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21st century living

I’m thinking of adding a new category of pop culture criticism … and this is going to take more caffeine. Pardon me for a second.

There. A hot tea on a cool day should do the trick. Don’t drink coffee. Never touched the stuff. My grandparents, who drank it like water, were convinced that if you gave a baby a tablespoon of coffee they’d never want it. Or so the story goes. Don’t know how old I was, or if this actually happened, but I don’t even care to go down the coffee aisle at the grocery store. I don’t even like the smell. So it is tea, for me, then.

Anyway. I’m thinking of adding a new category of pop culture criticism which is really just another opportunity for me to creep more steadily into the Get Off My Lawn subculture. In this, the neo-post-post modern age, I will call this category 21st Century Living, in that it is simultaneously obvious, conversant, ironic and has a whiff of both despair and angst, but not in a way that suggests I care that much, as I am already dismissive of the entire enterprise.

See? I’m not into the Get Off My Lawn subculture just yet. I understand things, I simply recognize the unworthiness of the general condition.

Take this commercial, for instance. Watch the first five seconds, over and over again, until you figure it out:

Or this CNN “package” where Anderson Cooper tries, really hard, to make some sort of wry observation by cunningly asking non-questions to a giggly reporter.

So I guess they don’t drug test at CNN? This is simply life imitating art. Consider Anchorman 2 (which, hysterically gives Ron Burgundy credit for the sad state of modern broadcast news):

About the commercial in the first video: Someone thought, “The stations that we are buying airtime, have stupid, stupid audiences. Someone will go try to build a time machine. We should stop that with some fine print, so as to ameliorate any potential culpability we have if some kid does invent the flux capacitor.”

And that’s 21st Century Living.

Things to read … because this stuff is worth your attention, no matter what century you’re in.

I collected a few of the reactions on an in-state “story” today. This is all about the headline.

Anytime you curate replies you are liable to get some colorful retort. And if you publish them you are just as likely to get someone accusing you of cherry picking. Doesn’t mean you use the most off-color one as a headline if you are aspiring to be the premiere news outlet in the state.

Todd Stacey is a staffer for U.S. Rep Martha Roby in Washington D.C. He previously worked in Montgomery, hence Chuck Dean’s “you guys” swat. But see what Dean did there? “Hey, it isn’t my fault. What’s more, if you don’t like what I wrote, go do something about it. But it is just a heads up, really.” This entire piece provides little to no public service, which is still the publicly stated goal for news outlets, but it could also do as much with a more appropriate headline.

AP’s Carvin: News Battle Near For Twitter, FB

Twitter and Facebook are setting themselves up for a battle for news supremacy among social media networks. Twitter, though, holds the upper hand, according to Eric Carvin, social media editor at the Associated Press. Twitter has “come to realize the value that the news industry has in terms of what people want to consume on social,” Carvin says. In an interview with NetNewsCheck, Carvin discusses potential news moves from those social platforms, along with the sleeper potential of Google Plus.

Half of U.S. Counties Haven’t Recovered From Recession

About half of the nation’s 3,069 county economies are still short of their prerecession economic output, reflecting the uneven economic recovery, according to a new report from the National Association of Counties.

The overall U.S. economy had reached its prerecession level of gross domestic product three years ago, Commerce Department figures show.

National statistics “mask the reality on the ground.”

There is an interactive map. How is your county faring?

If graduation rates is your metric of choice, this is good news: Alabama public schools set state record with 80 percent graduation rate in 2013. Or, even if you take the skeptical — “school was just made easier” — perspective, you at least have a new state record. This is using the on-time method.
Doesn’t 80 still seem low, though?

The individual school breakdowns aren’t out yet, apparently, but we can look at some recent numbers. Here are the superlatives for the state in the 2011-2012 year. Charles Henderson High listed a 58 percent graduation rate, the lowest in the state. Coffee County boasted a 94 percent.

Must be the caffeine they have down there.

I do not know what is happening. / iPhone / links / Monday / photo / running / swimming / things to read / video — Comments Off
13
Jan 14

Do not do math underwater

Swimming again this morning. I got in 1650 yards, which apparently used to be measured as a mile in the pool. That’s weird because, when you swim as slowly as I do, you have plenty of time to do multiplication and division in your head — several times — and realize, Hey, that math isn’t right.

Don’t do math in the pool. Because the sequence of events that follows is not unlike those Directv ads. And the inevitable “What lap am I on?” is only the beginning.

Don’t do math in the pool.

This evening I went for a run. It seems that if I get a route in my head some part of me feels obligated to do the entire thing, if possible. And there I was, wondering how this felt and why that ached, and enjoying that it was cold, but I was sweating. Wondering how my hair could be wet, the temperature could be 46 and I find that I’m enjoying myself. So I ran and walked eight miles. OK, really it was 7.94 miles, but my first rule of running is to round up. I walked the hills, because of whatever is going on with my legs. The entire route was on sidewalks or bike paths, except for one little bridge. I fairly well sprinted over that.

I don’t sprint.

I do not know what is happening.

Now, as I sit resting quietly, Allie has come for a visit. I moved to take a picture of her cuddliness and my poor posture, and she does this:

I can take photos of her with my camera all day long. She’ll tolerate an iPad being shoved in her face. You pull out your phone, and that is just going to ruin her night, you filthy paparazzo.

Things to read … because reading is fundamental.

A conversation on Mobile Content Strategy with Mark Coatney, Al Jazeera America:

Mark reads books on his commute so he believes that long form is absolutely possible on mobile. In his eyes a 5-minute video is long form. Short form means anything that is a steady stream of consumption: ‘stock and flow’. When asked if he was encompassing that theory by combining into one or splitting into two apps he replied “Two, but I hadn’t really thought of it like that”. One will give the steady stream of information and be more social. The other is a second screen, a companion that will give you more information, go deeper whenever a consumer wants to.

There is a ton of stuff, in that one simple paragraph.

Enhanced fan experiences: The sportd strategy of the second screen:

Consider this: 83% of fans say they use social media during games. Sixty-nine percent prefer phones as second-screen alternatives; 48 percent check scores and 20 percent watch highlights via mobile, according to data from March 2013.

[…]

Not enough is said or written about the engagement teams are having with fans in social. I feel conversations are not genuine enough and too many teams and leagues have built a barrier, not engaging fully with those who appreciate them most.

That is because most teams are terrible at the practice. The exemplar Tom Buchheim uses are the Boston Bruins. “The team uses replies to many fan tweets, even personalizing each response with the initials of those behind the scenes.”

So someone there understands Twitter is a conversation. Good for the Bruins. Why are most professional and big-time college franchises have difficulty grasping the attendant concepts? Buchheim continues:

Game time is go time in social media, and it can be chaotic. But teams should dedicate resources to connect one-to-one with fans more. Share their content. Have conversations. Build stronger bonds. This will only drive further engagement during the off-season and help fulfill social media’s true value — breaking down barriers and connecting people in authentic ways.

[…]

A sports fan’s second-screen options are endless. So are the ways teams and leagues can reach them during live events. It’s imperative fans find value in these experiences, whether they’re watching online, on their couches or in the bleachers. As it becomes ingrained into the sports experience, the second screen must be about the fan, providing deeper engagement, better access and increasing value.

The standard if/then/so structure there is heartening. These programs will figure it out, though I’m not sure why it will take them that long.

Who’s poor in America? 50 years into the ‘War on Poverty,’ a data portrait:

Today, most poor Americans are in their prime working years: In 2012, 57% of poor Americans were ages 18 to 64, versus 41.7% in 1959.

[…]

Today’s poor families are structured differently: In 1973, the first year for which data are available, more than half (51.4%) of poor families were headed by a married couple; 45.4% were headed by women. In 2012, just over half (50.3%) of poor families were female-headed, while 38.9% were headed by married couples.

Poverty is more evenly distributed, though still heaviest in the South: In 1969, 45.9% of poor Americans lived in the South, a region that accounted for 31% of the U.S. population at the time. At 17.9%, the South’s poverty rate was far above other regions. In 2012, the South was home to 37.3% of all Americans and 41.1% of the nation’s poor people; though the South’s poverty rate, 16.5%, was the highest among the four Census-designated regions, it was only 3.2 percentage points above the lowest (the Midwest).

Pew has a chart and a map on that page which say a lot, quickly.

And a more localized view, from Kaiser Family Foundation researchers:

All 10 southeastern states have poverty rates above the national figure. Mississippi (27 percent, second-highest) and Louisiana (26 percent, third-highest) are near the top of the rankings, while North Carolina and Florida, each at 21 percent, are just slightly above the U.S. rate.

Alabama, meanwhile, sits at 22 percent, ranked 15th overall.

Auburn / Friday / photo / video — Comments Off
10
Jan 14

Just a few things, and a bit of stuff

It is thundering, which means there is lightning. Accompanying them is rain. Two of those things are odd in January. They haven’t happened since … last January, apparently. So maybe it isn’t so odd. But it sure seems like it. The high today was 55, and it was overcast and that didn’t feel spring-like. But the lightning and thunder helps set the mood.

Can it be spring yet?

Spent a little time uploading 166 photos to Facebook last night. They are all older, pictures from the last 18 months, because I am a rebel when it comes to timeliness. All day people have been liking and tagging and commenting. My Facebook account has never been so successful.

Went to the gymnastics meet tonight. Auburn hosted and defeated Texas Woman’s University 194.875-189.825.

This was their opening meet of their season, at the Auburn Arena. I walked around a bit and strolled through the new “museum,” which isn’t as nice or complete as the old Lovelace facility was. I found this:

Those are the two trophies commemorating the first two Iron Bowls. The statue marked the second game. The cup, which has fallen from the perch just out of the top of the margin, celebrates the first victory.

I hope someone notices that and puts it back on the little display shelf. We’ll check back next week.

Yesterday I wrote here in passing about the documentary shot on Google Glass. Here’s the official site for Project 2×1, and their promotional trailer.

And, to wrap things up, the best 73 seconds of video you’ll watch tonight. Austin Hatch was in two plane crashes and lost his entire family between them. Now he’s back, finally, to basketball:

Austin Hatch says on Twitter is still planning to play for the Wolverines, making us all, for a time, Michigan fans.

Finally, How the NSA Almost Killed the Internet:

The hard-earned trust that the tech giants had spent years building was in danger of evaporating—and they seemed powerless to do anything about it. Legally gagged, they weren’t free to provide the full context of their cooperation or resistance. Even the most emphatic denial—a blog post by Google CEO Larry Page and chief legal officer David Drummond headlined, “What the …”—did not quell suspicions. How could it, when an NSA slide indicated that anyone’s personal information was just one click away? When Drummond took questions on the Guardian website later in the month, his interlocutors were hostile:

“Isn’t this whole show not just a face-saving exercise … after you have been found to be in cahoots with the NSA?”

“How can we tell if Google is lying to us?”

“We lost a decade-long trust in you, Google.”

“I will cease using Google mail.”

The others under siege took note. “Every time we spoke it seemed to make matters worse,” an executive at one company says. “We just were not believed.”

“The fact is, the government can’t put the genie back in the bottle,” says Facebook’s global communications head, Michael Buckley. “We can put out any statement or statistics, but in the wake of what feels like weekly disclosures of other government activity, the question is, will anyone believe us?”

Since it comes down to money and government contracts, no, probably not.

Auburn / football / links / running / things to read / Thursday / video — Comments Off
9
Jan 14

When your legs ache, it is all about your legs

It made it up to 48 degrees today, so spring is on the way! It was overcast, so spring will never show up! It rained, so spring is on the way! It was only mist and drizzle, and who knows what that means?

I ran in that today. Got in just under six miles. I have developed this pain on the outside of each of my calves. It wraps over the shins and then goes just into the instep of my foot. No obvious stretch fixes it. The pain in my left leg is aggravated when I go downhill. The pain in my right leg says you aren’t running up a hill no way, no how.

So I’m devastating on the flats, at least.

Weirdly, at about mile four or so the things stretched themselves out, or the nerves gave up or something. You know that brief moment when the absence of pain is a pleasurable feeling? I was flying at that moment.

I also went to the grocery store today, because I decided to make extra lean turkey spaghetti. Lean turkey is about two bucks cheaper, but this extra lean stuff, when surrounded by pasta and drowned in basil sauce, tastes exactly the same! What a world.

I did not go to the store while running, because I didn’t want the meat to go bad. Sure, we live a half mile from the store, but I run slow. Also, I didn’t want to cause a sweaty scene on aisle four.

Things to read … because there are things, and some of them are worth reading.

Gone in 79 seconds: Auburn at the BCS Championship is a pretty great piece for football fans.

Close to one-third of Americans were in poverty during economic downturn says Census data. We’re at about 16 percent, even now.

Watched this video today. Mike Ditka was slated to speak to the Texas Public Policy Foundation, but he had to cancel. So the group invited Texas state representative Scott Turner, a former NFL player, who gives a pretty good speech:

How Google Glass captured two very different communities talks about putting the glasses on the people of Crown Heights in Brooklyn, which is an interesting documentary concept.

If someone gave me Google Glass and asked me to tell my own story I’d borrow a shopping cart from the grocery story, sit inside, have someone push and take long tracking shots of everything.

It would keep my calves from hurting.

journalism / links / swimming / things to read / video / Wednesday — Comments Off
8
Jan 14

The cold, the pool and more

The freezing weather has broken. You may call it a polar vortex, the now popular, misused term found so often in the media. I just call it cold. We’re due two or three seriously cold days a year here, and, before today, we’ve endured about 36 hours of them.

It came in Monday night, when just before midnight the wind chill was -1.8. Early Tuesday morning it was -5.5 and the low was 9 degrees.

Have I mentioned we live in the Deep South?

Today the high was 45 degrees, so we’re on our way out of this. We may as well have a picnic.

During the cold snap we also had a fire warning. Things were dry. It was windy. Also cold. And fires sounded great. So we burned everything. It was terribly romantic, and now everything is covered in soot.

OK, we didn’t. But it was tempting.

Returned to the pool today. This was the first time there since October and that’s embarrassing. Did 1,000 yards.

This is a warmup for swimmers. But we’re talking about me here and 1,000 yards is a cause for celebration. I fought my goggles and complained almost the entire way.

And now I have tiny bruises on my maxilla bone, because I can never get the straps on my goggles right. They’re constantly squeezing and still letting in water and fogging up. All of which is silly. I can control that in a mask. I can fix all of that on a mask at 80 feet underwater.

Goggles? Total mystery, apparently.

Parks and Recreation, the quiet little show that could, is celebrating 100 episodes. That’s the magic syndication number, which is why you’ll soon see this show in the most inexplicable places. Here’s a 100 episode special, which starts with Perd Hapley, who would easily be my favorite character on the show if Ron Swanson wasn’t my spirit animal.

Things to read … I find ’em, I share ’em.

The Dominance of Loooooong in the Age of Short and, essentially, the opposite view, in The blog is dead, long live the blog.

We seemingly have an incessant need to call things dead in the media. Formats and a medium may change or even contract, but that doesn’t mean they are dead. (Newspapers aren’t dead, but they surely are different.) Tumblr and WordPress alone boast more than 164 million blogs. Even if half of those are stagnant, well, that’s hardly dead, or even on life support. Hyperbole, happily, is alive and well.

Two things going on in this story. One is the headline, the other is this nugget, “While it sits in the heart of San Francisco’s startup community in the SOMA district, the Chronicle has lagged in its coverage of technology and social media. Its circulation plummeted by 50% between 2009 and 2012. ” Newspaper to Put All Reporters Through Social Media Boot Camp

Still want a drone. Still window shopping and daydreaming. This doesn’t change that: FAA on drone recordings by journalists: ‘There is no gray area’. Mostly because it is 100 percent incorrect. Happily, the comments set this entire story upside down, which means it is right side up.

Finally, the much-anticipated rollout of the New York Times new site is upon us. Here’s a review. Also, here’s a TouchCast discussion about the redesign.

Love TouchCast. There is a lot of amazing stuff there, for your iPad and browser viewing. Make interactive, realtime video products with the swipe of your finger. What a world. I’ll be using it soon, too, I hope.