Eric Schmidt and Warren Buffett

Eric Schmidt, speaking today at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland:

“There will be so many IP addresses . . . so many devices, sensors, things that you are wearing, things that you are interacting with that you won’t even sense it,” he explained. “It will be part of your presence all the time. Imagine you walk into a room, and the room is dynamic. And with your permission and all of that, you are interacting with the things going on in the room.”

Warren Buffett, speaking to University of Washington students in 1998:

“I’m very suspect of the person who is very good at one business — it also could be a good athlete or a good entertainer — who starts thinking they should tell the world how to behave on everything. For us to think that just because we made a lot of money, we’re going to be better at giving advice on every subject — well, that’s just crazy.”

Not a perfect match: Schmidt here is more prophet than advice-giver, telling us not how to behave but how we will behave. But again: who is he to tell us how we are to live?

That phrasing — “with your permission and all of that” — suggests a rather casual attitude toward individual privacy and whatnot. And what is “the room”? It’s certainly not my living room.

See also Eric Schmidt on the future.

On subscription prices

If you plan to renew (or, I suppose, begin) a magazine subscription, it may be smart to do business over the phone. You may come out with a price significantly lower than those found in magazine inserts and mailed reminders. I speak from experience: anecdotal experience.

That concludes my advice for the day. YAEMV.

[Your anecdotal experience may vary.]

On paper clips

In academic life, paper clips are like pennies — always there. When I need a paper clip, I just look at my desk — there are always a few clips around. (Five as I’m writing.) I find clips in my shirt pockets and at the bottom of my Lands’ End bag. When I find them holding together pages several years old, they have often left on the paper a deposit of rust that cannot be removed. When clips do not rust, they leave their imprints, ghost clips made of shadow. I remember on at least one occasion in college getting back a paper that I was sure the professor hadn’t read — the paper clip was still in place, and there was no sign that anyone had turned the pages.

Taking paper clips seriously has made me look strange to people who should know better. At Bob Slate Stationers I asked a salesperson what kind of paper clip it is that doesn’t rust. (Stainless steel? Brass?) She referred me to someone else: “He says there’s a paper clip that doesn’t rust.” But lady, it’s true.

Taking paper clips seriously has also made me look strange to people who don’t know better.

When I hear “paper clip,” I think of something made of metal, though lately I have been using plastic-coated clips. They remind me of the wire I used in science-fair projects involving batteries and tiny light bulbs. Coated clips add interesting touches of color — pink or purple looks especially zany holding together pages of a critical essay or book review. These clips have a shorter life: after holding together a thick sheaf of paper, they are bent forever. They are the paper clips of the future, to be used once and discarded.

Paper clips are in some unprovable way more mature than staples: teachers staple exams for you, but they don’t provide paper clips.

A related post
Paper clips (A prose poem)

[Found in an old looseleaf notebook, from a writing course I taught in 1990-something. The assignment was to write about a small subject. I did the assignment along with the class. The other topics, all of the students’ invention: a chip clip, colors (black, blue, red), crayons, flowers, a fork, a full moon, the number 76, a paintbrush, paper, a Q-Tip, a ring, a toothpick. Remember the Lands’ End canvas briefcase? In 2015 it comes in only two colors, and reviews are mixed. I now suspect that coated clips are the only ones that do not rust.]

The libertine of the day

The word of the day from A.Word.A.Day is libertine . Which makes it a good time to revisit the story of I, Libertine .

Still life

[Click for a larger view.]

One of these things is not like the others. One of these things just doesn’t belong.

This post is an example of what Elaine and I call “making our own fun.”

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The Arancia Technique

Domestic comedy

“I had them when I was young, when they were in style.”

“Were they ever in style?”

Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

[They? These.]

Mystery Pier on Off-Ramp

KPCC’s Off-Ramp has a short feature on Mystery Pier Books. Happening upon this bookstore — right next to Book Soup — was a highlight of our visit to Los Angeles last summer.

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Things to do in Los Angeles

Separated at birth?

[Michael A. Monahan and William H. Macy.]

William H. Macy looks like Michael A. Monahan all grown up. Sources: an epsiode of Father Knows Best (1956) and Air Force One (1997).

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Nicholson Baker and Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Ted Berrigan and C. Everett Koop
John Davis Chandler and Steve Buscemi
Ray Collins and Mississippi John Hurt
Broderick Crawford and Vladimir Nabokov
Ted Cruz and Joe McCarthy
Jacques Derrida, Peter Falk, and William Hopper
Elaine Hansen (of Davey and Goliath) and Blanche Lincoln
Harriet Sansom Harris and Phoebe Nicholls
Ton Koopman and Oliver Sacks
Steve Lacy and Myron McCormick

Erik Spiekermann on “obsessive attention to detail”

Erik Spiekermann says that being obsessive about detail is being normal. He explains it to an interviewer:

Q. The meticulousness of typographic work seems to require an obsessive attention to detail. Would you describe your work in typography as an obsession and, if so, why does this particular discipline require this level of engagement?

A. Wrong question. Every craft requires attention to detail. Whether you’re building a bicycle, an engine, a table, a song, a typeface or a page: the details are not the details, they make the design. Concepts don’t have to be pixel-perfect, and even the fussiest project starts with a rough sketch. But building something that will be used by other people, be they drivers, riders, readers, listeners — users everywhere, it needs to be built as well as can be. Unless you are obsessed by what you’re doing, you will not be doing it well enough.

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An Erik Spiekermann poster
Erik Spierkermann explains quotation marks
Erik Spiekermann on typomania

Poetry and memory

From an interview with the poet Susan Howe:

I have an old friend who is in the advanced stages of dementia. He can barely remember his children. But he remembers music. If you play him something from his youth, songs from South Pacific or Cole Porter musicals, he knows melody and score. I brought him T. S. Eliot the other day, because he went to Harvard during the early 1950s when T. S. Eliot was a sort of god. I read him “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and from The Waste Land. He remembered whole lines, the familiar ones that used to astonish us then. “In the room the women come and go / Talking of Michelangelo.” “Do I dare to eat a peach?” “I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. / I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.” I thought, my God, how great T. S. Eliot is. These poems are so musical they can be remembered even after the ability to string words together has dissolved.

January 20: It turns out that there’s an Alzheimer’s Poetry Project.

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Alive Inside