I didn’t know there were two fonts for highway signs, Highway Gothic and Clearview.
Category: other stuff
Florida man stories
It’s been a while since I posted these. I saw the alligator story and had to find more.
Florida man accused of decapitating hamster, discarding body in box near his home (clickorlando.com)
Excellent essay by David French on losing friendships and its impact on the US
This is an excellent essay by David French.
I haven’t read it in decades but I recommend The Pursuit of Loneliness by Philip Slater from 1970.
Reporter explains why many Americans suddenly stopped hanging out with friends
M.U.L.E. – a game for the Atari computer in the 1980s
M.U.L.E. was my favorite game that was ever developed for the Atari. It was on a disc, not a cartridge. It was released by Electronic Arts in 1983 when the company was new. Obviously, it looks primitive today but it was great for its time. It was later made for the Commodore 64 and other systems.
M.U.L.E. was a multiplayer game where players could develop land parcels they owned on the planet IRATA. There could be random events like fires or sunspots that could help you or hurt you. There were no weapons or people getting killed.
Review in Byte magazine
Florida man damages urinal with fireworks
New poll of historians on presidents
The hardest president to evaluate in my lifetime is Lyndon Johnson. Johnson was great domestically – voting rights, civil rights, Medicare, Medicaid. He was bad in foreign policy – the Vietnam war. Johnson had courage politically. He knew the civil rights laws would cost the Democrats in the South but they were the right thing to do.
I don’t get what people see in Reagan. To me, he was a slightly less bad version of Trump.
Budway
I like the Budway name and logo, Subway has no sense of humor.
Two tweets about data concerning streets
Amazing Florida woman video
Twitter and Florida at their best
Ibsen, Chekhov and Strindberg
One of the best college courses I took introduced me to the plays of Ibsen, Chekhov and Strindberg. They are the founders of modern drama from the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Henrik Ibsen believed in the power of the truth. His plays were realistic and ahead of their time. My favorite of his plays is Hedda Gabler. A Doll’s House and An Enemy of the People are probably his best known. An Enemy of the People was apparently written as a reaction to the his previous play Ghosts. To me, it’s too simple a defense of the truth. It was followed by The Wild Duck, the most ambiguous of the Ibsen plays I know which shows there can be consequences for telling the truth. There’s a fine German film of it. I saw it about 40 years ago and don’t think it’s available in the US now.
There are only four major plays by Anton Chekhov. My favorite is Uncle Vanya but the critical consensus probably favors The Three Sisters or The Cherry Orchard. Chekhov loves his characters for their faults as well as their virtues.
August Strindberg is the most versatile of the three. He is best known for Miss Julie.
There are comprehensive biographies of Ibsen and Strindberg by Michael Meyer who also translated their plays. I’ve read the Ibsen one which is outstanding.
I saw performances of Uncle Vanya and Ghosts.
Uncle Vanya was performed in New York in 1973 and directed by Mike Nichols. Here’s the New York Times review. Nicol Wiliamson was outstanding as Vanya and the cast included George C. Scott, Julie Christie and Lillian Gish.
I saw Ghosts at the Kennedy Center in Washington in 1982. Here’s an article about Liv Ullman who starred in it. It looks like the same production also was in New York.
Sad! 