11 Matching Annotations
  1. Last 7 days
    1. “Do you know, Watson,” said he, “that it is one of the curses of a mind with a turn like mine that I must look at everything with reference to my own special subject. You look at these scattered houses, and you are impressed by their beauty. I look at them, and the only thought which comes to me is a feeling of their isolation and of the impunity with which crime may be committed there.”

      Indexing the world into a commonplace book, zettelkasten, or other means can create new perspectives on the world in which we live. It thereby helps to prevent the sorts of cognitive bias which we might otherwise fall trap to.

      This example of Homes indexing crime gives him a dramatically different perspective on crime in the countryside to Watson who only sees the beauty in the story of "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches."

    2. By eleven o’clock the next day we were well upon our way to the old English capital. Holmes had been buried in the morning papers all the way down, but after we had passed the Hampshire border he threw them down and began to admire the scenery. It was an ideal spring day, a light blue sky, flecked with little fleecy white clouds drifting across from west to east. The sun was shining very brightly, and yet there was an exhilarating nip in the air, which set an edge to a man’s energy. All over the countryside, away to the rolling hills around Aldershot, the little red and grey roofs of the farm-steadings peeped out from amid the light green of the new foliage. “Are they not fresh and beautiful?” I cried with all the enthusiasm of a man fresh from the fogs of Baker Street. But Holmes shook his head gravely. “Do you know, Watson,” said he, “that it is one of the curses of a mind with a turn like mine that I must look at everything with reference to my own special subject. You look at these scattered houses, and you are impressed by their beauty. I look at them, and the only thought which comes to me is a feeling of their isolation and of the impunity with which crime may be committed there.” “Good heavens!” I cried. “Who would associate crime with these dear old homesteads?” “They always fill me with a certain horror. It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.” “You horrify me!” “But the reason is very obvious. The pressure of public opinion can do in the town what the law cannot accomplish. There is no lane so vile that the scream of a tortured child, or the thud of a drunkard’s blow, does not beget sympathy and indignation among the neighbours, and then the whole machinery of justice is ever so close that a word of complaint can set it going, and there is but a step between the crime and the dock. But look at these lonely houses, each in its own fields, filled for the most part with poor ignorant folk who know little of the law. Think of the deeds of hellish cruelty, the hidden wickedness which may go on, year in, year out, in such places, and none the wiser.
  2. Jul 2022
    1. From Friday 2022-07-29 evening:

      Narrative String Theory<br /> Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (Warner Bros., 2011) has background NST boards at approx 17:22 and 1:18:46.

      Currently available on Netflix. If you're careful with timing you can get some fun facial expressions out of Holmes and Watson on one of them.

      https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1515091/

    1. Imagine that when you reading The Odyssey in a WorldLiterature class, you found you were interested in

      Or maybe you were interested in color the way former British Prime Minister William Gladstone was? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studies_on_Homer_and_the_Homeric_Age

      Or you noticed a lot of epithets (rosy fingered dawn, wine dark sea, etc.) and began tallying them all up the way Milman Parry did? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milman_Parry

      How might your notes dramatically change how we view the world?


      Aside: In the Guy Ritchie film Sherlock Holmes (2009), Watson's dog's name was Gladstone, likely a cheeky nod to William Gladstone who was active during the setting of the movie's timeline.

  3. Jun 2022
    1. https://press.princeton.edu/ideas/sherlock-holmes-and-the-history-of-information

      If Sherlock Holmes had an excerpting and commonplacing practice, did Arthur Conan Doyle?

    2. He examines archival documents and prehistoric barrows as expertly as mud splashes and tobacco ash, and files the results of his reading and excerpting systematically in a massive collection of notebooks, which he regularly consults.

      Worth pulling out the exact reference, but Anthony Grafton indicates that Sherlock Holmes regularly read and "excerpted systematically into a massive collection of notebooks, which he regularly consults."

    1. As SherlockHolmes says to Watson on a famous occasion: "If page 534 findsus only in Chapter Two, the length of the first one must have beenreally intolerable."

      Interesting to see Barzun quote Arthur Conan Doyle here. Not surprising given his penchant for mystery novels however.

  4. Feb 2021
  5. Dec 2015
    1. More than 100 years ago Mr. Sherlock Holmes

      Few people know this but Sherlock was actually born in Russia in 1792 and didn't change his name until much later.