I admit, it would have been a lot of fun if students suddenly broke into song in some of my classes.
I give major points to Prof. Valentini for enjoying the unique experience, instead of either getting angry, or (as I’m certain some of my professors would have done) remaining confused throughout about what was happening.
From Douglas Crockford’s JavaScript class:
When the compiler sees an error, it attempts to replace a nearby linefeed with a semicolon and try again.
This should alarm you.
Tonight’s Boston Pops concert (part of the ongoing OoP day celebrations) featured music from the Baseball Music Project, including a 1969 novelty song called Van Lingle Mungo. Far funnier in theory than in execution, the song’s lyrics consist entirely of the names of 1940s baseball players – particularly those that sound funny. The first verse:
Heeney Majeski
Johnny Gee
Eddie Joost
Johnny Pesky
Thornton Lee
Danny Gardella
Van Lingle Mungo
The author, David Frishberg, got to perform the song for Van Lingle Mungo himself, who griped that he wouldn’t get any money despite his name being the title and the refrain:
“When he heard my explanation about how there was unlikely to be any remuneration for anyone connected with the song, least of all him, he was genuinely downcast. ‘But it’s my name,’ he said. I told him, ‘The only way you can get even is to go home and write a song called Dave Frishberg.'”
They also performed a far more entertaining song titled Let’s Keep the Dodgers in Brooklyn, accompanied by slides of the team. Tip for the future: don’t show slides of a Brooklyn team wearing what is, in the end, the Red Sox insignia on their caps. We’re easily confused about that sort of thing.
Suppose that many students in New York public schools own cell phones. Summon all your powers of imagination for this one.
Now suppose that instead of banning phones, the city gives one to every student in the system – a phone called the Million.
During school hours the phone can’t make calls or send texts, but it can be used to do research online and interact with materials teachers distribute electronically. As students do homework and get good grades, they’ll receive an allowance of minutes to call their friends after school.
(via Freakonomics)
Boston has been abuzz lately with the sounds of absolutely nobody caring about how Legal Sea Foods advertises its restaurants.
The seafood chain began a campaign in January with ads on Boston cabs featuring its “fresh fish” – fresh like the prince of Bel-Air. The fish said things like, “The cab driver has a face like a halibut.” Nobody particularly noticed. Including the cab drivers.
Then in May they debuted the same campaign on the sides of Green Line trains. Now the fish said things like, “This conductor has a face like a halibut.” Nobody particularly noticed. Except some conductors.
Stephan G. MacDougall, president of the Boston Carmen’s Union, … fielded 40 phone calls from Green Line workers incensed by the ads.
“To say they are angered and offended is to put it lightly,” MacDougall said. “I will tell you this: If they don’t come down, we will not drive those trains.”
With this, a few people began to care. They do have a point: it is offensive and insulting. Even things said as a joke can be offensive. Did we learn nothing from Mean Girls, in which Tina Fey cautions the high school girls, “You all have got to stop calling each other sluts and whores – it just makes it okay for guys to call you sluts and whores?” Don’t tell me I’m the only one who watched that movie.
Complaining, however, was the worst move the Carmen’s Union (Local 589) could have made. They have a right to take offense, but it’s rather akin to arguing with the homeless guy about whether or not your drugs smell. Trust me. Nobody ever beat me up in middle school, and I was the guy who wore a vest to school every day. Ignoring the bullies must have worked at least a little. (Except that kid who tried picking on me on the last day of school – he ended up mopping hallways for the first week of summer while I was in Disney World. Seriously.)
Legal Sea Foods CEO Roger Berkowitz threw fuel into the fire the next week, with an “apology” on the radio:
“We should have never, ever said, ‘This conductor has a face like a halibut,’ when the truth is, most conductors don’t look anything at all like halibuts,” Berkowitz says in the new radio advertisement, produced by the New York ad agency DeVito/Verdi. “Some look more like groupers or flounders. I’ve even seen a few who closely resemble catfish. And there’s one conductor on the Green Line that looks remarkably like a hammerhead shark. So we feel very badly about this mischaracterization, and we won’t let it happen again.”
Somewhere in Boston 40 Green Line conductors were out purchasing soapboxes, and 350,000 Boston Globe subscribers were thinking about whether or not Legal Sea Foods was funny – and as a follow-up question whether they felt like some halibut for dinner.
Then Legal threw on the last log:
Initially, the MBTA said two of the five ads had to come down, but, without cause or warning, we found a third ad subsequently had been taken down.
This might lead a company to question whether its First Amendment rights have been violated. Nevertheless, we have bigger fish to fry, and hope that the conductors can accept the ads in the spirit they were created. I doubt any are truly offended. And if so, a halibut dinner is on us.
– Ida Faber, Marketing director for Legal Sea Foods. Printed as a letter to the editor of the Boston Globe, 19 June, 2008
Let’s stop right there. We’re already poised on the brink of raising a generation of illiterate txt spkrs (isn’t that the best editorial ever, by the way?) so let’s clarify something. The first amendment makes no guarantee whatsoever about who can advertise on the T or what those ads can say.
While Legal Sea Foods has a constitutional right to shout at the top of their voice that conductors look like fish, no advertising venue in the country has a constitutional obligation to print it. As Aaron Sorkin says, “You want free speech? Let’s see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil who’s standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours.”
Of course, the real purpose of the statement was to keep the dialog going. When it failed, giant ads appeared a few days later announcing that Legal really had sent gift certificates for free dinners to the Carmen’s Union for any conductor who wanted them.
We can only hope this wraps up a publicity battle that was fought absolutely nowhere but the pages of a newspaper, and sufficiently drives up Legal’s sales revenues for the month of June. And the award for Best Supporting Actor goes to: the Carmen’s Union, for making it all possible.
Imagine that you get off the T and find that although it is cloudy out it is not raining. You need to walk one block but it begins to sprinkle lightly. Describe the most appropriate emotional reaction to this situation.
If you’d asked me at 5:26 this evening, I would have answered, “You’ll get wet, and in 45 seconds you’ll be indoors and dry. Only an infant would complain about this situation.”
If you’d asked me at 5:27 this evening, I would have answered, “It’s sprinkling? If you value your life flee the streets for dry land with all the speed your legs can offer, sacrificing whatever possessions and money you must to secure the nearest shelter.”
I swear I am not exaggerating when I say that in the time it took me to walk one block the skies opened from “no moisture of any kind” to sheets of rain so thick that when I tried opening my mouth I had a very realistic fear of drowning right there on the street.
Then the leasing agent I went to see showed me apartment 1313. I can’t discount the possibility that some very powerful forces want to keep me out of this building. Besides, what happened to superstition (the jokes featured in the latter half that 1.5 minute video)?
Now, to make up for telling a story that, while admittedly very exciting for me at the time, basically reduces to, “I got very wet today,” I will balance it all out with a link to some of the best music ever written, beginning with the song And the Rain Crashed Down.
From Radiolab, Paul Ekman describes his definition of lying:
A lie is a deliberate choice to mislead a target without any notification.
According to that definition an actor is not a liar, although… I saw a good actor last night in a play and I was for a time misled. I even had tears because he had misled me. But I was notified.
My wife taught me what I’m supposed to say when she comes in with a new dress – I’m not supposed to say, “Gee, that’s not a flattering cut,” or, “the color is wrong,” or, “that’s for someone twenty years younger,” all of which might be true. I’m supposed to say, “Smashing!” So I’ve agreed to those rules, and since we’ve agreed about that I’m not lying.
A gallery of pictures of phone sex operators with short interviews:
“To the caller, when I first answer, I am the inanimate Barbie. They do not know what I look like, who I am or how I feel. They can only imagine. It is my job to indulge their fantasies, to convince them that I am not a doll. I am their dream turned real. I view every question the caller asks me as a command for me to transform. If they ask if I am blonde, I become a blonde. … I breathe life into their fantasy, I carve the doll out of flesh.”
(via Kottke)
According to the Globe (June 19, 2008) a man back in December 2007 shined a green laser into the cockpit of a police helicopter, forcing the pilot to take evasive action. He was formally charged yesterday. What struck me particularly was the description of the laser:
The laser Sasso is accused of using was classified by the Food and Drug Administration as a Class IIIb laser, which can cause burns, temporary blindness, and distractions, prosecutors said.
“Do you expect me to fly with this thing in my eyes?” “No, Mr. Bond. I expect you to get distracted.”
I don’t mean to suggest that shining a laser anywhere near a person’s face is ever acceptable, just that “distractions” are not a particularly potent argument to advance.
JK Rowling (which she herself has said is to be pronounced “rolling, like ‘rolling pin'”) gave the Commencement address at Harvard this year. Now you can watch online.
Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility; or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can’t remember a single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.
You see? If all you remember in years to come is the ‘gay wizard’ joke, I’ve still come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock. Achievable goals: the first step towards personal improvement.
That part’s funny, but watch the whole thing. This is the construction and utilization of language that makes English worth listening to.
(And yes, this is a point to Boston.)