The Red Cross board particularly acknowledges the following:

·       Dan Sisson and AT&T whose monetary support allowed us to give each donor a t-shirt.  The AT&T and Benedict College logos appeared on the sleeve of each t-shirt and other marketing materials.

But most of all, thanks to all the donors — each and every one of them is making a difference.

Tomorrow, Groundhog Day, there will be another community blood drive at the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center.

I can’t give, because it’s too soon after the last time. But you probably can. And of course, since I can’t do it this time, they’re giving away cool free stuff:

• A free American Red Cross Lifesavers t-shirt

• A free pound of Starbucks coffee

• A chance to win a pair of Delta Air Lines tickets

OK, so I’m jealous. But truth be told, last time around I managed to get my mitts on two rather nice long-sleeved T-shirts.

But the best reward is knowing that you’ve addressed the chronic shortage of life-giving blood in the Midlands.

The event will take place from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. To make an appointment, call 1-800-733-2767.

Tell them I sent you — in my place.

– Brad Warthen

Hope the folks at ADCO are happy to see “Famously Hot” everywhere. Good work that I think will pay dividends for years to come. Merry Merry!

Yes, we are — happy, that is. And it’s great to know that the mayor joins us in celebrating the success of Famously Hot!

We much appreciate the two shout-outs we got from Kelly Barbrey Wednesday at the Hospitality Hotspotters meeting, giving us credit for helping the community come up with the “Famously Hot” campaign.

We’ve been greatly gratified by the wide acceptance the campaign has achieved, from social media to major local events to common, everyday conversation in the Columbia area.

But even we were not quite prepared for this photo that Kelly flashed on the screen at the gathering. It was taken at Williams-Brice Stadium during the USC-Georgia last year.

So now we have the key bodypainters demographic on board. Wow. We’ve achieved acceptance with every group now.

We’ve never felt validated with such … enthusiasm… before.

And now we can celebrate the wide acceptance of the campaign (which was created by guess who) at the official Famously Hot New Year’s Eve party:

Get excited because this New Year’s Eve, the biggest, most exciting event in the Southeast is the Famously Hot New Year celebration on South Carolina’s Main Street in the heart of Columbia, South Carolina. This is not your grandmother’s family get-together, unless of course, your family likes to party. With beer, wine, and champagne vendors, an ESPN Zone playing the college bowl games, a Palmetto Tree and Crescent moon display during the midnight countdown, and Rock and Roll Hall of Famer, George Clinton, and his group the Parliament Funkadelic headlining, this is a one-of-a-kind celebration you will not want to miss. Plus it’s FREE!

See you on Main Street in 19 days…

AT&T employs 2,477 people in South Carolina, with a payroll of $173 million. Not to mention handling all those billions of texts.

Today, ADCO’s Brad Warthen visited the nerve center of it all, the very synapses that handle 90 percent of AT&T’s wireless traffic in South Carolina. Where was that? Well, he can’t tell you. That was a condition of going there. Very hush-hush.

AT&T’s Pam Lackey and other officials had invited a number of media and economic development types out to let the community know that the company has spent $125 million this year in SC to improve wireless service, including new cell sites and the upgrade of dozens of others. For instance, Forest Acres should see improved service from a new cell site at Trenholm Road and North Beltline. Meanwhile, 60 towers in Richland County have been upgraded with “enhanced backhaul connections,” which has to do with enabling 4G speeds.

AT&T was showcasing its processing power today because increasingly, that’s what it’s about, explained Laurent Therivel, AT&T’s vice president and general manager of Mobility & Consumer Markets for North Carolina and South Carolina. Consumers are less interested in, say, how many songs they can store on a device; they want to make sure they have a good connection to Pandora. Even such apparently device-specific functions as Siri are all about the network. Smart as she is, if you don’t have a good network, Siri can’t think.

What made the biggest impression on Brad, aside from the fact that AT&T is really serious about enhancing customer service? This: The whole thing runs on batteries.

Really. At  one point, he was in this room that was like all the others, except a little chillier and darker. But the stacks of electronic paraphernalia in that room consisted entirely of batteries rather than high-tech switching equipment. Basically, the idea is that it doesn’t matter whether the grid is working or backup generation, so long as the batteries get recharged. If there’s an outage, the network never knows the difference.

That’s one way to make sure the call — or text, or data — always goes through.

Last night, I saw “Back to the Future” for the first time in many a year. And I had to smile at the end. In 1985, it was still credible that we’d have flying cars in 2015. The shocking thing is that that leaves us only four years now. Well, at least it doesn’t take laying down much infrastructure, so I suppose it is conceivable (especially if we’re fueled by a Mr. Fusion).

But today, I saw something that is more likely to be our future — a plug-in electric car. In routine use.

I was visiting Mike Couick over at the Electric Cooperatives of South Carolina in Cayce. As it happens, we were talking about sustainable energy (ADCO is working with the Central Midlands Council of Governments and a couple of private partners on a project for local governments). And when we walked outside after the interview, there was some right in front of us.

This Nissan Leaf belongs to ECSC, and is used to drive around the state on co-op business, which surprised me — I assumed it was for local use. How does it manage that sort of range? Mike said all the co-ops have charging stations.

Very cool, I thought.

Mike reminded me that this was really sort of retro, since the original automobiles were electric, before the internal combustion engine decided to eat the world (my wording, not his).

With that in mind, I can’t wait to get back to the future and drive one of these myself. And I’ll pass on the gullwing doors, Mr. DeLorean.

– Brad Warthen

Aerospace company lands in Orangeburg County

Aerostructures North America will open a new aerospace components assembly facility in the 150,000-square-foot Miller Valentine speculative building, located at 348 Millennium Drive, Orangeburg.

GKN South Carolina plans to create 278 jobs and invest a minimum of $38 million over the next six years.

The U.K.-based company’s plans were announced today after Orangeburg County Council approved a set of incentives for the new aerospace manufacturer Monday night.

Initially, the facility will perform assembly operations for a composite fuselage for Honda’s new HondaJet, a light business aircraft. GKN was awarded the HondaJet contract on Nov. 14…

“Over the longer term we expect the new site to serve a range of aerospace customers on assembly tasks across civil and military aviation,” Cummings added.

One of those customers is Boeing Co., which last summer opened a final assembly facility for the wide-body Dreamliner 787 passenger plant in North Charleston, about 70 miles from GKN’s new Orangeburg site near the intersection of Interstate 26 and U.S. Route 301.

GKN Aerospace is responsible for a number of components on the 787, including the plane’s acoustic exhaust and lightweight thrust links, according to an earlier press release on the company’s website…

More and more, we in South Carolina are finding ourselves up in the air. And that’s a good thing.

On Monday, the Riley Institute’s Diversity Leaders Initiative class in Charleston contemplated the above, short-lived, Intel print ad. The class is filled with experienced South Carolinians who have seen a lot, but their minds were fairly boggled by this.

See if you can find, without Googling the controversy, how many ways the ad is racially offensive.

No, there’s no right answer, but ADCO’s Brad Warthen, a participant in the class, came up with three. With more time, perhaps he’d have come with more.

Intel withdrew the ad — which appeared in a Dell catalog — and apologized. Not surprising. What is surprising is that this thing ever actually found its way into print.

On this clip, you hear the very first thing Cameron Runyan said Wednesday after Columbia Mayor Steve Benjamin endorsed him for the at-large seat on city council in the April 2012 election.