December « 2014 « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

December, 2014

family / history / maps — Comments Off
18
Dec 14

70th anniv – My great-grandfather’s war

Seven decades ago he was there. Thirteen years ago we got an inkling of where he was and what he did. Two years ago I put this map together. And on this, the 70th anniversary of Tonice’s time in Europe as a combat medic, I’m doing a bit of revisiting of what the 137th Infantry Regiment did. We don’t know which company, or even which battalion, so this is only a regimental overview with some movements down to the company level.

So, then, for Dec. 18:

The 137th was ordered to resume the attack. The enemy was unable to stop the assault of our forces and was driven back to the rear edge of the woods.

The 2nd Battalion of the 134th Infantry, attached to the 137th Infantry, attacked the enemy at the edge of Reinneimerald Woods, on the 137th’s right flank, just south of Bebelsheim.

The Regiment was ordered to stop its attack at 1830 and to consolidate its positions on the most favorable ground. At the conclusion of the day’s operations the 2nd Battalion of the 134th was at the edge of Reinneimerald Woods. The 137th’s 1st Battalion was holding all of the Breiterwald Woods and a small patch of woods near Bannholz. The 2nd Battalion had elements in Bliesmengen and east of the town, while the 3rd Battalion was held in reserve at Neunkirch.

You can click all of the pins in the map below to see more of the unit’s day-by-day notes.

This information is derived from the unit history, found here and here and from this unit overview. Any errors are mine alone.

I do not know what is happening. / journalism / links / photo / running / things to read / Wednesday — Comments Off
17
Dec 14

There’s money big and small in this post

The view from my run this afternoon:

Today’s pace was 41 seconds faster than Monday’s run. I cut 4:07 of Sunday’s three-miler. Tomorrow I’m going to run at a different place, flatter, but with more boring views. I’m going to run farther, and probably slower.

We went back to Ulta today, the store I just learned about yesterday, because there was something there of a cosmetic nature we did not pick up yesterday.

Technology is great, not only does my phone time and map my runs and give me various breakdowns of the poor splits therein, it also gives me an excuse to stand near the front of the story and just scroll through things. I can give off the disinterested vibe without making anyone feel uncomfortable about their choices.

“Oh, no, not that blush, dear,” he never said to any stranger, “it will never work with your complexion.”

Things to read … because this stuff matches your tones.

The one everyone is talking about, Sony Pictures Cancels Holiday Release of ‘The Interview’ After Threats:

The film’s collapse stirred considerable animosity among Hollywood companies and players. Theater owners were angry that they had been boxed into leading the pullback. Executives at competing studios privately complained that Sony should have acted sooner or avoided making the film altogether. To depict the killing of a sitting world leader, comically or otherwise, is virtually without precedent in major studio movies, film historians say.

And some Sony employees and producers, many of whom have had personal information published for the world to see, bitterly complained that they had been jeopardized to protect the creative prerogatives of Mr. Rogen and Mr. Goldberg.

[…]

The multiplex operators made their decision in the face of pressure from malls, which worried that a terror threat could affect the end of the holiday shopping season.

That movie cost $44 million to make, but the losses directly stemming from Sony’s entire cyber nightmare are piling up much higher. Sony’s Very, Very Expensive Hack:

(T)he corporate hack seems likely to be among the most expensive of all time – up there with the 2014 Target breach (price tag: about $110 million), TJX’s 2007 hack (about $250 million), and Sony’s 2011 Playstation hack (about $170 million).

It’s still too early to know just how badly the hack might hurt Sony’s bottom line, especially given that the hackers keep on putting out new leaks and new threats. But some early estimates of the corporate damage have started to trickle out. And $150 or $300 million does not seem like a bad guess at the moment, meaning the hack might wipe out half of the Sony pictures unit’s 2013 profits.

Big federal money coming into UAB … UAB’s annual NIH funding up 20 percent:

The University of Alabama at Birmingham received $225 million in federal research funding from the National Institutes of Health during the 2014 fiscal year, which places the school 10th in NIH funding among public universities.

That total is up 20 percent from last year when UAB secured $188 million in NIH funding.

And smaller amounts, too … Meet the 5-year-old Ohio boy who sent his $1 allowance to try to save UAB football.

Rouble turmoil leads to Apple halting online sales in Russia:

The company stopped sales of its iPhones, iPads and other products in the country after a day in which the currency went into free-fall.

The rouble has lost more than 20% this week, despite a dramatic decision to raise interest rates from 10.5% to 17%.

By afternoon trade the rouble was flat with one dollar buying 68 roubles.

Its all time low, set on Wednesday, saw one dollar buying as many as 79 roubles.

Apple last month increased its prices in Russia by 20% after the weakening rouble left products in the country cheaper than in the rest of Europe.

That’s some serious volatility.

The amounts at play here are interesting. NowThis Media Raises Another $6M To Deliver Video News Stories In Less Than A Minute:

(T)he startup has become focused on “being a distributed media company and finding audiences where they live.” In other words, it’s less focused on drawing audiences to the NowThis mobile app and website, and more on finding viewers on social media.

Apparently the strategy is paying off — Mills said the company was seeing 1 million monthly video views as recently as early summer of this year, but it was up to 40 million monthly views in November. NowThis has also launched NowThis Studio, a division focused on branded content, and it acquired another startup, Cliptamatic.

That acquisition provided the foundation for a new platform called Switchboard, which is scheduled to launch early in 2015.

NowThis seems to work better in the app than in the browser, a good first step for social reach. I just watched four videos on it. Things move fast there. You get context, but not a complete story. There’s a fine idea there, and I’m looking forward to seeing how it matures.

family / history / maps — Comments Off
17
Dec 14

70th anniv – My great-grandfather’s war

World War II, Europe, the Battle of the Bulge and, today, the anniversary of the massacre at Malmedy, when Germans opened fire on 170 prisoners, killing more than 70 Americans.

Just over 100 miles to the south my great-grandfather was, probably, shivering. Tonice was a combat medic, but he never really told his family about his experiences. We learned at his funeral how he took off his field jacket one day in the coldest winter Europe could recall and gave it to another soldier. It could have been this day for all we know. It could have been every day. He was in the 137th Infantry Regiment, but we don’t know which company, or even which battalion, so this is only a regimental overview with some movements down to the company level.

So, then, for Dec. 17:

The 2nd Battalion was to drive to Bliesmengen and Bliesbalchen, and the 3rd Battalion was to continue on into the woods. 137th Infantry elements were fighting under the heaviest artillery fire they had ever experienced in France or Germany.

Elements of the 2nd Battalion fighting in Bliesmengen were faced by direct enemy tank fire, and other elements were pinned down all day. The enemy continued to shell the Regimental area regularly during the period. Frauenberg was hit very heavily again and again during the day.

Late at night the 3rd Battalion was relieved by the 1st Battalion.

View Tonice in the Bulge in a larger map
View Tonice in the Bulge in a larger map

This information is derived from the unit history, found here and here and from this unit overview. These markers are rough estimates and are meant only to be illustrative. Any errors are mine alone.

errands / iPhone / journalism / links / photo / things to read / Tuesday — Comments Off
16
Dec 14

Where I amend my reindeer antler policy

Enjoy the Glomerata post I put up earlier today? Have you been checking out the Battle of the Bulge map posts? I’ve got about two more weeks of those, tracing my great-grandfather’s time in Europe.

I woke up this morning and did one of my favorite things, which is sit with breakfast, or tea or both, and read. I got a lot of reading in this morning and then we did some paperwork errands this afternoon.

I drove The Yankee to Target and she picked up two shirts. We walked down the street to a store called Ulta, which is not missing an R from the sign. I’m not sure I knew this store existed until this afternoon, but then I’m so rarely on the cosmetics market these days.

We picked up grain and sourdough bread at the grocery store. I remembered we needed some eggs, so I hustled to the back corner and got the six-pack container. The first one I opened had a busted egg, which reminded me of my best poultry story. I told it to my lovely wife and the cashier at the front of the store. One of them found it funnier than the other, but they both smiled politely.

We saw this car. Now, ordinarily, I’m not a fan of the reindeer antlers, but I’m willing to change this stance. The rule now is this: if you put those things in your windows, you must commit to the giant red nose on the hood of your car.

We had a dinner guest tonight, one of our sweet friends who brought a soup and stayed for brownies and a movie and uses the word “assuaged” correctly. It was a lovely evening.

Things to read …

I remember waking up on this December morning in a full sweat. It was unseasonably warm. That afternoon we watched the F-4 tornado ravage Tuscaloosa, just 35 miles away, on television. That night, up the road in Birmingham, I drove home under the largest snowflakes I’ve ever seen in the South. It was a tragic and weird day. Celebration Of A Life Saved

Many of your remember this remarkable photo by Michael E. Palmer that was in the Tuscaloosa News, the day after the December 16, 2000 EF-4 tornado that killed 11 people. Michael Harris carries an unconscious Whitney Crowder, 6, through debris in Bear Creek Trailer Park after the tornado passed through. Whitney’s father and 15-month-old brother were killed in the tornado.

That post is two years old, when young Whitney was graduating from high school. It was a nice bookend to that tale.

So these two guys are political activists. They represent different parties and they are brothers. They were on C-SPAN to promote this documentary about the weird dynamic all of that creates. They got into a political name-calling debate and then the show started taking phone calls. Then … well, just watch and see:

This is worth a read. Former AP Reporter: I Didn’t Leave Journalism, It Left Me

A journalist for more than 40 years, Mark Lavie was based in Jerusalem for most of them and then in Cairo for two – during the “Egyptian Revolution.”

Lavie is no longer a journalist.

But he didn’t leave the profession, “it left me,” Lavie says.

Now Lavie is speaking out in as many fora as possible. He seeks to alert the public about the dramatic difference between what journalism used to be – and still pretends to be – and what it actually is.

Meanwhile, in Sweden, Advertisers Will Pay Up To 40% More For TV Sponsorship Deals Linked To Social Media, Says TV4

“It means that we need to work with story-telling on digital platforms, and that we need to engage and potentially also reward our users,” she said. “This is obviously very interesting for us, both from our perspective, and also from a commercial perspective, in terms of what we can offer our advertisers on these platforms.”

Lundell said that TV4’s experiments with extending linear TV formats into the social media sphere had shown that “you need to pay more than for ordinary sponsorship – and advertisers are prepared to do that. So, yes, we’re making money.”

The first thing I thought when she said “work with story-telling on digital platforms” was wondering why plots of scripted shows aren’t continued on other platforms. You already see supplemental webisodes of some of your more engaged shows, why not story arcs on Instagram?

First there was ESPN, the movie channels, last month it was CBS and now … Up To Speed: NBC to jump into live-streaming

This is solid. 5 tips for streaming live video from a smartphone

Livestreaming video from a mobile phone is a way for journalists to get footage which may not be possible to film with more traditional broadcast equipment.

“There are sometimes these stories where you don’t want a big camera crew, you want to try and keep a relatively low profile, in riots, in public disorder, or in places where you need to be sensitive,” Sky News correspondent Nick Martin told Journalism.co.uk.

“You can use that technology which is smaller and more compact to still get what you want to, but not [have] all the big crew considerations that we have.”

Media organisations such as ABC News have also started looking at mobile livestreaming as a developing part of their video programming.

For journalists who want to incorporate video streaming into their work …

As I told a colleague this evening, within the next year or two we’ll likely say if you’re not doing video with almost everything, you’re going to find yourself behind.

That’s why I spent the better part of my Saturday night building up video templates for future projects.

Glomerata — 1 Comment
16
Dec 14

Glomeratas

Back to the Glomerata section, where I share the covers of all of the yearbooks from Auburn, my alma mater. The one I’m showing you here is the 1904 edition. If you click this book’s cover you can see the 1910 Glom.

It always amuses me to realize we’re looking at a book that was leafed through more than a century ago.

In 1910 William Howard Taft had settled into the White House and Teddy Roosevelt was just beginning to wonder what his old friend Taft was doing. Johnny Mercer was born in late 1909 and Guglielmo Marconi won the Nobel Prize. That set the stage for a swiftly moving 1910. The Ottomans were losing their grip on empire. The first horror movie, Frankenstein, was released. Halley’s Comet appeared for the first time in 76 years and the first dirigible flew in Germany. The students would have read the news of Mark Twain’s death, but they couldn’t know that Sarah and Harry’s new baby in New York City, Arthur Jacob Arshawsky, would move generations of music lovers. Years later they’d settle in, though, and listen to Artie Shaw playing over their new radio.

There were 92 million people in the U.S. in 1910, an increase of 21 percent over the 1900 census data — a decennial rate, according to Wikipedia, which hasn’t been matched since. There were 2.1 million people in Alabama. Braxton Bragg Comer was the governor. He reformed the railroad system, child labor laws, boosted schools for white students and helped move the needle on state literacy. He did little for black Alabamians. He presided over a big local and state push toward Prohibition. This was a period when it was not illegal to possess alcohol in Alabama, but you could not purchase it.

The main agricultural building at Auburn is named after Comer. It was built in 1909, and rebuilt after a fire in the 1920s. That building is said to have housed more departments and academic units over the years than any other building on campus except Samford Hall. It got its start in a tough time for Auburn, university officials had just beaten back an effort to move the university to Birmingham. President Thach, who has been discussed in this space before, was successful in securing much needed money for the university, and that irked the people across the state at Alabama. It got nasty. And you thought that rivalry was all about football …