We’re at Walmart. There are two checkout lines open. And each line has about 20 people in it. One of the two lines is for the Express lane, which is more a state of mind than an indicator of progress or even a goal to which anyone abscribed. Such is your lot in life at Walmart. I’d say late at night, but increasingly, this seems to be the case no matter the time of day you’re there.
So The Yankee goes to the other line, figuring one of us will have to move eventually, because Disney World doesn’t stay stagnant forever, and the winner can call the other person halfway across the store to the other line. By now I’ve made friends with the young couple in front of us. The Yankee’s line starts to move. She waves me over. Our new buddies come to. The girl says to the boy, “They have to be first … ” and he says of course.
About this time two other families slink into that line. And my new friend says “Actually, we’ll be behind them.”
And his date, a charming young woman, says “No we won’t, we’re going in right after him.”
To which I said, “Yep.” So I fell in line behind my wife. This couple fell in line behind me and four people with tons of stuff had to wait because, By Walton, we’d all been there for an interminable amount of time.
Maybe the place was in shock about the massacre in the Valentine’s Day part of the store:
I broke my swimming goggles today. I’m always struggling with them in one way another, fighting the creeping water or exasperated at the slowly accumulating fog. Even if I wanted to swim non-stop I’d be stopped just so I can see. I’m forever closing one eye or both and just guessing. So, somewhere in a bad swim today, I pulled up and pulled on the straps, and broke them.
The nicest thing about the googles was that there was plenty of strap, because this is the kind that allows for a strip of the rubber to go around the bottom and the top of the back of your head. I spent a long time trying to reconfigure them today, finally got it to work, and found that it was no better.
Oh well. It was a lousy swim anyway, even by my poor standards.
This afternoon I had a nice meeting with industrial designer Chris Arnold. We are trying to tease out a few interesting things to explore in the journalism world. This conversation goes on and on, which means there is a need to refine some ideas. But Chris is a long-time Twitter friend, and it is always nice to get to spend more than few moments in passing with thoughtful people.
We watched the live-on-tape Opening Ceremonies with friends at a party. Some people dressed up as their favored nations. I think we all told each other we were Canadians. One woman wore a ushanka, with the standard Soviet pin, and she did so without irony. There were artists there, so they were thrilled with the constructivism, which was neat to see. One of the art historians there was a woman at the party from Belarus, and she got to hear her national anthem and gave us some context for some things.
I promised myself I’d limit the number of things I said about the Opening Ceremonies, so I’ve limited it to the above and just a few tweets:
The two overly annoying phrases that NBC developed for their embarrassing coverage: “This is highly idealized” and “pivotal experiment.” I’m not sure whether they were talking about the Soviet era or themselves.
Things to read … because this part of the daily post is always pivotal, even when it is quick.
You can admit it, you can’t wait until these become ubiquitous: Cruise Ship’s 80-Inch ‘Virtual Balconies’ Livestream the High Seas
The kindness of strangers always awes us: Snow can’t stop the Southeast’s largest kidney transplant chain at UAB
This is a regrettable portmanteau, but a fine read: Rise of the Platishers
A record month here, the coldest in a generation: The Alabama Climate Report
The Snowden era of journalism:
Snowden has prompted a free-for-all among journalists itching to tell America’s surveillance secrets, an important generational shift as the nation faces years of growing debate about privacy in an increasingly wired world. The litany of stories come not just from the handful of reporters with access to the former NSA contractor’s treasure-trove of documents but also from competitors eagerly searching for scoops to move the dial on what has become one of the biggest stories of the decade.
“For years … it was like the number of articles to come out on NSA you could count on the fingers on one hand,” said James Bamford, who has written four books on government surveillance. “Now it’s almost impossible to keep up.”
“What we’ve seen with the Snowden revelations is the impact that putting documents out there really has,” added Siobhan Gorman, a national security reporter for The Wall Street Journal, during a recent panel discussion hosted by Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism and the Reporter’s Committee for Freedom of the Press.
I’ve been thinking about this for a while. For example: You can have a robot vacuuming your floor, not unlike the Jetsons. That’s existed for some time now. But no one really wanted a Roomba until you saw it as DJ Roomba on Parks and Recreation. Anyway: Technology? We haven’t seen anything yet.
Headline of the day: Birmingham restaurant owner accused of shooting at customer who complained of bug in egg roll.
Let’s not eat there.
