I don’t read a lot of FAQ pages, but maybe I should start. The random question can be the best. You’ll see why below.
I left campus at 7:30 tonight. I had a meeting until about 7 p.m. with students. Students gathered until 7 p.m. on a Friday night. They did this after working late into the evening last night o put their paper to bed. And then they sat around in the earliest part of their weekend and talked with me about their work. Their dedication to their craft is so very admirable.
And then, at home tonight, I learned that our postal crew understands humor. Specifically, irony, a bend across the link of the envelope, right on the stamp that says “Do Not Bend.”
Fortunately, they also understand unwanted mail. I must get this same envelope every other month. I open it, remove the return envelope, skim the contents and practice my best wrist-rotating exercises 16 times. Sometimes I get another rip and tear in there. Sometimes the tension of the paper is too much and I think back to that year we managed to get a huge stack of unnecessary phone books. YouTube was just becoming a fixture. I found videos teaching me how to rip phone books. I managed to perfect the technique, at least one svelte editions of the phone books. Now, I’m destroying junk mail. It has much greater tensile strength.
If they’re going to bend it — it is more malleable than a phone book — the mail carrier may as well just keep the thing themselves, right?
Things to read … because when you see good things, you shouldn’t keep it to yourself.
Syracuse basketball’s Orange Madness: Details on selfies, student dunks, legends:
Why selfies and not autographs?
“We just felt like it would be more of a keepsake for our fans to take pictures and pass them around on social media,” Donabella said.
It has never occurred to me to get the autograph of a college athlete. I’ve covered a lot of them, and I’ve watched and cheered for many, many more, but autographs, no. I once sat on a sofa and talked dry cleaning with the fastest man in NCAA track and field. But it never occurred to me to take a photograph with him. (“Back in my day … “)
I have a few autographs of a few others — my first one, I think, is a now faded slip of paper with Kenny Stabler’s name scrawled on it. Later I managed to get a few photographs with famous people. I prefer the photos. Though the Stabler story is pretty good.
The explanation is easy, Twitter Is Finally Explaining Its Suggested Tweets Strategy:
When Twitter first started testing these suggested tweets a few months ago, it didn’t explain the change very well to users, most of whom were confused and even angry when they started seeing content in their stream from people they didn’t follow. Twitter often experiments with new features without adding much of an explanation early on.
Thursday’s blog post is Twitter’s attempt to quell those concerns and offer some insight into the company’s strategy.
They are doing it to frustrate me. If I wanted those extra tweets they’d be in my feed. So you’re offering me discovery by way of people I follow. They have a way to share information with me already, using the retweet button. When you add the favorite button to all of that, well you’re just making buttons redundant, you’re messing up the temporal flow of things and just being tedious, all based on an algorithm.
I have a lot of thoughts on this subject. It all boils down to humanism.
If this story is even close to true … 19-year-old dies naked on cell floor of gangrene; lawsuits target deaths in Madison County jail”>
Your daily Ebola update:
You don’t see the word “seethe” in headlines very often.
Finally, we’re going to the race at Talladega this weekend. We’re trying to figure out how much time to allow for traffic. I’m reading Yelp reviews and random things people have written on various sites (“Leave home: August | Leave the race: After the national anthem.”)
I found myself reading the Superspeedway’s FAQ:
18. Can I get married at Talladega Superspeedway?
Couples wishing to exchange vows on speedway property may do so within the confines of their spot in one of the parks. Weddings are not allowed on speedway property that is used for competition during race weekends.
We got married in lovely and historic downtown Savannah, Georgia. I am now kicking myself I didn’t think of the race track.
I’m sure someone wants to marry during a yellow. Someone else wants to marry and cause a yellow. I wonder if the minister says something like “If anyone has any reason why these two should not be wed or why Jeff Gordon shouldn’t be put into the wall in turn four, speak now or forever hold your peace.”
And, of course, the F in FAQ stands for “Frequently.” If it means anything, it wasn’t the last one on the list, either.
