What did she mean by that?

The title of a book my wife Elaine bought for me yesterday:

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Vegan Living

Words, mere words

From Mark Edmundson, Why Read? (Bloomsbury, 2004):

Many humanities teachers feel that they are fighting for a lost cause. They believe that the proliferation of electronic media will eventually make them obsolete. They see the time their students spend with TV and movies and on the Internet, and feel that what they have to offer — words, mere words — must look shabby by comparison.

Not so. When human beings try to come to terms with who they are and describe who they hope to be, the most effective medium is words. Through words we represent ourselves to ourselves; we fix our awareness of who and what we are. Then we can step back and gain distance on what we've said. With perspective comes the possibility for change. People write about their lives in their journals; talk things over with friends; talk, at day's end, to themselves about what has come to pass. And then they can brood on what they've said, privately or with another. From that brooding comes the chance for new beginnings. In this process, words allow for precision and nuance that images and music generally don't permit.

Our culture changes at an astounding velocity, so we must change or pay a price for remaining the same. Accordingly, the powers of self-rendering and self-revision are centrally important. These processes occur best in language. Surely there is something to be learned from the analysis of popular culture. But we as teachers can do better. We can strike to the central issues that confront students and the public at large, rather than relegating ourselves to the edges. People who have taught themselves how to live — what to be, what to do — from reading great works will not be overly susceptible to the culture industry's latest wares. They'll be able to sample them, or turn completely away — they'll have better things on their minds.

[Edmundson is quoting Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, 5.3:

Pandarus: What says she there?

Troilus: Words, words, mere words.

I'm reminded too of Hamlet, 2.2:

Polonius: What do you read, my lord?

Hamlet: Words, words, words.]

A related post » Mark Edmundson tells it like it is

Child's play

The Child is father of the Man

William Wordsworth (1770-1850), "My Heart Leaps Up"

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Child — the child, Father of the man

Van Dyke Parks (b. 1943), "Child Is Father of the Man," from SMiLE (words by Van Dyke Parks, music by Brian Wilson)

*

Most of my ideas come from my childhood. I just needed the knowledge and skills to develop them.

Gerhard Trimpin (b. 1951), sound sculptor and installation artist, quoted in an article by Jean Strouse, "Perpetual Motion," in The New Yorker, May 8, 2006

Relativity

My daughter's watching Meet Me in St. Louis this afternoon. It's one of her favorite movies. But it's not, she tells me, her favorite movie of all time. Marty is.

Meet Me in St. Louis, set in 1903, was released in 1944. I've always thought that an audience watching the movie in 1944 was looking back on an antique, bygone world. But now it occurs to me that their experience would be comparable to that of a 2006 audience watching a film set in 1965. And 1965 wasn't all that long ago. Heck, that's when Help! and Rubber Soul came out, along with The Sound of Music, which used to be my daughter's favorite movie of all time.

Ubuntu

An African word, meaning "humanity to others" or "I am what I am because of who we all are." The Ubuntu distribution brings the spirit of Ubuntu to the software world.

(from the Ubuntu website)

A suggestion: If you have an older computer around that's not doing much of anything, install Ubuntu. Ubuntu is an operating system, a friendly version of Linux, "Linux for human beings," as the website says, available for free on CDs and as a download. I installed Ubuntu on an old family computer earlier this week, a Gateway laptop with Windows ME (Millennium Edition). Reformatting the hard drive, installing Ubuntu, and installing applications (Firefox, OpenOffice.org, and so on, all packaged with the operating system) took less than an hour and involved nothing more than starting up a CD (yes, just one CD) and responding to a few prompts. Using an online guide, I found an Ubuntu-compatible wireless card and had a wireless connection in roughly another hour (a 45-minute trip to Staples and 10 minutes of trial-and-error entering the network information).

Five years or so ago, I spent several days trying to establish an Ethernet connection with this Windows ME laptop. I had no luck, not even after trying the one network card that Gateway and Microsoft guaranteed to work. I never found anyone else who was able to get a network card to work with Windows ME either. Now, for $34.95 (plus tax) and couple of hours, we have a "new" computer with which we can browse, do e-mail, and create documents that we can open with any of our Windows XP computers. Ubuntu is stylish, fast, and, so far, fool-proof.

[Silent laughter at Microsoft's expense.]

Links

» ubuntu, the word
» Ubuntu, the operating system
» Ubuntu and wireless cards

Expectations, extensions, achievements

Dr. Harold Koplewicz, director of the New York University Child Study Center, in today's New York Times:

"Among the baby boomers, and I am one, expectations for our children are very high," he said. "Baby boomers prepare their children for all kinds of bizarre things, as if their children are extensions of themselves. These are kids who have résumés by the time they apply to college. As a society, unfortunately, we have changed focus so we value our children for their achievements, not because they're our children."

From an article on the prime-time telecast of the Scripps National Spelling Bee finals.

Link » The Bee, the New Celebrity Showcase (registration required)

Gnail

Make a typo in a URL and you never know what you'll find. Here's what I found when I mistyped gmail:

Beijing Gnail Heattreatment Technology Institute is famous for his liquid heattreatment technology in China.

We have introduced from German, Japan etc. and R&D a lot of new technologies in liquid heattreatment. The technologies are proved stable, efficient, pollutant-free , and have been widely used in China. All experts in our institute are skill in application for the technologies. We are professional.

Our products have been exported to many countries and regions over the world with good quality. Gnail liquid salts offer so many solutions for manufacture with low cost and easy operation.

Gnail, good companies of heattreatment !

Yes, there is a Gnail !

Two links

» Beijing Gnail Heattreatment Institute
» Gmail

"Important Safeguards"

An all-in-one radio-phono-cassette-deck, a portable radio, and a portable cassette-player? Who wouldn't be happy?

I found this image in a pamphlet titled "Important Safeguards," which came with my purchase of a "component" system in 1983: a Harman/Kardon receiver, a Dual turntable (maybe the most temperamental turntable ever made), and Infinity speakers (all long-defunct).

A sound of summer

Written in E-flat major in jaunty 6/8 time, the jingle was created by an advertising agency in 1960 for the company's early radio campaigns. Though the trucks play only an instrumental version, the tune does have words:

      The CREAM-i-est DREAM-i-est SOFT ice CREAM

      you GET from MIS-ter SOF-tee.

      FOR a re-FRESH-ing de-LIGHT su-PREME

      LOOK for MIS-ter SOF-tee.

From the New York Times obituary for James Conway Sr., co-founder of Mister Softee.

On my block in Brooklyn, the Mister Softee truck would arrive mid-to-late afternoon. I can't remember a thing about the ice cream, but the Mister Softee jingle is a permanent sound of summer in my head.

Three links

» James Conway Sr., 78, a Founder of Mister Softee, Dies
from the New York Times (registration required)

» Mister Softee Jingle: Not So Sweet?
from NPR, with soundclip featuring the jingle

» "Mister Softee" sheet music
from mistersoftee.com

(The Mister Softee homepage plays an abridged version of the jingle if you have the proper Quicktime plug-in installed in your browser.)

Like hell

Exasperation speaks:

what the hell does simile mean

This Yahoo, excuse me, Yahoo! search led someone to my blog last week, specifically, to a post on a simile from Dante's Inferno. Alas, the post doesn't explain what the hell "simile" means. It offers an example of what the hell is like.