"Across the Universe," across the universe

NASA is to beam the Beatles song "Across the Universe" into space. But which "Universe"? NASA hasn't said. There are four official releases:

1. From a 1969 World Wildlife Fund charity record, with bird sounds at beginning and end, and two Apple scruffs (female fans) on the refrain. Now available on The Beatles' Past Masters, Volume Two. This version speeds up the tape, sounding in D# rather than D.

2. The Phil-Spectored version from Let It Be (1970). I grew up loving the song in this form (side 1, track 3), angelic chorus and all. This version slows down the tape, sounding in Db rather than D.

3. The Anthology 2 version (1996), a 1968 alternative take, with spare instrumentation. Here we hear the song at speed, in the key of D.

4. A de-Spectored remix of the 1968 master, released on Let It Be... Naked (2003). Also at speed.

My choice would be the Anthology version, which sounds warmest and, well, trippiest to me. No. 4 seems aggressive by comparison. Please, NASA, don't send up Spector.

Paul McCartney and Yoko Ono have both made statements about this project. Says cheeky Paul: "Amazing! Well done, NASA! Send my love to the aliens. All the best, Paul." And Yoko: "I see that this is the beginning of the new age in which we will communicate with billions of planets across the universe."

Related reading
Voyager music (NASA)

The Last Calligraphers

The Last Calligraphers, a forthcoming film by Premjit Ramachandran, tells the story of the Urdu publication The Musalman, Asia's only handwritten newspaper (est. 1927).

The Last Calligraphers is scheduled for summer 2008 release.

The Last Calligraphers (trailer, via moleskinerie)
A Handwritten Daily Paper (Wired)
Photo tour of The Musulman (Wired)

Reserved for faculty

[Photograph by Rachel Leddy.]

Alas, it's a parking area that's reserved.

(Thanks, Rachel!)

Snow, snow, snow

Expected: 8 to 11 inches.

Related posts
Frank Sinatra's popcorn
"Ice and Snow Blues"
"It is snowing."

Is this honor society legitimate?

Several people who have found my posts about the National Dean's List have e-mailed me wondering about the legitimacy of other collegiate honor societies. The Association of College Honor Societies offers guidelines for thinking about organizational credibility. The ACHS also has a list of its member organizations. Absence from that list doesn't mean that an organization lacks legitimacy — Phi Beta Kappa, for one, is missing — but the list, along with the guidelines, some online investigation, and the advice of a trusted professor or two or three, can help a student come to a sound decision about whether to pay up. The National Society of Collegiate Scholars? Legit. The National Scholars Honor Society? You might choose to walk on by.

Speaking as a prof, I'd say that a college- or department-level award, a few semesters on your neighborhood Dean's List, and some strong letters of recommendation will mean much more to someone looking at your academic record than generic honors will. You can use the money you're saving on membership to buy clothes for your interviews or, if you're a dachshund, to buy chew toys!

Related posts
The National Dean's List
The National Dean's List again
The National Dean's List is dead

MacBook Paper

The MacBook Paper is smaller and lighter than the MacBook Air. Cheaper too. Cuter too, if that's a plus.

Grecian coffee urn

[Photograph by Rachel Leddy.]

Coffee is truth, truth coffee!

My daughter snapped this photograph during a wonderful family lunch at Papa George, a great new Greek-American restaurant in Champaign, Illinois.

(Thanks, Rachel!)

Post-college first dates

From an interview with sociologist Kathleen A. Bogle, author of Hooking Up: Sex, Dating, and Relationships on Campus (2008):

[T]he transition to the post-college dating scene was not necessarily an easy one. Many of the 20-something-year-old men and women I spoke with were confused over how to act in certain scenarios after college, not knowing if they were on a date or just "hanging out and hooking up." Some of the people I interviewed had never been on a formal date until after college, so figuring out the rules for the "new" system was a big adjustment for them.

Read the rest: The Sociology of "Hooking Up" (Inside Higher Ed)

P.S. 131, 44th Street, Brooklyn

This item, from the series "New York's changing scene" (New York Daily News Sunday Magazine, March 4, 1979), has traveled with me for years. I clipped this column (with permission) on a Sunday visit to my grandparents' house in Brooklyn. I'd have never seen it otherwise: we were a Times family.

My mother went to P.S. 131 in the late 1930s and early 1940s, and I had her first-grade teacher, Mrs. Frazier, in the 1962-1963 school year. That span of time no longer seems amazing to me: there's nothing remarkable about teaching at the same school for twenty-odd years. But that my teacher was already teaching during the Depression: that's difficult to take in, and it makes me wonder when Mrs. Frazier's first-grade teacher began teaching.

I clipped this column not only for its school. Before my parents fled the city for New Jersey, we lived in the first-floor apartment of the rowhouse right next to P.S. 131: 1143 44th Street. A cranky landlady lived upstairs. My grandparents (my mother's parents) lived down the block. Oh memory!¹

Other P.S. 131 posts
P.S. 131
Some have gone and some remain

P.S. 131 class photographs
1962–1963 1963–1964 1964–1965 1965–1966 1966–1967

Related reading
P.S. 131 today (Insideschools.org)

¹ Repeated three times, the poignant phrase Louis Armstrong adds to his vocal in a 1931 recording of "Star Dust."

How to improve writing (no. 18 in a series)

A "blow out clearance"? A "sales event"? Dig the hyperbole and redundancy of this Wal-Mart sign:

  BLOW OUT
   APPAREL
CLEARANCE
     SALES
    EVENT

I wonder whether the sign's portrait-orientation led the author to pile up words to fill the space. Better:

   APPAREL
CLEARANCE
     SALE

Plain old clothing would be a better choice of course, but I'll stick by the dowdy word apparel, which no one outside of retail seems to use. (When did you last go apparel shopping?)

All "How to improve writing" posts (via Pinboard)