Virginia Tech

I remember on September 12, 2001, hearing someone refer to the events of the previous day as a "teachable moment." That phrase has always appalled me. "Moment" presumes to reduce to a manageable span events whose consequences will unfold across lifetimes and generations. And "teachable" presumes that we profs are in a privileged position to clarify, explain, interpret events that might better first be met with words of compassion and grief.

What happened today at Virginia Tech is not a teachable moment.

How to send telegrams

I know -- we can't. But in case they ever come back:



I've scanned this text from Sarah Augusta Taintor and Kate M. Monro's The Secretary's Handbook: A Manual of Correct Usage (Macmillan, 1949), a library book-sale find.

(Thanks, Ben!)

Related posts
This is not a telegram (The Retro-Gram)
Dowdy. World. Mourns. End. Of. Era. Stop. (The end of the telegram)

Times still passionate, study finds

In today's New York Times: passionate passions, from A (advanced aviation) to Z (Zoran Zivkovic, "not to be confused with the former prime minister of Serbia"). I've omitted a reference to passion fruit:

Soon after the brothers gained control of General Atomics in 1986, they unleashed their passion for advanced aviation by turning the company into a leading pioneer in drone warfare. (Charles Duhigg, "The Pilotless Plane That Only Looks Like Child’s Play")

Dressed in black, his intense face framed by a shock of black curls and a dark beard, Mr. Eifman hovers over his two dancers, instructing and explaining with evident passion. (Joy Goodwin, "No Rest for a Russian Renegade")

The Serbian author Zoran Zivkovic (not to be confused with the former prime minister of Serbia) already has many passionate supporters in America, and though it is too soon to crown him the new Borges, Seven Touches of Music: A Mosaic Novel (Aio, $23.95) makes him a leading candidate for the position. (Dave Itzkoff, "Cthulhu Meets Godzilla")

For the last four years, the object of his passion — and the chief topic of his dull lectures — has been the X-Paste, a toothpaste dispenser meant to keep bathrooms free of gunk. (Brendan I. Koerner, "Paste on the Brush, Not on the Sink")

She is particularly passionate about Virginia Woolf and James Joyce, and was president of the International James Joyce Foundation. (Kate Stone Lombardi, "At a Liberal-Arts Enclave, She’d Like a Bigger Tent")

And where that mighty stream is meant to take us, I think, is back to that large body of passionate, history-obsessed literature that is (or was) Latin American fiction. (Terrence Rafferty, "My Wife Is Mad")

In Ireland, the passion for steeplechase horse racing is, as Barich puts it, "a streak of lightning in the blood." (Ihsan Taylor, "Paperback Row")

It was impossible not to be affected by his passion. (Anthony Tommasini, "Passing the Baton: Be Bold, New York")

When she was about 70, Mrs. Winter turned her passion for clothing into a passion for making complex needlepoint portraits of women. (Stephen P. Williams, "Downsizing by Moving Downstairs")

Just as Ms. Miller’s renovations largely revolved around her need to accommodate her passion for collecting vintage shoes and clothes, Ben Schechter and his partner, George Barimo, put about $30,000 into their East Side apartment to accommodate their art and antiques. (Vivian S. Toy, "Sinking Your Money Into a Rental")

My passion for sentence collecting will soon wane -- such is the way of passion -- but anyone may play by searching the Times. Here's another examination of a Times tic:

Stuffed with madeleines (This Modern World)

Yes, it involves Proust.

Related posts
Madeleine
Passions of the Times

Passions of the Times

They call the New York Times the "Gray Lady." But the Times is no lady. She is a woman -- a woman of passion. Also of passionate. Both words are conspicuous in Times reportage.

Here are the instances of passion and passionate in today's online Times articles. I've excluded quoted dialogue:

She and the wonderful Mary Louise Wilson (as her bedridden mother), in the performances of their careers, make "Grey Gardens" an experience no passionate theatergoer should miss. (Ben Brantley, Theater Listings)

An indication of the passion and controversy generated by the contract is the high level of participation: about two-thirds of the 29,000 eligible workers cast ballots, or twice as many as voted in 2003. (David W. Chen, "State Workers in New Jersey Vote to Ratify New Contract")

But Mr. Cathie has been a passionate proponent. (Sam Dillon, "College Administrator's Dual Roles Are a Focus of Student Loan Inquiry")

His visual imagination is often arresting, and the dancers perform with passion. (Jennifer Dunning, "No Matter the Message, It's Delivered With Dazzle")

Even in this era of biodiesel fuels and degradable eating utensils, Cloud Cult is especially passionate about green music practices. (Ben Sisario, Pop and Rock Listings)

Still, at least on this night, there often seemed a dearth of chemistry between the performers, too little sense of the desperate passion that binds them. (Steve Smith, "The Violetta, Germont and Alfredo of Yore")

Administrators and the teacher who runs the club say they have struggled with Shawn, and are seeking a balance of how to engage him in his studies without barring him from the one thing about which he is passionate. (Timothy Williams, "Teenage Riddle: Skipping Class, Mastering Chess")

Related post
Times still passionate, study finds

Sonny Rollins on paying the rent

From an interview with Sonny Rollins:

It's very encouraging to know that you have contributed to some ease of getting through life, that's a nice feeling. Music is about giving. People tell me, "Oh, gee, you've helped me go to work, do this, that." I feel better when I hear things like that. It's like I'm paying my rent here on Earth.

A saxophone legend keeps forging ahead (Newark Star-Ledger)

It's online, yes, but my copy is clipped and mailed by my dad. Thanks, Dad!

[Correction: It was online. Now it’s gone.]

How to punctuate more sentences

A few more guidelines for using punctuation:

The semicolon is a good choice when sentences are clearly related, when they seem to go together, when a period would create a too emphatic stop between sentences. Alas, there's no rule to determine whether sentences are related in a way that makes a semicolon a good choice. Making this decision seems to me a matter of acquired intuition.

The presence of a connecting word or phrase (such as nevertheless, therefore, thus, even so, in contrast) is a good sign that you're in semicolon territory. But longish sentences, even if they're clearly related, are likely to be easier for a reader to take in if they're separated by a period.

One caution: it's easy to overuse the semicolon. As an undergraduate, I often used semicolons indiscriminately; I joined sentences together in long, unwieldy chains; my excitement about tying ideas together carried me away; as you can see in this example, the result is not reader-friendly.

When one or more commas appear within items in a series, semicolons should separate the items:

The menu offered limited choices: egg and bacon; egg, sausage, and bacon; egg and Spam; egg, bacon, and Spam; and egg, bacon, sausage, and Spam.

*

The dash is a very useful element of punctuation, as it allows for greater condensation in the presentation of ideas. The dash is appropriate in setting off an element that strongly interrupts the movement of a sentence. For instance:

Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman — the one oblique and elliptical, the other expansive and declamatory — might be said to have invented modern American poetry.

Three instruments — clarinet, muted trumpet, and muted trombone — create the unusual tone colors of Duke Ellington's "Mood Indigo."

The most important thing to remember about punctuation: it's a matter of conventions, shared agreements that help bring clarity to written communication. If you don't agree this sentence unpunctuated difficult to read can serve as a last attempt to persuade.

If you do agree, that last sentence — unpunctuated, difficult to read — can serve to confirm what you already understand.

Related post
How to punctuate a sentence

Metamorphosis

Ever notice . . . ? From a Christopher Hitchens essay in Slate:

A room-service menu, for example, now almost always offers "your choice" of oatmeal versus cornflakes or fruit juice as opposed to vegetable juice. Well, who else's choice could it be? Except perhaps that of the people who decide that this is the range of what the menu will feature. Fox TV famously and fatuously claims, "We report. You decide." Decide on what? On what Fox reports? Online polls promise to register what "you" think about the pressing issues of the moment, whereas what's being presented is an operation whereby someone says, "Let's give them the idea that they are a part of the decision-making process."

The next time you see an ad, the odds are increasingly high that it will put "you" in the driver's seat. "Ask your doctor if Prozac/
Lipitor/Cialis is right for you" -- almost as if these medications could be custom made for each individual consumer. A lawyer or real-estate agent will promise you to address "your" concerns. Probably the most famous propaganda effort of the 20th century, a recruiting poster with Lord Kitchener pointing directly outward and stating, "Your Country Needs YOU," was only rushed onto the billboards when it suddenly became plain that the country concerned needed several hundred thousand recruits in a big hurry and couldn't afford to be too choosy about who it was signing up.

Christopher Hitchens seems to be turning into Andy Rooney.

The You Decade (Slate)

Doped

My wife Elaine just had a second great adding-a-URL-to-Google experience:

Related post
Barfs
Beret
Fermi
Oveness

(Thanks, Elaine!)

How to have a bad restaurant experience

1. When you show up as a party of four, not the five of your reservation, you see a death-ray shoot from host's eye. (It misses.)

2. Before seating you, host asks if you'll "be done by 6:30."

3. Host seats you at a table positioned close to bathrooms, coffee station, and bussed china and glassware. That there is such a table gives you reason to wonder why you've come here.

4. Ask for different table. Host's answer: "I'll have to reset." Yet tables are already set.

5. Walk back to front of restaurant and wait to be reseated. Realize while waiting that host seems to follow no known protocols of hospitality.

6. Stand around while new arrivals enter and wait behind you. "Party of three?" "Uh, four." No: host meant the party of three standing behind you. It's the party of three that's being seated first. You are being punished.

7. Sit and look at menu, one page in length. It specifies plating fees if you bring your own dessert. Huh?

8. Feel waiter's death-ray warm as everyone chooses water for a beverage. Feel said ray further warm as everyone orders a relatively modest dish (vegan or vegetarian).

9. Notice that waiter seems to be writing a sonnet with each diner's order. Yet none of this writing appears on the bill.

10. Wait 45 minutes for food.

11. Food is served. Waiter serves by reaching across the table, rather than serving from behind the diner.

12. Consider the food. Meh. Upside-down pizza is bland, lifeless. A plate of jasmine rice and veggies holds a small mound of rice and a hand-sized serving of vegetables on a massive plate. Wonder whether they teach sarcastic presentation in culinary school.

13. Eat, with at least six interruptions to fill water glasses, all with much reaching across the table, elbows and armpits everywhere.

14. Notice when returning from bathroom that other diners seem to have markedly larger quantities of vegetables on their plates. And those vegetables are side dishes.

15. Get and pay bill. Tip 15%. Dodge host's death-ray near door. Leave, vowing never to come back.

16. GO TO COLD STONE CREAMERY!

Does anyone still say "fly"?

I was wondering. The answer, it seems, is "Yes." See here:

Hot Hot Heat: A graphical dissertation on the number one song in America (Village Voice, via kottke.org)