I got caught in the rain a few times today, so there’s that.
I dried out sitting on a waiting room sofa, talking with a colleague about Texas and grandchildren and holidays. That was nice, since yesterday I’d sat in someone else’s office and talked about communication plans and how you’d restructure your entire workflow if you were given the opportunity. These are little insights into other worlds that I don’t normally see, in my office or with my students or in my car or wheezing through a workout. We talked about internships in one of those meetings yesterday and externships today. Sometimes the circles complete themselves.
Sometimes the umbrella leaves drip marks as you walk up two flights of stairs.
I don’t know what that means. I only know you can never shake enough drips out of the things, and then I feel responsible to patrol halls warning people of the wet floor I made.
Things to read … because nothing of great interest is coming to mind.
Here’s what happens when the readers choose the front page story:
What if front pages were selected by newspapers’ readers instead of their editors? At NewsWhip, we’re always interested in the news stories people are choosing to share – and how those stories differ from the normal news stories editors put on the front pages of big newspapers. So we ran a little experiment.
On Wednesday morning, we gathered the front pages of leading newspapers in several countries. Then we used Spike to check the most shared stories from each one.
A little work at our end, and we used those most shared stories to make new “people powered” front pages for each newspaper – giving the most shared story the most prominence, the second most shared the second most prominence, etc.
I was going through the most read and most commented on stories at al.com to do a mock up of the local outlets. But I decided against it when, even in March, most of the lead stories would be about Alabama football.
Getty Images blows the web’s mind by setting 35 million photos free (with conditions, of course):
This move requires uptake, but the right kind of uptake. Ideally, it would generate new value among the web scofflaws while not harming Getty’s business with pro publishers. I’m not sure these embeds hit that balance. The workflows are too ungainly for the people who currently have contracts with Getty, true, but they’re also not quite easy enough to be a good substitute for people who don’t mind stealing. My wager is that, as transformational as this announcement might seem to be, Getty’s embeds won’t be pockmarking the web.
But no matter how it turns out, give Getty a lot of credit for being willing to take a highly unorthodox stance. It’s an effort very much worth watching.
So more illustrations for blog posts everywhere, I guess.
Newsweek Relaunches in Print With Bitcoin Coup:
Newsweek returns to newsstands Friday with a small press run (70,000), but it’s hoping to make a big impact with its cover story, which claims to have actually tracked down the elusive Satoshi Nakamoto, the man credited with inventing Bitcoin.
As the story goes, Nakamoto doesn’t open up much except to say that he’s not involved in Bitcoin anymore, but senior staff writer Leah McGrath Goodman manages to wring out a nearly 3,400-word profile of the California man, who’s described as rumpled and unkept and living in a modest home, despite having a fortune estimated at $400 million.
But, then: Alleged Bitcoin inventor says Newsweek story is dead wrong, so that’s a big question mark on the restart of the old rag.
Second HIV-positive baby may be cured of AIDS:
Doctors announced that they may have possibly cured a second baby born with AIDS by administering antiretroviral treatment within hours after birth.
Doctors revealed on Wednesday that the baby was in remission from the virus at an AIDS conference in Boston. The girl was born in suburban Los Angeles last April, a month after researchers announced the first case of a possible cure, a baby from Mississippi. The Mississippi case was a medical first that led doctors worldwide to rethink how fast and hard to treat infants born with HIV, and the California doctors followed that example.
Breaking news: We have great barbecue in Alabama. Alabama has two barbecue chains on the list of America’s 10 best:
Two of the 10 best barbecue chains in America are right here in Alabama, according to the food website The Daily Meal.
Birmingham-based Jim ‘Nick’s Bar-B-Q, which was founded by father and son Jim and Nick Pihakis in 1985, is No. 1 on The Daily Meal’s 10 best list.
That is a list of chains, mind you. And while I enjoy both of those chains, if you were talking singular barbecue experience there are about five other places you might choose first. In a related story: There is such a thing as eating too much delicious barbecue, but no one has found that amount yet.
What went wrong with Tutwiler and who’s being held accountable for Alabama’s prison problems?
That post is a bit self-serving, particularly given the gravity of the situation. Also, it seems that another, equally important question is: “Why is this taking so long to address?” This story is from a year ago:
There are other television examples from 2012. The systemic problem in the state’s prisons didn’t just creep up on anyone. And while there’s no finger-snap fix, it reads as if change is slow to come. But AMG is on the case now. Every little bit of attention helps in a progression story.
Rutgers University is not backing down in the face of a faculty eruption over the New Jersey state school’s invitation of Condoleezza Rice to deliver this year’s commencement address.
The Faculty Council at Rutgers’ New Brunswick campus is trying to oust Rice, a former secretary of state, national security advisor, and provost of Stanford University, as the university’s commencement speaker because she does not “embody moral authority and exemplary citizenship.”
Taking issue with Rice’s politics and career, professors passed a resolution Friday imploring the university’s Board of Governors “to rescind its misguided decision” to invite Rice and give her an honorary degree. Faculty councils on Rutgers’ Camden and Newark campuses are expected to do the same in the coming weeks.
If only the secretary was of a serious caliber of whom the Rutgers community deserves:
Apparently no one has uploaded a video of that 2011 Snooki speech. You do see a lot of “Rutgers angered by” links, though.
I bet they all went up and down the halls at dear ol’ Rutgers, warning of the drip that was coming.
