The real fake news in Illinois

The Chicago Tribune reports on Liberty Principles and Think Freely Media: “Conservative Illinois publications blur lines between journalism, politics.” Issues of one of these pseudo-newspapers, the East Central Reporter, went from our mailbox to our garbage can in 2016.

Barnum and Dennison

[Catching up on podcasts.]

At Innovation Hub, Kara Miller talks about P.T. Barnum with Stephen Mihm, editor of a new edition of Barnum’s autobiography. The conversation touches briefly on similarities and differences between Barnum and Dunning K. Dennison. Thr IH website pointed me to Mihm’s 2017 New York Times opinion piece “No, Trump Is Not P.T. Barnum.” A sample:

Barnum would have recoiled from Mr. Trump, especially from his cynicism about principles and truth. In a widely read exposé of swindles, quack medicines and other “humbugs,” Barnum declared that the “greatest humbug of all” was the individual “who believes — or pretends to believe — that everything and everybody are humbugs.” This person, Barnum observed, “professes that there is no virtue; that every man has his price, and every woman hers; that any statement from anybody is just as likely to be false as true; and that the only way to decide which is to consider whether truth or a lie was likely to have paid best in that particular case.”

Barnum was a consummate American: a fast talker, a self-promoter and a relentless striver. He also exemplified many of the qualities that have long made America great in the eyes of the world: generosity, humor, optimism and a willingness, in the end, to do the right thing.

Mr. Trump represents something different. Indeed, if Barnum were alive today, he might be interested in exhibiting Mr. Trump: not as a paragon of business acumen, political prowess or any of the other main attractions in the circus of contemporary life, but as an extreme embodiment of humbug — worthy of a sideshow, perhaps, but nothing more.

Cecil Taylor (1929–2018)

The pianist and composer Cecil Taylor has died at the age of eighty-nine. In the absence of an obituary, here is an appreciation from his fellow pianist and composer Ethan Iverson.

When I think of Taylor’s music, I think of words from David Bowie’s “Modern Love”: I try. I try. I recognize that a genius is at work and want to engage what’s happening. Sometimes I can. Two performances I’ve listened to again and again: the two versions of “After All” on the 1974 concert recording Silent Tongues (Arista). (It’s a Taylor composition, not Billy Strayhorn’s composition of the same name.) Start with the short encore. Then try the longer version. See what you hear.

*

The New York Times has an obituary.

Cloudflare’s DNS

Numbers to know: 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1, the numbers for Cloudflare’s new DNS service. I’m trying it, and it seems exceedingly fast. Here, look: Boing Boing and Lifehacker offer context and instructions.

With Cloudflare’s DNS at work and Safari’s prefetching disabled, my Mac feels as if it’s made for 2018 and beyond. Knock on aluminum.

A conversation from another world

From the Father Knows Best episode “Love and Learn” (April 11, 1960). Margaret Anderson (Jane Wyatt) is speaking to her college-freshman son Bud (Billy Gray):

“I had a conversation with the Dean of Men at the college today.”

“You did? Why?”

“Because he sent me a note.”

“Yeah? What about?”

“Your English grades.”

As the Anderson children grow up, the sexual politics of Father Knows Best become intolerable. But after watching all six seasons, I can say that in other respects Father Knows Best holds up surprisingly well. A 1950s domestic comedy with characters quoting Shakespeare and Whitman and talking about the Wordsworths, Dorothy and William? I’ll take it.

Other FKB posts
“Betty’s Graduation” : Flowers knows best : “Languages, economics, philosophy, the humanities” : “Margaret Disowns Her Family” : Scene-stealing card-file : “A Woman in the House” : “Your dinner jacket just arrived”

How to read Nancy and Zippy

[Zippy, April 5, 2018.]

Today’s Zippy has a Bushmillerized Zippy and Griffy discussing Paul Karasik and Mark Newgarden’s How to Read “Nancy”: The Elements of Comics in Three Easy Panels. Bill Griffith has already written a guide to his comic strip: today’s strip includes a URL that goes to a six-strip primer on how to read Zippy.

Notice the lower right corner of this panel, where the sequence 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 fuses the material and temporal dimensions of the narrative space. Some rocks! Some date!

Venn reading
All OCA Nancy posts : Nancy and Zippy posts : Zippy posts (Pinboard)

Objects in windows

Objects in the windows of the Antikos Bazar, in Terezín, the Czech Republic:


W.G. Sebald, Austerlitz, trans. Anthea Bell (New York: Modern Library, 2001).

Also from Austerlitz
Austerlitz on time : Marks on time : Language as a city

Eating at Corky’s

[Zippy, April 4, 2018.]

I know the feeling: the Dunning K. Dennison presidency is eating my soul too. My way to deal, at least for now: no television news. Just reading the news, mostly the online New York Times and Washington Post.

Corky’s is in “the Valley.”

Related reading
All OCA Zippy posts (Pinboard)

MR

After reading Diane Schirf’s thoughts about a Royal Sabre manual typewriter, I heard a voice: “Fool, look in thy heart and type.” No, not really: that was Sir Philip Sidney. But I did get out my manual, an Olympia SM, and typed an overdue letter, my second letter in two days. (I wrote the first with a fountain pen and brown ink.)

I was surprised by how quickly the mechanics of typing came back to me — even the delicate work of inserting a piece of correction tape to fix a typo. By the time I started the second page of my letter, I remembered to mark a bottom margin in pencil. What most surprised me was that without even thinking or looking I was hitting the margin-release key to fit extra characters at the end of a line. Typing on a typewriter must be the new riding a bicycle. Ding!

That bell belongs to a typewriter not a bicycle.

Red Vines and vodka

As host of a cooking show, Valerie Bertinelli wondered what to prepare for Betty White:

“She likes tuna fish, she likes hot dogs, she likes Red Vines and vodka. So what am I going to make for Betty?”

My suggestion: hot dogs and tuna fish, with Red Vines and vodka on the side.

[Found while waiting at the register and browsing the National Examiner, a tabloid with no Internet presence. According to the Examiner, White found Bertinelli’s remark hurtful and doesn’t want Bertinelli at her funeral.]