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Samford

journalism / links / Samford / Thursday / video — Comments Off
6
Oct 11

The descent into sickliness

In retrospect I should have known last night this was going to happen. I was ready for sleep by 10 p.m. And then this morning the scratchy throat begin. A workout was unsatisfying. The day slipped into, well let’s just call it existential decline.

Hey, it sounds good.

So there was work. Messing up a spreadsheet and recovering it by chance. Finishing slides for a lecture. Lecturing. Doing research. Tabbing through more spreadsheets. Making phone calls and so on.

As the afternoon slipped into evening the scratchiness in the back of my throat turned to a full-on sore throat. There was coughing. At the end of the day there was little breathing. Sinuses, then. My mortal enemy it seems. There will be little breathing or rest or happiness until this passes.

Links, then: Steve Yelvington has 10 things we (should) have learned about mobile and tablet news. Robert Rosenthal, meanwhile, offers lessons learned on reinventing journalism. About seven of these can apply to any industry, however.

And now the fun of new immigration law, writ large in Alabama’s fields. There is so much wrong here that deserves correction:

The farmers said the some of their workers may have been in the country illegally, but they were the only ones willing to do the work.

“This law will be in effect this entire growing season,” Beason told the farmers. He said he would talk to his congressman about the need for a federal temporary worker program that would help the farmers next season.

“There won’t be no next growing season,” farmer Wayne Smith said.

“Does America know how much this is going to affect them? They’ll find out when they go to the grocery store. Prices on produce will double,” he said.

Lana Boatwright said she and her husband had used the same crews for more than a decade, but only eight of the 48 workers they needed showed up after the law took effect.

“My husband and I take them to the grocery store at night and shop for them because they are afraid they will be arrested,” she said.

Tough situation with no obvious answers. It is already impacting Alabama’s agricultural industry, small farmers, the construction industry, schools, the DMV, large groups of people who are willing to endure thankless jobs at low or average pay to try and make a better life and who knows what else.

You can’t envy anyone in this circumstance, but we’re all about to learn the rule of unintended consequences. This is, however, a federal issue that has failed and the states — Arizona, Georgia and Alabama the first among them — to try to address the issue. There seems to be an overreach.

And now, for something more fun:

Come back tomorrow for ragged coughing and sneezing. And some other things too.

journalism / Samford / Tuesday — Comments Off
4
Oct 11

Venus Mars household habits

The Yankee is a great wife. She’s fun and silly. She appreciates my silliness. She is very smart. We exist together well and shuffle along in a reasonably efficient manner when such frivolous things as “work” or “other plans” interfere.

We had a pretend disagreement on Twitter last night about silverware in the dishwasher. Somehow this became a discussion about brownies — she threatened that I would not get a snack, I took a picture of them in defiance, she accused me of licking them. And then two other families became involved in the Twitter conversation. One took a very clinical and precise approach of efficiency and ergonomics. (They’re architects.) Other friends contributed, and their part of the conversation became about the proper use of the toothpaste tube. We all have our pet peeves. And for those particular friends, the debate rages on at the beginning, middle and end of the day.

Personally, I’m a wherever-the-thumb-falls-on-the-tube kind of guy. I assume most people, and particularly, most guys are. That his lovely wife, a photographer, disagrees with him, an editor, only speaks to the nature of the gender difference, organizational tendencies and the way they get along. Probably it also has something to do with their professional roles.

And this is my theory that will go precisely nowhere. Your formal training inspires what you do in the most minute way, which is really probably what started you down your professional or avocational path to begin with. I submit that the chicken came first, but in a calcium carbonate format. Take this, for example. About the only thing I’ve ever naturally done well is string a bunch of words together in a way as to seem almost credible.

But I digress.

My wife is a lovely lady. And about the only thing we disagree about is the preferred method of waking up. Her alarm goes off. She hits it and wakes up. She is one of those.

I maintain that the best treatment for an alarm, if you must have one, is to pound the plastic casing in a highly ritualistic manner in precisely timed increments. Sociologists, I believe, call this hitting the snooze button.

And I wore it out this morning.

Normally this is where I would delete all of that, write “I just wrote eight paragraphs on oversleeping” and move on with my day. But I’m rather proud of those eight paragraphs, so they’re staying in.

And this was a day of a one quick meeting and signing a bunch of things. It was a day of computer disorganization, class preparation and a teaching demonstration. There was another quick meeting, this time with bubble wrap and styrofoam peanuts.

Now, I am wrapping up the evening with the newspaper. There is apparently something in tomorrow’s edition that will stir conversation, and also many faces in the photographs. Every week is a little better than the issue before, so I’m eager to see what they’ll have tomorrow. No snooze button for me.

Lots more tomorrow.

cycling / iPhone / Monday / photo / Samford — Comments Off
3
Oct 11

The mole men are working on the transformer

The sun was low, the shadows were nice and long. I rode 24 miles into the evening twilight. I do enjoy a good ride in mild weather, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to attack a hill that perpetually defeats me.

Should have known better. But since I didn’t know better at least the hill was decent enough to clue me in right from the start. The excellent MapMyRide gives me excellent data on that hill, where it starts and where it ends. From there I can also look at how long the actual distance between the beginning and end of the hill. And I am a wimpy rider, really.

But maybe the local road makers are trying to pull a fast one on MapMyRide and Google Maps. Yeah, that’s the ticket. I feel much better about myself now.

Except for that part where I cut off a pickup truck. The driver had the decency to not honk the horn, or even run over me — I bet it was tempting, and you wouldn’t have blamed him. It was a matter of not seeing him as I glanced over my shoulder while needing a lane change. I moved and suddenly he was there and I was there and the truck was kind enough to give me a little space.

So, if you are or know the driver of a white truck who was complaining about a yahoo on his bike this evening, please pass along my apology and gratitude.

The best part about it was that the next stretch of rode after that is a strong progressive ride. I found myself thinking If he changes his mind and comes this way I’ll be gone!

Because I can outpace a truck, right?

There’s a lack of oxygen in the brain when you’re on the backside of a ride, I’m convinced of it. There’s simply no other way my mind — a thoroughly practical (if silly) and literal instrument — thinks up half the foolish things it does.

The next thing is to develop some speed. As I say, I am a wimpy rider. Now I want to go fast. Or, as I like to think of it, a good earnest and even medium speed.

I neglected to share this:

Because the world needs to know about my light fixtures. Bought this for The Yankee, on special request. Installed it with minimal mutterings. And was delighted to learn, once it was suspended in the ceiling, that the thing actually worked. There was a brief second, an elevated level of cognition perhaps, where it didn’t seem to work right away. The mutterings would have intensified, but the lights lit, the fear was gone, and now we have a moon and stars installation. Note the little moon guy that holds it all together.

Plus!

If you leave it on long enough, and then turn it off …

That is the dying embers of the glowing magic. For the first few moments it sheds enough light to illuminate a small room.

Class prep grading, reading, laundry. The usual Monday stuff otherwise.

The power was out this morning. That was riveting. Seems there was a scheduled maintenance. Ours is a below ground neighborhood, so we never see the hardworking power workers. Maybe they outsource that sort of thing to the mole men.

There’s a contract negotiation you don’t want to miss.

iPhone / photo / Samford / Thursday — Comments Off
29
Sep 11

Random blocks

Hit the gym, hit the weights, hoping they would not hit back. Sometimes they do, and that’s embarrassing if there are a lot of serious gym types around.

Fortunately I timed it right and visited during amateur hour. No one noticed my struggles, for they were busy overcoming their own struggles, or bypassing them altogether. I like to think of that as that nice feeling of topping a hill, knowing you’ve reached that little summit and realizing you still have a little more in you. That’s a nice little feeling.

I could use one of those in the gym.

Talked about news stories in progress today. Prepared a lecture (with musical accompaniment by Wilco, so there’s a big guitar solo midway through) about story structure. Also, it proved a little bit long, which is more welcome from Wilco than from a lecture, but the more you know, right?

One of my favorite parts of class, aside from giving spelling quizzes that the students all look forward to, is when I let them go for the day. Someone will stick around to chat for a minute. It’s a nice moment to get away from the professor-student, lecture and lab dynamic and get to know people a tiny bit. I like hearing stories.

Like this one:

How many family memories are wrapped up in that chifferobe drawer? That’s a beautiful piece and it really stands out in the daylight. Is it going from one house to another? Did it just get refinished? Sold?

It made me think of similar pieces of in my own family, where they are popular mementoes. Some dates back generations. Easy to see why. Suppose that piece has a mirror inside. How many days did some old aunt or grandmother pull out a shirt and glance into that reflection?

No wonder someone wants to keep that nice piece of furniture.

Those are the random pieces of blocks stories can be built around.

Auburn / journalism / links / Samford / site / things to read / Wednesday — Comments Off
28
Sep 11

“I’m not that interesting”

And if you go outside in the right time of the evening, you’ll see a scene like that. Life is good.

Did a lot of writing today, finishing a project that needed finishing. A lot of rewriting had gone into it, none of it especially inspiring, so it just dragged on and on. The next time that project comes up, though, it will be much better.

Alan Mutter has a read on an important new Pew report on a disconnect between younger and older consumers in perceived newspaper value.

When asked by researchers to identify their preferred source for crime news, 44% of those in the 40-plus category named newspapers, as compared with just 23% for the younger cohort.

[…]

In what may be a sign of the desperation of the population in this time of high unemployment, the only area where young and old alike turned with equal frequency to newspapers is hunting for information about jobs. Even there, only 17% of each age group considered newspapers the first place to look.

Pew also found this sobering statistic: Fully 69% of respondents said it would not “have a major impact” on their ability to keep up with news about their community if their local paper no longer existed.

That last one is more of a perception than anything and, I suspect, a misplaced one. Yes, more news now stems from personal networks, word of mouth and social media than every before, but there is still a significant amount of that information that originates in traditional newsrooms. That indirect impact, I believe, often goes undetected.

A federal judge upholds most of Alabama’s controversial immigration law:

Section 11 (a), which makes it unlawful for a person who is an unauthorized alien to knowingly apply for work, solicit work in a public or private place, or perform work as an employee or independent contractor in this state.

Section 13, which prohibits concealing, harboring, transporting, etc., of unlawfully-present aliens.

Section 16, which concerns the taking of a state tax deduction for wages paid to an unauthorized alien employee.

Section 17, which creates a state “discrimination” cause of action based on the retention or hiring of an unauthorized alien.

I posted a little something about both of these stories on the journalism tip blog I write. I invite you to read it if you find these sorts of things mildly interesting.

Still here? Good. I also changed the URL of that blog, and fixed the links on this site. Speaking of the site: I haven’t mentioned it, but I added a rotating piece of code to the top and bottom images on the blog. Hit reload a bunch. Fancy, huh?

Speaking of journalism, check out the Crimson’s site for the latest news from campus. Included is this cute little profile of the famous Ms. Dot.

I saw her at lunch today, just another face in her long line of a day.

I read about you in the paper!

“You did?”

Yes. It was very good! I think you should be in the paper every week!

“I don’t. I’m not that interesting.”

I think there should be a little According to Ms. Dot section in each issue of the paper. Just a little box with some wise saying.

Need a scarf? The original Toomer’s Corner tradition is now a fine accessory. It only costs $17.16 for the neckwear which is made of “scarf like” material. Not sure what that is. As for the price:

I guess they thought $28.27 was over the natural scarf price point.

Ahh, football season jokes.