FeedBurner, broken

You know that something is seriously wrong when even the usually dormant FeedBurner Status Blog acknowledges the problem: “We have been encountering difficulties with our stats production pipeline for data representing March 18th thru 20th. We are currently working to resolve the issue.”

The frequency of posting on the FeedBurner Status Blog tells you something about Google’s interest in this service: the last post before today’s appeared on September 21, 2012. And Google’s FeedBurner Help Group has long been a self-help group, minus a higher power: there’s no one from Google reading or posting. I think I will be looking for another service in the near future.

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March 22: FeedBurner is working again. But you’d never know it from the FeedBurner Status Blog.

No diagram needed

“You know what I love about you? I never have to draw you a diagram.”

From the Perry Mason episode “The Case of the Empty Tin,” first aired March 8, 1958. Alan Neil (Warren Stevens) is speaking to Miriam Hocksley (Mary Shipp).

Other Masonic posts
Perry Mason and Gilbert and Sullivan : Perry Mason and John Keats : Perry Mason’s office : Separated at birth? : Streetside gum machines

“MODERN ART PAYS BIG MONEY”

[Popular Mechanics, August 1931. Click for a larger view.]

Google Books . . . a rabbit hole. Popular Mechanics . . . a rabbit hole . . . within a rabbit hole. I found this advertisement while looking for something . . . else.

[Repeat after me: “You can learn at home . . . in your spare time . . . the Federal way.”]

“The Love Song of J. Alfred Brown”

[Peanuts, March 20, 2013. First published March 23, 1966. Click for a larger view.]

Charles Monroe Schulz channels Thomas Stearns Eliot.

Overheard

Elaine and I were in our favorite Thai restaurant. In a nearby booth, a young family of four, everyone talking: a good sign. The mother turned to her high-chaired daughter, who held an index finger in the air. Mom extended an index finger too: “One! One! That’s how old you are!” And then she turned to her son, who might have been all of five, and asked, ever so tactfully, “Could you put your pen back in your journal, please?” It was time to pack up and go home.

The son reminded me of Ralphie in A Christmas Story and of the boy in this Vivian Maier photograph. A kid so bookish, or notebookish, at the age of five or so might have some difficult times ahead, but I have little doubt that he and his sister are in good hands. Fare forward, young family.

Related reading
All “overheard” posts (Pinboard)
Early Language and Literacy Development (Zero to Three)

Dropbox 2.0

Dropbox for Mac and Windows just hit version 2.0, with a nifty, new drop-down menu.

If you’d like to try Dropbox, this referral link will give each of us an extra 500 MB of free storage.

Studying alone, really alone

A fringe benefit of reading Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa's Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses (2011): one can assemble from the book’s data and conclusions a to-do list for genuine learning in college. Arum and Roksa find that students who learn the most in college do three things: they take courses with professors who have high expectations and require much reading and writing; they talk to professors during office hours; and they study alone.

I think that Arum and Roksa have it right, but I think it's time to rethink the meaning of alone. When I walk through my college library, I see student after student studying sort-of alone: stopping repeatedly to check messages (most likely texts and tweets and updates) on a phone that is always within reach. There might be especially urgent reasons for any given student to have a phone out and on, but I doubt that emergencies account for the scenes I see again and again.

A student whose work is constantly interrupted by messages from the world beyond the library, who studies (or tries to) while anticipating the arrival of those siren songs, is never really alone, and never really paying attention — partial attention being, I would argue, a form of inattention. A better to-do for greater learning: study disconnected. Alone, yes, but with beeswax in your ears — in other words, with your phone silent and out of sight. A phone is hardly the only obstacle to attention: the mind provides distractions enough of its own. There’s no need to supplement them.

Related posts
A good place to study
A review of Academically Adrift

[Arum and Roksa studied the academic progress of students who began college in Fall 2005. Thus these students did much of their work before the massive growth of Facebook and Twitter. In Odyssey 12, beeswax protects Odysseus’ crew from the song of the Sirens. Odysseus, ever curious, has himself tied to the mast so that he can safely hear the song.]

On learning and games

Pamela Paul on learning and games:

“Imagine if kids poured their time and passion into a video game that taught them math concepts while they barely noticed, because it was so enjoyable,” Bill Gates said last year. Do we want children to “barely notice” when they develop valuable skills? Not to learn that hard work plays a role in that acquisition? It’s important to realize early on that mastery often requires persevering through tedious, repetitive tasks and hard-to-grasp subject matter.

How’s this for a radical alternative? Let children play games that are not educational in their free time. . . . Then, once they’re in the classroom, they can challenge themselves. Deliberate practice of less-than-exhilarating rote work isn’t necessarily fun but they need to get used to it — and learn to derive from it meaningful reward, a pleasure far greater than the record high score.

Read it all: Reading, Writing and Video Games (New York Times).

ClockSaver

I just updated my at-work computer and lo: Fliqlo and Word Clock no longer work. But there’s still ClockSaver, a free screensaver for Mac. I can vouch that it works with Snow Leopard; I don’t about Lion and Mountain Lion.

“Do the work”

A member of Professor Charles Kingsfield’s seminar for second- and third-year law students has just given a report using two props — a piece of “eastern erotica” and a Playboy centerfold. Kingsfield’s response: “lively, energetic, entertaining, . . . also overlong, ineptly researched, and quite shallow.” The props, says Kingsfield, are merely “a smoke screen” to conceal shoddy work. He then gives the student this advice: “Do the work, and you won’t need to do the dance.”

Do the work: yes. I’m reminded of the justly celebrated Rule 7.

These bits of dialogue come from a second-season episode of The Paper Chase, “Spreading It Thin,” which aired on June 15, 1983. Yes, the DVD is at Netflix.

Two more Kingsfield posts
How to improve writing (no. 42)
“Minds, not memories”