Friday « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

Friday

A brief one

Late in the day I got out for a little bike ride and found myself on a bad road. Six miles from home and everything in my shoulder locked up again. So, about that idea of a journal, one of the stimuli may be physical tension. I’d just spent a bit of time with my elbows locked, and my scapula pinched, after all.

In the last month or so I’ve just gotten mentally tired of the entire thing. I can’t explain it, but when it hurts it feels like it all hurts differently.

So I continue to do my exercises because I’m otherwise a healthy boy who should be able to overcome this.

All of this because of a big stick on a bike path. Funny, really. I’m almost never on a bike path. And I never run over sticks, nor do I ever intend to again. (This is also why I don’t ride a mountain bike.)

Things to read and listen to. This is what space sounds like, way, way out there. On the one hand Voyager has made it beyond the solar system. And this latest amazing achievement is another reminder that we have all but taken the people out of active space work. Robotics are interesting, but we should be out there taking steps to see and hear these things ourselves.

No doubt we’ll search each other when we do finally go. That’ll be all your fault. Ask this guy.

Well, fasten your flipping seatbelt because, according to a former DHS official, if you’ve been groped by TSA agents, you “can’t blame the TSA;” instead, he implied that you should blame privacy advocates.

[…]

“Unlike border officials, though, TSA ended up taking more time to inspect everyone, treating all travelers as potential terrorists, and subjecting many to whole-body imaging and enhanced pat-downs. We can’t blame TSA for this wrong turn, though. Privacy lobbies persuaded Congress that TSA couldn’t be trusted with data about the travelers it was screening. With no information about travelers, TSA had no choice but to treat them all alike, sending us down a long blind alley that has inconvenienced billions.”

What happens when the government tries to define journalists:

Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., complained that the definition of a journalist was too broad. Pushing back, Feinstein said the intent was to set up a test to determine a bona fide journalist.

“I think journalism has a certain tradecraft. It’s a profession. I recognize that everyone can think they’re a journalist,” Feinstein said.

The government has no real place in saying who is a journalist.

These are people trying to define your freedoms. Think on that. Ed Morrissey, and then Matt Drudge, continue the thought:

“The entire approach is misguided. I think that journalism is an action, it’s not a status, it’s not a membership. And I think they’re treating it like a membership and they’re doing it in a way that is intended to be basically rent-seeking for the larger players in the field,” Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey told POLITICO. “It’s just a bad idea.”

[…]

“Gov’t declaring who qualifies for freedom of press in digital age is ridiculous! It belongs to anyone for any reason. No amendment necessary.”

Morrissey calls it a licensing law, which it may well be. Also, it is outrageous.

It will, as it always does, come down to control. And there’s plenty of control of journalists already.

Meanwhile, in a separate but related story:

The US FISA Court has ordered the government to declassify some aspects of its phone and internet surveillance program, the most recent of several disclosures in the past month. In the wake of leaks over the summer, the ACLU and many others have filed suit against the US government, looking for everything from more transparency to a way to take down a powerful surveillance program. The latter goal is still far from fruition, but the ACLU and Yahoo have both made progress in the former with a pair of recent court decisions.

The government would like to define and then restrict by shield law manipulation who can safely report on pressing issues of the day. What could go wrong?

Some nice news from Samford:

Samford University’s fall enrollment has reached an all-time high of 4,833 students, university officials announced today.

The total exceeds last year’s record-setting enrollment of 4,758 and marks the fifth consecutive year of record-setting enrollment for the university.

Explains the parking.

adventures / Friday / Samford — Comments Off
6
Sep 13

A Friday spent largely in the car

One of the few perks our paper’s editorial staff gets is a free lunch, which was today. These students work hard and they get a few meals and small checks and loads of experience and clips and a big resume builder out of the arrangement. Not a bad deal when you think about it.

So today was the lunch that the marketing and communication office arranges. They meet each other, students-journalists and PR pros, and each talks about what they do. In the case of our university almost all of the people who work in that office are Samford grads. Most of them were in the current students’ position some or several years ago. So there is a commonality.

There is also a lot of “This is what we do” and “This is how we can help you.” That’s mixed with “This is what we won’t do” and “We look at you like every other media outlet we work with.” And they do, by and large. We’re very lucky, as a newsroom, to have the circumstance that we do with the administration and the media relations folks and the department and all the dynamics that interact with students toiling away in their learning laboratory.

Also, at lunch there is variant of derby pie, and you don’t turn that down.

Because so many people joined us today we could not dine in the Rotunda Club, which is where this lunch is typically held and where the silverware is more shiny, the food more tasty and the linens more … lineny … than anywhere else on campus. (They also serve, in the Rotunda Club, the best fried chicken I have ever had. And, being from the South, I know from fried chicken.)

The Rotunda Club is the only place on campus that serves that particular pie, but our colleague who arranged the meal said “the pie must be brought to me,” and so it was. And it was good.

After that someone took promotional pictures. I found my way into a brief meeting. Then I had a long chat with the new editor, a sharp, hardworking and thoughtful type.

There was one other administrative conversation, another errand and then back in the car.

Because now we are in Georgia.

There is a race tomorrow. I am not racing as I have not felt right all week, but The Yankee will be taking part in the aquabike — the swim/ride race — in the morning. We will wake up before sunrise and we will be on the way from the hotel to the event before the sky gets bright. And she is going to have an amazing race.

I know this because she almost always does, and because we had Italian tonight. We visited La Trattoria, which was pretty good for small town Italian food. The hostess was the waitress. She might have also had to go out back and grow the vegetables that eventually made their way into the minestrone and in the lasagna. They offered a spicy marinara, but there are worse things. Like the wait. They thought they were serving in Rome, where the wait is part of the meal.

In Georgia? Well, you’re in Georgia, aren’t you?

Random observation: I’ve never been on a trip to central or northern Georgia in my adult life where they weren’t currently wrecking the roads. We know the work is orchestrated by Georgia Tech grads — engineers and all.

The shoddy condition can only be because they have to employ Georgia grads, right?

Ahh, the liberating season of football season jokes.

Have a great weekend! We’re going to race!

football / Friday / music / Samford / video / YouTube Cover Theater — Comments Off
30
Aug 13

Football, YouTube Cover Theater

This is how Samford started their football season, on the opening kickoff from Georgia State in the Georgia Dome:

The Bulldogs would pull an impressive comeback in the second half tonight to open their season with a 31-21 win.

So there was a music contest …

Fred Stobaugh, whose wife Lorraine died in April, has no previous musical experience and wrote the song on a whim for a competition.

He submitted his handwritten lyrics by post and, although the contest was online-only, the organisers were so moved they put the words to music.

Oh Sweet Lorraine is number seven on US iTunes and has 1.9m YouTube views.

Billboard magazine said the song had sold 6,000 copies so far, placing it at number 49 in its rock digital songs sales chart.

The track is also in the iTunes charts for Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Sweden, Norway and Luxembourg.

There’s a short film about it. If you read the above, at least watch the second half:

He’s not a songwriter, or a musician, or a singer. So when the studio brought him the song he was hearing it for the first time. You almost feel like you can see it all, almost 75 years, right there in his eyes.

Are there covers? Can we turn this unexpected hit and lovely story into another installment of YouTube Cover Theater? There are covers.

And that’s enough to get us off to the weekend. Hope yours is great!

Friday / music / Tumblr / Twitter / video / YouTube Cover Theater — Comments Off
23
Aug 13

The return of YouTube Cover Theater

I had a musical epiphany tonight. It would be proper, and great fun, to convince someone this semester that Hard to Handle is the perfect rock ‘n’ roll song:

And then I’m going to explain that it is really an Otis Redding tune:

Heard the Crowes’ version before dinner. The song on the radio immediately before it was by Ice Cube. Somehow, I think Hard to Handle would go over slightly better.

What’s that you say? You miss YouTube Cover Theater? Well, I found some Black Crowes covers.

This is simply a demonstration of the talent of normal people sitting in their living rooms and bedrooms and showing off their musical abilities because they have a camera and a place to put the footage.

Dan Allen has only had this viewed 5,771 times, and that is a shame.

Nathan Hanna has had a bigger audience with his version of Remedy, which is a good one. Also, the song is older than he is. Now we’re all old.

He admits this is rough, but my favorite thing about Will Minning’s version of Jealous Again is that less than 200 people have heard it so far. No matter. He’s giving his all:

And I didn’t even have to use She Talks to Angels!

There are a lot of covers of specific instruments in Crowes songs. Here’s the guitar from Soul Singing:

People are very talented, aren’t they?

Have a great weekend!

cycling / Friday / journalism / links / maps / movies / music / things to read / video — Comments Off
16
Aug 13

The Unofficial Unified Swampers Theory

Greasy, if Aretha Franklin says it, is a good thing.

That’s not far from one of the places where I grew up. Aretha, in the Apple promo says “You just didn’t expect them to be as funky or as greasy as they were. This documentary looks great, if only to answer the question ‘Why Muscle Shoals?’

Which is the same as asking ‘Why not anywhere else?’

I have a theory, he said to the surprise of no one. Look at this map:

Think of all of the music that has come from the rough diamond of Memphis, New Orleans, Atlanta and Nashville. All of these places are where the Mississippi basin, the Delta, the Smoky Mountains, countless churches and a wide rural storytelling tradition meet. Inside the diamond is much of Mississippi, Birmingham and, right there, Muscle Shoals. There’s a lot of lyrical fertility in there.

Music comes from all over, but there’s a timeless quality — as pop culture goes — to a lot of the things produced in and around that little diagram.

Rode a bit this afternoon, just spinning little circles with my feet over to the bike shop. Bought new tubes and some drink supplements.

The nice thing is you can go over there in spandex and they don’t even blink. They get you in and out real quick. Can’t have you scaring everyone off.

I hit the last hill, the one we live on, and topped it in one gear. Usually it takes a third of the cassette. And I did it at a speed I can’t even average and that’s going uphill.

So, naturally, I’m going to choose to believe that means I’m improving. But we all know better.

I visited a physical therapist today. He wanted to test out my shoulder. The first thing he did was jab his massive, muscular finger right down onto the tops of the screws in my shoulder.

I do not like him very much.

But he says there are problems I shouldn’t have a year-plus later, so he’s sending me to a nationally renowned orthopedic guy. If I see that person next week as planned that’ll make my third ortho.

I’m starting to wish I’d noticed that chunk of wood that I hit last summer.

Things to read: Counting the Change:

In 2008 Jeff Zucker, then the president of NBCUniversal, a big entertainment group, lamented the trend of “trading analogue dollars for digital pennies”. But those pennies are starting to add up. And even Mr Zucker, now boss of CNN Worldwide, a TV news channel, has changed his tune. Old media is “well, well beyond digital pennies,” he says.

What has changed his mind? The surge in smartphones, tablet computers and broadband speeds has encouraged more people to pay for content they can carry around with them. According to eMarketer, a research firm, this year Americans will spend more time online or using computerised media than watching television.

And a Samford student wrote this one:

According to McCay, until recently, Alabama was seen as a “pass-through” state. Traffickers from other states take their “workers” and travel through Alabama to get to another state.

“Now that you see a Memphis girl being brought to Huntsville or Madison, you begin to think, ‘Ok, maybe we’re not just a pass-through state anymore,’ and we’re seeing more and more reports over the last several years that trafficking is in Alabama,” McCay said.

“It is happening,” McCay said, “and the thing that our task force is really trying to do is just raise the awareness primarily, just let people know that it is happening, get it on their radar. If you don’t know something is happening, how do you fix it?”

And I have to go to bed early tonight because I have to get up early tomorrow. Naturally I’ll be awake most of the evening. But I must try … Tomorrow, we race.

Hope you have a lovely weekend ahead of you.