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Samford

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26
Oct 11

Grounded to my chair

The bulk of my day today was invested in conference planning. I was elected sometime back as a vice-chair of a division of a conference that we attend each year.

This means that in the summer I send out a call for papers. In the fall the papers role into my inbox. The scholarly work is then submitted to academics who read the papers under blind review, which is to say that the author never knows who the reviewer is and vice versa. The system generally works well, so long as you have enough reviewers. In this case I was fortunate.

So the reviews have come back and now I must determine the order of things for the subsequent conference. These papers go here, these go there and that sort of thing.

All of this being done under Outlook Web App, our new campus email platform, of which I am not a big fan. I’m sure others appreciate it more, but it has bugs — little tiny ants are crawling across my email — and the organization of it isn’t as intuitive to me as other email systems.

The archiving seems solid, and this is an important thing, though finding things at a glance is challenging. But, hey, at least I can use a cupcake theme! There is also a robot theme, cats, varying colors and other things. Microsoft Outlook could work on making the thing work in browsers — it tends to not be responsive to any clicks should it log out and force me to sign in again. That being too much to ask, they’ve offered me a nice leaf theme to run across the top of the page for autumn.

It is the little things.

Anyway, the conference paper scoring is done based on an intricate four point scoring technique. First authors are asked to evaluate the overall paper. Then seven separate criteria are pulled for individual scoring on a seven-point scale. After that comes a comparative evaluation of this paper next to other papers the reviewer has been asked to read. Also, the reviewer is asked for if and how the paper should be accepted into the program.

Doing this several times over for each paper, takes some time. And then each score must be evaluated. Then the numbers and results are triple-checked. After that the surviving submissions must be placed in some cogent order in the program. And then the format of the program must meet specific guidelines. The programmer must also get halfway clever with titles and then ensure that the various specific details are accommodated.

All of these little details take a while, and I was intent on making sure the numbers worked and everything lined up just so, no matter which way you considered the material. This is my first time to do one of these. Now I know why everyone wishes the new guy luck, and inches away if he starts asking too many questions.

That’s not true. People at conferences are generally very helpful. This is a neat little volunteer job because you meet even more people. It is good for me professionally and I read maybe a dozen more papers being submitted to this conference than I would have without the role. So I’ve enjoyed it. Now I can send the finish product off and move on to other projects. If I counted up the time I’ve invested in this particular task it would be close to a week, so far. Time well spent.

So I didn’t even leave my office for much of anything else today. Did see this story though, where we learn BP oil spill money is being spent on correcting a problem not in any way caused by the BP oil spill:

For the first time in a generation, Sand Island Lighthouse lives up to its name.

As of Monday afternoon, the lighthouse once again has an island of sand surrounding its base.

On Tuesday, a trio of bulldozers pushed sand pumping out of a big metal dredge pipe into a hill that rose about 8 feet above the surrounding sea. A team of surveyors staked out the contours of the still growing island, which will continue to increase in size for the next several weeks.

For decades, the lighthouse was a small island unto itself, a forlorn brick pinnacle perched atop a heap of rocks and concrete. Dredging of the Mobile Ship Channel had sliced through the natural sand delivery system that runs along the Alabama coast and prevented new sand from washing onto Sand Island.

Over time, the island — once large enough for the lighthouse keeper to graze a herd of cows — shrank beneath the waves. But now, thanks to $6 million in federal funding awarded in the early days of the BP oil spill, the island is back where it belongs.

This is an erosion issue, and new knowledge of hydrodynamics is supposedly being utilized to help keep the sand from being moved around by the nature currents in that area. But, still, if this manmade island disappears in the next few years — this sort of thing happens on the coast — it would be wasted money.

And, also, this on the ongoing saga of the new Alabama immigration law:

The Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security told Congress Wednesday that her agency is not helping to implement Alabama’s immigration law.

In response to a question from U.S. Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., Secretary Janet Napolitano said the agency is instead working with the Justice Department in its legal challenge to the law.

As always on a divisive issue, the comments are especially insightful.

This evening I watched Captain America at the dollar theater. I was hoping for, as Claudia Puig wrote “A jaunty, retro style and stirring World War II story.” What I got was a polite mixture of Chris Barsanti’s “Little more than a dutiful origin story for a superhero” and a slight dash of Owen Gleiberman “Stolidly corny, old-fashioned pulp fun.”

But, then, I’m more interested here in the contemporary imagining of the 1940s — not enough took place in “New York” but rather in the woods of Austria, which doesn’t really say a lot more than “Trees!” I could care less about Hydra or the Red Skull character. The former has been done better in every incarnation and the latter should have been left in the comic books.

Let’s not even get into the “Look kids, steroids are OK if you’re heart is in the right place” subtext. I don’t care to read that deeply into this, though I’m sure some offended critic has. It doesn’t bother me, I’ve never been that impressionable, but it is in there.

So I’m left with those two bits at the end, the false finish and the post-credits tease. The best things these movies do is promote the next one — which is ingenious, mind you — meaning you’re paying to sit through the movie and wait for the next commercial. Why do we do that?

Also, I’m coming to the conclusion that Nick Fury is Han Solo. I don’t even know that character, as my comic book readings were limited, but I can see that the story without Fury is just OK. Everything seems to mean a little more when he’s in the shot.

Makes me worry about the Thor DVD waiting at home.

history / journalism / links / Samford / Tuesday — Comments Off
25
Oct 11

… You make Tuesdays

Breakfast this morning at Barbecue House and then to campus. Well, first I had to stop for plaques.

Next weekend is homecoming at Samford and one of the many festivities is our department’s Wall of Fame. Two individuals are being inducted this year, one an alumnus from the 1930s that I mentioned here last week and another gentleman who was a longtime public relations pro here in town. Part of the honor is a very handsome plaque (there are also speeches, bios, headshots and so on), which required the trip today to the awards and engraving store. It is helpfully named Awards and Engraving.

I’ve been in charge of this particular task for three years now. The guy is starting to recognize me. He also trusts me to leave with the efforts of his hard work without paying him. He seems convinced we won’t be packing up the university this weekend.

There is a tempting vacant Bruno’s parking lot nearby for any schools looking to move, though.

Samford has been here since the 1950s, though, I doubt the facilities people will uproot the joint after the game Saturday. Before that, Samford (or Howard College as it was then known) was in East Lake. Apparently that campus was never going to be suitable, something the university officials realized about 15 minutes after moving up from Marion. So, they spent 36 years in Marion in the 19th Century, 70 years in East Lake and 54 right here. The building holding my office has been around since the beginning.

I wonder what my office space was originally intended for.

“For now, we’re just going to hold chemicals and files up here. But in five or six decades, well. Everything will be different.”

So there was class. A few groans over the current events quiz and then the joys of discussing infographics. I showed off the work of Megan Jaegerman and an assorted collection from the always excellent infographics The New York Times puts out.

And then the bad. This PDF is so overdone as to be laughable, but it is a soap opera timeline, so maybe that was their point. Even still.

No paper tonight. The Crimson is publishing on Friday this week because of homecoming. So they’ll put that to bed on Thursday night. I’ll be hard at work on other projects between now and then.

journalism / links / Monday / movies / Samford / video — Comments Off
24
Oct 11

When life throws you Mondays …

Busy schoolwork day. I wrote three brief link posts on my blog for journalism students, one on the new faces of poverty another on the return of the police blotter and linked to an interview offering a little bit of social media advice for journalists. I’d like to think most people have gotten that figured out, but every once in a while someone does something that makes you wonder.

So those are the posts that I have been copying here from time to time. I can never make up my mind about how I want to present them. They’ll probably be reprinted here again next week, just out of habit.

One of the neater things I saw today. A six-year-old donates her birthday to help donate clean water to people in need. The founder of the non-profit recorded her a personal video:

The high touch is still a very valuable thing. Sending personalized notes like these at the right time to the right people makes for memorable content, and maybe some devoted followers.

The rest of my day was spent grading a few things and, mostly, preparing a big presentation on infographics for tomorrow’s class. There’s something like 40 pages of slides, a handout and the thing is still growing.

Oh, and there’s also a current events quiz for tomorrow’s class. MUHAHA.

Watched The Captains this evening. The preview:

Lileks‘ take on it:

The idea is simple and brilliant: he interviews everyone who played a captain on Star Trek. He’s a very good interviewer. The subjects are varied … In the end it’s about Bill, and life, and work, and what you lose, and death, and what you make in life. There’s even a big trip to a convention, and one scene that just about grinds your heart into a fine dry paste – which you can reanimate with your tears, if you please. Recommended.

This really became an excuse for Shatner to travel around and talk with people about himself while asking a few questions. At least that was the way it was edited. Maybe no one is as interesting as him. Scott Bakula and Patrick Stewart remain the most likable of the bunch, because they aren’t not crazy, bitter or overcome with ego. Chris Pine might be too cool for school, but he’s only in a fraction of the film, so it is difficult to tell. I call Kirk-level shenanigans.

Pardon me. My phone is ringing.

[…]

Step-father. He has dialed me by accident. I hear him speaking pointedly about … something. There’s someone else’s voice. And what sounds like some news-type talk show on in the background.

He is the only person that accidentally dials me. I think maybe my number is one of the hot buttons on his phone. It doesn’t happen often, but about once a year I’ll find myself comically yelling “HellllllOOOOOOOOOOO!”

This time I thought, What if he is flying? The recorders might not like my tinny voice in the background making jokes.

Why it has taken me that long to think that is a bit problematic. But I’ll distract myself with this question of morality: If someone unknowingly calls you, and you listen in, are you eavesdropping?

Because, you know, what if he were speaking pointedly about me?

He was not. When he realized his phone was on we had a little chat. Turns out he was talking about companies who are only out to get the consumer. Lots of folks can relate.

errands / Friday / memories / music / Samford / site / video / YouTube Cover Theater — Comments Off
21
Oct 11

Hedge hogging

The most productive accomplishment of the day was in trimming the hedges. This is no small thing, as our house is surrounded on three sides by shrubbery. I’m not sure why the southernmost side is bare.

Everything along the front, save the door, the sidewalk and the garage, are bordered with green, growing things. All but one segment was trimmed. The lucky ones — and isn’t that just like a bunch of bushes, bragging to their neighbors? “You got chopped up, but I’m still here. Look at me grow! — I left alone because they’ll probably be dug out of the ground in a few weeks. Others along the front got lowered, including one that borders the garage. We’ve developed a little contour into it for the car’s side mirror.

There are also two at the end of the drive. These must be maintained to preserve the proper turning ratio as one backs out of the drive. This requires the acquisition of surveying tools, and chalk lines. I am the only person in America going through such precise measurements.

The unintended benefit, or consequence, is that one of them is growing around the mailbox post. I’d let it grow over the thing, but that would probably violate some nuance of the neighborhood and only make the mail carrier mad.

I do all of this, by the way, with the 24-inch Black & Decker Hedge Hog, which is like mounting an M-60 onto Excalibur and plugging an extension cord into the hilt. You hit the trigger, feel that dual blade action, wave it above your head and know: your kingdom is only limited by your vision.

And municipally recognized property lines.

Trimming up the northern side of the estate required the ladder, because there are some bushes on steroids on that side of the house. Two of them would have been easier to reach from the roof.

So I’m standing on the top of a multi-use ladder. We have a transformer of aluminum that makes shapes that are only limited by your imagination, and not its contortion. I dutifully set the ladder into a standard A configuration, straddling the center hinge point with a foot on either side. I realized I couldn’t reach the very back of the bush. OK then. So I find myself standing on the top of the A, in the hinge-point, waving about a whirring 24-bladed saw with shark teeth moving at 2,900 strokes per minute.

My kingdom is suddenly a lot less interesting from this vantage point. I climbed down quickly.

The curious thing about the greenery here is that there is a lot of variety. Once the offending shrubs are out of the front there will only be one place surrounding the entire structure where you see two of the same species next to one another. I haven’t yet decided if that’s a feature or a bug. If you had to dig them all up, every annoying root, what would you replace them with? Uniformity or everything that could grow in this climate?

And that’s the sort of thing you think about as you rake away the leaves leavings. That’s some way to start your Friday evening.

YouTube Cover Theatre, where we see the talent that people have, until the advent of webcams and the Internet, people were hiding in their homes. Since Irecently watched the George Harrison documentary, we may as well check out covers of some of his work.

The Beatles weren’t my band. I like them fine, they just don’t belong to me. Wrong generation. But, if I had been in the right group, I think Harrison would have been my favorite of the bunch. And since you can’t have Harrison without the band, we’ll start with a cover of All Those Years Ago:

That looks like an impossibly difficult tune and he did a nice job. Then he leaned back against his den’s wood paneled walls and enjoyed the rest of his evening.

This cover of My Sweet Lord has received 26,000 views, which may be the largest count that we’ve ever seen in YouTube Cover Theater. Aside, is it just me, or has this song always sounded like it should be appropriated as commercial bed music?

One of the cool things about the Beatles, I would think, would be introducing what has essentially become timeless music to kids. I mean the clean cut, less drugs portion of the catalog. And while this is essentially a Paul McCartney tune, Harrison wrote the main riff, which is enough of an excuse to show a cute cover by a father serenading his daughter for her second birthday.

When she’s older she’s going to be humming Beatles tunes and won’t remember why. Then she’s going to stumble through her dad’s YouTube uploads and it will all click. It will be adorable.

Hard to believe it has been 10 years since George Harrison died. I was doing a network newscast at the time, the last segment of which was a 30 second spot and outro. That day I just played this song for 30 seconds and signed off:

Just for fun, here’s a recreation of Harrison’s Bangladesh Concert with members of Wonderous Stories, Alan Parsons Live Project and more, covering Wah Wah:

Other things happened today, too, emails and organizational things. We’ll have wrapped up the latest big project at work by the first part of the week, it seems my part has largely been completed, except for showing up at the various events next week. Homecoming at Samford means advisory council meetings and wall of fame induction ceremonies and all of the attendant activities.

With those things now completed I can return to other work. Like digging up shrubs.

iPhone / journalism / Samford / Thursday / video — 1 Comment
20
Oct 11

Look straight ahead, indeed

The hardest part of my day was in writing a biography about a man I’ve never met. People do this all the time, they are called biographers. They usually have a few more resources at hand and the opportunity to do more research. But I was tasked with doing this one in an afternoon. Fortunately the length required was much shorter.

But still, 750 word biography on a man you’ve never met. He’s deceased. His wife is also gone. There is, I was told, some small mystery about some of the particulars, even among his children. I understand that. There’s a lot of that in my family, too. Also, this is a bio about a journalist, which will be read by an audience of journalism-type folks.

No pressure, right?

Hugh Frank Smith attended Samford in the 1930s, when it was Howard College. Then he went to Mizzou to finish his education. I talked to some of their folks today trying to drum up information. He graduated, started working at a Memphis paper, where he stayed for half a century until it folded, with the exception of his time in the Navy during World War II. He wrote for other Tennessee papers after the Press-Scimitar disappeared. His work cropped up from time to time in bigger publications.

He ran a horse farm. A lot of people in Memphis learned to ride there. He used email, perhaps unusual for a man born in 1915. He traveled quite a bit, but never forgot east Alabama, from which he came, or Samford, to whom he became a scholarship donor. All of the things you can find about him are very complimentary. He seems like he would have been a nice man to know.

But I was able to find some of his old columns, and they are lovely. From late in his life, a tribute to his sister:

Nan taught me a lot through the years. She read to me nearly every day and was always reading a book herself — one reason why I still read one or two books a week. She taught me how to drive our old Model T Ford — at first in a hayfield, then later on a dirt road.

She always said, “Look straight ahead when you are driving.” Once when we were rounding a curve I almost ran into a ditch. She couldn’t understand why I was so reckless. “You told me always to look straight ahead,” I explained, and I had been — straight ahead into a cotton field.

I must have scored well in her other lessons because I have never had to report an accident in 78 years of driving.

Here’s one he wrote a few years after his wife died:

Even as her memory faded, Rachael never seemed depressed, and often she would laugh at herself when she said something ridiculous or outrageous. Rather than correct her mistakes, many of them humorous, we just went along with them. I even kept a log. For example, one evening she looked at me and asked: “How did I happen to marry you? I didn’t mean to.” We both laughed. Another night, after arriving home from a party, she looked at our house and asked: “Didn’t we once live here?” I laughed and she quickly joined me.

I really think she often made comments like that just to elicit a chuckle. When she couldn’t get to sleep one night, I suggested: “Why don’t you count sheep?” Her reply: “We only have three.” That was true; we had three sheep.

[…]

Most important, she remained at the center of our farm and our family throughout it all. We found ways to treasure as much of the end of life as possible. As it turned out, Rachael’s sunny disposition throughout her life was her final gift to us. It made Alzheimer’s “long goodbye” more bearable for my daughters and myself.

So I wrote a bio, met with students. I gave a tour of a few of the facilities to a visiting alumnus. I taught a class. Also this, a hasty little video just to remember the sunny day:

It was a fine day. Began with a headache, ended with pizza with friends and jokes in a blustery parking lot.