02
Sep 14
Sep 14
There are no free potatoes, either
Another free commercial on the basis of a photo, a story and nostalgia. I should get a free meal for this, I think.
The sign, it seems, is getting a makeover. The old neon has been stripped out. And pulling the gas-holding-gas has just shown the smear of age and wear and rain and paint. I love that sign. There’s just something about that pig face, blissfully unaware what is happening to his real life counterparts inside, grinning stupidly despite the messages often on display on the marquee just below. Hopefully they aren’t replacing the whole thing.
The Yankee and I had our first meal there — Friday was Pie Day, I said, and she said yes. I used to eat there frequently when I was still broadcasting. It wasn’t far from the station. I’ve dined there with a lot of friends. I ate there with my book tonight. I’d swam a mile and a big baked potato sounded right.
It was just the thing after only a brunch. The editorial staff at the Crimson dined with the media relations folks late this morning. I took some leftovers to have fruit for lunch, but I’d swam a mile, you see, and I can look at a body of water and get hungry. Real and hearty food was what was required tonight, and there was no Italian to be had with friends. So I had a baked potato with a book.
Things to read … becausing reading always brings around friends. Just get comfy with something great, and someone will come along to interrupt.
Learning How to Score a Job Using Social Media, for Beginners is a free email-based class, if you’re interested.
A friend sent this. I hated telling him he’s going to have to find someone else to see it with. A 15,000ft descent, sheer drops and 300 deaths a year: Welcome to Bolivia’s Death Road, the terrifying route tourists love to cycle
Ukraine: Russian forces in major rebel cities:
A Ukrainian official said Tuesday that Russian forces have been spotted in both of the major rebel-held cities in eastern Ukraine.
The claim by Col. Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for Ukraine’s national security council, came as the country’s defense minister said Ukraine’s armed forces are expanding their strategy from just fighting separatist rebels to facing the Russian army in a war that could cost “tens of thousands” of lives.
Lost in America: Visa Program Struggles to Track Missing Foreign Students:
The Department of Homeland Security has lost track of more than 6,000 foreign nationals who entered the United States on student visas, overstayed their welcome, and essentially vanished — exploiting a security gap that was supposed to be fixed after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.
“My greatest concern is that they could be doing anything,” said Peter Edge, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement official who oversees investigations into visa violators. “Some of them could be here to do us harm.”
Yet another of the core competencies that DHS was created for … and it is less than a sterling success.
3 free iOS apps for visual storytelling:
(J)ournalists do not necessarily need a big budget, banks of editing software or even a desktop computer to create appealing visual stories.
These three apps for iPhone and iPad all allow you to create beautiful visual stories on the move without any special gear.
Even better, each are easy to use – and free.
When you said free, you had my attention. Shame that meal wasn’t also free.
01
Sep 14
Sep 14
Labor Day
Last night we ordered Chinese takeout. I offered to go pick it up after The Yankee called it in. The lady on the other end of the phone knows who we are based on one of our habitual orders. You tell the soups and the egg rolls and the entrees and she says “Oh, hi Missus Smith.”
Then I went to pick up during halftime of the Tennessee game tonight and she started asking things about work. The nice lady at the Chinese restaurant, who has people going in and out constantly, knows where I work.
We might be eating too much Chinese.
Tonight we had Italian potluck with friends, and that was awesome. In between I did some work, building a lecture and tinkering with notes for other things and so on. I labored on Labor Day, but there was no grief to it. I sat in a chair at home and typed things. And when I was done, I took a 22 mile spin around town. My cycling app says my ride gave me the best times on four local segments.
This is surely a calculating error, a timing mistake. More likely, none of the fast people in town use this app.
Things to read … because everyone in town should read.
This is a former student, a Fulbright scholar now embarking on a year in Tajikistan. He’s a bright guy, and this will be an amazing adventure. Read along: House of leaves.
Security for journalists, part one
Boomers. When did we get so old?
I prefer the Vyclone app, which lets my collaboration be with my friends, rather than everyone, but this has some uses too: Snapchat lets you watch and create group videos of live events with ‘Our Story’.
7 interesting things about Lee County agriculture
The UK has big, big problems. This is simply a terrible symptom. Scandal hit Rotherham ‘deleted abuse files’:
Top ranking staff ordered raids to delete and remove case files and evidence detailing the scale of Rotherham’s child exploitation scandal, sources have revealed.
More than 10 years before the damning independent inquiry revealed sexual exploitation of 1,400 children in Rotherham a raid was carried out on the orders of senior staff to destroy evidence, it has been claimed.
In 2002 high profile personnel at Rotherham Council ordered a raid on Risky Business, Rotherham council’s specialist youth service, which offered one-to-one help and support to vulnerable teenage girls, ahead of the findings of a draft report, according to the Times.
The raid was to remove case files and wipe computer records detailing the scale and severity of the town’s sex-grooming crisis, sources told The Times.
Meanwhile, closer to home … In Maryland, a Soviet-Style Punishment for a Novelist:
A 23-year-old teacher at a Cambridge, Maryland, middle school has been placed on leave and—in the words of a local news report—”taken in for an emergency medical evaluation” for publishing, under a pseudonym, a novel about a school shooting. The novelist, Patrick McLaw, an eighth-grade language-arts teacher at the Mace’s Lane Middle School, was placed on leave by the Dorchester County Board of Education, and is being investigated by the Dorchester County Sheriff’s Office, according to news reports from Maryland’s Eastern Shore. The novel, by the way, is set 900 years in the future.
There’s a lot about this story that doesn’t yet make sense. Hopefully the next draft has some insight, otherwise, it would be particularly troubling.
(Three days later update: There is a lot going on in that story. And local media interviewed the teacher. It would seem there is still a good deal going on in that story.)
