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Larry Langford will miss the World Games

I’m in the slow and frustrating process of trying to add a few more miles back into my typical bike ride. I probably complain about this all of the time: this or that doesn’t allow for as much time in the saddle as I’d like.

Life is really hard, right?

This spring and summer my time has been split between triathlon training and travel and other worthwhile pursuits, but that takes its own sort of toll on a guy with already shaky form. So it was that I set out today to add a few more miles than the small amount of miles I’ve been doing recently. And I cracked nicely, right about here:

A friend, and fellow rider, sent me this article and suggested I not worry about it so much.

“I would distinguish ‘easy’ from ‘slow.’ Easy doesn’t mean always going slow, but going at a pace that’s comfortable.”

Indeed, what I consider slow is twice as fast as my girlfriend would go—whereas Fabian Cancellara, out for a casual spin, would drop me as if I were doing a track stand. Novices and unenlightened amateurs see good riders going fast without realizing they might also be going easy—hence the perception that you must ride strenuously to be good.

“Quality training is when you go fast compared to the effort you feel like you’re making,” Saifer explained to me. “If it feels mellow but you’re actually going pretty quick, that’s great. But if you start out hammering, and then you find you’re tired for the rest of the ride, it’s not benefiting you. Those are junk miles.”

Junk miles was what I found today, there was a great deal of hanging on, and hoping the county had flattened a few of the hills I’d chosen for myself.

They had not.

But, I told myself, the next time I add five more miles to the total, it won’t be as bad as this. We’ll see.

Things to read … because reading helps us all see. We’ll start with the journalism stuff.

Attacked on the job: A Post-Dispatch photographer’s tale

The growing pay gap between journalism and public relations

Over 4,000 BuzzFeed Posts Have Completely Disappeared

Teaching the Digital Media Revolution Without Disregarding the Past

It’s a true fact!!! People who edit things no longer neeeded

That last one I’m passing out in class this fall.

I’m pretty sure there’s no way we make it to a point where the next revelation in this huge story is a good revelation. It all just seems more shameful at every unfortunate turn. Local VA finds another 1,146 unread patient images:

A review of the imaging system at the Central Alabama Veterans Health Care System prompted by 900 lost X-rays revealed there were an additional 1,146 unread patient exams going back to 2011.

According to a statement from CAVHCS, they conducted a “broader review” of the imaging system but didn’t specify what the review involved. CAVHCS generated a report dating back to 2001, when the imaging software was installed, and didn’t find any unread exams from before 2009.

Birmingham one of three to submit bid for 2021 World Games:

The Magic City has submitted a bid to host the eleventh edition of the World Games in 2021.

Birmingham had until the end of July to place a bid to host the games and it was announced Monday that the city made the cut for the final three bidding municipalities. The games will feature more than 30 sports like Tug of War, Sumo and Water Ski, according to a release.

Not quite the Olympics that former mayor (and current guest of the federal prison in Ashland, Kentucky — until 2023) Larry Langford had hoped for, but it is something.

Childhood cancer survivors going to Rangers vs Rays baseball game:

That picture was in the June 8 edition of The Birmingham News and caught the eye of Susannah Higgins Moreland. Moreland read about the boys’ mothers meeting in a waiting room at Children’s of Alabama when the boys were toddlers and diagnosed with ALL (acute lymphoblastic leukemia).

According to Children’s of Alabama, every year 150 Alabama children are diagnosed with cancer.

“It’s a life-changing diagnosis that is devastating to the family and is the first step of a grueling treatment journey,” said Kathy Bowers with Children’s of Alabama.

During that journey, the boys grew to become close friends and each others biggest fans on the baseball diamond.

Some recovery. Study: New jobs pay 23% less than those lost during the Great Recession:

The results sync with those of the National Employment Law Project which finds that during the recovery (measured from February 2010 to February 2014), employment gains have been concentrated in lower-wage industries.

This is an amazing feature, just over a decade old, on Robin Williams, the cyclist. Robin Williams: “I’m Lucky to Have Bikes in My Life”:

He also admires how the racers mirror his own go-for-broke style. “These guys spend everything they have, day after day,” he says. A typical Williams stand-up performance is nearly 2 hours long, and reviews of last summer’s comedy tour universally marveled at the entertainer’s exhaustive drive. Biking, Williams, says, helps sustain that drive. The sport became especially important to him as a substitute for a darker passion; in the 1980s, just before seriously taking up the sport, Williams struggled with a well-publicized drug habit.

An important angle to the sad Williams story. Suicide contagion and social media: The dangers of sharing ‘Genie, you’re free’:

More than 270,000 people have shared the tweet, which means that, per the analytics site Topsy, as many as 69 million people have seen it.

The problem? It violates well-established public health standards for how we talk about suicide.

That’s the first place I’ve seen this mentioned. It should be discussed more.

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11
Aug 14

Nanu nanu

“Robin Williams can be yours for a mere $1.99.”

One of his first credits was Laugh-In, 1977. This was how America met him:

That’s a collection of clips from the re-launched Laugh-In. No one really knew who he was, but he quickly became the standout performer.

Mork & Mindy, though, was where he began to show his real spirit:

Then you consider his filmography. They aren’t all classics, but they make an impressive, impressive body of work. (At one point tonight, eight of the nine trending items on Twitter were related to his filmography.) And, to think, there was a time when people thought he couldn’t do dramatic works.

Things to read … that can be dramatic or sublime.

I could just begin and end with #AskJameis.

The stages of Jameis Winston reading the #AskJameis tweets pic.twitter.com/6gTSRgqwcm

— Bryce Klein (@BrycealanKlein) August 10, 2014

Someone in Tallahassee thought this was a good idea. No one in Tallahassee was able to change their mind.

And now for some links on journalism topics:

Times-Picayune returns to five print days (for now)

Another day at Local 10, another act of stupidity

Publishers try crazy idea: fewer ads, higher pricing

BuzzFeed Raises $50 Million for Expansion, Motion Picture Division

50 Million New Reasons BuzzFeed Wants to Take Its Content Far Beyond Lists

White House provides non-response, response to letter opposing excessive PIO controls (Where has SPJ been?)

Despite generous-sounding records law, public documents often hard to get in Alabama

How Dan Snyder Bought Off The D.C. Media

Let’s talk about that one. No one in D.C. seems to like Dan Snyder. Maybe it is mutual. If he couldn’t shut them down he’s taken plenty of steps to slowly things over. He’s been so successful that the owner of the NFL franchise has become the gatekeeper about the NFL franchise.

This is opportunistic and brilliant, from his point of view. In any other context, it would be reckless. (But this is football! What could go wrong?) It is the logical extension of brand journalism, native advertising, marketing and going around the media to talk to your audiences. Those of us in the particular audience will have to trust that the content is being created and distributed in good faith. (Some will be better than others.) And we’ll get to point out when we think it isn’t. (Some will be better than others.) It all makes for some interesting credibility issues.

What Happened to the Cord Cutters?:

Netflix, YouTube, Apple TV and the Internet at large are supposed to kill off pay TV … someday. But right now, pay TV seems like it is doing okay: Cord-cutting, which was supposed to accelerate with help from tech disrupters, looks like it may be slowing down.

New data from analysts MoffettNathanson shows that the pay-TV business lost about 300,000 subscribers in Q2. But that’s basically flat compared to a year ago, and that’s a change from the year-on-year declines of the previous few quarters.

I heard this same stance from several newspaper executives in the last 15 years. “We’re slowing down less!”

As for the answer to the question offered in the title: the early adopters have all done it. Others will come, in slower waves. Finally, the rest of us will go when there are answers for the programming that is important to them, like sports.

Quick reads:

The creator of Godwin’s Law on the inevitability of online Nazi analogies and the ‘right to be forgotten’

Remember The Titans Is A Lie, And This Man Still Wants You To Know It

American startup rates are declining: Brookings Institution study

Grand National to host PGA Tour event in July

Finally, my favorite video of the day:

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8
Aug 14

You can see it coming

The you-can’t-see-this-enough idea meets with the notion that life exists to be recreated as a Techmo Bowl video game and provides us with this piece of art, which, really, we should have seen coming:

You can quibble about the jersey colors, but there’s a still of Chris Davis and his grandmother (at 3:20 in this video), canceling out that quibble. And then there’s a screen shot of Bo Jackson’s Techmo status, which is the only real quibble. He was never average in Techmo Bowl.

Things to read … because reading interesting things makes us all superlative.

Because it would be a disaster if they did … Dear Twitter: Don’t use an algorithm for the stream:

If Twitter were to implement an algorithmic feed, it would lose its point of differentiation that would likely damage its de facto real-time information/news status unless a greater value proposition was offered (although it’s hard to see what this would be). Both as a professional tool for journalists and a point of record for regular users, Twitter offers a totally different kind of feed than say Facebook does because of its unfiltered stream of forced brevity. Every tweak with photos, cards and potentially new sell buttons drastically changes the delicate balance on the nuance — a nuance that should be protected.

Twitter is noisy, but it can be calmed.

The piece goes on, making excellent points that won’t be heard enough.

The answer is, it depends. Should you outsource your social media? And that article will help you figure out your best path.

This is India, but still interesting, and short-sighted. Newspaper asks staffers to refrain from tweeting other outlets’ stories

If you’ve read enough job advertisements and know how to read between the lines, this is an interesting collection that Jim Romenesko is offering. Here are the job descriptions for Gannett’s ‘Newsroom of the future’

This is just what it says it is, an all digital, invaluable resource. Verification Handbook: A definitive guide to verifying digital content for emergency coverage

This isn’t a standard thing, but it happens. And the HuffPo piece might have pulled back the curtain a bit too far for the comfort of some. Spy Agency Stole Scoop From Media Outlet And Handed It To The AP:

The government, it turned out, had “spoiled the scoop,” an informally forbidden practice in the world of journalism. To spoil a scoop, the subject of a story, when asked for comment, tips off a different, typically friendlier outlet in the hopes of diminishing the attention the first outlet would have received. Tuesday’s AP story was much friendlier to the government’s position, explaining the surge of individuals added to the watch list as an ongoing response to a foiled terror plot.

HBO trails in profits, but this is another in a series of interesting media tidbits in the last 18 months. Netflix now has more subscription revenue than HBO

This story is about health issues, and rightly so, but it applies in a lot of other respects, as well. What ails Appalachia ails the nation

Whoa boy. Relief official says Ebola crisis more serious than reported:

In stark, often chilling congressional testimony on Thursday, an official with a relief organization responding to the Ebola crisis in West Africa labeled efforts to control the virus a failure.

Ken Isaacs, a vice president with Samaritan’s Purse, a North Carolina-based Christian humanitarian organization, also said the number of Ebola cases and deaths reported by the World Health Organization are probably 25 percent to 50 percent below actual levels.

[…]

At one point, Isaacs even disputed the earlier testimony of a physician from the U.S. Agency for International Development, who said his agency had provided 35,000 protective suits for health care workers in West Africa.

Isaacs told lawmakers he had received an email in the last 90 minutes from a hospital in Liberia “asking us for more personal protection gear. This a problem everywhere,” he said.

It is virulent, sounds exotic, comes from an unfamiliar place, travels well and there are scary films about this general health theme. You can just see the panic coming.

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24
Jul 14

Samford is shoeing an entire nation

I work with special people in an amazing place. Here is what some of them have been doing recently. Watching this was the best three minutes of my day:

That’s an amazing project, built by incredible people.

The rest of my day felt a bit bleh. My neck still hurts and I had a general odd, off feeling. In the late afternoon The Yankee, Kim and Murphy and I all went for a run. Started feeling better right away.

So I suppose my few days rest are over. Thank goodness.

Things to read … because that’s just about all I have for you today, but there are a lot of things to read.

Rabbit returned to Opelika couple after seven years:

Marilyn McCarley had planted a colorful flower bed around the rabbits shortly before Mack went missing.

“Whoever got it came in and got the rabbit. … They didn’t stomp the flowers,” she said. “…They’re cement, you know. So they’re really heavy. We never thought in a million years we would see that rabbit again.”

While Mack was missing, Clyde McCarley drove around town, checking area lawns to see if Mack had found his way there.

“I can tell you every house that has a rabbit,” he said. For years, the McCarleys decorated just one rabbit for Christmas and Easter.

This would be great fun to ride, I’m sure. Europe Wants To Turn The Iron Curtain Into A Bike Path:

The Iron Curtain, once the ominous line dividing Cold War-era rivals, is being transformed into a 4,225-mile cycling trail for recreational travelers.

European Union officials interested in boosting bike tourism have set aside $2.4 million to connect and brand existing trails that extend from the Barents Sea, north of the border between Finland and Russia, to the edge of the Black Sea, at the border between Bulgaria and Turkey. Sections of trail already pass by popular historic sites like the remnants of the Berlin Wall.

Here’s a brochure on the whole thing.

Scholars hope a two-year exploration will help find the site of an epic Alabama battle:

On a muggy Memorial Day, in a remote clearing near the Alabama River, three of the state’s most eminent anthropologists and one of the state’s best-known historians huddle around a hand-drawn map they hope can take them a few steps nearer to finding one of the most significant historic sites in North America.

On Oct. 18, 1540, an armed force led by Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto clashed with Indian warriors led by the famed chieftain Tascalusa. The ferocious encounter decimated Tascalusa’s people and left the fortified Indian village in ruins. But it also proved to be a fatal blow to De Soto’s expedition. Severely weakened, De Soto led his battle-scarred troops deeper into the unmapped continent. He would not survive, and the remnants of his army were ultimately forced to find their way back to the relative safety of Mexico.

And now for a few quick links of interest:

Maxwell Air Force Base could be used to house thousands of immigrant children

Teens make up less of summer workforce than ever

Prosecutors Are Reading Emails From Inmates to Lawyers

Twitter Is Changing How the Media Covers the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Time.com’s bounce rate down 15 percentage points since adopting continuous scroll

How 4 Photo Editors Are Using Instagram

Finally, some music. This is the first track from Guster’s forthcoming album:

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21
Jul 14

Melts in the package, disappears

I think every kitchen has them, the cabinets no one ever really opens. When I was a child they were those spaces above the refrigerator. One of my grandmothers has cabinets that are entirely in violation of the feng shui of her kitchen, if she’d ever heard the word when she had the cabinets installed, far off to the right of everything and practically on the porch. My other grandmother, I imagine, has some low cabinets she seldom uses. You likely have some too. Your glasses and plates are over there. Your junk drawer is here, the occasional small appliances are stored just so and of course all of that stuff under the sink. But then there’s the hodgepodge cabinet, the one that you forget about when you lament for more space.

Ours is a left-handed cabinet, in particular the high shelves. Everything else in the kitchen moves to the right, and the spices are in the one next to it so, really, we already have everything we need in life.

But occasionally you need that giant bowl. And that means that occasionally I have to wash it and, later, put it away.

Doing that this evening I found a smaller bowl inside the larger bowls and inside the bowl was a handful of candy.

You’ve been hiding your stash, I said, thinking it was Halloween candy.

“We’ve been hiding that from ourselves and you should probably throw that out,” The Yankee laughed, telling me where we got it, which instantly dated the stuff.

So I ditched most of the stuff, but kept the one that featured the protective candy shell. A perfect dessert! Tear open the bag and receive:

That’s not really a lot of fun, but everyone has a different scale. I’d say it is more Bemused Size.

Things to read … because reading always brings fun or bemusement.

Mighty George Gring is now Cam Newton’s Mom’s favorite football player:

Looking back, it’s prophetic that Clayton and Katherine Gring of Houston nicknamed their oldest son “Mighty George” when he was born.

Maybe it’s his quick sense of humor, or the sparkle in his blue eyes, or his positive attitude. In any case, there’s something about him that naturally draws people to him. “He’s a little bit magnetic that way,” Clayton Gring said of his 6-year-old son.

These lists never include the word “that” or most adjectives. Nevertheless, 10 words to cut from your writing

A relaunch for The New Yorker, with high stakes:

The new site is the largest overhaul of newyorker.com in years, Thompson said. The last redesign, Thompson said, occurred before he switched from the print side to the web, and was little more than a “fairly minor reskinning.”

The current relaunch has been in the works for about a year, Thompson said, and it’s been in intensive development since the magazine brought on Michael Donohoe as Director of Product Engineering in January. Donohoe, who was hired from Atlantic Media’s Quartz, has been working full-time on the new site for the past seven months, Thompson said.

Every post, in Thompson’s opinion, should apply the magazine’s superlative sensibilities at Internet publishing speeds. “We want it to feel like the best-written story you’re going to read,” he said.

Still, the speed of the Internet necessitates some sacrifice. Overall, posts on NewYorker.com are subjected to a less rigorous editing process than magazine articles are.

They’ve got the talent, and they’ve convinced a lot of people on their payroll to shift their thinking, which is a victory of its own. I hope this works out.

Lawmakers passed it. Aviation experts criticized it. The TSA says they didn’t want it: TSA fee on plane tickets more than doubles.

There is some great data here, now we just have to sort it all out and make sense of it. Dollars per student is something of a simplistic metric, I’d think. See which Alabama school systems spend the most — and the least — educating your children:

Public records provided by the Alabama State Department of Education show significant disparities in per-pupil spending between public school systems statewide.

Due to variations in state, federal and local tax funding, the state’s highest spending school district spent $13,084 per student in fiscal 2013 while its lowest spending district spent $7,201 based on average daily attendance.

That’s a difference of 45 percent.

There are some issues of local monies and political will, but, all the same, that’s a huge variance worth addressing.

Tech links:

20 WordPress Plugins You Can Install Today for Easier Sharing, Better Posting, and a More Powerful Blog

Here’s how Facebook pitched brands on buying ‘likes’ in 2011

Facebook adds a ‘buy’ button

And, now, off to the Monday dinner party!