David Giacalone has a thoughtul entry on the absurdity of law school rankings. (Yes, I was pleased to see that my alma mater ranked in the top 20, barely). He focuses on the importance that professors — even more than prospective students — attach to these ratings. I would wonder, however, whether it is not appeal to the alumni — and their money — that drives the frenzy of deans and faculty over ratings.
Free at Last
I released my first book — All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren — through Book Crossing today. I put a label and a bookmark in it and left in on a table at the Caribou Cafe on 17th and L, N.W. in Washington, D.C. When I came back at lunchtime, it was nowhere to be seen. Now I am just waiting to see whether whoever picked it up will make an entry on the Book Crossing site.
Bad News for Babies
Attention Deficit Linked to TV Viewing (washingtonpost.com)
Very young children who watch television face an increased risk of attention deficit problems by school age, a study has found, suggesting that TV might overstimulate and permanently "rewire" the developing brain.
I admit that I park the kid in front of the TV when I am alone and I need to take a shower. Otherwise, we try hard to stimulate the baby in other ways. Even at 10 months, however, she loves Sesame Street.
Cooked
Andrew Sullivan has a poignant tribute to Alistair Cooke, from one naturalized Englishman to another.
Only in America
These days, it is not surprising to walk into the cafe at an urban Borders and find a homeless man seated at a table drinking coffee. It is still surprising, however, to see that the homeless man is using a laptop.
Cool Site of the Day
Flipping through PC Magazine, I came across Book Crossing. I was immediately enchanted, not only out of a love of literature but because it reminded me of watching one of my favorite childhood movies, Paddle to the Sea (based on the book
PGP Signed Comments
As an intellectual exercise, more than for any practical reason, I implemented OpenPGP Signing of Movable Type Comments on my weblog. As Krishnan Nair Srijith, the author of the Movable Type plugin, points out, "installing Crypt::OpenPGP's prerequisites is no easy work :)" So much so, that if I had know how much work it would be, I might not have attempted it. Nevertheless, I am glad that I did, if only because I learned a little bit about Perl in the process, perhaps enough to pique my curiosity to learn more.
My experience installing the prerequisite local Perl modules for Crypt::OpenPGP in my home directory can be summed up as follows:
Create the following directories in your home directory:
mkdir usr
mkdir usr/local
Set the environment variable (my shell is "/bin/bash")
export PERL5LIB="/home_directory/usr/local/lib/perl/5.6.1:\
/path_to_home_directory/usr/local/share/perl/5.6.1:" You may eventually want to add this line to your .bash_profile so that it will set the variables every time you log in.
You can see if you have properly set the environment variables by typing the command
perl -V
(Note that the flag is a capital "V"). Your library path (path_to_home_directory/usr/local/lib/perl/5.6.1) should be listed under @INC.
Download the required modules from http://www.cpan.org. The README in Crypt:OpenPGP lists the prerequisite modules, although some of these may also have prerequisites on your system.
Unpack the module with:
tar -xvzf module_name.tar.gz
cd module_directory
perl Makefile.PL PREFIX=/path_to_home_directory/usr
make test
make
make install
Repeat until all the modules are installed without errors, and finally install Crypt::OpenPGP. You then need to edit your Movable Type templates to take advantage of the new plugin. Be sure that you have put an ASCII copy of your PGP Public Key (e.g. /pgp.asc on your site so that you can test the key verification feature of the plugin.
I found that once I had properly set the environment variable (which took me some time to get right), most of compilation errors that I experienced resulted from my having not yet installed a prerequisite to the prerequisite module.
NOTE: Although installing the local modules manually rather that automatically through CPAN was somewhat tedious and time-consuming, I found that it was the only way that I was able to make the local installation work properly.
Also, Srijith suggests that it may be a good idea to edit OpenPGPComment.pl to set the variable called DEBUG to 0.
Goodnight, sweet prince
Yahoo! News - Legendary Broadcaster Alistair Cooke Dies
LONDON - Alistair Cooke, the broadcaster who epitomized highbrow television as host of "Masterpiece Theatre" and whose "Letter from America" was a radio fixture in Britain for 58 years, has died, the British Broadcasting Corp. said Tuesday. He was 95.
I grew up watching Alistair Cooke introduce Masterpiece Theatre, the one program on television that my parents invariably watched. His polish and assurance set the tone for the television program, lending a patina of English refinement and sophistication to the BBC retreads that followed. (Don't get me wrong, I love BBC retreads.) It has been years since I actually saw Alistair Cooke on television, but reading of his death marks the passing of another of the institutions of my childhood.
19th Century National Prejudices
"Pfuhl was one of those hopelessly, immutably conceited men, obstinately sure of themselves as only Germans are, because only Germans could base their self-confidence on an abstract idea — on science, that is, the supposed posession of absolute truth. A Frenchman's conceit springs from his belief that mentally and physically he is irresistably fascinating to both men and women. The Englishman's self-assurance comes from being a citizen of the best-organized kingdom in the world, and because as an Englishman he always knows what is the correct thing to do, and that everything he does as an Englishman is undoubtedly right. An Italian is conceited because he is excitable and easily forgets himself and other people. A Russian is conceited because he knows nothing and does not want to know anything, since he does not believe that it is possible to know anything completely. A conceited German is the worst of them all, the most stubborn and unattractive, because he imagines that he possesses the truth in science — a thing of his own invention but which for him is absolute truth." Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, tr. Rosemary Edmunds (Penguin, 1982), pp. 757-58.
Girl Scout Goodness
I like the Girl Scouts precisely because they have not been trapped into the narrow sectarianism of the Boy Scouts. Now I learn that there is a new rival organization that seeks to indoctrinate young girls with "Christian values" along with the s'mores. I like the Girl Scouts even more than I did before. Good thing, too, since in a few more years I may have one in the family.
Crit
Jeffrey Tayler holds forth on Bad Peace Corps Writing, and cites Tolstoy as one of his influences. I was particularly struck by Tayler's comment that it is never really possible to "go native," and that writers who claim to have done so invariably strike an inauthentic note. Such pretensions have the misfortune of blinding an author to what is most interesting about another culture — difference.
Reading
It has been a long time since I have read a novel with the emotional punch of War and Peace. Natasha Rostova is about to make the mistake of her young life by throwing herself away on the worthless (and married) Anatole Kuragin, and it is heartrending.
Ah! Vous dirai-je, maman Take 2
Divers - Ah! vous dirai-je, maman
"Ah! vous dirai-je, maman
Ce qui cause mon tourment?
Papa veut que je raisonne
Comme une grande personne
Moi je sais que les bonbons
Valent mieux que la raison.
"Ah! vous dirai-je, maman
Ce qui cause mon tourment?
Papa veut que je retienne
Les verbes La Laurentienne
Mois je dis que les bonbons
Valent mieux que les leçons."
Oh, if I could tell you mother,
How I suffer like no other,
Father wants me to reason,
Like a big person,
Me, I know that chocolate,
Is better than boring thought,
Oh, if I could tell you mother,
How I suffer like no other,
Daddy wants me to retain
Verbs Laurentian
Me I know that candies good,
Please me more than study could.
Last Will
Yahoo! News - Famous British Wills Available Online
"When William Shakespeare bequeathed his "second-best bed" to his wife nearly 400 years ago, a scribe dipped his quill pen in ink and scratched the bard's last wishes on parchment.
"Now the public can see the playwright's final will and testament on a computer screen with the click of a mouse."
Ah! Vous dirai-je, maman,
"Ah! vous dirai-je, maman,
Ce qui cause mon tourment!
Depuis que j'ai vu Silvandre,
Me regarder d'un oeil tendre,
Mon coeur dit à chaque instant :
Peut-on vivre sans amant?"
Oh, if I could tell you mother,
How I suffer like no other,
Since I have seen Silvander,
Gaze on me with an eye so tender,
My heart asks when each moment's over
Can one live without a lover?
Russian Lit
As I work my way through War and Peace, I am struck by the degree to which Russian novels were ignored during my formal education. I think I read one Russian Novel -- Turgenev's Father and Sons -- for a class during my entire time in high school, college, and graduate school. That novel I read for a history class, not a literature class. The omission of Russian literature from the curriculum seems even more surprising considering that at the time, the Soviet Union still posed the greatest single international political and military challenge to the United States.
Super Automatic Coffee Makers
How It Works: Be Your Own Barista, With a Programmable Helper
"Unlike the $40 drip coffee maker, which requires a bit of work to get from bean to cup, superautomatics grind the beans, tamp the grounds, brew the coffee with hot water under pressure and provide steam to foam the milk. They even dump out the coffee grounds."
Some things a man prefers to do for himself.
Forgotten But Not Gone
A Samuel Johnson Trove Goes to Harvard's Library
"The collection holds the only known copy with untrimmed pages of the first edition of Dr. Johnson's 1755 dictionary, the first in the English language. It also contains corrected proofs of James Boswell's biography of Johnson as well as a number of letters exchanged between the two men. And it opens a window into Johnson's exclusive literary club of authors and scholars that included Boswell, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Edmund Burke, and his friend the actor and producer David Garrick."
Although largely vanished from popular consciousness, the brilliant career of Samuel Johnson continues to fascination scholars of the eighteenth century -- a fascination reflected in Harvard's exultation over the acquisition of this collection. One thing the article does not explain, however, is why Lady Eccles chose Harvard. One would have thought, for instance, that an English university might have been more appropriate. Perhaps she wanted to help Harvard compensate for the fact that Yale has most of Boswell's papers.
Lawyer Makes Good
Classrooms Use Chess to Instill Skills for Life (washingtonpost.com)
"Mehler, a lawyer and former teacher, is the founder and director of the U.S. Chess Center, which for the past dozen years has introduced chess to children to help them improve their academic and social skills."
As a member of the U.S. Chess Center for the past couple of years, I was delighted to see the Center on the front page of the Post. I do not know if learning how to play better Chess has done anything for my cognitive skills, but it has been a lot of fun.
Where's the Beef?
I tried Queer Eye Chef Ted Allen's steak au poivre recipe tonight, with great success. I did not make the twice baked potato, however; my arteries have their limit. I opted instead for a simple baked potato and some sauteed snow peas. Dinner was two Samoas Girl Scout cookies; I just couldn't say no to the cookie table outside Giant Food.