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Words of the day: Now with names for the chemistry-classroom fixture with sink and Bunsen burner.
Orange Crate Art
“Mostly I read”
Ted Turner’s biographer doesn’t own a TV.
Words of the day: estrade and dais
What’s the word for the platform at the front of a classroom where the instructor’s desk stands? Is there a word for it? I was reaching for such a word on Saturday and later found one in Charlotte Brontë’s Villette : estrade.
“In Your Classroom”
The latest xkcd .
Shadow-world
A passage from Villette.
Today’s Newsday Saturday
“What are needed to say ‘Aye!’”
Accounts, multiple and definitive
Do we need multiple biographies of Philip Roth? Can one biography of Bob Dylan be “definitive”?
Livonians in Latvia
“With a population estimated at just around 200, Europe's smallest ethnic group is fighting to save its language and culture from extinction”: the BBC looks at the Livonian people of Latvia.
x
Thinking alphabet thoughts made me wonder: why do we solve (or fail to solve but maybe at least get partial credit) for x ?
Heteronyms
In The Washington Post, John Ficarra, a Mad editor, writes about his problem with heteronyms.
The alphabet and the encyclopedia
Encyclopedias haven’t always been alphabetical. The structure of a medieval encyclopedia was hierarchical, reflecting a divinely ordered universe. Begin with God, then human beings, animals, and on to inanimate things. The change to alphabetical order, Judith Flanders argues, marks a change in worldview.
Baltic Gold
Tiny, tender, lightly smoked fish from Latvia.
Zombie cicadas
“Infected cicadas, despite the fact that a third of their body has fallen off, continue to go about their activities like mating and flying as if nothing happened.”
“Let’s agree that if”
Akiva Eldar, Israeli political analyst and journalist, and Mkhaimar Abusada, professor of political science at Al-Azhar University in Gaza, in conversation.
Jaylan Butler v. Staes, et al.
“The memories of that night being pressed to the ground, with officers swearing at me and a gun pointed at my head, will remain with me forever. But I know that unlike other Black men who have been stopped and manhandled by police, I got to go home. For me, this lawsuit has always been about holding the officers accountable for their actions that night. I believe I have accomplished that goal. As a result, I am happy to dismiss the suit and move forward.”
Some of Mary Miller’s votes
My representative in Congress, Mary Miller (R, Illinois-15), votes with the worst of the worst.
“Anglaise!”
From Villette: in a coffee-room in the fictional French-speaking kingdom of Labassecour, forty miles from the capital Villette, Lucy Snowe is alone in several ways.
Pen and paper and
From Judith Flanders’s A Place for Everything: The Curious History of Alphabetical Order: everything that used to be needed for writing with ink.
FSRC: annual report
Nine novels, two plays, one short-story collection, and one mountain.
Meaningful letters
From Judith Flanders’s A Place for Everything: The Curious History of Alphabetical Order: omicron, omega, and others.
Today’s Nancy
Today’s Nancy harks back to a 2019 strip with a cookie jar and meta hijinks.
Fifty blog-description lines
“The desk fills the screen.”
Bob Koester (1932–2021)
The proprietor of Chicago’s Jazz Record Mart and the founder of Delmark Records
Today’s Newsday Saturday
“They’re in a book of Liszt’s.”
Out of practice
Elaine and I went out to visit friends last night, our first nighttime social effort in well over a year. And we didn’t remember to turn on the outside light when going out. We’re out of practice.
“Adoration” again
Here’s “Adoration” again, played by Randall Goosby, violin, and Zhu Wang, piano, but this time with audio and video. And Elaine Fine is now credited as the arranger.
I get pitches
“Hello! Great to MEAT you!” It’s all about meat and health and positive emotions.
E-mail, or email ?
Bryan Garner weighs in.
Spencer Silver (1941–2021)
He inadvertently created the adhesive that found a use in “repositionable pressure-sensitive adhesive sheet material” — aka the Post-it Note.
A Fine Price
Elaine just learned that her arrangement of Florence Price’s “Adoration” for violin and piano will appear on violinist Randall Goosby’s first album, Roots (Decca), to be released on June 25. HIs performance, with pianist Zhu Wang, has been released on YouTube as a calling card for the album.