I wanted to ride this morning, but Monday mornings race by and this morning needed to linger a bit. Besides, it had rained and … OK, maybe I didn’t want to ride this morning. I was a bit sore last night, actually, aching in places I haven’t in a good long while. And that’s probably the perfect reason to clip in.
Also I need to find out where the guy in the neon yellow jacket went yesterday. I turned onto one road behind him, met a cyclist heading the other direction and decided to overtake the guy in the loud jacket.
What if the cyclist going the other way turned around? He should see me put this guy between us so he can, naturally, destroy me with ease, I thought.
And then I realized where I was.
I could pace and pass this guy, but I struggle on the next hill and he’ll get me back there. That would be embarrassing.
So I decided to close the distance, but not force the issue. At the next intersection, from about 40 yards back, I watched him turn left. When I made the intersection — going straight — I glanced after him but he was gone. That was impressive. Or he might be missing out there somewhere.
That was yesterday’s 32 mile ride. Today damp asphalt and things to do kept me inside.
Class today. The conversation was led by a group discussing online media. One of the guys was controlling every computer in the room and a low-orbit satellite from his iPad. He was a good choice for this topic and, as usual, it was a great job. I have very sharp students.
I’m also buried in a spreadsheet. And I have a stack of things to grade, a few more phone calls to make. I have plenty of school work to do. So this is brief.
Things to read: Sustainability consultant tours good and bad of Birmingham:
Hopping aboard a bike, former Bogota, Colombia, Mayor Enrique Penalosa took a six-mile ride through the good, the bad and the ugly of Birmingham in advance of today’s Sustainable Smart Cities Conference.
After biking through depopulated portions of Titusville and Elyton, marred with abandoned and burned-out houses and grim housing developments, Penalosa was aghast.
“What I saw today was one of the most depressed areas I have ever seen,” he said.
He suggested that residents in the sparsely populated areas be bought out to make way for a “crazy” project
When a mayor of Bogota is telling you your business …
Mitt Romney Remembers Things That Happened Before He Was Born!:
Romney recalled he was “probably 4 or something like that” the day of the Golden Jubilee, when three-quarters of a million people gathered to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the American automobile.
“My dad had a job being the grandmaster. They painted Woodward Ave. with gold paint,” Romney told a rapt Tea Party audience in the village of Milford Thursday night, reliving a moment of American industrial glory.
The Golden Jubilee described so vividly by Romney was indeed an epic moment in automotive lore. The parade included one of the last public appearances by an elderly Henry Ford.
And it took place June 1, 1946 — fully nine months before Romney was born.
I love false memory stories, and only partly because the earliest memory I can muster (and that’s a good word) is, when I describe it to my mother, something that can’t possibly have happened.
If Romney isn’t cynically pandering with the idea that no one would bother to cross-reference the dates, this is a simple mistake. Of course no mistake on the campaign trail is simple. And this story, which is far more likely Romney’s re-telling of a story he heard in his family his entire life, is probably just a planted memory. Sometimes you can’t win for losing.
Jeff Jarvis at his best, Leave our net alone:
The internet’s not broken.
So then why are there so many attempts to regulate it? Under the guises of piracy, privacy, pornography, predators, indecency, and security, not to mention censorship, tyranny, and civilization, governments from the U.S. to France to Germany to China to Iran to Canada — as well as the European Union and the United Nations — are trying to exert control over the internet.
Why? Is it not working? Is it presenting some new danger to society? Is it fundamentally operating any differently today than it was five or ten years ago? No, no, and no.
So why are governments so eager to claim authority over it? Why would legacy corporations, industries, and institutions egg them on? Because the net is working better than ever. Because they finally recognize how powerful it is and how disruptive it is to their power.
Jarvis was the president of Advance Internet during much of my time with the company.
Friends of local Auburn legend Johnny “Mr. Penny” Richmond hold impromptu vigil:
Cards and flowers were left and candles were lit at the corner of Dean Road and Samford Ave. tonight in honor of a hero.
Johnny Richmond, affectionately known as Mr. Penny by students at Dean Road Elementary School where he worked for 37 years as a custodian and crossing guard, suffered a self-inflicted gunshot wound Monday morning, according to Auburn police. News outlets have backed off earlier reports that Richmond later died from his injuries, and as of 9 p.m. Monday list him as being on life support.
I wrote the next piece, the short, just-in-case bit of copy that you hope never has to run. Right now he’s hanging on. He’s seemingly one of those people that you can’t find anyone that has anything remotely to say about him. This is Mr. Penny:
Jeremy did that interview in 2011, after the community rallied to raise money to send him and his wife to the BCS National Championship game. We live in a great place.
