Thursday « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

Thursday

In like a lamb

Earlier this week campus looked like this:

Today on Talbird Circle, just off the quad, this was hanging over passing students:

I love the spring, the variable of the local weather. It looks like England one day and the Caribbean the next. We can have 40 degree swings. Pollen makes every car look like a school bus. It seems too warm for March, but then, hey, it is March. And spring is just 14 minutes away.

A couple of meetings today. Some reading and critiquing the paper. There was even a little grading. I made good time getting off campus, covering some of the distance in the lingering daylight. As I closed the garage door at home the rain came. It was a day of good timing like that. One person left as another person came along. Everyone I needed to run into I ran into while I was looking for them.

That and spring! What else does one need?

Things to read: Nine visual elements

Carnival of journalism

Stuff from elsewhere:

Branded apps have officially jumped the shark. No, they haven’t.

Ad of the day: The Guardian. Not sure if I like this foreshadowing or not.

The newsonomics of crossover:

The signs are everywhere — the signs of crossover. We’re not there yet, but publishers are starting to sense that the time when their business models become more about digital and less about print gets closer every day.

Since the web’s dawn, publishers have lived in a mainly print/somewhat digital world. We’re on the brink of a heavily digital/somewhat print world. The difference means hundreds of billions of dollars, euros, pounds, and yen to content creators and distributors. Get it right, and you win the prize: America’s Next Top (Business) Model.

This is a story from last year, but it is making its way back around today. It is a cute read. Maybe the best part is that a reporter pretended to try to interview a pigeon.

Finally: There’s a new section of the site for Thursdays:

I’m going to pedal around the county and collect pictures of all of the historic markers. That should be a few days of riding and weeks worth of pictures. There’s even an interactive map in the banner!

cycling / links / site / Thursday — Comments Off
23
Feb 12

Who’s counting?

I realized today that I need a new gimmick for the site. Thursday is usually a day with extra content here, and now I’m out of material. Last Thursday we wrapped up the section on my grandfather’s textbooks.

Not to worry. I have an idea. Now we’ll just have to make it work. Maybe by next week it will be ready to roll out.

Read a little. Wrote a little. Remembered how many people I still need to call this week. Somehow the day got away from me a bit.

A great essay by Jason Farman on using disruptive technologies to a classroom advantage:

I was excited by the potential of the iPad and other mobile technologies as a means to practice different forms of engagement. I am now a strong believer that these tools, when used correctly, truly foster a deep sense of interpersonal engagement between the students and with the spaces they move through.

I’ll finish up by getting on my soapbox and preaching to the choir (among other clichés): Soon, if it hasn’t happened already, every teacher in higher education will have to develop a strategy for mobile phone use in the classroom (whether that be to integrate the technology or to ban it). Currently, mobile phones are the most pervasive computing technology in existence. There are currently over 5.3 billion mobile phone subscribers worldwide. In a planet of around 7 billion people, that’s around 76% of the world that has access to — and uses — a mobile phone. Almost all of our students have them. The mobile device is something that they have on them throughout the day and has become embedded into the fabric of their everyday lives.

While it will be some time before the same can be said of tablet computers like the iPad, it is still worth noting at this stage that simply responding to these pervasive technologies by banning them from the classroom does little to address the importance of these media in our students’ everyday lives. From my perspective, as an educator, I must respond those practices that have become pervasive in the lives of my students, demonstrate that there are many ways to use these tools, and, ultimately, show them how to analyze and critique their own everyday practices. I am taking small steps toward figuring out the best techniques to achieve those goals.

Did manage to sneak in a few miles on the bike. I’m still adjusting to my new shoes and clips, so riding behind the neighborhood seemed like a good idea. While getting acquainted with the new gear my feet have been taking a beating. About four miles in my arches start complaining. After about 10 miles I had to take a break, just to rest my barking dogs.

I never think of my feet as dogs until they hurt. And on those rare occasions they snarl. That’s a good description for today.

So after a bit of standing around I hoped back on the bike and raced the daylight home.

The local bike shop says all of this should be better in three or six rides. Two down, some pain still to go.

cycling / errands / iPhone / photo / Thursday — Comments Off
16
Feb 12

These stories have thin morals

Eggs. Eggs. Must get eggs. I’d been tasked with this important task because it wouldn’t be a weekend without breakfast.

To the meat lab. This is all in the timing. If you went early the eggs would not be there yet. If you show up late they’ll be gone. (They are a good deal, and popular with the in-crowd. They have a sign with the bad news that they’re out of eggs. They do not have a sign for when they run out of pork chops.)

I walk in. There is one flat of eggs left. Thirty delicious eggs at a terrific price and these are the last ones for the evening. I ask the lady working there if they are spoken for. She says yes. Crestfallen, I glance around at other things and, having failed at the original mission, decide to purchase nothing. I turn to leave.

“You’re not going to buy the eggs?”

Didn’t you say they were someone else’s?

“No. I meant that’s the last of them.”

Well. They are spoken for, then.

Moral: Don’t count your eggs before they are in your refrigerator. (If you count them in someone else’s refrigerator, you should get permission first.)

Visited the big blue box store, because I had to see what the hubbub was about. The place was packed like Christmas was coming or snow had arrived. It was all very orderly though, with people stopping and staring at exciting things like brushes and notebook paper for the longest amount of time.

I checked out behind a handsome elderly couple. They just managed to sneak in under the draconian Express Lane rules that most people do not bother to acknowledge. The lady staffing the register checked them out in silence. And then she struck up a conversation with me, offering me a credit card application and asking about my day and wishing me well. She did none of these things for the couple. Maybe she just talks to every other customer.

Moral: A leopard can’t change his spots, but you can pick yours.

Also hit the local bike shop, where I needed their help making two small adjustments to my bike. They have a tool I don’t — they have a lot of tools I don’t — which is required to make this particular pedal-to-crankset change. I learned this important, and costly, lesson last spring.

Picked up some new shoes, talked about chain lubrication and the upcoming chain replacement that I’ll be due. Chain work, he said, can sometimes open a Pandora’s Box. Because, really, my repair-and-upkeep luck needs the help.

“It might be more than the chain,” he said. “There could also be problem with the cassette.”

Or the derailleur. We could find out I’ve been riding around on the wrong tires. There could be a problem with the satellite in a neighbor’s home, and this responsibility to fall to me.

“But it could be just a chain,” he said.

Moral: It is never just the chain.

links / Thursday / video — Comments Off
9
Feb 12

The cleverness of Mississippi lawmakers

The Gulf of America, nee Mexico?

A retiring Mississippi lawmaker says there’s a method to his madness in proposing a bill to rename the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.”

Mississippi Rep. Steve Holland in a phone interview that he authored the bill in order to fight “a litany of assaults on immigrants and poor people,” introduced by the Republican-controlled Mississippi Legislature.

“I just thought I’d give them some more red meat to throw at their base,” Holland said, adding that the bill would give Mississippi residents “no reason to ever have to refer to someone who looks different from us.”

Step 1: Come up with a concept that toes the line between novel and sublimely ridiculous.

Step 2: Never mind that you’re a state lawmaker who has no power to change the name of an international body of water. You’re retiring. Who cares?

Step 3: When you get a little more blowback than you anticipated … reach for any old talking point that you’ve heard your colleagues talk about the last few days and make a tenuous connection.

In other news, legislators in Mississippi have solved all of the problems in their great state and have moved on to international waters. So that’s a nice development.

Grading today, and read a bit. Managed to ride for a while. Spilled my milk after I got finished. I wasn’t sure how to react to that. Milk is so expensive these days you almost have to cry, no? And it wasn’t even milk, but chocolate milk!

Made my Valentine’s Day plans: Waffle House!

Not really. Though a waffle does sound good. (And you have to love that there are three shots of the jukebox in the first 13 seconds of B-roll. The man knows his Waffle House iconography.)

Auburn / baseball / football / Glomerata / history / photo / Thursday — Comments Off
2
Feb 12

The oldest graduate

When he walked at his graduation at Auburn William H. Holley, like many before and since, shook the hand of the university’s president, Dr. Bradford Knapp. The governor was Bibb Graves. Know those names?

The oaks at Toomer’s hadn’t been planted yet. Toomer’s Drugs was still competing with Homer Wright as the local top druggist. (Wright’s phone number: Nine.) S.L. Toomer simply referred to his place as The Store On The Corner.

Here’s Holley in his 1927 Glomerata:

Obligatory sports references: George Bohler was coaching both the Auburn football and basketball teams that year. The football team was 1-8, beating only Howard College. Snitz Snider — Olympic track star and future legendary high school football coach — was hurt much of the season. Another key player Babe Taylor — who, as a tackle, dressed at 6-feet-2 and “around two hundred pounds” as a tackle (Auburn’s current punter is bigger) — also had nagging injuries during the down year. Bohler’s basketball team went 3-13. At least the baseball team was posting winning records! Cliff Hare Stadium? Hardly.

The Bank of Auburn, in the back of Holley’s senior Glomerata, advertised four percent on your savings. Burton’s Book Store was the place to get your dusty tomes. J&M was decades away. Samford Hall, Comer, Mary Martin, Smith and Langdon Halls were all a part of campus. Ramsay Hall was brand new. Perhaps you’ll have heard of Holley’s dean: Bennett Battle Ross of Ross Hall fame. That building was still being erected when Holley graduated.

If those things don’t sound conceivable, don’t worry. Auburn’s oldest living alum has a few years on you. Holley celebrated his 105th birthday Wednesday at the Henry County Nursing Home in Dothan (Auburn stuff was everywhere).

His walk into the real world coincided with the beginning of the Great Depression. The 1929 graduate would work as a pharmacist in Abbeville and soon after helped soldiers get their prescriptions in France during World War II. When the Army let him go he settled with his wife and family in Headland, Ala. He became a pillar of that community where he handed out medication until he retired in 1973. His son Bill, a 1971 Auburn graduate, took over the druggist desk. His son has since retired.

Holley’s Auburn kids: Elizabeth (’59) and Bill Jr (’71):

But the elder Holley refused to slow down long after retirement. He has maintained two farms, one in his hometown of Samson, Ala. and another in Headland. He was famously building fence lines by hand well into his 90s. He has four grandchildren and six great-grandchildren in his life. He maintained his driver’s license well beyond his centennial, “just in case.”

His API diploma, made of sheepskin, still proudly adorns a wall in his bedroom.

As he told Auburn Magazine, learning about Newton’s first law in a physics class has played a big role in his long life. Objects in motion tend to stay in motion. Living Right, he said simply, is the key. He’d know.