No bull

The essentially English word bull is refined beyond the mountains, and perhaps elsewhere, into cow-creature, male-cow, and even gentleman-cow . A friend who resided many years in the West has told me of an incident where a gray-headed man of sixty doffed his hat reverently and apologized to clergyman for having used inadvertently in his hearing the plain Saxon term.

John Russell Bartlett, A Glossary of Words and Phrases Usually Regarded as Peculiar to the United States (1848). Quoted in H. L. Mencken, The American Language: An Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States , 4th ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1936).

Also from The American Language
The American v. the Englishman : B.V.D. : “[N]o faculty so weak as the English faculty” : On professor : Playing policy : “There are words enough already” : The -thon , dancing and walking : The verb to contact

[John Russell Bartlett was a historian and linguist. No relation to Quotations.]

Recently updated

Teaching and texting Sherry Turkle’s essay, now out from behind the paywall.

Decorum

While I’m thinking about teaching and texting and distraction, here is a statement about decorum that I used (with variations) on syllabi over many years:



I see this statement not as harsh or threatening but as plainly serious. Students, with very few exceptions, saw it that way too. Texting, as you can guess, was a rare occurrence in my classes.

Webster’s Second does a bang-job on decorum. Sense 2:

A standard or code of what is fitting, proper, or established by good usage, in the relation of parts to a whole, or means to an end, or esp. of conduct to principles or circumstances; hence, propriety; the proprieties; “good form”; convention; also, a requirement of propriety; as, a breach of decorum . “So far from the common decorum of a gentleman, as to send a letter so impudently cruel.” J. Austen .

The times, they change: at one point, my decorum statement mentioned knitting. Circa 1990-something, knitting in class was a thing.

[The decorum statement is in my favorite font for syllabi, Jos Buivenga’s Fontin Sans. After reading Edward Tufte, I began making syllabi with three columns running down the page; thus, the little block of text above. I made sure that a syllabus ran no longer than one double-sided page: compact and highly readable. If it doesn’t go without saying: exceptions to the no-phone rule were always possible, as when a student was waiting for a call about an urgent family matter.]

Teaching and texting

In The Chronicle of Higher Education, Sherry Turkle writes about “How to Teach in an Age of Distraction.” She begins with an account of teaching a twenty-student seminar at MIT devoted to reading and writing memoirs:

The students seemed to understand each other, to find a rhythm. I thought the class was working.

Then, halfway through the semester, a group of students asked to see me. They admitted to texting during class, but they felt bad about it because of the personal material being discussed. They said they text in all their classes, but here it seemed wrong. We decided the class should talk about this as a group. In that discussion, more students admitted that they, too, texted in class. They portrayed constant connection as a necessity. For some, three minutes was too long to go without checking their phones.

So “a group” of students are texting, and then it turns out that still “more students” are texting. My question — and it’s a genuine question, not a bit of snark: how is it possible to teach a class of twenty students (a seminar, no less) and not realize that many of those students are texting?

The Chronicle has Turkle’s essay behind its paywall, but you can read an excerpt here.

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8:35 p.m.: The essay is online for all, at least for now.

Related reading
More posts about attention and distraction (Pinboard)

HTTPS here

Google is adding HTTPS support for Blogger blogs. I switched over this morning, fixed a minor problem (the sidebar search URL needed an https ), and all seems well.

A comment appended to Blogger’s announcement says, “Dang. I wake up and it’s like the 2010s out there.” In other words, there’s nothing new about HTTPS. I’ve been using the HTTPS Everywhere extension since 2010, first in Firefox, later in Chrome. There’s no extension for Safari.

If you have any problems reading Orange Crate Art in your browser, please, let me know.

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12:10 p.m.: Too many troubles. Back to HTTP for now.

Adieu, Arne Duncan

From The New York Times: “Arne Duncan, Education Secretary, to Step Down in December.”

Duncan will be <sarcasm>warmly</sarcasm> remembered as the man who started us on the Race to the Top. His successor will no doubt stay the course.

A related post
Arne Duncan on Colbert

[Fake HTML made with character codes from this handy page.]

Pomodoro One

Pomodoro One is free for OS X 10.8+ ($1.99 to remove ads), $1.99 for iOS 7.1+. It’s the nicest Pomodoro app I’ve used, though I still claim loyalties to an orange and an owl.

A related post
The Pomodoro Technique Illustrated (my review)

Not enough

President Barack Obama on the mass killing today at Umpqua Community College, Roseburg, Oregon:

“Our thoughts and prayers are not enough. It’s not enough. It does not capture the heartache and grief and anger that we should feel. And it does nothing to prevent this carnage from being inflicted some place else in America, next week or a couple of months from now. . . .

“It cannot be this easy for someone who wants to inflict harm on other people to get his or her hands on a gun. . . .

“This is a political choice that we make — to allow this to happen every few months in America. We collectively are answerable to those families who lose their loved ones because of our inaction.”

The full statement is at YouTube.

[My transcription.]

Erroll Garner mystery phrase

It’s driving me crazy, and now it’s driving Elaine crazy too. Can anyone identify the source of this musical phrase? In my mind it says early twentieth century . I thought it might be from Felix Arndt’s “Nola,” but no.

Erroll Garner builds a chorus of “Lullaby of Birdland” from variations on this phrase. You can hear what I’m describing at the 1:00 mark.

Thanks to Elaine for writing out the music.

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3:14 p.m.: Elaine found the answer via Facebook: the phrase is from “Narcissus,” by Ethelbert Nevin (1891). Here is an amusing rendition. Nevin also wrote the music for “Mighty Lak’ a Rose.”

Thanks to Kevin Hart for identifying “Narcissus” and for pointing to one of its great turns in popular culture. In Our Gang Follies of 1936 the piece serves as dancing music for the Flory-Dory Sixtette: Spanky, Alfalfa, Buckwheat, and company. And that is why, I realize, I was able to recognize this musical phrase. Watch here. The dance scene begins at 15:53.

A related post
Erroll Garner, The Complete Concert by the Sea