video


15
Aug 14

There is Star Trek at the end of this post

We went for a run in the middle of the day, because running takes less time, and we haven’t done it in a while. Here’s the more-sunny-than-you-realize path.

trail

I discovered today that I’m big on the mind deals — slightly different than Ray Romano’s mind bets. Today’s was fairly straight forward: if you stop running, you’re going to run another mile.

I did not have to run the fourth mile. I had a fairly decent time on the 5K. But not fast enough.

I do not know what is happening.

As I finished the run, I was looking for some shade, stepped under a promising pine tree and found this guy:

caterpillar

That’s the Actias luna caterpillar. You might be more familiar with the luna moth version. I didn’t see one of those, but I did watch that caterpillar climb and climb:

caterpillar

There’s probably a metaphor in there, or we could just be impressed by the closeup quality of my phone’s camera. Probably a metaphor in that, too.

Brian came down for a weekend visit. He and I went to Niffer’s for dinner. Turkey burgers and corn nuggets are for dinner.

Afterward we spent the evening in the pool. Colleagues and neighbors were there. It was a fine time with friends and more friends. We stayed so long the bottom of my feet are raw. And we’ll probably go back tomorrow.

Things to read … to prepare for tomorrow.

Alabama’s unemployment rate at 7 percent

The Re-Return of Chuckie Keeton

Inside the College Football Hall of Fame playground in Atlanta:

First and foremost, know this: This isn’t your father’s Hall of Fame.

Often ignored for nearly two decades in South Bend, Ind., the College Football Hall of Fame in Atlanta represents today’s game and media world while respectfully giving a nod to the past. The National Football Foundation’s decision in 2009 to move the Hall of Fame into the deep South symbolizes how the sport has changed demographically and through television.

Located within a five-minute walk from the Georgia Dome and the future Atlanta Falcons stadium, the Hall of Fame craves connectivity and a personal experience above all else. There are interactive videos and games, selfies with digital face paint, countless screens, and a field for activities and events.

It sounds like a nice experience.

Now the fanfic looks better than the source material …

Interestingly, everyone you see in that prelude has played multiple characters across the sprawling Star Trek franchise, except for … Richard Hatch. This is his first time in Rodenberry’s universe. They’re making a movie out of it. They’ve received more than four times their Kickstarter goal and their making a feature film, of the independent variety. It’ll be low-budget but, if you watch the entire prelude, you can see there’s some really great quality there. And Garth of Izar.

“Donors will receive either a digital HD copy, or a DVD or Blu-ray copy, depending on their donation level. It will also be released for streaming on YouTube for all to enjoy sometime later!”

The movie is in pre-production now, according to IMDB. I find it a bit more exciting than it probably should be.


11
Aug 14

Nanu nanu

“Robin Williams can be yours for a mere $1.99.”

One of his first credits was Laugh-In, 1977. This was how America met him:

That’s a collection of clips from the re-launched Laugh-In. No one really knew who he was, but he quickly became the standout performer.

Mork & Mindy, though, was where he began to show his real spirit:

Then you consider his filmography. They aren’t all classics, but they make an impressive, impressive body of work. (At one point tonight, eight of the nine trending items on Twitter were related to his filmography.) And, to think, there was a time when people thought he couldn’t do dramatic works.

Things to read … that can be dramatic or sublime.

I could just begin and end with #AskJameis.

Someone in Tallahassee thought this was a good idea. No one in Tallahassee was able to change their mind.

And now for some links on journalism topics:

Times-Picayune returns to five print days (for now)

Another day at Local 10, another act of stupidity

Publishers try crazy idea: fewer ads, higher pricing

BuzzFeed Raises $50 Million for Expansion, Motion Picture Division

50 Million New Reasons BuzzFeed Wants to Take Its Content Far Beyond Lists

White House provides non-response, response to letter opposing excessive PIO controls (Where has SPJ been?)

Despite generous-sounding records law, public documents often hard to get in Alabama

How Dan Snyder Bought Off The D.C. Media

Let’s talk about that one. No one in D.C. seems to like Dan Snyder. Maybe it is mutual. If he couldn’t shut them down he’s taken plenty of steps to slowly things over. He’s been so successful that the owner of the NFL franchise has become the gatekeeper about the NFL franchise.

This is opportunistic and brilliant, from his point of view. In any other context, it would be reckless. (But this is football! What could go wrong?) It is the logical extension of brand journalism, native advertising, marketing and going around the media to talk to your audiences. Those of us in the particular audience will have to trust that the content is being created and distributed in good faith. (Some will be better than others.) And we’ll get to point out when we think it isn’t. (Some will be better than others.) It all makes for some interesting credibility issues.

What Happened to the Cord Cutters?:

Netflix, YouTube, Apple TV and the Internet at large are supposed to kill off pay TV … someday. But right now, pay TV seems like it is doing okay: Cord-cutting, which was supposed to accelerate with help from tech disrupters, looks like it may be slowing down.

New data from analysts MoffettNathanson shows that the pay-TV business lost about 300,000 subscribers in Q2. But that’s basically flat compared to a year ago, and that’s a change from the year-on-year declines of the previous few quarters.

I heard this same stance from several newspaper executives in the last 15 years. “We’re slowing down less!”

As for the answer to the question offered in the title: the early adopters have all done it. Others will come, in slower waves. Finally, the rest of us will go when there are answers for the programming that is important to them, like sports.

Quick reads:

The creator of Godwin’s Law on the inevitability of online Nazi analogies and the ‘right to be forgotten’

Remember The Titans Is A Lie, And This Man Still Wants You To Know It

American startup rates are declining: Brookings Institution study

Grand National to host PGA Tour event in July

Finally, my favorite video of the day:


9
Aug 14

Nixon on the subway

I was raised in a suburban and exurban lifestyle. It was grand. And, like so many Americans, that involved cars. Many cars. A lot of miles. A great deal of time on interstates and highways.

So, when I was however old I was, when I spent time on a mass transit bus and subway systems I noticed something. Everyone on board the thing would rather be somewhere else. Anywhere else. It is an energy-sapping experience and you can see it on everyone’s faces.

I make the joke, which my beautiful wife hates, that it is like “Lord of the Flies.” She hates it because she’s spent plenty of times on the subway, so she always rolls her eyes, which means the jokes continue until someone inevitably brings up the conch shell.

Well. I’m going to take this video as a piece of evidence for my side of the joke. The Broadway cast from “The Lion King” delivered a performance on the subway. Watch the commuters:

In contrast, when the Australian cast did it earlier this year, people actually enjoyed themselves. And they were on a plane:

Which brings up a good idea. If you’re organizing a flash mob — and why are you doing that, again? — you might want to have four or five people who have the very important job of acting shocked and amazed.

If you’re organizing a flash mob, be sure you top this one, which is perhaps the best one ever:

OK, one more video. This was 40 years ago, today, Richard Nixon had resigned amid the Watergate investigations, and was addressing the White House staff. It remains a fine speech lost in all of the important things that were happening.

He was wrong about one thing, well a few things, in that speech. There was a book written about his mother.

I wonder if Nixon would have liked The Lion King. I wonder what he would have been like on the the subway.

Something like this. Thanks, Internet.


8
Aug 14

You can see it coming

The you-can’t-see-this-enough idea meets with the notion that life exists to be recreated as a Techmo Bowl video game and provides us with this piece of art, which, really, we should have seen coming:

You can quibble about the jersey colors, but there’s a still of Chris Davis and his grandmother (at 3:20 in this video), canceling out that quibble. And then there’s a screen shot of Bo Jackson’s Techmo status, which is the only real quibble. He was never average in Techmo Bowl.

Things to read … because reading interesting things makes us all superlative.

Because it would be a disaster if they did … Dear Twitter: Don’t use an algorithm for the stream:

If Twitter were to implement an algorithmic feed, it would lose its point of differentiation that would likely damage its de facto real-time information/news status unless a greater value proposition was offered (although it’s hard to see what this would be). Both as a professional tool for journalists and a point of record for regular users, Twitter offers a totally different kind of feed than say Facebook does because of its unfiltered stream of forced brevity. Every tweak with photos, cards and potentially new sell buttons drastically changes the delicate balance on the nuance — a nuance that should be protected.

Twitter is noisy, but it can be calmed.

The piece goes on, making excellent points that won’t be heard enough.

The answer is, it depends. Should you outsource your social media? And that article will help you figure out your best path.

This is India, but still interesting, and short-sighted. Newspaper asks staffers to refrain from tweeting other outlets’ stories

If you’ve read enough job advertisements and know how to read between the lines, this is an interesting collection that Jim Romenesko is offering. Here are the job descriptions for Gannett’s ‘Newsroom of the future’

This is just what it says it is, an all digital, invaluable resource. Verification Handbook: A definitive guide to verifying digital content for emergency coverage

This isn’t a standard thing, but it happens. And the HuffPo piece might have pulled back the curtain a bit too far for the comfort of some. Spy Agency Stole Scoop From Media Outlet And Handed It To The AP:

The government, it turned out, had “spoiled the scoop,” an informally forbidden practice in the world of journalism. To spoil a scoop, the subject of a story, when asked for comment, tips off a different, typically friendlier outlet in the hopes of diminishing the attention the first outlet would have received. Tuesday’s AP story was much friendlier to the government’s position, explaining the surge of individuals added to the watch list as an ongoing response to a foiled terror plot.

HBO trails in profits, but this is another in a series of interesting media tidbits in the last 18 months. Netflix now has more subscription revenue than HBO

This story is about health issues, and rightly so, but it applies in a lot of other respects, as well. What ails Appalachia ails the nation

Whoa boy. Relief official says Ebola crisis more serious than reported:

In stark, often chilling congressional testimony on Thursday, an official with a relief organization responding to the Ebola crisis in West Africa labeled efforts to control the virus a failure.

Ken Isaacs, a vice president with Samaritan’s Purse, a North Carolina-based Christian humanitarian organization, also said the number of Ebola cases and deaths reported by the World Health Organization are probably 25 percent to 50 percent below actual levels.

[…]

At one point, Isaacs even disputed the earlier testimony of a physician from the U.S. Agency for International Development, who said his agency had provided 35,000 protective suits for health care workers in West Africa.

Isaacs told lawmakers he had received an email in the last 90 minutes from a hospital in Liberia “asking us for more personal protection gear. This a problem everywhere,” he said.

It is virulent, sounds exotic, comes from an unfamiliar place, travels well and there are scary films about this general health theme. You can just see the panic coming.


4
Aug 14

Not the normal Monday

An update to yesterday’s garage door mystery, from the prankee, himself. To set this up, he got into his car and backed out of the garage, but the garage door was closed. His wife saw him outside later kicking and beating on the door. Probably she saw him trying to put it back on the rails. That happened last week. And on Sunday:

I went for a run today for the first time in a while, it seems. I did four miles on the old road, down the hill, up the other side, around the curve and down and back up and down and turning around and repeating the whole thing. It looks like this:

road

The rain was from Saturday. Today it was positively summer, almost August in Alabama, even.

I met the local postal carrier. She’d written a lovely little note on my grandmother’s online obituary. That’s the way it is here, or that’s the way my grandmother lived, that so many people that she did business with have stopped to visit or attended the visitation or have written things. We had a nice chat right through here:

road

The postal carrier was emotional about it all too, so there I stood, sweating in mid-run, trying to keep my composure and thanking her for writing and telling her how perfect the timing of it had been. My grandmother made gifts for her, mittens for the winter and so on. She, meanwhile, had brought treats for the dog every day. I told her the truth: every time I visited, my grandmother mentioned the mail lady. She thought a lot of her, and the kindness was mutual.

It is like that a lot here.

I believe the preacher said something about that during the memorial service, to know her for even 10 minutes meant you would always know her, and always remember her.

I have had the good fortune of having several heart-to-hearts today. I visited the grocery store. My grandfather asked me if the garage door was opened or closed behind me. I looked, for a long time, through the rearview mirror. There’s no garage there, but it was a fine joke. (He’s such a strong guy, by the way, and though none of this is easy, he’s showing all of the great qualities that make him such an admirable man.)

I saw several members of the family and friends. I wrote thank you cards. I found that I wanted to write them, which is to say I wanted to have them written, but I didn’t want to go through the process of finding the things to say. I’ve added new numbers to my phone. I still have a few calls to return. Some of those will land on Tuesday.

Until then, keep an eye on those sneaky doors.