Google, what the?

A 2007 OCA post about a supremely sketchy and now-defunct “honors” outfit, the National Dean’s List, is at the top of Google search results for the NDL. Yay me, I suppose.

But look at what Google displays when one searches for national deans list, no quotation marks:

[“The National Dean's List sponsors the largest Free Book Program conducted by any publisher in any field. The books are provided, free of charge, ...”]

That chunk of text isn’t even from the post I wrote; it’s from a comment on the post left by someone who may have had a connection to the company.

When one searches for national deans list with quotation marks, my post appears at the top as a featured snippet:

[“Every year, professors, deans and leaders of civic and community service organizations affiliated with post secondary institutions are invited to nominate outstanding students who have achieved ‘Dean’s List’ honors, or comparable academic achievement, have a ‘B+’ average or are in the upper 10% of their classes.”]

That’s something I quoted from the now-defunct NDL website. I prefaced the quotation with these words: “If I were a genuine high-achieving college student, I might not have reason to doubt the claims on the NDL website.”

A sentence from the post that gives an accurate idea of the post:

The National Dean’s List is about as selective as a telephone book.

What made it possible for me to come to that conclusion? Mail from the NDL — letters of “invitation for nomination” — addressed to me (then almost thirty years out of college) and to a non-existent person, both names taken from mailing lists. The 2007 post explains in more detail.

The company marketing the National Dean’s List folded in 2007, so I’m surprised to see that my post about the NDL still gets visits daily. There must be many people aspiring to live in the past. At any rate, the National Dean’s List remains defunct.

A dictionary, done

“It was started in 1883 and now we’re done”: Svenska Akademiens ordbok, the official Swedish dictionary, analogous to the OED, has been completed after 140 years (The Guardian ). Ten thousand additional words — allergy, Barbie doll, computer, &c. — still need to be added to the volumes for A through R.

The dictionary is available online.

[Ordbok: yes, dictionary. Word book.]

A technological trick

From the Recomendo newsletter, a description of a revised Metaverse:

Although each person is wearing goggles, they experience a full-sized 3D avatar of the other person without goggles. It’s a technological trick that seems to work, and might be in our future as something better than Zoom.

Or it might not be in “our” future. It won’t be in mine.

Here’s a conversation showing the technology in use. I can’t imagine ever wanting to use it, much less using it and thinking it cool.

[A funny comment on the video: “Can’t wait to avoid eye contact in the Metaverse!”]

Myrtle Ave. Drug Co.

[137 Myrtle Avenue, Brooklyn, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

Whoever owned this building knew something about monetizing: it looks like a miniature Times Square, minus the LEDs. If you look closely, you can see that windows on the second, third, and fourth floors have been bricked over. Perhaps an even larger billboard once covered those windows. Jeez — let there be light.

My look at this address tells me that it housed a drug store for a long time. Advertisements in Brooklyn newspapers tout a number of patent medicines available at 137 Myrtle:

1907: Elixir Kosine, a cure for epilepsy and fits in children, “absolutely free from alcohol, cocaine, morphine or opiates.”

1907: “Orrine Destroys Desire for Drink.”

1912: AM-OR-OU, “the recognized stomach tonic of the age.”

1928: “Goitre Treated At Home.”

“Hank’s” might be Henry Rickards Hanks, purveryor of Dr. Hanks’s Neuralgia & Nerve Mixture. The name Shepard was well-established in patent medicines and much else when this photograph was taken:

[Journal of Applied Chemistry (1869).]

Like Shepard’s Compound Wahoo Bitters, this downtown Brooklyn address is now non-existent. The name Myrtle, now uncommon, is one I always associate with a beautiful John Ashbery poem.

[The Tablet, June 3, 1933.]

Related reading
More photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives (Pinboard)

Cinnamon toast and orange juice

This news item strikes me as a respite from other news: “Firefighters make kids breakfast after mother is rushed to hospital” (The Washington Post , gift link). And the mom is fine.

[“As I suspected, you’re a rank sentimentalist.”]

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper, by Matthew Sewell, is one hard puzzle. I’d call it a six on the Mohs Hardness Scale. You should really use a glass plate, knife blade, or maybe a steel nail to scratch its surface. I used a pencil and eraser, and to my surprise, they worked. The northeast and southwest: fairly doable. The northwest and southeast: better with the nail.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

4-D, eight letters, “Less than lucid.” I’m surprised to see that it’s a word.

6-A, three letters, “They take their turns in clubs.” The obvious (I think) answer doesn’t work.

9-A, five letters, “Lent direction.” Or misdirection.

11-D, ten letters, “Poetic ‘King of Kings.’” Gone but not forgotten.

14-A, nine letters, “Loud lament.” Not the first time I’ve seen the answer in a puzzle, but it’s still unobvious to me.

27-A, fourteen letters, “What you'll see in the latest Indy Jones film.” I want to rephrase: what a viewer will see, or what someone else will see. I don’t plan to see it. I knew what the clue was asking about, but figuring out the eighth and ninth letters made me a bit crazy.

29-D, ten letters, “Sudden burst.” I thought first of water: OUTPOURING.

34-A, three letters, “Ashley Walker Bush, in 2006.” Guessable, but who cares? Maybe she’s a friend of the constructor.

39-A, seven letters, “Six-stanza form for Dante.” And for John Ashbery, among other poets. Caution: the link is a spoiler.

45-A, fourteen letters, “Where lessons are prepared.” I thought of the smoke-drenched teachers’s lounge of my high school.

54-D, four letters, “Brand now ‘Even Gravy-er!’” I thought this had to be YARC (Yet Another Ragú Clue).

My favorite in this puzzle: 8-D, four letters, “Something often driven in December.”

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

“You were wrong about being done”

Gale Walden writes about her relationship with David Foster Wallace in life and in death. From “David’s Presence” (London Review of Books ):

The same day the book fell on my head I was listening to my ten-year-old daughter, Zella, playing her cello upstairs. I said out loud: “David, we are finally done.” I felt lighter, released from something. I thought I was acknowledging my happiness in the domestic life I had created, rather than the one I had imagined with him. The next evening, I found out David had hanged himself around the time I’d been listening to Zella play, and I thought: “You were wrong about being done.”

Related reading
All OCA DFW posts (Pinboard)

Michael Tracy/Tracy 168 (1958–2023)

The graffiti artist Michael Tracy, Tracy 168, has died at the age of sixty-five. The New York Times has an obituary (gift link), with many photographs.

I was fortunate to see Tracy 168’s work up close in 1983, when he and fellow artists put their art on the wall of the Coolidge Corner Theatre.

Related reading
Michael Tracy’s Instagram

What’s art for?

From William Deresiewicz, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at Art” (Salmagundi ):

Art is for increasing life. That, I believe, after all the other purposes receive their due, is really what it’s for — why we revere it, why we give our hearts to it.

The World’s Writing Systems

A beautiful use of the Internet: The World’s Writing Systems (via kottke.org). Seen here: Proto-Cuneiform, 3300–2900 BCE.