NPR, sheesh

“Similar to [a defeated former American president], Bolsonaro,” followed by some verb.

Better: “Like [a defeated former American president], Bolsonaro,” followed by some verb.

There’s nothing wrong with like here. But as Elaine points out, “Unlike [a defeated former American president]” is even better.

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All OCA sheesh posts (Pinboard)

[I no longer type the dfp’s name.]

Domestic comedy

From a meeting of the Four Seasons Reading Club (Elaine and me):

“It’s a good book. Its pages are good. It feels good to read it.”

“Good.”

The book is Dorothy B. Hughes’s In a Lonely Place (1947), reissued by New York Review Books. The Hemingwayesque good appears often. Here are the first dozen, smooshed together into a single paragraph for ease of reading:

It was good standing there on the promontory overlooking the evening sea, the fog lifting itself like gauzy veils to touch his face. That too was good, his hand was a plane passing through a cloud. The sea air was good to smell, the darkness was soft closed around him. It was a good moment. This time it tasted good. It was a good omen; it meant Brub wouldn’t have changed. A good fighter. Eyes, hazel; nose and mouth right for the face, a good-looking face but nothing to remember, nothing to set it apart from the usual. Good gabardine suit, he’d paid plenty to have it made, open-necked tan sports shirt. The room was a good one, only the chair was gaudy, the couch was like green grass and another couch the yellow of sunlight. Good prints, O’Keeffe and Rivera. “Because we had to isn’t good enough.”

But really, it’s a good book. As is Hughes’s The Expendable Man (1963). I can’t say as much for Ride the Pink Horse (1946). That one is not good.

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All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

An unforced Halloween error

The Reese’s Cups Snack Size package shows “approximately” twenty servings per package. We had nine trick-or-treaters and gave out eighteen cups, so I assumed we had about twenty-two cups left over. But when trick-or-treating ended, our orange pail still held a lot of candy.

So I counted. We have thirty-seven cups left over. Which means that a package has not approximately twenty but twenty-five to thirty cups. And a serving must be somewhere between one and two cups. My original caculation was an unforced Halloween error.

Halloween count

Early turnout: in one hour and three minutes of trick-or-treating, we’ve had six children call at our door, already matching our 2015 total (over three-and-a-half hours).

Twelve Reese’s Cups gone, twenty-eight to go. One hour and fifty-seven minutes to go.

*

Three more children. And that’s all. Anyone want a Reese’s Cup?

Mary Miller’s silence

From Politico: “Rep. Mary Miller (IL-15) is the only member of the state’s Republican congressional delegation not to condemn last week’s violent attack on the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.”

Mike Bost (IL-12), Rodney Davis (IL-13), Adam Kinzinger (IL-16), and Darin LaHood (IL-18) have all condemned the attack.

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A sharpener sharpener

[Zits, October 31, 2022. Click for a larger view.]

In today’s Zits, Jeremy Duncan has asked Connie, his mom, if there’s anyone famous in the family tree. She cites Jeremy’s great-great-grandfather. Hyphens are already in the air.

But I think I’d hyphenate this job title as pencil-sharpener sharpener.

Connie’s joy makes me suspect that it’s her great-grandfather she’s speaking of.

Related reading
All OCA punctuation posts (Pinboard) : The Hammacher Schlemmer crazy making hyphen shortage problem. : House hyphens : “Hyphen killer” : Living on hyphens : Mr. Hyphen and Mr. Faulkner : One more from Mr. Hyphen

Masks

[“Brinks Holdup.” Photographs by Ralph Morse and Yale Joel. January 1, 1950 (?). From the Life Photo Archive. Click any photograph for a larger mask.]

None of these photographs appear in the January 30, 1950 Life article about the Boston Brinks robbery. The robbery took place on January 17, so the date for the photographs must be a mistake. There is no indication that these are the masks the robbers wore. But they’re good masks. Here’s a post from 2021 with six more.

The last time Elaine and I committed to Halloween (2015!) we had six kids show up in three-and-a-half hours — pretty sad. On this Halloween there are more kids in our neighborhood than before, so we’re once again going to give out candy, or try to. We are hoping to dispose of the contents of two large bags of Reese's Cups tonight. Good stuff.

Turn up, kids! Or I’ll be the one who has to eat the leftovers.

Happy Halloween.

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Reaching out

This morning I have had a president, a vice president, and an undefeated former president reach out to me, one of them “personally reaching out.”

Just another Monday.

Gender and evaluations

From Inside Higher Ed: “Two new studies show how bias against women in student ratings operates over time, worsening with critical feedback and instructor age.”

I think that anyone who teaches knows there’s truth in these studies. If the instructor is a man: he’s tough, demanding. If the instructor is a woman: she’s a bitch. And I can only imagine how some students might regard a non-binary instructor.

Yet another letter to Mary Miller

[Click for a genuinely readable view.]

A note for the non-local: Mary Miller’s husband Chris Miller, our representative in the Illinois state legislature, runs a father-son Christian-themed camp with considerable emphasis on guns. But the camp doesn’t allow participants to bring their own weapons: “For safety reasons, please do not bring any firearms or archery equipment.”

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