Fake News, an icon

[Fake News, an icon by Louis Prado. From Noun Project.]

“Ug!”

[Hi and Lois, February 22, 2017.]

“Ug!”? Your family has a dictionary, Hi. Use it. Ugh.

Related reading
All OCA Hi and Lois and misspelling posts (Pinboard)

[Hi, by the way, is short for Hiram.]

Anglophilia amok

On an NPR station, a local announcer running through the PBS schedule described a series about British royalty in which the host “gets into bed with our past monarchs.”

First: ick. Second: our monarchs? That bit of copy should have been rewritten for this side of the Atlantic.

The series, as I now know, is Tales from the Royal Bedchamber. It’s about their monarchs. And again, about the gets-into-bed-with part: ick.

[About “the Atlantic”: I refuse to say “the pond.”]

“And you’re right too”

General relativity v. quantum mechanics:

A university student attending lectures on general relativity in the morning and others on quantum mechanics in the afternoon might be forgiven for concluding that his professors are fools, or have neglected to communicate with each other for at least a century. In the morning the world is curved space where everything is continuous; in the afternoon it is a flat space where quanta of energy leap.

The paradox is that both theories work remarkably well. Nature is behaving with us like that elderly rabbi to whom two men went in order to settle a dispute. Having listened to the first, the rabbi says: “You are in the right.” The second insists on being heard, the rabbi listens to him and says: “You’re also right.” Having overheard from the next room the rabbi’s wife then calls out, “But they can’t both be in the right!” The rabbi reflects and nods before concluding: “And you’re right too.”

Carlo Rovelli, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, trans. Simon Carnell and Erica Segre (London: Penguin, 2016).

The work of reconciling general relativity and quantum mechanics has given rise to the study of quantum gravity, the subject of Rovelli’s more recent book, Reality Is Not What It Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity (2017). I suspect that it’s a much scarier book than Seven Brief Lessions: 288 pages v. a mere 79.

I cannot claim to understand any of this stuff, not now, perhaps not ever. But I can try.

Also from Seven Brief Lessons on Physics
Elementary particles

“If Trump were more rational and more competent”

George Packer, writing in the February 27 New Yorker:

An authoritarian and erratic leader, a chaotic Presidency, a supine legislature, a resistant permanent bureaucracy, street demonstrations, fear abroad: this is what illiberal regimes look like. If Trump were more rational and more competent, he might have a chance of destroying our democracy.

Blossom Dearie sings

Here is a breathtakingly beautiful performance by Blossom Dearie: “They Say It’s Spring” (Bob Haymes–Marty Clark). Blossom Dearie, piano and vocal; Herb Ellis, guitar; Ray Brown, bass; Jo Jones, drums. Recorded September 1957. From the album Give Him the Ooh-La-La (Verve, 1958).

I’m still making my way through my dad’s CDs: Julian “Cannonball” Adderley, Ivie Anderson, Louis Armstrong, Fred Astaire, Mildred Bailey, Count Basie, Tony Bennett, Art Blakey, Ruby Braff and Ellis Larkins, Clifford Brown, Dave Brubeck, Joe Bushkin, Hoagy Carmichael, Betty Carter, Ray Charles, Charlie Christian, Rosemary Clooney, Nat “King” Cole, John Coltrane, Bing Crosby, Miles Davis, Doris Day, and now, Blossom Dearie. One shelf down, seven to go — which might suggest that a fairly even distribution through the alphabet. But not so: Frank Sinatra, Art Tatum, and Mel Tormé take up two of the seven shelves.

I wish I could tell my dad how much I love this song. My guess is that he loved it too.

Also from my dad’s CDs
Mildred Bailey : Tony Bennett : Charlie Christian

Elementary particles

Carlo Rovelli says that “for now, this is what we know of matter”:

A handful of types of elementary particles, which vibrate and fluctuate constantly between existence and non-existence and swarm in space even when it seems that there is nothing there, combine together to infinity like the letters of a cosmic alphabet to tell the immense history of galaxies, of the innumerable stars, of sunlight, of mountains, woods and fields of grain, of the smiling faces of the young at parties, and of the night sky studded with stars.

Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, trans. Simon Carnell and Erica Segre (London: Penguin, 2016).

Seven Brief Lessons on Physics is a wonderful book for elementary particles like me.

“Library hand”

Behold “library hand,” or a simulation thereof. It’s penmanship for librarians writing out catalogue cards. Sometimes (still) seen on the spines of older library books. Thanks to Gunther at Lexikaliker for passing on this link (by way of Boing Boing).

I made the sample above with Dewey Library Hand, a free font that emulates one variety of library hand.

Related reading
All OCA handwriting posts (Pinboard)
A catalogue-card generator (Typed, not handwritten)

Gilmore Girls and phrasal verbs

From the Gilmore Girls episode “Lorelai’s First Cotillion” (October 10, 2006). The ever-driven Paris Geller steps in to correct an SAT tutor who has told a tutee that “It’s a good sentence, but you want to make sure never to end with a preposition”:

“If she ended the sentence with a preposition, how could it have been a good sentence? It sounds like a terrible sentence.”

“Well, I just . . .”

“You were just coddling her. You wanna prop her up on your knee and burp her? Maybe buy her a pony? I’m not paying you to make her feel better about her incompetence. If she can’t construct a proper sentence, how is she gonna pass the essay section of the SAT?”

“Well . . .”

“That was rhetorical! Carry on.”

Now that’s clever writing. Paris would do well to read Bryan Garner. From Garner’s Modern English Usage:

The spurious rule about not ending sentences with prepositions is a remnant of Latin grammar, in which a preposition was the one word that a writer could not end a sentence with. But Latin grammar should never straitjacket English grammar.

Notice that Garner goes out of his way to violate the spurious rule. (He could have written “the one word that could not end a sentence.”) Also from GMEU:

Perfectly natural-sounding sentences end with prepositions, particularly when a verb with a preposition-particle appears at the end (as in follow up or ask for).

And as in carry on.

You can also end a sentence with the word it. Don’t worry about it.

Related reading, via Pinboard
All OCA Bryan Garner posts
All OCA Gilmore Girls posts

[My transcription.]

Overheard

[In a movie theater.]

“It’s so dark in here.”

Related reading
All OCA “overheard” posts (Pinboard)