Upshot: communites were made safer

Rare on the internet, added context to an amusing video clip. In this case, on the importance of blowing on a hot New Zealand pie. I was surprised at the assertion that some viewers didn’t know the comment was in jest, but perhaps these would also be people taken in by the story about buying a 3 AM pie. Note in the longer version of the clip, the pie-seeker seems VERY familiar with how to present his wrists for handcuffing.

Dainty Floral Sandwiches

From the book One Hundred and One Sandwiches come these delightful recipes, fit for little girls and delicate older ladies (and possibly some delicate gentlemen and/or elves would wish to join the tea party).

Nasturtium
One dozen nasturtium blossoms, two tablespoonfuls of mayonnaise dressing. Spread white bread with the mayonnaise, and place each blossom overlapping the next half-way to give substance to the “filling.” Roll the sandwiches.

Violet
Two cups of fresh violets, one-quarter cup fresh butter without salt, fresh and cold. Put one cup of violets in bottom of jar, wrap the butter in waxed paper and lay on top, and cover with remainder of violets. Cover the jar tightly, and leave for several hours in a cold place. When ready, spread this butter on very thin slices of white bread which has been given a violet bath in the same way.

Juvenile Genres

There’s a popular (and long-lived, since I remember it from my own grade school days) elementary school reading assignment that involves requiring students to read a book from each of the major fiction genres. The drawback, I feel, is that they are the major fiction genres for adult fiction (Realistic Fiction, Fantasy, Mystery, etc.*), not for kid fiction, and they haven’t been changing with the changes in publishing.**

I just found a couple possible books for a fourth grader who needed to read a mystery. The drawback being that mysteries are far more popular with people well out of childhood (and possibly well on their way to 40, as I find myself enjoying mysteries more these days). This may have something to do with children being less interested in books involving horrible murders and police corruption and poisoning and secret hatreds. Seems to frighten them, for some reason. The mysteries available for children almost feel like a different beast. More art theft, for instance.

And why not have kids read kid genres? I think this will teach them that there are different types of books within fiction (at least I hope that’s the purpose of the assignment). How about requiring them to read a book with animals that act like people, a dystopian novel where kids save the day, a school-based comedy, a best friends/worst enemies popularity drama, or a book with Serious Family Issues?

*Thank all that’s holy that they no longer require Westerns, since even adult fiction isn’t publishing more than a handful these days. I also don’t get why Fantasy is so often required while Science Fiction almost never is. Yes, there are fewer F than SF in the children’s section, but there’s some great new kid SF these days.

**The only possible benefit of teaching to tests is that it’s harder to keep using the same assignments for decades on end.

Nametags and Accountability

I was pleased to see the NYPD’s name badges were being worn and were readable in coverage of the Wall Street protests. In almost every media photo of protests (especially ones requiring crowd control) in London this year, police name badges were covered or removed entirely. I am sometimes annoyed by working in a nametag job, but now I think I’ll remember that it is a vital part of being accountable to the people you serve. I’ll stand behind my actions.

Writing Movies for Fun and Profit Review

Writing Movies for Fun and Profit: How We Made a Billion Dollars at the Box Office and You Can, Too!, Garant & Lennon. Non-Fiction. This is a ruthlessly practical guide to selling screenplays to Hollywood studios. It also provides appalling and entertaining insight into what is required of a writer in order to make a living doing that. If you are at all interested in the business of writing Hollywood studio movies, I encourage you to read this book. Even if you’re not, it’s probably worth a look.

On “digital”

I’ve been stewing for some time about the mis-use of the term “digital” to mean something other than “represented as a series of ones and zeros.” Or even “able to express only discrete values.” In this usage, CDs are not “digital,” despite the indisputable fact that they bear digital data. DVDs may include, as a bonus, a “Digital Copy,” indicating that the DVD is somehow not “digital,” despite the fact that the first D in DVD stands for digital! So aside from clearly being an improper use of the word, what does “digital” mean? It can’t mean “not delivered on a physical medium,” as a “digital copy” can be delivered to you on a disk, and my complete Beatles digital collection was delivered to me on a lovely, custom-cased USB drive. It can’t reasonably mean “downloadable to your portable device,” because I can take the exact bits off of a CD and throw them on to my iPod (admittedly, this would be silly, since various lossless formats take up much less space). It can’t reasonably mean “lower quality” (though it usually does), since some artists (thank you, TMBG and Jonathan Coulton) are good enough to sell FLAC versions of their works (the complete Beatles USB drive includes 24-bit FLAC versions, which are even higher-fidelity than their CD equivalents, bless them), though—to further invalidate the “device-downloadable” hypothesis—the most popular portable device will not play FLAC versions.
Of course, my thesis here is that none of this usage is reasonable, but is it even consistent? Can a definition be articulated? What do people think it means?