The Rat Phone

     Forget the Bat-phone. a scientist says he has managed to get one rat to transmit information to the brain of another rat..wirelessly...a kind of Rat-phone.
     Check out the story at this Scientific American blog.

What you missed from today's ANN Morning show in Montgomery!

Jamie Langley reacts as The Enigma swallows a sword on ANN This Morning

The Enigma says his first ink was on his lower leg.

The Enigma will be starring at The Lost Highway Tattoo and Music show this weekend in Montgomery.. More information here.

The Best & Worst States

Which State offers the best "Well-Being" for its residents? according to Gallup?

Hawaii.


And the worst?


West Virginia.

The entire list is here.

Sequestration

Friday's the day the mandatory across the board federal budget cuts take effect, a poison pill crafted by the Congress to make sure the Congress and White House would agree on more sane cuts.

Right.

The PEW's Stateline site has an interesting interactive showing how each state is likely to be impacted. Those like Alabama that receive a lot of Federal Aid (the spending we endlessly bash), will suffer more.
Click here for the U.S. map and select your state for a fact sheet.

The Voting Rights Act

      The Supreme Court is hearing arguments today in a challenge to a key provision of the act, which was approved by Congress after the Selma-to-Montgomery March in 1965.
     Shelby County in Alabama, and the State, argue that times have changed and that voters are protected now.
     Mark Ridley Thomas writes in a column at HuffingtonPost,

     Alabama says :" Trust us!". Well,  I don't.

Noon Today

     Civil Rights Attorney Fred Gray will speak at The Alabama Department of Archives and History in an Architreats event today at Noon. He'll focus on the three years between 1961 and 1963.

Political Divide

     Two stories of note today underlining the evolution (or devolution) of the GOP...New Jersey Governor Chris Christie joined the growing number of Republican Governors deciding they do want to expand Medicaid in their states under the Obamacare provision.
     Meanwhile Alabama's Republican Governor, Robert Bentley said today he's still dead set against Medicaid expansion ("...why expand a system that is broken?" he asks.)
     And U.S. Senator Richard Shelby (R-Alabama) ignored the chorus of Republicans back home and voted for Chuck Hagel for Secretary of Defense. The steering committee of the Alabama Republican Party had even called Shelby out in public, calling on him to reverse his support of Hagel. He didn't even respond.  
     What is the Alabama GOP going to do to Shelby anyway? Refuse to renominate him for a 6th term in office (presuming he runs again in 2016, which is doubtful)? He'll be 79 in May.

[UPDATE: Charles Dean has an interesting take in The Birmingham News on the GOP division.]

The Antithesis of our Southern Diet

The Greeks got it right...a Mediterranean diet cuts heart attack risk!

Alabama's Two Faces

Wednesday will mark a convergence of sorts between the two faces of Alabama.

     President Obama will attend the dedication of a statue of Rosa Parks, the first black woman to have a full length statue in her honor in the U.S. Capitol Building.
     And by apparent coincidence, also on Wednesday, lawyers representing Alabama's republican Governor will go before the U.S. Supreme Court on the other end of  Pennsylvania Avenue, arguing before The U.S. Supreme Court that the kinds of discrimination that motivated Rosa Parks are no longer a factor in Alabama.
    Parks died in 2005 and has been honored in numerous ways since...for example, a stamp has been issued displaying her face.
   Wednesday morning, The President will honor her by dedicating the statue that was commissioned in the days after her death,
   About the same time, Justice Department lawyers will be arguing in favor of the section of the Voting Rights Act that required mostly the states in The Deep South to have any election law changes approved by the U. S Justice Department. They argue Alabama can now be trusted to do the right thing without Federal supervision.
    A lot has changed in the half century plus since Parks was arrested..
    Dixiecrats ran the state back then, Southern Democrats as extreme to mainstream Democrats back then as Tea Party radicals are to The Republican Party today.
    The lead plaintiff in the suit against the Act is Shelby County, the most Republican, most white and most wealthy County in the state.   

MMMM #364 --- New Media, New Censors, New Drones.

Very old media guys

A Forbes Magazine column contrasts new social-media oriented /digital reporters, who are "trusting in Google" and "angling stories and headlines to give them the best chance of reaching the world"....with the veterans from decades past.

These were called typewriters.

A New Website.
Anyone who has worked as a reporter for any length of time has come across examples of what's being called The New American Government Censorship! It requires all employees of a government agency to refer reporters to a Public Information Officer, and forbids them from talking with a reporter without that supervision.
Some reporters are pushing back! There's even a website: Stop The New American Censorship!

Melton Barker

On The Media 
The Public Radio show this week included an interesting segment about a man who in the 50's, 60's and 70's traveled the country making the same move, over and over, with a new cast of non-actors chosen in each small town he visited. Sounds like a movie itself, no? I had never heard of filmmaker Melton Barker before, but he made the movie "The Kidnappers Foil" in towns across the country,  including at keast five in Alabama, including Opelika, Birmingham and Anniston. The actors, many of them children, paid a fee ($8 - $14) to be "trained" to be in the movie, of course,

These are called drones. They extend a reporter's view.

Droning on....
We've written about using drones in media..mostly to see the scene of a story from above. But an article in Fast Company magazine offers up a much broader (and perhaps less alarming) view of using the pilot-less craft for stories.





[The Monday Morning Media Memo is a regular feature of timlennox.com]

Amazing Fiery Looping Rain on the Sun

Published on Feb 20, 2013

Eruptive events on the sun can be wildly different. Some come just with a solar flare, some with an additional ejection of solar material called a coronal mass ejection (CME), and some with complex moving structures in association with changes in magnetic field lines that loop up into the sun's atmosphere, the corona.

On July 19, 2012, an eruption occurred on the sun that produced all three. A moderately powerful solar flare exploded on the sun's lower right hand limb, sending out light and radiation. Next came a CME, which shot off to the right out into space. And then, the sun treated viewers to one of its dazzling magnetic displays -- a phenomenon known as coronal rain.

Over the course of the next day, hot plasma in the corona cooled and condensed along strong magnetic fields in the region. Magnetic fields, themselves, are invisible, but the charged plasma is forced to move along the lines, showing up brightly in the extreme ultraviolet wavelength of 304 Angstroms, which highlights material at a temperature of about 50,000 Kelvin. This plasma acts as a tracer, helping scientists watch the dance of magnetic fields on the sun, outlining the fields as it slowly falls back to the solar surface.

The footage in this video was collected by the Solar Dynamics Observatory's AIA instrument. SDO collected one frame every 12 seconds, and the movie plays at 30 frames per second, so each second in this video corresponds to 6 minutes of real time. The video covers 12:30 a.m. EDT to 10:00 p.m. EDT on July 19, 2012.
Music: "Thunderbolt" by Lars Leonhard, courtesy of artist.

This video is public domain and can be downloaded at: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/goto?11168

Like our videos? Subscribe to NASA's Goddard Shorts HD podcast:
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The Worst Movie Ever Made

     OK..let me backtrack. How about the worst movie made in the past quarter century?
    It has to be the remake of Red Dawn. 

Waiting for their Razzie Awards

      The premise: North Korea, which can't even feed its own people without international aid, invades the U.S. and sets up prisoner camps and for some reason, the largest most well equipped military in history depends on these teenagers to repel the bad guys. I'll stop there.
      I can't begin to say how bad it is. Scripting? Acting? Dialogue?
     Don't get trapped in a theater so you will have to walk out.
     Don't go in in the first place.
     If the cast had just done the Harlem Shuffle for 90 minutes it would have been a huge improvement.

TM via David Lynch?

     The NY (watch the pay-wall) Times reports David Lynch  the director of such films as Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart, has now stopped directing films and is promoting TM as a route to world peace, or at least, personal peace for you.

Will Joe Biden Visit the other, previous VP?

The Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, 2012

    
     Vice President Joe Biden will be in Selma, Alabama next week for the annual bridge crossing Jubilee. It commemorates the beating of civil rights protesters by Alabama State Troopers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965.

     While he's in Selma, Biden might stop by the grave of the only Vice President of The United States to be sworn in on foreign soil. Congress passed a specific bill allowing it.

      On March 24, 1853, William Ruffus King was sworn in as the nation's 13th VP on his virtual deathbed in Cuba, where he had gone in an attempt to be cured of TB. It was thought the climate would help him. It did not. He returned to the U.S. and died at his plantation in Selma on April 18th.
     King named Selma and was one of the city's founders. His grave is in Live Oak cemetery.

Cop questions law student carrying gun. Oops.

The KKK in The South (Dakota!)

     South Dakota High School students are in trouble for wearing KKK style hoods at a student hockey game.

.....of course South Dakota is almost 90% white,..and just 1.4% is black, so perhaps the kids racial sensitivity is a lacking?

[Story finding credit to Jay, the Editor of ATNNOTMDL]

Hope for the future

     At least one high school athlete is in the news NOT for using steroids, or cheating, or being arrested. 
     Check out this CBS TV story from Friday night about the Texas basketball player with a heart the size of, well, his home state.

Alabama Dares Defend Its Right

     Alabama Governor Robert Bentley's position against expanding Medicaid is getting a little more lonely.
     Florida's Republican governor ran for office as a staunch opponent of Obamacare...but now he's supporting the expansion in his state, the largest in the U.S.
    The NY Times reports the number of GOP Governors doing so is growing.
    But here in Alabama, Bentley has drawn his line in the sand. No Medicaid expansion.

UA's Harlem Shake (NOT)

     The University of Alabama, which went after the artist who created collector paintings of their most impressive Crimson Tide Moments, has now clamped down on a student who wanted to make a video of students doing the Harlem Shake.
     If you don't know what that is, well, think group dance and flash mob. Kinda. If you don't know what a flash mob is, just move on.
     Anyway, The Huffington Post has a lengthy story about the almost-arrest of the student who organized the non-event.
   Here is a Harlem Shake.

     But there are a million others, each unique. The only connection (so far as I can tell) is that one person in the group starts moving by himself, and then the others join in. Costumes are kinda mandatory. OK. I give up.

PayedDay Loans

     PEW is out with a study of payday loans, and how people use them. 
     It finds a kind of love-hate, or at least like-hate relationship with those lenders:

*A majority of borrowers say                                      
payday loans take advantage of
them, and a majority also say they
provide relief. 

                                 (*from the study)

     One of the few places open when I go to work in the middle of the night is a payday loan operation, apparently open all night.
     There seem to be more of them here in Montgomery than ever before. Many also offer "Title loans" in which you hand over your car title for a loan, risking the loss of your vehicle if you fall behind on paying the loan back.
     There have been unsuccessful attempts to regulate them in Alabama.
     The industry argues that people who borrow from them can't get loans anywhere else, so if they are over-regulated out of business, it hurts those customers too.

College Data

     The White House has unveiled a program allowing parents and students to search through two and four year private and public colleges and universities by graduation rate, loan default rate, tuition costs etc etc.
     It is sure to be a big hit as parents struggle with getting their kids to a school they can afford without giving up on quality.
     As easy starting point: search by xxx number of miles from home and then click on the schools that interest you...or look at the list by state or degree programs or...
     There is some shocking information about schools in Alabama that have 11% graduation rates and some with big default rates.
     A few examples: 

• Alabama State University has a graduation rate of 26.2% and a loan default rate of 21% 

• Concordia College in Selma has a graduation rate of 3.4% and a default rate of 41.6%  .
• The University of Alabama has a graduation rate of 65.8% and a default rate of 5.6%
• And Auburn University has a graduation rate of 66.3 and a default rate of 6.8%

Stapling The Competition

     There are two Office Depots locations and one Office Max location in Montgomery....and now the two chains may merge, setting up possible store closings.
     There are no Staples stores in Montgomery, though they are elsewhere in Alabama, and that company is the big brother competitor of the smaller chains.     

Voting Rights Act

     The NY (watch the pay wall) Times reports this morning about the SCOTUS hearing set for the 27th on an Alabama challenge to the Voting Rights Act.
     Shelby County is the lead plaintiff, arguing that all's well, or at least mostly well, in Alabama, when it comes to voting rights.
     The Time story quotes a voter in Evergreen as saying some of the same difficulties for black voters that were in effect when the act was approved still exist today.
     The state and numerous other conservative entities have filed friend-of-the-court briefs in the case.
     The act covers states, mostly southerns states, that were historically belligerent to minority voters.

MMMM # 363 -- media transformations

      Several developments in the past week:
     Al.com wrote a story/piece/column/news release about their great success since the three largest newspapers in the state cut back to publishing 3-days-a-week.
      In short, they say (surprise) they're doing great. No mention of the Birmingham and Huntsville papers putting their buildings on the market.

     Here in Montgomery, The Advertiser office/administration building is still on the market. They've stayed a seven-day-a-week publication, but instituted a pay-wall for their online content.
     Speaking of, the Advertiser is launching a conservative column. The columnist writes by way of introduction:

"Political correctness and contorted phrases such as “fair share,” “war on women,” and “the one percent” supplant commonly held values. Hard work, self-sufficiency and personal responsibility are under attack because they are antithetical to the ideology of our president and his party."    

     Perhaps they needed balance for  Josh Moon, the columnist who makes conservative heads spin.
     Gene Kamena is the new columnist's name, a retired U.S. Army Colonel.
     No word how often he'll contribute.
     More about Kamena's military background here.

     In Washington:
     The White House may be trying to peel off viewership from TV.
     Read this email from the White House on the night of the State of The Nation address (the red type emphasis in mine):
======================================================================

Hello -- For the past few days, the White House has been humming as President Obama puts the final touches on his State of the Union Address. And at 9:00 p.m. ET, the President will deliver that speech to Congress -- and most importantly, to you. Tonight you're going to hear a clear plan for how Americans can work together to create jobs and grow the economy from the middle out -- with some ideas that are sure to get people talking. Here's how you can join the conversation: --If you watch the State of the Union with us, we'll make sure you get the enhanced version. We'll provide you with context -- some of the same data the President sees before he makes his decisions. We'll show you the charts, facts, figures, and graphics you need to get the most out of the speech. The enhanced version will only be available at WhiteHouse.gov/SOTU so be sure to tune tonight at 9:00. --When the President wraps up, we'll give you a chance to hear from a team of policy experts who will discuss the President's remarks and answer your questions. Just head to the same place for that: WhiteHouse.gov/SOTU. --Finally, WhiteHouse.gov is releasing something that's got us all really excited: Citizen Response. It's a new tool you can use to dig in to the President's speech -- line by line -- and tell us what resonates with you, what makes sense for your community. I'll be one of the folks reading what you tell us -- and we'll share that feedback with senior staff throughout the building and the President, himself. Tonight, the best place to be part of the State of the Union is WhiteHouse.gov. So watch the speech with us and then let us know what you think: WhiteHouse.gov/SOTU Thanks, David David Simas Deputy Senior Advisor The White House P.S. -- Want to learn more about Citizen Response? Check out the video we've put together to see how it works. ============================================================== But watching the White House version of the speech was like watching a director review his own movie. Think he liked it? I liked Marcy and Jamie joining Mr. Cardiotone in exercise this week on ANN.                     I stayed at the news desk, and felt tired just watching them! Heck, somebody had to take the photos! [PLUS: FOX transcript of their own Sunday Morning show misquoted Marco Rubio. The AP withdrew a story based on the transcript Sunday afternoon. Pretty rare event for the AP.] [The Monday Morning Media Memo is a regular feature of www.timlennox.com.]

Lincoln Lies

    I know the movie Lincoln probably won't be a huge hit here in The Deep South, but I loved it, for Daniel Day Lewis' acting if nothing else.
     Steven Spielberg plans to distribute copies to every middle and high school in the country that requests a copy.
     And there's the rub. In the climactic scene in which the House is voting on the 13th Amendment, two Connecticut house members are heard voting against it. Yet all of the House delegation from that state voted for it.

Slaves depicted in Montgomery at The Alabama River.

     Maureen Dowd in today's New York (Watch for the pay wall) Times, points out that they went to the trouble of using the actual sounds of the President's pocket watch, yet were sloppy with such an important vote?
     Do read her column, which is about fakes in the movies (is that not an oxymoron?)
     In an historical drama, should there not be be an an adherence to the truth? George Washington gets all the I-can-not-tell-a-lie credit, but wasn't it Lincoln who worked through the falseness of slavery in a Democracy, and the need for a Constitutional protection against it?
    

Billy Jack Gaither Memorial

People gather Sunday afternoon on The Alabama Capitol Steps for yearly anti-hate memorial.

PBS program Frontline has background and interviews about the Gaither murder in 1999.
The Alabama News Network will have coverage on the event tonight at 10:00pm on CBS 8 or ABC Montgomery.

Abuse across the decades

     An AP story posted online today includes the testimony of a West Alabama nun and the father who abused her, her brother, and Boy Scouts.

"...she now serves as regional director for Catholic Social Services of West Alabama, providing food, counseling and financial assistance to predominantly low-income families.

     The Scouts investigation, along with that of the Roman Catholic Church, has unturned too many long-hidden stories of abuse, with no attempt on the part of those in charge to report it.

Rave SNL review for Shakes

Billboard has a rave for Alabama Shakes on last night's Saturday Night live...including a video on Hulu.

I say give then a discount coupon for a video game.

     The Pentagon has created a new medal (no news there).
     It is to recognize the warfare engaged in by the "pilots" of drones in combat. It will a higher ranking medal than the purple heart, which honors military personnel who actually shed blood on the actual battlefield (as opposed to sitting in a 100% safe air-conditioned office complex with fresh coffee and secretaries.)
     Perhaps the DOD wants to rethink this "Distinguished Warfare" medal?

An inside look at places you've never been

The Alabama News Network EXTRA report that aired Tuesday is online now here.

Looking down at children touring the capitol.

The stairway leading to the upper level of the Alabama Capitol Dome.

We take you inside the Alabama Capitol Dome, out onto the balcony on the front of the building that overlooks Dexter Avenue, to the secret location of an early Native American Village, and to the Penthouse where a restaurant fire killed 26 people in 1967. The space has been rented as offices for most of the years since the fire.

 

Looking out on Dexter Ave. from the Capitol balcony.

View of The Alabama River from the old Dale's Penthouse location.

Off they go, on buses, away from Alabama

     I think we (Alabama) missed a great opportunity in the cruise ship fiasco. The 3,000 passengers were put on buses for two-hour or longer trips to hotels in New Orleans and Texas as soon as they set foot on dry land.
     Did anyone from Alabama pitch hotels in Mobile? You would think the last thing these poor passengers would want would be to get on a bus for a long drive with no chance to shower!
     I have to wonder if Carnival intentionally avoided putting them up in the Port City, which Carnival abandoned a couple of years ago after using the new cruise ship terminal for a couple of years.

Capital (Punishment) Kitty

The Neighbor's young cat, who visits frequently.

     You may have read the story recently about how deadly free-range cats are to free-range birds. They kill a huge percentage of the wild birds who die in the wild.
     But cat lovers were outraged, and in the words of the National Geographic article linked above, "littered" the Internet with negative comments. 
     There is no shortage of cats roaming my neighborhood...but no shortage of birds that I can tell either. 

New Yawk Times: Ala. is Pre-School Model

     An article in the paper says Alabama is already succeeding at a program promoted by President Obama in his State of The Union Address Tuesday night:

 Alabama is one of only five states whose preschool program received top marks based on an assessment of its quality standards by the National Institute for Early Education Research, but only 6 percent of 4-year-olds there are enrolled in a state-financed preschool.

The preschool push started with Democrat Don Siegelman, and was continued somewhat under Republicans Bob Riley and now Robert Bentley. The Republicans are not being altruistic...they see preschool as a kind of early worker training.

Vermont is For Lovers (No Church needed)

Vermont is for Lovers was the name of a movie.....but apparently it's strictly a secular love. A new poll from the Gallup folks shows Vermont is the least religious of the states. Alabama is way up there at #3.

The top ten:




======================================================================

Talking Turkey

Jimmy Harris from The Alabama Nature Center came by Alabama News Network this morning and brought a Turkey named Ringo with him (Once an animal has been given a name, is he or she safe from ending up on a dinner table?)

Jamie Langley and Jimmy Harris w/Ringo the turkey

Ringo was ready for his closeup!

[UPDATE: Uh, I guess it would have been nice of me to include the reason Jimmy came by...he's promoting a fundraising run for The Nature Center. It's called the Critter Crawl, and you can read about the event this Saturday here.