To all those on the Gulf Coast

Stay safe, Gulf Coast residents.

Colledge signage

A sign outside a bar, right across the street from a campus in Anytown, USA:

ASK ABOUT OUR

DRINKING DEGREE

SOMETHING U CAN

GET ALL A S IN

Yes, that’s a space between the A and the S. If I were a student, I might laugh — for a few seconds. And then I’d think about how this sign is serving to cheapen my school’s reputation and my degree. If I were a prospective student, I would wonder whether the school right across the street was a good choice.

I have no animus against alcohol or humor. But I do think of college as a serious endeavor, not something to treat as a joke. The joke is what I call colledge: “the vast simulacrum of education that amounts to little more than buying a degree on the installment plan.” Colledge students and college students can be found on the very same campus, perhaps right across the street from some bar.

I have brought this sign to the attention of those who might be expected to have sway. Right now the sign still stands. And on another corner, in front of a rental property:

WELCOME BACK STUDENTS.

WE’RE GLAD YOUR HERE!

*

August 29, 9:48 p.m.: Just saw that, for whatever reason, the bar sign has been removed. Something beginning with LADI was taking its place as I drove by.

Related reading
All OCA colledge posts (Pinboard)
Homeric blindness in colledge
#finals

Information retrieval

[From À nous la liberté (dir. René Clair, 1931). Click any image for a larger view.]

Louis (Raymond Cordy) obliges his friend and employee Emile (Henri Marchand) by requesting information about employee Jeanne (Rolla France). The request travels by pneumatic tube; a worker types in the necessary information (each employee at the factory is known by a number); a drawer springs open; and there’s Jeanne. There must be a cross-reference on her card. More typing, another drawer, and her uncle appears. Into the tube they go. And Louis and Emile smile.

A series of tubes, just like the Internet. See also the New York Public Library and an earlier post with Emile and a butterfly.

Escapees in nature

[Emile (Henri Marchand) contemplates a flower. From À nous la liberté (dir. René Clair, 1931).]


[Delmar (Tim Blake Nelson) contemplates a butterfly. From O Brother, Where Art Thou? (dir. Joel Coen, 2000). Click either image for a larger view.]

Perhaps a coincidence. But both Emile and Delmar have escaped from prison, and Tim Blake Nelson does resemble Henri Marchand, at least vaguely. And phonographs and records play an important part in each film. I’m going with more than coincidence. I’m going with tip o’ the hat.

Words, can’t stand ’em

Fresca at l’astronave has written a post about words she can’t stand.

We all have words and phrases we can live without. My friend Stefan Hagemann and I were talking about that just this morning. And then Fresca mentioned the word ginormous in a comment on a post about hyperbolic indefinite numerals. And now I’m here.

What words can’t you stand? What words can you live without? Comment on Fresca’s post, and comment here, too, if you like. Think of yourself as contributing to a merry little culture of complaint.

[I’ve written several posts about words I can live without: this one, about the educationese expressed that, has links to the others.]

Rita Felski on “critique”

On “critique” as a way of reading literature:

Critique proves to be a remarkably efficient and smooth-running machine for registering the limits and insufficiencies of texts. It also offers a yardstick for assessing their value: the extent to which they exemplify its own cardinal virtues of demystifying, subverting, and putting into question. It is conspicuously silent, however, on the many other reasons why we are drawn to works of art: aesthetic pleasure, increased self-understanding, moral reflection, perceptual reinvigoration, ecstatic self-loss, emotional consolation, or heightened sensation — to name just a few. Its conception of the uses and values of literature is simply too thin. . . .

[I]ts overriding concern with questioning motives and exposing wrongdoing (the moral-political drama of detection) results in a mindset — vigilant, wary, mistrustful — that blocks receptivity and inhibits generosity. We are shielded from the risks, but also the rewards, of aesthetic experience.

Rita Felski, The Limits of Critique (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015).

If I were a young teacher hoping to inculcate in my students some reverence for works of the imagination, I’d take great heart from this book.

Related posts
Hoagies, pizzas, and English studies
Politics and theory
Verlyn Klinkenborg on the English major

[My snarky quotation marks around “critique” signal that critique itself is under suspicion here. I think I reached my limit when I heard a graduate student give a paper arguing that Charles Dickens showed “sexist bias.” That was the point, and the student’s condescension toward Dickens was unmistakable. O benighted nineteenth-century fool!]

“You must go offline to view this page”

This page. You really do. Go to it and turn off your network connection. Via Daring Fireball.

[But the thing is, I like spending “hours caught in webs of my own curiosity.”]

Domestic comedy

[Concerning some bit of television trivia.]

“You’re asking the wrong person.”

“I know, but you’re the only other person here.”

Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

Word of the day: zaatar

The word of the day, or of my day, is zaatar, or za’atar. Cue the Oxford English Dictionary:

1. Originally in the Middle East: any of a number of aromatic culinary herbs. The precise herb referred to is variously identified as thyme, oregano, marjoram, hyssop, or savory.

2. In Middle Eastern cuisine: a condiment made from any of these herbs (esp. thyme) singly or in combination, with dried sumac, toasted sesame seeds and salt.

The British pronunciation: /ˈzaːtaː/. The American pronunciation: /ˈzaˌtar/.

The etymology:

Arabic saʿtar, ṣaʿtar, zaʿtar wild thyme, also a condiment made from this herb or similar herbs (see definition), probably < Syriac ṣatrā' (Aramaic ṣatrā'; > post-biblical Hebrew ṣatrāh savory, in modern Hebrew also satureia, thymbra). Compare Turkish zatar (probably < Arabic; the indigenous Turkish word for ‘thyme’ is kekik).

Got all that? No matter. If you’ve ever had hummus with a dark sprinkle of seasoning atop, you’ve tasted zaatar, or some version of zaatar. As a Wikipedia article explains, zaatar is a various thing. From what I’ve tasted, I’d describe the flavor as light and savory.

I looked into zaatar after a great lunch of falafel, salad, and zaatar-seasoned fries at Terre Haute’s Saratoga Restaurant. And now our household now holds a container of Sadaf Mix Green Zaatar: thyme leaves, oregano leaves, sesame seeds, salt, soy oil, sumac. The Saratoga no doubt makes it own.

[The ː symbol in /ˈzaːtaː/ marks extra-long sounds.]

“Zillions”

A fine episode of Helen Zaltzman’s podcast The Allusionist, about hyperbolic indefinite numerals: “Zillions.”

Our household’s favorite hyperbolic indefinite numeral is eleventyteen, from Elaine’s father Burton Fine. What’s your favorite hyperbolic indefinite numeral?