[Hi and Lois, December 17, 2012.]
Hi Flagston today reprises a role he performed on February 9, 2009, that of the stingy landlord who sends up a miserable nickel’s-worth of heat. Shame on you, sir, for making your tenants wife and children freeze. In 2009, Hi joked about checking the price of oil before raising the thermostat. Today, facing Lois’s anger and condensed breath, he jokes that “It helps to get all hot and bothered.” Listen up, Hi: if you don’t change your ways, things are going to get a whole lot colder in your house, and they’re going to stay a whole lot colder, especially in a certain room of your house, if you get what I mean, and I hope that you do.
The good news here is that the workers on the Hi-Lo line have figured out how to construct a classic Honeywell thermostat. Compare:
[2009, 2012.]
Related reading
All Hi and Lois posts (Pinboard)
Monday, December 17, 2012
Hi and Lois watch
Dropbox, onward, upward
After updating Dropbox on my iPad, I began to wonder: how does one update Dropbox in OS X? Dropbox isn’t in the App Store, and there’s no way to check for updates from the app itself. I found an explanation at Practically Efficient and went from 1.4.12 to 1.6.5.
If you’d like to try Dropbox, this referral link will give you and me each an extra 500 MB of free storage.
More music for voices, forks, and cello
“We’re at it again, and running seriously low on forks!” It’s “Time of the Season,” with voices, forks, and cello.
Friday, December 14, 2012
December 14, 2012
On August 5, 2012, I wrote the following words:
About two weeks ago, in the aftermath of the Aurora, Colorado, shootings, various voices in media and politics said that it was inappropriate to be discussing gun-ownership rights — not the right time, too early. In the aftermath of today’s shootings in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, it seems that once again it will be too early for such a discussion.White House Press Secretary Jay Carney sounded the refrain earlier today:
“There is, I’m sure — will be, rather, a day for discussion of the usual Washington policy debates, but I don’t think today is that day.”As violent event follows violent event, the logic here defies logic. Carney is of course right to say that today is not the day to discuss a piece of legislation. But his language is the language of procrastination, of endless deferral. It suggests to me J. Alfred Prufrock: “There will be time, there will be time.” And the reference to “the usual Washington policy debates” suggests a lack of conviction that anything much is going to change. But have gun-ownership rights even been a “usual” subject of debate in Washington? Not much, not lately.
President Obama was more to the point:
“As a country, we have been through this too many times. Whether it’s an elementary school in Newtown, or a shopping mall in Oregon, or a temple in Wisconsin, or a movie theater in Aurora, or a street corner in Chicago, these neighborhoods are our neighborhoods, and these children are our children. We’re going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics."And now, the president needs to lead.
Related reading
Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence
[My transcriptions, from clips available at CBS News.]
Hi and Lois watch
[Hi and Lois, December 14, 2012.]
Dot Flagston, look again: there is one door on the side of your family’s station wagon.
It was a car-safety problem that turned me into a close reader of Hi and Lois. The fun never ends. Everything about cars seems to be a challenge for those who assemble the strip.
The two-door station wagon seems hilariously improbable: the spaciousness of a wagon, the awkwardness of . . . a compact? (Especially improbable with baby Trixie on board.) But as I just found out, two-door station wagons did exist, years ago. Perhaps there’s some inside joke inside this strip.
Related reading
All Hi and Lois posts (Pinboard)
Domestic comedy
“I’ve never seen Jaws — only bits and pieces.”
Related reading
All domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)
Edward Tufte’s signage
“Using the format of diamond signs that provide alerts and warnings about the road ahead, this series of works on canvas shows philosophical alerts, imperatives, and thoughts about the path past and future”: Edward Tufte’s Philosophical Diamond Signs.
Thursday, December 13, 2012
Turabian, fourth edition
[Click for larger views.]
The fourth edition of the University of Chicago Press’s A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations appeared in 1973. This copy (thirteenth printing) is from 1979. Writers of the era used the tools depicted on the book’s front and back covers to create written documents by making marks on thin sheets of a material called “paper” and fastening the sheets together.
Notice the use of tightly spaced Helvetica. In a comment on a 2011 post about Arthur Plotnik’s The Elements of Editing, Daughter Number Three pointed out that such spacing was once popular. Notice too the Parker T-Ball Jotter and the typeballs. The small object at the bottom left of the front cover is a typewriter key. The one above it: no idea.
The covers are what have made me hold on to this book through the years.
Related posts
A Manual for Writers of Dissertations
Parker T-Ball Jotter, 1963
A Manual for Writers of Dissertations
[Title page. Click for a larger view.]
Who was Kate Turabian? The University of Chicago Press can answer that question. I found this pamphlet yesterday, discarded. It’s a 1949 reprint of a 1937 publication, free to Chicago advanced-degree candidates (“50 cents,” says the inside front cover). This sixty-one-page manual is the predecessor of A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, now in its seventh edition.
I can admire a typewriter as machine art, but reading the details of document preparation in this manual reminds me of how little glamour I find in the idea of using a manual typewriter. Been there, done that. No thanks.
[“4. Typewriter ribbon.--A black ribbon, medium- or clean-inked rather than heavy-inked, should be used. A sufficient number of ribbons should be used to ensure a relatively even blackness throughout the thesis. it is recommended that the total number required for a job of typing be in hand before the work is begun and that the ribbons be used in rotation. That is, use ribbon one for, say, twenty-five pages, then ribbon two for the next twenty-five pages, and so on until each of the ribbons has been used for the same number of pages, repeating the sequence as many times as necessary to complete the typing job.” And by the way, the Dissertation Secretary has a list of “competent thesis typists.” Click for a larger view.]
Can anyone identify the typeface used on the title page? The usual online resources can’t.
1:30 p.m.: Daughter Number Three identified the typeface in a comment: it’s Bernhard Gothic. Thanks.
Related reading
All typewriter posts (Pinboard)
[“Sixty-one-pages”? Yes. As the Manual says, “In isolated cases in ordinary text matter every number of less than three digits should be spelled out.”]
