Driven to distraction

From "Driven to distraction by technology":

For years, technology has worked to get people more connected. In the office there's e-mail, instant messages and the phone. On the road, cell phones and BlackBerrys enable workers to stay in touch with colleagues.

There is a mini rebellion under way, however. Desperate for some quiet time to think, people are coming up with low-tech strategies to get away from all their technology. That has Microsoft and others taking note and looking for ways to create software that can be more adept at preventing interruptions.

"If you don't have that sort of free time to dream and muse and mull, then you are not being creative, by definition," said Dan Russell, a senior manager at IBM's Almaden Research Center in San Jose, Calif.

After concluding three years ago that he was becoming a slave to e-mail, Russell decided to put his foot down. These days, he takes his time replying to messages. All his responses say at the bottom: "Join the slow email movement! Read your mail just twice each day. Recapture your life's time and relearn to dream."

As someone making the effort to cut down on checking my e-mail, I like Dan Russell's advice. Microsoft's response--more software!--reminds me of what happens when you call to cancel cable television: the cable company tries to sell you more channels. The real solution of course is to step away from the machine.

You can read Ina Fried's CNET News article by clicking here. (Via 43 Folders.)

Faux Faulkner

From "The Administration and the Fury," by Sam Apple, winning entry in the 2005 Faux Faulkner contest:

Down the hall, under the chandelier, I could see them talking. They were walking toward me and Dick's face was white, and he stopped and gave a piece of paper to Rummy, and Rummy looked at the piece of paper and shook his head. He gave the paper back to Dick and Dick shook his head. They disappeared and then they were standing right next to me.

"Georgie's going to walk down to the Oval Office with me," Dick said.

"I just hope you got him all good and ready this time," Rummy said.

"Hush now," Dick said. "This aint no laughing matter. He know lot more than folks think." Dick patted me on the back good and hard. "Come on now, Georgie," Dick said. "Never mind you, Rummy."

We walked down steps to the office. There were paintings of old people on the walls and the room was round like a circle and Condi was sitting on my desk. Her legs were crossed.

"Did you get him ready for the press conference?" Dick said.

"Dont you worry about him. He'll be ready," Condi said. Condi stood up from the desk. Her legs were long and she smelled like the Xeroxed copies of the information packets they give me each day.

"Hello Georgie," Condi said. "Did you come to see Condi?" Condi rubbed my hair and it tickled.

"Dont go messing up his hair," Dick said. "Hes got a press conference in a few minutes."

If you don't understand what's going on here, join Oprah's Book Club and start reading The Sound and the Fury. You can read the rest of "The Administration and the Fury," along with the two runners-up, by clicking here.

Update: The above link is defunct, but you can still read Sam Apple's parody in Slate via the link below.

» The Administration and the Fury

On handwriting and typing

W.H. Auden, from "Writing":

Most people enjoy the sight of their own handwriting as they enjoy the smell of their own farts. Much as I loathe the typewriter, I must admit that it is a help in self-criticism. Typescript is so impersonal and hideous to look at that, if I type out a poem, I immediately see defects which I missed when I looked through it in manuscript. When it comes to a poem by somebody else, the severest test I know of is to write it out in longhand. The physical tedium of doing this ensures that the slightest defect will reveal itself; the hand is constantly looking for an excuse to stop.

[From The Dyer's Hand and Other Essays (1962).]

Funny that in our time typing (or "word-processing") seems to mask defects--everything looks so slick, so finished, so right. To paraphrase Alexander Pope, our attitude about "word-processed" text seems to be that "Whatever is in Times New Roman, is right." Thus it is that teachers of writing often recommend printing a draft in an unfamiliar and unpretty font, so that the text it loses its fine appearance and becomes more readily subject to revision. (Try printing in Courier New and see what I mean).

"Stacks' Appeal"

From "Stacks' Appeal," by "Thomas H. Benton" ( a pseudonym):

What does it mean when the University of Texas at Austin removes nearly all of the books from its undergraduate library to make room for coffee bars, computer terminals, and lounge chairs? What are students in those "learning commons" being taught that is qualitatively better than what they learned in traditional libraries?

I think the absence of books confirms the disposition to regard them as irrelevant. Many entering students come from nearly book-free homes. Many have not read a single book all the way through; they are instead trained to surf and skim. Teachers increasingly find it difficult to get students to consult printed materials, and yet we are making those materials even harder to obtain. Online journal articles are suitable for searching and extraction, but how conducive is a computer for reading a novel?

I also suspect that retrieval of books in the context of food service and roving helpers inculcates in students a disturbing combination of passivity and entitlement, as if they are diners in a fancy restaurant rather than students doing their homework. The "learning commons" seems consistent with the consumerist model of education that we all recognize: "I deserve an 'A' because I'm paying a lot of money to come here (even if I spend all my time playing video games and hanging out at the new campus fitness center)."

You can read the essay, from the Chronicle of Higher Education, here. (Via Arts & Letters Daily.)

Everyday details in film

When I watch old movies, I always like looking at the details of everyday life as imagined on film. That's how I first noticed the snowglobe in Susan Alexander's boarding-house room in Citizen Kane. The cigarette-lighter and Bull Durham sack on Sam Spade's night-table in The Maltese Falcon, the signs strung across the drugstore in The Best Years of Our Lives, the sad furnishings of Garzah's room in The Naked City -- they all move me to hit Pause and undertake my own version of Cultural Studies. Here's something I just took in on the DVD release of The Grapes of Wrath -- the menu-board in a diner where the Joads stop to buy a loaf of bread (a 15¢ loaf, which they are able to buy for 10¢). The menu stands a silent commentary on the distance between the Joads and their dream of a better life:

T BONE STEAK   35
RIB STEAK   30
PORK CHOPS   25
ROAST CHICKEN   25
ROAST BEEF   25
ROAST LAMB   25
ROAST PORK   25
LIVER & ONIONS   25
BOILED HAM   25
COLD MEATS   25
STEW   15
SALADS   10
SOUP
PIES
COLD DRINKS

(The prices of the last three items are obscured by a counter display of lollipops.)

Makeover

I just spent an hour or so fiddling with another template, Douglas Bowman's Minima, changing the font, changing the title-style and colors. Tedious, but somehow fun. This new design is, to my eyes, cleaner, brighter, and, uhh, oranger.

From the Greek: panegyric

From Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day:

The Word of the Day for July 18 is:

panegyric \pan-uh-JEER-ik\ noun
: a eulogistic oration or writing; also : formal or elaborate praise

Example sentence:
At the symposium, Dr. Fields introduced his colleague with a lengthy panegyric that detailed her research, her publications, and her most recent awards.

Did you know?
On certain fixed dates throughout the year, the ancient Greeks would come together for religious meetings. Such gatherings could range from hometown affairs to great national assemblies, but large or small, the meeting was called a "panegyris." (That name comes from "pan," meaning "all" and "agyris," meaning "assembly.") At those assemblies, speakers provided the main entertainment, and they delivered glowing orations extolling the praises of present civic leaders and reliving the past glories of Greek cities. To the Greeks, those laudatory speeches were "panegyrikos," which means "of or for a panegyris." Latin speakers ultimately transformed "panegyrikos" into the noun "panegyricus," and English speakers adapted that Latin term to form "panegyric."

NYT apostrophe

From the New York Times online, a link on the front page (as it were):

The Smith's Music, on Stage

That should be Smiths', plural possessive.

This goof and others (this one, for instance) suggest that writing errors are filtering ever upward.

Update: The error on the Times page has been corrected. Is the paper catching its (not it's) own mistakes? Responding to e-mail corrections from readers?

Arts and science

In the course of the interview described here, Van Dyke Parks quotes John Maeda, professor of media arts and sciences at the Media Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology:

Amidst all the attention given to the sciences as to how they can lead to the cure of all diseases and daily problems of mankind, I believe that the biggest breakthrough will be the realization that the arts, which are conventionally considered "useless," will be recognized as the whole reason why we ever try to live longer or live more prosperously. The arts are the science of enjoying life.

This comment appeared in the November 11, 2003 New York Times; you can see an image of the print version here.

And here are links to Maeda's blog, Thoughts on Simplicity, and to samples of his work. I especially like "Line."

Van Dyke Parks interviewed

There's a two-hour podcast from Cotolo Chronicles featuring an interview with Van Dyke Parks (whose song "Orange Crate Art" gave this blog its name). You can find the interview as a 27.6 mb download by clicking here. Scroll down to the July 14, 2005 download. The interview begins at about the thirty-minute mark.

Here's a choice Parks remark, carefully transcribed:

It all led to an opportunity for arranging, and that's what I've done for my entire life is arranging and trying to surround myself with talent and learn how to be a collaborative talent myself, be the best beta-male I can think of, because of my devotion to the motion, my eyes being on the prize, as they are, which is just to go ahead and do music in any way I can. Sometimes that means even taking an accordion on an airplane.

[Parks played accordion on the Beach Boys' "Kokomo."]

And one more, on his love of many kinds of music, from Schubert to calypso:

I'm sorry to say I love music. I'm a goat; I eat everything.