It is thundering, which means there is lightning. Accompanying them is rain. Two of those things are odd in January. They haven’t happened since … last January, apparently. So maybe it isn’t so odd. But it sure seems like it. The high today was 55, and it was overcast and that didn’t feel spring-like. But the lightning and thunder helps set the mood.
Can it be spring yet?
Spent a little time uploading 166 photos to Facebook last night. They are all older, pictures from the last 18 months, because I am a rebel when it comes to timeliness. All day people have been liking and tagging and commenting. My Facebook account has never been so successful.
Went to the gymnastics meet tonight. Auburn hosted and defeated Texas Woman’s University 194.875-189.825.
This was their opening meet of their season, at the Auburn Arena. I walked around a bit and strolled through the new “museum,” which isn’t as nice or complete as the old Lovelace facility was. I found this:
Those are the two trophies commemorating the first two Iron Bowls. The statue marked the second game. The cup, which has fallen from the perch just out of the top of the margin, celebrates the first victory.
I hope someone notices that and puts it back on the little display shelf. We’ll check back next week.
Yesterday I wrote here in passing about the documentary shot on Google Glass. Here’s the official site for Project 2×1, and their promotional trailer.
And, to wrap things up, the best 73 seconds of video you’ll watch tonight. Austin Hatch was in two plane crashes and lost his entire family between them. Now he’s back, finally, to basketball:
Austin Hatch says on Twitter is still planning to play for the Wolverines, making us all, for a time, Michigan fans.
Finally, How the NSA Almost Killed the Internet:
The hard-earned trust that the tech giants had spent years building was in danger of evaporating—and they seemed powerless to do anything about it. Legally gagged, they weren’t free to provide the full context of their cooperation or resistance. Even the most emphatic denial—a blog post by Google CEO Larry Page and chief legal officer David Drummond headlined, “What the …”—did not quell suspicions. How could it, when an NSA slide indicated that anyone’s personal information was just one click away? When Drummond took questions on the Guardian website later in the month, his interlocutors were hostile:
“Isn’t this whole show not just a face-saving exercise … after you have been found to be in cahoots with the NSA?”
“How can we tell if Google is lying to us?”
“We lost a decade-long trust in you, Google.”
“I will cease using Google mail.”
The others under siege took note. “Every time we spoke it seemed to make matters worse,” an executive at one company says. “We just were not believed.”
“The fact is, the government can’t put the genie back in the bottle,” says Facebook’s global communications head, Michael Buckley. “We can put out any statement or statistics, but in the wake of what feels like weekly disclosures of other government activity, the question is, will anyone believe us?”
Since it comes down to money and government contracts, no, probably not.
