And so begins one of the longer weeks of the year. It involves travel. And when there is travel that means return travel. This will be done by car, so there’s a lot of windshield time involved. I’m exhausted already.
But, hey, life is grand. The sun is out. I got to teach today. We talked about social media and then wrote for a while. I had a catch-up session for a few students on WordPress.
I also typed and printed things. Probably emailed far too many detailed email things. You know how that goes.
Then I hit the pool. I swam 1,350 yards — that’s .77 miles — in a pool that was as warm as bathwater. It might sound great, but it felt pretty gross by the end. Despite the short distance and poor form and lack of fitness I’m going to take that one tidbit alone, the pool was too warm, as a sign that I’m becoming a swimmer.
I do not know what is happening.
We stopped swimming because we were meeting Kim and Murph for Thai for dinner. We sat in the most dimly lit restaurant in town and ate noodles and chatted almost until they ran us out. It was nice to see them outside of a football tailgating context. They’re still just some of the loveliest people you could meet.
I feel like I don’t get to eat with an entire table full of sweet people like my wife and Kim and Murphy every night. But I should. (And not just because they are foodies.)
Reports Remington Outdoor Co. plans to open a new manufacturing facility in Huntsville are being greeted with cheers in Alabama. That’s not the case in New York, however.
[…]
Gov. Cuomo’s office took to social media over the weekend to refute claims New York didn’t want the Remington jobs.
That’s not stopping people from firing back at Cuomo and the state’s strict gun regulations.
Alabama holds an election for U.S. Senate in 2014. Republican Senator Jeff Sessions is running for re-election. For the first time in Alabama history, the Democrats are not running anyone for U.S. Senate. Here is a list of Democrats running in the June 2014 primary for federal and state office.
There are no Democrats running for U.S. House in the 4th and 5th districts. For the 140 state legislative races, no Democrats are running in 57 races. There are no Democrats running for these additional statewide posts: Justice of the Supreme Court, Public Service Commissioner seat #1, and Public Service Commissioner seat #2.
That degree of homogeny can hardly be good in the long run.
As a result of my efforts to help injured bicyclists by calling 911, I was, in short order: separated from my friend, violently tackled, arrested, taken to county jail, stripped and left in a solitary cell. I am writing this story because, if it could happen to me, it could happen to you, and I feel the need to do something to help prevent this brutality from propagating.
The charges were ultimately dropped, but everything that came before it in that tale, if accurate, is well beyond the boundary of acceptable behavior from several of the law enforcement officers involved.
Kevin Grow, a high school senior with Down syndrome who lives in the Philadelphia area, has been signed by the Philadelphia 76ers to a ceremonial two-day contract.
Grow scored 14 points including three 3-pointers and a buzzer beater over the final two games of the varsity season after Bensalem High School coaches put him, the team’s four-year manager, in the lineup.
That almost makes me want to become a basketball fan.
A day in a chair. There was Olympics. There was sunshine. There was reading and, best of all, the fine company of a lovely lady. It was a day with not too much, but a day you’d do again.
There was this:
If I did business with Liberty Mutual I would strongly consider altering the transaction. I don’t know if anyone at the ad agency has ever been in life-changing environments, but the insurance agency has people that have been there. Everyone understands the urge to compare the Olympics with Your Product, whatever Your Product is. But letting a goal slip by against the Russians is hardly like losing everything in a house fire, is it? Missing the landing on your vault isn’t so traumatic as finding the place where you live and play and love so devastated by the weather that you can’t recognize landmarks, because there aren’t any anymore.
When I was in college this happened in the next little town from where I grew up. A huge tornado roared through in the darkness. When the sun rose everything was unrecognizable. The fire department had to go around spraying house numbers on shards of wood and jamming them into the sodden earth, as you would a mailbox, so they’d have a frame of reference in their life saving work.
Hardly a Kerri Strug moment.
And yet I feel for Kerri Strug and the Miracle on Ice guys, because they, of course, couldn’t know what would become of their legacy: a bad insurance commercial. I’d feel bad for Herb Brooks, but he’s dead. I don’t feel bad for Bela Karolyi. He should never have put Strug there. Also, there’s charming reading in the Bela Karolyi controversy section of Wikipedia.
Speaking of the Olympics. NBC gets a lot right. Visually they’ve really shown their A-game. But my word, do they get a lot of easy things wrong.
Other fine sports notes: I mentioned Tim Alexander here late last year. He’s got a rich and compelling tale, the kind of guy you can’t help pulling for. Well. He’s showing up again today. His UAB football team was running stadiums today. And then the new strength and conditioning coach decided Alexander, who is in a wheelchair, needs to be with his team. So he hoisted him on his shoulders and carried him. And then the team joined in.
The story does not mention how many walls they ran through after that.
The image folks from Westboro are after Michael Sam. Mizzou students solved the problem. That is a terrific school and was an inspired addition to the SEC, but I’m just starting to like them more and more now.
African migrants on the shore of Djibouti city at night, raising their phones in an attempt to capture an inexpensive signal from neighboring Somalia—a tenuous link to relatives abroad. Djibouti is a common stop-off point for migrants in transit from such countries as Somalia, Ethiopia and Eritrea, seeking a better life in Europe and the Middle East.
Things to read … because this hasn’t yet been enough.
Public records request service MuckRock asked for the document in late December. Last week a lieutenant in the department’s records unit denied the request, calling the guide “privileged as an attorney-client communication.”
Huntsville may be welcoming a major Remington Outdoors Co. gun manufacturing and development plant and possibly 2,000 jobs, AL.com reported today.
But would the city really welcome it?
It seems so, judging from an abundance of positive, pro-gun comments posted to the AL.com story this morning.
The author of that piece is from Atlanta. She attended school in Alabama. And she is surprised by the pro-gun, pro-job stance of her neighbors. This perplexes me entirely.
So now I have to read every story on the subject, just to see what other disbelief we can work into this story. Because gun factories are scary, I guess.
I’m not raising children today. I’m part of the “support troops.” I’m in the capital funding division. But if I were, I would be giving my children every chance to know about God.
If I were raising children today…I would be having fewer frantic activities and make more careful and deliberate choices. I wouldn’t buy them whatever they ask for—that’s for grandparents to do. I would be more present when they’re trying to talk to me.
I wouldn’t lecture as much and I would listen a little more. I wouldn’t worry so much about being their friend and more about keeping their respect as well as their love. I think I would listen for signs of God in their life and, like trying to start a fire, do everything I could to blow on it, but not too hard.
I would make sure they were around all ages of people, not just peers. I would pray for them with all my heart, and take most of my criticisms there. I would provide consistent discipline and accept that they will not always like me and know that the world won’t end if they’re mad.
It goes on and on, a suggested instruction manual from someone who thought, perhaps, about what they did right and did wrong. To do it all again, and this time from the cheaper seats, what an interesting idea from which to learn.
links / Samford / Thursday / video — Comments Off on I cut a lot from this post, but clearly not enough 13 Feb 14
Well. We certainly showed that snow what for. It was all gone by the end of the day, a product of temperatures leaping back into the 50s or low 60s, as winter here was intended to be.
Last night, as it snowed, I heard a woman say a friend “You’re wearing Chacos!” The Chacos wearing friend said, and I’m not making this up, “I didn’t know the snow would be this cold!” So, for that dear child, bring on spring.
I have a long window that stretches almost the entire length of one wall in my office. If you peer through the giant blinds you can see a dorm up the hill. Below that is a grass lawn that has been converted into a parking lot. (When I started here, six years ago, it was a construction equipment parking lot. Now it is overflow parking as they begin work on a new business building.) If I had the ability to open this window and step outside I’d walk onto the second-floor roof of this same building. Beneath me are various administrative offices. Over their heads was a great deal of snow. And I stared at it today, watching how it melted in stages while the sun moved from one horizon to the other, all of it disappearing, slowly from the ledge, and then rapidly from the pebbles. It all went away, except for the zealous stuff holding off the inevitable in the shade, thinking, Now bring on spring.
He said, like he’s been in Canada or some place with a real winter for the last four weeks.
There’s nothing like going from snow to short sleeves and no socks in the span of afternoon. And after you’ve done it a few times you start thinking that this time, really, it will last.
I noticed that the earliest blooming bush in our front yard was starting to give off its bright yellow signal. Let us call it now: another winter is behind us. This is, of course, an entirely mental exercise. There is barely a winter where I live and work and play. We get a few days of cold and trees pointing their sticks into the air for too long, but that’s not a winter. Even still, you’re always ready to see it off.
Saw this ad tonight:
Cadillac is hitting on something here, a nod to a bygone era, with an actor who, really, belongs in another era. Neal McDonough just asking, “Why?” For this? Stuff?
McDonough’s biggest early break came 11 years after his first TV appearance. He was in eight episodes of Band of Brothers, which, for most people promoted him from “That Guy” to, “Hey, Neal McDonough.” He was playing Buck Compton who earned a Silver Star on D-Day. After the war he turned down baseball to go to law school. He became a police officer and an assistant district attorney. Compton put away Sirhan Sirhan, became a judge and retired. Just for grins he taught himself the real estate game, got licensed and was a realtor on weekends.
McDonough has said a lot of nice things about Compton. He wrote the epilogue to Compton’s autobiography and it starts “I would do anything in the world for Buck Compton.” So I’m thinking about the old judge, who died just two years ago, when McDonough says “Why aren’t you like that?”
This commercial is so strange from there. The question outside, the answer inside. The “crazy-driven hardworking believers, that’s why.” He points to his daughter, or the double helix. And then the other kid gets the high-five exclamation point. And now I will name-drop. Wright Brothers. Bill Gates. Les Paul. Ali.
Muhammad Ali had his run-ins with the federal government. The U.S. called Microsoft a monopoly. They almost shut down Gibson, who made Les Paul’s guitars. Where is this spot going?
“Where we nuts when we pointed to the moon?” That isn’t McDonough’s wife, but there is a resemblance. But we’re nuts about the moon. Where we got … bored. And littered. We put a car on blocks on the moon because we’re going back up there.
Said the guy in a polo and yellow shorts.
But now we’re getting serious, because the suit is on and the digression is over — a digression for a kinder, post-Dennis Leary world, I might ad — and now we finally come to it.
Cadillac.
An electric Cadillac.
“You work hard. Create your own luck and you gotta believe anything is possible.”
Unless, of course, you mean seeing a return on all of that taxpayer money sunk into GM.
Which brings us back to “stuff.” That we’ve paid for, so you can sell it to us. You didn’t build that. Period.
I’d have put the ad here anyway, because I like McDonough, and in 60 seconds it gets about four or five slices of what the guy can do. That you don’t know what the ad is, indeed, that you realize it is a paean to a generally bygone ideal before you even know what the ad is for, makes it that much more incredible.
But here’s the truly amazing thing about this ad. It prompted cogent comments on YouTube. Here are a few:
Wonder how many bailouts it took to design this car?
In regards to taking August off, keep in mind that the GM UAW contact gives UAW workers up to 5 weeks off per year, plus 15 holidays per year (5 more than the standard number of holidays), for a total of 8 weeks of time off per year.
If GM and the UAW actually believed the message in this ad (which is true by the way), then why do they take so much time off? They are most assuredly NOT crazy, hard-working, driven believers, as the tens of billions of taxpayer dollars they swallowed up shows and the tax payers lost because what the UAW and GM management actually believe in is buying politicians.
I hope GM fails miserably and every single UAW member loses their jobs. They deserve it for their laziness, sense of entitlement and sloth. Because of their sense of entitlement they actually think they deserved taxpayers’ hard earned money because AMERICA! The problem is that America doesn’t stand for “taking from others to give to me using the state”. America stands for the actual crazy, hard working, driven believers that the UAW hate because the UAW is made to look bad always when compared to real working Americans.
A lot of commenters have all ready pointed out the rank hypocrisy of GM’s laziness, sense of entitlement, and sloth from having their hand in the government till for decades, then making the above ad. The message in the ad is still true, even though the messenger is an excellent representative of exactly the type of laziness, sense of entitlement, and sloth welfare yields.
Bummer for Caddy. This ad would have KILLED in 2000-2008. Happily, we’ve all grown up. ‘MERICA! Seriously, I thought it was satire until it wasn’t. So sad.
We’re going back to the moon??? With what budget? Oh and the same government that killed the shuttle program bailed out GM so they could keep making average cars and keep the UAW happy
The savings of the European Union’s 500 million citizens could be used to fund long-term investments to boost the economy and help plug the gap left by banks since the financial crisis, an EU document says.
The EU is looking for ways to wean the 28-country bloc from its heavy reliance on bank financing and find other means of funding small companies, infrastructure projects and other investment.
Senate Democrats facing tough elections this year want the Internal Revenue Service to play a more aggressive role in regulating outside groups expected to spend millions of dollars on their races.
In the wake of the IRS targeting scandal, the Democrats are publicly prodding the agency instead of lobbying them directly.
That’s a fairly even-handed story The Hill has, but it doesn’t take much to imagine the entire approach there spinning in some perverse direction.
I just cut three paragraphs that sounded too preachy about another story. I was casting allusions to the early 19th century and the Hoover administration. And that’s always how you know when to stop.
(T)he Pew Research survey asked college graduates whether, while still in school, they could have better prepared for the type of job they wanted by gaining more work experience, studying harder or beginning their job search earlier.
About three-quarters of all college graduates say taking at least one of those four steps would have enhanced their chances to land their ideal job. Leading the should-have-done list: getting more work experience while still in
school. Half say taking this step would have put them in a better position to get the kind of job they wanted. About four-in-ten (38%) regret not studying harder, while three-in-ten say they should have started looking for a job sooner (30%) or picked a different major (29%)
I’m using that in class next week.
Finally, Step Sing Step Sing Step Sing! (It takes over our campus, but it’ll be a pleasant memory by the end of the weekend.
Another day closer to the weather and we’re coming to the realization that it’ll hit us but good.
There are some things we have to keep in mind about winter in the South. First, it is hard to forecast. This is a dynamic region and the one-two punch we’re getting this week has major elements coming from the west, down from the north and up from the Gulf of Mexico. The forecast models change almost by the hour.
Meteorologists are more than happy to share those long-range models and, I’m half-convinced, they just confuse people who really shouldn’t be confused about winter weather.
Also, it isn’t the snow that’s the problem. Except when it is. Our snow is usually wet. And what often happens is the snow melts, the temperature drops and then we have great sheets of ice over everything. You drive on that.
You drive on that, because I’m staying inside.
And all of that may happen again this week. Most of the worst of it, right now, seems to be aiming for Georgia and the Carolinas. But we’ll have plenty, thanks.
Already the weather has canceled the student newspaper this week. It is due out tomorrow, but the printer is to our north, and they are expecting to get walloped. So on and on the fun goes.
To take our minds off that fun, here’s a shot of Allie, The Black Cat, sunbathing on Sunday:
That afternoon we decided, hey, it is a beautiful day, let’s run a sprint triathlon.
So we went to the pool. I had my new goggles and we swam our 650 yards. I started out too fast, which was a paradoxical decision as I am slow in the pool. And so I suffered with that for a while. I figured I would redeem myself on the bicycle, where I thought I would be able to hammer it a bit. So down the big hill and up the smaller, other side. Around part of the bypass, up another hill through campus. I got stopped at a red light, turned around and there was The Yankee. I was sure she would be nowhere to be found, but she was having a great ride.
Up through an old neighborhood, hang a left and then a right. I took a road I don’t think I’ve ever pedaled on before, but a road where we once looked at two houses. I finished the 14-mile route just a minute or two before she did, but she also caught a light I did not.
So I guess I’ll have to win in the run. We ran the first half of our 5K together, because it wasn’t a race. It was a beautiful, glorious, day for an hour and change outside, in shorts and t-shirts, in the sunshine.
We ran a sprint triathlon on a whim, making us those people. Last summer I did three of them, suffering and struggling and dreading them and only enjoying them after they were over — enjoying the knowledge that I’d completed them. (For this I get to thank Bud Frankenthaler, who two years ago I watched finishing a triathlon at the age of 79. If he could do it, the rest of us don’t have a lot of excuses, right? Thanks Mr. Frankenthaler. He will probably outpace me somewhere this year, too.) Today there were no bib numbers, no massage table, no timing chips. We did it for fun. Had a great time, too. I want to do it again. Let’s go next weekend.
I do not know what is happening.
Tomorrow we’ll have snow.
Things to read … because links will keep us all warm.
These are just the links, enjoy clicking through the ones that interest you.
We talked about critiquing news articles and television packages in class today. There are many great examples of quality work. There are also a staggeringly large amount of poor examples. They are all useful, but the one is often more fun than the other.
We watched a fire package several times. We closely considered the standard pre-winter weather milk and bread story. We read about a BASE jumper who died, and a restaurant owner shooting at his customers.
And, of course, the package that launched a thousand Antoine Dodsons:
On the one hand, that’s now four years old and I’m impressed by how many students are aware of it. On the other hand, I’m amused that there are people who don’t know it.
The Internet is a magical, large place. It makes you wonder what you’re missing, almost every day.
…
I just read Dodson’s Wikipedia page, and his website, and some link that the Internet gave me where he’s selling customized phone messages. He has had a few songs, and a clothing line, and another random thing here or there.
That guy sure was able to capitalize on the alleged sexual assault of his sister. Turned his family’s lifestyle around, at least for a time. To my knowledge no suspect was ever named. The culture surely has turned, hasn’t it?
The original remix won a handful of video of the year awards and tons of covers and parodies itself, the meta-parody writ large. And then college marching bands took a run at the tune:
I wonder how I can work this back into the class on Wednesday.
Ran a brisk 5K tonight. Felt good, being now about 12 or 15 miles into the new shoes. I’m now in a 4 mm drop running shoe, which doesn’t mean much to me. The old shoes were no longer capable of running. And I’ve had to transition into these. The heel-toe angle is different, and that takes an adjustment.
Also they are incredibly vibrant colors, which I guess might help make me visible on the side of the road, but they are never anything I’d choose for myself. They were on sale and there aren’t many options in my size. So my feet are fancy, and they still move slow.
I do not know what is happening.
Things to read … because there’s so much to learn about.
Trying to sell young adults on the idea of health insurance before an upcoming deadline, Illinois officials announced Monday they are launching an ad campaign with the satirical online newspaper The Onion.
Banner ads on The Onion website will depict a toy action figure with the words: “Man without health insurance is forced to sell action figures to pay medical bills.” The ads say: “Get Covered. Don’t sell your action figures.”
Oy.
Professor Reynolds knows not enough people care that they are being spied on. He makes good points here, but they won’t spur anyone to action, either. NSA spying undermines separation of powers: Column:
Most of the worry about the National Security Agency’s bulk interception of telephone calls, e-mail and the like has centered around threats to privacy. And, in fact, the evidence suggests that if you’ve got a particularly steamy phone- or Skype-sex session going on, it just might wind up being shared by voyeuristic NSA analysts.
But most Americans figure, probably rightly, that the NSA isn’t likely to be interested in their stuff. (Anyone who hacks my e-mail is automatically punished, by having to read it.) There is, however, a class of people who can’t take that disinterest for granted: members of Congress and the judiciary. What they have to say is likely to be pretty interesting to anyone with a political ax to grind. And the ability of the executive branch to snoop on the phone calls of people in the other branches isn’t just a threat to privacy, but a threat to the separation of powers and the Constitution.
How much does your school spend on snow removal? Good question. I know Samford spread 35,000 pounds of sand and 4,000 pounds of ice melt. Staff spent 506 hours clearing roads and sidewalks and dozens and dozens of staff members worked for three and four days, straight.
But at least the bookstore sold 428 pieces of clothing — a lot of sweatpants — on that day the campus was closed two weeks ago.
The campus closed early on Friday, last week, as well. And there is more weather coming this week. This is a strange winter for Alabama. The cost of lost time in the classroom has likely been the biggest toll. I’m still trying to get a class caught up. Maybe on Wednesday, if winter allows the class to meet.
