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21
Jul 14

Melts in the package, disappears

I think every kitchen has them, the cabinets no one ever really opens. When I was a child they were those spaces above the refrigerator. One of my grandmothers has cabinets that are entirely in violation of the feng shui of her kitchen, if she’d ever heard the word when she had the cabinets installed, far off to the right of everything and practically on the porch. My other grandmother, I imagine, has some low cabinets she seldom uses. You likely have some too. Your glasses and plates are over there. Your junk drawer is here, the occasional small appliances are stored just so and of course all of that stuff under the sink. But then there’s the hodgepodge cabinet, the one that you forget about when you lament for more space.

Ours is a left-handed cabinet, in particular the high shelves. Everything else in the kitchen moves to the right, and the spices are in the one next to it so, really, we already have everything we need in life.

But occasionally you need that giant bowl. And that means that occasionally I have to wash it and, later, put it away.

Doing that this evening I found a smaller bowl inside the larger bowls and inside the bowl was a handful of candy.

You’ve been hiding your stash, I said, thinking it was Halloween candy.

“We’ve been hiding that from ourselves and you should probably throw that out,” The Yankee laughed, telling me where we got it, which instantly dated the stuff.

So I ditched most of the stuff, but kept the one that featured the protective candy shell. A perfect dessert! Tear open the bag and receive:

candy

That’s not really a lot of fun, but everyone has a different scale. I’d say it is more Bemused Size.

Things to read … because reading always brings fun or bemusement.

Mighty George Gring is now Cam Newton’s Mom’s favorite football player:

Looking back, it’s prophetic that Clayton and Katherine Gring of Houston nicknamed their oldest son “Mighty George” when he was born.

Maybe it’s his quick sense of humor, or the sparkle in his blue eyes, or his positive attitude. In any case, there’s something about him that naturally draws people to him. “He’s a little bit magnetic that way,” Clayton Gring said of his 6-year-old son.

These lists never include the word “that” or most adjectives. Nevertheless, 10 words to cut from your writing

A relaunch for The New Yorker, with high stakes:

The new site is the largest overhaul of newyorker.com in years, Thompson said. The last redesign, Thompson said, occurred before he switched from the print side to the web, and was little more than a “fairly minor reskinning.”

The current relaunch has been in the works for about a year, Thompson said, and it’s been in intensive development since the magazine brought on Michael Donohoe as Director of Product Engineering in January. Donohoe, who was hired from Atlantic Media’s Quartz, has been working full-time on the new site for the past seven months, Thompson said.

Every post, in Thompson’s opinion, should apply the magazine’s superlative sensibilities at Internet publishing speeds. “We want it to feel like the best-written story you’re going to read,” he said.

Still, the speed of the Internet necessitates some sacrifice. Overall, posts on NewYorker.com are subjected to a less rigorous editing process than magazine articles are.

They’ve got the talent, and they’ve convinced a lot of people on their payroll to shift their thinking, which is a victory of its own. I hope this works out.

Lawmakers passed it. Aviation experts criticized it. The TSA says they didn’t want it: TSA fee on plane tickets more than doubles.

There is some great data here, now we just have to sort it all out and make sense of it. Dollars per student is something of a simplistic metric, I’d think. See which Alabama school systems spend the most — and the least — educating your children:

Public records provided by the Alabama State Department of Education show significant disparities in per-pupil spending between public school systems statewide.

Due to variations in state, federal and local tax funding, the state’s highest spending school district spent $13,084 per student in fiscal 2013 while its lowest spending district spent $7,201 based on average daily attendance.

That’s a difference of 45 percent.

There are some issues of local monies and political will, but, all the same, that’s a huge variance worth addressing.

Tech links:

20 WordPress Plugins You Can Install Today for Easier Sharing, Better Posting, and a More Powerful Blog

Here’s how Facebook pitched brands on buying ‘likes’ in 2011

Facebook adds a ‘buy’ button

And, now, off to the Monday dinner party!


19
Jul 14

Chattahoochee Challenge

This morning we took part in the Chattahoochee Challenge sprint triathlon, a comparatively easy 500-meter swim, 13-mile ride and 5K run.

The swim is in the Chattahoochee River which, today, offered us the most mild current possible. (Our last two races have been in very quiet water. May the trend continue.) Last year this race was in the middle of the wettest summer a lot of people could remember and we raced down the swim course.

Somehow my time was a few seconds slower, though my swim seemed better. Must have been that current.

The ride is through roads and bike paths and Columbus’ scenic river walk. The race and the city block off an entire lane for most of the road portion, which is very nice. It is mostly flat, which is nice. I didn’t have a flat as I did last year, which was even better. My bike time was naturally much better without the flat, but it should have been better.

The run is through the historic and flat downtown Columbus district. It was during that 5K where I wondered about the wisdom of two triathlons in a row. Last weekend’s was longer, and both demonstrated my poor conditioning. I did meet a nice 50-year-old woman who was celebrating her birthday with her second triathlon. She was having a great run just as I was coming to that conclusion. (Happy birthday, Laura!) And, somehow, my run was two minutes faster than last year, too.

It rained before the race. It stopped raining long enough to get in the water. Someone thought aloud “Wouldn’t it be neat if we had a slide start?” and no one disagreed with them.

Someone should have disagreed.

We stood in line to get in the water for about 90 minutes. The first racers had finished their races while we were standing there bored, cooling down, burning off our morning fuel and feeling feet get achy on cement.

If you have the opportunity to do a slide start to a race: don’t.

This is a good race, but if they have this feature next year I’ll skip it.

It started raining again just as I finished my bike. I caught up with The Yankee during the run. Here we are at the finish line:

us

And then it rained some more. Everything we took to the race is wet, which is OK, but it made us proud to have left some dry things in our hotel room, and made that shower even better.

Here’s my bike computer after the race. This is my average speed which isn’t bad considering you have to walk your bike both before and after the ride for safety purposes and I was trying to save something in my legs for the run.

Cateye

I should have pedaled harder. There was nothing in my legs by the end anyway.

As I said: The art, science, skill, talent and philosophy of triathlons is balancing the training and maximizing your minimums. I have no balance and many minimums.

But we had fun. Now we’re going to have ice cream, and rest.


18
Jul 14

Live, from Columbus

I am wearing this shirt today, because where else can I wear a triathlon shirt? It would seem the only place to do it is at another triathlon. Otherwise, this is just a t-shirt with too many weird things going on.

shirt

Plus, if you take the time to read it, you might notice the date on the back of the shirt, which indicates this race was last weekend. This might, I thought, look impressive to people preparing for this weekend’s triathlon.

“This guy is doing two in a row? He’s a monster!”

Or some such.

One person did notice, a race referee. We agreed last weekend’s race needed more shade. When the guy in stripes — and the triathlon refs wear stripes — says you need more shade, you need more shade.

This shirt is a “technical shirt” which means … as I look at the tag … it is 100 percent polyester. So that period of fashion was no event horizon after all. This is important to learn.

We are in neighboring Columbus, preparing for tomorrow’s race. And by preparing I mean signing in, discovering one Italian restaurant is closed, waiting for 10 minutes at another despite counting nine open tables, getting to our hotel, getting a room, changing rooms and finally settling in for a quiet, early evening.

I saw this sign today:

sign

Sound advice: Trust in the Lord and, for your prosaic braking needs, call Midas.

Anyway, the finish of tomorrow morning’s race will be streamed online. Check it out, if you’re interested. We should be coming across around 8:30 Eastern.

Things to read … no matter your timezone.

Here are three stories on Malaysian Flight 17 worth your time:

AIDS conference says 100 researchers may have been on flight MH17

This Is What The Victims Of Flight 17 Did For AIDS Research

Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 And The Future Of The Conflict In Ukraine

That last link discusses a wide swath of policy issues.

Here’s a story overcome by MH17 coverage: Islamic extremists kill 270 in attack on a gas field in central Syria, report says

Now we’re just piling onto Detroit. But the piece is worth a read. If You Don’t Pay Your Bills, You Don’t Get Stuff

Maybe you saw this one: Police: Fla. father beats accused child abuser

He is nice and knocked out on the floor for you,” the father told the 911 dispatcher. “I drug him out to the living room.”

[…]

The father has not been charged with any crime.

“Dad was acting like a dad. I don’t see anything we should charge the dad with,” Daytona Beach Police Chief Mike Chitwood said.

Closer to home:

Jobless rate up in Birmingham, but unchanged in Alabama

Shakalaka, Huntsville’s new all-ages extreme trampoline park, ‘turns you into a kid again’

Updated USGS earthquake risk areas include Alabama, Mississippi

When you can’t fall asleep, a potential new feature sharing the material I find when I’m wide awake too late in the evening. Our first entry is this intriguing Coke promo:

And then I stumbled across this truly impressive piece on football Hall of Famer Y.A. Tittle. It is human and intimate and vulnerable and it doesn’t seem the least bit exploitative. It is tremendous story telling:

On a December morning, he’s sitting in his usual spot on his couch, flipping through a photo album. His breathing is labored. There is fluid in his lungs. Waistline aside, Tittle doesn’t look much different now than he did in his playing days: bald head, high cheekbones, blue eyes that glow from deep sockets, ears that have yet to be grown into. His skin is raw and flaky, and when he scratches a patch on his head, a familiar line of blood sometimes trickles down. He shares his large house with his full-time helper, a saint of a woman named Anna. His daughter, Dianne de Laet, sits nearest him, leaning in as he touches each yellowed picture.

“That’s at Marshall High School!” Y.A. says, pointing to a shot of himself in a football uniform worn long ago, long sleeves and a leather helmet. That takes Y.A. back to his tiny hometown of Marshall, Texas, near the Louisiana border. Friday nights in the town square, where “I’d neck with a girl, if I was lucky.” Brown pig sandwiches at Neely’s barbecue. And football, always football. In 1943, he says, Marshall High traveled 200 miles to play Waco, ranked second in the state. The Mavericks pulled off the upset, and on the couch he recites the beginning of the newspaper story: “From the piney woods of East Texas came the challenging roar of the Marshall Mavericks, led by a tall, lanky redhead with a magical name: Yelberton Abraham Tittle.”

He is slightly embarrassed as he utters his full name. As a teenager he reduced it to initials, and it later became legend. Remembering his Texas days seems to bring a youthful spirit out of him, which is why Dianne gave him this album today. But then he flips to a photo of himself during his college days at Louisiana State, and something slips. “Where did you get these pictures?” he says to Dianne. “I haven’t seen them.”

It was good enough to read twice.

And now, truly late into the evening, I should be sleeping, but I’m looking for stories by or about one of my favorite writers, Willie Morris. Here’s a 1982 profile that appeared in a newspaper. It is hard to imagine so much time being spent on a story today, but the read is worth it.

Here are the first three paragraphs to a Texas Monthly profile on Morris that make you want a subscription to Texas Monthly (which would be a good subscription to hold):

Everybody thought they knew him. Few truly did. Willie Weaks Morris was a man of many parts. Some did not mesh with the others. The private Willie Morris—the brooder, the loner, the man who could lose himself in sleep because wakefulness was too painful, the man who called his telephone an instrument of torture and hid it in the refrigerator to muffle its rings, the man who at bottom was as stubborn as any mule William Faulkner ever owned, the man who became known, in plain ugly language, as the town drunk—well, that contentious and complex fellow is a Willie Morris his adoring public never met. You haven’t read about that fellow either.

No way to rhyme that private, haunted, sometimes terribly difficult soul with the public Willie Morris of legend: the glad-hander and shoulder hugger, the good ol’ boy from Mississippi, the incomparable raconteur of the Texas saloon or the New York salon, the literary star whose reputation soared at the daily paper of the University of Texas and later at the Texas Observer. In Austin he learned the skills that made him not only near-perfect in matching writer to subject but also so adroit an editor that writers felt chagrin that they hadn’t written it that way.

Willie’s emotions were as primitive and as changeable as the weather. He was the worst I ever saw at hiding his true feelings; he had little talent for the duplicities or wicked dirkings of office politics—a trait that ultimately cost him the job he once loved above all. We drank together, laughed together, cried together, worked as editor to writer and friend to friend. We had a foolish drunken fistfight in 1972 over which of us owned the affections of a certain fickle woman; it turned out that neither of us did. I thank such gods as be that we were fast friends when Willie Morris died suddenly on August 2, 1999, or otherwise I could not have borne it. I will miss the man so long as I have breath.

That’s before the essay even begins.

And today, from Weird Al:

Don’t forget! You can see the finish of tomorrow morning’s race thanks to the nice people at WRBL. We should be coming across around 8:30 Eastern.


16
Jul 14

The day I biked to the track to run

My run is slow. So slow, in fact, that I can tell when it is even slower. So slow, in fact, that it is impossible for me to go out too fast. Would that I could.

But, hey, my next run is over a flat downtown course. So, today, I decided to run on the flattest terrain I could find, at the old Wilbur Hutsell Track. In school I watched Olympians and record holders there, putting their athletic potential on display. It has never made me any faster. But, I noticed today, if I run on a flat course I can drop a few seconds off of my neighborhood pace.

Just to insure I am that guy I rode my bike to the track.

So I rode about eight miles. I would have ridden more — but there were dinner plans — and ran three miles. Maybe I’ll get in one more run and ride before the race this weekend.

I was listening to music as I ran. Here is the obligatory “Where were you when ‘Party in the USA’ came on?” shot, the east side of the track:

track

I have to add miles back into my legs. I need to run more miles, too. I recently read the relationship should be about 80/20 cycling to running. And I need to swim, a lot. The art, science, skill, talent and philosophy of triathlons, I’ve decided, is balancing the training and maximizing your minimums.

If you figure out what all that means, please let me know.

Things to read … because reading shows us what we need to know.

Technology journalists are facing extinction:

(W)hile my personal capacity to tell technology stories in the past year has diversified, I’ve noticed something: my beat is rapidly disappearing.

We don’t need someone “watching the internet” during elections anymore, that’s clear. But we’re also now approaching a point where the most pressing — and let’s face it, interesting — technology stories shouldn’t be thought of as technology stories at all.

That is an essay, really, about the ubiquity of the web and the blurring of specialization. That the author is still thinking in terms of “beats” is the first step to fixing the problem. Atomize the thing is important. Developing a contextual curation is important, and that will come from those with a background and depth of understanding, or as Steven Rosenbaum calls it, the Second Law of the Curation Economy. So if you are on a tech beat and feeling marginalized, figure out how you can flex your muscle in a new light.

Citing a story about a bar brawl that led to jail, and, now, the new EU’s rule on search engine forgetfulness, the editor of the Bolton News offers up the Streisand Effect. Bolton News story ‘erased’ from Google search results because of EU ruling:

(I)t is a completely pointless exercise. Those who ask for these articles to be removed simply invite more publicity on themselves.

This was an extremely serious court case, which merited a front page when we ran it back in 2010.

To have this disappear from Google searches is frankly ridiculous, which is why I feel it’s so important to highlight this issue.

Won’t it be interesting when the EU’s media outlets start pointing out content from which Google (Bing, Yahoo! et al) is removing their links? The story still exists online. The removal becomes a story — hence the Streisand Effect — and ultimately it becomes a badge of honor. There comes a day when the Bolton News proudly shows off all of those stories, they linked to this original one twice in one story, because they stand behind their news judgment. Some other site will then come along and become a clearinghouse for stories that Google (Bing, Yahoo! et al) can’t link anymore.

And that’s how the League of Shadows is brought into the light.

And four quick links:

The newspaper crisis, by the numbers

Essay: Hey, Publishers: Stop fooling us, and yourselves

Apple Teams Up With IBM For Huge, Expansive Enterprise Push

Fed reports modest economic expansion for South region

There’s more on Twitter, and more here tomorrow.

Weird Al likes foil (foil). This is a fine sendup. And have you noticed these are all coming from different places? Interesting.


15
Jul 14

Tuesday’s thousand words

We’re in something of a mild stretch of weather. Not too far north temperatures are 10 to 20 degrees below average. At least, for a brief time, our sky looked like this:

sky

The high today was 88 and it was mostly cloudy. I rode a few miles, just down through the back of the neighborhood and then out and up over the top of it. Of course it was raining by then. The plan was to use my legs a little bit before running a 5K through the neighborhood. After an Olympic-distance triathlon last weekend I get to simultaneously rest and taper for a sprint triathlon this coming weekend.

A real triathlete would probably find no problem with that schedule. I’m trying to figure out how to not work (rest is an important part of training) and train (because there’s clearly a lot for me to do) especially since I need improvement (a lot of improvement).

Things to read … because reading always brings improvement.

Two World Cup stories, to wrap up the mega-event. North Korea Is Telling Its Citizens That Their Team Is In The World Cup Final:

The report says North Korea’s brave side crushed Japan 7-0, USA 4-0 and China 2-0 in the group stages, before going on to reach the final… against Portugal.

I think the scores against that fictional group indicate a lot about North Korea’s geopolitics, too.

I wonder how many times North Korea has won the World Cup in their propaganda.

Dutch beat Brazil to claim bronze:

There was no lap of honour for the hosts as they trudged off down the tunnel with their heads bowed in shame.

Fragile in the back, runs that couldn’t produce from the middle and when they lost Neymar they lost their entire offense. They simply weren’t a good side, but they deserved better than they got from their crowd.

Here are two versions of a big local story: GE Aviation selects Auburn for $50 million 3D printing facility and GE Aviation in Auburn: Details on the new manufacturing project, incentives and how to apply for jobs. It is described as a first-of-its-kind facility. The plant now has 70 employees and should have 300 by the end of the decade.

Two more things about the Renaissance Man Triathlon: Husband and wife coordinate triathlon in Florence and some advice I received, in the comments.

A few other quick stories for varied interest:

New @congressedits Twitter Account Tracks Anonymous Wikipedia Updates

New Cosby show could debut as soon as next summer

Research: Human friendships based on genetic similarities beyond the superficial

Sydney Cromwell, the new editor of The Samford Crimson got an opinion piece published in Editor & Publisher. We’re excited for her for this and plenty of other reasons. She’s a talented student, strong young journalist and she’ll be a great editor, too.

Here’s a timeline for word nerds. “Language evolves”: The AP Stylebook during the last 30 years. Some of the changes are better than others, of course.

We knew this was coming: Sports Illustrated’s ‘Dirty Game’ articles spark false-light lawsuit.

This may be one of the best reads of the week: Retargeting Is Flawed; the Future Is Pretargeting:

There is no time in my life I am less likely to buy some white pants, a toaster or a flight to Los Angeles than after I’ve just bought these items, yet that’s precisely the time I see ads for these products or services.

These ghostly images stalk our internet journeys like shadows. While ineffective, these ads come to us by some of the most advanced technology there is. By some measures, they are the most appropriate ads to serve us; they can be the most noticeable, but they are also the most pointless.

The subhead reads “The future lies in targeting based on what we’re about to do, not what we’ve just done.” That’s very true. If you look at retailers, and some of the more forward-thinking online locales like Amazon, you’ll see the solutions coming in algorithms based on your habits, locale, where you are in the store, what you’ve looked at or purchased. It is based on your history, and trying to peer you up with other previous customers. Algorithms, by their very nature, have to improve, and the user experience will improve with it.

There’s a great chart in this story which deserves a careful examination: Which Types of Ads Do College Students Pay Attention to?

Our parents were all felons. Remember when your mom or dad told you to go outside and get lost? North Augusta Mother Charged With Unlawful Conduct Towards A Child:

A North Augusta mother is in jail after witnesses say she left her nine-year-old daughter at a nearby park, for hours at a time, more than once.

The mother, Debra Harrell has been booked for unlawful conduct towards a child.

The incident report goes into great detail, even saying the mother confessed to leaving her nine-year-old daughter at a park while she went to work.

The little girl is fine, but some say an area the mother thought was safe could have turned dangerous.

On the basis of “coulda” a child was entered into the South Carolina Department of Social Services. There is a fund raiser in the mom’s name.

So every time I was in the woods, walking in my neighborhood or spending a Friday night at the mall, the movies or the mini-golf place, to say nothing of the hundreds and hundreds of hours at the YMCA were all an opportunity for the authorities to step in. The silliness of this story, and the coverage, suggests there may be some changes in the charges. This is a simple and sad overreach.

I feel safer already: TSA Agent Stops Reporter Because He Didn’t Know Washington D.C. Is Part Of The United States.

I recently published three pictures on Tumblr that I haven’t yet mentioned on the site. You can find them here, here and here.

Today’s Weird Al is a catchy little ditty, guaranteed to make word nerds swoon: