Richard Wilhelm Francis Kroll, R.I.P.

Richard Wilhelm Francis Kroll is dead, all too untimely. He was the great-grandson of the world-renowned classicist Wilhelm Kroll, who was one of the primary collaborators on the Pauly-Wissowa Realencyclopaedie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, and an establisher of many standard texts, including the Teubner text of Catullus. Richard Kroll was a worthy successor. One of the world's experts on early modern literature, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, his erudition was matchless, as was his enthusiasm for his subjects and for teaching. I was never his student, and as such, was not subjected to the blisteringly high standards he imposed on his charges, but enjoyed many hours of conversation with him, ranging over hundreds of years of literature and music. Sometimes it seemed as though he had committed every primary text of his period to memory, and could quote or identify any bit of it that came within range.

He was not a quiet man. Born in Kenya, he retained an unapologetic and vocal colonialism, and, more to the point, a vigorous lack of political correctness, that put him at odds with many a more "enlightened" colleague. He was always willing to offer a vociferous opinion, on the understanding that it was, of course, correct. Talking to him, you at first had the sense of being a Platonic interlocutor, whose function was to affirm; in fact, he was a much better listener than he let on, and, if you engaged him, was more than willing to follow out your assertions to their logical conclusion.

He was a great lover of classical music, and an audiophile of the highest water. I had the privilege of listening to his absurdly sophisticated stereo system, into which he had poured his modest professorial salary, and through which music seemed to have a new life. We would listen to operas, string quartets, and even some of the modern music I brought, to which he would append thoughtful and incisive commentary.

I will miss his strong opinions, his friendship, and his commitment to a life of the mind that seems to be vanishing in these times. We could have used much more of him.

Progress Bars

Somewhere, there is a made-up statistic that says that 1/6 of our lives is spent looking at progress bars. I would like a progress bar to proceed steadily and give me an accurate indication of how far along some activity is, preferably with an estimated time to completion. Instead, there are progress bars that advance only to retreat, progress bars which complete only to be replaced with other, empty progress bars, and progress bars that go back and forth. There are even progress bars which do nothing except to tell you that some activity is occurring, and there are yet others which tell you no such thing, because they are just animated images. The only innovation in progress bars that I like is when, when you are uninstalling something, the progress bar goes backwards. There must be human interface guidelines somewhere that mandate meaningful progress bars. If not, surely they are on their way to completion.