elstaffe > Recent Status Updates

"He cites an appeal by the American educator Felix Adler ... that 'there should be "less of falsehood, gluttony, drunkenness and evil in general" than in the usual tellings' and 'that malicious stepmothers and cruel fathers should be excluded." He adds, 'The same need has been widely felt by parents and teachers.'" (xix-xx)

"[Johnson] prefaces each early book with a note that he has retained 'the interest, the charm and all the sweetness' of the stories but dropped the 'savagery, distressing details and excessive pathos' of 'that barbaric past when the tales originated.'" (xix)

"In America as in Europe his interests always lay more in the byways than the highways, and he avoided big cities as too cosmopolitan to be typical." (xiii) early example of "the only real typical people are truck drivers at a diner" attitude. For a folklorist I guess it's more excusable, but still

"[image caption] A sea lion follows a white shark. This is probably NOT a good idea." (25)

"deliberately vague, somewhere in 7 to 10 and maybe 72" (4,294,967,291) a good index listing

"Having bar codes caused situations where the patients and drugs were less thoroughly checked than they were before. If a new system is implemented, humans can be very resourceful when finding new ways to make mistakes.

It can be very dangerous when humans get complacent and think they know better than the math." (3)

"Originally an April Fools' joke, connected teapots have of course since been made and run according to HTCPCP. An attempt to remove this error in 2017 was defeated by the Save 418 Movement, which preserved it as 'a reminder that the underlying processes of computers are still made by humans.'" (14)

"Always hilarious, internet engineers have designated error code 418 as I'm a teapot. It is returned by any internet-enabled teapots that are sent a request to make coffee. It was introduced as part of the 1998 release of Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol (HTCPCP) specifications." (15)

"For this reason, programmers can leave 'comments' in their code, which are little messages to anyone else who has to read their code. The programmer mantra should be 'Always comment on your code.' And make the comments helpful. I've reviewed dense code I wrote years before, to find the only comment is 'Good luck, future Matt.'" (24)

"'While the printed version is good, I would have expected the publisher to have an audiobook version as well.'" (32)

"If you have not done so before, you must read the online reviews of books of random numbers. You'd think people would not have much to say about lists of random digits, but this vacuum brings out the creativity in people.
...
'Don't turn to the last page and spoil the book by finding out the ending. Make sure you read from page 1 and let the tension build.'" (32)

"Debbie said, 'School's all finished for the summer, Mog. Isn't it exciting!' Mog said nothing. She didn't like things to be exciting. She liked them to be the same."

"'I would suggest,' said Jim, 'that we look primarily at the evergreens. They are very ancient. They were here on earth before the insects. They are pollinated by the winds and, unlike other plants, do not depend on insects for anything. They can afford to kill them.'" (144-145)

"Maggie looked from face to face, saw that no one took the European belief seriously, and, reassured, decided to ask Grace to take her to the ravens' nest." (45) no one takes it seriously

"The fir tree was whispering to her. Perhaps because of the raven. She reached out and broke off a small bough." (9) a tree whispers to you and you respond by snapping off part of it?

"The numbers produced by statistics are the start of finding the answer, not the end." (56)

Well, that made me tear up ("A Taste of Something New" by Simran Jeet Singh)

Aw, that was really cute. ("Smile Number Seven" by Mitali Perkins)

"I understood Danielle perfectly. She is a typical member of my (American) tribe," (222) two books in six weeks with this nonsense

"For this reason, investing time in establishing trust will often save time (and many other resources) in the long run. And a similar way of thinking continues to exist in relationship-based cultures that are also blessed with solidly reliable legal structures, such as Japan and France." (185) wait, so it's not abt relationship-based cultures at all. Just say "majority brown and black third world countries", Meyer

"The only way you feel assured that you'll be paid in countries like Nigeria is the trust you have in the other person. ...
You believe you can do business with the shopkeeper because your relationship with him (direct or indirect) provides a safety net that replaces the role of the legal system in more developed countries." (185) I hope this is low context because otherwise it's just racist

"Having a signed agreement in a culture with a consistently reliable legal system makes it possible to do business easily with people you don't trust or even know." (184) a CULTURE with a legal system?? How is this on the culture

"Now imagine ... this time you are Nigerian and designing women's purses in Lagos. The legal system in Nigeria is less reliable than the one found in countries such as Denmark, the United Kingdom, and the United States. You can sign a contract, but there is no way of enforcing it if the payment doesn't come through." (184) boy oh boy

"There is, in fact, a very clear, practical benefit to investing in affective relationship building-especially when working in emerging markets." (284) this feels gross

"The further a culture falls toward the task-based end of the scale, the more people from that culture tend to separate affective and cognitive trust, and to rely mainly on cognitive trust for work relationships. The further a culture falls toward the relationship-based end of the scale, the more cognitive and affective trust are woven together in business." (170-171)

I appreciate the Inaccessible Rail as a name for a bird that a) lives on Inaccessible Island and b) is flightless

"Early European explorers who'd never seen a penguin before thought Magellanic penguins were a type of goose. Perhaps they'd never seen a goose before either." (57) I love this book a lot

"DID YOU KNOW? On average one dead body is pulled out of the Thames every week." Still???

"DID YOU KNOW?
The double-decker bus has been around for much longer than the motor car. The first buses were introduced in the 1820s, but the double-decker was invented in 1847 and was drawn by horses until it was fitted with motor engines in 1895." I did not know this. Very cool!

"The home of the Design Museum, this also used to be an old banana warehouse." I never pictured such a thing before