USPS, Pioneers of Industrial Design

One of twelve new Forever Stamps from the United States Postal Service: “Pioneers of Industrial Design.” Here’s a press release with details. And here’s a PDF with biographies of the designers.

[Elaine, I think we need to replace all our stamps.]

Principal borrows from DFW’s commencement speech

In the news:

The principal of a middle school geared toward writers tried to pass off much of a well-known graduation speech as his work, parents and students told the Daily News.

They say Joseph Anderson, who heads the Clinton School for Writers and Artists in Manhattan, recited — without attribution — portions of an address penned by the late writer David Foster Wallace at Friday’s eighth-grade commencement. . . .

Anderson said it was an “oversight” not to identify Wallace as the author of the “anecdote.”

“I thought I had stated in my commencement speech that I was sharing a story I had read. . . . It was not my intention to mislead my school community,” he said.

Says graduating eighth-grader Marcus Cook, “We’re a school for writers and artists. It”s kind of ironic that he can’t write it. If you do that in college and high school, you can get kicked out.”

The Daily News article doesn’t say which part or parts of DFW’s speech Principal Anderson borrowed.

June 30, 11:12 a.m.: A Daily News editorial says that Anderson borrowed this passage:

Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think.

Not clear though whether this passage is all that Anderson borrowed.

Related reading
David Foster Wallace, Kenyon College 2005 commencement address

Google navigation bar (again)

For the second time this year, Google has changed its navigation bar, this time to black. The new bar appears to be part the move to the Facebookish Google+. If you, like me, find the black bar a distraction, there are Greasemonkey scripts to help:

Disable Google Black Bar, by Keith Dsouza. This script removes the black bar from google.com but leaves the bar as is elsewhere.

Google Light Navbar, by akira@Taiwan. I prefer this script, which brings back the white bar on all Google pages — which is to say, the bar that doesn’t look like a bar, because it’s indistinguishable from the white background.

These scripts require Greasemonkey, a Firefox extension. Greasemonkey will work in other browsers too.

Thank you, Keith and akira@Taiwan, for creating these scripts.

11:22 a.m.: One more: Google Bar Classic, by Olmer. Also brings back the white (non-existent) bar. Thanks, Olmer.

2:28 p.m.: Google Bar Classic seems to break Google Reader — no longer possible to send or share items.

July 1, 8:25 p.m.: Google Bar Classic has been updated: problem solved.

A related post
Google navigation bar

Two goose books

In 1994, George Bodmer made a picture book for his daughter. And now she has made one for him. And you can read them both:

Jane the Goose-Girl and George the Goose-Guy

Everyone should be so lucky to have such a father or daughter, or both.

[When you get to page seven, click on “Older Posts” to read the rest. Or just click on June 2011 to see all pages.]

Fred Steiner (1923–2011)

Fred Steiner, who wrote the theme music for Perry Mason (and much else) has died.

The Perry Mason theme sent my brother and me into a frenzy in early childhood. The four-note phrases became a lyric: “The mum - my PRAYERS! The mum - my PRAYERS!” (Repeat until delirious.) The theme’s title, as I just learned, is “Park Avenue Beat,” which doesn’t seem to have anything to do with mummies.

(Via Sounds & Fury via Musical Assumptions.)

Kozol on jargon

Jonathan Kozol on educational jargon:

One of the most annoying consequences of this trend, as you’ve observed, is a peculiar tendency to use a polysyllabic synonym for almost any plain and ordinary word: “implement” for do, “initiate” for start, “utilize” for use, “identify” for name, ”articulate” for state, “replicate” for copy, “evaluate” for judge, “quantify” for count, “strategize” for plan, “facilitate” for help, “restructure” or “reconstitute” for change. The toss-in use of adjectives like “positive” and “meaningful” (instead of, simply, “good” or “real”) in front of nouns like “outcome” or “collaboration” is another common way of trying to pump extra air into a wilted and deflated intellectual ballon.

Letters to a Young Teacher (New York: Crown, 2007)

We should talk about these observations in small grou — I mean, in breakout sessions.

Related posts
How to improve writing (no. 5) (on facilitator)
How to improve writing (no. 11) (on implement)

Rod Blagojevich found guilty

In the Dog-Bites-Man Department: an Illinois politician has been found guilty on corruption charges.

If you’re wondering, here’s how to pronounce his last name.

A couple of related posts
Blagojevich and “Ulysses”
Rod Blagojevich, maker of metaphors

[Elaine and I are proud not to have voted for him, twice.]

Moore Metalhed Maptacks

[Click for a larger view.]

Google wants to know: “Did you mean: metal head map tacks.“ No, I did not. I meant metalhed maptacks, about which Google could find nothing.

I bought this box of Moore Metalhed Maptacks in a late-20th-century stationery store, the kind of store where products sit on the shelves for years, lost in thought, not making a peep. I think of these tacks as having missed their true calling: as markers on a wall-size map charting the progress of a police dragnet. “His only chance now is to head south on Ninth. So we’ll cut him off right … here.” [Tack goes into map.]

Moore is a venerable name in tacks and push-pins: Edwin Moore (1874–1916) founded the Moore Push-Pin Company in 1900. Moore Push-Pin continues in business today, with a website offering a brief account of the company’s history and details of current products. I am especially taken with the Thin-Pin, which might be described as a push-pin that comes close to existing in just two dimensions.

I tried several times to pose these Metalhed Maptacks in a plausible way. They finally surprised me by coming to rest in these cuneiform-like formations.

[This post is the eleventh in an occasional series, “From the Museum of Supplies.” The museum is imaginary. The supplies are real. Supplies is my word, and has become my family’s word, for all manner of stationery items. Photographs by Michael Leddy.]

Also from the Museum of Supplies
Dennison’s Gummed Labels No. 27
Eagle Turquoise display case
Eagle Verithin display case
Fineline erasers
Illinois Central Railroad Pencil
A Mad Men sort of man, sort of
Mongol No. 2 3/8
Real Thin Leads
Rite-Rite Long Leads
Stanley carpenter’s rule

Domestic comedy

“It’s not a hunting camp; it’s a gathering camp.”

Related reading
All “domestic comedy” posts (via Pinboard)

New York and equal marriage

The Flag of Equal Marriage needs updating. Hooray for New York and New Yorkers. Hooray for the twenty-nine Democratic and four Republican legislators who voted for the Marriage Equality Act. And hooray for the Democratic governor who signed it.

This detail from a New York Times article is telling:

With his position still undeclared, Senator Mark J. Grisanti, a Republican from Buffalo who had sought office promising to oppose same-sex marriage, told his colleagues he had agonized for months before concluding he had been wrong.

“I apologize to those who feel offended,” Mr. Grisanti said, adding, “I cannot deny a person, a human being, a taxpayer, a worker, the people of my district and across this state, the State of New York, and those people who make this the great state that it is the same rights that I have with my wife.”

[The flag will be updated when the law goes into effect: July 24, 2011. I’ve corrected the Times quotation: “to those,” not “for those.”]