cbfrench

When I was in high school, my English classes focused quite a bit on performing that sort of analysis. Then I majored in English at a college whose department was still very much aligned with the New Critical “close reading” methodology. Then I went to a PhD program in a top-ten department.

My experiences: My college experience prepared me very well to analyze texts—to understand their mechanics, to discuss the ways in which they develop meaning out of those mechanics, and to argue for an interpretation on the basis of that. What it did not prepare me to do well was to conduct literary research, which was the point of the PhD program. Nevertheless, most of my grad school professors valued my ability to conduct a close reading of a text because many other students who came from more research- and theory-oriented undergrad backgrounds had difficulty in explicating texts without resorting to extra-textual frameworks.

I ended up leaving the PhD program for various reasons, but I will say that the close-reading skills I developed in college have been widely applicable for me outside of academia. Close reading forces you to interact with a text at a granular level and to be attentive to the assumptions that it is smuggling in through its construction. Some lit folks now prefer to talk about “slow reading,” but it’s mostly the same thing.

I would argue that, given the deluge of text with which any of us is confronted on a daily basis, the ability to slow down and to be attentive to a text is a necessary interpretive skill. Maybe students don’t all need to learn to identify figures of speech and poetic devices, but they should learn how to sit with a text and analyze how it’s put together. For one thing, this makes them more sensitive and acute readers. For another, it ideally can make them clearer and more forceful writers. (It is no accident that many of the greatest canonical writers honed their skills by producing parodies of other great writers: the exercise requires getting into the mind and comprehending the style of another writer in order to understand the choices that (s)he has made.) Good reading is a prerequisite for good writing, and that is partly a function of reading widely, yes, but it is also a function of reading deeply.

Rather than jettisoning analytical approaches entirely, we might be better off teaching students how to read, in the sense of showing them that different texts require different levels and forms of engagement. (Insert here the Baconian adage about the different kinds of books.) Some texts can be skimmed simply to mine for information, while other texts require much more deliberate and analytical reading. Students should develop the skills to perform both kinds of reading. And then there’s also reading that isn’t done for a purpose other than sheer enjoyment, and that should be encouraged too (perhaps by having students, as you say, read some stuff just to share their responses to it). But I think a disservice is done when we treat reading as a univocal act, whether that means we make it all about analysis or all about generating responses to texts.

It’s pretty remarkable to think in the 400k+ MLB games that have been played in 100+ years, this is the first time this has ever happened. To quote the line: “How can you not be romantic about baseball?”

Honestly, it’s probably a little of both. We’re all embedded in various communicative matrices, all of which have conventions to which we generally adhere because it’s how we were taught, it’s understandable by others (at least other guild members), and it makes communicating more efficient. There’s also a protective mindset to keep the uninitiated from peering too deeply into the mysteries—and thus rendering the work you do much less valuable.

This same study could have been conducted on medical writing and probably arrived at the same conclusions, except medical writing is probably even more jargon-laden than legalese, so I’m not sure a group of layfolk could produce a convincing parody of it.

In any event, I have the feeling this study could have been avoided by a trip across the quad to talk to someone in the English dept.

Now comes cbfrench and respectfully submits the following comment.

So they’ve discovered literary form and genre. Remarkable.

To be less snarky, my wife is a lawyer, while I am an Anglican priest (cue the jokes). Both of us are in fields where certain traditional literary forms—be it statutes, contracts, biblical texts, or liturgical prayers—play important roles. These forms tend to be inherently conservative because there is the sense among practitioners of both the law and the liturgy that things can go awry if one departs too far from established conventions, so it’s better to rely upon boilerplate conventions, which can actually be more efficient in spite of their syntactical convolutions. Indeed, C.S. Lewis makes the point w/r/t liturgical vs. extemporaneous prayer that formal, customary prayer frees one up actually to pray because one isn’t having to decide with every utterance whether or not one agrees. The extemporaneous prayer may be more “straightforward,” but it imposes its own set of cognitive burdens.

I would guess that legal writing operates similarly: boilerplate constructions have generally standard and agreed-upon meanings around which many of the substantive interpretive issues have already been resolved, which makes them on the whole more efficient. What law seeks to accomplish as a genre of writing depends upon striking a difficult balance among interpretive stability, capaciousness, and definitiveness, which necessitates certain concessions to what we might consider stylistic infelicity. (Plus, those concessions keep food on my table, so I’m rather grateful for them, lol.)

It shouldn’t be surprising or noteworthy that people who are asked to compose a bit of text in a particular genre respond by writing in a way that conforms to what they understand of its generic conventions. Similarly, if I asked people to write something that could be a passage from the Gospels, most people would probably produce a text with thees, thous, and verilys and that would also likely include something about sheep and being good to other people. They would do this because in their minds that is what “the Bible” ought to sound like. Likewise, if I asked you to compose thirty seconds of ad copy for a new car, you probably aren’t going to write it in the form of an epic prologue (“Ford and the man I sing…”).

We all have baseline understandings and expectations of what conventional forms look like and sound like, which are often tied to what the particular form is trying to convey or accomplish. So, perhaps legalese is a form of “incantation” trying to conjure up its own authority, but arguably so is every other literary form. That’s just how form works: if it doesn’t establish some implicit authority (even in the most rudimentary sense of “you should pay attention to this”), it’s effectively meaningless.

Further affiant sayeth naught.

IANAL, so spitballing here, but it seems like this might be false imprisonment, given the use of handcuffs to restrain the student. It would be hard to argue this was a reasonable means of maintaining order when the student was not actively disrupting proceedings and when, say, simply having the kid ejected from the courtroom would have removed whatever disturbance was being presented.

It doesn’t seem that the handcuffing was connected to any sort of contempt proceeding. Judges are, as you note, given wide latitude to determine how to maintain order in their courts, but there are usually limits to how they can exercise their contempt power. It would seem, though, that handcuffing a student who is not actively disrupting proceedings or posing a threat without a formal contempt proceeding would be considered a due process violation, regardless. I expect having a member of the gallery handcuffed without being held in contempt exceeds that wide authority, so I wonder if the student couldn’t recover some damages for the tort.(Edit: Probably not, as judicial immunity would likely shield the judge from any civil action against him. There was a recent Sixth Circuit case—Orta v. Repp https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca6/23... —that upheld the immunity claim in a similar case of abuse of contempt power.[0])

But even if this incident is not criminally or civilly actionable, it is highly likely that the state judicial ethics commission might take a rather jaundiced view of such behavior.

[0] The record in the Orta case honestly makes this whole incident look trivial by comparison. If you want to see what it looks like when an asshole judge goes on a power trip, here you go: https://www.supremecourt.ohio.gov/rod/docs/pdf/3/2020/2020-O...

It should be noted Repp was later suspended for a year without pay by the Ohio Supreme Court.

“There's a long drive... way back at center field... way back, back, it is a... Oh my! Caught by Mays!”

https://youtu.be/7bLt2xKaNH0?si=I1rvcp67qk2pV5yN

This Guardian piece does a decent job of explaining the background of the local militias: https://www.theguardian.com/news/article/2024/jun/11/inside-...

>Ham radio’s time has come and gone

I dunno about that. There are more licensed hams today in the US than there ever have been. And as a proportion of the US population, the number of hams is close to an all-time high.

https://www.clearskyinstitute.com/ham/stats/index.html

I also serve as a Volunteer Examiner (ham who helps administer license exams), and the group with which I volunteer administers remote licensing exams to multiple people on a daily basis. So, anecdotally, I do think there are still plenty of folks out there getting into the hobby.

Last night I got a place to stay in Switzerland through a PSK-31 QSO. Didn’t even ask. Mentioned that we would like to visit the country in the next couple of years, and it just so happened the ham I was contacting lives on top of an Alp next to a monastery. When he found out Switzerland was on our list, he enthusiastically offered to make whatever arrangements necessary for us to stay at the monastery to visit. I’m definitely sending him a QSL card.

Sure, that interaction could have happened on the internet, but it is highly unlikely to have done so, given how I (and most people) use the internet. And no one is calling random foreign strangers on their phone.

Perhaps radio is no longer “magical,” but it is still serendipitous. When I sit down, I have no idea who or where will be receiving my RF. I have talked to a wider variety of people all over the world with my radio than I ever have with my laptop—at least in terms of real conversation and not just interacting on a reddit post or what have you. And, sure, plenty of QSOs are also just about your rig, your antenna, the weather, etc., but even being marginally curious about others’ lives usually garners some interesting conversation.

These are people with whom I would never have had the chance to converse without the happenstance of the ionosphere. So, I dunno, seems pretty magical to me. Maybe the broader issue is that folks generally aren’t interested in having random encounters and conversations with others.

As far as the gatekeeping aspect, that’s definitely a problem. The number of sad hams out there still bitching about how “FT8 isn’t real radio” is too damn high. But it’s a big hobby, and there are more licensed hams in the US now than there ever have been in terms of raw numbers, and it’s pretty close to an all-time high as a proportion of the population, too. So I think there’s room for optimism about it.

Yeah in that case, you’d probably be better off just picking up some decent GMRS handhelds. Spend a little more on some antenna upgrades, and you should have no issues. If you really want to stay on the right side of the law, you can have everyone in your group (who isn’t related to you) throw $35 at the FCC for some GMRS licenses. But, depending on terrain, you should be able to stay in reasonable contact with everyone with 5W if you’re within a mile or two.

Yeah, definitely agree 100%. It’s not a popular ham opinion, but the general follow-up to “Is this illegal?” should be “Will anyone care?” Lots of practices in the radio world are, strictly speaking, illegal, but no one cares. See all the guys running multiple kW amps on CB, which is limited (laughably) to 4W AM and 12W PEP on SSB.

If you modify a bunch of Fengs to run on FRS/GMRS freqs to talk up and down the mountain out in the middle of nowhere, sure, it’s illegal, but if no one hears your transmissions other that the people on the mountain, it’s not an issue unless you take the FCC regs as moral edicts. But if you’re looking for a way to get a signal out in an emergency, a satphone is still going to be your best bet.

I don’t think it would. IIRC, CB radios are type-certified, which means that the transmitter itself is licensed, rather than the operator (similar to FRS).

That said, these days the FCC gives absolutely zero shits about what happens on 11m, so I wouldn’t expect any knocks at the door if you modify a non-CB radio for use on CB channels.

The better question might be: What is your imagined use case for this radio? A VHF/UHF handheld is more or less limited to LOS transmission, so you would either need to be within reliable range of a repeater or another person with an HT tuned to that frequency. If you’re looking for something you can use in a backcountry emergency, you’d frankly be better off just plunking down the money for a satphone, which is going to be much more reliable. An HT radio is unlikely to be of much use in that scenario, unless you know there’s a repeater nearby that is regularly used and that you can hit from your location. OTOH, if you’re looking for a new hobby and a gadget to play around with, get a license, pick up an UV-K5, and have fun!

If you want to get a license just to play on the radio, it is super easy. A Technician license will allow you legally to use any VHF/UHF radio with full access to those bands (plus all of 6m and some access to other HF bands).

It’s extremely simple to get licensed. Put the HamStudy app on your phone, run through the question pool/practice exams until the info is in your memory, and then sign up for a remote exam on HamStudy.org. I studied for my Technician license for like a day and a half and aced the Tech exam. I aced my General and Extra exams within a week using the same method. I have no background in tech or EE. So, yeah, it’s easy.

> Solar storms (and following northern lights) are bad news for radio communication.

Although it can allow for auroral backscatter propagation on VHF, which is fascinating. https://www.electronics-notes.com/articles/ham_radio/amateur...

Definitely not good for HF though. The Sun wilding out the past few days has at least given me the opportunity to work on some stuff in the evenings that isn’t screwing around on FT8, lol.

I’ve found the Itoya Profolio Oasis notebooks to be excellent. They are inexpensive, but the paper is high quality and does not bleed or feather. I’ve been using them for a few years now, and they’re great.

https://goldspot.com/products/itoya-profolio-oasis-notebook-...

Lol, I would doubt Parson Woodforde’s maid resembled Kate Beckinsale—either in an appropriate or an inappropriate outfit. ;) My guess is he probably meant she was a little mouthy and stubborn for his standard of a servant. Both of those terms generally meant someone who was impudent, although “saucy” at the time did have connotations of lasciviousness. So, although he was a bachelor and a priest, it’s not to say that his use of the term would have been entirely angelic, haha.

As an eighteenth-centuryist by training and an Anglican priest by vocation, I am sorry to say I had never run across Fr. Woodforde’s diary. But I have dutifully ordered a copy and look forward to digging into it.

I did find it interesting to note that he “noted down prayers for the recently deceased.” This certainly would not have been a feature of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer which he would have used, and, in fact, many of the English reformers had taken great pains to try to stamp out prayers for the dead. But here is a country parson in what is generally considered one of the low points of the English Church praying for the dead. Guess it goes to show that, regardless of what the official position may be on such matters, there is still a residual observance of such forms of obsequy. (And it’s worth noting that the vast majority of BCPs have come around on that question and have re-introduced prayers for the dead.)

For anyone interested in the observances of another country priest, I highly recommend Eamon Duffy’s Voices of Morebath, a diary of a priest who recorded his life before the Reformation, then through the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary, and (IIRC) into the reign of Elizabeth. It’s a fascinating account of a priest trying to do his best amidst the “changes and chances” of those turbulent times. Fascinating reading.

When I took a bibliography seminar in grad school, the Wise Forgeries were one of my favorite topics. The discovery of the forgeries by Carter and Pollard and the discovery of the thefts by Foxon are true landmarks in bibliography. It’s worth hunting up a copy of Carter and Pollard’s “An Enquiry into the Nature of Certain Nineteenth Century Pamphlets” and Carter’s Thomas J. Wise and His Forgeries, both of which are surprisingly thrilling reading.

If you give a mouse a bookie…

Would is correct there (i.e., “I don’t think Ted would think”), but my syntax is very convoluted. Thanks for the catch.

That’s correct. I was insufficiently caffeinated when writing that comment, and clarity suffered accordingly!

> Like I found a part of a book that explains how to do logical synthesis and I bookmarked it, so I can keep going back to reread it every now and then in order to do stuff.

What’s the book?

I’ve never developed a good system for note-taking while I read, apart from marking up books and making marginal notes, which can be somewhat helpful. But I never developed the discipline of turning those into useful notes. My memory, which has never been good, has naturally gotten worse as I’ve gotten older and more sleep-deprived, so I now feel like most of my reading is retained for about twenty minutes after I’ve read something.

I also don’t get the sense that if anything interesting had happened, Ted would think it was worthwhile in any way, lol.

I’ve always much preferred Dana of the two Gioia brothers, and mostly for this reason. Ted is a great jazz critic and historian, but his constant sense of being impressed with himself is just too much. I had a friend in grad school—an exceptionally good amateur historian of music himself—who got into a fight with Ted about music on Ted’s Facebook page. My friend offered a pretty cogent and insightful defense of popular music, to which Ted responded with disdainful bloviating. Ted is the kind of elitist who is is adamant that he isn’t one—as though his background somehow precludes it. (Nevermind that background, while beginning in a working-class milieu, also includes two degrees from Stanford, a degree from Oxford, and a stint at McKinsey.)

Everyone buying a copy: “It me.”

The best class I took in grad school was a course on bibliography. (Few English departments still offer courses in it, alas.) It was magnificent learning the ins-and-outs of how books were manufactured and learning to reconstruct their processes of manufacture from the physical artifact. The show-and-tell each class from the rare-book librarians was a treat for exactly the reasons the author mentions in the article. It was also the one area of study in which I felt like I had done real work and produced something of value (however marginal) at the end of the day.

Unfortunately, I lacked the punctilious and painstaking scholarly discipline to become a bibliographer. (Our professor had produced the standard bibliography of Alexander Pope’s Dunciad, which required him to spend countless hours in numerous libraries with a checklist to identify minute textual variants in editions, a labor that demands a preternatural level of dedication and attention to detail.) However, I can still produce a correct bibliographical description if the situation calls for it—which, admittedly, it rarely does…

I’m disappointed that I only learned about the bloom at IU after the fact; I’m just north of Indy, and I certainly would’ve driven down to see it.

I wish there were an app that would notify me when one was blooming within a reasonable distance. Something tells me the audience for such an app probably wouldn’t warrant the development, lol.

One bloomed in the greenhouse at my alma mater last month: https://www.local3news.com/local-news/rare-corpse-flower-blo...

I think its first and previous bloom was three years ago.

Got 0 mi on my first guess because I thought “That’s [state]” and then picked a random spot on the [other state] side of the state since it had that feel. I feel like I might as well quit at this point, lol.

Edited out spoilers.

I don’t normally, but I can if I’m trying to print clearly. I basically make the shoulder and descender of the a, then come back up the ascender and make the loop, connecting the loop in such a way as to leave the tail. That said, I normally just do a D’Nealian lowercase print a.

Edit: thanks to the other commenter who shared a link to this. Much easier to show than to tell! http://sketchtoy.com/71138762