In lieu of Random Monday, we have three items for Random Tuesday.
Folks in Macon (and Burma and Oklahoma) got hit hard by a tornado. One creative way you can help is to give money to a qualifying charity in the Swindle Industries Charity Bowl. It gives you an opportunity to shame a rival college football team for a good cause. Just click the link if you’re wondering how that’s possible.
I could spend years at the Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center and still not read everything I wanted to read. The Atlanta Journals and Atlanta Constitutions I read from the 1930s on microfilm were amazing, as were the collections of high school yearbooks from the 1920s and 1930s. You should check it out sometime. More on my research project later.
I agree with Shelby and Thomas Friedman. The McCain-Clinton gas tax holiday is the basest sort of pandering. Some of you may not like Friedman, but that particular column he wrote was spot-on:
It is great to see that we finally have some national unity on energy policy. Unfortunately, the unifying idea is so ridiculous, so unworthy of the people aspiring to lead our nation, it takes your breath away. Hillary Clinton has decided to line up with John McCain in pushing to suspend the federal excise tax on gasoline, 18.4 cents a gallon, for this summer’s travel season. This is not an energy policy. This is money laundering: we borrow money from China and ship it to Saudi Arabia and take a little cut for ourselves as it goes through our gas tanks. What a way to build our country.
“Out of a nation of 304 million, is this the best we have?”
That was how Roy Barnes, former governor and lifelong Democrat, replied when asked about the presidential contest featuring Republican John McCain and Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
“I’m not excited about any of them,” Barnes added.
Sounds like sour grapes that his boy Edwards never caught on. I hope we can all at least agree that the candidates on both sides are better this time out than they were four or eight years ago.
File under “sweet baby Jesus we’re still having this discussion?” Enjoy this segment from Bob Costas’ show. Do a shot every time you hear the phrase “Wild West” or “anything goes” correlated to “the blogospehere.”
Prop yourself up on something, call ahead for a cab home, and try to suppress your giggles when Bob Costas opines about the “tone of gratuitous potshots and mean-spirited abuse in the blogosphere,” which is immediately followed by a torrent of gratuitous potshots and mean-spirited abuse from Buzz Bissinger, author of Friday Night Lights.
I wish people would quit pretending like asshattery is somehow limited to a particular medium.
As part of the restructuring, the AJC will launch an E-edition — an online replica of the print newspaper. The paper said this will allow students to read, browse and search the AJC. As a result, it will develop its News For Kids program into an online platform beginning May 23. Eventually, the E-edition will be available to the larger market.
I can’t wait for them to put hyperlinks in the print edition. Then maybe I’ll buy a copy again.
We were watching The Office Thursday night, and this 11Alive promo came on. I thought it was so ridiculous that it needed to be posted. This has inspired me to collect all the ridiculous local news promos I see and to compile them into a bigger video.
Sorry about the crappy letterboxing that occured there. Here’s a better Quicktime file you can watch on your desktop.
To tell you the truth, I know very little about championship division football other than they have a playoff and that Appalachian State is a lot better than the two teams I’ve seen them play on TV. I know Georgia Southern was really good for a while and gave Georgia a hard time a few years ago in a game that was supposed to be a snoozer. I also know that Georgia State will announce its intention to start a football program today (watch it live here at 2 p.m.).
I’d suggest reading Tony Barnhart’s column for some more background. I agree with everything he wrote there, but am curious where they’ll actually play games (Barnhart thinks they should play in the Georgia Dome).
I’d like to add another suggestion to Tony’s list: schedule a lot of Thursday night games. Virginia Tech schedules a lot of Thursday games, which has garnered its program national exposure which it wouldn’t have received if it had to compete with 40 other games going on at the same time. Often, Virginia Tech and its opponent will be the only bowl division teams playing on a Thursday. I’m not going to skip watching a Tennessee game on TV to watch playoff division football (just as I don’t expect Georgia or Georgia Tech fans would skip watching their games), but I’d go to some games if I could take MARTA to them after work on a Thursday.
GSU will probably go through a few 0-11 seasons at first, but there’s enough talent in this state (even after UGA, GT, and Southern have had their shots) for them to put together a watchable team if they go about this the right way. It’s not unrealistic to think that in four or five years the games could be more fun to watch than Falcons games.
I’m excited about the possibility of having a I-AA team here for what I think would be the same reasons I’d be excited if there was a minor league baseball team in the city. I hope they get it right.
I have not the slightest idea what to expect from BarCamp Atlanta, which I believe is the idea and what makes BarCamps exciting. Here’s the premise from the web site:
Be prepared to Demo or Speak. Barcamp is as good as the participants make it. Be prepared to lead or participate in a session, ask interesting questions, show off cool stuff you’re working on and make new friends. Barcamp is not a typical conference where you are fed information in a one-way fashion. If you’re planning on attending, you should think about how you’ll contribute before you come. And after Barcamp, you should be willing to share with others about what you learned.
I do have somewhat of a preconception that BarCamp Atlanta will be more geek-focused than even a pretty nerdy event like PodCamp Atlanta was. But I also think that preconception could turn out to be wrong depending on the mix of people that show up. Things get interesting because of the 100-attendee cap, and the dominant areas of interest of those 100 people will go a long way to determine how the event turns out.
In my case, most of where I believe I could contribute has to do with explaining Drupal stuff: using CCK and Views, theming and programming modules. I could demo an early alpha version of the Georgia Podcast Network redesign that is starting to come together, functionality-wise. That is, if anybody shows up who is interested in Drupal programming. We won’t really know until tonight.
Anyway, if you haven’t already registered, you might be SOL because all 100 slots are filled. However, you can get on a waiting list in case any slots open up. Email jhaynie[at]gmail.com.
I will try to blog as much as I can tonight and tomorrow. Amber set up a Flickr group, so keep an eye on that.
