A few notes

From a page I made to accompany Marianne Moore’s poem “The Mind Is an Enchanting Thing.” I hope you agree that this paragraph is more fun than an anthology’s footnotes.

Other Marianne Moore posts
Marianne Moore magic
Q and A

[Nothing is certain but death and parataxis.]

Recently updated

C+ lawsuit continues It’s over.

Saving the post office Now with a link to a Washington Post piece on social media and the mail.

Saving the post office

“If they don’t find a way to make the postal system more essential to people’s lives, there is only one direction this thing can go”: Tucker Nichols explains why he is campaigning to save the post office.

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February 15: From the Washington Post: Will social media help save the Postal Service and Saturday delivery?

C+ lawsuit continues

Says the judge, “I remain unconvinced the judiciary should be injecting itself in the academic process.” But the case goes on.

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February 15: It’s over.

A related post
Suing in academia

An on-screen desk

At Submitted for Your Perusal, Matt Thomas writes about the on-screen representation of “what is often referred to as knowledge work”: Zoe’s Desk.

For Valentine's Day

“Seventy years later I’m still in a daze”: cdza presents Our Wedding Song, four couples and their songs. Take a tissue or two.

[My daughter Rachel deems this “the PERFECT video for Valentine’s day.”]

From Naked City

O dialogue of television past:

“All he does when he gets home is drink beer and look at Old Rabbit Ears — that’s what I call his portable TV.”

That’s from the Naked City episode “Go Fight City Hall,” first aired October 31, 1962.

Forty episodes from the series (though not this one) are now available in a ten-DVD set. Amazon has it for $24.99.

Other Naked City posts
Poetry and Naked City
A telephone exchange name: GRamercy
MUrray Hill
Another MUrray Hill
TWilight? TWinbrook? TWinoaks? TWining?

Suing in academia

A former graduate student is suing the school where she received a C+ in a class. The damages asked: $1.3 million. And here’s more.

In other news, the Edwin Mellen Press and its founder are suing a blogging librarian and the university that employs him. The damages asked: $4.55 million. This news is sure to endear the Edwin Mellen Press to university librarians everywhere.

Thanks, Sara, for the C+ story.

Downton Abbey stuff

Elaine and I watched Episode 6 of you-know-what last night and noticed three little flurries of stuff:

Lady Edith Crawley: “Oh, just family stuff — an errand for my grandmother.”

Lady Mary Crawley: “Nothing. Women’s stuff.”

Matthew Crawley: “Nonsense, you had stuff to see to.”

Stuff is an old, old noun. But the three young Crawleys are using the word in a new way. The Oxford English Dictionary has it:

Used loosely to denote any collection of things about which one is not able or willing to particularize . . . ; material, matter, business. colloq.

The young Crawleys are a colloquial avant-garde. The OED’s first citation for this use of stuff is from 1922, from an American source, Radio News:

Take a look at S. M. Brown, Chief on the Mauretania, “doing his stuff” in the saloon.

I can’t imagine that the influx of stuff in this episode is just coincidence: it’s one sign among many that the world is changing.

A related post
Word of the evening: hobbledehoy

[Other signs of change in this episode: new techniques in land-management, new roles for women, and jazz.]

How to succeed in college without really trying

More specifically, how to get a perfect score on a final examination without taking it (Inside Higher Ed).

I’ll say what no one commenting on the article has said: the organizers should be ashamed of themselves, as should those who went along.

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Here’s a later post that explains why these students should not have received 100s.