I found this clip last week and was waiting for the right time to use it. Turns out today is the right time, which is to say I didn’t want to wait any more. Bono walked around on Samford’s campus one night. I’m not gushing about Bono, but enjoying the perceived incongruity of that. Bono taking an impromptu tour, doing who knows what:

The band was in Birmingham that November, 1988, touring in support of Rattle and Hum. Desire had topped the charts in the UK and Australia and had peaked at number three in the U.S. A few days after their stop in Birmingham Angel of Harlem was released as a single. They made the video the year before, in Memphis:

Wikipedia suggests that Bono has forgotten a lot of the lyrics to the song.

But imagine it, walking around on your small private college campus and there suddenly is one of the biggest young musicians in the world standing in front of you. Crazy.

Not everything in 1988 was good news. Here’s an example from earlier in that year where a writer does a pretty nice job of localizing a compelling slice of one of the biggest stories of the decade.

It is always interesting to see how stories like these evolve over time.

Both of those reporters are still in town. One of them is now a consultant, the other is in corporate communications. We always tell students where their peers intern or their first jobs — because a lot of those are great jobs. But knowledge like this makes me want to say to students, “Yes, when you work your way through that first job or two, there are some even cooler roles in your future.”

Things to read … because reading will be important in the future, too.

I’ve interviewed Pat Sullivan. He is a modest man, a gentleman, and he likes to understate things and put the spotlight on others. Q&A with Auburn great Pat Sullivan as he brings Samford to Jordan-Hare

Since we’re coming up on that time of year, I’ll link to this, but you have to click over and read the very end yourself. It is worth the click. Behind College Football’s Most Amazing Play:

Davis was an offensive dynamo in high school, but Auburn’s coaches pitched him on two other roles: playing cornerback and returning kicks. After Davis committed in Dec. 2009, he said: “They think I can make history down there.”

[…]

“Touchdown, Auburn—an answered prayer!” shouted veteran CBS broadcaster Verne Lundquist, who was calling the game. After the 109-yard touchdown return, Lundquist allowed for 65 seconds of silence so viewers could drink in the fan celebration as the TV audience swelled to 21 million people. Above the field, in the coaches’ box, Johnson and his fellow assistants were high-fiving. “We had never worked on it,” Johnson said of the play. “It was the most amazing thing.”

One last sports story, where the New York Times apparently wants FSU fans to do their job for them, F.S.U. Coach’s Call-In Show Is a No-Sin Zone.

And now a few drone links … Gorgeous Drone Video of the Tallest Church Tower in the Netherlands Bursting Through a Sea of Fog:

To get the perfect aerial drone shots of the Dom Tower of Utrecht, Dutch filmmakers Jelte Keur and Reinout van Schie had to wait a full 10 months for the perfect weather conditions to arrive. But once they did, the minute forty-five of footage they captured made it all worthwhile.

Penn State crop educator explores drone-driven crop management

Drone Flights Face FAA Hit

A few local stories … Birmingham dropped from list of 2016 DNC contenders

Americans with Disabilities Act lawsuits against businesses on the upswing in Alabama

Man, I hate clickbait headlines. So here’s the part the author really wants you to read, This guy is fixing the U.S. Capitol dome, but what he says about Alabama workers is the real wonder:

He tells of the way guys who learned to work with metal as mechanics and automakers – regular guys with problems and pasts and views that didn’t extend much beyond their own homes – “can challenge and perform the task before them” in a way that lives up to the expectations of the very architect of the Capitol.

“They are typical Alabamians who work with their hands, and I’m proud of them,” he said. “I tell them you will have a job in this country as long as you can work with your hands. And you will.”

And, now, how a bill becomes a law:

Some tech links … How 3-D printing is revolutionizing medicine:

The researchers began by taking a CT scan of the baby’s chest, which they converted into a highly detailed, three-dimensional virtual map of his altered airways. From this model, they designed and printed a splint—a small tube, made of the same biocompatible material that goes into sutures—that would fit snugly over the weakened section of airway and hold it open. It was strong but flexible, and would expand as the boy grew—the researchers likened it to “the hose of a vacuum cleaner.” The splint would last for three years or so, long enough for the boy’s cells to grow over it, and then would dissolve harmlessly. Three weeks after the splint was implanted, the baby was disconnected from the ventilator and sent home. In May of 2013, in The New England Journal of Medicine, the researchers reported that the boy was thriving and that “no unforeseen problems related to the splint have arisen.”

This sort of procedure is becoming more and more common among doctors and medical researchers. Almost every day, I receive an e-mail from my hospital’s press office describing how yet another colleague is using a 3-D printer to create an intricately realistic surgical model—of a particular patient’s mitral valve, or finger, or optic nerve—to practice on before the actual operation.

Medical science development is amazing stuff.

And so much of it started right here, The First STAR TREK Scene Shot 50 Years Ago This Week

Introducing Charted A new way to share data:

Charted is a tool that automatically visualizes data. Give it the link to a data file and Charted returns a beautiful, shareable visualization of that data.

[…]

Charted is open-sourced and available for anyone to use at charted.co. The publicly-hosted charted.co works with files that are already publicly accessible to anyone with the link (e.g., Dropbox share links). For protected or sensitive data, you can serve your own instance of Charted on your secure network, which is what we do at Medium.

A few journalism links … This will be interesting, Vine shifts from comedy clips to a valid journalistic tool

This is a fine idea, but I always wonder about the efficacy. Not everyone sees the top-down organizational plea. But some is better than none, and that some will, in time, influence others, making it more efficient. So, then, it is worth the try, Establishing Social Media Hashtag Standards For Disaster Response

Hard Comparison: Legacy Media vs. Digital Native

And, finally, for you history buffs and forensic fiends, New mystery arises from
iconic Iwo Jima image:

You have seen this photo because on Feb. 23, 1945, in the middle of one of the fiercest battles of World War II, a group of U.S. Marines carried a flag up the highest peak on the Pacific island of Iwo Jima. As six men struggled to plant the flagpole into the ground, an Associated Press photographer, who was worried he would miss the shot, clicked his shutter without even looking through his viewfinder. You have seen this photo because it’s one of the most famous photos in American history.

Eric has stared at this photo for hours. He has zoomed in on the black-and-white image until he can see the creases in the men’s helmet covers and can study the unique shapes of their noses. He has combed through dozens of other photos taken that day atop Iwo Jima’s Mount Suribachi. He has watched a film clip of the famous flag raising so many times he has each frame memorized.

[…]

He has stared at the photo for the better part of a year, and he’s convinced that he and another amateur history buff have discovered something that has apparently eluded military leaders, World War II experts and historians for nearly seven decades.

Ultimately, I think I agree with Professor Sherrard. Compelling, but perhaps not necessarily to the level, yet, of proof.

I love everything about this story. People with passion and attention to detail, an explanation for that thin strap, the dismissal by their “betters,” the source material for us to make up our own minds. I love all of it.

It is perfect. Perhaps not in the sense of IDing the specific Marines (I wasn’t there, after all) but it is a lovely dash of storytelling.

Now, to write my way back to the beginning, I’ll humbly suggest a new meme where Bono is inserted into historic photographs. Doesn’t that sound like fun?