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I was wisely edited out of the final video below

I went for a run last night. It was cold and I was about two miles from home when it was dark enough, and simultaneously light enough, that I could see my breath. Then I car would come, and those headlights are far off in the distance in the night time when you’re on foot and only doing a tiny part of the job of closing the gap. Then suddenly there are all these headlights, and yet you’re in the dark. And by the time you figure that out, the curious behavior of directional photons and the physical features of the earth and what not, the headlights are now upon you, blindingly so.

You run a little farther off the road, farther away then you already were. Because it is dark in December and cold and no motorist has a reasonable expectation of finding you there. In my 5.32 miles I met four walkers, five cyclists, two joggers and a couple walking their dog. Hope we all got home safe.

This evening I took my bike for a quick 20-mile spin. I was pressed for space by three separate pickup trucks. One which lingered long enough to allow me to make jokes about his license plate. Another which clearly belonged to a man who’d just received word that his baby was about to be born and, with it, the luckiest lottery ticket of all time, but it could only be cashed if he showed up 15 minutes ago, having bent space and time to learn how to deliver the child himself and could do so with the ease of years of practice. And so he must pass every living thing like it were a dead thing and proceed with great haste to the special baby extraction unit. Or to his late appointment at the accountant’s office. Whatever was going on in the guy’s life.

How I didn’t roll up on the accident he must have surely caused later can only be explained by the idea that it happened on a different road than my route.

And so, I have a theory: pickup trucks are the most dangerous vehicles to cyclists, and perhaps everyone else.

Otherwise, grading and some grading. The grades are due this week, and so they will be done this week. I’ve made good headway and will, tomorrow or so, input the final numbers into the Excel formula. I will watch the averages move up and down and spot check a third of a class roster’s score with good old fashioned math to make sure I’ve built the spread sheet correctly. It is the least I can do. I usually build them correctly, but there’s always that concern, right?

Met Adam for dinner. We visited Cheeburger, where we had large cheeseburgers and I had a milkshake. All the while I complained about always being hungry. I was hungry when we left the place, in fact. Exercise will do that to you, it turns out.

Things to read … If you take away toy guns from toy monkeys then only toy monkey criminals will have guns. Our society is a little out of control just now, with the exertion of so much control, just now. Funny how that works. TSA Seizes Tiny Toy Gun From Stuffed Monkey, Threatens to Call Cops:

“She said ‘this is a gun,'” said May. “I said no, it’s not a gun it’s a prop for my monkey.”

“She said ‘If I held it up to your neck, you wouldn’t know if it was real or not,’ and I said ‘really?'” said May.

The TSA agent told May she would have to confiscate the tiny gun and was supposed to call the police.

The terrorist monkeys have won, basically.

But wait! It gets even more sublimely stupid! Snowball Fight at Univ. of Oregon Could Lead to Criminal Charges

Is there video? There is video:

So, yes, college students are doing silly college student things. And the retired professor decided to get out of his car, where he was safe behind his high-tech, ultra-dense, futuristic anti-snow polymer shielding. If it feels to you like there’s more to this story, it is probably because there is more to that story.

Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania, leave your quiver-filled imagination at home. Or get suspended. Truly these are dangerous times in education.

How about a few nicer stories. Building a library: Donation of books to low-income first-graders in Birmingham underscores importance of early reading:

Zion was among 80 first-graders at the school to receive a bag of five books to take home. Other books were “Charlotte’s Web,” “Amelia Bedelia,” “The Tale of Peter Rabbit,” and “Where the Wild Things Are.”

“These kids don’t have a lot so this is an opportunity for them to really build their own personal libraries,” said Theris Johnson, student achievement coach at Minor Elementary School. “They’re starting a lifelong interest in reading.”

There was nothing, and still is nothing, quite like a book that could take you away from the struggles of your day.

Though someone should tell educators there is an axe in Charlotte’s Web, Amelia uses scissors and Peter Rabbit is drugged by his mother. I’m sure there was something subversive and dangerous to school principals in Where the Wild Things Are, as well.

So the boss gave you a nearly unlimited budget to do a bit of viral marketing. Well done:

The selfie. Someone making contortions to explain it away: context matters.

So does decorum. When you land on a site called Selfies at Funerals, you have little of it.

Someone commented there, “One of the most important pictures of our time.” And that may be right. Another person, elsewhere, recalled Barbara Tuchman:

“So gorgeous was the spectacle on the May morning of 1910 when nine kings rode in the funeral of Edward VII of England that the crowd, waiting in hushed and black-clad awe, could not keep back gasps of admiration. In scarlet and blue and green and purple, three by three the sovereigns rode through the palace gates, with plumed helmets, gold braid, crimson sashes, and jeweled orders flashing in the sun. After them came five heirs apparent, forty more imperial or royal highnesses, seven queens – four dowager and three regnant – and a scattering of special ambassadors from uncrowned countries. Together they represented seventy nations in the greatest assemblage of royalty and rank ever gathered in one place and, of its kind, the last. The muffled tongue of Big Ben tolled nine by the clock as the cortege left the palace, but on history’s clock it was sunset, and the sun of the old world was setting in a dying blaze of splendor never to be seen again.”

Granted, The Guns of August may be a bit of an overreach for a vacuous photograph. At least we all hope so, at any rate.

Finally, this incredible video has been making the rounds. A design professor friend asked why I didn’t make an appearance. I assured him my only trick was balance, and even then only on occasion:

That is very much the kind of video you need to watch from the beginning to the end. It only gets more impressive as it goes. Amazing stuff. And, much like the rest of life, stick around to the end to see the (painful) bloopers.

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6
Dec 13

Who ratted out that dog?

The SEC championship game is in Atlanta tomorrow. Auburn will be there, facing Missouri. There are a lot of signs like this around town just now.

We’ll be there too. Auburn and Mizzou each received 16,000 tickets. Auburn makes theirs ridiculously difficult to acquire. Missouri was kind enough to simply sell them online, so a lot of Auburn folks bought their tickets from Missouri. Given the proximity, and the weather out their way, it should be something of a home game for the team in blue and orange.

It is hard to believe, and easy to get caught up in. Another conference championship is a possibility, just four years removed from the last one and one trip around the sun from last year’s unfortunate season and we’re going to watch a championship game tomorrow. Hard to believe.

Things to read … This has been making the rounds. A Stanford student wrote this about the Iron Bowl:

Stanford beat Notre Dame, but all we can talk about is the SEC and its raucous finale of Auburn-Alabama. And for once, I have no problem with that.

Even as a West Coast man, I cannot tear my eyes away from the Southland drama that exploded into being on Saturday night. It was the single most unlikely play in football unfolding at the absolute perfect moment. It remains wondrous and unknowable, some quantum shiver in nature slowly solidifying in our minds. As I write, the eyes of a thousand sportswriters still flicker desperately across the ghostly pages of history, searching for some apt comparison or even just something to describe what happened — even just words.

Now, more than ever, there are no words.

That guy is pretty good. Meanwhile, I turned my Iron Bowl post into a larger story with bigger pictures. Slightly new text, much more interesting format. You can read it again here.

Speaking of photos, When White House Photos Are ‘Visual Press Releases’.

Also speaking of photos, here is a photographer being tackled by security for trying to do his job and photograph a protest. Little by little, we’ll chill journalists.

This dog is a cat burglar:

That’ll be the day’s cutest video. This one, a time lapse from the space station, will be the most awesome:

And, now, the most truthful headline you’ll ever read. A pair of shoes for Christmas: ‘It’s a small thing, but it makes a huge difference’:

At an elementary school in Huntsville on Thursday, a boy about 8 years old went to his little brother’s pre-K classroom and approached the teacher. He said his little brother didn’t have shoes that fit, and asked if it would be OK if they went to the on-campus HEALS clinic. He’d heard the HEALS staff gave out shoes.

The 4-year-old brother was wearing a pair of worn-out shoes that were four sizes too big, and a too-big pair of athletic socks that were dirty and full of holes.

“The little brother was so upset and embarrassed by the whole situation that he started crying,” said Pam Clasgens, development director with HEALS, a local nonprofit organization that provides school-based medical and dental care for children.

If you’re looking for a charity, this one will make a lot of kids very happy.

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5
Dec 13

Links, and we find a corner of the Internet that can retire

I’ve been busy with work, so there are just the regular things to read feature. It happens.

The story starts like this:

Missouri is willing to offer Boeing as much as $1.7 billion in incentives over the next two decades in an effort to land production facilities for the 777X. The proposal is the latest in a series of offers from states trying to woo the jet assembly plant and the thousands of jobs it could bring.

Huntsville is one of several locations competing to be the new home for the Boeing production facility after union members in Washington state rejected their latest contract. Other locations reported to be in the running include Missouri, South Carolina, Texas and Utah, and Washington state has maintained efforts to keep the facility there.

The headline is States offer billions to land Boeing facility; Alabama faces Dec. 10 deadline to craft its deal. At least some of the Boeing program is coming here, which is, of course, good news.

Hate this already: ‘Star Wars’ launches official Instagram account with Darth Vader selfie. Darth Vader does not take selfies. He is not a preening, angry teenager. He’s the scariest guy in a galaxy. He’s supposed to be terrifying with the simplest of gesture, intimidating with the slightest whim of his mercurial personality, not a laughable guy in a suit with a good data plan.

Also, the picture makes no sense. Fans spent a lot of time in the comments trying to figure it out.

I can’t embed this video, apparently, but it is perhaps the craziest thing you’ll see today. Nigerian man rescued from sunken boat after three days trapped at bottom of Atlantic.

Like stop motion? Here’s how you move a 400-foot vessel, on land, in tight quarters. Pretty neat stuff out of Mobile.

Still more video, you might remember the best videotaped phone call from the Georgia game two weeks ago. everyone wants to hang out with Nana and Angela now.

Here’s a nice story out of Birmingham, James O. Walker Sr. — a 1957 Auburn graduate who’s father has the pharmacy building named in his honor — gave a couple of Iron Bowl tickets to a young fan. That young man stopped by to thank him for his generosity and ABC 33/40 was there:

I don’t have the opportunity to mention the Crimson White, the student-produced newspaper at the University of Alabama, here a lot, but it is a good publication. Here are their front and back pages today. Inside was this cartoon, which will take some explaining, I’m sure … And here it is:

Post by The Crimson White.

On Dec. 5, The Crimson White opinion page published a cartoon depicting two football players, one from the Alabama Crimson Tide and one of the Auburn Tigers. Above the depiction was type that read, “This is what happens in Obama’s America.” The cartoon was meant as satire, but unfortunately it has been perceived by many readers as having racist intentions. We sincerely regret this, and apologize to anyone who was offended by it.

The cartoon, in fact, was intended as a lighthearted look at some of the more absurd explanations given for Alabama’s collapse at the end of the Iron Bowl game against Auburn last Saturday. Many fans across the state took to social media and personal platforms to place blame for the team’s loss. To The Crimson White, and much of the student body, the blame was based on ridiculous and unfounded reasons.

They caught a lot of flack, which is unsurprising. And the reaction is probably a bit more knee jerk than necessary. Editor Mazie Bryant continues:

We are taking actions now to correct this mistake, and we are instituting a change in the way we address editorial cartoons. Cartoons, just like the rest of the content on our opinion page, is personal thought. However, cartoons have the ability to reach a wider audience by their pictorial nature, and therefore, we must be vigilant to place a more critical eye on the greater implications and perceptions a cartoon might carry. From this point on, we will be approving cartoons before they are published with a panel consisting of our editorial board. We will judge cartoons based on their power and meaning and decipher which areas need to be revised and expanded upon.

All of it has started good conversation (and probably a few overheated reactions).

It makes me think of the issue of quality. If a cartoon’s purpose isn’t readily apparent to a basic, standard audience then it has little quality of value or merit as commentary. If it fails there it doesn’t give the paper anything.

The secondary art that is to be learned, then, is learning to answer that challenge. If a newspaper cartoon illustrator has to, later, explain his or her meaning so that the audience can reach the desired conclusion and have the correct reaction the cartoon needs work before it is published. As one young reporter said to me today, “It lacks clarity where clarity is definitely needed.”

Elsewhere, The Week in Schadenfreude finds “This may be remembered as our Gettysburg.” The sports section of the Internet can retire now.

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3
Dec 13

Just things to read

Maybe we should all take our football a little less seriously. And maybe people should reconsider that extra drink. And if you judge people based on how dejected they act after your team loses, let’s not be friends, mmkay?

Woman charged with murder in Hoover Iron Bowl party shooting

The title of the largest municipal bankruptcy in the history of the United States hasn’t been in Alabama since Detroit filed this summer. So, in a way, Jefferson County got off the hook of ignominy. Now the county is out of bankruptcy:

(T)he county’s bankruptcy exit is being appealed by ratepayers. Critics of the county’s plan have said the sewer rate increases will place to great of a burden on poor residents. Others have noted that the debt structure of the deal could lead to problems down the road.

But county officials have maintained that the plan represents the best option for the county.

I knew, when I first covered the super sewer scandal in 2001, this would never end. This will never end.

Now for something more fun, AdWeek has compiled what, they say, are the 20 most viral videos of the year. Enjoy.

How about a few stories about disruption?

Professor Jeff Jarvis writes, Past the page, asking you to watch a video about Ask Google. Then he writes:

(T)hink about the diminished role of the page and what that will do to media. We publishers found ourselves unbundled online, so we shifted from selling people entire publications to trying to get them to come to just a page — any page — and then another page on the web, lingering long enough to shove one more ad at their eyeballs.

But just as the web disintermediated physical media, voice disintermediates the page. But media still depend on the page as their atomic unit, carrying their content, brand, ownership, and revenue. Now, when you want to know the score of the Jets game — if you dare — you don’t need to go to ESPN and find the page, you just say, “OK, Google. What’s the Jets score?” And the nice lady will tell you the bad news.

Now let’s go farther — because that’s what I live to do. Let’s also disintermediate the device.

What Will Google Glass Do For Journalism Education? Good question:

While Google Glass has some clear applications in higher education already, Robert Hernandez, a professor of web journalism at the University of Southern California, sees the technology’s potential more than anything else. “From a digital perspective, from my perspective, it’s just another device…it doesn’t change your life,” he explained. Nonetheless he can see a number of ways it can influence journalism and how it’s taught.
According to Hernandez, Google Glass isn’t likely to revolutionize journalism or education so much as provide users with a few additional options for how to create and interact with content.

Doesn’t technology just feel like that a lot? I’ve had that perception for most of the last decade. “This is neat, useful, somewhat impressive. But it is just a step along the way.”

More than anything, I see the shiny new thing (“Look what my phone can do!”) as an indicator of potential.

Eventually it starts to really change people’s lives. Like, perhaps, this story: The Beginning Of The End Of Waiters and Waitresses?

A friend of mine is producing this video. Like mountain bike riding?

Sport Science discusses Chris Davis’ Iron Bowl return:

This could be the last word on the subject. Probably won’t be, but it could be:

The Onion: Nobody At University Of Alabama Caught Saturday’s Game

Maybe this year I’ll get to take this ride: Bo Jackson to take bike ride for tornado relief to Auburn for 2014 A-Day game

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27
Nov 13

Avoid the shade

Bright. Clear. Cold. Not so bad in the sun, but it was a different story in the shade.

So I tried to run in the sun, but of course all of our preferred routes have nice tree cover, which is a great idea for most of the year. Only tonight did I think of visiting the actual track.

Ah, well, freeze and learn.

The high was 45. We are diving toward 27. Like I said, cold. But I got views like this:

I ran 3.64 miles, and the cold made it hurt. It has been a long time since I’ve ran in a serious chill. It doesn’t feel any better now than when it did back then. But I ran. Someone who runs in cold weather needs to tell me how to dress appropriately.

Things to read …

Chart of the Week: A minute on the Internet:

Keeping up with what people do online is no easy task — just ask the researchers in our Internet Project. Nor is it much easier for those seeking ways to make money off online activities — they’re changing almost too fast to keep up with.

But the folks at Quartz, the business-news site from Atlantic Media, have given it a good shot. They pulled together data from Intel, investment bank GP Bullhound, and a Facebook-led consortium called Internet.org to create this neat summation of what happens in a minute on six of the Web’s biggest services

The numbers are staggering. And speaking of which, This Map Of Planes In The Air Right Now For Thanksgiving Will Blow Your Mind.

Gov. Robert Bentley says report that Medicaid expansion would create 30,000 jobs is ‘bogus’:

“Because the studies are all bogus,” Bentley said. “The jobs are already there. You’re not creating new jobs. You’re not creating new people by bringing this money in. You have the doctors are already there. The nurses are already there. You don’t produce a new doctor in a year. I went to school 24 years to become a doctor. You don’t produce these type people immediately.”

The governor said he did not dispute that expanding Medicaid, which states have the option of doing under the Affordable Care Act, would create some ancillary jobs.

“I’m not saying it couldn’t create some jobs,” Bentley said. “That’s not the reason we’re doing this though. That’s not the reason we’re making this decision. We’re making this decision philosophically.

“And we’re just going to have to see how this plays out. I personally think the entire Affordable Care Act is falling apart. The people of this country do not like it. The majority of the people of this country do not like it. And I’m not going to be a part of it.”

There’s a lot to unpack there.

Love stories like this one. Secret to a long marriage revealed; Birmingham couple in nursing home renews vows:

He was walking into the JC Penney in Jasper more than 72 years ago. She was walking out.

Wednesday at a nursing home in Birmingham where they both reside, Hercule, 95, and Kathleen Henslee, 89, renewed their wedding vows in a ceremony that brought tears to the eyes of family, friends and nursing home staff alike.

“Do you promise to love, honor and cherish, in sickness and in health, to be faithful, forsaking all others, for as long as you both may live?” asked the Rev. Herman Pair, pastor of Sandusky First Baptist Church, where the couple have been members since the 1950s.

I saw this young man in the background of a football game the other night. He has a remarkable story. Alexander in wheelchair, but UAB lets him work toward football dream:

Practice is for players and Timothy Alexander was not a player, not in his condition. But before he could dream to be upright again, he had a proposition for McGee: You let me live that dream and try to become that player.

“I just fell in love with the person,” McGee remembers. “Then he started talking to me about, ‘Man, the Lord is going to bless me. I’m going to be back on the field.’ I started saying, ‘You know, I believe that, too. I think you’re right.’ ”

So Alexander, seven years removed from his car wreck that paralyzed him, practices football. Each afternoon. It’s not the kind of practice any of them is used to. Alexander does push-ups during practice periods, does leg lifts in the weight room. He once benched 315 pounds.

McGee has given him a locker, his own jersey. This bio even says he’s playing football. All this because when the Lord decides to bring Timothy Alexander all the way to the field, he wants to be in shape.

That’s a great personification of the human spirit.

Auburn fans may be able to see this on Facebook, though for some reason they are having takedown orders on YouTube. Despite the left-hand, right-hand confusion this is a fairly intense video for the Iron Bowl this Saturday. We have reached saturation point. We don’t care. There is a video to see.