In Julia Child’s kitchen

Watching The French Chef on DVD last night, Elaine and I had the same thought: that Julia Child’s kitchen is in our kitchen. Look:

My Kitchen, Julia Child’s Kitchen (Musical Assumptions)

See? The oven is not exactly our old one though (pace Elaine). Look here.

Churchill’s speeches fail exam

News from England, late 2009:

Churchill’s speeches, Hemingway’s style and Golding’s prose would not have been appreciated by a new computerised marking system used to assess A level English.

The system, which is a proposed way of marking exam papers online, found that Churchill’s rousing call to "fight them on the beaches" was too repetitive, with the text using the word “upon” and “our” too frequently. . . .

Online marking of papers is being tested by exam boards and could be introduced within the next few years. It is already in use in America, where some children have learnt to write in a style which the computer appreciates, known as “schmoozing the computer.”

Churchill’s speeches fail exam (Telegraph)

Schmoozing the teacher, sure, but I’ve not heard of schmoozing the computer. A Google search points again and again to this Telegraph article. I’d like to know what’s involved in computer-schmoozing.

Related posts, on the SAT essay test
The SAT is broken
Words, words, words

Items in a series

ENTERTAINMENT

SPORTS

FREE SCHOOLS

From a commercial for the United States, in a dream earlier this morning.

Stand with Haiti

Talking with Rachel Maddow on MSNBC last night, Tracy Kidder recommended Partners in Health to anyone interested in donating money to help Haiti. Kidder is the author of Mountains Beyond Mountains, about PIH co-founder Paul Farmer.

William Zinsser, writing advice

William Zinsser offers writing advice to international students at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism:

Writing English as a Second Language (The American Scholar)

Useful for all students of writing.

Huffington Post, misleading headline

Above, the main headline at the Huffington Post right now (where it appears at about twice the size). Reading it, you would click, without even thinking, anticipating the news of a catastrophic aftershock. And you would not find it. What you would find is a report on the earthquake’s aftermath.

The Huffington Post is notorious, in my house anyway, for its cynical efforts to increase page views. Click on a headline to read a story; get a page with that headline, no story; click again. It’s difficult to decide whether the above headline is a matter of an ill-considered metaphor or the work of the Department of Page Views. At any rate, it helps to explain why I’ve begun to get the news from the BBC.

[Ben, you were right.]

Sue Shellenbarger on time-management (again)

Sue Shellenbarger updates readers on her experiment with three time-management strategies: FranklinCovey’s Focus, GTD, and the Pomodoro Technique.

Related reading
No Time to Read This? Read This (Wall Street Journal)

Haiti

The Rachel Maddow Show has a list of twenty-eight charitable organizations at work in Haiti:

Haiti earthquake: How to help (MSNBC)

Also: you can text HAITI to 90999 and a $10 donation to the Red Cross will be charged to your cellphone bill:

A Disaster in Haiti and How You Can Help (U.S. Department of State Blog)

Thelonious Monk plays Duke Ellington

From a seventieth-birthday tribute to Duke Ellington, Berliner Jazztage, November 7, 1969:

“Satin Doll” (Ellington–Billy Strayhorn–Johnny Mercer)
“Sophisticated Lady” (Ellington–Irving Mills–Mitchell Parish)
“Caravan” (Ellington–Irving Mills–Juan Tizol)
“(In My) Solitude” (Ellington–Eddie DeLange–Irving Mills)
“Crepuscule with Nellie” (Monk)
“Blues for Duke”

The final piece, with Joe Turner (piano), Hans Rettenbacher (bass), Stu Martin (drums), was likely created on the spot. “Caravan” is the highlight, I’d say; “Satin Doll,” a charming surprise. “Caravan,” “Solitude,” and “Sophisticated Lady” appear on the 1955 Riverside LP Thelonious Monk Plays the Music of Duke Ellington.

What did we do before YouTube? Without.

Two related posts
T. MONK’S ADVICE (1960)
Mini-review: Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane

Van Dyke Parks and Ringo Starr

Ringo Starr’s album Y Not, out today, has a significant contribution from Van Dyke Parks.

[Update, February, 7, 2010: In a promotional clip, Starr explains that the Starr–Parks song “Walk With Me” began as a “God song.” “I don’t write about God,” said Parks.]