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journalism / links / Monday / video — Comments Off
8
Aug 11

London calling, they say there’s nothing on the telly

I could not sleep last night, or most of this morning. It was a fitful thing, falling asleep while the birds were rising to their day’s task. Whistle and tweet, and there’s the lightening sky, how neat.

It reminded me of every all-night ever pulled in the history of man. You remember the thrill of the first all-nighter. It was a great feeling, defeating the night, beating the sun to its sense of purpose, only to strangle yourself on snores a few hours later. Youth.

And here you are missing out on four deleted paragraphs devoted to the evolution of the all-nighter’s impact on your body. As you know, you begin to cope less and less with it.

Anyway. The problem with being wide awake at 3 a.m. is your choice of television, which is to say every shopping channel, SportsCenter’s greatest hits from 1983 and infomercials. The most challenging thing on television? The Transformers movie. You can’t fall asleep to that because you’re too busy being annoyed at how bad the thing is.

Headline News, searching for the sweet spot of news and entertainment irrelevance, had a package where Jersey Shore regulars give their insight into the economy. Here’s your tip: two guys from Jersey Shore have an opinion on the economy. Wrestle with that awhile. And then digest their take home message: Italy is in much better shape than the US just now. I refer you to this handy 2010 Economist infographic on the PIIGS. Judge for yourself. Me, I’ve now watched two minutes of people who’s stature in the world has been determined by their appearance on a show with the word Jersey in the title.

I have a strict rule: No Jersey Anything watching. And I have in-laws, lovely, thoughtful, sweet, lightyears beyond the stereotypes, in-laws in New Jersey. But, still.

What you think you know about the London riots is probably understated. This map, if accurate, gives one pause.

View Initial London riots / UK riots in a larger map

Not that you can see it on American television, but, then, that is why we have the Internet. The initial spark was a police shooting, but this now seems to be a bit of youthful discontent, hooliganism, opportunism and the slowest governmental response to a swelling issue in quite some time. Here’s a Sky News reporter, shooting in his neighborhood tonight:

Here’s an overview piece that basically says no one knows why, and no one has done much yet to stop it. It doesn’t seem if there will be any solutions anytime soon, given all of the dynamics in play.

Meanwhile, my little presentation is coming along. It now has a central point. I have also downloaded the appropriate PowerPoint template. Tomorrow words will begin appearing on it, as if by magic.

cycling / iPhone / journalism / links / overwriting / video / Wednesday — Comments Off
3
Aug 11

The bike, rhetoric, the economy, journalism, politicians, link bait

Twenty miles this morning, which was the rough equivalent to midday on Venus. The heat index was 102 and I learned a very important thing on this ride across an eternal purgatory: shade is important.

Can you tell I’m an intellectual?

It has been a while since I’ve been on my bike. My legs felt like goopy clay, churning sometimes, freewheeling at other moments and never answering the call as they should. When the heat kicked in I think my brain went beyond non-autonomous functions like shifting gears and concentrated on things more important like perspiration and demanding I take a drink.

We had here, though, a type of asphalt cement that was being baked again. The county, should they feel compelled, could do road work for half price this month because much of their equipment could be left at the office. The sun is baking everything, including the brains of the road workers. And people foolhardy enough to be riding their bike at the you-should-know-better hour of 8 a.m.

I noticed that the sun was killing me, but when I got under trees, everything felt significantly better. Like a good scientist, I continued observing this phenomenon until I could state for certain that a pattern had emerged. Of course my brain was a hunk of melted chocolate by then, but I had my answer: shade = good. Problem: this road has little shade.

And so I called it a ride, because how much of this do you need, really? (I did get a new picture for the front page, though, so that’s something.)

Which is when I decided to stop at a gas station for a Gatorade where something unusual and unexpected happen. And I will tell you that story below, but I must say this first: I live in a lovely town. Counting the years I attended undergrad here I’ve spent six years in residence. It is a fine college town. The people are friendly, generally decent and helpful and, I think, it is because we all know we’re lucky to live in a nice place. So that’s six years, and aside from the occasional town versus gown thing, and whatever condescension — which was never much, mind you — I received as a student by the locals, I don’t recall having ever experienced a truly snooty moment from anyone. (At least when I didn’t deserve it.)

So the story: I go into this gas station, who’s initials shall remain nameless, but the acronym stands for Quick Trip. There’s an older lady and a younger man working there. I’m going to say they were related, but I have no idea. This is a nice clean place. Good location, all of that. They have two full walls of beverages. I wander in and in my dazed, sizzling brain state look for the Gatorade that will hopefully give me the electrolytes of life.

The young guy walks the length of the store and starts eyeballing me. Not in a subtle way, but in a serious and obvious looking me over way. Like he’s going to ask me if I have any needles, drugs or weapons on me before he pats me down sort of way. I grab my drinks and start navigating up to the counter to pay for my beverages. This takes a little effort because I have my bike with me and don’t want to knock anything off their shelves.

Now, I took my bike inside because I don’t ride with a lock, there’s no place to tie it down anyway and I’m not interested in watching my expensive machine disappear with someone else. Also my phone and other important things were on board today. So I take my bike inside. I’m trying to line the front wheel and the handlebars off so I don’t knock off a can of Dinty Moore with the drops and this requires a pause, a steer and a come-on-brain-work moment. My shadow over here has noticed I’ve stopped, has turned and walked back to study me again.

I get it. And, look dude, I’m wearing bike shorts and a bike shirt. You think I’m stuffing a sleeve of crackers somewhere on my person?

I make my way to the front and my conversation with the lady staffing the register goes like this:

“Ain’t never seen that before.”

What’s that?

“Someone bringing their bike in the store.”

Well, it is expensive and I’m cheap and I don’t want to lose it.

“This is a good neighborhood …”

I know, it is. I live just down the road.

A fine neighborhood, to be sure. And yet you’ve got your boy giving me long hard looks. Lady, don’t judge me. I’m riding a bike. I have on a helmet and an iPod. I’m sweating like Zeus being confronted by Hera. I feel for the hard-working African-American man who kindly held the door for me as I exited and he entered. I can’t imagine what she thought of the young Hispanic male who walked in after that.

“This place is just going to Hades.”

Yes, I’m sure she thinks this, is scared of it and can blame the heat on the confluence of so many undesirable things, sweaty white guy and two men who do not fit into her expectation of a nice neighborhood.

I stood there thinking, I should go clean myself up and come shop here in a more respectable manner, just to see if they recall this visit. But then I thought, No. You’ve been judged and found unworthy. By a gas station attendant. You need not spend any more money here.

I refer you to Smith’s First Rule of Commerce, Marketing and Entrepreneurship: Do not make it hard for me to spend my money with you.

At home I got cleaned up, stretched out, denied aloud that I was going to sleep and then promptly took a three hour nap. My body ran hot the rest of the day, it does that some time, and I took on the task of the daily reading.

The message for politicians who now find themselves adept at the art of brinkmanship: your upcoming vacation may not be as pleasant as you’d like. Even for Congress, people are displeased:

Nor has the spotlight in the past few weeks helped Congress: Nearly one in five independents say they think less of both congressional Democrats and Republicans as a result of the budget negotiations. Not a single one of the independents interviewed now thinks more highly of both sides.

Every now and then the electorate pays attention. And on some of those occasions they peer beyond the soundbites, dismiss the rhetoric, look to their children and they form opinions on you. And that must give you cause to tremble. I’ve had some very interesting conversations and heard still more from several demographics talking about elected representatives lately; there’s a lot of displeasure that can’t solely be blamed on unemployment rates.

My representative’s office did send out a Cut, Cap and Balance email about a week after the legislation was dead. You can imagine what the replies must have been like.

Want an electric car from Chevrolet? No one does, it seems. Sadly Weekly Standard is not allowing comments there. They would no doubt be an entertaining read.

Look. I know who Maureen Dowd is. I know what she does and why she has the pulpit she does. Hasty, red meat rhetoric doesn’t bother me because it is easily dismissed. Curdles the moment you write it and leaves the author with the worst sort of legacy. If that’s what you’re after, good for you. I’ve read this stuff for years, studied it studiously and written about it professionally. But, really:

Most of the audience staggered away from this slasher flick still shuddering. We continue to be paranoid, gripped by fear of the unknown, shocked by our own helplessness, stunned by how swiftly one world can turn into a darker one where everything can seem familiar yet foreign.

“Rosemary’s Tea Party,” an online commenter called it.

If the scariest thing in the world is something you can’t understand, then Americans are scared out of their minds about what is happening in America.

Every view is fine, and every semi-organized group needs yipping attack dogs, too. It gives people a role to play, and maybe a nice seat at a correspondents dinner. That’s great. My visceral problem with op-eds such as these are that, 80 years from now, someone is going to pull this up off that old dusty — What did they call it back then? Interweb? Worldtubes? — and see things like this in the paper of record during a period supposedly beyond yellow journalism, written by those flush in the glow of those would do good with their pen, comfort the afflicted with their FTP and afflict the comfortable with their retweets. And instead of some good copy, or even a nice argument, you get:

Tea Party budget-slashers didn’t sport the black capes with blood-red lining beloved by the campy Vincent Price or wield the tinglers deployed by William Castle. But in their feral attack on Washington, in their talent for raising goose bumps from Wall Street to Westminster, this strange, compelling and uncompromising new force epitomized “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” and evoked comparisons to our most mythic creatures of the night.

They were like cannibals, eating their own party and leaders alive. They were like vampires, draining the country’s reputation, credit rating and compassion. They were like zombies, relentlessly and mindlessly coming back again and again to assault their unnerved victims, Boehner and President Obama. They were like the metallic beasts in “Alien” flashing mouths of teeth inside other mouths of teeth, bursting out of Boehner’s stomach every time he came to a bouquet of microphones. (Conjuring that last image on Monday, Vladimir Putin described America as “a parasite.”)

Remember: The New York Times created something called Times Select because they thought all of America would plunk down $50 to read such gems from Maureen Dowd et al. That lasted exactly two years, and was successful for almost none of that time.

And so, because we need perspective, we must once again turn to a comedian:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c

Dealageddon! – A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Compromise – The Super Committee

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor & Satire Blog

The Daily Show on Facebook

No matter how you feel about it, there’s a reason people trust the guy. It doesn’t take a day on hot asphalt to realize that. Well, maybe it does.

And now we must go buy birthday cards. Because we have a host of people to recognize in August and nothing says “We respect and love your kind and generous contributions to what make us who we are” like a midnight trip to Walmart. More on that tomorrow.

Auburn / football / history / journalism / links / Tuesday — Comments Off
2
Aug 11

Football season

Practice starts tomorrow. Here’s a look at last year, a fine photo gallery put together by Oregon Live before their Ducks faced Auburn in the BCS Championship game.

Thirty-something days and counting …

In professional camps, Cam Newton is getting positive early reviews with the Panthers. As always on a sports post, read the comments at your own risk.

There’s other stuff, too, National Night Out, where our neighborhood said “Dude. This is August,” and just recalled that they met people last year. Even the police didn’t bother to cruise through the neighborhood handing out the campaign literature. Now, if someone had been out offering ‘Smores and lemonade …

Speaking of lemonade, there’s the intent of the law and then there’s the intent of the law, and you can add this to your list of communities to avoid — or flock to, as you like — when reading this story:

Police closed down a lemonade stand in Coralville last week, telling its 4-year-old operator and her dad that she didn’t have a permit.

An officer told Abigail Krutsinger’s father Friday that she couldn’t run the stand as RAGBRAI bicyclers poured into Coralville.

And here’s another one, same town:

A mother of six also said her kids had their lemonade stand on 18th Avenue shut down after just 20 minutes.

Bobbie Nelson said she laughed when a police officer told her that a permit to sell lemonade would cost $400.

“The kids were devastated,” Nelson said. “They just cried and didn’t understand why.”

[…]

Mitch Gross, a member of the Coralville City Council, said he believes the city will learn a lesson from this. Gross said he expects future ordinances to apply only for vendors who set out to “make a profit.”

“It was never our intent to shut down kid’s lemonade stands,” Gross said. “We never really thought about it.”

That’s refreshing of the councilman, who admitted openly that he and his colleagues did not think through the two-day ordinance they passed in order to capitalize on a visiting bike tour’s tourist influx. Err. I mean looking out for people. So which is it? Money-hungry or nanny statism? So hard to choose sides somedays, isn’t it?

Do read those comments, where the people are throwing lemons back at the city.

And, finally, what space shuttles and horses have in common:

When we see a Space Shuttle sitting on the launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are the solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at a factory in Utah. The engineers who designed the SRBs might have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site.

The railroad from the factory runs through a tunnel in the mountains. The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than a railroad track …

That’s as fun a tongue-in-cheek mini-essay as you can read today.

That’s enough for one sitting. Try to stay cool out there. The heat index here today was 102.

adventures / books / iPhone / links / overwriting / photo / Wednesday — 1 Comment
27
Jul 11

Writing retreat, Day Five

This was the last day of the retreat, which has the goal of arriving with a work in progress and leaving with a finished paper. Some people do this. The Yankee did this, though she said there is a bit of editing to do, which is terrific.

My project, which had something of a learning curve involved, isn’t finished, but is probably two-thirds of the way there. A few more long sessions of concentrated effort could get the thing to the editing stage. So that’s progress.

After things wrapped up this evening we stopped to smell the roses:

We went to Portland’s International Rose Test Garden — the sun stays up until about 9 p.m. out here this time of year, so we took advantage of the daylight to do one last bit more of sight-seeing. Some 700 varieties over more than 4 acres, including annual winners dating back to the 1940s. Neat place, and you can find more here.

When you start telling people you’re about to go to Portland they tell you “Oh, you have to go to Powell’s!”

You don’t go to cities and have folks tell you to visit a bookstore often, so you pay attention. With good reason; Powell’s is unique. It is a regional chain, but the original spans a city block, has two buildings, mixes new and used and is full of sensory overload. (Likely no one knows how many titles are in the Powell’s system.) There’s that beautiful pulp smell and also the feeling you get when you walk into a big cave — you’re inside, but everything is oversized enough to suggest you’re outside, and yet, there’s a roof over your head.

Seeing Powell’s was great, but also it made me a bit sad. I keep my Amazon wishlist as a way to keep track of books I want to pick up one day. I checked that list against every book Powell’s had in stock. Every great-looking book that caught my eye on the shelves I looked up on Amazon. Powell’s lost every time. They got close in one book, after you figured in shipping and handling, but that was it. (I was not really shopping today, this was a tourist trip because I’m not lugging books across the country, but I did add a few things to my eventual reading list.)

The used books at Powell’s are mixed in with the new, but they are high quality used books. And, at Powell’s, you can buy a quality used hardback for the price of a new paperback. But you can buy the same book for pennies on the dollar online.

Still, aside from the joy of being in a bookstore, and the random chance of discovering some gem on sale or an intriguing book cover, it is difficult to find a book that is cheaper in a store now. And that makes me a bit sad. Borders, which had been using a flawed business model for years, it seems, is as symbolic as it is as damaging to an industry. Shame so many people lost their jobs in that company’s demise, but as an indicator of change it is just as unfortunate. So there will be less distribution, thus fewer books, and fewer publishers pushing new authors (self publish!) and prices will go up and quality will go down a smidge.

We’re buying digital versions of media or not consuming them at all anymore. As such that atmosphere that we’re losing is also painful to contemplate. This is relative. When record stores went away we mourned, moved on and bought the new stuff in malls and online. After a while you forget the feeling. I fell out of my biggest music habits just as the digital download became the medium. When newspapers and television finally had to grudgingly accept the notion that there might be something to this online thing, I was already working there. In time, people will overlook the psychic benefits they once received from the old style in favor of their new cerebral download of water skiing squirrel features they get daily.

On books, I’m old school. I buy actual books online and have them shipped to my home because I like books. I like shelves and art and big fonts and running my fingers along those beautiful spines to find the tome I want. I like my own little personal library. I sincerely want a home library stacked so high I need a library ladder on rails to reach the top shelf. At the risk of sounding old, I can’t get that in a digital reader.

A bookstore as big as a city block can’t compete with a warehouse jammed to the rafters in a cornfield somewhere who can get me that book before the weekend. There’s little hope for bookstores. Which means books are in bigger trouble from the model than from their formatic opposition like Kindles and iPads.

See DVDs, Blockbuster and Netflix.

There will always be a need for some of these type places. Just fewer of them, and farther between. My argument for why I could live in the middle of nowhere so long as they had a decent grocery store (and good Internet) is because you can get anything shipped. (Arts, culture and medicine, as a service and experience, seem to be the biggest outliers.) But, then, maybe this changes things:

Falling mail volume and soaring red ink may soon doom Saturday mail delivery and prompt three-day-a-week delivery within 15 years, Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe warns.

Donahoe wasn’t specific about how soon he would like to reduce service but said he thinks Congress, struggling with the federal budget, will be more open to the idea now. He said a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll last year helped move the discussion along. More than half of those polled had no problem with losing Saturday mail.

The Postal Service estimates the move would save $3.1 billion a year.

So pick your spots ship on Monday for a Friday arrival, I guess, or hoof it to town.

Also, in that same piece: “On Sept. 30,” he told the USA TODAY editorial board Tuesday, “I won’t be able to pay my bills.”

Better leave your mail person a tip.

We had dinner at Good Taste, an almost-dive in Chinatown. It was very good. This was my fortune:

cycling / iPhone / links / Monday / photo — Comments Off
18
Jul 11

Tractors count

Pedaled 35.8 miles this morning. And, as I told The Yankee (who beat me home today) I bonked so hard I physically felt it. There I was, struggling along, wondering if it was too early to start trying to count the remaining hills in my head when it felt as if a 10 pound weight had been dropped upon each shoulder.

The last six miles were done in sheer defiance.

But it was a lovely day for a ride. Bright, quiet, few cars on the road as I moved away from town before “rush hour” and stayed in the country for most of the ride.

One of my goals is to pass a moving car. Just getting up from a redlight doesn’t count. Waiting for a safe path to turn doesn’t count. I almost had one in the neighborhood once. He was adhering strictly to the speed limit and if I’d only had a little more juice left in my legs I might have made it a compelling race. Thought I had another one today:

Yes, tractors would count. He turned off just before I caught up to him. Chicken. I’d entertained the notion of following him, but he went down a gravel road. I, too, am a chicken. The fun of it was that, had I not slowed to compose a photograph I might have overtaken him.

Tractors would count.

One of the nice parts about the route we took this morning is that much of it is so far out in the middle of nowhere you can go miles without seeing a car. You also have great scenery:

I love that stuff, and this area is full of fields that used to feature working houses or barns that are now storage or little more than rusty, rotting windbreaks. Occasionally you get to see things you aren’t really sure about:

Maybe it isn’t a mirage. Couldn’t say. This was on a stretch of road I’ve pedaled on once before, notable for the calm, quiet pastureland and that there is no store for miles and miles around. You instinctively nurse your water through here, even on a hot July day, because you don’t know when you’ll find a place with more to sell you.

Near that house:

I’m always on the lookout for a flat field with a lone tree and nothing in the background but horizon. The parts of the world I live in are too hilly and too covered in trees to see it, but somewhere on the great plains this place exists. I don’t know why I look for that setting, but I have an urge to take a photograph of it. I look and I look, and I find neat little places like that. You probably wouldn’t even notice that from a car. I speak from experience, having spent countless hours on sleepy country roads driving from one family dream to another family event.

I thought of this on my ride today. I have a list of questions I’m going to ask should I ever get to speak with someone in Management in Heaven. One question is “How close did I get to walking over buried treasure?” Another is “Was my purpose something small, like not letting someone off the phone so that they could not leave their home and narrowly miss a horrible accident? Or was it bigger, like eating all of the Little Debbie snack cakes?” I have a whole list. And now this: “How much time did I spend on little two lane country roads?” I wouldn’t ask that out of despair, at least not anymore, but out of wonder. There can be a great joy that can be found in getting from here to there, even on paths you’ve taken your entire life.

Or on new paths. Today I found myself at an intersection that featured an old country dining restaurant, a decrepit fireworks stand, a Dollar General, a stand-alone ice dispenser and a random country grocery store. I’m going back with a fistful of dollars.

The Yankee took me to lunch today. She wanted salad, so we visited Panera, where they now give you a pager, ask for your social security number, blood type, mother’s maiden name and the lotto numbers you play. When your food is ready they call your name.

I had a brief chat with the guy at the pickup counter.

Are the pagers broken?

“No … “

And that was it. They don’t use them, his voice trailed off as if he hadn’t considered being asked such a question, as if the local franchise had been unsure, all this time, about how to use those big chunks of black plastic. How does the home office know what is happening in all of the various satellites operating under their signage near and far?

I liked Panera better before the prices went up and the cups got tiny, back when there was a little craft on display in their sandwich making process. Today I had warm soup dipped from a warming vase and a sandwich with cold cuts. This will run you about seven bucks. The cups, though, are the thing that get you. The Panera drink glass is now the size of most people’s water cups. The Panera water cup is a diminutive thimble. As if they have a staff member, the guy who’s on this mysterious “Pager Duty” walking the floor making sure no one ordered a water and pumped in a little carbonated lemonade instead.

Give the place credit, though. This particular Panera actually has seating, a concept which is as foreign in most of their restaurants as the pagers. This is a happy accident. This Panera is in a strip mall and was previously a … my memory and the Internet don’t recall what it was, let’s call it a specialty boutique retail store of indistinct origin or business model. They’ve capitalized on the space, and there are plenty of tabletops. In fact the room segments itself nicely, along the front are the college kids, in the back are the silver foxes.

We try to sit in the middle.

Links and stuff: Students at the University of Alabama put this little video together on life after the April tornado. Do check it out:

There’s plenty still to do around the state in recovery. A lot of that has been done so far by way of social media, and no one has been more prominently centered than James Spann. He’s a humble guy who downplays his role, but if ever a meteorologist was a hero before, during and after a storm, he’s your guy. He’s talking here at the recent TedxRedMountain event.

You want pictures? The Atlantic is running a deep photo essay on World War II. Good stuff.

You want words? Brooks Conrad is a baseball player, the kind you might celebrate because he came up the hard way and made it through grit and perseverance. And then there was the night when his life all but came unglued. You don’t have to be a huge baseball fan or even a Braves fan (I’m neither.) for this story.

When in doubt, blame it on your mother.