12 Matching Annotations
  1. Feb 2024
    1. A useful model for note-taking is that of system 1 and 2 thinking. Try to do as much as possible in system 1. So, most work is done without much work and effort. Chris places his hypothesis.is workflow within system 1.

  2. Aug 2016
    1. are ne

      This interaction is funny and intriguing. This was published 30 years before the suffrage movement and already you can see things are starting to change. Sherlock, although very progressive with his reason and detective skills, still sees women as inadequate. While Watson is coming around to the new way of thinking that women can have opinions and thoughts too.

    2. short

      (I’m putting this at the end of Small’s narrative because my annotation deals with the entire thing.) Doyle wrote this piece during the heat of british imperialism and had had much success in taking over indigenous populations. Doyle kind of shows India as mystical and full of treasure and there is this constant idea that the new world means wealth. It was a popular belief among people at the time. But paired with the luxurious treasure is the constant despair and destruction. Maybe Doyle is suggesting Britain’s ability to overthrow anyone shouldn’t be so highly praised for it only seems to cause chaos. By casting Sholto as a British man as well as a thief I think Doyle is showing his contradictory views. Maybe Doyle sees this expansion and power as robbing other nations and over stepping british boundary.

    3. Tonga thought he had done somethingvery clever in killing him, for when I came up bythe rope I found him strutting about as proud as apeacock.

      Also Sherlock and Watson viewed the little man as a savage, so possibly Conan Doyle believes that these people indigenous to Tierra del Fuego are crazy and cannot control themselves

    4. Morstan went over to Agrashortly afterwards, and found, as we expected, thatthe treasure was indeed gone.

      I find it funny that throughout this whole story they were trying to find and convict the man who had wronged Sholto and Mary's father, when both of them had wronged Mr. Smalls and taken all of his wealth and he spent his whole time trying to get revenge for his brothers or "The Sign of Four." To Mr. Smalls home is the bond that he made between the three other men. To Mr. Smalls it didn't matter what race they were because they made a promise to each other and he tried to help them.

    5. For some little time hiseyes rested thoughtfully upon the sinewy forearmand wrist all dotted and scarred with innumerablepuncture-marks. Finally he thrust the sharp pointhome, pressed down the tiny piston, and sank backinto the velvet-lined arm-chair with a long sigh ofsatisfaction.

      As said by a few other classmates, this is historical context because drugs such as morphine and cocaine, as well as many other opioids, were commonly used during the 1800s. However, other versions of Sherlock Holmes tales have taken this context out and replaced it with one that is more common for us, like drinking. The link below, in the section titled 'Sherlock Holmes, Eccentric Chemist (and Dope Shooter)' explains why the Sherlock Holmes movies replace his cocaine use with alcohol. https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2009/12/film-friday-comparing-ritchies-sherlock-holmes-to.html

    6. “ ‘Nonsense!’ he broke in. ‘What have threeblack fellows to do with our agreement?’“ ‘Black or blue,’ said I, ‘they are in with me,and we all go together.’

      This passage shows how Doyle is representing cultural blending. The major is belittling the three other men because they are black, and Small is defending them. This, in my observation, is Doyle's way of pushing down the idea of cultural purity, because the four men are working together to get the treasure regardless of their race.

    7. “For me,” said Sherlock Holmes, “there stillremains the cocaine-bottle.” And he stretched hislong white hand up for it.
    8. “so absurdly simple that an ex-planation is superfluous; and yet it may serve todefine the limits of observation and of deduction.

      Doyle is saying that even though the idea is very simple that no description is needed but giving context to it, will only limit what the audience views while reading. This seems like a good example of having multiple meanings because when things appear to be simple, and no description is given, we tend to miss something huge later on. I feel like this is foreshadowing for this book. If being simple were something that is just looked over, major clues for the characters, or readers are hidden in plane sight.

    9. What a very attractive woman!” I exclaimed,turning to my companion.He had lit his pipe again, and was leaning backwith drooping eyelids. “Is she?” he said, languidly.“I did not observe.”“You really are an automaton,—a calculating-machine!” I cried. “There is something positivelyinhuman in you at times

      Yet again it is shown the difference between Watson and Holmes, and perhaps one of the great strengths Holmes is able to show in his ability to seperate emotions or feelings from his outlook on the problems.

      This is in stark comparison to Watson, who makes this remark, whilst Holmes is thinking about the problem at hand. Not only this, but he does get emotionally involved with her multiple times later in the story, whereas Holmes is able to focus his mental capacity on the pressing matter at hand

    10. My father was an officer in an Indian regimentwho sent me home when I was quite a child. Mymother was dead, and I had no relative in England.I was placed, however, in a comfortable boardingestablishment at Edinburgh, and there I remaineduntil I was seventeen years of age. In the year1878my father, who was senior captain of his regiment,obtained twelve months’ leave and came home

      Judging from the fact that it is said her father was in the "Indian regiment", in "the year 1878", we can get a pretty good idea of the war they are referring to, being the Second Anglo-Afghan war between the British Raj and the Emirate of Afghanistan, in the years of 1878 to 1880.

      The offensive was done by British India, invading Afghanistan, so this is with all likelihood what is referred to by the "Indian regiment", stating that Miss Morsten's father was a senior captain of his regiment in the British Indian invasion of Afghanistan in the Second Anglo-Afghan war.

    11. I never make exceptions. An exception dis-proves the rule.

      This really speaks to Sherlock's rigorous logical discipline that he keeps in his work, as he never lets his emotions get in the way of his observation, his work, and his thought process.