Occasional Reader 1/2/2020 5:23:43 AM

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Good morning.  Compare and contrast to Benghazi:

https://newsthud.com/breaking-pro-iran-protesters-fully-withdraw-from-u-s-embassy-in-baghdad/

Occasional Reader 1/2/2020 7:03:04 AM

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JCM 1/2/2020 7:05:26 AM

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Reply to Occasional Reader in 1:

Amazing what a CINC willing to send a Marine Quick Reaction Force can accomplish.

lucius septimius 1/2/2020 7:07:30 AM

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Reply to Occasional Reader in 2:

I didn't drink nearly enough to get hung over.  But I did get sick -- woke up at 3 AM with the sluices open at both ends.  Ugh.

Occasional Reader 1/2/2020 7:12:43 AM

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In #3 JCM said: Amazing what a CINC willing to send a Marine Quick Reaction Force can accomplish.

But he's playing right into their hands!  Will only inflame tensions further!  Etc. etc. etc... 

Occasional Reader 1/2/2020 7:13:00 AM

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In #4 lucius septimius said:   But I did get sick -- woke up at 3 AM with the sluices open at both ends.  Ugh.

Oh, now.  How are you today? 

lucius septimius 1/2/2020 7:17:57 AM

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Reply to Occasional Reader in 6:

Ok -- a little weak, as you might expect.  No idea what brought it on, though my stomach has been a mess for several days now.  Probably allergic to mom's house.

buzzsawmonkey 1/2/2020 7:18:41 AM

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An instructive lesson in how one cannot trust the Internet, and how things lapse into the public domain become corrupted.  For some reason, I wanted to read the O.Henry short story "The Cop and the Anthem," and rather than hunt up my copy of O.Henry's works I did a quick Google search.  

The first apparent link to the story I clicked on was this one, and it didn't "read right."  It was too bald in the prose, and several lines I remembered seemed to be missing.  

So I went back to Google and tried another link---this time finding the proper story, with all of O.Henry's florid prose. 

There's nothing to be done about this, of course; the story is long in the public domain, which means that those who will can bowdlerize the work to their heart's content without fear of consequence.  But it is a sobering reminder of the unreliability of internet sources, and of how the "public domain" is not an unmixed blessing.

buzzsawmonkey 1/2/2020 7:21:55 AM

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Reply to buzzsawmonkey in 8:

BTW, the first link---the bowdlerized version---is put out by the US State Department for "the teaching of American English around the world."

lucius septimius 1/2/2020 7:27:45 AM

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Reply to buzzsawmonkey in 8:

I've run into a curious phenomenon where high-quality pdfs  of older German books, printed in Fraktur, appear to be missing letters when I try to read them on my Kindle.  There is no pattern, although I have a cheap reprint, based on scans, where about 3/4 of the b's have been replaced with d's -- I suspect by some 8 year old Indian who is trying to fill in the blanks and doesn't really know the difference between the letters.

buzzsawmonkey 1/2/2020 7:39:11 AM

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Reply to lucius septimius in 10:

Odd.  One would think that if you were reading a scan, it would simply be...a scan, and faithfully reproduce the original.

I first started noticing the inaccuracies in online classic works some years ago, when I was reading an online version of Mark Twain's story "Luck."

The story details a clergyman telling the narrator (presumably Twain) that the honoree at a banquet they're attending is "an absolute fool." The clergyman tells the narrator the actual details of the honoree's life, since the clergyman has known the honoree since he was a boy at school. It comes out that the clergyman, from a misplaced sense of pity at the honoree's stupidity and general incompetence, has in fact smoothed the way for the honoree to reach his current exalted position.

 The last line in the story, "I say again, Scoresby's an absolute fool," is the whole kicker, as it underscores that the clergyman remains wholly unaware that he is mostly if not wholly to blame for an incompetent reaching an unmerited position of honor.  And, in the online copy I was reading, that final line was missing.  

I've looked somewhat askance at online sources ever since.

Occasional Reader 1/2/2020 7:43:09 AM

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In #6 Occasional Reader said: Oh, now.

= Oh, no

Occasional Reader 1/2/2020 7:45:43 AM

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In #11 buzzsawmonkey said: I've looked somewhat askance at online sources ever since.

Oh, that's ridiculous paranoia.  also your freind ocasinoal reader very much asks to you vote for Democratic Party alwasy

Occasional Reader 1/2/2020 7:47:18 AM

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In #7 lucius septimius said: No idea what brought it on

From your brief description, sounds like food poisoning.  The good news of which, it clears up by itself almost always (just stay hydrated); and it's a wonderful, if short-term, weight-loss method...

buzzsawmonkey 1/2/2020 7:51:48 AM

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In #14 Occasional Reader said: From your brief description, sounds like food poisoning. 

Bad fish is a common source of food poissoning.

Syrah 1/2/2020 7:53:50 AM

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Reply to lucius septimius in 7

that sounds like food poisoning.

it might be worth going through her fridge and cleaning out suspect items.

buzzsawmonkey 1/2/2020 7:54:50 AM

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In #13 Occasional Reader said: Oh, that's ridiculous paranoia.  also your freind ocasinoal reader very much asks to you vote for Democratic Party alwasy

Heh.

I find it particularly perturbing that a government site purporting to supply materials for teaching English should be purveying gutted versions of classic American works.

Occasional Reader 1/2/2020 8:00:09 AM

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In #15 buzzsawmonkey said: Bad fish is a common source of food poissoning.

Preparing bad fish is a terrible sin... a pescado mortal, as they say in Spanish. 

Occasional Reader 1/2/2020 8:00:59 AM

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In #16 Syrah said: it might be worth going through her fridge and cleaning out suspect items.

Particularly the ones in which small civilizations have been founded... 

lucius septimius 1/2/2020 8:01:41 AM

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Reply to Syrah in 16:

Reply to Occasional Reader in 14:

I cleared out the fridge when I got here -- not that there was anything in it.  And she and I ate exactly the same thing last night and she was fine and I was, as the Australians would put it, screaming at the carpet.

doppelganglander 1/2/2020 8:34:18 AM

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In #11 buzzsawmonkey said: One would think that if you were reading a scan, it would simply be...a scan, and faithfully reproduce the original.

Not necessarily. An OCR (optical character reader) scans for individual characters. It often gets it wrong and a human has to go through and fix the mistakes. The type of scan you're thinking of is an image - it's accurate, but it can't be edited. A lot of the free editions of classics available for Kindle are created with an OCR from a print copy. It looks tidy on the page, but they don't usually go to the bother of fixing typos, correcting widows and orphans, and that sort of thing. 

buzzsawmonkey 1/2/2020 8:45:08 AM

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Reply to doppelganglander in 21:

BTW---what did your partner say when you told him about the "musical" euphemism in Casablanca?  There's also an interesting set-up for that joke, in that when Ilsa first asks Renault "Who is this Rick?", Renault says, "Well, Mademoiselle, if I were a woman, and I were not around, I'd be in love with Rick."  A strangely-turned phrase which oddly foreshadows the "musical" line, on the old dramatic theory that a gun hanging on the wall in the first act will be fired in the third act.

Occasional Reader 1/2/2020 9:20:06 AM

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In #22 buzzsawmonkey said: the old dramatic theory that a gun hanging on the wall in the first act will be fired in the third act.

Chehov’s Rifle.  I’m still hoping that one of the Star Trek movies will do a “Chekhov’s Phaser Rifle” visual pun.

doppelganglander 1/2/2020 9:21:46 AM

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Reply to buzzsawmonkey in 22:

I'm not sure he believed me. He's used to me offering bits of trivia or making odd observations, which he usually ignores. And yes, that line of Renault's is very odd.Perhaps the captain swings both ways.

lucius septimius 1/2/2020 10:59:48 AM

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Going through the piles and piles sheet music at mom's -- this is a random sample from the piano bench.of 

Occasional Reader 1/2/2020 11:17:51 AM

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In #24 doppelganglander said: Perhaps the captain swings both ways.

He’s become very broad-minded

buzzsawmonkey 1/2/2020 11:33:05 AM

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buzzsawmonkey 1/2/2020 11:46:39 AM

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Reply to lucius septimius in 25:

Lucius: A pretty good and wide-ranging collection, I must say.

buzzsawmonkey 1/2/2020 11:47:04 AM

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In #26 Occasional Reader said: He’s become very broad-minded

Heh. I'd forgotten that one.

Occasional Reader 1/2/2020 11:52:36 AM

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Reply to lucius septimius in 25:

So she's a big rap/hip-hop fan, I see. 

Occasional Reader 1/2/2020 11:53:23 AM

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In #27 buzzsawmonkey said:  The second reason given was "an economy in free-fall,"

"Bad luck"

/hat tip: Heinlein

Occasional Reader 1/2/2020 11:54:44 AM

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In #29 buzzsawmonkey said: Heh. I'd forgotten that one.

I can only imagine the reaction of a 1942 movie audience to that line.  Something along the lines of "astonished guffaws". 

lucius septimius 1/2/2020 11:56:41 AM

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Reply to buzzsawmonkey in 28:

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of pieces in the various stacks.  Classical and popular tunes -- I get the impression my grandmother would go out and buy sheet music from the latest shows/films.  I think she had pretty much everything Victor Herbert ever wrote.

buzzsawmonkey 1/2/2020 12:05:42 PM

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In #32 Occasional Reader said: I can only imagine the reaction of a 1942 movie audience to that line.  Something along the lines of "astonished guffaws". 

Well, even today, it would get him kicked out of the California Congressional delegation...

doppelganglander 1/2/2020 2:20:36 PM

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Reply to lucius septimius in 33:

That's amazing. I wonder if it would be valuable to a collector.

buzzsawmonkey 1/2/2020 2:30:34 PM

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Reply to lucius septimius in 33:

Reply to doppelganglander in 35:

Remember, by the way, that as of this year everything originally published in 1924 or earlier is in the public domain.  That means that it can be used without any kind of license or permission.  It also means that original copies of such works become more valuable, as (per my discussion of the public domain upthread) there is nobody riding herd on the integrity of these works.

lucius septimius 1/2/2020 2:36:39 PM

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Reply to buzzsawmonkey in 36:

I suspect the collection begins around 1925 and then continues down to about 1950.  

In the case of classical music, it's interesting that one way that various publishers (Dover among them) have gotten around copyright is by reprinting editions produced in the Soviet Union and Soviet bloc.  Those were not covered under international copyright.  Rachmaninoff is a fascinating case:  his first three piano concertos did not have copyright protection in the west; his last concerto and the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini do, mainly because when he published them, he did not do so as a Russian national.

buzzsawmonkey 1/2/2020 3:04:42 PM

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Reply to lucius septimius in 37:

Regarding the public-domain issues, now that we've begun rolling conversion into the public domain, 2021 will see the works of 1925 enter into the public domain, 2022 the works of 1926, etc.   It's not static.

The international copyrights remain a knotty problem; I had lots of Penguins/Puffins when I was a kid, acquired in the UK, which all said that "For copyright reasons, this edition not for sale in the USA."  And, indeed, some things were published under different titles here and abroad; Ian Seraillieur's "The Silver Sword," which details the travels of some Polish children from Warsaw to Switzerland in the aftermath of WWII in the hope of finding their parents, was published here, by Scholastic, under the title "Escape from Warsaw."

The Soviets were not party to any of the international copyright conventions---but the US wasn't party to the Berne Convention either until 1988. 

In any event, two brief things to underscore the value of retaining original copies:

1) Some years ago, a person dumpster-diving behind the Library of Congress found a quantity of curious paper rolls in the trash.  Intrigued, he picked them out of the dumpster and took them home.  They turned out to be the copyright deposit copies of a quantity of silent films, by then in the public domain.  Film back then was so fragile and transitory that the filmmakers printed out frame-by-frame copies of their movies on paper rolls, and sent those in.  These were the sole surviving copies of many films that would have otherwise been lost---which the Library of Congress guardians of our culture had tossed away because, who cares?  It's old stuff.

2) You may recall that Hugh Lofting's Dr. Doolittle books were under attack a few years ago, because the drawings of blacks were too caricaturish for today's gentle sensibilities, as were the characters as written.  If those books can be found at all today, they will be extremely rare.  We all know about the periodic efforts to censor or suppress "Huckleberry Finn."  I recall seeing, when I was a kid, an American copy of J. Meade Faulkner's "Moonfleet" which cut out the blatant antisemitism of the English original---and while I was on one level "comforted" by that, I was simultaneously annoyed and perturbed at the censorship.

 Original copies are valuable.  I am convinced that the original "original lyrics" to "Puttin' on the Ritz" were "Have you seen the jigaboos...?" instead of "...the well-to-do"; the former makes sense in the context of the song, and the latter does not---but the earliest performance I've been able to see, of Harry Richman doing it in an early sound film, has the latter lyric.  I would love to find an original copy of that sheet music to see what it said/how it read.

doppelganglander 1/2/2020 3:12:17 PM

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In #38 buzzsawmonkey said: the Library of Congress guardians of our culture had tossed away because, who cares?  It's old stuff.

Of all people, librarians should be at the forefront of preservation. Just appalling.

lucius septimius 1/2/2020 3:19:04 PM

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In #38 buzzsawmonkey said:  I would love to find an original copy of that sheet music to see what it said/how it read.

iirc, Berlin was in the habit of frequently re-writing the lyrics of popular songs.  I wouldn't be surprised if there were multiple different versions that preceded the "canonical" 1927-1930 versions.

lucius septimius 1/2/2020 3:21:39 PM

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Reply to doppelganglander in 39:

As our librarian friend (speaking of which, has she been invited to Rude Bridge?) would say, most "librarians" now are only interested in "digital" stuff, not books.  I remember interviewing someone for a university librarian position who said we should just get rid of books and turn libraries into coffee shops with really good wifi because nobody reads books any more.

lucius septimius 1/2/2020 3:26:39 PM

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In #38 buzzsawmonkey said: "Have you seen the jigaboos...?"

I'd bet a bottle of good scotch that he sang it that way when he was performing it for friends.

buzzsawmonkey 1/2/2020 3:27:21 PM

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In #40 lucius septimius said: iirc, Berlin was in the habit of frequently re-writing the lyrics of popular songs.  I wouldn't be surprised if there were multiple different versions that preceded the "canonical" 1927-1930 versions.

"Puttin' on the Ritz" does not, alas, appear in my Variety Cavalcade, but according to Wiki it was written, and registered as an unpublished song, in 1927, and again in 1928, before being registered as a published work in 1929.  So the '27-'28 deposit copies would be the things to look at.

He did indeed rewrite his songs constantly; the later version of "Ritz" which most people know is "Have you seen the well-to-do/Up and down Park Avenue...?"  with the lines "Dressed up like a million-dollar trouper/Trying hard to look like Gary Cooper...", NONE of which is original; the original song is poking fun at the pretensions of black domestics on their Thursday nights off.

buzzsawmonkey 1/2/2020 3:29:13 PM

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buzzsawmonkey 1/2/2020 3:35:15 PM

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doppelganglander 1/2/2020 3:36:26 PM

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Reply to lucius septimius in 41:

I'm blanking on who you're referring to, so I guess not.

lucius septimius 1/2/2020 3:41:17 PM

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Reply to doppelganglander in 46:

Former LGF person -- we had dinner with her last spring when she was in town?

PaladinPhil 1/2/2020 3:52:31 PM

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Reply to lucius septimius in 47:

Afrocity Brown? I follow her on Facebook and she's finally doing better from what I gather.

doppelganglander 1/2/2020 3:55:44 PM

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Reply to lucius septimius in 47:

Oh, at Six Feet Under? I haven't spoken to her since then, have you?

lucius septimius 1/2/2020 3:55:57 PM

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Reply to PaladinPhil in 48:

Yep 

doppelganglander 1/2/2020 3:56:38 PM

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Reply to PaladinPhil in 48:

That's good news. Where is she living now?

lucius septimius 1/2/2020 3:56:53 PM

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Reply to doppelganglander in 49:

No -- I haven't.

doppelganglander 1/2/2020 4:03:42 PM

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Reply to lucius septimius in 50:

Believe it or not, that was last January. I remember I ducked out of an ISPI meeting to attend. 

JCM 1/2/2020 4:08:09 PM

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Reply to lucius septimius in 41:

She should see the stack next to my highstand.

4 feet and growing.

doppelganglander 1/2/2020 4:29:21 PM

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Reply to JCM in 54:

Someone I follow on Twitter posted that she read 127 books in 2019. She has insomnia.

Kosh's Shadow 1/2/2020 4:46:03 PM

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In #4 lucius septimius said: woke up at 3 AM with the sluices open at both ends.

That's what you get for drinking Chateau Chunder, an apellation controllee that really opens up the sluices at both ends

Jukebox

Kosh's Shadow 1/2/2020 4:50:48 PM

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In #27 buzzsawmonkey said: Any mention at all of the disastrous reign of the late Robert Mugabe and his communist ideology,

Where he took farms from white farmers and gave them to his supporters, who had no idea how to farm.

One neighboring country offered the farmers free land if they came and made it productive.