I haven't posted in a while, so it is unfortunate that my reappearance is to share with you the demise of our beloved Yankee Doodle. No, not the one with the macaroni. The famous lunch counter in New Haven, wedged between Tyco and a corner spot with a rotating assortment of proprietors. (It was a Wawa when I was a student, but has since been a swanky shoe store, inter alia.)
Some may say that the place was doomed in an age of no trans fats and increasing flexitarianism. Or it could be that as Yale has spiffed up the area surrounding it, students had more and better choices for their comestibles. Less well known, though, is that the Doodle record went to a professional competitive eater some years back, which I think took away some of the attraction for the plus-size men on campus.
In any case, its doors are closed, apparently for good, and we will miss you, O fair Doodle!
Cinematographer László Kovács is dead. Mr. Kovács shot some great pictures, as well as some lousy ones. But I'll most remember him for the reason I adopted his name, which was his name-only (but apparently coincidental) appearance in A Bout de souffle as Jean-Paul Belmondo’s nom de gangster.
Now that it's coming to the telly, you can also get the new Dr. Who (or at least the phone booth) on your desktop.
Found, rather accidentally and tangentially, on Emily’s personal journal: WorldCat, a collaborative cataloging of library collections. There are arguable snags, of course. I was told, for example, that the closest library where I could find John Knox’s First Book of Discipline was the Newberry Library in Chicago; this, when I know from personal experience that Yale’s Beinecke library has one just three blocks from my office. WorldCat did present me with a low-visibiilty link to Yale's own catalog. In any case, libraries are a great way to save you money and clutter. (One would think this is dog-bites-man news, but best-seller lists suggest otherwise.)
It occurred to me, on the eve of this 232nd anniversary of the founding of our republic, that most of the independence days of which I knew were in the summer. As this group consisted of exactly 3 countries (USA, Canada, and France), I decided to make a survey that could more easily fool a listener into thinking it was authoritative. My extensive research took me to the first result in Google from searching for “national independence days”, some obscure children's site named Kids Turn Central. Dot com!
Turns out your most popular month for uprisings is September. Back to school, time to kill some aristocrats. June is right behind, with a higher percentage of nations in temperate climates. I guess for us, July is just too hot to take the yoke of oppression any more.
The listing of independence days or national holidays seems to be basically accurate, based on spot-checking against the CIA World Factbook. (Though you never know with those spooks. They could be sowing disinformation about Burkina Faso’s national holiday.) It’s probably not exhaustive, since it comprises only 120 nations, but I’ll assume it’s representative.
Wear it with pride or with air quotes: Merch from the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.
Every family should have one. Great for bookplates, too. The Seal Generator is from the good folks who brought you the Church Sign Generator, the Mobster Threat Generator, and George Says.
Lloyd Alexander
I've only read the Chronicles of Prydain, but they were excellent. I believe Mike’s read more.
Charles Nelson Reilly
Yes, you know he was simply fabulous on Match Game, prefiguring Paul Lynde on Hollywood Squares, but have you ever seen Lidsville? From the demented duo Sid and Marty Krofft, Lidsville is straight out of the what-drugs-were-they-on childrens television school of the early ’70s. Butch “Eddie Munster” Patrick falls into a magic top hat while snooping around backstage at a magic show and ends up in a special land where all the inhabitants but one are hats. Yes, hats. Who's the non-hat character? Charles Nelson Reilly, playing Hoo Doo, who’s trying to, um, do something.
Multiple vulnerability announcements today from Mozilla, seen at Secunia, on Firefox 1 and 2. The upgrade path for Fx 2 gets you to version 2.0.0.1, and the yuks just write themselves.
If you haven’t already done so, please make sure to write your (possibly new) senators and representative, and soon, telling them what you expect out of them and the 110th congress. Me? I had the pleasure of being snarky with Joe Lieberman about the fact that he's the only member of the Connecticut for Lieberman party. But I also told him, Dodd, and DeLauro what I want them to do for me now that they’ve got The Power. At the risk of being insufficiently cynical, I claim that your chance to be heard is not limited to election day.
Design Observer’s got a guest column up about the culture of Conservatism, which would be more accurately titled The Culture of the Republican Party. My father fits squarely in line with this description — while he’s no screaming reactionary, he does love trying to get my goat, even if he fails.
An interesting example of both info design and type wonkery, this man put together what seems to be a pretty good, dense, readable family ancestry chart.
Purchased today: One card catalog from Yale University, which is finally getting all of their collection online. Said catalog is the kind in the picture facing left, under the lights. 65 drawers of Church J through Cohen (MD), but without the actual cards.
Picture brazenly stolen from complete stranger Steve Minutillo.
Something I’ve been noodling around with lately: How many songs are there that are titled with years, and years only? Just for starters, there’s “1969” (and “1970”) by the Stooges and “1979” from Smashing Pumpkins, but what else? I’ve gotten through the ’70s, but I cheated and used AllMusic.
I eventually received back from a friend in Paris her view on the riots. Natch, it’s just one woman’s thoughts, but she’s a reasonable and intelligent person. (Reprinted without permission, hence without attribution.)
Rassure-toi! Paris n’est pas à feu et à sang! Il ne faut pas regarder Fox News ni même CNN! Les choses semblent se calmer maintenant mais le problème des banlieues demeure. Il existe depuis trente ans et aucun parti politique n’eu la volonté ferme et persévérante de le résoudre. Il s’agit de ségrégation sociale pure et simple, de ghettos où plus de 40% des jeunes n’ont pas de travail. Dans une société qui, globalement, s’enrichit mais où s’accentue le fossé entre riches et pauvres. Dans ces ghettos se retrouve évidemment une majorité de Français d’origine maghrébine ou africaine. D’où l’exploitation des événements par le parti d’extrême droite.
Last Wednesday I had a very odd experience, and since I have banished personal life posts from my own blog, I’ll blog about it here. Last Wednesday (the astronomical end of summer), I went to the funeral of a family friend, a woman who was possibly the nicest and most helpful of the many non-family volunteers who helped take care of my mother when she was dying from ALS. Her name was Sharon Norgaard, which won’t likely mean anything to you, but it will some day to Google.
The experience was very strange because it was rather like going back in time to see my mother’s funeral from an outsider’s perspective. I was in the same chuch for the memorial service part, with many of the same people attending. Eulogies were very similar in tone to those for my mother, to the extent I remember my mother’s funeral Sharon’s oldest daughter is a friend of mine from high school, but she was 3 years behind me, so she’s onlya year older than I was then. The minister even mentioned Sharon’s caring for my mother as a particularly noteworthy example of her generosity.
Sharon, like my mother, got the benefits and problems of a long decline. She first had her breast cancer nearly 15 years ago, put it into remission through treatment and, what seems likely for her, sheer force of will. But it came back, as the Grim Reaper sometimes does, and wouldn’t be denied this time. Sharon was a fighter, so she rode the Pan-Mass Challenge (PMC) as often as she could, and personally raised over $80,000 for cancer research. Equally importantly, she passed on her strength to her children, who all rode the PMC with her once or more, and were sad but stable at the gathering after the interment. (Yankee/WASP values of stoicism . . . )
Remember email appliances? Well, I find myself actually in the situation that I’d like to get one for my grandparents. Trouble is, all those email appliances seem to have tiny screens. My grandparents, being old, don’t have such great eyesight, making me skeptical of the utility of an LED screen the size of those old hybrid typewriters. Anyone have any ideas?
I considered a laptop that could be locked down to make it effectively an email appliance, but that’s a chunk of change for the functionality. Oh yeah, and space is a premium, or I’d consider doing the same with one of the spare, if old, desktop towers we have around my office.
Remember those books that were kinda popular at one time where if you solved the puzzle in the book you won thousands of dollars, or maybe nothing, because solving the puzzle involved going to some remote shire in England and digging where the puzzle clues told you to?
Well, Coudal Partners has something like that, called The Trail. Looks to me like it could be really interesting, but I just haven’t the time. (Plus I’m scared I would be intellectually smacked-down.)
