|
The weekly post that is just pictures. Only this week it is singular. Because Friday was Valentine’s Day, and I didn’t post this one, shame on me.
Valentine’s Day is one of those things that comes and then goes. And when it is gone, the only thing left are maybe a card, a few flowers and discounted chocolate. And, for the most part, we’re happy Valentine’s is one of those days we’re glad it is past when it is in the past.
But the Valentine, if you’re lucky, she sticks around.
I’m lucky!
A day in a chair. There was Olympics. There was sunshine. There was reading and, best of all, the fine company of a lovely lady. It was a day with not too much, but a day you’d do again.
There was this:
If I did business with Liberty Mutual I would strongly consider altering the transaction. I don’t know if anyone at the ad agency has ever been in life-changing environments, but the insurance agency has people that have been there. Everyone understands the urge to compare the Olympics with Your Product, whatever Your Product is. But letting a goal slip by against the Russians is hardly like losing everything in a house fire, is it? Missing the landing on your vault isn’t so traumatic as finding the place where you live and play and love so devastated by the weather that you can’t recognize landmarks, because there aren’t any anymore.
When I was in college this happened in the next little town from where I grew up. A huge tornado roared through in the darkness. When the sun rose everything was unrecognizable. The fire department had to go around spraying house numbers on shards of wood and jamming them into the sodden earth, as you would a mailbox, so they’d have a frame of reference in their life saving work.
Hardly a Kerri Strug moment.
And yet I feel for Kerri Strug and the Miracle on Ice guys, because they, of course, couldn’t know what would become of their legacy: a bad insurance commercial. I’d feel bad for Herb Brooks, but he’s dead. I don’t feel bad for Bela Karolyi. He should never have put Strug there. Also, there’s charming reading in the Bela Karolyi controversy section of Wikipedia.
Speaking of the Olympics. NBC gets a lot right. Visually they’ve really shown their A-game. But my word, do they get a lot of easy things wrong.
Other fine sports notes: I mentioned Tim Alexander here late last year. He’s got a rich and compelling tale, the kind of guy you can’t help pulling for. Well. He’s showing up again today. His UAB football team was running stadiums today. And then the new strength and conditioning coach decided Alexander, who is in a wheelchair, needs to be with his team. So he hoisted him on his shoulders and carried him. And then the team joined in.
The story does not mention how many walls they ran through after that.
The image folks from Westboro are after Michael Sam. Mizzou students solved the problem. That is a terrific school and was an inspired addition to the SEC, but I’m just starting to like them more and more now.
The World Press Photo of the Year. The picture is terrific. The reporting — the caption — is what makes it.
African migrants on the shore of Djibouti city at night, raising their phones in an attempt to capture an inexpensive signal from neighboring Somalia—a tenuous link to relatives abroad. Djibouti is a common stop-off point for migrants in transit from such countries as Somalia, Ethiopia and Eritrea, seeking a better life in Europe and the Middle East.
Things to read … because this hasn’t yet been enough.
I do not think you could make this up. And, previously, I would have not thought there would be someone foolish enough to try to actually do it. NYPD denies FOIA request for department FOIA guide:
Public records request service MuckRock asked for the document in late December. Last week a lieutenant in the department’s records unit denied the request, calling the guide “privileged as an attorney-client communication.”
Muckrock gets all the good and stupid ones.
Remington is coming to Alabama, reportedly bringing about 2,000 jobs. The official announcement is tomorrow. The disbelief is today:
Huntsville may be welcoming a major Remington Outdoors Co. gun manufacturing and development plant and possibly 2,000 jobs, AL.com reported today.
But would the city really welcome it?
It seems so, judging from an abundance of positive, pro-gun comments posted to the AL.com story this morning.
The author of that piece is from Atlanta. She attended school in Alabama. And she is surprised by the pro-gun, pro-job stance of her neighbors. This perplexes me entirely.
So now I have to read every story on the subject, just to see what other disbelief we can work into this story. Because gun factories are scary, I guess.
Lastly, this piece defies excerpting, but is wholly worth reading. It is titled Pastor offers 15 tips for raising kids: ‘Give them a chance to know God’ but a better title would be “A grandfather reflects on how he would raise a child.”
I’m not raising children today. I’m part of the “support troops.” I’m in the capital funding division. But if I were, I would be giving my children every chance to know about God.
If I were raising children today…I would be having fewer frantic activities and make more careful and deliberate choices. I wouldn’t buy them whatever they ask for—that’s for grandparents to do. I would be more present when they’re trying to talk to me.
I wouldn’t lecture as much and I would listen a little more. I wouldn’t worry so much about being their friend and more about keeping their respect as well as their love. I think I would listen for signs of God in their life and, like trying to start a fire, do everything I could to blow on it, but not too hard.
I would make sure they were around all ages of people, not just peers. I would pray for them with all my heart, and take most of my criticisms there. I would provide consistent discipline and accept that they will not always like me and know that the world won’t end if they’re mad.
It goes on and on, a suggested instruction manual from someone who thought, perhaps, about what they did right and did wrong. To do it all again, and this time from the cheaper seats, what an interesting idea from which to learn.
The weekly post with the … most … place-holding photos we can find. On with the ceremonies, then.
This is the pre-show stage design we saw at the Fox Theater
The Fox, which seats just under 5,000, opened at the beginning of the Great Depression as a home for the local Shriners. The design borrows heavily from Moorish and Egyptian influences. (King Tut’s tomb having been discovered just a few years before they started construction, there was an Egyptian fever.)
Here’s good news: Jim ‘n’ Nicks has opened a store near us. The return of Pie Day!
On Thursday I promised you the rest of the banners that will tease the upcoming Step Sing shows at Samford. Here are those banners now:
This won’t take long. We sat on the sofa and watched television all day. The Yankee loves the Olympics, she does a lot of her research on the topic. And it was nice to just sit down for a while.
Here are a few things to read, though, on your lovely Saturday. Deadspin has a bit on NBC’s selective gatekeeping:
Russia’s anti-gay laws have been a major focus in the lead-up to the Olympic Winter Games in Sochi, and during his address at today’s opening ceremony IOC president Thomas Bach made a strong statement against “any form of discrimination” and in favor of tolerance. Viewers worldwide heard the statement; NBC viewers in the U.S. did not, because the network edited it out.
[…]
This is the second time in two years that NBC has made at least one ill-advised edit from its tape-delayed Olympic opening ceremony broadcast.
They’ve got both versions of the speech, if you are so inclined. NBC, since you want to be well-advised before jumping to your conclusion, says the edits are about programming run time.
Why every child should learn to code:
Anyone can learn to code. In a few hours you can pick up the basic skills and in a few weeks you will be able to build useful applications and websites.
In the last few years, the UK has finally woken up to the importance of coding. Organisations like Young Rewired State, Code Club and Code Academy have led the way, helping young people learn these key skills.
Why is it so vital that we teach our children to code? We are already living in a world dominated by software. Your telephone calls go over software-controlled networks; your television is delivered over the internet; people don’t buy maps anymore, they use the web; we all shop online. The next generation’s world will be even more online and digital. Soon, your house will be controlled with software, some of your medical care will be delivered over the web and your car may even drive itself.
Software is becoming a critical layer of all our lives. It is the language of our world. In the future, not knowing the language of computers will be as challenging as being illiterate or innumerate are today.
I bought new goggles tonight. We have one of those giant sporting goods stores about three miles from home and they stay open late. They had exactly one end cap, hidden at the back of the store, with swimming gear.
I picked up these:
They are comfortable. They feel like a mask, more than goggles, which will always be a win to me. Tomorrow I’ll give them a try. I’m sure none of the Olympic swimmers and national champions and All Americans we see from time to time would be caught wearing these. And I might get laughed at because these probably aren’t terribly hydrodynamic, but that’s the least of my worries in the water.
And, finally:
Tonight the Star-Spangled Banner played in Russia to celebrate the gold of an Olympic athlete born after the Cold War ended. We are old. #fb
— kenny smith (@kennysmith) February 9, 2014
