A joke in the traditional manner

How do amoebas communicate?

No spoilers. The punchline is in the comments.

More jokes in the traditional manner
The Autobahn : Did you hear about the cow coloratura? : Did you hear about the thieving produce clerk? : Elementary school : A Golden Retriever : How did Bela Lugosi know what to expect? : How did Samuel Clemens do all his long-distance traveling? : What did the doctor tell his forgetful patient to do? : What did the plumber do when embarrassed? : What happens when a senior citizen visits a podiatrist? : What is the favorite toy of philosophers’ children? : Which member of the orchestra was best at handling money? : Why did the doctor spend his time helping injured squirrels? : Why did Oliver Hardy attempt a solo career in movies? : Why did the ophthalmologist and his wife split up? : Why does Marie Kondo never win at poker? : Why was Santa Claus wandering the East Side of Manhattan?

[“In the traditional manner”: by or à la my dad. He gets credit for all but the cow coloratura, the produce clerk, the toy, the squirrel-doctor, Marie Kondo, Santa Claus, and this one. He was making such jokes long before anyone called them “dad jokes.”]

A job listing

Excerpts from a genuine job listing, describing a tenure-track position in philosophy:

Our students tend to be poorly prepared for college level work, intellectually passive, interested primarily in partying, and culturally provincial in the extreme. . . .

The academic environment at SEMO is distinctly non-intellectual — somewhat like a Norman Rockwell painting — and the candidate cannot expect to attract students by offering courses that assume innate curiosity about ideas and books, or intellectual playfulness, or independence of moral and political thought.

Snopes calls this listing cynical. Other readers might call it honest. The fellow who got the job now heads the Department of Political Science, Philosophy, and Religion at Southeast Missouri State University.

Marketplace on Illinois

From American Public Radio’s Marketplace , a helpful introduction to the public higher education crisis in Illinois.

Related reading
All OCA Illinois budget crisis posts (Pinboard)

Steve Young (1942–2016)

The musician and songwriter Steve Young has died at the age of seventy-three. He is the subject of Van Dyke Parks’s extraordinary song “The All Golden,” which appeared on Parks’s first album, Song Cycle (1968).

Here is a solo Parks performance of “The All Golden,” from 2010. Next to you-know-what, it’s my favorite Parks song, suggestive of Edward MacDowell, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” showtunes, Gertrude Stein’s word portraits — and Steve Young.

Words, phrases, etymological cages

Sir Ernest Gowers, or a second- or third-generation reviser, writing about what has come to be called the etymological fallacy, the mistaken idea that a word’s present meaning must be related to that word’s etymology:

[T]here is a point where it becomes idle pedantry to try to put back into their etymological cages words and phrases that escaped from them many years ago and have settled down firmly elsewhere. To do that is to start on a path on which there is no logical stopping-point short of such absurdities as insisting that the word anecdote can only be applied to a story never told before, whereas we all know that it is more likely to mean one told too often.

The Complete Plain Words , rev. Sidney Greenbaum and Janet Whitcut (Boston: David R. Godine, 1988).

This book is full of quick bits of wit.

Also from The Complete Plain Words
Buzz-phrase generator : “Falling into incongruity” : Thinking and writing

[Anecdote : from the Greek anekdota, unpublished items. A choice word to illustrate the etymological fallacy: decimate .]

Orange parking art

[“As seen in Illinois.”]

Other posts with orange
Crate art, orange : Orange art, no crate : Orange batik art : Orange bookmark art : Orange car art : Orange crate art : Orange crate art (Encyclopedia Brown) : Orange dress art : Orange flag art : Orange manual art : Orange mug art : Orange newspaper art : Orange notebook art : Orange notecard art : Orange peel art : Orange pencil art : Orange soda art : Orange soda-label art : Orange stem art : Orange telephone art : Orange timer art : Orange toothbrush art : Orange train art : Orange tree art : Orange tree art : Orange tree art : Orange Tweed art

Diane Schirf’s pay phones

Variations on a theme, or items in a series: “Pay phones I have known,” photographs by Diane Schirf.

Pogue’s Basics: Life

The Subliminal Mr Dunn wrote a post recommending David Pogue’s Pogue’s Basics: Life  (New York: Flatiron Books, 2015). The book’s title makes for the same awkwardness I encounter whenever I write about Bryan Garner’s Garner’s Modern American Usage . I bought a copy anyway.

Pogue’s book collects tips and shortcuts about cars, travel, food, clothes, and (as they say) much, much more. As with any such collection, some bits will seem obvious (to unlock all car doors, press the button on your electronic key twice, duh); others, not so much. Two tips (paraphrased) that, for me, have made the book worth buying:

To avoid being blinded by oncoming headlights on a two-lane road, look at the white line to your right. (It works.)

The order for setting cutlery is alphabetical: fork, knife, spoon. Fork to the left (four-letter words), knife and spoon to the right (five-letter words). Who knew it was that easy to remember? Not me.

Thanks, Barnaby.

Not good for the United States, but good for CBS

Leslie Moonves, CBS executive chairman and CEO, likes the idea of a Donald Trump candidacy. From The Hollywood Reporter (not The Onion ), and picked up by Fortune :

“It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS,” he said of the presidential race. . . .

"Man, who would have expected the ride we’re all having right now? . . . The money’s rolling in and this is fun,” he said.

“I’ve never seen anything like this, and this going to be a very good year for us. Sorry. It’s a terrible thing to say. But, bring it on, Donald. Keep going,” said Moonves.

Even the famous misquotation “What’s good for General Motors is good for the country” at least purported to align corporate and national well-being. Moonves is more honest: what’s good for CBS is good for CBS.

Thinking about Leslie Moonves, I can only invoke the words of Edward L. Norton: “A pox on you and all your ancestors.”


[Leslie Moonves, before and after karmic retribution. Click for a larger and more fiery view.]

From a Van Gogh letter

Vincent van Gogh to his brother Theo, July 23, 1882:

So you must picture me sitting at my attic window as early as 4 o’clock in the morning, studying the meadows & the carpenter’s yard with my perspective frame just as they’re lighting the fires to make coffee in the yard and the first worker comes strolling in. A flock of white pigeons comes soaring over the red tile roofs between the smoking black chimney stacks. Beyond it all lies an infinity of delicate, soft green, miles & miles of flat meadow, and a grey sky, as calm, as peaceful as Corot or Van Goyen.

That view over the ridges of the roofs & the gutters with grass growing in them, very early in the morning, & those first signs of life & awakening — the flying bird, the smoking chimney, the small figure strolling along far below — that is the subject of my watercolour. I hope you will like it.

The Letters of Vincent van Gogh , ed. Ronald de Leeuw, trans. Arnold Pomerans (New York: Penguin, 1997).

Also from Van Gogh’s letters
“Admire as much as you can”
“It was a bright autumn day and a beautiful walk”
“Lately, during the dark days before Christmas”