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Friday / Twitter — Comments Off on Some social media stuff
10
Jul 20

Some social media stuff

I spent most of the morning in Zoom meetings.

The rest of the day was a blur for reasons I already don’t understand.

Anyway, a tweet:

A story that, I dunno, is probably going to require followups:

Local health officials were optimistic; two months and more than $40 million later they’re losing patience.

According to multiple public health officials, it is unacceptable that as many as half of the files in the state’s contact tracing database are missing vital information.

On May 11, Indiana began to supplement the efforts of local health departments by creating a centralized contact tracing call center. The state is paying Virginia-based outsourcing firm Maximus $43 million to oversee centralized tracing. Although public health experts recommended more, 500 workers were hired in May.

Just before the deal was inked, the company sent a donation to Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb’s reelection campaign. That wasn’t its first foray into Indiana politics.

Maximus did not respond to a request for comment—either on its political contributions or the quality of contact tracing.

But the issues Indiana is facing run deeper. Health officials worry contact tracing issues could be costing Hoosier lives.

And since we talked about the sports here yesterday, how about a video? I know all these guys. Nice guys. Smart guys. Future-of-sports-broadcasting guys.

And one more tweet to begin your weekend.

More on Twitter, check me out on Instagram and more On Topic with IU podcasts as well. And have a great weekend!

cycling / photo / Twitter / video / Wednesday — Comments Off on Just some Wednesday stuff
8
Jul 20

Just some Wednesday stuff

We went for a bike ride today, which was nice. It was bright and sunny and that was nice. It was warm. It was hot, but not ridiculously, oppressively hot, which was nice. We rode over to campus to go up and down one of the hills over and over. And I won the day’s hill set, which was nice.

Here I am at the bottom after my last hill repeat and waiting on The Yankee to finish her last two rounds.

The actual hill disappears and wraps up to the right. So it doesn’t look like the biggest hill in the world, because its not, nor does it need to be. We’re just doing two minutes of consistent climbing right now. Also, to be fair, I only won because she pulled off to set up a camera shot and somehow that let me get well ahead of the game.

Across from our hill repeats there is a smaller hill — a nice single roller, really. It’s on a road that splits the softball and baseball fields from the tennis courts and the football field parking lots. After a softball game there last year I saw three guys fly over that hill on their bikes and thought, I can do that. So now when I am over there, I do that.

And today I went over it at in my next-to-hardest gear with ease and at a respectable speed. Well, I thought. Because my inner-monologue often features sentences without subjects or verbs and only interjections. So I went back around again, through a parking lot time trial segment, hanging a right and then weaving through some road construction barrels and then working back into the hard end of the cassette right away, turning left and hitting that roller one more time, in my smallest gear. And then I stood up. And I went over the hill.

I went over the hill slightly slower than I had just the time before. I could see it on the Garmin, right there in front of me.

And there’s a lesson in there somewhere.

The next hill after that was the first one on our way back to the house and it was the hardest hill on the route. Maybe we should do repeats on that one. (Let’s not. No one tell her that I even mentioned that.) Then you weave through the rest of the campus and the little side roads that get you back to where you want to be. It’s an easy ride because the hills you dread are out of the way. Sure there are some repeats in your legs, and those always feel and seem so slow, because I’m slow, but the rest of up and downs after that have some real flow.

And there’s a lesson in there somewhere, too.

Hey, did you see this yesterday? That interview played right into my hands, timing-wise, didn’t it?

What’s not to love about this? And, sure, this is a 43-minute video, but it’s a tight recap and all the action is in the first 28 minutes.

Plus it features a finish between two of the great Classics riders of the modern age and what else do you have going on tonight, anyway?

podcast / Thursday / Twitter — Comments Off on Sometimes Thursday fly
11
Jun 20

Sometimes Thursday fly

The light week continues. I’m not sure where the days are going just now. Probably Zoom meetings and Slack messages. I spent some time this evening working on a project in the garage, too. And, somehow, that constitutes a much of the day. And also a podcast. Third one of the week! I’m saving one for next week, but I do have one for you today.

Danielle Kilgo researches protest movements and she walked me expertly through this conversation. At one point, I think, I said “Statement of fact. Give me an answer?” She overcame my deficiencies and loaned her expertise to the cause and it turned into a terrific show. Just because of her, it had nothing to do with me. Plus, I think, I hope, it represents the beginning of a pivot in the program. We’ll see about that this summer, but for now let’s see about this:

On the subject of shows, I have always wanted to try this, too:

The point would be all of the new ways that a scientist in one field is using a satellite or a radar or some other piece of tech being applied in a field that’s, well, far afield. How did you come to try that? What does this simplify or amplify for you? What kind of doors does this idea up for more work in your specialty?

I got to do one episode of this on an old show, before things got shut down. LIDAR was making the rainforests spill all of its secrets about how big the ancient cities were. I found someone in the same field to talk about how taking a few modern tools were changing the efforts of archeology and nothing less than our understanding of the sheer size of a society. It would be a boring show for everyone that’s not taking part in it, probably, but at some point the first audience is the most important one.

There’s something important to be said about the power of humanity and the healing of the spirit.

Between the leeches and the take-two-of-these-and-call-me-in-the-morning and the tonsillectomies and the Ritalin and the animal-assisted therapy we’re going to find out one day that hope is another important prescription. Maybe this disease creates some circumstances, the highly contagious nature of the thing and negative air pressure rooms, that deprives people of an elemental treatment. It could be that soothing sounds and rhythmic lights and butterflies are part of the deal, too. It could be that we learn one day that hanging upside down or a trivial root boiled at a precise temperature will ease our aches and pains. Maybe we find concentrated sound waves clean up your organs. Maybe concentrated beet juice really does do something. People do something, for each other, too.

Maybe, and bear with me here, masks and social distancing work. Let’s keep trying that.

hobby / photo / Twitter / video / Wednesday — Comments Off on Got 20 minutes? There are two great videos below
10
Jun 20

Got 20 minutes? There are two great videos below

I found some fossils down at the lake yesterday. We have to spread these things out for content just now, plus I’ve been playing around with a new light box setup at home. So yesterday’s crinoid samples would have to wait. They’ve been sitting around for a few hundred million years, so what’s a few more hours, really?

Anyway, I am trying to remember how to take pictures of small things.

They look like shriveled Cheerios, don’t they? Really crunchy cereal bites with ridges. Don’t eat these, they aren’t that tasty, and probably difficult to digest at this stage.

It’s amazing, really. I’m taking these pictures and I’ll put these back out by the lake or a creek or something and maybe one day someone else will see them.

Or maybe they’ll just wait for another few hundred million years until the insect citizens of Perpaplexiconia dig through a few more feet of soil and who knows what they’ll think of tiny fossils. Maybe they’ll eat stones for their digestive properties.

Stuff from Twitter, to pad this out.

This is sort of self-explanatory. But I always wonder how people select the takeover person, and what that negotiation is like. Do you have to leave your license and car keys behind or something? Now, a full on swap for a day or so would be enlightening. I think it might be better on Instagram than Twitter, actually.

George Taliaferro is one of those people that, the more you read about him, the more you want to know about him.

He led the Hoosiers to their only undefeated season, helped end segregation in Bloomington by a few different methods:

He became the first African-American drafted by the NFL, and spent a lifetime, I mean the rest of his life, lifting up others. I regret not having had the chance to meet him before he passed away. But there are plenty of great stories about him, I mean plenty, and football is merely the way you learn about an otherwise great man.

Midway through this piece Taliaferro talks about he and the university president managed to desegregate the businesses of Bloomington. It’s a little choppy, but it goes like this: There was a photo in a popular restaurant right across the street from campus that had a picture of a championship IU team on the wall. Taliaferro said to Herman Wells, my picture is on the wall, but I can’t eat there. And Wells said, we’ll just see about that. It’s a big little story about two amazing men.

They don’t make many like that anymore, and they never did make enough of them to begin with.

I have an idea about this, don’t:

Can you imagine? One day you’re going through life’s drudgeries, the next day you’re in a pandemic, and then suddenly you’ve lost your father and your step-mother and now you’re the caregiver to five children and a stroke victim.

Where a mask, wash your hands, give the people around you plenty of distance.

journalism / photo / podcast / Tuesday / Twitter — Comments Off on Dip your toes in, the water’s fine
9
Jun 20

Dip your toes in, the water’s fine

And, now, a scene from “the beach,” which is how I mistakenly thought of the lake’s shore line when we were out there for a few minutes today. That says something about how long since I’ve seen a beach.

It was Christmas, last time I saw a beach, and that was just looking into a sound, so it might not even count. If you don’t count that you have to go back to last July. I’m not the biggest beach person in the world, but that still seems like too long.

So we were at the lake for a few minutes. It rained. I sat under an umbrella talked on the phone while The Yankee did some considerable distance of freestyle swim. And that was lunch. Down to the lake, in for a quick dip and then produce a show.

Talked to an economist today. Bottom line is … we know a lot of things, but that really just illustrates what we don’t know. We’re about to start stage four of back-up-and-at-’em here, which will be normal-ish but for some restrictions that won’t get honored a lot, I’m sure.

The good news is that the jobless claims are coming down from the spring. The bad news is they are still very high. The other bad news is that state tax revenues are taking a hit. This was not a surprise, but still, it is underway and impactful. The good news is that people are going back to work and so there is progress to be made. But don’t take my word for it. I have a minor in economics. This is an actual economist:

I have a love-hate relationship with security-footage-as-news stories. It doesn’t devalue a story, but too often it elevates a story beyond its natural worth because of suddenly compelling available video. Compelling, easily available video. (That part is important.) Or, even worse, it elevates a story because there’s video and no one else has anything better that day.

It’s a tricky thing, when visual drive messages. I see and have worked with and teach this stuff, so I consider all sides of the argument. I think we all should consider all sides of its use before using it, and that’d be a great starting point, I’d say.

And then there’s stuff like this …

Funny how video has helped bring to light rampant injustice in society. Funny how necessary that video is for this sort of circumstance. Sometimes the visuals have to drive the message.

More on Twitter, check me out on Instagram and more On Topic with IU podcasts as well.

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