"Tech-free classrooms"

A study published in the April issue of British Educational Research Journal found that 59 percent of students in a new survey reported that at least half of their lectures were boring, and that PowerPoint was one of the dullest methods they saw. . . .

Students in the survey gave low marks not just to PowerPoint, but also to all kinds of computer-assisted classroom activities, even interactive exercises in computer labs. "The least boring teaching methods were found to be seminars, practical sessions, and group discussions," said the report. In other words, tech-free classrooms were the most engaging.

From a piece by Jeffrey R. Young on the role of technology in college classrooms. Read it all:

When Computers Leave Classrooms, So Does Boredom (Chronicle of Higher Education)

Little sponges

From the back of the Cheerios box:

Think of oats as sponges that can help soak up some cholesterol and naturally remove it from your body.

Appetizing! Not!

Fresh cookies, fresh ironing

Danny dug into the crock in the pantry and brought out two large, soft, still-warm cookies. He poured himself a glass of milk and sat down at the kitchen table.

"Mmm," he said, dreamily. "I love the smell of fresh cookies and the smell of fresh ironing. I guess you're right. We do have to learn some history. But it's so dull — all those names and dates."

Jay Williams and Raymond Abrashkin, Danny Dunn, Time Traveler (1963)

The sentence about cookies and ironing has stuck with me from childhood, which is why I got hold of the source text (in a dopey-looking 1979 edition) via interlibrary loan.

Danny Dunn grew up to write À la recherche du temps perdu.

Related reading
Danny Dunn (Wikipedia)
Out of the past (On reading books from childhood)

Walter Cronkite

[Walter Cronkite commenting on Richard Nixon's resignation speech, as seen on a Washington, D.C. television set, August 1974. Photograph by Gjon Mili (1904–1984). From the Life photo archive. Walter Cronkite died today at the age of 92.]

Amazon and Orwell

One more reason not to buy a Kindle: Amazon has erased copies of 1984 and Animal Farm from customers' Kindles. Granted, these were bootleg copies. But still. Amazon sold (rented?) them, and has now taken them back. One reader's story:

Justin Gawronski, a 17-year-old from the Detroit area, was reading 1984 on his Kindle for a summer assignment and lost all his notes and annotations when the file vanished. "They didn’t just take a book back, they stole my work," he said.

Read more:

Amazon Erases Orwell Books From Kindle (New York Times)
Some E-Books Are More Equal Than Others (New York Times)

A related post
No Kindle for me

Portrait of Billie Holiday and Mister

[Portrait of Billie Holiday and Mister, New York, c. February 1947. Photograph by William P. Gottlieb (1917–2006). Via American Memory, from the Library of Congress.]

"[T]hree days after Bastille day, yes"

It is 12:20 in New York a Friday
three days after Bastille day, yes
it is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine

Frank O'Hara, lines from "The Day Lady Died"

Three days after Bastille Day, fifty years ago today, Billie Holiday died.

Things to do:

Read Frank O'Hara's poem. Read the New York Times obituary. Listen to Billie Holiday: "Fine and Mellow," "I Loves You, Porgy," "These Foolish Things," "Travelin' Light," "What a Little Moonlight Can Do."

[A note for the fan: "Travelin' Light" seems to be a very rare bit of film footage.]

A related post
On December 8

Poems, "made of words"

"Now you notice what I said: there is no subject that the modern poem cannot approach. There is no selected material. It's what you do with a work of art. It's what you put on the canvas and how you put it on that makes the picture. It's how the words fit in. Poems are not made of thoughts, beautiful thoughts. It's made of words, pigments, put on. Here, there, made, actually."

William Carlos Williams, to an audience at Harvard University, December 4, 1951

PennSound at the University of Pennsylvania is an audio archive for poetry. It offers, among other treasures, what appear to be all extant recordings of William Carlos Williams.

{The above passage is my transcription.]

"Plenty of stationery"

Pip and Herbert prepare to take stock of their debts:

We ordered something rather special for dinner, with a bottle of something similarly out of the common way, in order that our minds might be fortified for the occasion, and we might come well up to the mark. Dinner over, we produced a bundle of pens, a copious supply of ink, and a goodly show of writing and blotting paper. For, there was something very comfortable in having plenty of stationery.

Charles Dickens, Great Expectations (1861)

NYPD typewriters

Remember the All in the Family episode in which Archie unwittingly insults a police officer and is made to wait while the slowest typist in the precinct pecks out a report? Typewriters are still in use in the NYPD:

New York Police Department officials said the city is spending nearly $1 million to purchase and maintain typewriters for the police force.

City officials signed a $982,269 contract last year with New Jersey typewriter manufacturer Swintec for the purchase of manual and electric typewriters during the next three years and last month the city inked a $99,570 deal with New York's Afax Business Machines for maintenance on the typing machines, the New York Post reported Monday.

NYPD sources said the vast majority of the typewriters are for use by police.

Most of the city's arrest forms have been computerized, but property and evidence vouchers printed on carbon-paper forms still require the use of typewriters.

Carbon-paper forms!

The Swintec site is worth a look. No carbon-paper forms for sale, but you will find clear typewriters ("especially designed for inmate use") and a $1678 Word Processing System that boasts "60K Large Working Memory" and "Unlimited Document Storage on 3 1/2" Floppy Disks."