Guitarist John Fahey, from a handwritten lesson on C tuning:
I like to teach guitar to people. People, or students who learn. Nobody likes to teach somebody who does not learn because that is not teaching & not learning.
In order to learn something, some use ofMEMORY
is required. Teaching & learning is not showing somebody the same thing over & over, ad infinitum.
Change in higher education:
Across the country, there is growing evidence that final exams — once considered so important that universities named a week after them — are being abandoned or diminished, replaced by take-home tests, papers, projects, or group presentations.Related posts
Final exams are quietly vanishing from college (Boston Globe)
Not by me, by a friend who passes it on from afar. A teacher to students:
“A preposition simply tells the location of something. In the sentence ‘The boy is under the table,’ the preposition tells you where he’s at.”Note that the other prepositions in these sentences — at, by, from, in, of, to — all work in exactly the same way!
[“James Hoffa fingering pencil while testifying before senator [sic] Rackets Committee.” Photograph by Paul Schutzer, August 1958, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Via the Life photo archive.]
Yes, that’s a Mongol.
Related posts
Mongol No. 2 3/8
“Sound-testing a MONGOL”
The New York Times reports that Verizon Wireless will be paying up to $90 million in refunds to customers who have mistakenly pressed the infamous $1.99 key.
Related posts
Verizon’s $1.99 typos
Pogue v. Verizon, continued
Verizon data charges
Google CEO Eric Schmidt, on the future:
“We don’t need you to type at all, because we know where you are, with your permission. We know where you’ve been, with your permission. We can more or less guess what you’re thinking about. Now is that over the line? Is that right over the line? Is that right over the line?”This model seems to confuse the unpredictable play of idea and association and memory (what I would call thinking) with a crude stimulus-response model, in which restaurants mean eat and stores mean shop. I begin to wonder: what sorts of humanities courses did Schmidt take in college? Someone who’s read Emily Dickinson or James Joyce or Frank O’Hara would have more complex ways to think about what it means to think.
From his stage patter: “Be kind to one another. Or I’ll kill ya!”
Van Dyke Parks Threatens Violence At The Bell House (Village Voice)
Related posts
Van Dyke Parks in Chicago (1)
Van Dyke Parks in Chicago (2)
[“Movie stagehands pushing a 400-pound pair of gigantic scissors on a dollie next to two men carrying a 21-ft. pencil, just some of the props that created the illusion of a dwindling hero for the movie The Incredible Shrinking Man at Universal Studios.” Photograph by Allan Grant, September 1956, Hollywood, California. Via the Life photo archive.]
It includes breakfast:
“I usually have a pickup breakfast. I could have cereal and milk, fruit. Sometimes I simply finish up whatever leftover is in the ice box. You can tell my age; I still use the words ‘ice box.’”
Letters to Answer, and Logs to Split (New York Times)
