news roundup

[calimac]

1. Schoolchildren are no longer learning cursive writing. And as long as we don't mind growing future adults whose signatures look like second graders wrote them, it's probably a good thing. I rebelled against learning cursive, myself. I'd painstakingly learned how to print in earlier grades, and the announcement, "Now we're going to learn a new way to write," prompted a groan of "Oh no, not again." And I never did. Not until I got a checking account at 18 did I attempt to pick up enough to develop a signature. Heavily influenced by reproductions I'd seen of the distinctive and often illegible signatures of U.S. Presidents, I eventually succeeded in developing one of my own, figuring that the purpose of a signature was not to enable my name to be read - for that I could print it - but to prove that I, in person, had authenticated the document, so it had to look as if I, and not somebody else, had signed my name. For this reason I resisted all entreaties to sign my boss's name to letters during my secretarial days. Also because, if I hand-wrote in cursive anything besides my own signature, it would look as if a second grader had written it. To this day, anything else I handwrite, I use printing. I didn't learn to touch type until high school; today that would be far too late.

2. Tres chic, this claims to be a list of the 50 best foods in the world and where to get them. I'm a fan of good local food but no gourmet, and no world traveler either, so I am surprised to find that I've actually had two of the items on this list: a pastrami sandwich at Katz's on the Lower East Side (which was very good, but the best pastrami sandwich I've ever had was at the Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia) and pizza at Frank Pepe's in New Haven (where I've been three times and found the pizza variable, from indeed the best I've ever had to sadly undercooked). I visit LA often but have never even heard of the milkshake place that is no. 9 on the list, and I'm not likely to venture up to San Francisco for the tomato juice with coriander and chili, because I don't like tomato juice. And Chez Panisse is just not my sort of thing. Of course I could make my own additions to the list, based with equal arrogance on my own experience of the culinarily divine: the best burrito (Pancho Villa's in the Mission district of San Francisco, where I go regularly and am never disappointed), the best jambalaya (Mother's in New Orleans, twice and never forgotten), the best cider (some tiny pub in rural Herefordshire, I wish I could remember it more specifically).

3. Cheryl Morgan reports on the recent Worldcon, unsurprisingly mostly from the con-runner's POV. The comments on programming tech support surprised me. I was site liaison for Potlatch, where whumpdotcom also ran a Second Life program. I didn't claim to understand the details of his tech requirements, but my job was to facilitate his work with the hotel, doing everything in my power to make it possible for him to make everything come out right. At, needless to say, no extra cost beyond what we put in the contract. It seemed to come out OK. Also, the Worldcon's "just in time" tech policy, rushing AV equipment from room to room barely in time, if that, for their program needs. Now it's true, I've never done program scheduling for a Worldcon, a task requiring a computer program. But I do think of my experiences scheduling programs for Mythcon, a task I've done with a pencil and notebook while listening to a Stanford students noon concert recital. Faced with 25 or 30 papers and very few time/day restrictions, it's easy to see that Paper A should be followed by Paper B, and these two could go opposite each other but those two should not, but where do you start? What's the seed with which you begin the crystallization? And my answer is: I take all the papers requiring AV equipment and schedule them in the same room on the same day. It makes life easier for the staff, and it's only sensible.

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Yeah--that's what I tried to do with our recent Mythcon: all AV in one room.

I planned it with little bits of paper on a grid.