Posts Tagged ‘mistakes’
“A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals to discovery.”*…
Ed Simon on errata (and other errors) in literature…
… The King James Version of the Bible has exactly 783,137 words, but unfortunately for the London print shop of Robert Barker and Martin Lucas, official purveyors to King Charles I, their 1631 edition left out three crucial letters, one crucial word—”not.” As such, their version of Exodus 20:14 read, “Thou shalt commit adultery.” Their royal patron was not amused. This edition was later deemed the “Wicked Bible.”
Literature’s history is a history of mistakes, errors, misapprehensions, simple typos. It’s the shadow narrative of expression—how we fail because of sloppiness, or ignorance, or simple tiredness. Blessed are the copyeditors, for theirs is a war of eternal attrition. Nothing done by humans is untouched by such fallenness, for to err is the universal lot of all of us. Authors make mistakes, as do editors, publishers, printers (and readers).
If error were simply an issue of a wrong comma here or an incorrect word there it wouldn’t be nearly as interesting, but mistakes undergird our lives, even our universe. They can be detrimental, beneficial, neutral. When Lockheed Martin designed the Mars Climate Orbiter using American units and NASA assumed that they’d used the metric system instead, a discrepancy that resulted in that satellite crashing into the red dust of the fourth planet from the sun—that was a mistake. And when the physician Alexander Fleming left out a culture plate which got contaminated, and he noticed the flourishing of a blue mold that turned out to be penicillin—that was a mistake. Errors in how people hear phonemes are what lead to the development of new languages; mistakes in an animal’s DNA propel evolution; getting lost can render new discoveries. Sometimes the flaw is that which is most beautiful.
Certainly, there are no shortage of them…
A wonderfully amusing history, and richly illuminating consideration of literary mistakes through the ages: “How Many Errorrs Are in This Essay?,” from @WithEdSimon in @The_Millions.
Vaguely apposite (and also really fascinating): “Panic at the Library.”
* James Joyce, Ulysses
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As we muse on misprints, we might recall that it was on this date in 1968 that The Beatles’ record label, Apple Records, released its first single, “Hey Jude.”
The label was founded… as a creative outlet for the band and as a way to reduce their tax burden. They choose the name and image of a Granny Smith apple because in Paul McCartney’s mind, a green apple signified creative freedom and independence from commercial interests. The record was unique because it featured the image of a Granny Smith apple on side-A and the same apple sliced in half on side-B. But according to The Independent, the song was almost never released because some record executives thought that the image looked pornagraphic. In a letter sent to Apple boss Ron Kass, it said, “Here’s a wild and unanticipated problem to brighten up your day. I just received a call from a very large and influential jack jobber in the western United States. He opened the conversation by saying, ‘Are you guys serious? Do you know what you’re doing? Do you really intend to sell products bearing the new Apple label?’” He said that the Apple label was completely pornographic and the graphic nature of the art was noticed by all of his employees. He doubted that record store chains would want to stock such a record. Not only was he wrong [the single sold 8 million copies], but there is no evidence that the band had intended using a controversial image.
source
Your correspondent leaves it to the reader to deduce the supposed pornographic image. If, like him, you are stumped, see The Independent article linked in the quote above.
“There Are Two Typos Of People In This World: Those Who Can Edit And Those Who Can’t”*…
Typos can be embarrassing. They can also be costly. And not just for those individuals whose jobs depend on knowing the difference between “it’s” and “its” or where a comma is most appropriate. In 2013, bauble-loving Texans got the deal of a lifetime when a misprint in a Macy’s mailer advertised a $1500 necklace for just $47. (It should have read $497.) It didn’t take long for the entire inventory to be zapped, at a loss of $450 a pop to the retail giant. (Not to mention plenty of faces as red as the star in the company’s logo.)
Google, on the other hand, loves a good typing transposition: Harvard University researchers claim that the company earns about $497 million each year from people mistyping the names of popular websites and landing on “typosquatter” sites … which just happen to be littered with Google ads…
From a NSFW travel agency ad to “the most expensive hyphen in history”– “10 very costly typos.”
* Jarod Kintz
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As we check our work, we might send carefully-edited birthday greetings to Samuel Langhorne Clemens, AKA Mark Twain; he was born on this date in 1835 in Florida, Missouri. One of the best-known writers and aphorists of his time and ours, his The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is consistently cited as a (if not indeed the) Great American Novel, at the same time that it is equally consistently the target of censors who would ban it from school and public libraries… but not for sloppy editing or typos: Clemens began his career as a newspaper man– first as a typesetter, then as a reporter, where he honed his copy editing skills. And he carried those skills with him into the use of new technologies: he was the first author to submit a typewritten manuscript to his publisher.
Matthew Brady’s photo of Mark Twain
“The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”*…
From the annals of the $20 billion phenomenon that is Electronic Dance Music (EDM)…
The latest craze, known as miss-mixing, is proving very popular amongst digital DJs as a way of highlighting that they are actually manually mixing tracks rather than using the sync button.
Michael Briscoe, also know as DJ Whopper, spoke about miss-mixing with Wunderground, “Flawless mixing is now a thing of the past, especially for any up and coming digital DJs. You just can’t afford to mix without mistakes these days or you’ll be labelled as a ‘sync button DJ.’”
“I learned how to mix on vinyl years ago so naturally I’m pretty tight when it comes to matching beats,” continued the resident DJ. “I swapped to digital format a couple of years ago because it’s convenient, now I spend more time practicing making mistakes than I do practicing actual mixing.”
“I like to drop in on the second or third beat, leave it play for a couple of bars and then quickly correct myself,” explained Mr. Briscoe. “It’s subtle yet affective, I call it The Perplexer. People who don’t know what they’re listening to won’t even notice it while other DJs will be thinking ‘that’s a great mistake, who is this DJ Whopper lad anyway?’ d’ya know what I mean?”…
Ponder the price of authenticity at “DJs Now Deliberately Making Mistakes To Prove They Are Real DJs.”
* The title of a seminal work by recent (R)D “honoree” Walter Benjamin
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As ask ourselves if it’s real or if it’s Memorex, we might recall that it was on this date in 1985 that the first Farm Aid concert was held, in Champaign, Illinois.
It started with an offhand remark made by Bob Dylan during his performance at Live Aid, the massive fundraising concert held at Wembley Stadium, London, and JFK Stadium, Philadelphia, in the early summer of 1985. As television viewers around the world phoned in donations in support of African famine relief, Dylan said from the stage, “I hope that some of the money…maybe they can just take a little bit of it, maybe…one or two million, maybe…and use it, say, to pay the mortgages on some of the farms and, the farmers here, owe to the banks.” Dylan would come under harsh criticism from Live Aid organizer Bob Geldof for his remarks (“It was a crass, stupid and nationalistic thing to say,” Geldof would later write), but he planted a seed with several fellow musicians who shared his concern over the state of the American family farm. Less than one month later, Willie Nelson, Neil Young and John Mellencamp announced plans for “Farm Aid,” a benefit concert for America’s farmers.
As one might have expected of a concert staged to “raise awareness about the loss of family farms and to raise funds to keep farm families on their land,” Farm Aid featured a number of performers from the worlds of country, folk and rootsy rock music. There were the three main organizers and the instigator Bob Dylan, for instance, along with Hoyt Axton, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Emmylou Harris, Waylon Jennings, Loretta Lynn, Joni Mitchell and Charley Pride. But the first Farm Aid, more than any of the annual Farm Aid concerts since, was a bit of a stylistic free-for-all, featuring artists united only by their interest in supporting a good cause.
“As soon as I read in the paper that there was gonna be such a thing,” Sammy Hagar told MTV’s cameras on the day of the show, “I called my manager and said, ‘I wanna do it.’ And he said, ‘It’s all country.’ I said, ‘I don’t care. It’s America. I wanna do it.’ If there was anything more surprising than hearing Hagar perform his hard-rock anthem “I Can’t Drive 55” on the same stage that had earlier featured the quiet folk of Arlo Guthrie, it was hearing Lou Reed perform “Walk On The Wild Side” on a stage that had featured John Denver.
Over the years since its first charity concert on this day in 1985, the Farm Aid organization has raised upwards of $33 million to support small farmers, promote sustainable farming practices and encourage consumption of “good food from family farms.”
[source]
Coincidentally, it was on this date in 1962 that Dylan played his first gig at Carnegie Hall…
“There are two typos of people in this world: those who can edit and those who can’t”*…
We all make mistakas…
- The Wicked Bible (as it’s come to be known), published in 1631 by Robert Barker and Martin Lucas in London, offers an unusually permissive version of the Seventh Commandment
And some are funnier than others…
Webster’s chemistry editor, Austin M. Patterson, sent in a slip reading “D or d, cont./density” in 1931; but it was misinterpreted as a single word– and published in the second edition of the New International Dictionary in 1934. It was not removed until 1947.
The preface of The Vocabulary of East Anglia, by Robert Forby, 1830
Further funny faux pas at “The Most Disastrous Typos In Western History.”
* Jarod Kintz
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As we relax into Labor Day, we might pause to contemplate the commemorative and celebratory occasions sprinkled through the first month of Fall…
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SEPTEMBER is . . . National Bed Check Month, Read-A-New-Book Month, Mom & Apple Pie Month (Massachusetts), Cable TV Month, Latino Heritage Month, Be Kind to Writers & Editors Month, National Mind Mapping Month, Pleasure Your Mate Month, Board & Care Recognition Month, International Gay Square Dance Month |
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1st Week |
2nd Week |
3rd Week |
Last Week |
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Self-University Week Independence Week (Brazil) National Religious Reference Books Week Aarmus Festival Week (begins 1st Sat; Denmark) |
La Merienda Week National Mind Mapping For Project Management Week Fall Hat Week National Housekeepers Week Battle of Britain Week (Week w/15th) |
Tolkein Week National Singles Week Vitupertion Week (18th-24th) National Laundry Workers Week National Adult Day Care Center Week |
Banned Books Week National Food Service Workers Week National Dog Week National Roller Skating Week National Mind Mapping For Problem Solving Week National Pickled Pepper Week (begins Last Thurs) |
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September Movable Daily Holidays |
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Day |
Holiday |
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1st Sunday |
Working Mother’s Day Pffiferdaj (Day of the Flutes; France) Giostra del Saracino (Joust of the Saracen; Italy) |
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Saturday before Labor Day |
Capital Day |
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1st Monday |
Labor Day Settler’s Day (South Africa) Buhl Day (Sharon, Pennsylvania) Great Bathtub Race (Nome, Alaska) Box Car Day (Tracy, Minnesota) |
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1st Saturday |
Indian Day Braemar Highland Gathering (Scotland) |
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1st Sunday after Labor Day |
Grandparent’s Day |
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1st Saturday after Labor Day |
Federal Lands Cleanup Day Yellow Daisy Festival (Stone Mountain Park, Georgia) |
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1st Saturday after Full Moon in September |
Indian Day (Oklahoma) |
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2nd Sunday |
National Pet Memorial Day |
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2nd Sunday (every other year) |
Bruegel Feesten (Belgium) |
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2nd Friday after Labor Day |
The Big E begins (New England’s Great State Fair; Maine) |
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3rd Sunday |
World Peace Day Pig Face Sunday (Avening, UK) |
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3rd Tuesday |
International Day of Peace (UN) Prinsjesdag (Netherlands) |
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4th Sunday |
Good Neighbor Day |
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4th Friday |
Native American Day |
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4th Saturday |
National Hunting & Fishing Day Kid’s Day (Kiwanis Club) |
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Last Sunday |
Gold Star Mother’s Day |
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Sunday before Michaelmas (29th) |
Carrot Sunday (Scotland) |
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16 days from late September ending on 1st Sunday in October |
Oktoberfest begins (Germany) |
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Sunday before October 2nd |
Tap-Up Sunday |
And all of this is not to mention such red-letter days as Eat an Extra Desert Day (September 4), Talk Like a Pirate Day (September 19), or Hug a Vegetarian Day (September 26)…
Party on!
“A doctor can bury his mistakes, but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines…”*
From the New School of Architecture and Design, “Failure by Design”– an infographic that charts major architectural blunders through the ages… Visit the Lighthouse of Alexandria, the Tower of Pisa, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, and other famously ill-conceived constructions for explications of the miscalculations at work and the lessons they teach.
Click here (and again) for an enlarged version of the full graphic; read about the project here and here.
* Frank Lloyd Wright
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As we take up our t-squares, we might send exquisitely-wrought birthday greetings to the architect of “The Library of Babel,” Jorge Luis Borges; he was born on this date in 1899. An accomplished poet, essayist, and translator, Borges is of course best remembered for his short stories. In reaction to 19th century Realism and Naturalism, Borges blended philosophy and fantasy to create an altogether new kind of literary voice. Indeed, critic Angel Flores credits Borges with founding the movement that Flores was the first to call “Magic Realism.”
There’s no need to build a labyrinth when the entire universe is one.
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