Good news! With a grant from the Maryland Energy Administration, Baltimore City has installed 9 electric car chaging stations in municipal garages, making it that much easier to own and drive one of those eco-friendly electric cars—like the Chevy Volt or the Nissan Leaf—around Baltimore. Okay, so those supercool jet packs we were all promised by the year 2012 haven't quite panned out, but this all seems quite futuristic and a very positive step for Baltimore.

Here's a list of the participating garages.

(Now if only they could figure out a way for my smartphone to keep its charge all day. . .)

Get the handkerchiefs ready because tonight is going to be a doozy on ABC's hit reality program Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. Pretty much every episode of the show, which provides dream-house level renovations to the dwellings of deserving families, elicits a tear or two, but tonight's show will hit particularly close to home. (No pun intended.)

Tonight's episode focuses on 24-year-old Kennedy Krieger Institute spinal-cord injury patient Brian Keefer, who lives with his family in York, PA. The staff at Kennedy Krieger play an integral role in the episode offering recommendations to the crew about what features to include in the remodel and were present on reveal day to see the end result. The show also filmed two vignettes at Kennedy Krieger, which may make it into the episode. 

We don't want to spoil the surprise for viewers, but if you're extra curious, you can find a lot of information on the project here. And don't forget to tune in tonight at 8 p.m. on ABC! 

The message boards at NPR are abuzz about yet another personnel brouhaha at the network. In a move that brings back memories of the Juan Williams fiasco, NPR questioned the ethics of radio host Lisa Simeone’s involvement with an Occupy D.C. group (as a spokesperson). Simeone, who lives in Baltimore and hosts the World of Opera and Soundprint shows, doesn’t technically work for NPR—she’s a freelancer—but that didn’t stop the network from posting the following message on its website last night…

We recently learned of World of Opera host Lisa Simeone's participation in an Occupy DC group. World of Opera is produced by WDAV, a music and arts station based in Davidson, North Carolina. The program is distributed by NPR. Lisa is not an employee of NPR or of WDAV; she is a freelancer with the station.

We're in conversations with WDAV about how they intend to handle this. We of course take this issue very seriously.

That sparked dozens of angry comments, most along the lines of “Shame on you, NPR.”

Simeone, for her part, blasted NPR in a lengthy statement, and soon after, it was reported that Soundprint had fired Simeone. There’s...

I don't know about you, but I spend a good chunk of my Monday mornings listening to Mike and Mike on ESPN Radio, waiting for the premier national sports radio duo to heap praise on the Ravens. Inevitably, I'm disappointed. (Unless they manage to always squeeze it in during the five minutes I'm in the shower, but the odds of them doing that this many weeks in a row is becoming increasingly long.)

Mike and Mike tend to prattle on about their favored teams, like the Philadelphia Eagles (where Mike Golic played), the New York Jets (Mike Greenberg's favored team), along with favored teams like the New England Patriots, Green Bay Packers and (inexplicably) The Dallas Cowboys. Other national sports outlets tend to overlook the Ravens as well. Baltimore's in a relatively small market and, though we're winning games, there's no good story lines, especially since we're primarily a defense-driven team.

But there comes a time each season when the Ravens have accomplished enough that people have to start...