I like the straight-facedness with which the New York Times makes corrections:
The Well column on Tuesday, about the potential dangers to children who focus early on one sport, misstated the coach-to-athlete ratio recommended by Dave Peterson, the owner of a sports center in California. Mr. Peterson suggested a coach-to-student ratio of 1 to 6 in preschool and about 1 to 8 for older athletes, not 6 to 1 and 8 to 1.Related posts
[Click for a larger view.]
The most beautiful and functional screensaver I've ever seen: Word Clock by Simon Heys, a free download for iPhone, Mac, and Windows. [Via kottke.org.]
Five bloggers, posting pretty regularly, and always interesting to me:
Musical Assumptions Elaine Fine (yes, Mrs. Orange Crate Art) on music and culture.And one more:
Notes of an Anesthesioboist T. is an English major turned anesthesiologist turned oboist, writing about medicine with great compassion and insight.
Relative Esoterica Trombonology's astute, evocative commentary on film, jazz, and popular song.
Submitted For Your Perusal Matt Thomas' New York Times digests almost always point me to items I'd otherwise overlook.
(what is this?) Angela has a great eye for ephemera. From her Blogger Profile list of interests: "flea markets, memory, ruins."
The Daily Dish Andrew Sullivan's day-by-day, hour-by-hour, and sometimes minute-by-minute commentary on culture and politics.[On the Internets, five, like ten, is a magic number, right?]
From campaign manager David Plouffe's e-mail to Barack Obama supporters:
Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin specifically mocked Barack's experience as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago more than two decades ago, where he worked with people who had lost jobs and been left behind when the local steel plants closed.Indeed. Giuliani:
On the other hand, you have a resume from a gifted man with an Ivy League education. He worked as a community organizer. What?And Palin:
I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a "community organizer," except that you have actual responsibilities.Community organizer. Ha ha.
The Unofficial Apple Weblog has posted a three-part series on writing tools for the Mac: word-processors, text-editors, utilities. Helpful to anyone who's recently switched to a Mac or is thinking about it:
"Back to School: Writing tools": Parts 1, 2, 3
Of the programs covered in this series, I'm partial to Bean (word-processor, free), Pages (word-processor, part of Apple's iWork), TextExpander (keystroke saver), and WriteRoom (full-screen text-editor). I also like TextWrangler, a free text-editor. There's life beyond Microsoft Word.
Novice writers often want their writing to "flow," mistaking result for process. Sentences whose movement seems inevitable and right usually result not from easy spontaneity but from careful rethinking. Here for instance is a sentence that could be greatly improved with a little more thought. From a library's monthly newsletter:
For those people who live outside the city limits, even if it is only by one house, two feet, etc., they have to pay an annual fee of $45 for their library card.What's wrong with this sentence? The "one house, two feet" details are unneeded, and seem to hint at a history of argument with cranky residents. There's also a problem with agreement: people need to pay for their library cards. The main problem with the sentence though is the clumsy syntax: "For those people," "they have to pay." Better:
Anyone who lives beyond the city limits must pay a $45 annual fee for a library card.From 33 words to 17: almost 50% off!
Anyone living beyond the city limits must pay a $45 annual fee for a library card.From 33 to 16: over 50% off!]
"Have we ever seen John Malkovich in a movie that was any good?"
"Being John Malkovich."
"Besides that one: he was just playing himself."
I don't want to keep going with Hi and Lois, but I must. (If nothing else, close-reading Hi and Lois offers a break from the looniness of the real.)
Today's strip reminds me of the children's game of spotting the differences between pictures. Did the same hand draw both panels?
Note too that the window sill does not follow the slant of the wall — more disturbingly so in the second panel. The Flagstons must be living in a German Expressionist suburb, next door to the Caligaris.
[Hi and Lois, September 2, 2008.]
The curtains shorten.
The window panes widen.
The glazing bars shrink. (Thanks, Wikipedia.)
The painting (a Cy Twombly?) shrinks and moves up and away.
Lois's shirt is on backwards. (Kidding.)
The Flickr page for Jack Delano's photograph of Sylvia Sweets Tea Room now includes a lengthy and evocative account of life at the restaurant from Elaine (Dayos) Liatsos, daughter of John Dayos, who began Sylvia Sweets in the 1930s. A sample:
I remember well the two ladies who worked at McCarthy’s in the fifties and would come in on Friday night, when the stores were open until 9pm and order Salmon Salad on plain dark bread and my father would enjoy making it extra special for them every week — cut in fours with toothpicks.How wonderful that this picture of the gone world (thanks, Lawrence Ferlinghetti) should find so many old and new friends in this century.
