Is Winter Weather a Grind?

 A Winter Diversion

        After a while snow, ice, gray skies, freezing temperatures and being confined inside is a drag. I know. 

        So, what if your job is a beach?

        And what if waring 5000 pound elephant seals were a job hazard?

    

        That's the deal for a couple of Cal Poly researchers recording behavior and communication sounds of elephant seals at our local rookery. The battling brutes kept wrestling closer to equipment.

        Try being nonchalant as the bull edges ever closer while your colleague is trying to extract a sound boom that another beach resident has rolled on down at the ocean.

        It's not always picnic at the Pacific shore. Researching the colony also includes counting the pups that don't survive.

       Still, the beach beats any office I've known.

        And who's going to complain about you catching a nap?

        When compared to those winter's past, it's hard to think of even a foggy and cool day as being a bad day at the beach. That idea is shared out here.

 

         February can be brutal out there. On the central cost, it brings green and the hint of the spring's renewal that comes to all. 

    

        Back when my patience with winter chill and hazard was at its end, I'd start playing Paul Simon's April Come She Will.

     It will and for those of you in freezing temperatures, rain and snow, hope the adage "life's a beach!" warms you a bit. 

    See you down the trail.

IT'S WILD and NOT SO

SHOW TIME

   There's been an unusual amount of commotion along the Cambria to San Simeon shoreline this year.

Photo by Mike Griffin

   The warmer ocean has brought an extraordinary number of humpback whales closer to shore.

    It is a great enjoyment to hear the oohs and ahhs and wonderment of tourists who maybe seeing their first whale up close.

   The Central Coast has been a beautiful western stage this summer.

BEARS

     I am an unabashed fan and enthusiast of Yosemite National Park, wishing that everyone could visit and feel the experience.

     The park prepares excellent video reports and this piece on bears, featuring some almost unbelievable historic footage is too good not to share with readers of this blog.

Enjoy.

A SLO TREASURE

  We recently discovered the Leaning Pine Arboretum on the Cal Poly campus in San Luis Obispo.  What a jewel it is!

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

    See you down the trail.

CONNECTIVITY AND LIFE INTERNETTED

LIVING BENEATH THE MOON

    Shooting the moon, the recent blood moon, gave me a chance to tweak around with a new camera.

WEBS

  Spider webs are forever fascinating.

THE HUMAN WEB
NEW CONNECTIVITY'S

    It would have been nice to know this woman's father.

   Jim Hayes was a beloved journalism professor who mentored an impressive retinue of high calibre users of words.

    Dayle Hayes paraphrased the Norman Maclean novel A River Runs Through It in remembering her father when she said, "There is no clear line between religion and words." She said in her father's life words were religion.

    Dayle opened ADVANCING INTEGRITY IN JOURNALISM AND COMMUNICATION-JIM HAYES SYMPOSIUM at Cal Poly.  The impressive  presentations that followed underscored the legacy her father seeded in practitioners as well as the confounding issues that challenge 21st Century journalism and communication.

     Presenters included Peter King Director Public Affairs, University of California and former LA Times reporter, editor and columnist.  David Kerley ABC News Correspondent, Judy Muller professor at USC's Annenberg School for Communications and Journalism, NPR Commentator and former ABC Correspondent, Robert Logan of the US National Library of Medicine at the National Institutes of Health, Kevin Riggs former television newsman and now a senior vice president of Randle Communications, Patrick Linn professor of Philosophy and Director of the Ethics + Emerging Sciences group, an author and expert on artificial intelligence and robotics, and Karen Miller Pensiero editor of Newsroom Standards for the Wall Street Journal.

     Pensiero's Keynote affirmed the need for ethics and core values even as journalism and communication morph into new methods of gathering and distribution. She eschewed the idea that social media is self correcting. 
     Pensiero observed that news group "brands" must now co-exist with  the "franchises" of some of their own employees. She was responding to my inquiry about Ezra Klein leaving the Washington Post for Vox Media, the Wall Street Journal's own Walter Mossberg departing for his new Re/Code and Nate Silver's taking of his 535 franchise from the New York Times to ESPN and his own private label. "I see no end to it," she said noting it is part of the new world.

    Judy Muller played the iconic clip of Walter Cronkite choking back a tear as he announced the death of President Kennedy. She said that was "emotionalism" in journalism in a 1960's world. By contrast she played clips of Anderson Cooper  angrily going off on Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu for political back patting as victims of a Gulf storm continued to suffer and as bodies laid on streets. She played a clip of CNN's Jake Tapper being emotional as he covered disorder in Ferguson. I asked her to reflect on the differences of Tapper's emotionalism to Tom Pettit's coverage and that of others during the 1960's civil rights disturbances. She said she thought if they could have used the same live technology they too may have been more emotional.  

      It's my view the jury is out on that assessment. Everything was different then and those who practiced journalism saw themselves as distillers and handlers of information. Our emotions were not to be a part of the coverage and in fact the entire process was a series of filters.But Muller is correct, emotionalism and commentary are a part of the current delivery, like it or not. Her suggestion for Media Literacy training for students is a wise idea.

 

     In this time of Ebola and media inspired fear, Logan's presentation dealing with weighing best evidence and providing contextualization was a healthy antidote.

     Based on the accounts given by presenters, Hayes must have been an extraordinary "teacher/editor." The audience included alumna and alumni, professionals, a few retirees and students, though the information has value to all who use any form of media.

      Ethicist and Artificial Intelligence expert Dr. Patrick Lin, blew a few minds when he put three news briefs on the screen. Each had been written by a robot. It was part of his discussion of Algorithmic Curation, the affect of data mining and organization that you may see in your own life. Here's what I mean. Research a new camera for example and suddenly web sites you visit feature camera ads. Lin said present generation algorithmic writing programs are very effective at correlation but bad at determining causation. Correlation is not causation. An example he cited makes the point. Traffic fatalities decrease when there is an increase in the import of lemons from Mexico. Artificial Intelligence can spot a correlation, but can't make the judgement there is no connection.  

      Lin made good points in noting that values change with time and we seem to be witnessing what he called a "democratization of news." He concluded that ethics is a competitive advantage.

       With more demands placed on journalists-the need to tweet, blog, shoot video, edit and report at the same time, with demanding editors and a hungry news machine to feed-it is reassuring to know the values taught by a fellow who must have been a helluva good professor have been enshrined in what I hope will be an annual symposium on integrity. The world needs it.

       See you down the trail

ENCHANTED AND ENCHANTING, NO HATE HERE! AND THE CLOONEY CONUNDRUM

ENCHANTING

    Pacific coast evenings are the stuff of novels or cinema.

    Cozy, eclectic and exquisite dinning with family,friends   and sometimes with "show biz" luminaries. Part of the unique vibe.

THE MONUMENTS MEN

     I don't understand why there is such a disparate range of reaction to George Clooney's latest project-The Monuments Men. I wouldn't nominate it for a film of the year, but it is a good film, entertaining and important. Important because it tells history, revealing a little known aspect of the larger destruction of WWII. But some simply do not like it and find faults that I did not see.  It's a great cast, with subtle but studied performances. The film moves by story line, a creative treatment of what actually happened. Had it not been for this special team the Nazi horror and the Allied bombing response would have extracted a cost that fortunately  we do not have to calculate.  Still the film has moments of poignancy as we contemplate what Germany under Hitler did, the barbarity of his mad plans and the extraordinary human toll. It reminds me of a good 1940's film. There is a kind of reminiscence of combat films I saw as a kid, but minus all of the shoot 'em up with more emphasis on the team played well by the entourage cast.

    Is a painting worth a human life?  President Truman asks that question but getting to the answer requires a bit of knowledge and Professor Clooney provides that in a history lesson, entertainingly delivered.  We are better because of knowing it. Thank you Robert Edsel for the book and Clooney and Grant Heslov for the screenplay and movie.

Here's a project

      I read once there are more original VW buses on the road in California than anywhere else. After 7 years of residency, I guess I agree having seen more in the last few years than maybe the previous 40 in Indiana. Most are in great shape, but occasionally you see a "project."

NO HATE HERE

     The regional office of the Anti Defamation League (ADL) responded quickly with a packed house community forum after a jerk crawled out of their rat hole. A cranky woman confronted a new pharmacist and said "you look like your Chinese. I don't appreciate you coming into our town taking jobs from white people."  The pharmacist was born in the Philippines and has lived in the US since he was 4. He had recently purchased the pharmacy. As THE CAMBRIAN columnist John Brannon reported, the man got two "nasty notes" in his mail box. It frightened his wife who cares for their 18 month child. 

      More than 100 people jammed into the auditorium of the Cambria Center for the Arts to affirm support for the man and his family and to discuss how to respond.

       The panel included, from left, history professor Emeritus and columnist Daniel Krieger, Commander Jim Voge of the San Luis Obispo County Sheriffs Department and a Cambria resident, Dr. Elizabeth Myer of Cal Poly, an educational expert in bullying and Catherine Ryan Hyde, author of Pay It Forward and 24 other books, representing the LGBT perspective.  Moderator Deborah Linden served ADL and as a former Police Chief in San Luis Obispo.

      As Commander Vogue and former Chief Linden affirmed, a hate crime incident is so out of character for Cambria. NO HATE HERE buttons, posters and bracelets are showing up around the village. Many have made a point to voice their support of the pharmacist. In more than one way, it takes a village.

      You can read The Cambrian editor Bert Etling's report here.

       See you down the trail.