3 Matching Annotations
  1. Feb 2024
    1. Ranking below Thomas Austin, who sent in 165,061 slips, and WilliamDouglas, who sent in 151,982, there is a big drop to the third-highestcontributor Dr Thomas Nadauld Brushfield, who sent in 70,277 slips.

      repetition here from before to introduce mental health...

    2. the outright winner was a mysterious character called Thomas Austin Jnr whosent Dr Murray an incredible total of 165,061 over the span of a decade.Second place goes to William Douglas of Primrose Hill who sent in 151,982slips over twenty-two years; third place to Dr Thomas Nadauld Brushfield ofDevon, with 70,277 over twenty-eight years; with Dr William Chester Minorof Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum coming in fourth place with 62,720slips.

      Top slip contributors to OED: 1. Thomas Austin Jnr. 165,061 slips over 10 years (45.22 notes per day) 2. William Douglas 151,982 over 22 years (18.92 notes per day) 3. Thomas Nadauld Brushfield 70,277 over 28 years (1.98 notes per day) 4. William Chester Minor 62,720 slips over 23 years (to 1906) (7.5 notes per day)

  2. Apr 2022
    1. Ann Bergin writes (in her diary with respect to [[Zoom Session 1 for The Extended Mind]]):

      She [Mary Douglas] argues that ring composition is an enabling constraint, both for storytelling and interpretation. Douglas mentions a form of parallelism in divination in ancient China based upon the symmetrical markings on either side of a turtle shell.

      This sounds quite similar to me to the work in Bascom's Sixteen Cowries which Lynne Kelly summarizes in The Memory Code when talking about West African divination systems (particularly the Yoruba) using seeds, nuts, and cowrie shells and songs which memorized songs are sung based on the outcomes of tossing these objects.

      Is there in fact a link between these storytelling/song systems? Are they functioning roughly the same way? Is there a level of recombination or statistical chance in the ring composition systems Douglas is describing? Are they similar without the combinatorial portions?


      References:

      W.R. Bascom, Sixteen Cowries: Yoruba divination from Africa to the New World, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1980.