Step right up

My son Ben asked if had this seen this article. It really feels like the beginning of the end:

Arizona State University, one of the nation’s largest universities, is joining with edX, a nonprofit online venture founded by M.I.T. and Harvard, to offer an online freshman year that will be available worldwide with no admissions process and full university credit. . . .

“Leave your G.P.A., your SATs, your recommendations at home,” said Anant Agarwal, the chief executive of edX. “If you have the will to learn, just bring your Internet connection and yourself, and you can get a year of college credit.”

Yes, step right up.

I am forever loyal to the idea of college — that is, real college, what college can be and still, often, is. But we seem to be moving toward a future in which that possibility becomes, once again, reserved for a privileged few. For everyone else, an Internet connection will suffice. No classmates, no office hours, no libraries. It’s telling that even Mr. Agarwal’s hucksterism acknowledges reality: this scheme offers not a year of college but “a year of college credit.” They’re not the same thing.

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May 3: Oh — and there’s no financial aid.

A related post
Higher-ed monopoly

[Title courtesy of Tom Waits.]

M. H. Abrams (1912–2015)

That diagram, from The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition (1953), has been the starting point for who knows how many expeditions into the world of criticism.

The New York Times has an obituary: “M. H. Abrams, 102, Dies; Shaped Romantic Criticism and Literary ‘Bible.’”

[The “Bible” is the The Norton Anthology of English Literature.]

Some like it hot

[Life, April 29, 1940. Click either image for a much, much larger view.]

Liverwurst, it’s your turn to shine.

I like the density of this advertisement, which helps me to understand that it might indeed have been possible to leave the Pennsylvania Station at a quarter to four and arrive in Baltimore just one magazine later. One poem, two faucets (hot and cold), three “everyday Americans” (as we are now known), three smartly dressed sophisticates, five recipes. Plus serving suggestions, plus reminders that liverwurst is also known as Braunschweiger. The Institute of American Meat Packers knew how to pack a page.

The poem is by Emily Dickinson:

What does Liver Sausage have
    That always hits the spot?
One thing is Tasty Flavor
    That all folks like a lot.

Restored from the fascicle text:

What does Liver Sausage — have
That always hits — the spot?
One thing is — Tasty Flavor —
That all folks — like — a lot

Other liverwurst posts
Henry buys liverwurst : Liverwurst: “For health, for strength — for eating fun” : “THIS IS FUN”

How to improve writing (no. 57)

[Mark Trail, April 22, 2015, and revised.]

Abbey Powell’s April 20 polysyllabic spree (“Parasitoids are a biocontrol agent”) left Mark’s pal Wallace Wood bewildered and exasperated: “Abbey, can you explain it all to me in plain English, please?” What a know-nothing: no wonder his forest is falling to pieces. What (ahem) bugs me though is Mark’s prolixity in today’s strip. It’s not necessary to say that something would (or could ) potentially save the trees. And “before they get too damaged”? Thus these revisions: from sixteen words to thirteen, from twenty-three syllables to thirteen. Or, finally, to three words, five syllables.

Mark, you’re speaking in speech balloons. Save some helium.

Related reading
All OCA How to improve writing posts (Pinboard)
All OCA Mark Trail posts (Pinboard)

[More drastic: “Wiping out the eggs and larvae could save the trees!” But I wanted to keep the idea that the trees have already been damaged. This post is no. 57 in a series, “How to improve writing,” dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]

Gift from the sea through the mail

Monday’s mail brought an unexpected gift: a tin of sardines from reader and fellow writer Martha. To say that this gift made me happy would be understatement: it felt like an affirmation of a secret society devoted to finding delight in the most everyday things. I knew right away what I would be having for lunch on Tuesday.

I had never tried King Oscar Mediterranean Style, and now I had the chance, skin, bones, and all. Accompanying these Brisling sardines: extra virgin olive oil, black olives, soybean oil, red bell pepper, herbs of Provence, salt. I divided the sardines into two camps to try Martha’s serving suggestions (balsamic vinegar, lemon juice) and pulled out two slices of cracked wheat bread for accompaniment. The sardines were delicious, and surprisingly delicate in flavor, quite different from their meatier skinless and boneless kin. These tiny Brislings were — I can’t help saying it — a different kettle of fish. Must get more.

I’ll say it again, here: Thank you, Martha!

Also from the briny deep
All OCA sardine posts (Pinboard)

[The skin and bones: non-problematic. So much squeamishness for naught. Image from King Oscar.]

Finns and Ducks

One more from Shadows in Paradise (dir. Aki Kaurismäki, 1986). Ilona (Kati Outinen) is thinking about taking a trip: “My aunt’s been to Florida. She says there’s nothing there. All she saw was some Finns and some Donald Ducks.”

Other Karuismäki posts
Ariel : The Man Without a Past : Shadows in Paradise and The Match Factory Girl  : Trashy dialogue

A little trashy dialogue

From Shadows in Paradise (dir. Aki Kaurismäki, 1986), an exchange between garbagemen. One (nameless, played by Esko Nikkari) wants to start his own company. He tries to interest Nikander (played by Matti Pellonpää) in signing on:

Co-worker: I’ve got a great slogan already: “Reliable garbage disposal since 1986.”

Nikander: But that’s now.

Co-worker: That’s why it catches the eye.

Nikander: Pretty smart.

Co-worker: Isn’t it.

Kaurismäki posts are beginning to pile up here: Ariel , The Man Without a Past , Shadows in Paradise and The Match Factory Girl . This one is for Fresca.

Proletariat Trilogy bookends

[Nikander (Matti Pellonpää), Ilona Rajamäki (Kati Outinen), and Melartin (Sakari Kuosmanen), out for a drive in Shadows in Paradise. Click for a larger view.]

Our household’s Aki Kaurismäki spree (if spree is the right word) now includes the other two thirds of the Proletariat Trilogy, the first and last films of the series, Shadows in Paradise (1986) and The Match Factory Girl (1990). Like the middle film Ariel, they take up familiar narrative possibilities in a world of working-class poverty filled with ancient radios, makeshift tables and chairs, cracked and peeling walls, and sofas doubling as beds. Shadows in Paradise is the romantic comedy of the trilogy — tracking the relationship between an inhibited garbageman (Nikander, played by Matti Pellonpää) and an inhibited supermarket cashier (Ilona Rajamäki, played by Kati Outinen). One might think of the film as a painfully awkward variation on Marty (dir. Delbert Mann, 1955): compared to Nikander and Ilona, Marty Piletti and Clara Snyder are players. In The Match Factory Girl, a revenge tragicomedy, Outinen returns as Iris, a cipher of a factory worker who takes calm, indiscriminately murderous action in intolerable circumstances. (Part of the pleasure of watching Kaurismäki is seeing his people reappear from film to film, as in, say, the work of Preston Sturges.)

Elaine and I found all three films greatly rewarding, but we also thought that things improve from one to the next. And the trilogy’s ending is both satisfying and hopeless: nothing should follow that.

Other Kaurismäki posts
Ariel
The Man Without a Past

Ben Leddy makes history

Our son Ben, making musical history.

Previously on Orange Crate Art
Ben Leddy rocks the world

Blogger Profile blurry-picture fix

[For Bloggers only.]

The Blogger Profile photograph in my sidebar was suddenly blurry this morning. It turns out that Blogger has begun using 80 × 80 images for Profile photographs. If a photograph is set to appear in a larger size, Blogger stretches the small version: thus a horribly pixelated image. Making that change and giving the user no notification: it’s just one more eff yew from Google to its “users.” (Who’s using whom?)

Prayag Verma has put together a script that solves the problem. I added it to my sidebar as an HTML/JavaScript gadget. Not wanting an extra line to mark the invisible gadget, I then added the text of the Camel-cigarettes-derived joke that sits at the bottom of the sidebar. (Sneaky, eh?) The script seems to work only when it appears before the text of the joke. It’s also possible to add the script as a gadget at the bottom of the Blogger template, but doing so creates a longer moment of blur before the picture snaps into focus. So sidebar it is.

Thank you, Prayag!

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April 21: I moved the script higher in the sidebar, into the search gadget below the profile. No blur at all.