@, !

From Smithsonian, the stories of @ and !.

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Matthew Crawford on problems

A philosopher and mechanic on finding problems:

When you do the math problems at the back of a chapter in an algebra textbook, you are problem solving. If the chapter is entitled “Systems of two equations with two unknowns,” you know exactly which methods to use. In such a constrained situation, the pertinent context in which to view the problem has already been determined, so there is no effort of interpretation required. But in the real world, problems don’t present themselves in this predigested way; usually there is too much information, and it is difficult to know what is pertinent and what isn’t. Knowing what kind of problem you have on hand means knowing what features of the situation can be ignored. Even the boundaries of what counts as “the situation” can be ambiguous; making discriminations of pertinence cannot be achieved by the application of rules, and requires the kind of judgment that comes with experience. The value and job security of the mechanic lie in the fact that he has this firsthand, personal knowledge.

Matthew B. Crawford, Shop Class as Soul Craft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work (New York: Penguin, 2009).

This insight in this passage seems to me applicable in many ways. In terms of writing instruction, I think of the difference between a grammar exercise and the work of revising an essay. With an exercise, one knows what to look for, and often, though not always, there’s a rule to follow to make things right. With revision, who knows what the problems are? One must figure out what they are, problems of all sorts, wherever they might be. Is a paragraph too long? Is a sequence of sentences right? Answering such questions is a matter not of rules but of “the kind of judgment that comes with experience.”

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Hommage à Ernie Bushmiller

[Zippy, August 29, 2012.]

Zippy and Griffy as Nancy and Sluggo. Stage left, Bill Griffith has placed the mystical configuration of “some rocks.” Scott McCloud explains:

Art Spiegelman explains how a drawing of three rocks in a background scene was Ernie’s way of showing us there were some rocks in the background. It was always three. Why? Because two rocks wouldn't be “some rocks.” Two rocks would be a pair of rocks. And four rocks was unacceptable because four rocks would indicate “some rocks” but it would be one rock more than was necessary to convey the idea of “some rocks.”

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“There goes the neighbourhood”

From Danny Eccleston’s profile of Van Dyke Parks, in the September 2012 issue of Mojo:

For years, his mother displayed a yellowed cutting from the Los Angeles Herald Examiner on the refrigerator — her only evidence of her son’s status as a showbiz personage.

“It was 1980,” relates Parks. “I was just back from Malta, playing piano with Kinky Friedman in a place in North Hollywood, and we’d been collared by a reporter. The piece ran, ‘Van Dyke Parks, when asked what he felt about Bob Dylan becoming a Born Again Christian, said, “Well, there goes the neighbourhood.”’”

Read it all at Bananastan Records.

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All Van Dyke Parks posts (via Pinboard)

[Malta: That would have been Popeye. I think he must’ve said neighborhood.]

The Wheel of Information

Five tiers, eight hundred books, forty-five years on the job: the Enoch Pratt Free Library’s Wheel of Information (via Pencil Revolution).

[Insert obligatory “Proud Mary” reference here.]

High school, 1950

[“Students sitting in circle listening to teacher outside on campus of New Trier High School.” Photograph by Alfred Eisenstaedt. Winnetka, Illinois, June 1950. From the Life Photo Archive. Click for a larger view. Or choose the jumbo economy size.]

There’s a maturity and sense of purpose in this photograph that I find difficult to reconcile with “high school.” But New Trier was and is no ordinary public high school. In a country committed to equality of opportunity, every school would be able to offer its students the possibilities available at New Trier.

Jonathan Kozol contrasts life at Chicago high schools and life at New Trier in his book Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools (1992). A November 2011 Chicago Tribune article sugests that little has changed since 1992: in 2011, the poorest school districts in Illinois spent less than a third of what the wealthiest districts spent per student.

[Notice the second suited man, seated at 12:00. Perhaps the class is team-taught. Notice too the striped socks at 3:00, the surfing shirt at 8:00, and the matching dresses at 11:00. Twins, or best friends?]

Restorative v. retributive justice

At The Atlantic, Max Fisher addresses a question that you too might be asking.

YouTube and me

Did you know that if you embed or link to YouTube clips on your site, Google might create a “channel” that collects the relevant content? I just discovered the Orange Crate Art channel by chance. I have no idea how long it’s been around. Its avatar, above, is a funnily ghastly example of parataxis: our children Rachel and Ben, Duke Ellington, and staring straight into the future, The Amazing Criswell.

Google’s explanation is kinda vague:

An auto[-]generated channel is created when YouTube algorithmically identifies a topic to have a significant presence on the site. It might be because there are a minimum number of videos or watch views about this topic. We also determine if the quality of the set of videos in that channel meets some thresholds.

Thanks, Google. Thanks a lot.

[Rachel and Ben, what did you do to make Duke so angry with you?]

Okay, swell, lousy

Pregnant — I mean expecting — and fearful, Lucy Ricardo has hired a tutor, Percy Livermore (Hans Conried), to ensure that she and Ricky and Fred and Ethel will speak proper English around the baby:

Mr. Livermore: We must rid our speech of slang. Now besides okay, I want you all to promise me that there are two words that you will never use. One of these is swell, and the other one is lousy.

Lucy: Okay, what are they?

Mr. Livermore: One of them is swell, and the other one is lousy.

Fred: Well, give us the lousy one first.

“Lucy Hires an English Tutor,” I Love Lucy, December 29, 1952.

In the Degrees-of-Separation Department: My dad once said hello to Hans Conried.

Mitt Romney, soaking in it

Mitt Romney, earlier today: “No one has ever asked to see my birth certificate.” No doubt. It’s called white privilege, and Governor Romney, you’re soaking in it.

[With apologies to Madge.]