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13
Feb 14

I cut a lot from this post, but clearly not enough

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

Anybody want to take a run at explaining that?

Meanwhile, in Europe: Exclusive: EU executive sees personal savings used to plug long-term financing gap:

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.

And, meanwhile, here at home: Vulnerable Dems want IRS to step up:

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.

So, moving on …

The Rising Cost of Not Going to College:

(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.

iPhone / Samford / video / Wednesday — Comments Off
12
Feb 14

More snow

As I write this we have something like two-and-a-half or almost three inches of snow on the ground. It is supposed to continue off and on. There are just a few flurries here and there now. Earlier there was an urgent rate of snowfall. The clouds had a date, and there was much brushing of the shoulders.

I heard someone say to a friend “You’re wearing Chacos!”

The friend said “I didn’t know the snow would be this cold!”

And I wept for the future. And the tears froze on my face, because it is cold.

Actually, we’ve hovered just above freezing for hours. That could make the overnight interesting.

This morning everything else had closed up, but our campus held out until the mid-afternoon. They were hoping against hope, but you just knew the feeling was in the air. Then, after lunch, came the word.

My afternoon class was canceled. The weather has closed the campus for four business days in the first three weeks of school. It has been a crazy semester, but a pretty, wet, snow. At least the roads have been passable.

In the evening came the snow:

Overnight will come, possibly, the ice.

I do not know what is happening. / journalism / links / Monday / running / Samford / things to read / video — Comments Off
10
Feb 14

Run and tell that

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.

In a post-Dodson world, why not? Illinois using The Onion to reach young uninsured:

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.

adventures / iPhone / links / Samford / things to read / Thursday — 1 Comment
6
Feb 14

Another weather day

The big cultural event of the spring at Samford is Step Sing, the choreographed, team-based, song and dance revue put on by the Greeks, independent groups and who knows whom else. I learned today that there was once a professors’ group. I suspect there’s probably enough interest in creating a local alumni group. I say local because this is a seriously orchestrated event. They put in about 40 hours of rehearsals for the three days of shows. It eats into everything.

One of the ancillary aspects of Step Sing is the banner drop. There are 14 groups performing this year. I know this because there are 14 banners now on display in the Caf. Everything is supposed to be kept strictly confidential until the banners are unveiled, and then the real anticipation for the shows begins. Here are two of the banners:

More later this week.

I say Step Sing eats into everything. The only thing big enough to eat Step Sing is winter weather. And so it was, that on the sixth day of February, and for the fifth time in just the second week of the term, we’ve had campus closed.

So I went home. Which was good, because we had to be in Atlanta tonight. There was a play:

Here is the curtain call:

That show isn’t for everyone, but if you like your satire acerbic and irreverent, well you might find a place in that show.

Things to read … because reading is for everyone.

This story should really be titled “Russia: Our shower surveillance says the hotel rooms are fine.” Russian Officials Fire Back at Olympic Critics

If you were wondering about J.C. Penney’s Super Bowl adventures, here’s an explanation. How JC Penney Accidentally Won the Super Bowl:

But here’s the kicker: It never even occurred to the company or its agencies that people would accuse them of staging a hack — or, for that matter, being drunk. In reality, the tweets were part of JCPenney’s ongoing campaign for the Olympics, which involves promoting its special Go Team USA mittens. The original plan for the Super Bowl was to tweet a stream of these misspelled, clumsy tweets through the big game and then reveal the #tweetingwithmittens hashtag at the end.

If you believe this telling — which has some depth to it — then you have to acknowledge that what really happened here was J.C. Penney was more or less very lucky with an incredible unsound strategy.

You’re going to run a series of bad tweets for a few hours and then tell the joke? There were 25 million tweets during the game, which is to say the firehose was turned on full bore. And you’re going to run a joke for three hours in an environment that is guaranteed to have an audience with an attention span of Dory the Pacific regal blue tang? At best you get ignored and forgotten. At worst people assume, well, what they assumed.

J.C. Penney will take all of the publicity they can get, but the point is this was a deeply flawed plan.

Quick ones:

Der Spiegel journalists on walking the fine line between informing the public and compromising NSA intelligence

IRS Criminal Prosecutions Surge Under Obama

Twitter Breaks Rank, Threatens to Fight NSA Gag Orders

More of … something … tomorrow.

iPhone / journalism / links / photo / Samford / things to read / Wednesday — Comments Off
5
Feb 14

Field tripping

I took a class on a field trip today. This is the class that takes three or four each term, which is one of my favorite classes, mostly, I think, because of the field trips.

So here we are in the conference room at Intermark Group in downtown Birmingham, where the students learned a bit about the day in a life of PR practitioners, advertising reps and creatives.

They give us a quick walking tour, offices, cubicles, a server room, some of their edit bays — they have a full service production studio in their building — and the famous camper:

They bought it online, restored it, had it installed and now all of their clients try to have their meetings in there. One of the dozens of neat touches you’ll find in a shop full of out-of-the-box thinkers.

Things to read … because sometimes you have to stay in your box.

Here are three quick ones to frighten you:

Retailers warn Congress that more cyberattacks are looming

Bankers want retailers to bear the costs of data breaches

Cyberattacks are on the rise. And health-care data is the biggest target

Who wants to go back to stamps and checks?

What can make audio go viral? NPR experiments with building earworms for social media:

So why doesn’t audio go viral? It’s not because shareable audio doesn’t exist — it does. If you’re an audio listener, you’ve probably heard something amazing, surprising, or funny that you really wanted to share. But in many cases, there are boundaries that prevent shareable audio clips from spreading.

When we started experimenting around audio and social, we identified three hurdles.

It is a shame, really, because audio can work as such a focusing agent, or an atmospheric agent, or a telling agent. There’s something inherently compelling about really good audio — recognizing and capturing it is an art unto itself — but if you’re discussing the nebulous “go viral” as a goal then you are talking about online. And, usually, if you can record audio you can record video. And, of course, in video sometimes the audio is lowered, or removed, or just overwhelmed by what the eyeballs see.

Take note of this, it will be huge. Amazon Lays Foundation for Giant Video Advertising Business:

Amazon is shedding a little more light on where it hopes to take its ad business. It is announcing that it has inked a deal with video ad company FreeWheel to provide the technology for Amazon to build out its video advertising business.

FreeWheel is essentially responsible for putting the right video ads in front of the right Amazon customers.

In short: Get ready for a lot more video ads on Amazon video content.

Get ready to buy in pre-roll, buying from more directions in Kindle and buying, buying, buying everywhere.

Still don’t think your packages are being delivered by drones, despite 60 Minutes’ breathless efforts.

The first thing you have to know about this one is that the headline and the story don’t play well together. The US will build regional ‘hubs’ to combat the impacts of climate change

The Obama administration is pushing ahead with its vow to mitigate the effects of climate change. Today, the US government announced plans to create seven “climate hubs” that will offer information and resources to communities in rural regions across the country.

Specific details on the hubs are slim for now, but each one will be tailored to a specific region’s climate-related challenges — such as water shortages, forest fires, pests, or floods. The hubs, which will be overseen by the US Department of Agriculture, are largely zeroing in on farming and ranching. In a statement, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack noted that the hubs will help ensure that “agricultural leaders have the modern technologies and tools they need to adapt and succeed in the face of a changing climate.”

The first question I have: Why not just use the existing Extension infrastructure? They are in place. They have a wide array of experts. They are already networked into the local farming and ranching communities and so on. The answer to that question would be telling.

Just enjoy the comments. NBC News’ Richard Engel: My Computers, Cellphone Were Hacked ‘Almost Immediately’ In Sochi. Also, there are plenty of things about this that don’t make sense yet, but do enjoy the comments.

Two posts on the multimedia blog today:

I did not know half of these Google Doc tips

GoPro moves you, moves themselves

And I think that will be enough for a cold Wednesday. Here’s to a warm weekend coming your way.