Reading surveilled

[W]e have awoken to find a retail panopticon where everything we say or see is observed, counted, and recorded. . . . Even readerly underlining, once the bastion of self-referentiality, is now being viewed for marketing purposes with the help of electronic readers. There is no outside the network today except the ever dwindling space-time of off. As Don DeLillo writes in Valparaiso, his satirical drama of contemporary media, “Everything is the interview.” We have returned to a world before the invention of privacy.

Andrew Piper, Book Was There: Reading in Electronic Times (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012).

And now the act of reading itself is becoming data. Read all about it: As New Services Track Habits, the E-Books Are Reading You (The New York Times).

[Mac Dictation turned panopticon into panoptic con. Hmm. Thanks for the book, Ben.]

Pedestrians in Los Angeles

The New York Times reports on a crackdown on pedestrians in Los Angeles:

When Adam Bialik, a bartender, stepped off the curb on his way to work at the Ritz-Carlton a few blinks after the crossing signal began its red “Don’t Walk” countdown, he was met by a waiting police officer on the other side of the street and issued a ticket for $197.

“I didn’t even know that was against the law,” he said. “I was like, ‘You are the L.A.P.D., and this is what you are doing right now?’”

When Elaine and I were in Los Angeles last fall, we walked great distances and never got a ticket. I’m pretty certain that we never jaywalked — it would have been like trying to cross a football field.

Christmas 1913

[“13,000 at the Spugs Christmas Party: Band Played, Chorus and Soloists Sang, and Nearly Everybody Danced. 40-Foot Tree Bore Gifts. The Children Got Half a Pound of Candy Each; Luncheon Served to All.” The New York Times, December 26, 1913.]

The Society for the Prevention of Useless Giving, the Spugs, was the creation of Mrs. August Belmont. Its mission: “to fight petty holiday grafting.” A 1912 Times article attributed to Mrs. Belmont this definition of Spug̢: “a woman who has vowed never again in all her life to give any Christmas gift that is not offered with a whole heart.” The Times described the Spug as “a working girl who has put her foot on all the usual Christmas-time schemes for raising money with which to buy Christmas presents for those ‘higher up,’” such as floorwalkers and head salesladies.

To all who celebrate it, Merry Christmas. May the presents you give and receive be real ones.

A seasonal joke in the traditional manner

Why was Santa Claus wandering the East Side of Manhattan?

[The answer is in the comments. The traditional manner: à la my dad.]

Santa on break

“A Santa during a coffee break during the NYC Christmas season.” Photograph by Leonard McCombe. New York City, December 1962. From the Life Photo Archive. Click for a larger view.]

[The counter layout and the sugar dispenser suggest that Santa might be a Chock full o’Nuts customer. The tray though doesn’t. Maybe it came from the North Pole with Santa.

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A VLC replacement icon

[Left: icon by VLC. Right: icon by Primofenax.]

I know that the VLC icon has a story behind it. But I don’t like that traffic cone. I like it even less when it wears a Santa hat — to me, it looks tacky. I do like this alternative icon by Primofenax. And I like VLC, a lot, though 2.1.2 has problems playing DVDs on my Mac. I’ve gone back to 2.1.1.

From the app’s website: “VLC is a free and open source cross-platform multimedia player and framework that plays most multimedia files as well as DVD, Audio CD, VCD, and various streaming protocols.” One great advantage of VLC, for me: unlike OS X’s DVD Player, VLC allows screenshots.

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[The free app img2icns turns an image file into an icon. There’s a nice replacement icon for that app too.]

Public radio map

I like exploring the weirdness of “the dial,” all of it, but I still think I would find this page invaluable on a long car trip: a public radio map, by Andrew Filer.

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New directions in advertising (Indiana AM weirdness)

[Did car radios ever have dials?]

The Pennsylvania Turnpike, then and now

[That was then.]


[This is now.]

Elaine and I are old hands at making our own fun. Yes, we are makers. Driving to New Jersey last month, we attempted to recreate the scene on this 1949 postcard, the Blue Mountain Tunnel as seen from the Kittatinny Tunnel. I got into the left lane and Elaine filmed with an iPhone.

When we told our son Ben about our accomplishment, he mentioned that the Turnpike’s tunnels were designed for a never-completed late-nineteenth-century railroad, the South Pennsylvania Railroad. The guy knows his American history.

Subject-verb disagreement in the New York Times

In Garrison Keillor’s review of Deborah Solomon’s Norman Rockwell biography:

It took him seven months to paint his “Four Freedoms” pictures — a Lincolnesque workingman standing up and speaking at a town meeting, a cluster of profiles of persons in prayer, a mother and father watching over two sleeping children, a family gathered around the Thanksgiving table — which appeared in The Post and drew sacks of fan mail and was used by the Treasury to sell war bonds.

Anyone can slip up in this way, yes. But such a slip shouldn’t get by the Times.

*

10:10 p.m.: The more I look at this sentence, the more I think about (1) the great distance between pictures and which, and (2) the awkward series appeared, drew, and was were used. (And I’m not sure that paintings should be drawing anything.) How about two sentences, with minor adjustments?

It took him seven months to paint his “Four Freedoms” for The Post — a Lincolnesque workingman standing up and speaking at a town meeting, a cluster of profiles of persons in prayer, a mother and father watching over two sleeping children, a family gathered around the Thanksgiving table. The paintings became wildly popular, and the Treasury used them to sell war bonds.

Or:

It took him seven months to paint his “Four Freedoms” for The Post — a Lincolnesque workingman standing up and speaking at a town meeting, a cluster of profiles of persons in prayer, a mother and father watching over two sleeping children, a family gathered around the Thanksgiving table. The paintings became so popular that the Treasury used them to sell war bonds.

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All How to improve writing posts (Pinboard)

[This post is no. 48 in a series, “How to improve writing,” dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose. I’ve added italics to the magazine title.]

Domestic comedy

“We have all the superfoods: avocados . . . pistachios . . . grilled cheese . . . .”

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