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Mouth fist! Fist line!

We bought our first Girl Scout cookies of the year. Our friend Jeremy’s daughter is a Girl Scout. This is her first year. So he called and asked if they could drive over. This is good timing because we are usually visited by the most entrepreneurial young lady in the troop. She goes around selling to restaurants and dessert places.

Sadie, Jeremy’s daughter, beat her to us. We’d also promised to buy from another girl. So we’re buying a lot of cookies, but this is a good experience for the kids. Plus, cookies.

I turned on the exterior lights. A bit later Sadie rang the doorbell. Jeremy has stayed in his car. We discuss the cookies. It was in the 30s, so I invited her in, because we are friends. Sadie, who has the most ironic sense of humor you’ve ever seen on a child her age, says “Let me go ask my dad. For ‘safety.'”

She made the air quotes, which made my day.

So I filled out the forms. We had a good chat about why I invited her inside, why people shouldn’t invite her in, why she should stay at the door and why asking her dad was a very good thing. I’m sure they discuss that when they hand out the Girl Scout sashes, but you can never hear the safety lectures from too many different people.

We sent her across the way to sell cookies. Since they had cookies in the back of their car we collected ours and then removed the rest. They almost drove off without their supplies, until mock guilt at our pretend theft got the better of us.

But we were thiiiis close to establishing a black market for cookies.

Tonight we watched an episode of the seventh season of the Cosby Show. It guest starred Red Buttons, a comedian and composer. Buttons played the local hardware store owner. He was all worked up about a traffic accident that happened a decade prior. Turns out Buttons’ daughter wanted to marry the son of the other guy in that old car wreck, whom Buttons’ character is still mad at. That role was played by the great E.G. Marshall. If you let that scene play out, below, it is rather touching, with Cosby just sitting back watching two old masters work.

Buttons first movie was in 1944. He was still on TV in 2005, before dying in 2009. Marshall got his start in 1945 and worked until his death in 1998.

They first worked on the same project in 1947. This episode of the Cosby Show was shot in 1991. Fifty-four years in between. Of course, almost 23 years have passed since this episode aired …

Things to read … from this decade.

Goal Post kicker going home with family:

The fate of the animated, neon placekicker who welcomed generations of Anniston residents to Goal Post Bar-B-Q had been uncertain since the place closed in September. But this week the Calhoun County icon found a new home — just 2 miles down Quintard Avenue — with the family that established the famed restaurant in the 1960s.

If you like iconic neon, this story is great news. It is quite a shame that the old barbecue joint shut down, but at least the sign will live on.

Tornado impact minimal in north Alabama in 2013; second-fewest twisters in last 6 years:

Tornadoes in 2013 had a minimal impact in north Alabama and for the second straight year, there were no deaths attributed to tornadoes, according to the National Weather Service office in Huntsville.

The weather service today released its 2013 statistical review of tornadoes, which reflected that north Alabama saw its second-fewest number of twisters since 2007.

It was, the story notes, the second year in a row that the area had only two of what are considered “strong” tornadoes.

NSA collects 200 million text messages daily in untargeted sweep, British paper reports:

The program code named “Dishfire” collects data, including communications from people not suspected of illegal activity, and conducts an automated analysis. Among the data collected: Missed call alerts, details of border crossings derived from network roaming alerts, names and images from electronic business cards, financial transactions and travel details.

And, finally, something more amusing than all of that from across the Atlantic, bad British football commentary:

No doubt this will be a hit at Alabama, where they think their team might probably should be in the Super Bowl.

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15
Jan 14

Mugshots liked on Facebook

Overcast this morning. Clear in the afternoon. The high was in the mid 40s. It was the kind of day that suggested a feeling that implied what flirting with spring might, one day, be like.

The forecasts call for another cold snap in a few days, making it our second of the year, meaning we’ll have an extra one that no one ordered. We’ll convince ourselves that, somehow, this means we’re going to have an incredibly nice spring.

Hit the pool, swam a mile. That makes three times in a week. Suddenly, I feel like I can breath in the pool again. That’s always a nice comfort-level skill to have. I’m a very bad lap swimmer, but I only kicked the lane lines twice today, so there’s that, too.

Appropos of nothing I came home the other night from somewhere and The Yankee was watching City of Angels. I remember seeing this in the theater, it was probably the perfect late-90s date movie, after all.

So we ended up watching the whole thing, because she likes the movie, and I can make Nick Cage jokes. And then, toward the end, at the climactic scene:

She yells at the television screen, “Wear a helmet!”

It has just become a reflexive thing, at this point.

Things to read … no helmet required.

The New New Newsweek.com: “it seems like every time you turn around there’s a new Newsweek.com.”

I remember when I first subscribed to Newsweek. It was the 7th grade. It was a class assignment. I was never that big of a nerd. We had the same English teacher four times in junior and high school and she gave us writing assignments out of the old magazines. Those were my first, real, writing assignments, summarizing news copy each week, every week, for four years. It was a decent start on learning the craft of writing. I remember when I finally dropped Newsweek, when they were running wildly divergent covers for different parts of the world. What you saw from one to the next was so different as to be insulting. And if that wasn’t insulting the American copy got the job done. I doubt I’ll be subscribing again anytime soon, despite new editors and a third round of new owners and so on, but having more publications out there is never a bad thing.

Survey: Obamacare worries Hill aides:

A vast majority of top congressional aides say in a new survey that they are concerned about the effects of Obamacare on their staff, ticking off worries about changes to their benefits, higher costs and whether they’ll have access to local health care providers.

Ninety percent of staffers surveyed for a report released Monday by the Congressional Management Foundation said they are concerned about benefit changes under the health care law, while 86 percent are anxious about the financial hit and 79 percent cited worries to access.

[…]

“The elimination of staff’s traditional health care has been a complete disaster,” one aide said in the survey. “If you wanted a legislative branch run by K Street lobbyists and 25-year-old staffers, mission accomplished.”

Guess you should have had your bosses read the bill before they passed it, huh?

What Secrets Your Phone Is Sharing About You:

Fan Zhang, the owner of Happy Child, a trendy Asian restaurant in downtown Toronto, knows that 170 of his customers went clubbing in November. He knows that 250 went to the gym that month, and that 216 came in from Yorkville, an upscale neighborhood.

Businesses are tracking their customers and building profiles of their daily habits using a network of startups that have placed sensors in restaurants, yoga studios and other sites. Chris Gilpin, founder of one such site, Turnstyle, joins the News Hub.

And he gleans this information without his customers’ knowledge, or ever asking them a single question.

Mr. Zhang is a client of Turnstyle Solutions Inc., a year-old local company that has placed sensors in about 200 businesses within a 0.7 mile radius in downtown Toronto to track shoppers as they move in the city.

The sensors, each about the size of a deck of cards, follow signals emitted from Wi-Fi-enabled smartphones.

Whenever I talk in class about how we’re going to be leveraging technology in the near future — which is here, now — this is the one that always makes the students squirmy. You can see why.

This is the best story of the day. I have a feeling no one will mess with Jeanna Harris anymore, except maybe reporters, to whom she gives great quotes. Woman with shotgun chases away burglar:

Jeanna Harris, of Decatur, said the man she woke up early Tuesday to find rifling through her bedroom belongings is welcome to come back and try to steal from her again.

“He better be glad I had my nightgown on. The Lord’s hand was on him,” said Harris, 43, who armed herself with a 20-gauge shotgun and chased the intruder from her home. “I’m waiting on him, and I will not have on my Victoria Secret nightgown. I will have on my running shoes. It didn’t scare me; it made me mad.”

[…]

Harris said she’s glad she didn’t fire, partly because “it could have been a very dirty mess to clean up.

A suspect was arrested. And, Decatur, where this happened, puts mugshots on Facebook. People comment. “They” would do that without booking information being published online, but fewer people would hear about it. In some circumstances that could be a good thing.

journalism / links / things to read / Tuesday / video — Comments Off
14
Jan 14

21st century living

I’m thinking of adding a new category of pop culture criticism … and this is going to take more caffeine. Pardon me for a second.

There. A hot tea on a cool day should do the trick. Don’t drink coffee. Never touched the stuff. My grandparents, who drank it like water, were convinced that if you gave a baby a tablespoon of coffee they’d never want it. Or so the story goes. Don’t know how old I was, or if this actually happened, but I don’t even care to go down the coffee aisle at the grocery store. I don’t even like the smell. So it is tea, for me, then.

Anyway. I’m thinking of adding a new category of pop culture criticism which is really just another opportunity for me to creep more steadily into the Get Off My Lawn subculture. In this, the neo-post-post modern age, I will call this category 21st Century Living, in that it is simultaneously obvious, conversant, ironic and has a whiff of both despair and angst, but not in a way that suggests I care that much, as I am already dismissive of the entire enterprise.

See? I’m not into the Get Off My Lawn subculture just yet. I understand things, I simply recognize the unworthiness of the general condition.

Take this commercial, for instance. Watch the first five seconds, over and over again, until you figure it out:

Or this CNN “package” where Anderson Cooper tries, really hard, to make some sort of wry observation by cunningly asking non-questions to a giggly reporter.

So I guess they don’t drug test at CNN? This is simply life imitating art. Consider Anchorman 2 (which, hysterically gives Ron Burgundy credit for the sad state of modern broadcast news):

About the commercial in the first video: Someone thought, “The stations that we are buying airtime, have stupid, stupid audiences. Someone will go try to build a time machine. We should stop that with some fine print, so as to ameliorate any potential culpability we have if some kid does invent the flux capacitor.”

And that’s 21st Century Living.

Things to read … because this stuff is worth your attention, no matter what century you’re in.

I collected a few of the reactions on an in-state “story” today. This is all about the headline.

Anytime you curate replies you are liable to get some colorful retort. And if you publish them you are just as likely to get someone accusing you of cherry picking. Doesn’t mean you use the most off-color one as a headline if you are aspiring to be the premiere news outlet in the state.

Todd Stacey is a staffer for U.S. Rep Martha Roby in Washington D.C. He previously worked in Montgomery, hence Chuck Dean’s “you guys” swat. But see what Dean did there? “Hey, it isn’t my fault. What’s more, if you don’t like what I wrote, go do something about it. But it is just a heads up, really.” This entire piece provides little to no public service, which is still the publicly stated goal for news outlets, but it could also do as much with a more appropriate headline.

AP’s Carvin: News Battle Near For Twitter, FB

Twitter and Facebook are setting themselves up for a battle for news supremacy among social media networks. Twitter, though, holds the upper hand, according to Eric Carvin, social media editor at the Associated Press. Twitter has “come to realize the value that the news industry has in terms of what people want to consume on social,” Carvin says. In an interview with NetNewsCheck, Carvin discusses potential news moves from those social platforms, along with the sleeper potential of Google Plus.

Half of U.S. Counties Haven’t Recovered From Recession

About half of the nation’s 3,069 county economies are still short of their prerecession economic output, reflecting the uneven economic recovery, according to a new report from the National Association of Counties.

The overall U.S. economy had reached its prerecession level of gross domestic product three years ago, Commerce Department figures show.

National statistics “mask the reality on the ground.”

There is an interactive map. How is your county faring?

If graduation rates is your metric of choice, this is good news: Alabama public schools set state record with 80 percent graduation rate in 2013. Or, even if you take the skeptical — “school was just made easier” — perspective, you at least have a new state record. This is using the on-time method.
Doesn’t 80 still seem low, though?

The individual school breakdowns aren’t out yet, apparently, but we can look at some recent numbers. Here are the superlatives for the state in the 2011-2012 year. Charles Henderson High listed a 58 percent graduation rate, the lowest in the state. Coffee County boasted a 94 percent.

Must be the caffeine they have down there.

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13
Jan 14

Do not do math underwater

Swimming again this morning. I got in 1650 yards, which apparently used to be measured as a mile in the pool. That’s weird because, when you swim as slowly as I do, you have plenty of time to do multiplication and division in your head — several times — and realize, Hey, that math isn’t right.

Don’t do math in the pool. Because the sequence of events that follows is not unlike those Directv ads. And the inevitable “What lap am I on?” is only the beginning.

Don’t do math in the pool.

This evening I went for a run. It seems that if I get a route in my head some part of me feels obligated to do the entire thing, if possible. And there I was, wondering how this felt and why that ached, and enjoying that it was cold, but I was sweating. Wondering how my hair could be wet, the temperature could be 46 and I find that I’m enjoying myself. So I ran and walked eight miles. OK, really it was 7.94 miles, but my first rule of running is to round up. I walked the hills, because of whatever is going on with my legs. The entire route was on sidewalks or bike paths, except for one little bridge. I fairly well sprinted over that.

I don’t sprint.

I do not know what is happening.

Now, as I sit resting quietly, Allie has come for a visit. I moved to take a picture of her cuddliness and my poor posture, and she does this:

I can take photos of her with my camera all day long. She’ll tolerate an iPad being shoved in her face. You pull out your phone, and that is just going to ruin her night, you filthy paparazzo.

Things to read … because reading is fundamental.

A conversation on Mobile Content Strategy with Mark Coatney, Al Jazeera America:

Mark reads books on his commute so he believes that long form is absolutely possible on mobile. In his eyes a 5-minute video is long form. Short form means anything that is a steady stream of consumption: ‘stock and flow’. When asked if he was encompassing that theory by combining into one or splitting into two apps he replied “Two, but I hadn’t really thought of it like that”. One will give the steady stream of information and be more social. The other is a second screen, a companion that will give you more information, go deeper whenever a consumer wants to.

There is a ton of stuff, in that one simple paragraph.

Enhanced fan experiences: The sportd strategy of the second screen:

Consider this: 83% of fans say they use social media during games. Sixty-nine percent prefer phones as second-screen alternatives; 48 percent check scores and 20 percent watch highlights via mobile, according to data from March 2013.

[…]

Not enough is said or written about the engagement teams are having with fans in social. I feel conversations are not genuine enough and too many teams and leagues have built a barrier, not engaging fully with those who appreciate them most.

That is because most teams are terrible at the practice. The exemplar Tom Buchheim uses are the Boston Bruins. “The team uses replies to many fan tweets, even personalizing each response with the initials of those behind the scenes.”

So someone there understands Twitter is a conversation. Good for the Bruins. Why are most professional and big-time college franchises have difficulty grasping the attendant concepts? Buchheim continues:

Game time is go time in social media, and it can be chaotic. But teams should dedicate resources to connect one-to-one with fans more. Share their content. Have conversations. Build stronger bonds. This will only drive further engagement during the off-season and help fulfill social media’s true value — breaking down barriers and connecting people in authentic ways.

[…]

A sports fan’s second-screen options are endless. So are the ways teams and leagues can reach them during live events. It’s imperative fans find value in these experiences, whether they’re watching online, on their couches or in the bleachers. As it becomes ingrained into the sports experience, the second screen must be about the fan, providing deeper engagement, better access and increasing value.

The standard if/then/so structure there is heartening. These programs will figure it out, though I’m not sure why it will take them that long.

Who’s poor in America? 50 years into the ‘War on Poverty,’ a data portrait:

Today, most poor Americans are in their prime working years: In 2012, 57% of poor Americans were ages 18 to 64, versus 41.7% in 1959.

[…]

Today’s poor families are structured differently: In 1973, the first year for which data are available, more than half (51.4%) of poor families were headed by a married couple; 45.4% were headed by women. In 2012, just over half (50.3%) of poor families were female-headed, while 38.9% were headed by married couples.

Poverty is more evenly distributed, though still heaviest in the South: In 1969, 45.9% of poor Americans lived in the South, a region that accounted for 31% of the U.S. population at the time. At 17.9%, the South’s poverty rate was far above other regions. In 2012, the South was home to 37.3% of all Americans and 41.1% of the nation’s poor people; though the South’s poverty rate, 16.5%, was the highest among the four Census-designated regions, it was only 3.2 percentage points above the lowest (the Midwest).

Pew has a chart and a map on that page which say a lot, quickly.

And a more localized view, from Kaiser Family Foundation researchers:

All 10 southeastern states have poverty rates above the national figure. Mississippi (27 percent, second-highest) and Louisiana (26 percent, third-highest) are near the top of the rankings, while North Carolina and Florida, each at 21 percent, are just slightly above the U.S. rate.

Alabama, meanwhile, sits at 22 percent, ranked 15th overall.

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11
Jan 14

Things in the air

We’re counting the days until the sun returns and the weather warms up and spring arrives. This morning we woke up to tornado watches. In the late morning the sun remembered its job and by the afternoon there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. We got into the low 60s, too, and it was a perfect day to be outside.

So we ventured over to the local exercise path, a nice two-lane asphalt topped trail that crosses two little streams on its 1.5 miles. It is named as a bike path, but the walkers and joggers and strollers have taken over. Occasionally you’ll see a bike, but anyone doing more than soft pedaling is going to be on the adjacent road. I ran up and back down the path, and then did it again, for six miles.

On the second return trip I saw this:

Which isn’t terribly sharp, perhaps, because I was panting, but we’re going to just consider this foliage as another sign of a great spring is in the air.

Things to read … because the Internet is one enormous scavenger hunt …

Speaking of in the air, 110 million Target customers and … some more stores you haven’t even heard about yet. More well-known U.S. retailers victims of cyber attacks – sources:

Target Corp and Neiman Marcus are not the only U.S. retailers whose networks were breached over the holiday shopping season last year, according to sources familiar with attacks on other merchants that have yet to be publicly disclosed.

Smaller breaches on at least three other well-known U.S. retailers took place and were conducted using similar techniques as the one on Target, according to the people familiar with the attacks. Those breaches have yet to come to light. Also, similar breaches may have occurred earlier last year.

The sources said that they involved retailers with outlets in malls, but declined to elaborate.

So it is back to cash, then.

Closer to home, there was a Lego show in Birmingham. Check out the photos.

We’ll just let the headline do the talking here: Huntsville woman reports intruder hiding behind Christmas tree.

That cold snap earlier this week was so severe that in the northern part of the state so many pipes burst that all of the water storage tanks were drained, and people are having to conserve water. First world problems, huh?

Ominous: ‘For Every One Job Added, Nearly 5 People Left the Workforce’:

Today’s jobs report underscores a deeper problem facing our economy: a large and growing block of people who are chronically jobless and completely outside the workforce. In December, the economy added only 74,000 jobs – not nearly enough to keep up with population growth –and 347,000 left the workforce.

Sen. Jeff Sessions, an Alabama Republican, says everything but “This is the new economy.” He’s not saying that because it doesn’t get votes, but people are seeing it. They’re realizing it. That’s in the air, too.