It seems I did not take the first picture this week. I took quite a few, actually, but they’re earmarked for later display on the site, so I don’t have any pictures for this space.
So I’ll just look at the stats and pull the most popular images that you’ve viewed this month. In order of popularity, then:
Playing in the yard on a beautiful January afternoon:
Catching the light just right — not bad for the phone, riding in a moving car:
The Cateye on my bicycle:
The least viewed shot I’ve uploaded this month:
Not missing much there, are you?
We went on a great ride this afternoon. The sun was out, the air was just on this side of being warm and everything was perfect. I took The Yankee out of town and into the next community over, through their downtown and then out the back into the countryside.
We rode on a road that absolutely had an uphill gradient, but it felt like I was going downhill with legs and speed to spare in my highest gear. At the end of that road we were almost at the halfway point. It felt like that halfway point of the roller coaster too, because after that stop sign you drop about a 150 feet in three tenths of a mile. Again, these aren’t real ascents and descents we have here. But I may have been speeding, so they’re real enough.
Anyway, by the time I’d meandered my way home on a not-so-direct route I’d accumulated 36.5 miles on the day. As I said on Twitter I looked, once again, like a guy pretending to be a poor cyclist rather than a guy with a bike. So top form! It all felt great, right until the end. I guess I can start putting a few more miles back into the routine, then.
Had Italian for dinner at a place called Ma Fia’s. So clever! The way they made that play on words! Good stuff for small town Italian, though. We’ve been there twice now and have enjoyed both trips.
Finished up a few projects after dinner. Got everything together for tomorrow’s first day back in class. And now I’m going to go ignore the protests of my dead legs.
Still just a guy being pulled around by a bike, then. Heh.
“This is fun when they play well,” The Yankee said. And, indeed, it was. A struggling Auburn basketball team had a nice game going against the visiting 23rd ranked Ole Miss team. They started out with a 9-0 run, and had another nice stretch to extend an early lead.
The Rebels, though, are not pushovers. They fought to within two at the half. It stayed close in the second half, with only three lead changes and no lead greater than five points for either side.
Auburn struggled from the field, shooting just 37 percent. But, then, they’re only shooting 41 percent on the season. They finally had a strong night at the free throw line, and this was the difference in the game. Where Auburn shot 15 of 19 at the stripe Ole Miss, after 39 minutes and 54 seconds, a terrible 2-of-15.
And so with six seconds left and the scored tied Auburn was called for a foul. Mississippi’s best player, who was having a lousy night, walked to the line and dropped two shots: 63-61, final, Mississippi.
Our friend Kim said it best:
The company of good friends is always better, even if the basketball was entertaining for 39:56.
I think I spent pretty much the entire (non-cycling portion of my) day planning out classes. The exotic life I lead sometimes, I tell ya.
The best part about it is that it becomes a multi-directional puzzle. What can I do on what day for logistical purposes? What part of DEF needs to wait until ABC has been concluded? After a while it all starts to fit together nicely.
The frustrating part is that I know, I just know, there will be something I’ll miss or forget or write up incorrectly. I won’t catch it until after the class starts. C’est la vie.
Classes start back on Monday, hence so much time on it all this week. I’m on a quest to make a wonderful experience for the students. Hopefully it gets a little bit better every time I teach this particular class. I think I’ve removed most of the busy work and refined the most confusing parts. Now I just have to add in some more extra material. There can never be enough work, he thinks to himself.
And now the correspondent will share two stories bearing no resemblance to one another.
The Alabama Department of Homeland Security confirmed there has been a hacking attack on state computers but declined to describe the scope or severity of the intrusion.
A spokeswoman said the incident was still under criminal investigation.
“The Alabama Department of Homeland Security acknowledges that there has been a cyber-intrusion of state government IT infrastructure. It is currently under criminal investigation and at this point there will be no additional comments,” according to a statement issued by the department.
It is not immediately known which agencies were involved or if any state records were compromised.
First, isn’t this what the state Department of Homeland Security — and aren’t you glad they put that office into motion? — is supposed to prevent? Their public mandate is “Working to prepare for, prevent and respond to terrorist activity within the state.” So maybe not. It is unclear if these were terrorists. But the meaning of that word has become fluid in the modern age. You know know what else isn’t clear? The way the reporter wrote the story, “It is not immediately known” suggests that maybe the state officials don’t know what was compromised. Of course it means “the state officials aren’t tell us who got hit,” but still. Maybe it is their job to protect against all threats, foreign, domestic, terrorist and baud modem. Maybe it isn’t their job. Maybe they should just unplug all of the computers when they go home at night.
I’d write more about the state Department of Homeland Security but, as of this writing, their site seems to be down. Vexing.
Meanwhile, in Wisconsin, there’s a sheriff many people would vote for: Wis. sheriff urges citizens to get gun training. Part of Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke Jr.’s new radio campaign:
“I need you in the game,” he says.
“With officers laid off and furloughed, simply calling 911 and waiting is no longer your best option,” he adds. “You can beg for mercy from a violent criminal, hide under the bed, or you can fight back. … Consider taking a certified safety course in handling a firearm so you can defend yourself until we get there.”
The ad has generated sharp criticism from other area officials and anti-violence advocates. The president of the Milwaukee Deputy Sheriffs’ Association, Roy Felber, said it sounds like a call to vigilantism.
“That doesn’t sound too smart,” Felber said. “People have the right to defend themselves, but they don’t have the right to take the law into their own hands.”
I’m not exactly sure about the straw Felber is standing on. If you conflate protecting your family and vigilantism, there’s not really much point in even locking your doors, right? Here’s the sheriff’s actual ad:
I’m sure he’ll be a hit on Fox News before the weekend is over.
You know, it is Friday. We haven’t done this in a while. Here, then, is the impromptu return of YouTube Cover Theater, the segment where we discover the amazing talent of people sitting in their homes with an instrument, a camera and an Internet connection. This week’s covers will feature the great Same Cooke.
My favorite part of this one is where she gets a little frustrated with the bridge. And also the light and sound in the room. Also, the cover is pretty great:
Some guy laid all of that tile in this kitchen and never guessed it would be seen online more than 70,000 times. But you get a good sense of why:
I always thought this song worked better as a harmony. The ragged parts in this version help it, too. A lot of fun for what is, presumably their first try at it:
(I don’t think it was the first time they tried it, but it is a nice idea.)
Here is a panorama of the historic Auburn train station. Click to embiggen in another tab:
Lot of history in that joint. Jefferson Davis reviewed the Auburn Guard there as he was on his way to his inauguration at Montgomery. That was, apparently, the first presidential review in the Confederacy. This is also the place where students sabotaged Georgia Tech’s football team in 1896:
The Wreck Tech parade, and the pajamas, date back to their first football meeting in 1896 where legend has it that the A.P.I. students snuck to the train station under cover of darkness and greased the tracks. The train couldn’t get stopped at the station and the Tech players had to walk some five miles back to Auburn to get their 45-0 beating.
And by the rails, a self portrait at the first sign passengers would have seen getting off the train:
A closer view of a font you’ll never see again:
These shots were part of a brief ride today. I got other pictures today, so the marker series will return next week. That’s progress.
Nothing about the ride felt very good today, though. Nothing about me felt very confident of myself. Just a lousy ride. But I also found an incredible curve I had to slow down through, lest I wind up in the trees. And then I had to ride through a big neighborhood disagreement that involved at least five police officers, two of which I almost hit on my bike because they didn’t look both ways before crossing the street. One of those days.
Here’s a sunset over Agricultural Heritage Park, with the intramural field in the background to the right:
I am not sure where today went. I’m going to blame the emails, literally hunders of them, that I wrote today. Also there was reading materia. Reading my material and then reading for a class I’m teaching. Somehow the day disappeared.
Some inside the network argued that its reporters — who had initially been put onto the story by Tom Condon, Te’o’s agent — had enough material to justify publishing an article. Others were less sure and pushed to get an interview with Te’o, something that might happen as soon as the next day. For them, it was a question of journalistic standards. They did not want to be wrong.
Bless those hearts full of integrity. What’s that ESPN? Yet another bizarre update in the bizarre story? OK:
A source close to Te’o gave ESPN’s Jeremy Schaap documents that the source says are Te’o’s AT&T phone records from May 11 to Sept. 12, the date that the woman was supposed to have died. The logs are not originals, but spreadsheets sent via emails, and could not be independently verified.
They re-wrote it, but I recorded the original passage on Twitter. The earlier version said “Their veracity couldn’t be independently confirmed, but the source insisted they are genuine.”
The source insisted. In a story about hoaxes. Journalistic standards.
Five years after the start of the Great Recession, the toll is terrifyingly clear: Millions of middle-class jobs have been lost in developed countries the world over.
And the situation is even worse than it appears.
Most of the jobs will never return, and millions more are likely to vanish as well, say experts who study the labor market.
Finally, A 1951 home recording from Hazel Street. Kim and Herb are celebrating 25 years, and all of their friends recorded a message on a Wilcox-Gay Recordio.
That’s via James Lileks. And since he didn’t, I’ll wonder why it is that this recording fascinates in ways 60 years from now that nothing we produce on Instagram or Pinterest or anywhere else won’t in 2075.
Here’s Bill Wagner, a coal man, who — think about this — was about to hear his recorded voice for the first time ever.
Here’s a raucous group sing:
Here’s evidence that teenaged girls have giggled for generations. This song is from 1935, the first country song by a female artist, Patsy Montana to sell more than one million units. So maybe this was recorded by amateurs now lost to history in the 40s or 50s.
Here Albert is recording a message in California for friends or family back home in the midwest during World War II:
Those were all thrift store finds. This one is a family heirloom:
There are at least several dozen of these on YouTube. I could listen to them all day.
