Hopefully this will be one of the few times in my life when I could benefit from a left-handed Dvorak keyboard. Primed to take the plunge and find out whether it’s more Esperanto or Betamax.

And if you ever wondered why your typing wasn’t significantly more efficient …

In 1956, a General Services Administration study by Earle Strong, which included an experiment involving ten experienced government typists, concluded that Dvorak training would never be able to amortize its costs. The study was a large obstacle for the wide adoption of Dvorak for many firms and government agencies. [...] Strong’s objectivity with regard to the Dvorak keyboard was questionable at best. [...] there is other evidence that Strong and Dr. Dvorak had a strained business relationship. It is also notable that when researchers had asked Strong for the data to his study, Strong had destroyed the data.

Called Obama when he announced but really didn’t do so well four years earlier.

1. Feature-length adaptation of one or more R.L. Stine novels. There’s a market.

2. Expansion of “Controversy” section of Wikipedia entry on Mikhail Prokhorov.

Rikers Island (top) and LaGuardia Airport.

Hijacking:

“An invisible island in the city, Rikers squats in the East River barely 100 feet north of Runway 22 at La Guardia Airport.”

A view from İcadiye Caddesi.

‘Today, the winding side streets of Kuzguncuk appear often in Turkish television shows. The colorfully painted 19th century wooden houses are used as backdrops to evoke a sense of the “old” İstanbul. In many ways, the feeling of old İstanbul still permeates the village. Artisans have workshops in storefronts all through the tiny valley, and much of their artwork adorns local businesses.’

Without so little vocabulary, group conversations in a beginning language class are disarmingly blunt. The other two like Michael Moore because he stirs up a sort of righteous anger (enfado), but for my part he’s more than a bit shallow (faciles), while allowing that Roger & Me is a great movie (less great when you learn how he financed it). I doubt I’d even have a conversation about Michael Moore in English.

In the first class you’re always asked why you’d like to learn language X. The easy answer — the one I have the vocabulary for — is that I’d like to make friends. (¡Quiero conocer mas Mexicanos!) The one I thankfully can’t express is that I’d like to cultivate some sort of hemispheric consciousness, with all the other people the Darién Gap keeps awake at night.

Aware that Squier did not share his sentiments on slavery, Nott explained that he “had to mix a little sweet sauce with it in the way of Politics, Sectional feeling &c–religion you know is a funny thing–a man’s conscience is always on the side of his interest–” He had recently lost by shipwreck “upwards of $300 worth of rare scientific” works ordered from Europe and hoped the Lectures would sell enough copies to make up the loss. He was sure it would be favorably received “at the South where the public mind is at present morbidly excited about the nigger business.”

–The Leopard’s Spots: Scientific Attitudes Toward Race in America 1815-59, William Stanton

“I am as American as April in Arizona.” -Nabokov in 1966.

American Literary History 1994 6(2):325-335

From Censoring an Iranian Love Story by Shahriar Mandanipour:

I hope in countries where people are proud of their democracies and live confident of a secure future, no one ever has to worry about the books they borrow from a library. I pray that whenever they want, without fear of the future, they can at least read The Jungle by Upton Sinclair or the dull and artless The Iron Heel, a bad work by a relatively good writer who drank too much whiskey and wanted to replace American democracy with Animal Farm democracy.

From the Indy archives:

A review of Jeff Wall at the MoMA

A review of “Infidel” by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

A piece on the transformation of Providence’s Jewelry District

A piece on Buddy Cianci’s return to Providence

A piece on the Fox Point neighborhood of Providence

A piece on the S-CHIP renewal and children’s health in Rhode Island

A piece on Amy Winehouse and the politics of crack cocaine

A piece on Mike Huckabee, the joker

Providence Journal, March 12 (for my job):

RHODE ISLAND and America in general are in a fiscal crisis that also seems to be a crisis of government. In response, the Rhode Island Board of Regents plans to cut the sole statewide civics-education position, along with funding for civics professional development. The state has historically underperformed at teaching its students the fundamentals of civic participation. Now, just when we are beginning to catch up — and just when we could surely use a critical, well-informed electorate — the state is throwing in the towel on civics.