Sometimes the thing that goes bump in the night can’t be seen. And usually because you are looking in the wrong place. Finally we find out where the cat is frolicking.
For the second consecutive year Samford’s women’s basketball team is going to the big dance. The repeat Southern Conference champions are traveling to Nashville to face …
Last year the Samford ladies made their first tournament appearance, falling to Florida State. This year the Bulldogs (20-12, 12-8) are the 15th-seed taking on second-seeded Duke (24-5, 15-1).
I couldn’t say if there is a lot of video like this, or if it is a one-of-a-kind contribution to the International Institute of Outflow Mesoscale Gradients.
That’s from a small town east of Lexington, Ky. and that’s serious business. They aren’t used to seeing that sort of thing up there. Once a Louisville meteorologist confessed to his shock at seeing three rotations in one radar sweep. He’d never seen that before.
Here we call that Tuesday.
Of course they can deal with snow, so there’s a trade off.
Felt sluggish all day. I guess it was the week catching up with me, but there was no energy to be found anywhere. So this evening I made myself ride my bike. I want to ride even when I don’t feel like it, not just when I feel good. That’s how I can really churn out the miles — I told myself while inflating my tires.
So I set off on the warm up routine, down and out throw the neighborhood and then on the two back roads that border the local area. My legs were heavy. Actually they were dead. The wind was blowing. I’ve found that a mild headwind kills two or three miles an hour. Going up hills felt more like standing still.
I did have two nice sprints, the first hitting 31 miles per hour and the second at 30. Otherwise it was a remarkably poor 30 mile ride. Except for this:
It is a lovely neighborhood.
At the Auburn baseball game, the Tigers were leading here 5-3:
They’d jumped out to that score early, and it stayed there a long time. In the top of the ninth Belmont scored two runners on sacrifice flies. It was tied when the Tigers ran off the field.
In the bottom of the ninth Auburn’s leadoff man reached first on a field error. Jay Gonzalez then stole second. There was a strikeout and then an intentional walk. And then Cullen Walker hit one just past Belmont’s diving second baseman. Gonzalez raced around the diamond from second, giving Auburn the 6-5 win.
Nice way to start the weekend series. The only thing missing? The peanuts.
And now, the day that leaps. I hope you enjoy at least 25 percent of this video that explains the quadrennial correction:
And now for a truly creepy video:
The first version of that story, which I saw on television and haven’t yet discovered online, had the father irate. After which he confronted his family and, writing later (to Target, I think) admitted that he had not been up-to-date on the details of his home. That wouldn’t be an awkward or uncomfortable conversation, would it?
VisitedIntermark on a field trip today. This is the second year I’ve taken students there, and they do a great job. One of their account executives tells the class about the work he does. A public relations expert talks about her day. Two former internships who now have full time jobs there talk about their experience — they pitch to actual clients in their internships — and then there’s the social media talks. Media planning, the creative types and then the video production crews show off their work.
The students come away with an idea of what happens in a full service public relations and marketing shop. (It is an intro course.) Some people get a sense of what they might like to do; others may decide this isn’t for them. Someone asked about if they get discounts on car deals with the dealerships they promote.
Bo Jackson, that Bo Jackson, will ride across Alabama in April, east to west, as a fund raiser for tornado relief.
The man is intense even in promotional videos. I want to ride along. At least for a little bit, if not an entire leg. (I’d prefer the Bessemer to Tuscaloosa day obviously, since we both grew up there.)
If I were able to ride with him the only problem would be figuring out to get ahead of him several times so he can pass me and I can describe the sound. So I can write things like this:
Bo riding a bike is an angry mashing of steel gears. Gritting carbon fiber against melting alumnium. He flings acidic drops of sweat behind him, furious that he has to stop and replace his pedals every 45 minutes or so. He’s riding a Trek because it is built like a tank, but he still grinds them into dust. I bet he could ride the 300 miles in the better part of an afternoon if he catches the red lights right. But since he has to wait so often for wheel rebuilds it stretches this thing out over a week. I bet the turbulence behind him helps clean up the tornado debris on some of those central Alabama roadsides.
And not one man will sneer at him when he coasts into Tuscaloosa, because they know.
I told a friend that I was trying to explain Bo to my lovely bride, who was busy being a little girl in another part of the country during Bo’s prime while we were busy agog at what the man could do. A few years later and superlatives can ring hollow. He suggested the uninitiated watch this:
If I rode with Bo I would not act like a fanboy, but I would ask him about coming home to raise money. And I would ask him about his VOX2 Max. And I’d playfully suggest we sprint to the next road sign, just so I could say I’ve been beaten by the best.
I wanted to ride this morning, but Monday mornings race by and this morning needed to linger a bit. Besides, it had rained and … OK, maybe I didn’t want to ride this morning. I was a bit sore last night, actually, aching in places I haven’t in a good long while. And that’s probably the perfect reason to clip in.
Also I need to find out where the guy in the neon yellow jacket went yesterday. I turned onto one road behind him, met a cyclist heading the other direction and decided to overtake the guy in the loud jacket.
What if the cyclist going the other way turned around? He should see me put this guy between us so he can, naturally, destroy me with ease, I thought.
And then I realized where I was.
I could pace and pass this guy, but I struggle on the next hill and he’ll get me back there. That would be embarrassing.
So I decided to close the distance, but not force the issue. At the next intersection, from about 40 yards back, I watched him turn left. When I made the intersection — going straight — I glanced after him but he was gone. That was impressive. Or he might be missing out there somewhere.
That was yesterday’s 32 mile ride. Today damp asphalt and things to do kept me inside.
Class today. The conversation was led by a group discussing online media. One of the guys was controlling every computer in the room and a low-orbit satellite from his iPad. He was a good choice for this topic and, as usual, it was a great job. I have very sharp students.
I’m also buried in a spreadsheet. And I have a stack of things to grade, a few more phone calls to make. I have plenty of school work to do. So this is brief.
Hopping aboard a bike, former Bogota, Colombia, Mayor Enrique Penalosa took a six-mile ride through the good, the bad and the ugly of Birmingham in advance of today’s Sustainable Smart Cities Conference.
After biking through depopulated portions of Titusville and Elyton, marred with abandoned and burned-out houses and grim housing developments, Penalosa was aghast.
“What I saw today was one of the most depressed areas I have ever seen,” he said.
He suggested that residents in the sparsely populated areas be bought out to make way for a “crazy” project
When a mayor of Bogota is telling you your business …
Romney recalled he was “probably 4 or something like that” the day of the Golden Jubilee, when three-quarters of a million people gathered to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the American automobile.
“My dad had a job being the grandmaster. They painted Woodward Ave. with gold paint,” Romney told a rapt Tea Party audience in the village of Milford Thursday night, reliving a moment of American industrial glory.
The Golden Jubilee described so vividly by Romney was indeed an epic moment in automotive lore. The parade included one of the last public appearances by an elderly Henry Ford.
And it took place June 1, 1946 — fully nine months before Romney was born.
I love false memory stories, and only partly because the earliest memory I can muster (and that’s a good word) is, when I describe it to my mother, something that can’t possibly have happened.
If Romney isn’t cynically pandering with the idea that no one would bother to cross-reference the dates, this is a simple mistake. Of course no mistake on the campaign trail is simple. And this story, which is far more likely Romney’s re-telling of a story he heard in his family his entire life, is probably just a planted memory. Sometimes you can’t win for losing.
So then why are there so many attempts to regulate it? Under the guises of piracy, privacy, pornography, predators, indecency, and security, not to mention censorship, tyranny, and civilization, governments from the U.S. to France to Germany to China to Iran to Canada — as well as the European Union and the United Nations — are trying to exert control over the internet.
Why? Is it not working? Is it presenting some new danger to society? Is it fundamentally operating any differently today than it was five or ten years ago? No, no, and no.
So why are governments so eager to claim authority over it? Why would legacy corporations, industries, and institutions egg them on? Because the net is working better than ever. Because they finally recognize how powerful it is and how disruptive it is to their power.
Jarvis was the president of Advance Internet during much of my time with the company.
Cards and flowers were left and candles were lit at the corner of Dean Road and Samford Ave. tonight in honor of a hero.
Johnny Richmond, affectionately known as Mr. Penny by students at Dean Road Elementary School where he worked for 37 years as a custodian and crossing guard, suffered a self-inflicted gunshot wound Monday morning, according to Auburn police. News outlets have backed off earlier reports that Richmond later died from his injuries, and as of 9 p.m. Monday list him as being on life support.
I wrote the next piece, the short, just-in-case bit of copy that you hope never has to run. Right now he’s hanging on. He’s seemingly one of those people that you can’t find anyone that has anything remotely to say about him. This is Mr. Penny:
Jeremy did that interview in 2011, after the community rallied to raise money to send him and his wife to the BCS National Championship game. We live in a great place.
