More open than DC

Someone wrote this on the floor-to-ceiling chalkboard in the Samford Crimson’s newsroom.

chalkboard

Lately the board has been filled with non sequiturs, cryptic notes or jokes. That’s fun. I’ve always wanted to draw football plays on it. One day I’ll quote some 13th century Chinese philosopher and see if anyone notices.

The government shut down. In pieces, full of the nonessential types, which are surely made up of people who find themselves and their salaries essential. You wonder how long the thing will last this time. You recall the 1990s and how a lot of people didn’t seem to notice. You wonder how long it would take for some of those unfortunate nonessential types to be considered truly nonessential.

But if there is one place that jobs aren’t fungible, you know where that is.

All that could be said about the government shutdown has been said elsewhere, or is perfectly capable of being digested in 140 character increments on Twitter, or tuned out with The Million Second Quiz. Mileage may vary, of course. I’m pretty certain we’ll come to the conclusion that no one is playing their parts especially well.

I swam 1.33 miles tonight, 2,400 yards.

I do not know what is happening.

It started out poorly. Oh, it ended raggedly, too, but at least it improved a touch. The first 400 yards, though, were such that I was questioning pretty much every decision of the day. I hadn’t slept enough. I hadn’t eaten enough. I shouldn’t have walked over to the pool. I shouldn’t have deleted that spam email about arm replacements and on and on. I started bargaining with myself about when I would hang it up, because this wasn’t a pleasant experience.

After a time, though, the laps started ticking off and the weak feelings disappeared.

I improved my freestyle. For the first 1,800 yards I was doing 150 in my tadpole breaststroke and then 50 free. In the last 600 yards I was doing 100 in the fake stroke and 50 free. So, over the course of the swim, that worked out to 650 yards of freestyle. Which, I guess, means I have to learn how to swim now.

Remember, this summer I couldn’t swim more than four or five strokes of freestyle, so this is grand progress.

Things to read which I found interesting today.

Wearable Computers Could Make Steep Inroads into Farming, Experts Say

Does the right to “inspect” public records include the right to Instagram them?

College football attendance drops 3 percent in opening month

Inside Nairobi’s Devastated Westgate Mall

I put this on Tumblr. There’s more stuff there you can scroll through. Find me on Twitter, too.

And now I’m being summoned into the newsroom … so until tomorrow, then.

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