Orange peel art

[“British Orange Peeler.” Photograph by Wallace Kirkland. August 8, 1950. From the Life Photo Archive.]

It’s a photograph that seems to say, “It’s called surréalisme, you lousy Philistines!”

This photograph did not appear in Life, but another (by the same photographer) appeared beneath a letter responding to a Life item about a French waiter’s orange-peeling skills:

[Life, August 28, 1950.]

A quick trip through the Life Photo Archive confirms that the monocled fellow is indeed David Leven, using the peeler he invented. I’m guessing that Dale = Da[vid] + Le[ven]. I can find online nothing about the inventor or his work.

[Does “Orange peeler in action” mean the device, or the man?]

Yahoo[!] Mail Classic

If you happen to have a Yahoo Mail account and if you happen to find the redesign ugly, there’s a sneaky way to get back the less ugly (though still ugly) look of Yahoo Mail Classic. Long story short: disable JavaScript in your browser, open up Yahoo Mail, choose “Return to a previous version of Yahoo! Mail,” and enable JavaScript. There’s a more detailed explanation from user Rudjake here.

Too bad Yahoo doesn’t offer something like Gmail’s new Preview theme, which to my eyes is a model of clarity and good taste.

[Yes, I use a Yahoo Mail account for blog-related stuff. Yes, I would feel like a jerk typing the exclamation point again and again.]

Man in inflatable chair

[Click for a larger view.]

Above, Bob Dishy as Jerry in Lovers and Other Strangers (dir. Cy Howard, 1970). Along with the extravagant markers of with-it — the lava lamp, the door beads, the YIELD sign, there’s a Barbra Streisand record (My Name Is Barbra) on the shelf. In other words, Jerry’s trying too hard. You should hear the conversation.

Lovers and Other Strangers is a funny film with a terrific ensemble cast. And it offers the only chance you’ll ever have to see Bea Arthur and Richard Castellano play a married couple.

Anthony Lane on tabloid journalism

Two choice sentences on Murdoch’s tabloids:

If your attitude toward the lives of others is that of a house burglar confronted by an open window; if you consider it part of your business to fabricate conversations where none exist; and if your boss treats his employees with a derision that they, following suit, extend to the subjects of their inquiries — if those elements are already in place, then the decision to, say, hack into someone’s cell phone is almost no decision at all. It is merely the next step.

Anthony Lane, Hack Work (New Yorker)

Tone balls

Elaine and Ben and I spent the afternoon yesterday at Elderly Instruments in Lansing, Michigan. Housed in a former Odd Fellows building, Elderly is quite a store.

Downstairs, next to the repair desk, there is a curious exhibit titled “Tone Balls,” a collection of the little bundles of dust, hair, lint, and whatever that form inside guitars. The term tone ball is the work of an unidentified Elderly employee. Here, from The Fretboard Journal, is a 2006 article about tone balls, with scary-big photographs.

Elaine has already written about these things, and I see that she too found the Fretboard Journal piece. The photograph above is hers.

[Gasoline to Lansing and back: about $30. Getting your son an instrument: priceless.]

Word of the day: skeuomorph

Skeuomorph is a word that I wish I had known a few months ago, when writing a post about the Moleskine app for iOS. Skeoumorph comes from the Greek σκεῦος [vessel, implement] and μορϕή [form]. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the word in two ways:

An ornament or ornamental design on an artefact resulting from the nature of the material used or the method of working it.

An object or feature copying the design of a similar artefact in another material.

It’s the second definition that’s relevant: the Moleskine app attempts to emulate paper by offering the user the non-functional choice of a plain, ruled, or squared page. To my mind, that’s an analog-to-digital mistake.

I learned skeuomorph while browsing John Siracusa’s review of Mac OS X 10.7 Lion. The leather stitching and torn paper of Lion’s iCal and the sewn signatures of Lion’s Address Book are examples of skeuomorphic design. Siracusa calls them “egregious.” I’d say “ghastly.”

Wikipedia has a handy collection of examples of skeuomorphic design. Perhaps the most obvious examples: fake stitching, fake woodgrain, and the shutter click of a non-SLR digital camera.

“Mitt lille land”

My friend Norman sent links to two recordings of “Mit lille land” [My little land], a song by Norwegian musician and poet Ole Paus. The first is by Paus. The second, just days old, is by Maria Mena, and is accompanied by news footage from last Friday. Norman included a translation (not, he points out, his own):

My little country
A little place, a handful of peace
thrown out among mountain plateau and fjords

My little country
Where high mountains are planted
among houses, people and words
Where silence and dreams grow
Like an echo in barren earth

My little country
Where the sea pats mild and soft
like it’s caressing from coast to coast

My little country
Where stars glide by
and becomes landscapes when it gets lighter
while the night stands there — bleak and silent

My little country
A little place, a handful of peace
thrown out among mountain plateau and fjords

My little country
Where high mountains are planted
among houses, people and words
Where silence and dreams grow
Like an echo in barren earth

[Image from the Maria Mena video.]

In favor of penmanship

Joanna Key favors penmanship.

Garner, Menand, and Truss

Good reading: two devastating appraisals of Lynne Truss’s Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation (2003), by Bryan A. Garner and Louis Menand.

Idle and curious, I looked at Truss’s book in the library a few weeks ago and found myself stopping short at the subtitle, which should read The Zero-Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. It was downhill from there.

[Sheer, strange coincidence: Garner’s Usage Tip of The Day (taken from Garner’s Modern American Usage) has just hit punctuation. Today’s tip concerns the apostrophe. You can subscribe here (bottom right). The Garner link above is now dead.]

Word of the day: earthling

The Oxford English Dictionary Word of the Day is earthling. I was surprised to learn that the word is much older than I’d thought. The meaning that I think of — “A person who lives on or comes from the earth as opposed to another planet” — first appeared in 1858, in a newspaper item about a comet. As the OED notes, this meaning later turns up mainly in science fiction. (As in, say, “Attention, earthlings!”)

But earthling has earlier meanings. In 1600, Sir William Cornwallis used the word to denote “A worldly or materialistic person.” In 1593, earthling appeared in Thomas Nashe’s Christs Teares Over Iervsalem, meaning “An inhabitant of the earth as opposed to heaven”: “Wee (of all earthlings) are Gods vtmost subiects.”

Earlier still (beyond today’s Word of the Day), earthling (that is, yrðling, yrþling, or urþling) meant “A ploughman, a cultivator of the soil.” And as yrðling, ærðling, and irdling, earthling also meant “A kind of bird (not identified).” Perhaps a bird that couldn’t fly? I wonder.

[You can subscribe the the OED Word of the Day at the dictionary’s homepage.]