Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

To Atlanta! Travel on a non-snow day

We got snow. It started around me around 6 or 7 p.m. last night. It looked like this:

It didn’t snow very much on us, but to the north they had an actual snowfall event. The roads were dry by mid-morning. Campus opened at 11 a.m. today. The expectation was that the cold temps and melting snow could make for some dangerous roads for winter-weary travelers.

So almost as soon as campus opened I had to get ready to leave. Things must be printed and copies must be made. Department credit cards must be picked up, returned and then finding another one. The rental car people have to show up. I have to promise not to transport minors to Canada. (Seriously, there’s an Enterprise form for that.) Waivers from students must be signed. And then we get to the van. It is a giant white brick. The Enterprise people couldn’t find the gas tank. We walked around it three times before we accidentally stumbled upon it. We labored with loading the thing with luggage, which was more difficult than it needed to be.

And then we were on the road, bound for Atlanta and the Southeast Journalism Conference, hosted by Georgia State University. The trip was no problem, the roads were perfect. We checked into the hotel right on time. We checked into the conference with no problem. The Yankee came over and we all went out for dinner at Tin Lizzy’s Cantina. Some of the students brought us milkshakes. I got to see a student that was in my class a few years ago, but transferred to GSU, which made us all sad. It was a nice treat to see her and learn that she was doing very well. Also, milkshakes.

Things to read … because reading goes with your dessert.

Lessons from a 73-Year-Old World Champion:

Train and race hard. Treat your training like a job and always approach it with great focus.

Never quit. Don’t shortchange any of your workouts. Always finish what you set out to do because if you can’t accomplish goals on the micro-level, you won’t be able to shoot for those on the macro-level.

Always stay in the moment. Banish all negative thoughts from your mind and focus on the task at hand.

Here are a few local stories of note.

Undocumented immigrants: A boom or bust opportunity for Alabama economy?:

While charting the population totals for each state may be inconsistent, the amount already paid in tax dollars is not. Data from The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy , or ITEP, highlights that undocumented workers contributed $10.6 billion in state and local taxes in 2010, but this money could slowly be leaving some states who continue to fight the inclusion of undocumented immigrants.

This population is also reportedly getting smaller for Alabama — a state faced with closing a $700 million budget gap and on the verge of a tax increase.

This story is going to be huge. ALDOT director says lawmaker’s billboard went too far, kills road projects:

Alabama Department of Transportation Director John Cooper today said he has called off planned road projects in state Sen. Bill Holtzclaw’s district, which includes portions of Limestone and Madison County.

Holtzclaw, a Republican, this week put up a billboard in his district that read “Governor Bentley wants to raise your taxes. I will not let that happen.”

“I just thought the billboard was a step too far,” Cooper said today. “If Sen. Holtzclaw feels that strongly about taxes, he probably wouldn’t be comfortable with a significant amount of tax dollars being spent in his district as we had planned.”

Let’s continue with that story, where an appointee is trying to silence a representative of the governor’s own party. Alabama DOT director stops road projects because of senator’s billboard critical of Gov. Robert Bentley:

“If Sen. Holtzclaw is that concerned with taxes I think he probably would be uncomfortable with us spending tax money in his district, so I pulled the projects,” Cooper said.

Bentley announced last week that he would propose a $700 million tax increase to close a shortfall in the General Fund budget.

Bentley also said at that time, in response to questions about whether he would try to strong-arm legislators into supporting his plan by threatening to withhold project funds: “We will look more favorably on areas of the state that really do want to support our budget.”

Cooper said today that Bentley did not instruct him to stop the projects. He said he informed Bentley about his decision in a phone call but declined to say how the governor reacted.

We’re going to hear a lot about this story, I hope, in the near future.

I’ve written about this man here before. Medal of Honor recipient Bennie Adkins shares his story with Opelika High students:

According to Army records, Adkins is estimated to have killed between 135 and 175 enemy soldiers and was wounded 18 times during the incident.

“What makes it so humbling is the fact that in that time period, 30 million men and women served in our military, and there are only 79 living Medal of Honor recipients,” Adkins said. “I wear this medal today for the other 16 American soldiers with me on those days. All 17 of us were wounded, most of us suffered multiple wounds, and five paid the ultimate price for this great country. The 18 wounds I suffered are very minor compared to that.”

I wrote about his truly unbelievable Medal of Honor notice, here.

Journalism links:

Six questions journalists should ask when evaluating a rumor
SPLC project strives to empower women in student media
Firing Joey Kennedy

Tomorrow the conference begins.

photo / Wednesday — Comments Off
25
Feb 15

The second weather day — Photoshop fun

Birmingham was the dividing line, more or less. To the north people reported snow amounts ranging from three to nine inches. In Birmingham it rained all day. The city started seeing snow late in the day, and it really began to stick after night fall. But it seems to have been a fairly mild event locally.

So I have no nice snow pictures. These photoshops I made, tongue-firmly-in-cheek, will have to do.

history / journalism / links / photo / Samford / things to read / Tuesday — Comments Off
24
Feb 15

The first weather day

Campus opened late today because of concern about the roads. The forecast called for ice, but I never did hear of anyone having any problems. So, perhaps, opening at 10 a.m. was the right thing. Or perhaps we all benefitted from an over-abundance of caution. Either way, that was a big part of the morning.

In the afternoon, in my never-ending effort to get more things out of my office, I ran across this old clip Crimson from 1988:

McClure coached seven academic All-Americans and won a conference title at Samford. Throughout his career he coached a remarkable 145 All-Americans. He produced three Olympians. His athletes held world records in eight events. He was an assistant coach in the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich. You can’t find a track and field or regional sports hall of fame that hasn’t inducted him. Previously, I’d discovered this photo of the “reserved gentleman,” Bill McClure among the hundreds of files I’ve inherited over the years:

He retired in 1996 after a 46-year sports career, the last 10 years at Samford. Before he picked up a whistle he was a Marine in World War II. He’d worked at Abilene Christian (63 All-American), South Carolina. LSU (34 All-Americans) and was the associate athletic director at Samford. He died in 2008 and was survived by five children.

Maybe they should name something after him.

Paper tonight, classes canceled tomorrow. So they’re reworking the front page and dreaming up contingencies for weather coverage. It has made for a long day, despite the late start.

Things to read … because the clock never stops.

We found the real Ron Swanson, and he’s just like the one on TV:

(T)rue fans know the loss that will hurt the most: Ron Swanson.

Ron Swanson, our freedom-loving, meat-eating, mustache-rocking man’s man. He’s our instructor of how to live on your own terms while remaining fiercely loyal to your people — characteristics we’d want in any man, especially our fathers and bosses. We’ll be lost without his rants, his wisdom, his giggle. Is there anyone who can replace him?

Well, there is a real Ron Swanson who lives in Indiana.

The guy doesn’t even watch the show. Also, remember how Ron Swanson was initially supposed to be a joke? Funny how that works out.

Twitter’s Dilemma:

At times (quite a bit) the way that Twitter has chosen to roll out features and products has felt schizophrenic. And that’s no wonder, really, as the company now serves two masters. Its users and its shareholders. And while those interests may sometimes align, there is no question which is the more important to please for a public company.

This has led to rocky times when it comes to external, and even internal, perceptions of Twitter’s directional confidence.

[…]

Recent product decisions appear to be displaying more thoughtfulness about how to balance Twitter’s Dilemma. It remains to be seen whether the market will bear that, or if there is a way to truly find an equilibrium there. But there are some pleasant signs. We’ll see if the messaging products really do get the attention that Weil says they are, and whether video and onboarding continue to get polished.

There is a great deal of thought and insight in that piece. The big takeaway is that there are a lot of moving parts in play. The second takeaway is that Twitter might try to become all things to all people. And you know what happens when you do that.

From Internet to Obamanet:

Critics of President Obama’s “net neutrality” plan call it ObamaCare for the Internet.

That’s unfair to ObamaCare.

Both ObamaCare and “Obamanet” submit huge industries to complex regulations. Their supporters say the new rules had to be passed before anyone could read them. But at least ObamaCare claimed it would solve long-standing problems. Obamanet promises to fix an Internet that isn’t broken.

The permissionless Internet, which allows anyone to introduce a website, app or device without government review, ends this week.

And we’re going to miss it when it is gone.

Lawmaker with lavish decor billed private planes, concerts:

Illinois Rep. Aaron Schock, a rising Republican star already facing an ethics inquiry, has spent taxpayer and campaign funds on flights aboard private planes owned by some of his key donors, The Associated Press has found. There also have been other expensive travel and entertainment charges, including for a massage company and music concerts.

The expenses highlight the relationships that lawmakers sometimes have with donors who fund their political ambitions, an unwelcome message for a congressman billed as a fresh face of the GOP. The AP identified at least one dozen flights worth more than $40,000 on donors’ planes since mid-2011.

The AP tracked Schock’s reliance on the aircraft partly through the congressman’s penchant for uploading pictures and videos of himself to his Instagram account. The AP extracted location data associated with each image then correlated it with flight records showing airport stopovers and expenses later billed for air travel against Schock’s office and campaign records.

Reporters are watching politicians’ EXIF metadata. That’s brilliant.

Later in the story we learn that Schock is a 30something legislator that refers to people as “haters.”

Thank you, modern society.

Journalism links:

What can you do with a GoPro?
Snapchat stories: Here’s how 6 news orgs are thinking about the chat app
News Outlets Are Using This Site to Find Photos and Video on Social Media

Tomorrow: a snow day! But will we get snow?

Glomerata — Comments Off
24
Feb 15

Glomeratas

Back to the Glomerata section, where I share the covers of all of the yearbooks from Auburn, my alma mater. The one I’m showing you here is the 2011 edition. If you click the cover you can see the 2008 Glom.

There is a lot about the oughts that doesn’t make sense to modern sociologists. For the 2007-08 school year Lost was the top television show, Transformers was a top-10 movie, people still thought they liked Chris Brown and Joe the Plumber was somehow a stand-in for us all. George W. Bush was still president, Bob Riley was the governor.

The summer of 2007 ended, and students returned to campus, as 572 people were killed in suicide bombings in Iraq and 512 died in an 8.0 earthquake in Peru. And to really set the tone for the weekend, Russia announced their bombers were set to resume flights for the first time since the Cold War. That fall Marion Jones gave up her five gold medals and Vladimir Putin was named Time’s man of the year. Luciano Pavarotti died, as did Gen. Paul Tibbets — pilot of the Enola Gay — Evel Knievel and Norman Mailer.

In January of 2008 fuel crossed $100/barrel for the first time ever, Fidel Castro finally stepped down in Cuba, surgeons perform the first operations using bionic eyes in London and more than 133,000 were killed by Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar. Edmund Hillary, Heath Ledger, Roy Scheider, Arthur C. Clarke and Charlton Heston also died in the first part of the year.

Also, it was the beginning of the poorly named Great Recession in the United States. A lot of things about the oughts remain baffling indeed.

journalism / links / maps / Monday / photo / Samford / things to read / windshield time — Comments Off
23
Feb 15

There are at least four (really bad) puns here

One more week and this becomes a thing, but today I saw this cruise down the highway.

If you think of it, most everything gets shipped somewhere, one way or another. But you never really think about that, at least until you see a truck hauling logs going one way as it passes a truck hauling logs going the other way. Then it seems silly. “They’ve got logs over here, too!”

Maybe it should have sunk in and stuck in our traveling minds the first time we saw a big truck hauling other trucks, or when you saw a freighter moving most any thing that can move on its own. Everything gets shipped, even the live fish. And you hope to never think about it, or become aware of it which, in this case, would usually mean bad news puns because of an accident. “Ofishials: Traffic flounders after accidents, bystanders threaten to sushi.”

Just Coelorinchus horribilis.

(Yes, I had to look that up.)

You want to see that crudely drawn logo, you say? No problem:

I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that the fish has a fishing pole. Like a fish can whistle.

Things to read … because I can’t whistle, either.

Boston’s Winter From Hell:

Sure, it’s not the same as an earthquake: The snow will melt, eventually. But that will bring more woes. The flooding will hurt the T, ruin roofs and basements and clog roads still more.

Where are the federal disaster funds, the presidential visit, Anderson Cooper interviewing victims, volunteers flying in, goods and services donated after hurricanes and tornadoes? The pictures may be pretty. But we need help, now.

This is more snow, seven feet in three weeks it says, than I’ve seen in my entire life, probably. And there are certainly big problems — many of them are detailed in that column. But, really?

(We’re absolutely getting two to four inches of snow later this week. I’m going to laugh at us.)

Easily the best story I read yesterday, Chasing Bayla:

Moore had engineered something that could be a breakthrough for rescuers, a way to sedate whales at sea. The man standing to his left on the Zodiac platform held the instrument Moore had conceived for the task: a pressurized rifle tipped with a dart and syringe filled with 60 cc’s of a sedative so powerful that a few drops on human skin could kill.

Bayla was probably seven tons, but you can’t weigh a free-swimming whale. If the estimate were wrong, an overdose could plunge Bayla into a catastrophic slumber and she would drown.

Moore scanned the horizon. Fishing charters and Disney Cruise Liners jockeyed for space at the shore. Ahead, the vast reach of the Atlantic met at every point with the prickling Florida sun.

He knew that the work of a lifetime shouldn’t come down to a single moment. He was the father of four grown boys. He loved his wife. His home was an island in Marion Harbor. He had published scores of peer-reviewed papers and commanded millions in grant money.

Yet the vow he had made to himself as a young man, the thing he had dedicated his career and heart to, remained unfulfilled. For Moore, nearing retirement and running out of ideas, there might be no more chances.

Blow spouted off the port bow.

That’s a slightly longer read, and it has stunning visuals. Well worth your time.

CNN … just … Does Kim Jong Un’s new look reflect a new attitude?

Journalism links:

Why Journalism Students Need a Baseline Understanding of Coding
Local newspapers are hoping online radio can be a growth area
Your ultimate guide to Snapchat
Snapchat boss sees music as a ‘really interesting opportunity’

And. finally, we return to the old Crimson archives that are still in my office. I’m trying to work through them all and file them away elsewhere. Occasionally I find some interesting things. Here’s one now. This was written in 1979 by a person who now works at a non-profit in Texas and a Kentucky physician.

Did you know there was a rear gate? It was right here: