum into a full-fledged department.

That’s why it pains me so that a study of that same department, decades later, undercuts a proud tradition. It besmirches the department’s reputation. It disrespects the dedication of those who came before the current regime. It's beyond troubling.

An internal UNC investigation has found instances of academic fraud in no fewer than 54 classes offered by Department of African and Afro-American Studies. There were professors who didn’t show for classes, unauthorized grade changes and, incredibly, dozens of classes that lacked "instruction." (How does a class lack instruction?)

The investigation comes in the wake of the UNC football scandal and raises questions about the large numbers of athletes in those classes and whether they received breaks because they could catch a football or dribble a basketball.

The department head was removed last year after a well-publicized incident involving a football player in his class whose paper was obviously plagiarized. And not caught by that department head.

According to figures supplied by the university, football and men’s basketball players comprised nearly 40 percent of the enrollment in the classes that have raised suspicions of academic fraud.

In my day, there were always jokes among classmates about following the trail of athletes to find easy course, or "slides."

I think Botany 10 had that reputation, as did some Portuguese classes.

But dozens of classes in a single department revealed not only as possible havens for laxity but  outright fraud?

African and Afro-American studies programs already have to struggle for respect and legitimacy. This doesn’t help.

More from the N&O in Raleigh, including Roy Williams' reaction.

Google is testing its design for a driverless car.

Maybe that will the ultimate solution for texting at  the wheel.

It could have a ton of  other major implications: How would driver’s licenses work?

Could drivers blame their cars for infractions such as speeding?

How could police tell whether a car was driving itself or being driven manually in the case of an accident?

But first things first. It has to be proven to actually work.

So far, so good. Some of the cars are out and about in Nevada, which has issued the first license for one.
 

Former Mayor Bill Knight, who once declared that the city “should not be in the entertainment business,” is positively amped by the notion of a new performing arts center.

Knight, who has conducted personal research, including visits on his own to study the Durham Performing Arts Center, shared his ideas Monday morning with leaders of the group that is studying the feasibility of a similar facility in Greensboro.

Much of the former mayor’s presentation, which included handout hard copies of a Power Point document, summarizes facts his audience already knew — that DPAC not only has been an effective catalyst for top-notch entertainment and downtown growth in Durham, but it also is making a profit in the process.

But what was more interesting was his conclusion that Greensboro might be able to replicate that success.

Knight especially like Durham’s operating model for DPAC, which involves the city owning the building and a private company operating it. The two entities split the profits.

“If they can do it, why can’t we do it?” he said.

He did raise some concerns:

From where would a Greensboro performing arts center draw its audiences?

Can voters be assured that they would not have to incur the "development and operating costs"?

But Knight’s enthusiasm is still noteworthy. He seemed an unlikely supporter for this project.

“I wish you well,” he said after concluding his remarks. “And I appreciate what you’ve done.”

We’ll soon see how the rest of the public feels.

A consultant will report on the Performing Arts Center Task Force’s findings on May 15.

It will file a final report on June 26.

Having been declared the world's Most Beautiful Woman, Beyonce has now won ... a journalism award?

Like Kanye West on Taylor Swift, some very surprised members of the journalism profession (who don't sing and dance in their day jobs) were not impressed. Richard Prince of  the Maynard Institute reports.

I'll have to read her award-winning essay for Essence magazine before weighing in. But, to be honest,  I'm suspicious.

This is not helpful in the Amendment One debate, if it's true.

What's more troubling is Jodie Brunstetter's awkward explanation of her use of the word "Caucasian" in discussing the amendment to poll workers.

In what context did she use it?