BEYOND THE PALEWALL (10)

 1. Real Puzzling
   Many people up here are indoors working on jigsaw puzzles because that beats going outdoors or watching the news. A large 1000-piece puzzle, solidly coloured and with irregular edges, can keep you busy for quite a while. Looking for a bigger challenge, some senior folks in Utah, where they probably don't want to go outside either, ordered a 75 pounder consisting of 60,000 pieces. They went to work:

Over the next four months, about 50 seniors spent four hours a day piecing together 60 different 1,000-piece puzzle sections featuring a world map and 187 images of artwork by Dowdle of scenic landmarks such as the Colosseum in Rome, the Taj Mahal in India and U.S. national parks.
Last month, after the 60 puzzles were combined into one piece of art spread across 16 banquet tables, the senior center put its 8-by-29-foot creation on display for the public.

   Dowdle, the puzzle maker, operates "Dowdle Folk Art" which, conveniently enough is just down the road from the Springville Senior Center where the puzzle he made is on display. You can order "What A Wonderful World" - The World's Largest Puzzle" by clicking on this link. Before you do so, you should know that it is about 8' tall and 29' long and costs $1,027.00 in real dollars.
   All of this was learned from: "Utah Senior Center Tackles Loneliness With a 60,000-Piece Puzzle," Ruth Nielsen, Washington Post, Feb. 17, 2024. If you want to learn more, see the * Largest Jigsaw Puzzles in the World," Nancy Levin, largest.org, Jan. 19, 2023. The smallest offered is the 33,600-piece, "Wild Life" which costs $600 also real dollars. 

2. Build A Border Wall - A Northern One!
 Former presidential candidate, Vivek Ramaswamy suggested one needed to be built because of the fentanyl problem, and Nikki Haley pointed out the problems presented by 500 people on the terrorist list who crossed over from Canada. More Republicans may be scrutinizing the Canadian/American border because of an article such as this one:
"Migrants Face Cold, Perilous Crossing From Canada to New York: Increasingly, Migrants From Latin America Are Risking Their Lives to Cross Illegally Into the United States Along the Northern Border," Luis Ferré-Sadurní, The New York Times, Feb. 11, 2024.

   As migrants continue to overwhelm the southern border in record numbers, a growing wave is trying an alternative route into the United States: across the less fortified, more expansive Canadian border….

More than 12,200 people were apprehended crossing illegally from Canada last year, a 241 percent jump from the 3,578 arrested the previous year. Most of them were Mexicans, who can fly to Canada without a visa and may prefer the northern border to avoid the cartels that exploit migrants in their country.

3. Dire Headline of the Decade - "Is the Media Prepared for an Extinction-Level Event?" 
 The subtitle of Clare Malone's Atlantic article (Feb.10) continued this way: Ads are scarce, search and social traffic is dying, and readers are burned out. The future will require fundamentally rethinking the press’s relationship to its audience. She reports on
 A report that tracked layoffs in the industry in 2023 recorded twenty-six hundred and eighty-one in broadcast, print, and digital news media. NBC News, Vox Media, Vice News, Business Insider, Spotify, theSkimm, FiveThirtyEight, The Athletic, and Condé Nast—the publisher of The New Yorker—all made significant layoffs. BuzzFeed News closed, as did Gawker. The Washington Post, which lost about a hundred million dollars last year, offered buyouts to two hundred and forty employees. In just the first month of 2024, Condé Nast laid off a significant number of Pitchfork’s staff and folded the outlet into GQ; the Los Angeles Times laid off at least a hundred and fifteen workers (their union called it “the big one”); Time cut fifteen per cent of its union-represented editorial staff; the Wall Street Journal slashed positions at its D.C. bureau; and Sports Illustrated, which had been weathering a scandal for publishing A.I.-generated stories, laid off much of its staff as well.
The Fahrenheit 451 of everything without the fires.

4. Rankled by Rankings (again):
   The rankings game is played by most universities which hide low numbers and seek the higher ones. Although most would like to opt out, it is difficult to do so and arguments about how the rankings are done and disagreements between those ranked continue.
   Among the recent rankings disputes, you may have missed this one. It does not involve U.S. News & World Report or Maclean's. It does involve the Chinese (again) and math, but in this case neither of those subjects is inscrutable.

  To Disraeli's, "lies, damned lies and statistics," math can be added. It may even be the case that you can have a highly ranked math department in a university where there is no department of mathematics. Here is all you need to know and you don't need to know any math to understand it: "Citation Cartels Help Some Mathematicians - and Their Universities - Climb the Rankings," Michele Catanzaro, Science, Jan.30, 2024.

Cliques of mathematicians at institutions in China, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere have been artificially boosting their colleagues’ citation counts by churning out low-quality papers that repeatedly reference their work, according to an unpublished analysis seen by Science. As a result, their universities—some of which do not appear to have math departments—now produce a greater number of highly cited math papers each year than schools with a strong track record in the field, such as Stanford and Princeton universities.

   The ranking wars will continue, however, and if you google any university, the rankings will appear since good ones can be found somewhere. Those pictured are currently displayed at the university close by. 

Newspapers

Pictures or Prose?

    I still enjoy reading the paper newspapers and hate to see them go. I have noticed lately, however, that the printed ones are becoming more like the electronic ones, in that images and illustrations are occupying the spaces formerly reserved for sentences and paragraphs. The good news, I suppose, is that now what we see in the papers resembles so closely what we view on the screen, maybe we won’t miss them so much when they are gone.

Before

    This is what newspapers used to look like.

After

   Here is what they now look like. Presented below is a picture of the front page of “Canada’s National Newspaper” (The Globe and Mail) as it appeared on April 29, 2017. I apologize for the quality of the image, but can assure you that there are very few words provided within it. The same was true for many of the pages of the other sections and apart from the images illustrating the stories there were the pictures contained in the advertisements. The entire back page of one section was an ad related to Prostate Cancer Canada, but I am happy to report that the large picture cleverly avoided showing what you might expect. (I am not picking on The Globe; the other papers are the same and then there are the tabloids where most of the words are found mainly in captions.)

Progress?

    I ran across the following comment a while back and while I am not sure if it is true, it is interesting:   

      “In 1900, each page of The Times held twice as many words as in 1987”.

Given what has happened over the past 30 years we may want to consider a “Moore’s Law” for newspapers (that’s the one for computers that says the number of transistors on a chip will double every year.) We could call it “Less’s Law” and say it predicts that the number of words on a newspaper page will be halved each year.

“All the News That’s Fit to Picture”

    Perhaps The New York Times will have to soon alter the motto - “All The News That’s Fit to Print” - and they are welcome to the one above as a replacement.

Sources: The quotation about the number of words in The Times is found in: The First Cuckoo (which is a compilation of letters to that paper and I will soon say more about it.)

P.S. One can argue that in the past, more words did not necessarily mean more thoughtful commentary. Many of the words were devoted to such things as shipping intelligence and “agony columns” and sensational stories were not excluded.

There is some irony in the fact that now that the printing costs associated with paper and ink have been largely eliminated and space no longer an issue, we may only get more pictures and less words.

On the other hand, some argue that too many words are the problem. “One reason seekers of news are abandoning print newspapers for the Internet has nothing directly to do with technology. It’s that newspaper articles are too long. On the Internet, news articles get to the point. Newspaper writing, by contrast, is encrusted with conventions that don’t add to your understanding of the news.” see: ”Cut This Story: Newspaper Articles Are Too Long,” Michael Kinsley, Atlantic, Jan./Feb. 2010.

Perhaps he thinks a picture is worth a thousand words.

Fourth Leaders

    I have been meaning to get around to this subject for a while since it is a subject about which it is difficult to find information.  It is one of the few topics for which there is no entry in Wikipedia. That may mean, of course, that it is not interesting or important enough to be included.

    I ran across the phrase “Fourth Leaders” a few years back when reading a biography of Peter Fleming, the English author and brother of the arguably less interesting Ian. One learns from the book that, among many other things, Peter wrote Fourth Leaders for The Times. “Leader” is a term in English journalism that essentially refers to a “leading article” or “editorial” and although the phrase “Fourth Leader” could be applied broadly, it is generally associated only with a particular type of essay published only in The TImes.

    I hasten to add that if you go looking for them in The TImes you will not easily find them. They no longer exist and when they did they were not labelled “Fourth Leaders”. Nor were they always the fourth leading article on any particular page, either above or below the fold. As one reader notes: “Oh, by the way, at the outset I spoke of a fourth leader. Lest any literal-minded reader should take the trouble to tell me that it was fifth in the order of going in, let me point out that ‘fourth leader,” like “late night final,” is a trade and not a mathematical term.” (Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer, December 22,1953, p.4.)

    You will recognize them, however, since the Fourth Leader was the only humorous and whimsical article to be found in “The Thunderer” (as The TImes was called). I hasten again to add here that the Fourth Leaders” are ‘funny’ in a particular Anglo-arcane-allusive way; you are probably going to loudly chortle only if your Latin is good. As one writer notes: “Fourth Leaders would toss off literary quotations and assume that Latin tags were stored away in the rusty compartments of the Times’ universal mind. Oxbridge dons scanned the day’s Fourth Leader before descending to tutorials. The Fourth Leader was unashamedly elitist.”

The Rise and Fall of the Fourth Leaders

    The origin is traced back to 1914 where the purpose of the Fourth Leaders is also provided:

    “Humbly beg for a light leading article daily…” Chief.

Thus Northcliffe who in 1908 had purchased The TImes telegraphed the Editor on January 25, 1914. Such requests from Olympus however euphemistically phrased were ignored at peril and the following day  the ‘light’ (later ‘the third’, later still ‘the fourth’) leader appeared. The innovation was resisted by some of the old guard in the Printing House Square but gradually the readers took these capsules of light relief to their hearts; for over 50 years they were a British institution. Like other edifices propping up the country the ‘fourth’ was eventually deemed to have served its purpose. It was decreed that it carried within the seeds of a small (and vanishing) esoteric club - an anomaly in the new age of white-hot technology. On January 1967 it received its conge.” (“On This Day: February 23, 1914,” in The Times, Feb. 23, 1985. p.9.)

   Since the source above is from The Times one assumes that the first Fourth Leader is found in 1914, but another indicates that they are found from 1922 to 1966 (Brewer's Dictionary of Modern Phrase & Fable, 2nd ed.). As well, there are a few articles about Fourth Leaders  in The Times in the early 1980s and one reader, lamenting their loss as “a disaster”, claims to have spotted one in 1973. (“Old Two Hundredth”, Brian G.D. Salt, Feb. 10, 1984.) Another letter writer, not lamenting the loss, thinks they are gone: “For generations the fourth leader was an immutable daily custom, undertaken often more with a sense of obligation than delight by writers whose thoughts were in the Balkans or with the Fleet. Writing for a readership much narrower than today’s, they produced an almost private genre, laced with whimsical nostalgia, literary allusions and rueful comment on everyday life which they could count on the reader recognizing - a genre now happily completely extinct.” (“A Ha'p'orth Of Difference”, The Times,  Feb. 4, 1984).

Books of Fourth Leaders

    Over the years (mainly in the 1950s), compilations of Fourth Leaders were published by The Times, usually with the titles The Times Fourth Leaders [year] or Fourth Leaders From The TImes [year]. I did find one from 1929 with the title, Light and Leading: Being Light Leaders Reprinted from The Times. Some of the notices for the books illustrate their appeal:

From 1955:

“They  [Fourth Leaders] are meant to be enjoyed-or skipped-and passed on-if they have amused you-to a kindred spirit. They are chosen from the daily columns of The Times where they appear to remind readers that whatever grave things may be happening in the world, there is no reason for not observing life with a smile. They take you round the seasons, asking no more of you than to give them a glance for a few minutes - and to be amused with the writers if you feel in the mood…. Put this little book by your bed, and let it tempt you every now and then to stay awake for a few extra minutes then to fall asleep in a nice relaxed mood. Or fall asleep as your eyes have got half-way down the page and your drowsy mind is half-way through a sentence. The writers will be with you in either case. All that they ask is that you should think kindly of enough of them to say that they have helped you to take things easily in a hard world.” Berwickshire News and General Advertiser, December 13, 1955, p.6.

From 1952:

“There are few people who daily buy the world’s most famous newspaper The Times who can say in honesty that they have read every word of it. But there must be a very small number of the paper’s readers who go to bed without finding the rewarding minutes in which to study and be delightfully entertained by the fourth leaders, those usually somewhat lighthearted contributions on any topic under the sun which happens to take the fancy of the leader-writer. These essays seldom offer a serious solution to the great problems of the day, but they will certainly solve the problem of selecting a Christmas present for a discerning friend or relative - for some 80 of the leaders have been collated in Fourth Leaders, a volume selling at 9s and published by the Times Publishing Co. Ltd.”, Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail, December 1, 1952, p.1.

  It appears that such books were bought: “I grew up assuming that all homes contained books; that this was normal. It was normal, too, that they were valued for their usefulness: to learn from at school, to dispense and verify information, and to entertain during the holidays. My father had collections of Times Fourth Leaders; my mother might enjoy a Nancy Mitford. “ (Julian Barnes, “My Life as a Bibliophile,” The Guardian, June 29, 2012.)

  

    It appears, as well, that Fourth Leader books were also promoted in the United States. A piece about the 1950 edition is found in Life magazine under the title “A Mouse for Milady’s Hat,” (Dec. 4, 1950): Fourth Leaders are “...so called because the items in question usually fall fourth in the sequence of editorials, or leaders, in each issue. In them the art of being unimportant is preserved and practiced with a charm and skill rare in our day. They are short. They are literate. At their best they gleam with gentle humor and are rich in pithy sentences which at once enthral and satisfy the reader.”

    On the same day, this is found in Time magazine:

“The Press: Your Head Is on Fire

"Some were pleased, some were shocked, none remained indifferent on hearing that the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University, accompanied by his spouse, is to take off tomorrow from, one of the quadrangles of Christ Church in a helicopter."

To the uninitiated, a lighthearted essay on such a topic might seem out of place amid the somber rumblings of the London Times's editorial page. But generations of Britons have learned to expect just such things in the Thunderer's "fourth leader," i.e., the item usually fourth in sequence on its editorial page, an unfailing source of quiet, literate, gentle humor. Last week, for the second year in a row, the Times published a collection (Fourth Leaders from the Times; the Times Publishing Co., London; 8/6) of the year's best work of its anonymous editorial writers. Covering everything from stamp collecting to new arrivals at the zoo, the fourth leaders not only range the quirks of British life but also have an occasional smile for the quirks of journalism.”

   Although such essays were meant to be “light”  and humorous they were also supposed to be “elegantly-turned” and Peter Fleming’s first submission was rejected:

“My Dear Fleming,

    I am afraid this will not do. You must study our leader style rather more closely. Seven paragraphs is too many for a short article of this kind, and the editorial ‘we’ (which you employ more than once) is always a nightmare to me. Have another shot.

Yours sincerely, Geoffrey Dawson.”

He went on to write many Fourth Leaders over the years (although all of the Fourth Leaders are unsigned) and if you want to see a successful one read “Shaving Time” which is provided in Peter Fleming: A Biography, by Duff Hart-Davis.

Sources: It is very difficult to locate Fourth Leaders in The Times unless you have a specific reference to one, so finding a collection of them in a book is the best option. Here are a few from The Times I am aware of: “The Far-Fetched Flea,” (Nov. 6, 1951, p.7); “A Self-Made Cat,” (Aug.26, 1952, p.5); “Windmills,” Aug. 6, 1947,p.5). In 1955 there is a funny one about a chap who lost interest in continuing his swim across the Channel as he neared the French coast - “Mid-Channel Musings” (Sept.9, 1955, p.11). Apparently those musings prompted him to try again and that resulted in a follow-up fourth - “Fourth Leaders to the Fore,” (Oct. 25, 1958).

While it was Northcliffe’s demand for something “light” that led to their publication, credit for the creation of Fourth Leaders is sometimes given to the colonial editor of The Times, Douglas Woodruff. He later became editor of The Tablet and apparently his column “Talking at Random” is very Fourth Leader-like (see his obituary in The Times, March 11, 1978.)

As noted, the Fourth Leaders were published anonymously, but some authors (like Fleming) are known. Another was Joyce Anstruther who “wrote 60 Fourth Leaders for the newspaper between 1938 and 1940.” She was also the creator of Mrs. Miniver and wrote under the name Jan Struther. (see: “Made Famous for Soppiness,” David Hughes, The Spectator, Nov. 24, 2001.)