Semi-mistaken identity

Not only was I mistaken for a librarian by a public-library patron this afternoon; I also answered that patron’s question to her satisfaction, a question that the patron asked knowing that I was not a librarian.

[I’m still not a librarian.]

Remediation in community colleges

The New York Times reports on remediation in community colleges:

The knowledge gap at community colleges is increasingly being recognized as a national problem. About 65 percent of all community college students nationwide need some form of remedial education, with students’ shortcomings in math outnumbering those in reading by 2 to 1 . . . .

Nationwide, as at CUNY, fewer than half of students directed to take one or more remedial classes — “developmental education” is the term administrators prefer — complete them.

The saddest thing in this article is the lament of a student newly aware of his deficits in mathematics, reading, and writing: “‘Throughout high school, I was a good math student, and to find out that it was my lowest grade of all three was really surprising.’”

A junkie’s pockets

[Click for a larger view.]

Clockwise from the left, the contents of Professor Darcy’s pockets: matches, Life Savers, uncanceled stamp torn from an envelope (?), dip pen (?), pocket notebook, pencil, coin, Camel cigarette pack, key, coins, penknife, keys. The professor is also a junkie. Seeing these 1933-things on the screen just sends me.

The Mystery of the Wax Museum (dir. Michael Curtiz, 1933) is a stylish pre-Code horror film in glorious two-color Technicolor. Lots of snappy patter, much of it from Fay Wray. If you know her only from King Kong, as I did, you’ll find this film a surprise.

More notebook sightings
Angels with Dirty Faces : Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne : Extras : Journal d’un curé de campagne : The House on 92nd Street : The Palm Beach Story : Pickpocket : Pickup on South Street : Red-Headed Woman : Rififi : The Sopranos : Spellbound

PEREC, not ADAIR

Errors in New York Times crossword clues are rare. There’s one in today’s puzzle: 60-Across, “Gilbert       , author of A Void, a 290-page novel without the letter E.”

Gilbert Adair is not the author of A Void (1994); Georges Perec is. Adair translated Perec’s novel La disparition (1969) from French to English. Translating sans e a novel sans e is no ordinary feat of translation, but Perec is the author, as I’m sure Adair would be the first to say.

[The capitals in the post title? Not shouting, just a convention with crossword answers.]

Random Exhibit Title Generator

“Apposite Banality: The Dysfunction of the Local”: just one of many titles from the Random Exhibit Title Generator (via Coudal).

See also Write Your Own Academic Sentence.

For Infinite Jest readers only

“We think 2011 is clearly going to be the year of iPad 2,” Mr. Jobs said.

Some Infinite Jest posts
Attention : Description : Loveliness : “Night-noises” : Novelty : Romance : Sadness : ❍ : Telephony : Television

FeedBurner problems

My FeedBurner stats this morning show a drop from 7,389 readers to 223. I’m guessing that the other 7,166 have been put to work sorting stacks of recently lost Gmail.

Update, March 3: FeedBurner is working again. Welcome back, readers. Welcome, new readers, too.

[FeedBurner too is a Google service.]

Hi and Lois watch

[Hi and Lois, March 2, 2011.]

Today’s Hi and Lois may be sending dozens of people to their dictionaries, which will confirm that phooey is spelled with “a” ph, or a p and an h. Ditto, you were right.

The Oxford English Dictionary reports that phooey first appeared in print in a caption (for a cartoon perhaps?) in the 1919 Sandusky Star-Journal: “Phooey! That’s old stuff — she told me pers’n’ly that all of them ‘sweet patootie’ letters was forged.”

Related reading
All Hi and Lois posts (via Pinboard)

Weather, continued

The sun is out, way out, making my earlier weather post passé.

[Insert imprecations here.]

Weather

Nobody does anything about the weather, but everybody talks about it. They talk behind its back, in terms unflattering and, I’m sorry to say, even coarse.

Today’s March weather looks no different from yesterday’s February — “the dirty month of February,” Jane Austen called it. The calendar shows the same muddy page.

[Insert imprecations here.]