"The Mail Moment"

From a New York Times article by James Fallows, "Why the Internet Isn't the Death of the Post Office":

The most touching artifact among these mail studies is a survey conducted by the Postal Service and called "The Mail Moment."

"Two-thirds of all consumers do not expect to receive personal mail, but when they do, it makes their day," it concluded. "This 'hope' keeps them coming back each day." Even in this age of technology, according to the survey, 55 percent of Americans said they looked forward to discovering what each day's mail might hold.

As Fallows points out, personal letters "account for less than 1 percent of the 100 billion pieces of first-class mail that the Postal Service handles each year."

So here's a suggestion: Make someone's day, three or four days from today, by sitting down and writing a letter.

Link: "Why the Internet Isn't the Death of the Post Office"

[To read Times articles online, use mediajunkie as your name and password, or create an account of your own.]

Laughter and tears

From Andrew Sullivan:

"The good news is--and it's hard for some to see it now--that out of this chaos is going to come a fantastic Gulf Coast, like it was before. Out of the rubbles of Trent Lott's house--he's lost his entire house--there's going to be a fantastic house. And I'm looking forward to sitting on the porch." (Laughter). --president George W. Bush, today.

Just think of that quote for a minute; and the laughter that followed. The poor and the black are dying, dead, drowned and desperate in New Orleans and elsewhere. But the president manages to talk about the future "fantastic" porch of a rich, powerful white man who only recently resigned his position because he regretted the failure of Strom Thurmond to hold back the tide of racial desegregation.

Also worth reading: "The Rebellion of the Talking Heads," from Slate, on reporters' increasing impatience with official assurances and platitudes:

In the last couple of days, many of the broadcasters reporting from the bowl-shaped toxic waste dump that was once the city of New Orleans have stopped playing the role of wind-swept wet men facing down a big storm to become public advocates for the poor, the displaced, the starving, the dying, and the dead.

Last night, CNN's Anderson Cooper abandoned the old persona to throttle Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., in a live interview.

"Does the federal government bear responsibility for what is happening now? Should they apologize for what is happening now?" Cooper opened.

As if campaigning before the local Democratic Ladies' Club lunch, Landrieu sing-songed back, "Anderson, there will be plenty of time to discuss all of those issues, about why, and how, and what, and if." She went on to thank President Bush, President Clinton, former President Bush, Senators Frist and Reid, and "all leaders that are coming to Louisiana, and Mississippi, and Alabama," for their help.

Her condescending filibuster continued: "Anderson, tonight, I don't know if you've heard--maybe you all have announced it--but Congress is going to an unprecedented session to pass a $10 billion supplemental bill tonight to keep FEMA and the Red Cross up and operating."

Cooper suspended the traditional TV rules of decorum and, approaching tears of fury, said:

Excuse me, Senator, I'm sorry for interrupting. I haven't heard that, because, for the last four days, I've been seeing dead bodies in the streets here in Mississippi. And to listen to politicians thanking each other and complimenting each other, you know, I got to tell you, there are a lot of people here who are very upset, and very angry, and very frustrated.

And when they hear politicians slap--you know, thanking one another, it just, you know, it kind of cuts them the wrong way right now, because literally there was a body on the streets of this town yesterday being eaten by rats because this woman had been laying in the street for 48 hours. And there's not enough facilities to take her up.

Do you get the anger that is out here? …

I mean, I know you say there's a time and a place for, kind of, you know, looking back, but this seems to be the time and the place. I mean, there are people who want answers, and there are people who want someone to stand up and say, "You know what? We should have done more. Are all the assets being brought to bear?"

Landrieu kept her cool, probably because she's in Baton Rouge, while the stink of corpses caused Cooper to tremble in rage all the way to the commercial break.

Link: "The Rebellion of the Talking Heads"

PocketMod

Too cool for school: the PocketMod. This Flash program lets you design and print an 8.5 x 11 page that folds into a nifty 8-page booklet. It's great for keeping notes for the day in a pocket or wallet. The page templates include lines, grids, calendars, even tic-tac-toe. And it's all free.

High Water Everywhere

Oh Lordy, women and grown men drown
Oh, women and children sinkin' down
[spoken: Lord have mercy]
I couldn't see nobody's home
and wasn't no one to be found

From Charley Patton's 1929 recording "High Water Everywhere (Part II)," chronicling the catastrophic Mississippi flood of 1927.

Link: The American Red Cross

F-words

From the Daily Mail:

A secondary school is to allow pupils to swear at teachers--as long as they don't do so more than five times in a lesson. A running tally of how many times the f-word has been used will be kept on the board. If a class goes over the limit, they will be "spoken" to at the end of the lesson.

The astonishing policy, which the school says will improve the behaviour of pupils, was condemned by parents' groups and MPs yesterday. They warned it would backfire.

Parents were advised of the plan, which comes into effect when term starts next week, in a letter from the Weavers School in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire.

Assistant headmaster Richard White said the policy was aimed at 15 and 16-year-olds in two classes which are considered troublesome.

"Within each lesson the teacher will initially tolerate (although not condone) the use of the f-word (or derivatives) five times and these will be tallied on the board so all students can see the running score," he wrote in the letter

"Over this number the class will be spoken to by the teacher at the end of the lesson."

Parents called the rule "wholly irresponsible and ludicrous."

Link: "You can use the f-word in class (but only five times)"

Getting the truth

Six months before the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison broke into public view, a small and fairly obscure private association of United States Marine Corps members posted on its Web site a document on how to get enemy POWs to talk.

The document described a situation very similar to the one the United States faces in the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan: a fanatical and implacable enemy, intense pressure to achieve quick results, a brutal war in which the old rules no longer seem to apply.

Marine Major Sherwood F. Moran, the report's author, noted that despite the complexities and difficulties of dealing with an enemy from such a hostile and alien culture, some American interrogators consistently managed to extract useful information from prisoners. The successful interrogators all had one thing in common in the way they approached their subjects. They were nice to them.

From Stephen Budiansky's article "Truth Extraction," in the Atlantic Monthly, June 2005.

Link: "Truth Extraction"

Link: Sherwood F. Moran's "Suggestions for Japanese Interpreters" (available as a .pdf download from the page) The document is no longer available.

For freshpersons

Advice for college freshpersons, from college sophomores.

Link: "The keys to freshman success"

While my ukulele gently weeps

Below, a link to a Quicktime peformance of George Harrison's "While My Guitar Gently Weeps"--on ukulele. Jake Shimabukuro's virtuosity must be heard and seen to be believed.

GH was a great ukulele devotee in his final years; he often has a uke in hand in the Anthology documentary. I wonder whether he ever heard JS.

Link: Jake Shimabukuro, "While My Guitar Gently Weeps"

April 24, 2006: While the above link is down, you can find the video clip here: Jake Shimabukuro, "While My Guitar Gently Weeps"

[Thanks to Carrie Kourkoumelis, who sent the original link to Elaine Fine, who sent it to me.]

Press Your Luck

Larsen was winning so much money that the running total on his digital contestant podium no longer had sufficient enough real estate to display the dollar sign character. Perspiration dripped from his face. Under the hot lights, surrounded by a bloodthirsty arena of screaming audience members, bracketed by two pissed-off players who hadn't won a goddamn thing, staring straight into the Guy Smiley face of an agitated, loudmouth host who'd long since run out of different ways to proclaim Michael's performance "incredible"--Mr. Larsen was experiencing a horrible secret side-effect of his plan which he could share with no one: he had failed to locate an exit strategy.

In order for Michael to keep his winnings, he'd have to remain trapped on the stage of Press Your Luck forever. His situation was an infinite loop from which there was no escape: he'd learned how to trigger only plunger-hitting patterns nailing a cash prize and a free spin. According to the game's rules, this "free" spin would eventually have to be spun. In other words, each plunger push would lead to another. Nobody else could play, and Larsen himself could never stop playing.

A scenario that sounds like something from a Steven Millhauser novel. You can read about the luck, good and bad, of game-show contestant Michael Larsen, by clicking on the link below.

Link: Press Your Luck: The Michael Larsen Incident

[Thanks to Stephen Murphy for the link.]

Paper chase

From Inside Higher Ed:

On the first day of classes, the ritual has been the same for decades: Professors hand out copies of the syllabus and walk students through it. But in most courses at the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh this fall, the only thing professors may hand out is a URL.

That’s because the dean of the College of Letters and Science told professors that--for financial and educational reasons--they should put their syllabuses online, and stop distributing them on the first day of classes. If students want to print out copies, they can do so themselves, says Michael Zimmerman, the dean.

Zimmerman says that the Wisconsin system’s budget "has been cut relentlessly" and that deans have no choice but to try to save every penny. Zimmerman has been dean for 14 years, and his college’s budget (about $18.5 million) is down from where it was when he started. Not a single unit in his college is receiving more money now than when he started, despite inflation generally and huge increases in costs such as scientific equipment.

"We have to set priorities," he says.

The college never figured out the exact cost of printing syllabuses, he says. But copies cost the college about 2 cents a page, nearly all of the university’s 11,000 students take at least some classes in the college, and syllabuses run from a page to 15 pages.

How much money might Dean Zimmerman be saving? If one estimates 50,000 syllabi, five pages each, the college would save $5,000 by not xeroxing. I would think that there'd be better and easier ways to save $5,000. Then again, it's possible that the Dean has chosen this highly visible cost-cutting measure to call attention to the dire budgetary situation at his school.

Link: "The End of the Paper Syllabus"