Little people

Lunch yesterday at a Chinese restaurant where my wife Elaine and I have been going since 1985. Mae, the owner, was happy to see us. "You're such a cute couple," she said. "So little."

Little?

I immediately thought of what Elaine and I used to call "potato love"--our characterization of the tiny old people you see in a city, rocking slightly from side to side as they walk, arm in arm, to do their shopping.

Then Mae added, "You always look the same," and I realized that little meant young. Phew. Thanks, Mae!

Woebegone

A really revealing piece in Inside Higher Ed, "Woebegone About Grade Inflation," on professorial attitudes toward grade inflation. Authors Janice McCabe and Brian Powell draw four conclusions:

First, most professors believe grade inflation occurs at their university, but few believe it occurs in their department, and even fewer in their own classes. . . .

Second, most professors view student pressure as a key factor fueling other professors' grading practices and grade inflation, but few admit they experience this pressure, and fewer acknowledge they are influenced by it. . . .

Third, most professors assert a link between grades and student evaluations, but they also express faith in their students and their evaluations' ability to distinguish between the best and worst teachers. . . .

Fourth, most professors believe average grades should be lower on campus, but would like to see a higher grade distribution in their own classes. . . .

What do these deep contradictions mean? McCabe and Powell offer a compelling explanation:

These four seeming contradictions provide another illustration of what social psychologists refer to as self-enhancing tendencies: that individuals believe they are better than average and that their situation is distinct from others. This is the social psychological equivalent of the Lake Wobegon Effect, "where all the children are above average." The Lake Wobegon Effect is referred to repeatedly in the public discourse over grade inflation, although in that discourse, students, not professors, are being rated as above average.

The self-enhancing tendency helps explain why professors believe that grade inflation exists but their grades do not contribute to it, why student pressure and student evaluations influence others' grading but not their own, and why grades in their classes should be higher but grades at the university level (and other universities) should be lower.

The entire piece is well worth reading for what it says about grade inflation and for what it says about the self-enhancing (and self-deluding) professorial mind. (Click on the title of the article above.)

Les yeux sans visage

From a New York Times article, "A New Face: A Bold Surgeon, an Untried Surgery":

A team led by Dr. [Maria] Siemionow is planning to undertake what may be the most shocking medical procedure to occur in decades: a face transplant. . . .

From the moment Dr. Siemionow first proposed this surgery, she has been hearing about "Face/Off," the 1997 movie starring John Travolta and Nicolas Cage as an F.B.I. agent and a criminal mastermind whose mugs are surgically swapped.

One night, before the first review of her proposal by colleagues at the Cleveland Clinic, she rented the movie to gauge the public's potential reaction to the operation.

"It was O.K., if you like Travolta," she shrugged. "But it was just science fiction."

An earlier movie is relevant too: Les yeux sans visage [Eyes without a face], a 1959 film by Georges Franju about a doctor who seeks to give his daughter a face transplant. (He was driving "like a madman," and the accident that ruined her face was his fault.)

Les yeux sans visage is one of the most gruesome and stylish horror movies I've seen. (Yes, it depicts the surgery.) It's equal in fascination to Carnival of Souls (the 1962 film made in Lawrence, Kansas). Both films are available on DVD from the Criterion Collection in beautifully restored prints.

Microsoft disses paper and pen

Microsoft has launched "Stationery Is Bad," an ad campaign to promote a product called OneNote. Says the website, "Let's face it. Stationery isn't very good. And when it comes to note taking, it just isn't up to the job."

Oh really? This campaign is supposed to be "humorous," but I find it insulting to my intelligence and to my sense of reality. The advantages of paper-based communication have been recounted many times. Does Microsoft really believe that saying something makes it so?

Paper

One place to begin reading about the advantages of paper is The Myth of the Paperless Office, by Abigail Sellen and Richard Harper. To read Macolm Gladwell's New Yorker review, click here.

Driven to distraction

From "Driven to distraction by technology":

For years, technology has worked to get people more connected. In the office there's e-mail, instant messages and the phone. On the road, cell phones and BlackBerrys enable workers to stay in touch with colleagues.

There is a mini rebellion under way, however. Desperate for some quiet time to think, people are coming up with low-tech strategies to get away from all their technology. That has Microsoft and others taking note and looking for ways to create software that can be more adept at preventing interruptions.

"If you don't have that sort of free time to dream and muse and mull, then you are not being creative, by definition," said Dan Russell, a senior manager at IBM's Almaden Research Center in San Jose, Calif.

After concluding three years ago that he was becoming a slave to e-mail, Russell decided to put his foot down. These days, he takes his time replying to messages. All his responses say at the bottom: "Join the slow email movement! Read your mail just twice each day. Recapture your life's time and relearn to dream."

As someone making the effort to cut down on checking my e-mail, I like Dan Russell's advice. Microsoft's response--more software!--reminds me of what happens when you call to cancel cable television: the cable company tries to sell you more channels. The real solution of course is to step away from the machine.

You can read Ina Fried's CNET News article by clicking here. (Via 43 Folders.)

Faux Faulkner

From "The Administration and the Fury," by Sam Apple, winning entry in the 2005 Faux Faulkner contest:

Down the hall, under the chandelier, I could see them talking. They were walking toward me and Dick's face was white, and he stopped and gave a piece of paper to Rummy, and Rummy looked at the piece of paper and shook his head. He gave the paper back to Dick and Dick shook his head. They disappeared and then they were standing right next to me.

"Georgie's going to walk down to the Oval Office with me," Dick said.

"I just hope you got him all good and ready this time," Rummy said.

"Hush now," Dick said. "This aint no laughing matter. He know lot more than folks think." Dick patted me on the back good and hard. "Come on now, Georgie," Dick said. "Never mind you, Rummy."

We walked down steps to the office. There were paintings of old people on the walls and the room was round like a circle and Condi was sitting on my desk. Her legs were crossed.

"Did you get him ready for the press conference?" Dick said.

"Dont you worry about him. He'll be ready," Condi said. Condi stood up from the desk. Her legs were long and she smelled like the Xeroxed copies of the information packets they give me each day.

"Hello Georgie," Condi said. "Did you come to see Condi?" Condi rubbed my hair and it tickled.

"Dont go messing up his hair," Dick said. "Hes got a press conference in a few minutes."

If you don't understand what's going on here, join Oprah's Book Club and start reading The Sound and the Fury. You can read the rest of "The Administration and the Fury," along with the two runners-up, by clicking here.

Update: The above link is defunct, but you can still read Sam Apple's parody in Slate via the link below.

» The Administration and the Fury

On handwriting and typing

W.H. Auden, from "Writing":

Most people enjoy the sight of their own handwriting as they enjoy the smell of their own farts. Much as I loathe the typewriter, I must admit that it is a help in self-criticism. Typescript is so impersonal and hideous to look at that, if I type out a poem, I immediately see defects which I missed when I looked through it in manuscript. When it comes to a poem by somebody else, the severest test I know of is to write it out in longhand. The physical tedium of doing this ensures that the slightest defect will reveal itself; the hand is constantly looking for an excuse to stop.

[From The Dyer's Hand and Other Essays (1962).]

Funny that in our time typing (or "word-processing") seems to mask defects--everything looks so slick, so finished, so right. To paraphrase Alexander Pope, our attitude about "word-processed" text seems to be that "Whatever is in Times New Roman, is right." Thus it is that teachers of writing often recommend printing a draft in an unfamiliar and unpretty font, so that the text it loses its fine appearance and becomes more readily subject to revision. (Try printing in Courier New and see what I mean).

"Stacks' Appeal"

From "Stacks' Appeal," by "Thomas H. Benton" ( a pseudonym):

What does it mean when the University of Texas at Austin removes nearly all of the books from its undergraduate library to make room for coffee bars, computer terminals, and lounge chairs? What are students in those "learning commons" being taught that is qualitatively better than what they learned in traditional libraries?

I think the absence of books confirms the disposition to regard them as irrelevant. Many entering students come from nearly book-free homes. Many have not read a single book all the way through; they are instead trained to surf and skim. Teachers increasingly find it difficult to get students to consult printed materials, and yet we are making those materials even harder to obtain. Online journal articles are suitable for searching and extraction, but how conducive is a computer for reading a novel?

I also suspect that retrieval of books in the context of food service and roving helpers inculcates in students a disturbing combination of passivity and entitlement, as if they are diners in a fancy restaurant rather than students doing their homework. The "learning commons" seems consistent with the consumerist model of education that we all recognize: "I deserve an 'A' because I'm paying a lot of money to come here (even if I spend all my time playing video games and hanging out at the new campus fitness center)."

You can read the essay, from the Chronicle of Higher Education, here. (Via Arts & Letters Daily.)

Everyday details in film

When I watch old movies, I always like looking at the details of everyday life as imagined on film. That's how I first noticed the snowglobe in Susan Alexander's boarding-house room in Citizen Kane. The cigarette-lighter and Bull Durham sack on Sam Spade's night-table in The Maltese Falcon, the signs strung across the drugstore in The Best Years of Our Lives, the sad furnishings of Garzah's room in The Naked City -- they all move me to hit Pause and undertake my own version of Cultural Studies. Here's something I just took in on the DVD release of The Grapes of Wrath -- the menu-board in a diner where the Joads stop to buy a loaf of bread (a 15¢ loaf, which they are able to buy for 10¢). The menu stands a silent commentary on the distance between the Joads and their dream of a better life:

T BONE STEAK   35
RIB STEAK   30
PORK CHOPS   25
ROAST CHICKEN   25
ROAST BEEF   25
ROAST LAMB   25
ROAST PORK   25
LIVER & ONIONS   25
BOILED HAM   25
COLD MEATS   25
STEW   15
SALADS   10
SOUP
PIES
COLD DRINKS

(The prices of the last three items are obscured by a counter display of lollipops.)