Brothers Orin and Hal Incandenza are talking on the telephone. Orin can’t remember the name of the woman he is attempting to seduce:
“I guess I’ll have to get back to you on that.”Other Infinite Jest posts
“Boy, you really put the small r in romance, don’t you.”
David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest (Boston: Little, Brown, 1996).
Another Google search, another student-driver stuck in my driveway, so to speak. Add an introductory “The cat is on the mat” to this passage to get the magic number five:
[I]f my saying that the cat is on the mat implies that I believe it to be so, it is not the case that my not believing that the cat is on the mat implies that the cat is not on the mat (in ordinary English). And again, we are not concerned here with the inconsistency of propositions: they are perfectly compatible: it may be the case at once that the cat is on the mat but I do not believe that it is. But we cannot in the other case say “it may be the case at once that the cat is on the mat but the mat is not under the cat.” Or again, here it is saying that “the cat is on the mat,” which is not possible along with saying “I do not believe that it is”; the assertion implies a belief.Or again, do your own homework. That’s the way to learn something.
J.L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words (1962)
Apple’s new iPhone offers FaceTime. Says Apple,
People have been dreaming about video calling for decades. iPhone 4 makes it a reality. With the tap of a button, you can wave hello to your kids, share a smile from across the globe, or watch your best friend laugh at your stories — iPhone 4 to iPhone 4 over Wi-Fi. No other phone makes staying in touch this much fun.This FaceTime video tugs at eleventyteen human heartstrings in under two minutes. It would appear that no one at Apple is daunted by what David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest has to say about “video telephony” and “good old voice-only telephoning.”
Mark Frauenfelder. Made by Hand: Searching for Meaning in a Throwaway World. New York. Portfolio. 2010. $25.95.
In an America in which almost all things are boughten, Made by Hand celebrates what has become known as maker culture, which itself celebrates the pleasures of self-reliance and imperfection.¹ Mark Frauenfelder, co-editor of Boing Boing and editor of Make, has written not a manifesto but a sequence of engaging stories drawn from life, the first of which tells of moving with his wife and children from California to the South Pacific island of Rarotonga. Frauenfelder soon realized that the possibilities of a better life were to be found not in a different place but in a different approach to daily living: less buying, more making. Thus begin his efforts, back in California, to acquire various sets of skills — growing fruits and vegetables, modifying an espresso machine, raising chickens, keeping bees, building cigarbox guitars, carving wooden spoons, and making fermented foods, all undertaken with an intention of becoming “more mindful of our daily activities, more appreciative of what we have, and more engaged with the systems and things that keep us alive and well.”
The emphasis throughout Made by Hand is not “how-to” but “why-to”: there are no diagrams, no project plans, though there are useful bits of advice along the way, both project-specific (“Screws, not glues”) and universal (cross your property line — in other words, go to the store — and you’ll get nothing done for the rest of the day). As someone who teaches, I especially like what Frauenfelder says about mistakes as a necessary means of learning. Proceeding by trial and error (and more error), he gains deeper respect for art and nature, and greater confidence in his ability to solve problems. In this learning process, there is of course no escaping consumer culture: Made by Hand is filled with trips to buy lumber, tools, and beekeeping supplies. The investments of time and money sometimes make for difficult practical questions, as when Frauenfelder wonders whether a daily handful of eggs justifies the work of a coop and fence for chickens. In such situations, one must take a long view, weighing costs against future returns, both tangible and intangible.² And those returns are significant indeed. As Frauenfelder and his family come to agree, “Recreational shopping . . . is no match for recreational making.”
Reading Made by Hand makes me think of a famous WWII-era poster, which I’m now tempted to revise: Use it up. Wear it out. Make it do. Or — make it yourself.
Thanks to Portfolio for a review copy of this book.
¹ I like the word “boughten,” borrowed from Robert Frost’s poem “Provide, Provide”: “Better to go down dignified / With boughten friendship at your side / Than none at all. Provide, provide!”
² The long view can also be a handy way to justify buying, say, a nice fountain pen.
What is this I see in the San Francisco Examiner? The stirring tale of a civic-minded soul, one “Park,” telling Gavin Newsom about the many fine qualities of the humblest of writing instruments?
No, that is not it at all.
My daughter Rachel probably knows the exact name for the type of ambiguity this sentence exhibits. I know it only as “some.”
“[I]f there is a lesson from the Gore breakup, it’s that with marriage, you’re never done working on it.”
It’s true. Read more:
What Brain Scans Can Tell Us About Marriage (New York Times)
The Mozy situation seems to be improving. Yesterday morning, I sent an e-mail (with a link to this post) to Mozy’s Press/Public Relations address. Later in the day, a long statement from Mozy Support Services Manager John Livingston appeared in the Mozy Community discussions of Windows and Mac backup problems. And when I checked my e-mail last night, I found a message from John asking me to e-mail or call him about my backup problem and Mozy’s response. I called last night, and we talked at length.
The discussion post, e-mail, and phone conversation suggest to me that the people at Mozy have a genuine interest in doing a better job of responding to customers’ backup problems. And it turns out that long-time users of Mozy’s free service can open Support Tickets. (See my earlier post for the details.)
Long story short: a senior engineer is looking at my backup problem (which, it turns out, may not be the same as everyone else’s backup problem). Stay tuned for further developments.
[June 8, 2010: It’s now fifteen days with no backup.}
[June 9, 2010: I received an e-mail today telling me that I need to to call Mozy tech support for instructions on how to “restore from a previous date.” I’m not sure why I need to restore, as I’ve lost nothing on my computer. I tried calling tech support twice. The first time I was disconnected. The second time, I gave up after waiting more than an hour. (Total time on hold: 105 minutes.) I’ve e-mailed a request for written instructions, having found nothing relevant in Mozy’s online Knowledge Base. It’s now sixteen days with no backup.]
[June 11, 2010: In the spirit of DIY, I uninstalled and reinstalled Mozy (why not?) and started a backup. It seems — seems — to have worked, though slowly: backing up took almost twenty-four hours. I’ve sent my log file to Mozy’s tech support (as requested). I’ve also crossed my fingers.]
[June 11, 2010: at tech support’s request, I tried backing up again with the addition of one very large file. (My choice: the wonderful short film 3rd Ave. El, from the Prelinger Archives.) This file went through very quickly. Things seem to be working once again.]
[June 11, 2010: Happy ending.]
Henry, who lives in a world in which children shoot marbles and dress like Buster Brown, is about to learn the Twist.
And in Beetle Bailey’s world, electric razors still work the old-fashioned way.
[Beetle Bailey, June 5, 2010.]
Related posts
Betty Boop with Henry
Today’s Beetle Bailey
I’ve long been an enthusiastic user of the online backup service Mozy. I’ve recommended Mozy to family and friends, and I’ve offered my referral code — get your free megabytes! — to interested readers. In 2008, I wrote a post that told two tales of tech support, contrasting dismal Technorati (since grown only more dismal) and smart, speedy Mozy.
But now Mozy seems to be a mess. A server problem has made it impossible for many users to back up their data — which, after all, is the whole point. I’m on the tenth day without backup. The company now says it has “a fix” and that all users should soon find Mozy working. I hope so. But these two threads from Mozy’s “community” pages suggest a company that’s largely indifferent to the concerns and frustrations of its customers. Moreover, I’ve discovered that I now have no way to e-mail Mozy to report a problem. Here’s what the website says about Mozy’s “My Cases” option: “This tab is not shown to everybody. If you can see this tab, you can click on it and see all of your open Support Tickets.” What’s left unsaid here is that only paying customers can open tickets. As a user of Mozy’s free service (that’s all I need), I’m stuck with the “community.” In other words: discuss among yourselves. Users who have opened tickets report general disappointment anyway.
Worse still: Mozy’s front page and blog make no mention of a general problem or an effort to solve it. The most recent post, from May 18, is about a Twitter contest. Sheesh.
Word up, Mozy: when one has a problem backing up, one immediately assumes that there’s something wrong with one’s computer or connection. If the problem is on your end, and you know that, let your users know and save them some trouble. If you would prefer not to announce the problem on your site, an e-mail would suffice: “Many users are currently experiencing problems,” &c.
If, reader, you’ve read this far, you can guess what the final sentence of this post is about to say: I can no longer recommend Mozy.
[June 6, 2010: As I learned last night, long-time users of Mozy’s free service can open Support Tickets. The trick is to log in here, not here, and then go the Support page. The story continues, and I hope to be able to recommend Mozy again.]
[June 9, 2010: It’s now fifteen days with no backup.]
[June 11, 2010: Happy ending.]
Elaine and I traveled to our test-kitchens yesterday afternoon to sample and score the six decaffeinated black teas we have on hand. We prepared all teas in the same way: five minutes steeping before removing the bag, then another five minutes to cool. All tasting was as blind as we could make it: after putting numbered Post-it Notes on cups and writing names and numbers on index cards, we soon lost track of which cup held which tea. Elaine used a cup of non-decaffeinated PG Tips in her judging. We tasted, made notes, and ranked each tea. No peeking. When we compared notes, we were surprised by the ways in which our tastes diverged and converged. Here are the overall results, from least favored to most favored:
6: Red Rose. Elaine doesn’t like regular Red Rose, so her low mark here is no surprise. I’ve always liked regular Red Rose and found something to like in the decaffeinated version. Elaine ranked this tea last. I had it in third place.
5, 4: A tie between Twinings English Breakfast and Twinings Irish Breakfast. We were in agreement that these teas were undistinguished. To our tastes, Twinings decaf teas have very little of the flavor that makes regular Twinings teas so pleasurable. Elaine ranked these teas third (Irish) and fourth (English). I ranked them fourth (English) and fifth (Irish). I was surprised to find myself preferring English Breakfast to Irish Breakfast.
3, 2: A tie between Lipton and Trader Joe’s Irish Breakfast. Here our tastes were at odds. Lipton was Elaine’s most favored tea. She found in it “a bit of an edge” and “tea aftertaste, or finish, if you will.” (Yes, she was kidding around.) I on the other hand had Lipton dead last. “Tastes like hot water,” I wrote. We diverged a little less dramatically on Trader Joe’s: Elaine had it in fifth place; I had it in second. What struck Elaine’s taste buds as “pale” and “weak” struck mine as somewhat hearty. Then again, I didn’t have a cup of PG Tips for comparison.
1: Tetley British Blend. The surprise champ: Elaine had it in second place; I had it in first. “Deeper — more minty, but no finish,” said Elaine. “More tannins, aroma, more flavor, much better,” said I. I suspect that removing caffeine from tea leaves removes some of the tannins that give tea its pleasantly astringent quality. The Tetley package notes that British Blend tea bags contain more tea (2.5 g) than “standard” tea bags (2.0 g): perhaps that accounts for Tetley’s stronger flavor.
Nothing fancy here: aside from Trader Joe’s Irish Breakfast, these teas may all be had in most American supermarkets. As I do more hunting and gathering, I’ll share more taste-test results.
While writing this post, I remembered listening to a story on NPR about tea-auctions and tea-tastings in Kenya. You might want to listen.
A related post
Caffeine-free
