Gotcha

       
     So I bought a new phone a week ago Monday. I almost wrote "cell phone" but realized I come off as old enough without rubbing anybody's face in it. I had to buy it — the old phone, an Apple iPhone 12, wouldn't load software updates, no matter how many large attachments and apps I tossed over the side, like a balloonist flinging away ballast. 

     An iPhone 17, if you must know, through a process of extraordinary length and tedium. Not the 6.8 inch pro, but the smaller, 6.3 inch version. That was my central priority — I wanted the same size. Consistency is a big value to me at this point. I might not be able to keep the country from sliding into autocracy. But I can keep my phone from morphing into something huge and heavy. Same size, more or less, same color, black. I worried over the .2 inch increase, but decided it was acceptable. 

    This is a wild abbreviation of hours of study and consideration, over months. How much capacity? I opted for the 512 GB. Do I need the service plan? Generally no. But my wife says ... I started to summarize and quickly realized I was boring myself.

     Credit to Apple — buying it was easy and intuitive, leaving aside the stress and indecision I brought to the process myself. The thing arrived the next day via Fedex. I placed my phones together, migrated my data — easy as pie —  and then had to prepare my old phone to trade in. It was complicated — I had to watch a video or two — but eventually returned wiped it clean, both of information and fingerprints — wiping the screen, using Windex, actually thinking, "Clean the old gal up to meet her parents back at Apple." I thanked the black oblong for its service, packed it up in the little cardboard folder they'd sent and shipped it off, itself a complicated, three part process that involved a) going to the Fedex store or, rather, where the Fedex store had been last time I needed it. Being redirected by a sign at the shuttered store to the new location, b) being told, there, that the label on the parcel in my hand was intended by folks more observant than myself for UPS, not FedEx, and, c) finally, heading to the UPS store (you see why I'm trying to abbreviate this process? Every step has four substeps and three corrections).
     A few days after that Apple wrote me a stern note under the heading, "Action needed to continue your trade in." Despite my best efforts, I had not, apparently, turned off Find My Phone, a system to locating stray devices. Before I got my $120 trade in, I must do that, another dive into a rabbit hole that involved, I kid you not, a 24 hour security waiting period, as if it were some dramatic step, a gun purchase or a divorce.
     I finally did it, or at least thought I did it. No big "Success!" screen comes up. The thing to do once that was accomplished was to wait — waiting, like shutting up, an art form I struggle to master — until Apple realized the Find My ... feature had been shut off and alerted me that my 120 bucks was en route. But patience is the first victim of technology. And I wanted it done. So I jumped into the Apple chat support and, after a 20 minute conversation that I should have preserved. for donation to some future museum of head-on-a-board frustration, I was reassured by some AI chatbot that the check was indeed in the mail, so to speak, and I'd be notified in three to five business days.     

     Satisfied, I went about my business, or tried to. Then this appeared.

     There was something in that tone. The "need" part of the message, like bad news from your spouse. "Honey, we need to talk..." I almost overlooked that nothing was being delivered, or nothing I knew of. I phoned, as instructed, went through a variety of shells and messages without actually getting anywhere, realized I was wasting yet more time, and gave up and went about my business, or tried to. 
    The next day, I got this.

    Oh, for Pete's sake, I thought. What now? Had I inadvertently changed my birth date trying to shut off the Find My feature? I clicked on the Apple Support link. Ba-boom:

    It was a trap, set by my own office, that I had blundered into, softened up by the gantlet Apple had already put me through, buying a new phone and trading in an old one. You know, they used to give us phones. Call us to a room and hand out a box, like Christmas. I didn't care anything about the phones, then. They were free, to me anyway, a benediction that forgave all sins. Now, not only am I required to buy my own phone but if, loggy from the ordeal, I can find it's not a link, but the office in disguise, ready to bite my straying finger.

       I was immediately enrolled in one of those generic security seminars that pelt us like rain and I would avoid if I only could. Hoisted with my own petard. Perhaps also as a result, perhaps coincidentally — who can tell anymore? — perhaps because now my tech judgment was suspect, I was also logged out of the paper's email system, and could not log in, because my new phone isn't set up with its One Login Connect security feature. I felt like I was being made to sit on the red stool, for being careless, and ended up calling our tech support, which allowed me to at least talk to an actual person, and apologize for clicking on the poisoned link. He didn't seem to take it personally. My OneLogin bona fides were quickly established.
     I planned to illustrate this item with a photo of a bird, taken with what I assume is the vastly-improved Zoom feature on my new iPhone17. Only I haven't been outside enough to see a bird. Because I've been inside. Futzing around with this tech shit. I decided to describe the tiresome process yesterday, without realizing just how tiresome it would be to relate. But it's 4:46 a.m. Saturday — I didn't get this written yesterday because we had a big pizza party so family could ogle the new granddaughter, radiating cuteness like a new sun. So some life is still happening, around the tech hassles.  We did go for a long walk out in the beautiful weather yesterday afternoon. Sad that I would choose to describe this phony inside process instead of that lovely outdoor stroll . Another wrong decision. Carpe diem. 

The president, the lies and the cannulated cow

 

     The beauty of getting out into the world, meeting new people and seeing new stuff, is two-fold. First, you learn new information, from the new people you talk to and the new stuff you see. Learning new things is fun.
     And second, you then can apply this new knowledge, making all sorts of interesting connections.
     For instance, struggling to articulate the general numbness of watching President Donald Trump's State of the Union address Tuesday, I remembered a cannulated cow seen at Chicago's High School for Agriculture Sciences in Mount Greenwood (What? You didn't know about either cannulated cows or the ag high school? Well, I'm happy to be the one to tell you.)
     MAGA types, who don't seem at all keen on either new people or new ideas, imagine liberals in some kind of pearl-clutching agony, or door-jamb-gnawing fury. But truly, nearly two hours of the State of the Union speech left me mostly bored. We've heard all this before, many times, from the moment candidate Trump descended that escalator in his monstrous brass and orange stone lobby.
     "When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best," he said. "They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists."
     Tuesday was more of the same. When he wasn't lying about the economy or gaslighting — for example, the shameless fraud declaring war on fraud — Trump was grinding over the threat of immigrants. Both criminals and bad drivers. That's where I thought of the cannulated cow. How cows digest their food is important to the dairy industry, and one way to keep tabs is to surgically implant a round window into the side of a cow. Students and scientists look through the window, into the cow's stomach, and watch the half-digested mash sloshing around.
     That was the State of the Union speech. The same well-chewed slop of fear, hatred, lies, prejudice, nationalism and enormous self-regard that Trump has been spewing for years.
      One of the many dangers of this moment is exhaustion. The liars lie nonstop, while those familiar with the truth get tired of repeating ourselves, bloodying our fingers scratching at that brick wall.
     Yet scratch we must. So forgive me for belaboring the obvious for the benefit of — well, I'm not sure who at this point. Either you understood long ago or you never will. Yet truth will out.
     The current war on immigrants is not only morally and economically wrong, but entirely based on lies — haters are cowards, and rather than just admit they're surrendering to fear (of new people and new things) they slur the object of their fixation. They don't hate immigrants because immigrants are criminals; they tar them as criminals because they hate them.

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Out on the stoop

 

     Words are funny things. As you well know. I began re-reading Philip Roth's "Goodbye, Columbus" Wednesday and was struck by the magnificent economy of a certain phrase. The hero, Neil Klugman, is driving from his home in Newark, New Jersey to visit a young woman living in its leafy suburbs, noting as he did the "houses where no one sat on stoops." A lot of social history packed into seven words.
     He doesn't say whether that is good or bad. I suppose the answer depends where you happen to be living. Suburbanites might envy the cohesion of those nosy neighbors, gossiping on the steps, while city dwellers were keen to escape the crowded city, with its prying stoop perchers monitoring your movements, another hassle to be escaped, along with smells in the hallways and crashing garbage cans. 
     In the chapter on noise in my "Alphabet of Modern Annoyances," I studied New York's 1929 survey of city noise complaints, finding much to be nostalgic about:

     Despite the familiarity of most noise annoyances listed in the survey ("roistering whoopee parties" was my favorite) other irritants have ceased to be considered problems, from "the noises from milk wagons and pie trucks to "newsboys' cries" to "youths and maidens group on front stoops sing[ing] in close harmony at unreasonable hours of the night," an image that makes one positively pine for the past.

     A "stoop," of course, is the stairs leading from a front door to the street. I wondered about its etymology — the word sounds Dutch, though that might be because of eating too many stroopwafels on airplanes. I imagine some core meaning about downward motion, as the verbal form, such as "She Stoops to Conquer." 

     But which sense came first? The stairs or the descent?

     The Oxford English Dictionary gives "Stoop" a full page, plus, starting by tying the word to Late Middle English and batting away my cookie-stoked theory. "It is doubtful whether the word has any connection with MLG. and early mod. Du. stolpe." "MLG" being middle low German, and you can figure out the rest.

     The bending usage is the oldest, back to 1571, while the architectural meaning shows up two centuries later, to describe "An uncovered platform before the entrance of a house, raised, and approached by means of steps. Sometimes incorrectly used for porch or veranda." The OED considers the word an American and Canadian coinage.

     The OED bringing up such synonyms as porch and veranda sent me scurrying to one of my least-used dictionaries, Webster's 1942 Dictionary of Synonyms, which goes into the weeds regarding the fine distinctions between similar words. It disputes the OED's doubts about the word origin, suggesting it comes, not from Holland, but from Dutch New Amsterdam: "Stoop, which is of Dutch origin, was originally used in and around New York City and is now used elsewhere to designate a small porch, flanked by seats of benches at the entrance to a house; it is now also applied to any platform at the entrance to a house, which one ascends by a step or two."

     While writing the above, a line from Shakespeare floated into mind. "Fetch me a stoup of wine," Sir Tony Belch commands in "Twelfth Night." (Actually, he says, "Marian, I say! A stoup of wine!" I had it mixed up with Richard III's "Give me a bowl of wine. I have not that alacrity of spirit Nor cheer of mind that I was wont to have." Who does nowadays?)

     Where does "stoup," with a U, fit in? Back to the OED...

     Ah, here is the Dutch — specifically, Middle Dutch — I detected, older than them all, back to the 14th century to describe "a pail or bucket" now limited to the Scots and, of course, Shakespeare, quoting that and John Galt's 1822 satiric novel, "The Provost" — "Even lasses were fleeing to and fro, like water nymphs with urns, having stoups and pails in their hands."

    That seemed a lovely image to leave you with — it makes sense that a guy like Sir Belch would ask for a pail of wine — but thoroughness demanded I press on, finding a second OED definition, narrowing our pail into "a drinking-vessel, of varying dimensions; a cup, flagon, tankard."

     That's what Belch wanted: a cup of wine. No wonder people spurn the fact-based world. It does have a way of spilling the wind from the billowing sails of our fancy.

Pet surrenders surge in hard times — the right way and the wrong way

Kaye Larsen Olloway at Fat Cat Rescue, 2023.

 

     The black Kia rolled up shortly before midnight to Fat Cat Rescue, a 7-acre haven for feral cats in Wadsworth that readers might remember me visiting in the summer of 2023.
     It certainly was not summer now, but late January and bitterly cold.
     A couple got out of the car. You see them on security camera footage, jiggling locked door handles. They notice the doggie door, remove a cat from the car, push it through the door, then speed off.
     Being a cat, however, the animal didn't stay where it was put. She ran back outside, into the freezing weather, joined by two more cats dropped off by the same couple.
     The volunteers who keep Fat Cat humming eventually corralled the three cats, one badly hurt by frostbite. Then they appealed to me.
     "We need your help please," Michelle Andrich, a volunteer, wrote. "Two-part help."
     The first part was to share photos of the couple dropping off the cats and their car in the hope that "someone will recognize them and turn them in. ... There should be consequences for their actions."
     Pass. In the annals of unpunished crime, dropping off cats at a shelter doesn't cry out for justice. The couple didn't know any better, which leads to Fat Cat's second request.
     "There are proper ways for a pet owner to surrender their pets," Andrich said. Would I help "educate or enlighten people on proper ways to surrender your pet"?
     Well, I can try. Whether they actually get enlightened is on them.
     People give up their animals for a variety of reasons — they move, lose jobs, can no longer afford their upkeep. Pets get sick, or their owners do.
     What should you do if you can no longer care for an animal?
     Start by planning ahead, if possible.
     "Don't wait until the last minute," said Kaye Larsen Olloway, who runs Fat Cat and suggests allowing at least a month to find your pet a home. "If you know you're moving out, don't wait until the night before to make arrangements for the pet. Give us a chance to make arrangements. We have a list of 20 other rescues we can contact."
     Or reach out to Chicago Animal Care and Control.
     "Our staff will help you," said Armando Tejeda, public information officer at the city department. "You don't have to do this alone. Resources exist."

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Restaurant notes: S.K.Y.

S.K.Y.

      My sons are foodies, and I am always glad when they pick the restaurant, as I know I'm going to dip my toe into something new and noteworthy.

     Saturday it was brunch at S.K.Y. at 2300 N. Lincoln Park West, in the elegant Belden-Stratford apartment building, whose stunning lobby entrance S.K.Y. shares with the venerable Mon Ami Gabi.
     The room is large and lovely — elegant in an austere, mottled concrete fashion — if fairly empty at 12 noon on a Saturday, not a good sign for them. Things were certainly hopping next door at Mon Ami Gabi. I cast a covetous glance in its direction as we swept past.

     Service at S.K.Y. was impeccable. We were six adults and a baby, and we were sat front and center and never rushed. The cuisine is ... what? Asian fusion? The brunch menu offered bibimbop, pork belly noodles and poke, so that sounds right. The Michelin Guide called it "globally minded." The restaurant's unfortunate name stands for the initials of the chef's wife, Seon Kyung Yuk. Myself, I wouldn't monogram a towel, never mind a restaurant. S.K.Y. used to be in Pilsen, which seems an odd fit, like opening a rib joint on Devon Avenue. It relocated to Lincoln Park last July.
     The appetizers were a hit, the black truffle coquettes, filled with aged white cheddar, light and piping hot, the Maine lobster dumplings stuffed with generous helpings of buttery lobster.
     I had trouble finding a main course item that suited my fancy (with days to consider, now that checking out the menu, ahead of time online, is something of a dining tradition). Sizzling Sisig and Short Rib Shakshuka didn't strike me as brunch fare. Maybe I'm losing my exploratory spark. I settled on what I thought was a safe bet, a French Onion Cheeseburger au Jus. Dipping burgers into beef stock is not my idea of a good time, and the crispy gruyere round standing in for the burger's slice of cheese didn't float my boat either. For a $21.95 burger, it was just okay. My wife had Hot Smoked Salmon Tartine on toast, and that seemed a smarter order. She gave me several generous bites.

     The brunch pastry tier for dessert allowed us to sample the place's baked goods — my wife and I were big fans of the petite cornmeal madeleines, while the rest were sweet and ordinary. Still, dividing them in six pieces and passing them around was a fun process.
     The most intriguing item was a slice of "local toast" on the menu for $8.88, which I was tempted to try, in tribute to the $24 bread basket at Balthazar in New York City — the .88 in all the prices being some kind of numerological luck thing. But we already had carbs aplenty, and I decided to leave the toast a mystery.
     My younger son and his wife have been to S.K.Y. before and love the place, so I can assume that my tepid reaction says more about my blunted, aging sensibilities and less about the restaurant's quality, or lack of same. My wife and I decided that we'd go back, if pressed, but would vastly prefer to return to the nearby North Pond, in a similar price range and just better in the grub department. Still, the company was excellent, and a good time was had by all.

'The ghost in the machine is just us' — AI pinch hits. But there's a problem...

 

I also asked Gemini 3.0 to create a new columnist's bug for me — I'm overdue. Notice anything wrong with it? That's right, they place the Aon Center on the river. And I'm left-handed.

     Two years ago, with artificial intelligence the hot new thing, I enlivened a slow February morning by feeding Gemini AI this prompt: "Write a column defending the use of artificial intelligence in the style of Neil Steinberg of the Chicago Sun-Times."
     Gemini spat out a snappy patter that began, "Hey, Windy City. Steinberg here, with a word about our new neighbors: the robots. Yeah, I'm talking AI. Artificial intelligence. All the sci-fi buzzwords that used to belong to Isaac Asimov and now clog your Twitter feed."
     "Does that sound like my voice?" I asked readers, sincerely aghast. "Kill me now."
     Last February, I checked up on how AI had advanced by putting the same request to Gemini 2.0. The result was smoother, better, and — what really scared me — it provided a spot-on critique of what my writing is like, unbidden, noting my "casual and conversational tone" and "cynical and skeptical outlook" seasoned with "A touch of self-deprecation."
     Who needs self-deprecation anymore? Not when reality deprecates us so regularly, with technology and the entire culture joining forces in a feverish drive to utterly moot what real people, such as myself, do for a living.
     Now February has come again and is fast waning. So if I want to keep the tradition alive — the way things are going, there might not be another February — time to gird my loins and approach AI, bigger than ever, filling actual, real-world jobs, so — cue the self-deprecation: I thought I'd lob Gemini 3.0 the same slow pitch and see what happens.
     Four seconds after I clicked the button, it offered a solid headline: "The Ghost in the Machine is Just Us" and a column beginning:
     "I stepped onto the Red Line this morning and watched a young man staring into his phone, his thumb flicking upward with the rhythmic precision of a piston. He wasn’t looking at the scenery — which, let’s be honest, is mostly the backside of crumbling brick three-flats anyway — he was arguing with a computer. Or rather, he was asking a computer to write a poem for his girlfriend because he, like most of us when faced with a blank page and the weight of human expectation, had found himself utterly empty."
     Sigh.
     OK folks, using only that big, slow, imperfect lump of pink wetware between your ears, can anyone please tell me the problem with that paragraph? Not a subtle drawback either. I hope. Honestly, the flaw should reach out of the page and slap you hard across the face. Because — not to pressure you — if it doesn't, it truly might be time for me to go out to Lake Michigan, settle myself on an ice floe and wait for spring, to be carried out to that Great Newsroom in the Sky, to share a lager with H.L. Mencken and Sydney J. Harris ...
     Anybody?    
     It's not true. I didn't step out onto the Red Line — indeed, would never use that phrase if I did, but name the specific station — there was no young man, no phone, no nascent poem.
     Honestly, Gemini could have responded the same if I asked it to pinpoint the biggest problem with AI: firehosing a constant stream of fictitious slop.
     This year's Fauxberg column continues:
     "The scolds will tell you this is the end. They’ll say that Artificial Intelligence is the final nail in the coffin of the human spirit, a cold, silicon reaper coming for our jobs, our art, and our very ability to think.... We are a species that delights in fearing our own shadows, especially when those shadows are cast by a new kind of light."

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Flashback 1987: Buying a tie - How to select one that suits you

     Lawyers are circumspect. While paid to speak, in court, they are also paid not to speak, at least not publicly, in almost every other situation.
     This would make me almost an anti-lawyer, in that I am paid to communicate constantly, and also do so on a pro bono basis, such as here. For fun.
     The general reticence of lawyers came up recently at home, when I showed a unpublished blog post to a certain young attorney mentioned in it, hoping he'd say, "Sure, go for it. Excellent work!" What he actually said was, "I'd rather you didn't." Or words to that effect. The moment evoked the memory of a long afternoon spent trying to find a lawyer who would provide the first quote in the story below. I had to knock on many doors, despite it being what I thought was a completely uncontroversial topic. Saying nothing is always safer.
    I was newly hired, writing for "The Adviser," a weekly section giving people tips on living their lives, necessary in that pre-Internet age. Now ties are hardly worn at all. Or if they are worn, are too often red, and you can wear one tied so long that it covers your fly and still be president. Bigsby & Kruthers went out of business in 2000.

 

 

     "Before the world sees your home, your automobile or your wife's jewelry, it sees your necktie."
                                                    — Montague

     Behold the common necktie. A simple strip of cloth, 56 inches long and — this year — about 3 1/4 inches wide. It serves no practical purpose, beyond covering the buttons at the front of the shirt.
     But a lot of symbolic weight is packed into those few square inches of fabric. When a man puts on a tie, he is donning his armor for the workplace.
     In comparison to the tie, the suit jacket is a mere accessory. Any CEO can doff his jacket, roll up his sleeves and run a meeting. But take off the tie, and he might as well grow three days' worth of beard and carry a pair of maracas.
     For example, no lawyer worth his writ would be caught, in or out of a courtroom, without a tie.
     "Law firms provide fairly expensive services to their clients," said David Crumbaugh, a partner in the law firm of Winston & Strawn. "They are selling those services, and at same time they are selling a certain image, of which a tie is a required part."
     Gene Silverberg, president and co-owner of Bigsby & Kruthers men's stores, feels so strongly about the importance of ties that he covered an entire wall of his new La Salle and Madison store with them, and says it is more important to buy a few suits with many ties, than many suits with few ties.
     "When you're looking at Michael," said Silverberg, using his hands to frame the area between senior vice president of merchandising Michael Karpik's chin and mid-chest, "you're looking right here. You concentrate on the shirt and tie. That's the focal point, the power zone."
     Power is an important word when it comes to neckties. Just take a glance at the televised Iran/Contra hearings and you'll see a parade of power ties, their colors and patterns carefully selected to give an impression of professionalism — and honesty.
     "Teal is a powerful color," said Karpik, the tie-buyer for the Bigsby & Kruthers stores. "Pinks are still hot, or yellows. People want the power look."
     Not only do men wear ties for power, they wear them to be distinctive, to stand out from the crowd.
     "Men are getting a little more daring for business wear," said Bill Gardner, owner of Besley Tie Shops. "Reds and yellows are still very popular, but we're seeing a lot more pastels."
     Be forewarned. It is easy to get in trouble with a tie. If you tie it too short, or too long, the most expensive tie will seem ridiculous (ideally, the tip of your tie should just crest over your belt buckle). A little extra haste in the morning, and you'll leave your clients asking themselves, "How is this guy going to manage my assets if he can't tuck his tie under his collar in the back?"
     Ties come in thousands of patterns and varieties. When choosing one, you need to keep two things in mind: what the tie will be used for, and whether the tie is right for you.
     "There are ties for getting a raise and ties for getting a date," said Silverberg, holding up a red silk tie with small emblems. "Now, some people would wear this on a date, even though it isn't a tie for a date. It's a tie for the office."
     Silverberg then pointed to a rich, glittering tie with inlaid patterns of silver and purple. "Now this tie says: `Friday night, work's over. . . .' "
     If you have a difficult time matching the various elements of your wardrobe, selecting ties with a variety of colors in them can make the task easier.
     "For instance, this tie will pick up a gray suit, a blue suit, a yellow shirt, yellow socks," Karpik said, holding up a pink tie with medallions of pink, blue, burgundy, gray, teal and yellow.
     Silverberg said to be creative when selecting ties by giving classic styles a slight twist. Set yourself apart from the crowd and still appear well-dressed by wearing a tie with large single paisleys or oversized medallions.
     "The whole dress-for-success thing turned out to be bad," said Silverberg. "All these rules for business dressing were created and the result was complete anonymity.
     "We always encourage a little flair. You don't make waves, but you can make ripples."
     There are several tests of quality when buying a tie. Hold the tie in the middle and let the wide end hang. If the tie does not hang straight, but twists, that's a sign the inner lining is too tight, or not sewn properly. The tie won't hang right on your neck, either.
     Another test is take the tie, seam side up, and hold it in the middle with both hands, between the thumb and curled fingers. With a light grip, slowly run the tie through your fingers. The lining in a quality tie will not bunch up.
     Judging the quality of a tie by how many gold stripes are on the white lining sounds like one of those urban myths, but it is a valid test. The best, heaviest lining has six gold stripes. Lesser qualities have fewer stripes. Turn the tie over and gently fold back the ends to expose the lining and the stripes.
     Ties can be made of numerous materials: silk, wool, polyester, cotton. Which material makes the best tie is a personal decision and the subject of some debate.
     "I've been making ties since 1940, and peddling ties before, so I should know something about ties," said Irving Wolfmark, 79, founder of the Wolfmark Neckwear Co., holding up his own maroon polyester tie. "When a person buys a polyester tie or polyester silk tie, they find satisfaction. The tie holds its shape, comes up like new after you clean it.
     "People go for silk because it is more expensive," Wolfmark continued, "but if a silk tie gets a spot, you have to throw it away. The most practical tie for someone who wears a tie everyday is a polyester tie."
     Bigsby & Kruthers, on the other hand, doesn't stock polyester.
     "There's no virtue in having a polyester tie," said Silverberg.
     "My customers don't put their ties in washing machines. I don't want to be a snob, but there is a certain resilience to silk. It's natural. The best manufacturers in the world, the ones with the most interesting patterns and designs, don't use polyester. A polyester tie is very utilitarian and a silk tie is very artful."
     One kind of tie you should never buy, unless you are a policeman or a lathe operator, is a clip-on tie. Clip-ons are fashion death, and unless required by your job, they should be disposed of after adolescence.
     "Throw them away," said Karpik. "They're good for 9-year-olds at Sunday school. That's it. After grammar school, it's time to get a real tie."
           — Originally published in the Sun-Times, May 31, 1987