John Henry's pencil

On the life and death of Wallace Peters, "the mythic three-column accountant at Chesapeake & Ohio Consultants who pitted himself against Microsoft's latest version of the popular spreadsheet program Excel":

Peters challenged the computer after an interoffice memo announced that Excel's powerful upgraded accounting software would render jobs in the accounts receivable division obsolete and result in sweeping layoffs. Although warned repeatedly by his colleagues in billing, Peters insisted that he could beat the software "to the bottom of a large balance sheet of bedrock-hard figures."

Accounting crewmen who worked alongside Peters said his legend as an accounting hero was formed by his willingness to answer to the challenge.

"He'd tell us, 'Now, 20 rows down, the accounting's hard as granite -- it's the hardest thing an office man can stand,'" said Huddie Ledbetter, one of Peters' former trainees, "'but you keep your pencil sharp, and you keep your pencil working. It's the life of a numbers-crunchin' man.'"

To which I'd add:

Lord, Lord. It's the life of a numbers-crunchin' man. It's the life of a numbers-crunchin' man, Lord, Lord. It's the life of a numbers-crunchin' man.

Note that in the post below, I favor writing -- not calculating spreadsheets -- by hand.

» Modern-Day John Henry Dies
Trying To Out-Spreadsheet Excel 11.0 (from The Onion)

Writing by hand

[Advice for students]

A recent piece in Inside Higher Ed by Shari Wilson, "The Surprising Process of Writing," jibes with my observations over the last few years: many students do better with in-class handwritten essays than with word-processed essays written outside of class. My evidence is only anecdotal, but it's consistent enough to suggest that writing by hand may have several significant advantages for many student-writers:

1. Writing by hand simplifies the work of organizing ideas into an essay. Compare the tedium of creating an outline in Microsoft Word with the ease of arranging and rearranging on paper, where ideas can be reordered or added or removed with arrows and strikethroughs. With index cards, reordering is even easier.

2. Writing by hand serves as a reminder that a draft is a draft, not a finished piece of writing. For many student-writers, writing an essay is a matter of composing at the keyboard, hitting Control-P, and being done. More experienced writers know that an initial draft is usually little more than a starting point. Without the sleek look of word-processed text, there's no possibility of mistaking a first effort for a finished piece of writing.

3. Writing by hand helps to minimize the scattering of attention that seems almost inevitable at a computer, with e-mail, instant-messaging, and web-browsing always within easy reach. Even without an online connection, a word-processing program itself offers numerous distractions from writing. Writing by hand keeps the emphasis where it needs to be — on getting the words right, not on fonts, margins, or program settings. Writing is not word-processing.

In some cases, of course, a computer is a necessary and appropriate tool for writing, particularly when a disability makes writing by hand arduous or impossible. But if it's possible, try planning and drafting your next written assignment by hand. Then sit down and type. Thinking and writing away from the computer might make your work go better, as seems to be the case for so many students.

Don Knotts (1924-2006)

Enid Coleslaw has drawn a portrait for her "remedial high school art class." Her teacher Roberta (whose taste in art involves concepts and statements) looks at it, vaguely amused:

Roberta: Who is this, Enid?

Enid: It's supposed to be Don Knotts.

Roberta: And what was your reason for choosing him as your subject?

Enid: I don't know -- I just like Don Knotts.

Roberta: Interesting.

Dialogue from Ghost World, screenplay by Daniel Clowes and Terry Zwigoff (2001).

I just like Don Knotts too.

» Actor Don Knotts, 81, Dies (from the Associated Press)

Overheard

My wife Elaine, as the toaster dinged:

"That's the sound of one tart popping."

This is not a telegram

The Retro-Gram is a faux telegram, delivered as a .pdf via e-mail at no cost, or on paper via first-class mail "for a mere US$3.95." How postmodern can one get?

» Retro-Gram (link via snowangels)

*

September 2016: Both sites are gone.

NYT on professors, students, and e-mail

Stefan Hagemann pointed me to an article by Jonathan Glater in today's New York Times, "To: Professor@University.edu Subject: Why It's All About Me." An excerpt:

One student skipped class and then sent the professor an e-mail message asking for copies of her teaching notes. Another did not like her grade, and wrote a petulant message to the professor. Another explained that she was late for a Monday class because she was recovering from drinking too much at a wild weekend party.

Jennifer Schultens, an associate professor of mathematics at the University of California, Davis, received this e-mail message last September from a student in her calculus course: "Should I buy a binder or a subject notebook? Since I'm a freshman, I'm not sure how to shop for school supplies. Would you let me know your recommendations? Thank you!"

At colleges and universities nationwide, e-mail has made professors much more approachable. But many say it has made them too accessible, erasing boundaries that traditionally kept students at a healthy distance.

These days, they say, students seem to view them as available around the clock, sending a steady stream of e-mail messages -- from 10 a week to 10 after every class -- that are too informal or downright inappropriate.

You can read my guidelines for e-mailing a professor by clicking on the link below. This post is, as the sidebar jokes, my #1 hit, with thousands of visits.

» How to e-mail a professor

Yet another word from the Greek

I've been wondering for a while whether to post this bit -- I just wasn't sure what to do. Merriam-Webster's (February 1) Word of the Day:

abulia \ay-BOO-lee-uh\ noun
: abnormal lack of ability to act or to make decisions

Example sentence:

"Since his college graduation, my son seems to be suffering from abulia -- —he just can't decide what he wants to do next," sighed Philip.

Did you know?

"I must have a prodigious quantity of mind," Mark Twain once wrote. "It takes me as much as a week, sometimes, to make it up." The indecision Twain laments is fairly common; only when inability to make decisions reaches an abnormal level does it have an uncommon name: "abulia." The English term we use today comes from a New Latin word that combines the prefix "a-," meaning "without," with the Greek word "boulē," meaning "will." "Abulia" can refer to the kind of generalized indecision that makes it impossible to choose what flavor ice cream you want, though it was created to name a severe medical disorder that can render a person nearly inert.

» Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day

Laughing in the drugstore

My wife Elaine jokingly pointed out a line of Bald Guyz products in the drugstore this afternoon. After careful examination, I had to buy a box of Head Wipes. For $4.99, who could ask for a better typo?

Our cashier didn't get it. If I'd had a Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary with me, I would've said "mange: any of various persistent contagious skin diseases marked esp. by eczematous inflammation and loss of hair, affecting domestic animals or sometimes humans, and caused by a minute parasitic mite."

The other Bald Guyz products -- sunscreen, shampoo -- had awkward-looking blue stickers over the offending text, asking consumers to let the company know what they need. But the Head Wipes had somehow, err, slipped through.

I know what BG Products needs: more careful proofreading. (Moisturizes is a typo too.)

Update (June 7, 2007): An unexpected discovery about Bald Guyz Head Wipes!

Barbara Guest (1920-2006)

The poet Barbara Guest died on Wednesday in Berkeley, California.

The problem proposed to the lemon tree. When
will your green fruit turn yellow? When shall I
understand Minneapolis?

If not grain by grain, at least loaf by loaf.

If not the river flow, at least its turn and tributary.

Still there are permissions to approach through that
immigrant air.

From The Countess from Minneapolis (1976)

New, improved

If you're a returning visitor to Orange Crate Art, you'll notice that I've given my blog yet another makeover. The dotted lines and little arrows of the Rounders template no longer pleased me, so I spent a fair amount of time this afternoon deconstructing the template, risking disaster at every moment (because I have very little idea what I'm doing!).

I like the clean lines, white columns, and dark background very much, and the signboard at the top gives Orange Crate Art more of that same great orange taste. Reader, I hope that you like it too.