Orange Crate Art

SSNs

2012-01-27T08:42:00.001-06:00

[“Man looking at film records containing social security numbers at the Social Security Board.” Photograph by Thomas D. Mcavoy. Baltimore, Maryland, 1938. From the Life Photo Archive.]

Thinking about Google’s new [Lack of] Privacy Policy reminded me of this photograph, which for some time I’d been planning to post.

Politics as infotainment

2012-01-26T20:44:00.002-06:00

I turned on the television to watch a few minutes of the Republican debate and heard the voice of hard-hitting journalist Wolf Blitzer: “Stay tuned to find out why each man on this stage thinks his wife would be the best First Lady.”

That was enough.

“Fine-grained choices”

2012-01-26T10:01:00.000-06:00

From Google’s Privacy Principles:

From Google’s new Privacy Policy:

So much for “fine-grained choices.” The choice now, as we used to say in Brooklyn: Like it or lump it.

Logic and porridge

2012-01-26T08:57:00.000-06:00

When I teach ancient works, I like to point out that logical coherence is not always the point. For instance: if it’s the tenth year of the war, why is King Priam only now asking Helen to identify the various Achaeans laying siege to Troy? I think there’s only one good answer to such a question: “It’s a story.” For the purposes of the story, it makes sense to have Priam ask about these things, tenth year or no tenth year: his questions and comments let us understand his attitude toward “the enemy” (quite different from those that hold in our world). And in Iliad 3, it really is as if the war is just beginning, tenth year or no tenth year: single combat between Menelaus and Paris — now they think of it? — might settle the Helen question, until Athena breaks the armies’ truce and battle begins in 4.

When I raise or respond to this kind of logical question, I invoke the story of Goldilocks and the three bears. How can one bowl of porridge be too hot, one too cold, and one just right? Well, it’s a story. I am now happy (I think) to see that I am not the first person to have wondered about the temperature differences. Physicist Chad Orzel addressed the question in a 2009 blog post: The Faulty Thermodynamics of Children’s Stories (Uncertain Principles: Physics, Politics, Pop Culture). And there’s a 2007 novel that investigates the question (and many more questions), Jasper Fforde’s The Fourth Bear.

[Reader, have you read Jasper Fforde?]

Still drifting

2012-01-26T08:32:00.001-06:00

Richard Arum and Jospia Roksa have been following the students of Academically Adrift into life after college. The general conclusion, as summarized by the Chronicle of Higher Education: “College graduates who showed paltry gains in critical thinking and little academic engagement while in college have a harder time than their more accomplished peers as they start their careers.” No surprise there, only a strong reminder: a credential alone is not enough.

Related reading
Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses (my review)

Apple and China, continued

2012-01-26T08:20:00.000-06:00

From the latest New York Times report on Apple in China:

“We’re trying really hard to make things better,” said one former Apple executive. “But most people would still be really disturbed if they saw where their iPhone comes from.”

The details are horrific.

In a related story, a nationwide Times survey found that owners of Apple products are largely unaware of where those products are manufactured. Only eighteen percent knew (or thought?) that Apple products are made abroad.

I envy Mary Richards

2012-01-25T08:37:00.001-06:00

I have been watching The Mary Tyler Moore Show on Me-TV, and I must confess: I envy Mary Richards. Not her hair. Nor her cozy little part-of-a-house apartment. Nor her architectural-salvage M.

I envy Mary Richards the simplicity of her technology. The sum total: A table-top telephone. A Sony portable television, reception adjusted by built-in antenna. A Sony stereo system: a receiver/radio/turntable unit and two small speakers. A portable manual typewriter.

Mary never had to figure out how to get an old-phone ringtone into a cell phone. Her ring came with the phone, loud and clear. Mary never had to reprogram her television after getting a new cable box. She watched what was already “on” and reprogrammed by changing the channel. Mary did not have to buy a ground loop isolator to fix a problem with a humming turntable, only to find that the device failed to fix the problem. Her turntable was grounded. Mary did not to have to uninstall the software package that came with her HP printer and download a simpler and better package from Apple. She used Wite-Out.

Of course, Mary never made it past 1977.

Jokes for Murray Slaughter to insert in the above paragraphs:

“Cell phone? Sounds like something you’d use in prison.”

“Cable box? Sounds like what Marie uses for storing sweaters.”

“A humming turntable? Doesn’t it know the words?”

“Download? Sounds like what Lou’s gonna do to Ted in about five minutes.”

[I had just about the same stereo as a teenager. The simplest way to remove a turntable hum might be to get an extension cord and run all components to the same outlet. And Elaine got it out of me: I do kinda envy Mary her apartment.]

Infinite Jest and Liberal Arts

2012-01-25T08:31:00.002-06:00

Josh Radnor directs and stars with Elizabeth Olson in the new film Liberal Arts:

“The screenplay is salted with a love of literature, and David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest plays a key role. “That book really messes you up,” Radnor said. “But read it.”

Sundance Film Festival: Josh Radnor’s wry and touching Liberal Arts a major hit (77 Square)

Related reading
All David Foster Wallace posts (via Pinboard)

The Last Mountain

2012-01-24T09:07:00.000-06:00

[Click for a larger view.]

The mother of all environmental problems is the climate-change issue. It is very real; it is happening today; and at the core of the problem is coal.

Gus Speth, former dean, Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, quoted in The Last Mountain

*

The epicenter of the climate-change battle in the United States is Appalachian coal, and the epicenter of the battle around Appalachian coal is Coal River Mountain.

Allen Hershkowitz, Senior Scientist, Natural Resources Defense Council, also quoted in The Last Mountain

The documentary The Last Mountain (dir. Bill Haney, 2011) tells the story of West Virginians’ fight against mountaintop removal mining, a technology with catastrophic consequences for the environment and human health. In this film, the line between what’s wrong and what’s right is clear. Greed, corporate lobbying, and utter disregard for the well-being of West Virginia’s people are amply on display. (Meet Don Blankenship.) But there’s hope too, in the promise of wind power and in the efforts of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and a host of dedicated citizens and environmental activists. Among them: Susan Bird, Maria Gunnoe, Jennifer Hall-Massey, Lorelei Scarbro, David Aaron Smith, Bo Webb, and Ed Wiley. Their names are as important to note as those of the better-known figures. Watch Ed Wiley stand up to West Virginia’s then-governor Joe Manchin: we should all have such courage.

Read more
The Last Mountain (the film’s website)

[This film serves as a nice reminder that giving money to the candidate, not the party, can be a smarter choice. That a contribution to the Democratic National Committee might help the likes of Joe Manchin makes me cringe.]

Chrome and Flash

2012-01-23T13:23:00.001-06:00

Chrome-and-Flash problems seem to be in the air. From Lockergnome: How To Fix Shockwave Flash Crashes in Google Chrome.

Serving suggestion

2012-01-23T13:03:00.000-06:00

Gunther at Lexikaliker found an interesting Serviervorschlag [serving suggestion.] The picture is funny in any language.

Apple and China

2012-01-23T10:41:00.001-06:00

From a New York Times article on why Apple products are made in China:

A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.

How the U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work (New York Times)

Related listening
“Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory” (This American Life)

National Handwriting Day

2012-01-23T08:19:00.003-06:00

[“. . . Unit on Germs and one on Atoms or the Human Body. I think it was a very good idea to have Penmanship so that we can improve our handwritings. I also think that we should have . . . .”]

It’s National Handwriting Day. Because it’s the birthday of John Hancock.

Above, a sample of my 1967 handwriting, courtesy of my fifth-grade teacher Marcia Schorr. Thanks, Mrs. Schorr. And thank you for everything.

Related reading
All handwriting posts (via Pinboard)

[Yes, I always had trouble with the cursive capital I.]

Now more than ever

2012-01-22T11:13:00.000-06:00

On December 4, 2011, in an idle moment of amateur prophecy, I wrote:

If Romney becomes the nominee, look for Bain to become a familiar name in political discourse. I think though that it’ll be Gingrich, and that Obama v. Gingrich will resemble Clinton v. Dole. Gingrich seems well suited to play a cranky old guy.

I still think it’ll be Gingrich. And indeed, he seems well suited to play a cranky old guy. More specifically, a cranky old white guy. The next nine months will, I think, come to feel like a slog through toxic sludge. But I have little doubt about how the election will go.

[If I were a Republican voter, I’d have voted for Jon Huntsman. I guess I wouldn’t have a great career as a Republican voter.]

An ism

2012-01-21T09:33:00.004-06:00

What my friend Sara calls an “ism”:

Learning is the process of realizing you did not create the world.

It’s hers, and it’s one smart ism.

Hi and Lois watch

2012-01-21T09:29:00.002-06:00

[Hi and Lois, January 10, 2012.]

[Hi and Lois, January 16, 2012.]

Though its characters haven’t aged in years, the Hi and Lois world is ever in flux. Furniture disappears and windows change shape in the interstices; a neighbor changes his hair color and no one says a thing. I like the contrast between the speech balloons above: first Hi’s risqué suggestion, then the twins’ cheerful cure for Lois’s seasonal affective disorder.¹ I notice too that the windows have again changed shape.

But there’s a more fundamental difference (as Professor Gingrich might say) between the above panels. Notice how the art has changed: as of January 15, every character, every object, every speech balloon is enclosed by a thick Sharpie-like line. I’ve read that eight people “animate” the strip: it looks as if they’re taking turns.

Update, January 22: Things are back to normal on the Hi-Lo production line. (But that shadow?)

[Hi and Lois, January 22, 2012.]

¹ Re: seasonal affective disorder: that’s what Lois thinks is wrong. I suspect though that it has something to do with Hi’s clumsy attempt to “turn up the heat.”

Related reading
All Hi and Lois posts (via Pinboard)

Time Inc. notebook

2012-01-20T08:32:00.001-06:00

[“Notebook of Time Inc. co-founder Briton Hadden with suggestions and ideas for new magazines.” Photographer unknown. 1929. From the Life Photo Archive. Click for a larger view.]

I like the idea of a “letter mag” (right under “secy mag”) — I’d like to think that meant a magazine devoted to letters as in stamps and stationery, not letters as in literature.

[I’ve written two letters this year. How about you?]

Definitive Jest

2012-01-20T08:27:00.001-06:00

Jarett Myskiw’s Definitive Jest: “a vocabulary-building and SNOOT-approved word-of-the-day blog centered around David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest.”

Related reading
All David Foster Wallace posts (via Pinboard)

[In the essay “Authority and American Usage,” Wallace glosses SNOOT as his “nuclear family’s nickname for a really extreme usage fanatic.” The acronym stands for “Sprachgefühl Necessitates Our Ongoing Tendance” or “Syntax Nudniks Of Our Time.“ “Authority and American Usage” appears in Consider the Lobster and Other Essays (New York: Little, Brown, 2005). The essay first appeared in Harper’s as “Tense Present: Democracy, English, and the Wars over Usage.”]

Bands and punctuation

2012-01-20T08:22:00.002-06:00

Some of what’s here is diacritics, not punctuation. But it would be pedantic to point that out: A Brief Guide to Band Name Punctuation.

[Don’t forget Tony! Toni! Toné!]

PHONE SCAM

2012-01-19T20:03:00.001-06:00

I had to laugh when I saw the ID for this incoming call: was it the result of some new truth-in-dialing law? No. It’s the phone company doing its work. Do a search for 567-248-4400 and you’ll find endless reports of nuisance calls about lowering credit-card rates. Bravo, phone company.

Illegibility and shopping

2012-01-19T17:10:00.000-06:00

On the list:

plague rinse

sympathy carol

nuanced garlic

basmati nice

Yes, that was my own handwriting staring back at me. And National Handwriting Day is just days away. I better get in shape.

Jessica Mitford on the Famous Writers School

2012-01-19T08:43:00.000-06:00

From the July 1970 Atlantic, Jessica Mitford’s Let Us Now Appraise Famous Writers. Go, read!

[Correspondence schools: the original “distance learning.”]

Writing about writing

2012-01-19T08:42:00.005-06:00

If you’re going to write about writing, write well. Someone at the Huffington Post didn’t:

“Twitter, with it’s unavoidable limitations . . . .”

[When is it its? When it’s not it is. When is it it’s? When it is it is.]

“”The logical steps your reader has to navigate to find the meaning of your sentence is more difficult if you use the passive voice.”

[Well, sometimes, sort of. But we don’t navigate steps in reading a sentence; we navigate the sentence. And we don’t “find the meaning” of a sentence; we understand a sentence (or don’t). Things are also more difficult when your subjects and verbs don’t agree.]

“Adverbs are inherently weakening.”

[I wondered whether the writer is joking about inherently, but nothing else in his presentation makes me think that he is. At any rate, this claim about adverbs is absurd: if I say I slept fitfully, the adverb is crucial to my meaning.]

[“When is it its?” is from Jessica Mitford’s Poison Penmanship: The Gentle Art of Muckraking (1979). Does anyone still read — or listen to — Jessica Mitford? I was Huffington Post-free for weeks till (not ’til) a Google Alert pulled me back in, dammit.]

A related post
Its and it’s

Print as the new vinyl

2012-01-19T08:39:00.002-06:00

From an e-mail by an “industry insider”:

Long-term there’s no future in printed books. They’ll be like vinyl: pricey and for collectors only.

Confessions of a Publisher: “We’re in Amazon’s Sights and They’re Going to Kill Us” (PandoDaily)

(Found via Daring Fireball)

Update, 9:48 a.m.: Apple has just announced iBooks Author, a free OS X app for ~~destroying textbook publishers~~ creating e-books.