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Samford

The most frightening Muppets

One of the most frightening Muppets, to me, was Grouch. Doesn’t ask me why. I think it was his appearance, home and his voice, which vaguely reminded me of one of my uncles. That’s what I’m going with. I bring this up because the other one that disturbed me is at the bottom of the post.

At lunch today I dropped a plate, basically right in the lap of a young lady who’d made the unfortunate decision to sit between my Point A and Point B. The plate was, thankfully, empty. And it did not break. But this is mortifying. There are eight young women sitting there talking about their studies or their sorority or boys or who knows, and then I happen.

Some distance away I could hear the slow clap starting. That hasn’t happened since high school. My innocent victim noted, as she picked up my plate and I apologized profusely, that at least her table didn’t chime in, an observation I’d already made, and a decision for which I was grateful. But no one else did, either, and the slow clap quickly died. It was probably only three people.

“Frat boys,” one of the students said.

I’m pretty sure they started clapping reflexively, but then stopped when they realized this was an old guy. Maybe one of them was a student of mine. Maybe it just isn’t funny if it isn’t your peers.

For example, the state troopers now say there were more than 700 snow and ice-related car crashes last week, not counting whatever the locals worked. That’s unfortunate for those people, to be sure. Nine people died in crashes. And in this vein some people are making their wacky “Haha, Southerners can’t drive in snow” jokes.

But, hey, we opened our windows and sat around in shorts last weekend.

Here’s another video, a short film featuring Ms. Alice Herz-Sommer. She is believed to be the oldest living Holocaust survivor, and, perhaps, the world’s oldest piano player:

Things to read … because your parents warned you about watching all of those videos.

I saw this story today and wondered what the reaction would be and how long it would take. CBO nearly triples estimate of working hours lost by 2021 due to Affordable Care Act:

A historically high number of people will be locked out of the workforce by 2021, according to a report by the Congressional Budget Office released Tuesday.

President Barack Obama’s signature health-care law will contribute to this phenomenon, the CBO said, citing new estimates that the Affordable Care Act will cause a larger-than-expected reduction in working hours—eliminating the equivalent of about 2.3 million workers in 2021.

The answers were not long, and bad enough that they should have taken a few more minutes to think up something not so insulting.

Health Care Law Projected to Cut the Labor Force

With the expansion of insurance coverage, the budget office predicted, more people will choose not to work, and others will choose to work fewer hours than they might have otherwise to obtain employer-provided insurance. The cumulative reduction of hours is large: the equivalent of 2.5 million fewer full-time positions by 2024, the budget office said.

The report “rightfully says that people shouldn’t have job lock,” said Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader. “We live in a country where we should be free agents. People can do what they want.”

“Now you won’t have to work!” doesn’t sound like an especially compelling argument, really, Senator. But have at it.

Assault on California Power Station Raises Alarm on Potential for Terrorism

The attack began just before 1 a.m. on April 16 last year, when someone slipped into an underground vault not far from a busy freeway and cut telephone cables.

Within half an hour, snipers opened fire on a nearby electrical substation. Shooting for 19 minutes, they surgically knocked out 17 giant transformers that funnel power to Silicon Valley. A minute before a police car arrived, the shooters disappeared into the night.

[…]

The attack was “the most significant incident of domestic terrorism involving the grid that has ever occurred” in the U.S., said Jon Wellinghoff, who was chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission at the time.

[…]

To some, the Metcalf incident has lifted the discussion of serious U.S. grid attacks beyond the theoretical. “The breadth and depth of the attack was unprecedented” in the U.S., said Rich Lordan, senior technical executive for the Electric Power Research Institute. The motivation, he said, “appears to be preparation for an act of war.”

Have 24-hour TV news channels had their day?

The past two decades have seen a revolution in every aspect of the media industry – technological change has enabled consumers to develop sophisticated and subtle patterns of behaviour, constantly being updated from a variety of sources. Cable news established the 24-hour news habit, but today social media and mobile phones fulfill the instant news needs of consumers better than any TV channel can.

Yet around the world hundreds of millions of dollars continue to be invested each year in news networks. Is this money well spent? Or has the time come to rethink the TV news business? Were live channels simply the product of the satellite age which is now all but over?

[…]

News channels prize being first – a race that they can’t win, and nobody else cares about. “Did we beat CNN?” is a phrase often heard in a newsroom. But in the digital age social media will always win the race to be first (if not always the race to be right). And who, other than the inhabitants of newsrooms, is watching enough news channels simultaneously to know who was first anyway? Those 30 seconds might be important for commodity traders – but for news audiences?

In today’s media environment any broadcaster is first for minutes at most – by which time Twitter or the competition will have caught up. Being first – the primary criterion for 24-hour news channels – is increasingly the least interesting and effective value they offer.

What wasn’t included, but should be: The Weather Channel.

Making Failure Acceptable: Entrepreneurship in Journalism

Sochi facilities still a work in progress

From the multimedia blog:

Viral content, relevant news aimed at audience who offers excuses to news

Journalism trends? Let’s have some fries and talk about it

This will take two minutes

And, finally, the game is a-fruit!

The Count always scared me. But that’s a conversation for a different day.

journalism / links / Monday / Samford / things to read — Comments Off
3
Feb 14

Let’s try this again

The first day of class, take two. After Tuesday’s snow and ice event turned into a systemic and region-wide calamity, our campus was closed for a while. They sent down the CANCELED notices at 11 a.m. on Tuesday. Things returned to normal on Saturday. Which is overstating things. Campus was passable by Wednesday. The roads were finally usable by Thursday, when the cold weather broke. But Friday, it just felt like people needed a rest. At least that was part of the reasoning.

Folks had been working for three days straight – and straight is used in the literal sense. You could tell that people just needed a break. I’m sure there were some other logistical reasons and probably even larger, perfectly fine rationale, but at the end of it all, the administrators decided that campus would be closed on Friday. Most on campus activities started again over the weekend. Classes resumed today. (And if you had a Tuesday afternoon class, or later, you hadn’t even met yet.)

Walking in today, then, we started all over again. It seemed liked it had been three weeks since we met last, anyway.

Various things in the class, as they were put into place, proved that missing last Wednesday because of the weather was actually a big deal. Many things had to be re-juggled. How this happened since we lost only one day, I’m not sure, but it took a while to put the moveable parts around the immovable parts in a way that made sense for the larger aims of the class.

So I rebuilt and rearranged parts of the syllabus.

This is the class where we ask students to start thinking about news products in critical terms. So I have them critique the news that they see and hear and read. I have them do this online, so they can learn at least one content management system this term and have place to start putting their news clips, too. We used to have students build faux-websites in Dreamweaver, but that presented unique problems on two or three fronts, so I’ve just streamlined the effort and now we use WordPress. Which means that, today, we spent all day talking about Dashboard.

It isn’t the most exciting day of the term, but it is useful. And I get to show off a cool site or two (like this one) and demonstrate how easy it is to be a modern publisher. I did not make, however, my international author joke. So I have to make sure to get that one in class next Monday.

Also, I need to remember, here, to cross link to things I publish on my multimedia blog. Here are the most recent items now:

Immersive media

Olympic tweets

Simple, effective storytelling

Writing with zeroes and ones

Images tell our stories in many ways

Just so you know the world you’re going in to …

Things to read … because you haven’t yet read enough.

High quality navel-gazing here, Netflix and Google Books Are Blurring the Line Between Past and Present:

Six decades after Hartley wrote his famous line, the past is no longer a foreign land. Instead we’ve brought a weirdly literal truth to William Faulkner’s famously sphinxlike aphorism: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” Take the Kennedy assassination, for instance. In honor of the event’s 50th anniversary last November, CBS streamed four straight days of its news broadcast from the period surrounding the killing so you could experience what it had been like in real time. Or consider this: World War II buffs can download radio broadcasts and listen to the rise of Hitler or the news from D-Day as you would have heard them back then.

More often, though, we don’t immerse ourselves in history; it’s just there whenever we want it, living right alongside the present. We can trace ideas backward in time, either by searching Google Books or (for a sum) through thousands of academic journals, using a few keywords to find sources that once were the sole domain of historians. Pick any historical subject and the Internet will bring it to life before your eyes. If you’re interested in vaudeville, you’ll find videos galore, while college football scholars can browse Penn State’s 1924 yearbook, complete with all the players’ names and positions. And every day, more history keeps washing up. Not long ago the news went out that a Philadelphia woman named Marion Stokes had recorded 140,000 VHS tapes of local and national news from 1977 to her death in 2012. Her collection has been acquired by the Internet Archive, and soon it will trickle onto the web.

This omnipresence of the past has weird effects on contemporary culture. Take any genre of music, from death metal to R&B to chillwave, and the cloud directs you not just to similar artists in the present but to deep wells of influence from the past. Yes, people still like new things. But the past gets as much preference as the present—Mozart, for example, has more than 100,000 followers on Spotify. In a history glut, the idea of fashionability in music erodes, because new songs sit on the same shelf as songs recorded five, 25, and 55 years ago, all of them waiting to be discovered. In this eternal present, everything can be made contemporary.

Just wait until the next time you see a favorite actor that you see regularly from some production from the 1980s or 1990s. And then, when you see them now, think of reading that again.

Why is local news innovation struggling financially while national thrives?:

Why does digital news media seem so vibrant on the national level and so anemic on the local level?

First, venture capitalists and other professional investors have little interest in businesses focused on one community. News is tough enough to make money on but at least if you’re national you can generate massive numbers of ad impressions and the possibility of Amazonian reach. Venture capital investors can only get 5x return or more for businesses that promise national or global scale.

[…]

Another challenge faced by local news startups relates to the nature of digital advertising. Because national digital properties – Google, Yahoo, AOL – can target ads to particular zip codes, local advertisers can reach their customers through them, without having to advertise with a local company. In effect, a local media company is now competing for ad dollars not only with the other media in town but with massive, national institutions with better technology and larger sales forces.

Also, infrastructure. The local shops need to be well-staffed with talented people. If you don’t have that, you won’t have much. Sadly, there have been a lot of cuts across the industry of old hands. Meanwhile, the younger staff that were hired to replace them, typically in a digital capacity or one-man band scenarios, are still learning their craft. Audiences pick up on that sort of thing.

The most convoluted lead of the day, and it isn’t the reporter’s fault. Kerry, Hagel urge ‘transatlantic renaissance’ to confront political and security challenges

MUNICH — In an unusual joint appearance overseas, Secretary of State John F. Kerry and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told European allies Saturday that Washington would depend more heavily on them to tackle a litany of political and security crises, even as the two pushed back against concerns that the Obama administration was abdicating leadership on the same issues.

And, finally, about that Super Bowl Coke ad:

So let me get this straight. A nation of immigrants is supposed to be offended that a happy song about it is sung in many languages?

— Stephen Green (@VodkaPundit) February 3, 2014

photo / Samford / Thursday — Comments Off
30
Jan 14

The little thaw

It wasn’t a big freeze, so the thaw couldn’t be that big either. You don’t need a big freeze to cause big problems, though. So, as I assured my grandmother, I was staying put. I had no need to be anywhere until things got warm and dry. Everything dried up yesterday. We crossed back over above freezing today.

At lunch, the outside world was starting to look like this again:

There were four squirrels wrestling and playing and fighting in that tree. You can see a few of them in that shot if you look long enough.

I stuck around the office until just after 4 p.m. The roads were dry. The first intersection on my way to the interstate, a crossing of two four lane roads that had apparently looked like a war zone, was fine.

When I got to the interstate I found all of the local media setting up on the overpass. Tonight’s story: traffic.

From the entrance of the interstate, to the next interchange, which is about seven miles, I counted 43 abandoned cars.

The thing of that is that most of that seven mile stretch includes a high wall at the median. You have no way of knowing how many cars are sitting over there, waiting for their owners, people desperate enough to walk in snow and ice two days earlier.

What a week.

photo / Samford / Wednesday — Comments Off
29
Jan 14

Socked in

Day two — The campus is closed again today. Above is the quad, as seen from the cafeteria, which is functioning on full cylinders — breakfast, lunch and dinner. They were wiped out at dinner last night, but those people are unfazed. Whatever kudos they receive will hardly be enough.

Until late today no one could get on or off campus if they wanted to. Even making the turn to campus from the road, and vice versa, is a dangerous proposition. At this point you can do it carefully, but the concern would be the condition of the roads between here and where you are trying to go. In most cases, the answer is not good.

Some enterprising students were taking the two mile icy hike from here to the Target down the street, borrowing shopping carts and pushing them back to campus. I think they were doing this so they would have a story with which to annoy their future grandchildren.

I heard a student yesterday say he’s never had a snow day. He’s from California. A young lady was ecstatic yesterday that it snowed on her birthday. There’s an older gentleman, a really sweet guy, stuck here with a serious history of heart and blood pressure problems. He told me last night he had six aspirin. We also have a nursing school, a pharmacy school here, several nurses are on call and a lot of faculty and staff. He was still in fine spirits and in fine shape when I saw him this afternoon. He was about to go home.

A lot of people are still trying to get there. At Samford, the university, like many places, is on day two of housing people who just happened to be in the area. There is a huge Facebook group with the aim of the entire region trying to help stranded motorists. Some of the stories are disconcerting: seriously ill people without their medication, people without jackets, people with no gas and dead phones, people who hadn’t eaten in 12 or more hours, people walking home for miles and plenty of “Come get me!” pleas.

There are some truly scary stories. Five are dead and at least 23 injured in the region. There are bad car accidents, labor pains on the side of the road and missing people. More than 11,000 students had to spend the night in their schools — where teachers were troopers. People slept last night in drug stores and in the cars and in hotel lobbies, strangers and wherever they could get. One good samaritan disappeared for hours. They found him badly hurt, but alive, in a snowy ravine. Seems he is diabetic and they think he may have become disoriented, fell in and hurt himself. Now he’s in critical condition.

Clearly, this is serious. A fair amount of it is unavoidable, so there will be municipal finger pointing and audiences immediately and cruelly blamed the meteorologists. Quite a few people’s experiences would have at least been less uncomfortable if only they’d prepared for the eventuality. Suggesting this is somehow verboten, but more of us would do well to realize our own personal responsibility.

Happily, there are great stories of neighbors helping neighbors, and strangers helping strangers. We pat ourselves on the back when we hear those stories. Like this one, so far the best story of the year: Doctor walks six miles in snow to perform life-saving brain surgery. The simpler things — we can’t all be brain surgeons, the good spirited, good natured, decent, neighborly, lend a hand thing happens every time something bad happens, of course. We’re all better for it, of course. It probably happens faster with the current communication infrastructure. Like so many other things, social media has changed what we can do.

While everything in the metro is a mess, Samford has been fortunate. Hard work and good cheer have won the day. There will be a lot of pats on the back and thank yous to share. The people working here are incredible. I hope the students notice that, too.

We have power and food and hot water and heat and life is good. Everyone is a little more tired than they were yesterday, but there are plenty of smiles. It is a special place even on fine spring days, but give the people here a small obstacle and their quality shows even brighter.

Oh, you’re here for the pictures? Fair enough. Here are a few from last night, when the hills on campus were too icy to even walk on:

This is Hodges Chapel:

Here’s Frank Park Samford Hall, the administration building:

Across the way is the McWhorter School of Pharmacy:

The Harwell Goodwin Davis Library, and Centennial Walk:

The A. Hamilton Reid Chapel:

Those were last night, and these are from today. Here’s Reid Chapel again:

The frozen fountain in Ben Brown Plaza. I was standing on the ice to take this picture:

I was not standing on the ice to take that picture. But these students did:

There’s a great shot of a young lady earlier this month when the fountain was frozen solid, she gave it the perfect ice skater’s pose. I met her last night and she showed me the picture again. I’d already seen it online, declared the shot’s inherent awesomeness and she says “He’s got one better.” I’m thinking that’s not possible. Her friend pulls out his phone and he shows me a shot where they’d taken a park bench and put it on the fountain ice, and he’s sprawled out on the bench taking a nap. His shot might have been better. Sadly, and happily, the fountain isn’t freezing that much this time.

There have been at least two students and one professor skiing on the quad. Not that you need skis. But how often do you get the opportunity to do that? (The professor had her skis in her office, it seems.)

Part of the Crimson staff, brainstorming story ideas. Zach, on the left, is the editor-in-chief. Clayton, in the foreground is the sports editor. Megan is a Samford alumna and last year’s features editor for the Crimson. She works just down the street at Southern Living, now, and had to walk to campus because of Snowmageddon.

These guys are the unsung heroes on campus. He and his colleagues were working before noon on Tuesday and have scarcely stopped since then. They are why the sidewalks and the most of the campus roads are in pretty decent shape.

They won’t get enough credit for it, which is a shame. But when you hear people trying to explain to snowbound students
that campus is much better off than the city at large, they are why.

Samford / Tuesday / video — Comments Off
28
Jan 14

The snow

Had a meeting canceled this morning. Samford closed at 11 a.m. Everything else closed simultaneously. And then the snow descended. And people panicked, because it is white.

Here’s the real problem with snow in the South. It isn’t that we’re Southern. The snow doesn’t send us into a tizzy. It stuns us. And the snow, which is more wet than anything, then quickly turns into ice. And then the in-tizzification begins.

So people are stranded all over and that’s dangerous and unfortunate and miserable. Can’t wait to see who we blame this time.

The road that runs across the front of Samford’s campus is a high-traffick artery. That road is gridlocked, so we brought a lot of people up from their cars into the relative comfort of the university. The athletics department is loaning space and towels. Mattresses came from somewhere. Every shower is being put to use. If you didn’t get out between 11 and 11:05 odds are that you were stuck on the road for a long time. A colleague wrote that she normally has a 15 minute commute, but it turned into four hours and 15 minutes today. And she was on the fortunate side.

It is the ice. See? It is always the humidity.

Campus is holding up nicely. The facilities staff and the grounds crew have worked tirelessly. They were blowing snow and spreading for ice even as it came down. They didn’t stop until late in the night. We have power — and that’s the biggest, understated victory of this storm, the power outages everywhere seem to be comparatively minor — and we have food and everything is peachy keen.

The place is usually full of good spirits, perhaps even more so today.

Here’s a video I made: