things to read « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

things to read

Over the river, through the woods

You’re always so cynical about the maple trees. They’re full and verdant and prolific. Their shoots can only barely be controlled. The leaves, on the ground, are a big hassle. And you’re always cutting back the branches. Oh they give great shade. So good even the grass won’t grow in spots underneath that lush, cool canopy.

For all of that, you just know they’ll be the first ones to give the great heave, the shrug of the shoulders and the big sneezing sigh that means hours of rake time.

And yet, for now, they’re still hanging on:

But those are at home. This is one of our views on campus, looking from Samford’s Centennial Walk up to Shades Mountain:

I get to work at a beautiful place.

After the links you’ll find some nice pictures. So scroll on down if you aren’t interested in today’s collection of extra words.

Things to read …

Remember when the government encouraged you to go to transfat? Never mind.

Heart-clogging trans fats were once a staple of the American diet, plentiful in baked goods, microwave popcorn and fried foods. Now, mindful of the health risks, the Food and Drug Administration is getting rid of what’s left of them for good.

Condemning artificial trans fats as a threat to public health, the FDA announced Thursday it will require the food industry to phase them out.

When in doubt, never forget that someone in Washington knows more about what is good for you than you do.

Right?

“I am sorry that they are finding themselves in this situation based on assurances they got from me,” the president told Chuck Todd of NBC News during an interview at the White House.

I liked the part where he said the whole thing burned him — err, the American people. The guy just can’t help himself.

I really, really, hope this gets soundly refuted:

Reporters with the Society of American Business Editors and Writers received “training” on how to cover Obamacare’s rollout from a policy expert who works with President Obama’s former health information technology adviser.

Otherwise what you’re saying is that, essentially, government is telling you how to report on the government. Debacle or not, that would be embarrassing and should be more than a small problem for journalism. So I hope it gets convincingly refuted.

Quick links:

Grants topping $800,000 aimed at creating jobs, improving economy in Alabama’s Black Belt

NPR’S Brian Boyer on building and managing news apps teams

Study: 96% of UK journalists use social media every day

Internet Kills the Video Store

Made it to my grandmother’s, just in time for a few twilight pictures:

More stuff tomorrow. And by stuff I mean the big family present I’ve been alluding to for days. Come read all about it!

history / journalism / links / photo / Samford / things to read / video / Wednesday — Comments Off
6
Nov 13

The red ink is on my hands

A few more leaves to mark our fall, which seems to be happening in more pronounced stages than usual this year. The oaks are, how you say, reticent:

Not that I mind. We’ve all shifted clocks and grumbled about that to ill effects. We’re all in various stages of layered clothing — depending on where you live or the thinness of your blood, as some people say — and now the betrayal of the trees. I’m always glad the oaks stick around. Mostly because we have several pin oaks.

Whomever plants pin oaks has never raked the leaves from a pin oak.

Critique meeting of the Crimson today. Story count is up. Layout is good. Quality is sturdy. Art is coming along. Now I need new challenges for them. You can see some of the students’ work here, if you like.

Also did some grading. I entered grades into a spreadsheet. Doing some other things with spreadsheets. I know some people that like spreadsheets. Well, how well can we really know someone who likes spreadsheets?

I prepared files. I printed documents.

Also, last night, I finished the files for the large present that we are delivering this weekend. I got the thing down to 26 pages. It includes maybe 16 sources and three appendices.

Never let the geek in your family prepare documents as gifts.

So that got printed out. It looks nice and clear on the good machine, the machine so important we named a room after it — the copy room. It has color maps end everything.

The document, I mean. Though the copier also probably has maps in its manual. It also faxes. And makes a mean espresso, from what I hear.

Anyway, this was the next thing that happened: I briefly explained the purpose of this file to one of the nice people in my office. She thought it was great. Then she gave me two different types of protective things to keep the file in. Everyone likes this gift. Everyone has thought the idea was nice. Four different people have chipped in. And none of them know the recipient.

But, to know the recipient, you’d want to help even more. That kind of guy.

All will be explained this weekend. I write vaguely about it because it is fun and mysterious, but also just in case he decides to explore the Internet beforehand.

Things to read …

Corpsman! Mother! Jesus! A Marine remembers Iwo Jima for the last time. Chuck Dean, you’ll see, is one of the stronger writers at al.com, but how can it be for the last time?

Jarvis struggled as we spoke. He often had a hard time catching his breath. He told me his doctors were treating him for pancreatic cancer.

“It’s not good,” Jarvis said.

As we talked Jarvis said that years ago he had not wanted to talk a lot about the battle. But later in life, Jarvis changed his mind.

“I came to see that it was important, very important that people understand what happened over there to us, to my Marines. It was important because people need to understand the horrors of war so that they think long and hard before getting into one. And they need to understand that those who fought in the war were just boys, really. That’s all I was. The day after Pearl Harbor every boy at Minor High School went down to enlist, including me. Some of them didn’t make it back. People need to remember them and what they did and why they did it.”

Jarvis paused after a while and looked at me with a thin smile.

“You know Chuck, you might be the last person I tell my story to.”

I told him I hoped not. I told him I was honored to hear it and would be honored to tell it.

He smiled again. “Well, I think you might be the last person I tell it to, and I want to ask you a favor. When you tell it, please tell it good.”

These next two stories? These are not the thing those young men fought for:

Man charged with using stun gun on wife after football bet in Mayville:

Before the game, avowed Packers fan Nicole Grant allegedly bet her husband, devoted Bears backer John Grant, that she would allow him to use a stun gun on her for three seconds if Green Bay lost, according to a criminal complaint.

Grant, 42, found himself in Dodge County Circuit Court the next day after allegedly making good on the bet. He was charged with possession of an electric weapon during an initial appearance. If convicted, Grant could face up to six years in prison.

And this one, Hijacker returns to the United States:

Instead of becoming the next Che Guevara, Potts found himself a foreigner who spoke little Spanish in crowded and often violent prisons. But he refused Cuban offers to return home.

“If you are not able to suffer for the cause you are just a play revolutionary,” he said.

[…]

But the one-time hijacker will return to an uncertain future. Potts was unable to negotiate a plea deal and, while he hopes any sentence he faces in the United States would be reduced by the time he has served, there are no guarantees.

That story is just full of quotes that are the opposite of genius.

Quick links:

I know people that work here: Job fair held for more than 1,100 workers who will lose jobs when International Paper closes

Third cyclist killed near Springhill Avenue in two weeks

ProPublica has found the one “sob story” worth your while: Loyal Obama Supporters, Canceled by Obamacare

When the data mountain comes to you

Independent Campus Journalists Vital

And, finally, I’ve been hanging on to this for a while. May as well use it here. #Story50 tips for the factual storyteller from Adam Westbrook

Auburn / friends / journalism / links / photo / Samford / things to read / Tuesday — Comments Off
5
Nov 13

42 is no longer the answer

And now a quick study in shutter speeds. This first moody shot was taken in bright, filtered morning sun at 1/4000th of a second at f/6.3. This would fall under the category of “Usually looks better in the camera’s LCD than on the computer screen:

Now, the same shot. Just a few heartbeats later, the composition altered only by the vagaries of imprecise body movement. Our subject is still in the bright, filtered morning sun. I shot this one at 1/400th of a second at f/6.3:

Mostly I’m amazed she stayed perfectly still for that, even at high shutter speeds.

Actually, she doesn’t mind the camera so much. She will not cast her countenance upon your phone, however. Every shot I’ve ever managed with the phone has been by some means of deception or another. And the camera is much larger and has the always-popular swaying strap.

Today’s study in autumn foliage is to the opposite side of the dogwood, where we can study the new buds, already present and patiently waiting for next year. Even if you grow maudlin at the passing into winter, there is always a sign of escape. Dogwoods, then, can be instrumental for your morale, should you need them.

The paper is happening as I write. Who knows where the paper is when you read this. The next newspaper could be happening. Next year’s staff could be happening over a newspaper next year. This could be printed in a paper at some later date when you read this. This could be the first thing anthropologists pull up when they figure out how to connect their power with ancient power supplies a few millennia from now.

Cats and leaves. Yes, great-great-great-great grandchildren, this is what we often did with the Internet at a slow moment. It truly was a marvelous time. Now come grab some of this hard candy before promptly getting off my lawn.

Spent the morning in the office, pecking away at things. Spent the afternoon in the library, pecking away at things. Spent the evening on The Editing Of Things. Now this, and then back to pecking and editing.

The thing I am editing is the upcoming family present project, which I have sort of alluded to here in passing from time to time. We are presenting the finished product this coming weekend, which means I am now finishing up the actual project. I’m ready for it to be done because I am anxious to deliver it because I am uncertain at how it will be received.

You always are, when you make something, aren’t you? How will this go over? It isn’t the same if you’re just buying a thing. Doesn’t fit? Wrong color? No problem. I have a receipt. What’s one trip to the store? To make something, to envision it, and to put in the effort, to visualize and re-visualize the finished version, to contextualize and add and subtract from the context of what it all means, to put it all together, hoping there are no typos or that everything is straight or accurate or the right color or under the proper protocol and on and on. It can get to you, if you are a crafty person.

My friend Kelly, who is easily one of the two or three craftiest people I know, agrees with me about this. You start out doing something, decide to do a nice thing for someone and then you introduce a little anxiety and stress about this nice thing … it is amazing, I think, that anyone ever makes anything for anyone.

But, then, I am not especially crafty.

I do, however, admire those that are. Even more so than I usually do. Which is why it is hard to let go of things people occasionally make for you. Which is why I always look forward to when the leaves turn because behind that comes cooler weather and that means I can dig out the awesome blanket that Kelly made me years ago. It is colorful and warm and sturdy and it was made with love.

Which I think will be the theme of the inevitable speech that will surely be given with this project this weekend. As it should be. That’s what it has been, an exercise in searching and exploring and persistence and assistance and, ultimately, love.

So, really, I’m down to the giving. With the giving comes some receiving, he said, staring off into the future, but also the past, while in the middle of The Editing Of Things.

I’m not a crafty person, but there are few things I’ve looked forward to giving so much as this. All will be revealed this weekend.

Today I learned that there are believed to be some 8.8 billion planets in our galaxy alone that fit in what we think of as the Goldilocks zone for life, as we know it. Tonight I got to use the expression “If your mother tells you she loves you, check it out.”

I always smile when I get to use one of the old journalism cliches — which are the only ones you needn’t avoid like the plague, it seems. Even more with this. Verify what you’re told, being the point. If an astronomer tells you there are 8.8 billion planets, any of which could support life, just roll with it. “And the people that live on two or three of those planets, at least, are made of cookie dough. Hey, we’re astronomers. What are you going to do?”

Some of that is just how we perceive and conceive things. Comedian Steven Wright said “Tell a man that there are 400 billion stars and he’ll believe you. Tell him a bench has wet paint and he has to touch it.” Whether or not you look up that quote probably says a lot about how you perceive and conceive reality and me in it. Whether he stole it from someone else, says a different thing.

But we all like cookie dough.

And that conversation right there, that’s probably how quantum physics or postmodernism or postmodern quantum physics got started.

Things to read …

Look how transparent Apple is and is not in this transparency report. And scroll to pages three and four to see tables demonstrating what your government is doing in your name. Compare that to other countries. Come up with your own observations.

This may be another perspective on something I’ve already linked to here, but I’m of the opinion that all of these perspectives matter. So let us Kirsten Berg’s thoughts on America’s Shackled Press:

Since its establishment by a group of American correspondents in 1981, the Committee to Protect Journalists has focused on defending the rights of its counterparts abroad, naming and shaming the most egregious offenses against press freedom around the world. Incarcerations in Iran. Crackdowns in China. Retaliations in Russia. Slayings in Syria.

But now, for the first time in its history, the CPJ said it felt compelled to commission a special report on its home country: The United States.

It’s an irony that is not lost on Joel Simon, the organization’s executive director. But, as he told an audience at the New America Foundation last Thursday, the recent actions taken by the Obama administration—from its aggressive pursuit of leakers to the campaign-like media relations firewall it erected to control the information that comes out of government agencies—led them to conclude that there had been a fundamental, chilling shift in the ability of journalists in this country to report the news.

This is the second of such features I’ve read recently. I like these stories. Doing good in the community, giving people confidence, meeting police officers and beating them up in the name of science? Good stuff. Lee County Sheriff’s Office offers class aimed at empowering women:

Alicia Cohill delivered one final blow to the aggressors and ran back to a cheering group of women.

“It’s exhilarating,” she said, catching her breath. “You kind of go to that place. Especially the last one, when you have to close your eyes and rely on touch. Once they grabbed me, it was automatic… It takes you out of your comfort zone. You just kick butt.”

While the women also learned grappling and quick escape techniques, Jones said the course is not just about physical self-defense.

“It is not a self-defense course, per se,” he said. “It is also about awareness, giving women the tools they need to avoid becoming a victim.”

Plus you get to wear the cool pads.

More here. If you are tempted to leave now, dear anthropologists of the future, please scroll on through. Our society’s answers to the meaning of life are hidden in these pages. Hint: It is the cookie dough.

friends / journalism / links / Monday / photo / Samford / things to read — Comments Off
4
Nov 13

The kind of Monday where the traffic clears before you get there

I got a call on the drive into work. It was a friend who was some miles ahead of me on the interstate. He was stuck in bumper to bumper traffic and was thoughtful enough to offer this heads up. He screen capped a picture of his favorite traffic app map and sent that to me. I compared what his phone said to what my phone said. I was able, while safely not in traffic, to consult a news source on line. Ten miles of interstate were closed.

Surely this means there was a nuclear reactor meltdown at a place where no one realized there was a nuclear reactor meltdown.

By the time I made it to the area, after a bite of lunch to wait out the traffic, it was all gone. The road had reopened. There was a car, Brian said, that had ran off the road. He also sent pictures of a fender-bender or two, the sort of thing that happens in the backup of a larger accident and just ruins your week. He never saw anything that merited a 10-mile shutdown.

Which still doesn’t mean that there aren’t spent fuel roads on some county road overpass.

But my friend called me from his stationary vehicle with a phone he wears on his hip. That signal went off a tower, probably to a satellite synched up to a static Mercury orbit, came back down to me and we conferred like air traffic controls. Then he sent me digital imagery, the stuff no one would have conceived of 50 years ago. And then he beamed me photographs, which would have been a fanciful plot device in a television show even 20 years ago.

And, what a world, we do all of this without thinking.

The only problem with autumn this far south — he said with a vacant sigh, as if any sigh could truly be vacant — is that it doesn’t last very long. Three days, The Yankee says. She’s being sarcastic about it, but only just. So you spend a little time in this beautiful weather, and it has been amazing the last few days, lingering a little bit longer under each tree, for no other reasons than you can and should.

The only problem with autumn anywhere — he said with a more resigned sigh, as if any sigh could be anything more than resigned — is that it is impossible to capture the feeling of autumn, even the muted version we get, in an image. You don’t get the sun just right and the air feels different and the smells you never notice are just shifting in that way that makes you notice them for 23 minutes on a Tuesday, but not again until some day early next spring. If spring is a shout to the senses and summer is a testament of being able to filter out the overwhelming then fall is a gentle nod at imperceptibility. It only barely says “I’m coming.” It usually only whispers “I’m here andnowI’mleaving.” There’s a big heave at the end, of course. “I was there.” Those are the leaves on the ground.

Makes you wonder why we call them leaves.

Here are a few from the yard. By the time I am back under this dogwood the entire thing will look sickly.

I’ll post a few more pictures like this this week. I know you can’t photograph autumn. I know it never catches the moment and, at the end of the day, you have nothing more than multihued tree extremities. But I keep trying, every year.

In class today we talked about public relations, what it is and isn’t. And we began discussing the all-important press release. This evening I worked on The Editing Of Things, which isn’t as ominous as it portends, just unending. I had a soup-and-sandwich dinner, because it was as cold inside as outside, which is to say mildly chilly outside, and ridiculous indoors.

I dipped the toasted herb focaccia bread into the vegetable soup, the flavors of which did odd things to the asiago, roasted tomatoes and basil pesto sauce on the slices of turkey. I say that just to make it sound healthy and exotic. Especially after I just mistakenly saw the nutritional value of that sandwich. Looks like I’ll need a new usual.

Things to read …

The list really shouldn’t include this. A local columnist, in his well-placed displeasure with people that have been elected to office and subsequently gotten themselves in heaps of legal trouble and the community in historic financial trouble, has gotten vivid:

That era of debt and corruption is going to burn for a lifetime. We laid ourselves down with Langford and these banks, and some of these lawyers, and woke up itching with an STD we can’t shake.

Commissioner George Bowman, the lone vote against the new deal, was right when he said poor people will be disproportionately hurt by perpetually rising rates.

Poor people are going to get hosed. Poor people – all residential customers but especially the poor – are going to get hosed worse than they did before the bankruptcy or during it. They are going to get hosed in perpetuity.

Shame there’s no municipal-grade penicillin.

Here’s the story: ” I was supposed to be there for her at that moment and I was.” The video is worth 53 seconds of your time:

The newest Pew surveys are out, and there’s so much to unpack. It all defies excerpting in a place like this, so I’ll just give you the headline, which is not as good as the actual read: Twitter News Consumers: Young, Mobile and Educated.

Follow me on Twitter, there is occasionally something for most everyone there. And be sure to come back tomorrow for more leaves and various other observations of the modern condition!

cycling / Friday / iPhone / journalism / links / photo / things to read — Comments Off
1
Nov 13

Broke 4,000 miles

I call this one “Where I’ve been, where I am and where I’m going.” I broke 4,000 miles on my bike this afternoon — not all at once, of course. It took far too long, actually. Took a few pictures, including the odometer on the Cateye. Here’s to the next thousand miles:

I got honked at today. I was doing about 26 miles per hour at the time. I’m pretty sure the full framed gentleman in his truck has never done that under his own power. But I won’t judge. Sometimes I pass trucks. Sometimes the guy inside hurls a slur. It all works out. The late afternoon and early evening was beautiful and life is grand.

That was a 30 mile ride which is, I’m embarrassed to say, the longest ride I’ve had since August. Felt like it, too. Have to ride more.

Things to read …

This is a long — but vitally important — one. And also an attractive example of modern web design. The Guardian offers NSA files decoded: What the revelations mean for you

Coolest story of the day: San Francisco Will Become Gotham City For One Day To Make A 5-Year-Old Boy’s Wish To Be Batman Come True

And since I talked about foliage yesterday … this was one of the better parts of the scenery today:

The clocks move back this weekend. Fall is here. I’d hope for more warm weather, but that is beautiful.