Tigers and Tide are both off today, but they’ll play for pride next Friday. Undefeated Auburn will be on the road, looking to snap Alabama’s two-game winning streak in the series.
I like Auburn’s chances.
Via, The War Eagle Reader.
video
17
Nov 10
Danger: Below are TWO Wikipedia links
My office window faces the north, so I have to go outside for views like this. There’s a nice green lot below my windows and I can see when the sun hits that perfect golden angle. It just so happened I had to make a trip today from my building to another part of campus and I just managed to catch the sun exploding through that tree through the lomo filter.
Students were throwing a frisbee on the quad, the hammocks were empty, young ladies were teaching one another an exciting new cheer that involved a lot of screaming. The sun was peeking between the chapel and the theater. I was carrying a handful of books and binders and things and it was just a marvelous scene. I took more pictures for later.
We had baked apples at lunch, which I only mention because I’ve never noticed them in the cafeteria before. Naturally I tried them. Baked apples are very subjective, of course. No two recipes are the same and no one’s are as good as those made by the person that you’re now thinking of.
My grandmother makes the best apples. She would cut up fruit from the Granny Smith tree in her yard — I never called her Granny, but given that her name was Smith it was a long time before I realized that the variety wasn’t named after her. I don’t know all of her secrets, but I know that my cousin and I would beg her to make them. She’d fill up one of those square casserole dishes, the apples, the sauce and a bunch of mini-marshmallows. We could eat them all in one sitting.
These apples weren’t my grandmother’s apples. They weren’t bad. They had a nice cinnamon taste with a mild bleach finish. My grandmother has never had to make apples for hundreds of people, so there’s that. And it got me into the
spirit of fall, so I’ve no complaints.
Journalism links: It still boggles the mind that publishers, who were slow to accept the changes brought about by the world wide web because they were fundamentally losing control of their ability to be one of a few unique voices, have made their bed with Apple where they have willingly handed over control. Poynter reports:
(T)he November issue of Esquire, its second to be made available as an iPad app, has been held up by Apple’s app review process since mid-October.
The November cover story features actress Minka Kelly, who the magazine named the “sexiest woman alive,” and that apparently is the sticking point in the app being approved.
The Gazette Extra, like everyone else, is trying to find the proper way to deal with comment trolls. Because, as the editor says, “some people can’t behave” his paper won’t allow comments on stories about crimes, courts, accidents, race or sex. That particular paper, it seems, has exceeded that point of critical mass where comments are no longer constructive or dialogical. Even in that thread, on a note from the editor about curtailing vicious comments, the conversation veers wildly out of control. Most every big site has this problem.
Cooks Source — the New England cooking magazine that became suddenly infamous for infringing upon the works of online writers, and then snottily claiming that everything online was public domain — has another petulant letter from the editor on their website. Both Facebook pages they’ve set up have been overwhelmed by critics. And now, at their most popular, the little magazine that copies and pastes is closing shop.
And I wish I could give you a link, but the Samford Crimson is unfortunately not putting it online. The sports section has been running a football pick chart this fall. The university president, the starting quarterback, sports writers and other student leaders have been participating. A math professor has led all season.
Videos: Last Saturday when Georgia visited Auburn for their beat down in the South’s Oldest Rivalry freshman running back Mike Dyer broke the great Bo Jackson’s freshman rushing record. Jackson was there, celebrating the 25th anniversary of his Heisman, and had a nice moment on the sideline with Dyer.
This is the video that aired on AUHD, so imagine seeing this on the big screen at the game, and the audio is the crew’s behind-the-scenes chatter. It makes a nice moment even more entertaining:
I love that last line: Memories. That was just perfect, in so many respects. The guy who produces the the big screen programming, Bo Cordle, is leaving. In fact that was his last game. what a way to go out.
This wasn’t quite as entertaining, but I watched The Red Baron tonight. It is a modern adaptation on the career of Manfred Von Richthofen. Like all movies of legendary war heroes, it is told as a love story. Only this particular love story didn’t actually happen. Because the story of perhaps the greatest ace of World War I needed to be glossed over and fictionalized. I hate when that happens.
Meanwhile, here’s actual funeral footage:
Everyone in that footage is also in the ground now. World War I was a long time ago, said obvious guy, obviously. I just started reading this week R.A.C. Parker‘s history of Europe between the wars. The first handful of chapters are about the treaties that ended World War I. This book was published in the 1960s, so everyone knew where this story was headed. Even still, in the first few pages, it is already heartbreaking because of what even then, just months after that funeral, was something of an inevitability.
As is this stack of things I must grade. So, to my red pen I must now go.
16
Nov 10
The wisdom of pancakes
There were a great many low, dramatic looking clouds today. You’ll see some more here and here. In ancient times this would mean the gods were angry, and that the late crops had to come in, pronto. You knew that to be true whenever the gods brought those orange barrels overnight.
(Most think those are about traffic, but actually that’s just a cultural nod, the departments of transportation have a think for old mythologies.)
This cloud formation means nothing today, except that a storm system is blowing out and a higher pressure system is moving in.
Taught today, spent the evening with the newspaper bunch. Took some time working over a survey and playing with QR codes.
Very cool stuff, turning any flat surface into a link. I suspect there’s a better QR reader than the free one I found tonight. (Any tips? Mine isn’t as fancy as the one in that CSI clip.) They’re just begging to become more of a multimedia tool. (But maybe no one will get around to doing that for a while and I can.) If they were a bit more aesthetically pleasing they’d grow bigger, faster, but sometimes the look of things is a slow growth.
Links, upon which journalism was practiced: Staff Sgt. Salvatora Giunta was formally presented with his Medal of Honor:
Obama said Giunta “charged headlong into the wall of bullets.” The sergeant at first pulled a soldier who had been struck in the helmet to safety, then sprinted ahead to find two Taliban fighters dragging away the stricken Sgt. Joshua C. Brennan.
“Sal never broke stride,” Obama said. “He leapt forward. He took aim. He killed one of the insurgents and wounded the other, who ran off.”
As bullets rained, Giunta dragged Brennan by his vest to cover and worked feverishly to stop the bleeding until the wounded Americans were flown from the ridge.
Giunta’s is the first Medal of Honor that hasn’t been a posthumous award since Vietnam. That most surely is a terrible oversight.
I let NPR’s Most Popular box dig up the rest of my reading. These two were interesting to see right next to one another. One suggesting this conversation about sexuality is a good conversation to have, the other suggesting that talking about it can be a bit precarious. These are conflicting times.
Dave Barry has been felt up at the airport: “Well, I would say whoever wrote that it’s not punitive was not having his or her groin fondled at the time.”
So I’m adding this to my list of unorthodox public policies. First, there’s the Nixon rule: If a president’s approval number ever falls to Nixonian levels you should retire from office, extending arms in a large motion with fingers stabbing the sky in a V, escaping the public eye for a decade or two before trying to rehabilitate your image. (Neither Bush made it there, but Truman did, predating Nixon of course.)
Now, the second of my unorthodox public policies goes like this: If Dave Barry can’t make a joke about what you’re doing, you’ve gone woefully astray and things need to change.
Read this. It will only take a moment. And then flip through the slideshow, enlarging the pictures. What a terrific project. I’m being vague because you should read it.
And now, to IHOP, for a late dinner. I have a craving for pancakes. It was there that I learned the all-important lesson “It isn’t whether you win or lose, but where you eat afterward.”
One night, during a particularly bad semi-pro volleyball game where nothing went right the coach called a time out. We gathered together and tried our best not to bicker. The jokester of the team picked his spot perfectly. In between the “What are you doings?” and the “Pass the ball better!” he said “Where are we going to eat later?”
And then we all went out for chocolate chip pancakes.
13
Nov 10
Georgia at Auburn
The South’s Oldest Rivalry, a bitter, bitter affair some years. This turned out to be one of those years. On the line for Georgia, the possibility to turn around a bad season (their worst in more than a decade) by beating second-ranked Auburn. For Auburn, a win meant a trip to Atlanta for the SEC Championship. The Tigers were looking to snap a four-game losing streak against the Bulldogs. And, of course, there’s all of that Cameron Newton controversy.
I’m generally staying out of that debate (aside for expressing my disbelief at the poor quality of reporting that emerged in the first two days of the story) mostly out of a fundamental human decency. I’m not covering the story and I don’t know anymore than anyone else. The thing will turn out however it turns out. Neither of your basic resolutions will do anyone much of any good, but the chips will fall where they may. I hope, hope, hope Auburn comes down on the right side of this because the alternative will be more than unpalatable. In the meantime, it is entertaining to watch people play a game.
So here are pictures, video and my Twitter impressions, such as they are, preserved forever. After-the-fact thoughts are in bold.
Nastinchka called my sweater retro. Just because I’ve been wearing it to #Auburn games for 15 years … I see her point.
@AUHD is showing an overhead shot of Tiger Walk. That might be of 1989 proportions out there. Did it seem bigger than normal to anyone else?
Oh it is ON. Curtis Luper wore a bow tie! Surrender now, Georgia. You can hide a lot of weapons in a bow tie.
Not kidding: @AUHD plays Nothin’ But A Good Time, Cam Newton appears on the screen. Students develop a UGA bloodlust.
Hope you brought your tickets, Tiger fans. Receiving reports that upper deck seats are going for $400.
Hunker down, it is a fine day at Jordan-Hare for housebreaking Bulldogs.
Cam Newton is the announced starter. (Not that there was much doubt, but I included it and this for posterity. It might not count at all in a few years — who knows? — but it counted on a beautiful fall Saturday. They announced him last in the lineup. It would have been cooler if they’d just mentioned it like any other game.)
Praying for the souls of the poor puppy dawgs.
This place will be Beyond Thunderdome in an hour.
We’re all going deaf tonite. Riotous may not describe Jordan-Hare.
Buzzed by Nova – he flew just a few feet over us – and by two fighters. Now: football!
Touchdown Auburn! Cam Newton, Mike Dyer, TZach, Newton and that’s an 80-yard drive in 2:24. 7-0.
Georgia quarterback Aaron Murray looks terrified. Not that you blame him. By far the biggest road game in his short career, but he settled in nicely.
Georgia converts a fourth and one for a score. 7-7.
So UGA has a running back of some talent, AJ Green, a flustered QB and … that’s about it right now.
That’s a statue of liberty. Good grief. And, sadly, a holding penalty. Thing of beauty, everywhere except the holding call. And, sure, this is Georgia and you can’t leave anything out, but you have to think “If this is what Gus is showing Alabama, what is he hiding?” And then you smile.
Flag, flag, interception, flag. Think it may be getting to the offense?
That stiff arm? Worth every penny. I only made the one joke. It looked more like a stiff arm than a head slap until I saw it on television. And I’m sure this was borne of frustration, if not the jawing and the extracurriculars that were already creeping into the game.
Freshman punter buries one inside the five. Four guys can’t down it. One of those days. Truly, this was the one place in the game where I fretted. If the ball isn’t going to bounce your way you need to find the signal as soon as possible, and this looked like a bad omen.
See number 8? He should be covered.
Murray to Green. 7-21. Down two scores? Not a bother. If Auburn had fallen back three scores I would have been squeamish.
Newton to Darvin Adams, inside the five. Easy enough.
TOUCHDOWN AUBURN! Onterrio McCalebb around left end for the score. 14-21. Simply because of this. You know Auburn will score. And have you ever seen a team, of any vintage at any level, that seems to chew up yardage so quickly? It isn’t just a function of falling forward for three yards, but these guys are eating down and distance like a lineman at the victory dinner.
Somewhere Eric Zeier is a little sad at Aaron Murray.
Nick Fairley has a bad arm or shoulder, but he’s battling.
Tigers force a punt. Big stop for the defense.
When the defense has everything else, there’s always Emory Blake. It isn’t quite catchy enough for a t-shirt, but close.
TOUCHDOWN AUBURN! 21-21 after @wesbyrum‘s PAT. Glory glory.
Hey Georgia? Where is your Herschel Walker? Our Bo Jackson is right here.
That’s Mr. Means if your nasty.
The Redcoat band has a lady who twirls four (FOUR!) flaming batons. Apparently the band plays music, too!
She threw flaming batons high into the night sky, doing splits as she caught them. How did you pay for college?
Sweet halftime vignette from @AUHD.
And now we kick around some mangy red and black puppies.
@wesbyrum gives Auburn the perfect onside kick. Tigers recover, but Josh Bynes is hurt.
Not Bynes, but Chris Davis. He walks off under his own power.
Terrell Zachery on the reverse for 30 yards.
TOUCHDOWN AUBURN! Onterrio McCalebb finds the end zone, @wesbyrum makes the lead 28-21.
Nosa Eguae is not a dawg person.
UGA marches down to score. 28-28. That guy is good. And only a freshman? Oh goodie.
@AUHD I still say you need a Fyffe “Touchdown Auburn!” button to go with Ric Smith’s call. One guy can sit by the Fyffe button. When McCalebb or whomever scores, he presses the button. A good, blaring Fyffe bite plays as the crowd roars. We’ve already built an atmosphere that makes the screen and the audio the other 12th man, so why not add a bit of nostalgia? If they can’t staff it I’ll volunteer to be the guy that presses that button. Help me out here, Internet.
TOUCHDOWN AUBURN! McCalebb with his third score of the night. 35-28.
Mike Dyer breaks Bo Jackson’s freshman rushing record.
They flash Mike Dyer’s record on the screen and Bo floats over, hugs him and raises his arm in victory. It probably wouldn’t have mattered much what else happened, because this was the coolest moment of the night. In one of those odd bits of timing that only sport can seem to inspire, Jackson happened to be on the sideline celebrating the 25th anniversary of his Heisman when one of his individual records fell and he had that great moment with Dyer. I’d say he’ll probably re-live that moment for ever, but I think we all will.
Man it is loud in here.
It just so happens that AJ Green is good.
BIG stand for the defense, holding UGA to a field goal. 35-31. And now the band strikes up their crazed rebel call. Love that fanfare. They need their own smoke effect for when they do this. And perhaps a trebuchet to launch something into the visitor’s section.
TOUCHDOWN AUBURN! Newton to Lutzenkirchen makes it a two score game. 42-31.
Nick Fairley for dawg catcher!
OH: Why are we so CLASSY!?!?!
The band and students sing Lean On Me, the unofficial theme for the 2010 Tigers.
TOUCHDOWN AUBURN! Newton over top. 49-31.
Dee Ford has your exclamation point.
Georgia has clearly gotten under the skin of the Auburn defenders. Tigers need to focus on the game. OK, look. Nick Fairley’s spear into Aaron Murray’s back earlier in the game was reprehensible and helped gift UGa a field goal. As for the rest of his reputation, the guy is playing within the framework of the existing rules. Don’t like it? Get the rules changed. If he doesn’t abide by your new rules, I’ll call that reprehensible too. Clearly, the scuffle at the end of the game was a regrettable moment for all sides. Players taking swings at opponents is first patently stupid (your target is wearing pads) and they should be punished accordingly. Georgia: going after Fairley (which is pretty clear in the replay) and storming the field en masse doesn’t make you innocent of anything.
Similarly, the booing of the Georgia player hobbling off and then falling to the ground on command from the sideline was pretty bad. Could he have hopped off? Sure, it did seem like it. What he did, though, is also within the framework of the rules. Cynical, perhaps, but get over it. Besides ….
Final 49-31. The Tigers are 11 and oh! Western division champs!
Hey Bama! Hey Bama! …
Watching the seniors bask in their moment as their fellow students take up the S-E-C chant. They deserve it.
Proud for those seniors. They’ve been a strong and special bunch throughout and they deserve their moment.
Kudos again to @AUHD for the season highlights in the post-game. Great feature.
Rolling Toomer’s.
And finally:
10
Nov 10
The no continuity update
Tomorrow is Veterans Day, and today marks the 235th anniversary of the creation of a fine force of warriors. There’s a long line of Marines in my family and I’m thinking of theme today. One of them lost a leg in Vietnam, others served in more peaceful times.
A few years ago we watched a battalion graduation at Parris Island. I spent two years there is a child and watched countless graduations. I don’t remember any of them, but I think of the men I saw four years ago. I think of these young Marines today, and I hope they are safe and still serving proudly.
Semper Fidelis, Marines.
That’s this evening at Samford. Evenings being relative. Three weeks ago that same time was the afternoon. At any rate I was walking from one errand to a meeting and had the best view. By the time I made it back to the office it was completely dark. And that shouldn’t happen.
Spent the better part of my night working on a paper for my media effects class. I wrote, revised, edited, re-wrote and moved things up and down until it didn’t make sense any more. That’s when I quit, having achieved a level of perfection that is not easily reached. Tomorrow I’ll wake up and realize two or three things that I should have added, but you should live by this motto: Print early, never second guess.
That’s a great motto, but hardly a practical one. I’ll continue on with this paper until the bitter end — trying to massage every possible detail into a very finite, five-page space — and hope my professor makes sense of it as well.
Random fun: In 1995 Dr. Clifford Stoll could see no future to this Internet thing. Newsweek, a fine brand today weakened by both content and their very name and now being absorbed by The Daily Beast, published his scribblings:
Visionaries see a future of telecommuting workers, interactive libraries and multimedia classrooms. They speak of electronic town meetings and virtual communities. Commerce and business will shift from offices and malls to networks and modems. And the freedom of digital networks will make government more democratic.
Remember, this is 1995.
(T)he Internet is one big ocean of unedited data, without any pretense of completeness. Lacking editors, reviewers or critics, the Internet has become a wasteland of unfiltered data. You don’t know what to ignore and what’s worth reading.
Sound like any curators (or journalists or producers) you know?
Then there’s cyberbusiness (sic). We’re promised instant catalog shopping—just point and click for great deals. We’ll order airline tickets over the network, make restaurant reservations and negotiate sales contracts. Stores will become obselete (sic). So how come my local mall does more business in an afternoon than the entire Internet handles in a month? Even if there were a trustworthy way to send money over the Internet—which there isn’t—the network is missing a most essential ingredient of capitalism: salespeople.
He decries the lack of human interaction, the virtual communities and some sense of isolation.
Dr. Stoll’s Wikipedia page says he’s now mostly a stay-at-home dad and sells custom-made blown glass on the Internet. Good for him.
OK, back to that paper, lest it become an all-nighter.
World’s Fair update will be along in a bit.
