“It’s an iPad for your face”: from Nilay Patel’s skeptical review of Apple’s Vision Pro (The Verge ).
I hadn’t planned on posting anything about the Vision Pro, but one sentence in Patel’s review prompted this post: “This is the best anyone has ever made in there look, and it’s still not nearly as good as out here.”
Readers of Steven Millhauser’s Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer (1996) will recall the novel’s ending, when Martin Dressler leaves his in there, the fever-dream of the Grand Cosmo, “a new concept in living,” for the world outside it. From the final paragraph:
Out here will always be better than in there.
Related reading
All OCA Steven Millhauser posts (Pinboard)
Tuesday, January 30, 2024
In there and out here
A kidhood mondegreen
A song popped into my head, I looked it up, and I found that I’d been hearing it wrong from kidhood.
The song: “In the Middle, in the Middle, in the Middle,” by Vic Mizzy. New Yorkers of a certain age will remember it from PSAs during kids’s TV programming. Here’s the song, as sung by Mizzy’s daughter Patty Keeler. (I’m unable to find the PSA itself.) There was another PSA with an instrumental version of the song. And there’s a more recent version of the song by They Might Be Giants, with Robin Goldwasser singing.
My mondegreen: “Keep your eyes to look out, keep your ears to hear.”
But the song says, “Teach your eyes to look out, teach your ears to hear.”
And a more minor mondegreen:
Me: “And wait, and wait, until you see the light turn green.”
The song: “And wait, and wait, until you’ve seen the light turn green.”
Well, I’m glad I got that straightened out.
Floppies in the news
Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (notice, no serial comma) is abandoning its use of the floppy disk. From Japan Today :
The push to end the use of floppy disks within government agencies stems, of course, from two major problems. The first is that a physical media requirement reduces the ability to submit and share data online, hampering operational efficiency and complicating the process of revising or updating the information. Second, it’s extremely difficult to even find floppy disks for sale anymore, as they’ve essentially disappeared from the consumer market.“Essentially disappeared”? Tell that to Tom Persky, whose floppydisk.com is still selling 3.5″, 5.25″, and 8″ disks. Here, from Euronews, is a look at Perksy and his business. And from Wired, an explanation of “Why the Floppy Disk Just Won’t Die.”
A related post
Utnapishtim’s word-processor (An 8″ Displaywriter disk)
Monday, January 29, 2024
The states of reading
“Dozens of cities and states across America are overhauling the way their schools teach reading — attempting to close gaps exacerbated by the pandemic”: Axios surveys states’ approaches to reading.
On striking detail: Mississippi, next to last in fourth-grade reading proficiency in 2013, rose to twenty-first in 2022: “State legislators and educators tried a number of strategies, including screening kids for literacy, hiring literacy coaches for teachers, and emphasizing phonics.” Hmm, phonics.
Here in Illinois, the Chicago Sun-Times reports that in spring 2023, nearly 35% of third through eleventh graders were reading at grade level. “This is a great sign for the state of Illinois that we are really back on track,” the state's superintendent of education said. He wasn’t joking: in 2021 and 2022, 30% of students were reading at grade level. Maybe it’s time for phonics.
In Berkeley, California, where only 26% of Black students are proficient in reading, schools are still using Lucy Calkins’s Units of Study (EdSource ).
Thanks, Joe, for pointing me to the Axios article.
Related reading
All OCA posts about teaching reading (Pinboard)
Sunday, January 28, 2024
The Grennie Pharmacy
Staten Island, like Upper Manhattan, is a mystery to me. Wanting to post a WPA tax photograph to give the borough at least some slight representation in these pages, I thought of New Dorp, the Staten Island neighborhood whose high school was the setting for Peg Tyre’s celebrated 2012 Atlantic article, “The Writing Revolution.” So off I went, to New Dorp.
[The Grennie Pharmacy, 253 New Dorp Lane, New Dorp, Staten Island, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]
If the building looks newish, that’s because it was. The NYC Archives date it to 1958 (!), but the more likely date is 1939. I was drawn to the Grennie Pharmacy by the glossy black (glass? granite?) and the elegant capital R.
[Click for a slightly larger view.]
Frank L. Grennie (1896–1969) had a distinguished career as a pharmacist: a page at Find a Grave will give you an idea. An entry in a 1930 compendium of Staten Island lives has more. A prescription box from the Grennie Pharmacy, dated 1942, is for sale at eBay.
What I didn’t expect to find when searching for grennie new dorp : Frank Grennie’s son Richard. He was born in 1924 and enlisted in the Army in 1943. He died in St. Lo, France, on July 13, 1944, in the aftermath of D-Day. The Kells-Grennie American Legion post on Staten Island bears his name.
Today no. 253, still standing, houses a shoe-repair shop, a nail salon, a driving school, and a car service.
Related reading
More photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives (Pinboard)
Saturday, January 27, 2024
Today’s Saturday Stumper
Today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper is by Stan Newman, the puzzle’s editor, constructing as Lester Ruff. So often I find a Les Ruff puzzle more challenging than perhaps it’s meant to be. This one went quickly at first, with 19-A, three letters, “Work with kimono costuming” and 32-A, six letters, “Farrow's musician spouse after Sinatra,” which together gave me 1-D, nine letters, “Potable portmanteau.” But elsewhere I found more difficulty, and the upper right corner proved really Ruff.
Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:
9-D, eight letters, “Birthplace of Tom Cruise or Archimedes.” Improbable and amusing.
11-D, four letters, “Regular guy.” From the upper right corner.
14-D, five letters, “It’s slashed for everyone.” No, not really, not everyone.
15-A, nine letters, “Irrigation system feature.” I knew only one meaning for this answer, and now I know another.
21-A, seven letters, “Dramatist whose name looks like a Scrabble rack.” Novel, irreverent, and funny.
23-A, four letters, “Small six-footers.” A value-added clue.
49-D, six letters, “Take an angular course.” Huh. I should know this word.
57-A, seven letters, “A WHO Essential
Medicine.” Sobering to realize it.
69-A, nine letters, “Anagram of A REM THING.” Another value-added clue. Not difficult to see, but fun.
My favorite in this puzzle, from the upper right corner: 13-D, five letters, “Amount to.” Nicely Stumpery, a plain answer at least semi-fiendishly clued.
No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.
Bill Griffith, notebook user
From a Connecticut Examiner interview with Bill Griffith, cartoonist:
I have a notebook that I always keep in my pocket, because I never know when an idea will come up, a punchline, an idea. I try to never censor myself. I write it down immediately in my notebook. I sometimes wake up in a twilight zone between sleeping and waking and have an idea. I write it down. Once in a while, I’ll think of an entire strip of panels that way. It’ll happen all of a sudden. Mostly it isn’t good, but every once in a while, it is good, and I can use it. If I don’t write it down right in the moment, it disappears.Related reading
All OCA Zippy posts (Pinboard)
PBS NewsHour , salt, and tea
From the PBS NewsHour: “American chemist causes stir in Britain by suggesting salt can improve cup of tea.” And an interview with that chemist, Michelle Francl, the Frank B. Mallory professor of chemistry at Bryn Mawr College: “How to spot the chemistry in your cup of tea.”
I have no plans to add salt to tea. I like my tannins.
Related reading
All OCA tea posts (Pinboard)
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