109 Matching Annotations
  1. Mar 2024
  2. Feb 2024
    1. The Dictionary’s coverage of the leading transcendentalist, HenryDavid Thoreau, is largely due to the monumental efforts of a single woman,Miss Alice Byington of Stockbridge, Massachusetts, who sent in 5,000 slipsfrom books that included several by Thoreau:

      over how long a period?

    2. Ashbee was also quite possibly the anonymous author of an infamouspublication, My Secret Life, a narrative (likely fictitious, albeit based on theauthor’s experiences) of the 1,500 sexual exploits of a man called ‘Walter’who frequented the bars and brothels of London in the 1880s. The memoirwas in excess of a million words, coming in at 4,000 pages, over elevenvolumes. Only six copies exist today of the original print run of 475, self-published for private subscribers, but it was reprinted in the 1960s and hassince grown in reputation and fame. Its author is still unidentified, but Ashbeeis the frontrunner. Given the words sent in to the Dictionary by Ashbee, itwould not be surprising if he authored a book with chapter headings such as‘My Cock’, ‘A Frisky Governess’, and ‘My Cousin’s Cunts’ (the plural ismind-boggling!). It was only very recently, in the twenty-first century, thatMy Secret Life was read for the OED and the editors discovered that itcontained the first written evidence for the words cocksucking, cunty, fist-fuck(originally meaning masturbation), frig, fuckee, and randiness.

      Ashbee could be an interesting movie idea...

    3. It was left to a handful of keen British scholars, by no means part of themainstream, to encourage others to take up Continental philology. Murrayand his colleagues at the London Philological Society, especially its foundersEdwin Guest, Henry Malden, and Thomas Hewitt Key, were main players inenlivening the British linguistic scene and adopting the methods ofContinental philology. Now known as ‘the oldest learned society in GreatBritain dedicated to the study of language’, the Philological Society wasfounded in 1842 as a forum for discussion, debate, and work on developmentsin philology. But all this innovation came comparatively late, and theGrimms, who were made honorary members of the London PhilologicalSociety in 1843, were at the heart of the European innovations. Theyinfluenced Continental philology; they practised the application of historicalprinciples; they pioneered the descriptive method of defining and tracing aword’s meaning across time; and they forged the crowdsourcing techniquesand lexicographic policies and practices adopted by the OED editors.
    1. Thoreau also said that we will be “rich in proportion to the numberof things which we can afford to let alone.”
    2. As Thoreau said, “We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us”;and this is what we must fight, in our time. The question is, indeed,Which is to be master? Will we survive our technologies?

      another variation of Thoreau on tools... source?

      It's Walden. (see: https://hypothes.is/a/b10mJsGoEe6rgteMdxbwKQ)

      Joy may have more profitably quoted the earlier Walden piece from p.41: "But lo! men have become the tools of their tools."

      There also seems to be the idea of our slow evolution into cybernetic or Borg-like beings hiding not only in Joy's argument, but in Thoreau's. If we integrate so closely with our tools, where do they stop and we end and vice versa?

      Compare this with the infamous problem of the ship of Theseus.

    1. We do not ride on the railroad; it rides uponus. Did you ever think what those sleepers are thatunderlie the railroad ? Each one is a man, an Irish¬man, or a Yankee man. The rails are laid on them, andthey are covered with sand, and the cars run smoothlyover them. They are sound sleepers, I assure you.And every few years a new lot is laid down and runover; so that, if some have the pleasure of riding on arail, others have the misfortune to be ridden upon.

      p100

      This fits into the same sort of framing as Thoreau's earlier quote "men have become the tools of their tools." (p41)

      see: https://hypothes.is/a/vooPrPkwEe2r_4MIb6tlFw

    2. But lo!men have become the tools of their tools. The manwho independently plucked the fruits when he was hun¬gry is become a farmer; and he who stood under a treefor shelter, a housekeeper.

      p41

      This quote is fascinating when one realizes that the Thoreau family business was manufacturing pencils at John Thoreau & Co., one of the first major pencil companies in the United States. Thoreau's father was the titular John and Henry David worked in the factory and improved upon the hardness of their graphite. https://hypothes.is/a/sm7LUpazEe2tTq_GhGiVIg

      One might also then say that the man who manufactured pencils naturally should become a writer!


      This quote also bears some interesting resemblance to quotes about tools which shape us by Winston Churchill and John M. Culkin see: https://hypothes.is/a/6Znx6MiMEeu3ljcVBsKNOw

  3. Jan 2024
    1. But if we are downloaded into our technology, what are the chancesthat we will thereafter be ourselves or even human?

      reminiscent of the quote:

      Life imitates art. We shape our tools and thereafter they shape us.<br /> —John M. Culkin, “A Schoolman’s Guide to Marshall McLuhan” (The Saturday Review, March 1967) (Culkin was a friend and colleague of Marshall McLuhan)<br /> (see: https://hypothes.is/a/6Znx6MiMEeu3ljcVBsKNOw)

      or the earlier version:

      But lo! men have become the tools of their tools. The man who independently plucked the fruits when he was hungry is become a farmer; and he who stood under a tree for shelter, a housekeeper.<br /> —Henry David Thoreau, Walden, p41 <br /> (see: https://hypothes.is/a/vooPrPkwEe2r_4MIb6tlFw)

  4. Dec 2023
    1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cisco_Kid

      I can't help but feel like this story and subsequent television shows and movies informed the creation of Robert Aldrich's The Frisco Kid (1979).

  5. Nov 2023
  6. Oct 2023
    1. Acknowledgement: Great thanks to Chris Aldrich who saw the Quote Investigator article about the saying “We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us”. Aldrich notified QI of the germane quotation examined in this new article. Aldrich pointed to its presence in “Walden”. This led QI to create this article and to update the existing article.

      https://quoteinvestigator.com/2023/10/21/tools-of-tools/

      I'm responsible for a quote investigator article being rewritten! Huzzah!

      Cross reference my note: https://boffosocko.com/2023/05/22/men-have-become-the-tools-of-their-tools-henry-david-thoreau/

  7. Sep 2023
    1. a transcendental is something that is, or not a thing, of course, but it's very well known and it has been well known for a very long time.
      • for: Kant's transcendental - in history, quote, quote - Upanishad, quote - Ernst Cassirer, quote - Michel Henry, quote - Giovanni Gentile, quote Edmund Husserl

      • paraphrase

        • The transcendental cannot be an objective thought but is the condition for any objective thought
        • Brihadaranyaka Upanishad
          • Kant's transcendental is equivalent to the Braham
            • it is never seen but is a seer
            • it is never heard but is a hearer
            • it is never thought but is the thinker
            • it is never known but is the knower
            • it is the source of things and the source of knowledge
        • Ernst Cassirer
          • Consciousness is a goal to which knowledge turns its back
        • Michel Henry Consciousness cannot be shown, for it is the power to show.
        • Giovanni Gentile
        • Edmund Husserl
          • transcendental turn
            • the world is a sense for the transcendental ego
            • the transcendental ego is presupposed by the senses
    1. In 1896, they invented a simple mending tape to fix torn currency, but it soon became a hit with librarians for mending books. Gaylord Bros. became a purveyor of supplies to libraries across the country.
    1. Even though I commented earlier i have to side with Chris. A ZK is best suited for argumentative and essay like work, not creative one like poetry.Maybe this is something that we need to discuss as a community as hole: it’s seems that a lot of people try to fit their needs to a system that (in my opinion) it’s neither intended or works for those kinds of projects.

      reply to Efficient_Eart_8773 at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/16ad43u/comment/jzaas4l/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

      Though depending on your needs and desires, you can really do both to effectuate the outcomes you'd like to have. The secret is knowing which affordances, structures, and methods suit your desired outcomes. (Of course if you're going to dump your box out and do massive rearrangements or take large portions out and want to refile them for other needs, then you're going to have to give them numbers and do that re-filing work.)

      I've seen snippets of saved language in Thoreau's journal (commonplace) which were re-used in other parts of his journal which ultimately ended up in a published work. As he didn't seem to have a significant index, one can only guess that he used occasional browsing or random happenstance delving into it to have moved it from one place to another.

      As ever, what do you need and what will best get you there?


      Link to:<br /> What Got You Here Won't Get You There

  8. Jun 2023
    1. Henry Grabar schillert in einem neuen Buch ausführlich die Folgen des parkens für amerikanische Städte. In den USA wird mehr Fläche für das Parken als für das wohnen verwendet. Allein um Houston in Texas herum wurde in den letzten Jahrzehnten eine Fläche, die dem Land Belgien entspricht, versiegelt. Die verkehrsemissionen sind der größte Teil des enormen amerikanischen treibhausgasausstoßes. Das Buch behandelt gründlich alle Aspekte des Themas und stellt Alternativen vor.https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/may/26/paved-paradise-book-americans-cars-climate-crisis

    1. Todd Henry in his book The Accidental Creative: How to be Brilliant at a Moment's Notice (Portfolio/Penguin, 2011) uses the acronym FRESH for the elements of "creative rhythm": Focus, Relationships, Energy, Stimuli, Hours. His advice about note taking comes in a small section of the chapter on Stimuli. He recommends using notebooks with indexes, including a Stimuli index. He says, "Whenever you come across stimuli that you think would make good candidates for your Stimulus Queue, record them in the index in the front of your notebook." And "Without regular review, the practice of note taking is fairly useless." And "Over time you will begin to see patterns in your thoughts and preferences, and will likely gain at least a few ideas each week that otherwise would have been overlooked." Since Todd describes essentially the same effect as @Will but without mentioning a ZK, this "magic" or "power" seems to be a general feature of reviewing ideas or stimuli for creative ideation, not specific to a ZK. (@Will acknowledged this when he said, "Using the ZK method is one way of formalizing the continued review of ideas", not the only way.)

      via Andy

      Andy indicates that this review functionality isn't specific to zettelkasten, but it still sits in the framework of note taking. Given this, are there really "other" ways available?

  9. May 2023
  10. Apr 2023
    1. Henry R. Luce

      founded Time, Life, Fortune, and Sports Illustrated magazines

      This explains the "advertisement" in LIFE in January 1948.

    Tags

    Annotators

  11. Mar 2023
    1. As ajournalist, historian, novelist, and autobiographer, Adams was con-stantly focused on the American experiment, testing a statementoffered by another figure in Democracy: ‘You Americans believe your-selves to be excepted from the operation of general laws. You care notfor experience’ (LA 37–8).

      In Chapter 1: American Exceptionalism of Myth America (Basic Books, 2023) historian David A. Bell indicates that Jay Lovestone and Joseph Stalin originated the idea of American Exceptionalism in 1920, but in Democracy (1880, p.72) Henry Adams seems to capture an early precursor of the sentiment:

      "Ah!" exclaimed the baron, with his wickedest leer, "what for is my conclusion good? You Americans believe yourselves to be excepted from the operation of general laws. You care not for experience. I have lived seventy-five years, and all that time in the midst of corruption. I am corrupt myself, only I do have courage to proclaim it, and you others have it not. Rome, Paris, Vienna, Petersburg, London, all are corrupt; only Washington is pure! Well, I declare to you that in all my experience I have found no society which has had elements of corruption like the United States. The children in the street are corrupt, and know how to cheat me. The cities are all corrupt, and also the towns and the counties and the States' legislatures and the judges. Every where men betray trusts both public and private, steal money, run away with public funds.

      Had a flavor of American Exceptionalism been brewing for decades before Stalin's comment?

    2. Adams, Henry. The Education of Henry Adams: An Autobiography. Edited by Ira B. Nadel. 1907. Reprint, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.

      annotation target: url: urn:x-pdf:36c954cb79cc117f8dbeff1351049bda

  12. Feb 2023
    1. One of the first writers to take up the cause ofthe new pirate state was a young Daniel Defoe, who in 1707published in his journal Review an elaborate case for recognizingAvery’s kingdom:

      Was this the same broadside mentioned earlier that others of the time were reading?

      What is the specific reference?

    2. he British government duly declared Avery an “enemyof all mankind” and an international manhunt was announced—theworld’s first.
  13. Jan 2023
    1. Among other things, I have traditionally used my Journal to think out loud to myself about my work in hand: the progress I’m making, the problems I’m encountering, and so on. Many of my best ideas have arisen by writing to myself like this.

      Richard Carter uses his writing journal practice to "think out loud" to himself. Often, laying out extended arguments helps people to refine and reshape their thinking as they're better able to see potential holes or missing pieces of arguments. It's the same sort of mechanism which is at work in rubber duck debugging of computer code: by explaining a process one is more easily able to see the missing pieces, errors, or problems with the process at hand.

      Carter's separate note taking and writing journal practice being used as a thought space or writing workshop of sorts is very similar to the process seen in my preliminary studies of Henry David Thoreau's work in which he kept commonplace books and separate (writing) journals which show evidence of his trying ideas on for size and working them before committing them to his published works.

    1. Mutual Aid grew from a series of essays written in response to Thomas Henry Huxley, a well-known Social Darwinist, and summarized the Russian understanding of the day, which was that while competition was undoubtedly one factor driving both natural and social evolution, the role of cooperation was ultimately decisive.
  14. fieldnotesbrand.com fieldnotesbrand.com
    1. A lovely quote I ran into this morning, perhaps for a future 3 pack, potentially featuring Thoreau, Thoreau and writing, Thoreau and nature, the Concord writing group, etc., etc.:

      "Might not my Journal be called 'Field Notes?'" —Henry David Thoreau, March 21, 1853 via The Journal of Henry David Thoreau, 1837-1861. Edited by Damion Searls. Original edition. New York: NYRB Classics, 2009. https://www.amazon.com/Journal-Thoreau-1837-1861-Review-Classics/dp/159017321X/

      There's also another writerly tie-in here as when he returned to Concord, Thoreau worked in his family's pencil factory(!!), which he would continue to do alongside his writing and other work for most of his adult life. Replica Thoreau factory pencils anyone?!

      Given the fact that he was an inveterate journaler as well as someone who who kept multiple commonplace books, perhaps a tie-in to a larger journal or commonplace book format product? (I'm reminded that the famous printer, publisher and typeface designer John Bell published blank commonplace books along with instructions from John Locke on how to keep and index them. See an example: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Bell_s_Common_Place_Book/3XCFtwAACAAJ?hl=en )

      At a minimum I'm pretty sure we all want this Thoreau quote on a Field Notes brand t-shirt...

      Thanks for all the years of solid design and great paper!

      Warmest regards, Chris Aldrich

    1. Might not my Journal be called “Field Notes?”

      —Henry David Thoreau, March 21, 1853

    2. to heaven. I see that if my facts were sufficiently vital and significant,—perhaps transmuted more into the substance of the human mind,—Ishould need but one book of poetry to contain them all.

      I have a commonplace-book for facts and another for poetry, but I find it difficult always to preserve the vague distinction which I had in my mind, for the most interesting and beautiful facts are so much the more poetry and that is their success. They are translated from earth

      —Henry David Thoreau February 18, 1852

      Rather than have two commonplaces, one for facts and one for poetry, if one can more carefully and successfully translate one's words and thoughts, they they might all be kept in the commonplace book of poetry.

    3. The definitive scholarly edition of the Journal is being published insixteen volumes by Princeton University Press in their series TheWritings of Henry D. Thoreau. To date, seven volumes are in print,each costing around $100; the material not yet in book form isavailable online atwww.library.ucsb.edu/thoreau/writings_journals.html.
    4. he Journal of Henry David Thoreau, 14 vols., edited by BradfordTorrey and Francis H. Allen, was first published in 1906 and iscurrently in print in a two-volume edition from Dover Books,photoreduced but easily readable; it was also reprinted by PeregrineSmith Books in 1984 with volume introductions by Walter Harding andincluding a lost volume first published by Perry Miller asConsciousness in Concord in 1958. Any of these editions is highlyrecommended for the reader who wants 6,000 more great pageswhere this book came from.

      Unabridged versions of Thoreau's journals, though note editing of some.

    5. Finally, I should say that this abridgment does not claim to beobjective. I chose passages for inclusion not necessarily because oftheir importance to Thoreau’s biography, or to cultural or naturalhistory, but because I liked them: the book is shaped by my personalproclivities as much as by anything else—a preference for berryingover fishing, owls over muskrats, ice over sunsets, to name a few atrandom.

      Fascinating to think that Damion Searls edited this edition of Thoreau's journals almost as if they were his (Searls') own commonplace book of Thoreau's journals themselves.

      Very meta!

    6. Like any journal, Thoreau’s is repetitive, which suggests naturalplaces to shorten the text but these are precisely what need to be keptin order to preserve the feel of a journal, Thoreau’s in particular. Itrimmed many of Thoreau’s repetitions but kept them wheneverpossible, because they are important to Thoreau and because theyare beautiful. Sometimes he repeats himself because he is drafting,revising, constructing sentences solid enough to outlast the centuries.

      Henry David Thoreau repeated himself frequently in his journals. Damion Searls who edited an edition of his journals suggested that some of this repetition was for the beauty and pleasure of the act, but that in many examples his repetition was an act of drafting, revising, and constructing.


      Scott Scheper has recommended finding the place in one's zettelkasten where one wants to install a card before writing it out. I believe (check this) that he does this in part to prevent one from repeating themselves, but one could use the opportunity and the new context that brings them to an idea again to rewrite or rework and expand on their ideas while they're so inspired.


      Thoreau's repetition may have also served the idea of spaced repetition: reminding him of his thoughts as he also revised them. We'll need examples of this through his writing to support such a claim. As the editor of this volume indicates that he removed some of the repetition, it may be better to go back to original sources than to look for these examples here.

      (This last paragraph on repetition was inspired by attempting to type a tag for repetition and seeing "spaced repetition" pop up. This is an example in my own writing practice where the serendipity of a previously tagged word auto-populating/auto-completing in my interface helps to trigger new thoughts and ideas from a combinatorial creativity perspective.)

    7. Sometimes, Isuspect, he copied his own words because he liked to copy: no one’scommonplace books could run to a million words—those are just theones that survive, in addition to a two-million-word Journal, andenormous quantities of other writing—without a sheer love of sittingwith pen in hand, a printed book and a blank page both open before

      him.

    8. Jan. 22. To set down such choice experiences that my own writingsmay inspire me and at last I may make wholes of parts. Certainly it isa distinct profession to rescue from oblivion and to fix the sentimentsand thoughts which visit all men more or less generally, that thecontemplation of the unfinished picture may suggest its harmoniouscompletion. Associate reverently and as much as you can with yourloftiest thoughts. Each thought that is welcomed and recorded is anest egg, by the side of which more will be laid. Thoughts accidentallythrown together become a frame in which more may be developedand exhibited. Perhaps this is the main value of a habit of writing, ofkeeping a journal,—that so we remember our best hours and stimulateourselves. My thoughts are my company. They have a certainindividuality and separate existence, aye, personality. Having bychance recorded a few disconnected thoughts and then brought theminto juxtaposition, they suggest a whole new field in which it waspossible to labor and to think. Thought begat thought.

      !!!!

      Henry David Thoreau from 1852

    9. Thoreau, Henry David. The Journal: 1837-1861. Edited by Damion Searls. Original edition. New York: NYRB Classics, 2009.

  15. Dec 2022
    1. Fluxus was an international, interdisciplinary community of artists, composers, designers and poets during the 1960s and 1970s who engaged in experimental art performances which emphasized the artistic process over the finished product.[1][2] Fluxus is known for experimental contributions to different artistic media and disciplines and for generating new art forms.
  16. Nov 2022
  17. Sep 2022
  18. Aug 2022
    1. Useful suggestions in regard tonote-taking will be found in Samuel S . Seward, Note-taking,Boston, 1910; and, especially for more advanced students, inEarle W. DOW, Principles of a note-system for hirton’calstudies, New York, 1924

      He's read Langlois/Seignobos and Bernheim, but doesn't recommend/reference them for note taking, but points to Seward and Dow instead.

      What are the differences between the four methods?

      Note that this advice is in 1931, a few years after Beatrice Webb's My Apprentice which has a section on note taking that prefers the first two without mention of the latter two.


      It would appear that Seward is the brother of William Henry Seward. see: https://hypothes.is/a/MwspfCBOEe2YCpesAgwiGQ

    1. Thought the middle names are similar, but slightly different spellings, this would seem to indicate that Stanford professor Samuel S. Seward, Jr. (author of Note-taking) is the brother of politician William Henry Seward.

  19. www.janeausten.pludhlab.org www.janeausten.pludhlab.org
    1. good-looking

      She refers to him as not handsome! Henry Golding as Mr Elliot is one of the few gifts of Persuasion 2022 (tried to attach a picture but it didn't work)

  20. Jul 2022
    1. various bibliographic catalog from the end of the '800 and '900 (from Paul Otlet/Henry La Fontaine Munaneum to Ranganathan faceted classification system passing through Niklas Luhmann, Carl Sagan and many others

      Look into Henry La Fontaine, Mundaneum, Ranganathan's faceted classification system.

      See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faceted_classification

      What was Carl Sagan's system?

  21. Jun 2022
    1. u/sscheper in writing your book, have you thought about the following alternative publishing idea which I'm transcribing from a random though I put on a card this morning?

      I find myself thinking about people publishing books in index card/zettelkasten formats. Perhaps Scott Scheper could do this with his antinet book presented in a traditional linear format, but done in index cards with his numbers, links, etc. as well as his actual cards for his index at the end so that readers could also see the power of the system by holding it in their hands and playing with it?

      It could be done roughly like Edward Powys Mathers' Cain's Jawbone or Henry Korn's Pontoon Manifesto? Perhaps numbered consecutively to make it easier to bring back into that format, but also done with your zk numbering so that people could order it and use it that way too? This way you get the book as well as a meta artifact of what the book is about as an example of how to do such a thing for yourself. Maybe even make a contest for a better ordering for the book than the one you published it in ?

      Link to: - https://hyp.is/6IBzkPfeEeyo9Suq-ZmCKg/www.scientificamerican.com/article/reading-paper-screens/

    1. https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/patrick-henry-virginia-ratifying-convention-va/

      While gerrymandering isn't brought up explicitly here, the underlying principles are railed against heavily.

      Some interesting things applicable to the rise of Donald J. Trump hiding in here.

      Interesting to read this in its historical context versus our present context. So much can be read into his words from our current context, while others can extract dramatically different views--particularly by Constitutional originalists.

    2. It is a fact that lands have been sold for five shillings, which were worth one hundred pounds: if sheriffs, thus immediately under the eye of our state legislature and judiciary, have dared to commit these outrages, what would they not have done if their masters had been at Philadelphia or New York?

      This is almost hilarious in light of how the U.S. Government has since repeatedly dispossessed Indigenous Americans of their lands for far less than "five shillings."

    3. Our situation will be deplorable indeed: nor can we ever expect to get this government amended, since I have already shown that a very small minority may prevent it, and that small minority interested in the continuance of the oppression.

      The definition of "freemen" to Patrick Henry here is ultimate as otherwise all of his words are folly since they don't include exactly those people who are most oppressed within his own country.

    4. O sir, we should have fine times, indeed, if, to punish tyrants, it were only sufficient to assemble the people! Your arms, wherewith you could defend yourselves, are gone; and you have no longer an aristocratical, no longer a democratical spirit. Did you ever read of any revolution in a nation, brought about by the punishment of those in power, inflicted by those who had no power at all? You read of a riot act in a country which is called one of the freest in the world, where a few neighbors cannot assemble without the risk of being shot by a hired soldiery, the engines of despotism. We may see such an act in America.

      Oh the ironies of this as he was talking about a small proportion of the population at the time, a large swath of which (namely enslaved persons with no power) had no arms to protect themselves against him.

      His definition of "freemen" was painfully limiting for someone speaking about freedom in such lofty terms.

    5. A bare majority in these four small states may hinder the adoption of amendments; so that we may fairly and justly conclude that one twentieth part of the American people may prevent the removal of the most grievous inconveniences and oppression, by refusing to accede to amendments. A trifling minority may reject the most salutary amendments. Is this an easy mode of securing the public liberty It is, sir, a most fearful situation, when the most contemptible minority can prevent the alteration of the most oppressive government; for it may, in many respects, prove to be such. Is this the spirit of republicanism?

      Patrick Henry railed against the idea that small minorities could hold the country hostage and subject us to "the most oppressive government".

      Little did he anticipate that gerrymandering and chicanery of just such a nature would come to pass in American History.

    6. Some minds are agitated by foreign alarms. Happily for us, there is no real danger from Europe; that country is engaged in more arduous business: from that quarter there is no cause of fear: you may sleep in safety forever for them.

      When talking about "disciplined armies", "defense", and "militias" at the Virginia Ratifying Convention in 1788, Patrick Henry explicitly says that the United States is not in danger from European powers:

      Some minds are agitated by foreign alarms. Happily for us, there is no real danger from Europe; that country is engaged in more arduous business: from that quarter there is no cause of fear: you may sleep in safety forever for them.

    1. Among other things, Coryat's book introduced the use of the fork to England[3] and, in its support of continental travel, helped to popularize the idea of the Grand Tour that rose in popularity later in the century. The book also included what is likely the earliest English rendering of the legend of William Tell.

      I can't remember what brought me to this page, but some fascinating culture hiding here.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coryat%27s_Crudities

    1. Elie Mystal writes in Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy's Guide to the Constitution:

      There was an original purpose to the Second Amendment, but it wasn't to keep people safe. It was to preserve white supremacy and slavery. (p36)

      He indicates that there are quotes from Patrick Henry and George Mason, governor of Virginia. They needed the ability to raise an armed militia to put down slave revolts and didn't want to rely on the federal government to do it.


      • [ ] Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy's Guide to the Constitution by Elie Mystal #wanttoread

      link to 1967 Mulford Act signed by Ronald Reagan see also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulford_Act

  22. May 2022
    1. in my experience it has its head has a similar pattern to what henry ford did to the automobile 01:20:31 industry so before him it was basically like a few people built one car at a time and he basically broke up the process so you had like i don't know how many but 01:20:43 like dozens people a dozen people and each individual had just one one motion to do and the industrialization specialization right yeah and the the result was that 01:20:56 each individual didn't know anything and all the knowledge was in the process and my suspicion is that the promise of the settle custom that the paper 01:21:08 just write themselves it's like a very prominent process a promise around the telecast method lead to the to the thinking that you basically reduce your 01:21:20 the need for yourself and all the intelligence all the proficiency is put into a system and you have something doing for you and you treat yourself more like a like a 01:21:33 worker on a an assembly line just being and having all just a simple a simple motion that you have to do and then the end product will be 01:21:45 but will be very complex and very sophisticated because the intelligence is embedded in the process

      Sascha Fast analogizes the writing process using a zettelkasten to Henry Ford's assembly line for building cars. Each worker on the assembly line has a limited bit of knowledge for their individual part of the process, but most of the knowledge and value is built into the overarching process itself. This makes the overall system quicker and more efficient.

      Similarly with note taking, each individual portion of the process is simple and self-contained, but it allows the writer to create a much more creative and complex piece in the end. Here an individual can accomplish all of the individual steps in a self-contained way while focusing on individual steps without becoming lost in the subsequent steps which would otherwise require a tremendous additional amount of energy.

  23. Apr 2022
    1. The 1931–33 Dakar-Djibouti anthropologicalexpedition had been for him an intensive training ground for the systematic tech-nique of note-card filing. While in the process of becoming a professionalethnographer and of setting the stage for the dual exploration of autobiographyand ethnography that will inform his further work for more than fifty years, thisalmost-manual (artisanal) aspect of his professional training will soon lead him toopen a sort of autobiographical account, a kind of safe into which he will depositentries cut out (i.e., copied out) from his diary, before drawing from this frequentlyreshuffled and augmented portfolio of memories, anecdotes, ideas, and feelings,small and big, to feed his continuous self-portrait. 13 The result is a secondary, indi-rect autobiography, originating not from the subject’s innermost self, but from thestack of index cards (the autobiographical shards) in the little box on the author’sdesk. A self built on stilts, on “pilotis,” relying not on direct, live memories (as inProust’s involuntary memory), but on archival documentation, on paper work, aself that relates to himself indirectly, by means of quotation, of self-compilation.

      I like the idea here that a collection of index card notes combined and recombined might create an autobiography.

      Link to Henry Korn's cards.

  24. Mar 2022
    1. One of those books was B.S. Johnson’s The Unfortunates, which Wildgust says he has used “to demonstrate how a ‘book’ can also be a box with unbound pages.” According to Wildgust, Johnson borrowed the idea from Turkish-born writer Marc Saporta’s 1962 experimental novel Composition No. I, which was printed as a collection of 150 unbound, single-sided pages that can be read in any order.

      Link this to Henry James Korn's experimental novel/cards in the early 1970s and late 1990s hypertext fiction.

    1. But itwas a kid’s action film called The Quest in the United States (FrogDreaming in Australia) that heavily influenced me.

      I too was incredibly taken by the film The Quest!

    Tags

    Annotators

  25. Feb 2022
    1. We need to getour thoughts on paper first and improve them there, where we canlook at them. Especially complex ideas are difficult to turn into alinear text in the head alone. If we try to please the critical readerinstantly, our workflow would come to a standstill. We tend to callextremely slow writers, who always try to write as if for print,perfectionists. Even though it sounds like praise for extremeprofessionalism, it is not: A real professional would wait until it wastime for proofreading, so he or she can focus on one thing at a time.While proofreading requires more focused attention, finding the rightwords during writing requires much more floating attention.

      Proofreading while rewriting, structuring, or doing the thinking or creative parts of writing is a form of bikeshedding. It is easy to focus on the small and picayune fixes when writing, but this distracts from the more important parts of the work which really need one's attention to be successful.

      Get your ideas down on paper and only afterwards work on proofreading at the end. Switching contexts from thinking and creativity to spelling, small bits of grammar, and typography can be taxing from the perspective of trying to multi-task.


      Link: Draft #4 and using Webster's 1913 dictionary for choosing better words/verbiage as a discrete step within the rewrite.


      Linked to above: Are there other dictionaries, thesauruses, books of quotations, or individual commonplace books, waste books that can serve as resources for finding better words, phrases, or phrasing when writing? Imagine searching through Thoreau's commonplace book for finding interesting turns of phrase. Naturally searching through one's own commonplace book is a great place to start, if you're saving those sorts of things, especially from fiction.

      Link this to Robin Sloan's AI talk and using artificial intelligence and corpuses of literature to generate writing.

  26. Dec 2021
  27. Nov 2021
    1. The Odyssey of Homer A Close Reading - Week 1

      Video: https://vimeo.com/642829312/245fb2b6a5

      The Odyssey of Homer: a Close Reading

      • Will Quinn
      • Dr. Elizabeth Patton

      Looking at Chapters 1-4

      • Council of Gods on Mount Olympus
      • Journey of Telemachus (Telemachy)

      Translation

      Using Richmond Lattimore's translation of The Odyssey in part because he keeps the sens of the formulaic epithets.

      Dactylic hexameter

      "This is the forest primeval."

      Epithets

      • "The man of many ways" (Odysseus)
      • much enduring Odysseus
      • rosy fingered dawn

      These sorts of epithets are designed to fit the epic into the dactylic hexameter.

      Background of story

      Proem

      in Greek suffering can mean "learning"

      Q: When does the council on the gods take place?


      "Council of the Gods" in Galleria Borghese (Rome) ceiling_ceiling.jpg)


      Penelope with the Suitors by Pinturicchio


      Circumspect Penelope

  28. Oct 2021
    1. Jacobean gentleman Henry Peacham wrote in his treatise ‘The Gentleman’s Exercise’ (1612; left) ‘The making of ordinary Lamp blacke. Take a torch or linke, and hold it under the bottome of a latten basen, and as it groweth to be furd and blacke within, strike it with a feather into some shell or other, and grinde it with gumme water.”

      I've run across Henry Peacham, the younger, in other contexts and his father within the context of rhetoric and commonplacing.

  29. Aug 2021
  30. Jul 2021
    1. Ralph Waldo Emerson, the man who encouraged his friend Thoreau to start a journal and the man who had the most success with the journal > lecture > essay > book method, kept elaborate notebooks just for indexing his other notebooks.
  31. Jun 2021
    1. Regarding theinfluence of iconoclasm, the inaugural moment can be set circa 1536–1541, during Henry VIII’sdissolution of the monasteries.

      Long places the influence of iconoclasm in the destruction of the method of loci at the time period of Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries around 1536-1541.

  32. Feb 2021
    1. TheIndustrial Revolution isthe first strong historical analog for the modern phenomenonof a quantum leap in human progress, resulting in radically altered ways of life in a short span of time.

      As Hall points out in Where Is My Flying Car? there is a strong argument to be made that the industrial revolution was a social chain reaction that had already set off an exponential improvement process on its way to 'singularity', this was disrupted in the 20th century however. But prior to that it had been ongoing for 300 years at a steady average rate of 7% more usable power annually.

  33. Oct 2020
    1. Found reference to this in a review of Henry Quastler's book Information Theory in Biology.

      A more serious thing, in the reviewer's opinion, is the compIete absence of contributions deaJing with information theory and the central nervous system, which may be the field par excellence for the use of such a theory. Although no explicit reference to information theory is made in the well-known paper of W. McCulloch and W. Pitts (1943), the connection is quite obvious. This is made explicit in the systematic elaboration of the McCulloch-Pitts' approach by J. von Neumann (1952). In his interesting book J. T. Culbertson (1950) discussed possible neuraI mechanisms for recognition of visual patterns, and particularly investigated the problems of how greatly a pattern may be deformed without ceasing to be recognizable. The connection between this problem and the problem of distortion in the theory of information is obvious. The work of Anatol Rapoport and his associates on random nets, and especially on their applications to rumor spread (see the series of papers which appeared in this Journal during the past four years), is also closely connected with problems of information theory.

      Electronic copy available at: http://www.cse.chalmers.se/~coquand/AUTOMATA/mcp.pdf

  34. Jun 2020
    1. The furries are kind of like the new age Native American where they have the spirit animal or connection, or like, they take on that personal animal. . . . And whatever you put on, [you] take on those characters [and] aspects, and, for some people with social stigma who can’t interact, they put on the suit and they’re a completely different person.

      Make note of Sarah Marie Henry's Furries, Fans, and Feminism: Querying and Queering of the Furry Fandom. Sarah Marie Henry made a very good point about the appropriation of Native American culture in the furry fandom, something that is not exactly the nicest thing to do. Traditions stay within certain groups for a reason. A direct quotation/reference may be impossible, as the only copy of this master's thesis is locked up in San Francisco State University, and there's a pandemic. 😕

    1. I n 1814, Moss resurfaced again in the New England Journal of Medicine and Surgery, where he i s described as a Black man “whose skin has nearly lost i ts native colour and become perfectly w hite.”
    2. man.” Henry Moss, unbeknownst to Americans, was s uffering from vitiligo, a skin disease t hat c auses t he loss of s kin color, making one’s dark skin lighten.
  35. May 2020
    1. In evolutionary terms, certainly, because the individuals that show these traits have a higher chance of survival in the long term.

      Not surprisingly, nature is a great teacher. Not until the 1950s and Johnny von Neumann did game theory get developed, but it was found that tit for tat with forgiveness is the optimal model. In other words, altruism or as Henry Ford called it, enlightened self-interest (https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Game_theory)

  36. Mar 2020
  37. Dec 2019
    1. Tilbury Fort

      Tilbury Fort is an artillery fort on the north bank of the River Thames in England, built by King Henry VIII to secure it against France. It was later reinforced over concerns of invasion by the Spanish Armada in 1588.

    2. She was there, lifeless and inanimate, thrown across the bed, her head hanging down, and her pale and distorted features half covered by her hair.

      Shelley most likely drew this scene from Henry Fuseli's painting The Nightmare. See Anne Mellor, Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters (New York: Routledge, 1988), p. 121.

  38. Sep 2019
    1. The Executive [Lincoln] is frequently compelled to affix his signature to bills of the highest importance, much of which he regards as wholly at war with the national interests.
  39. Jul 2019
    1. "when school day is over"-curious learning is done Participatory Culture -communities producing media to share among themselves -people produce media to share with each other, not for money -passing of skills -social mode of production -drive to share for sharing's sake -Harry POtter Alliance -participatory culture and changing the world -bringing PC into educational culture -Wikipedia example

  40. Feb 2019
    1. since the convents where some had been educated had been disbamlcd long ago by Henry Vlll,

      I feel like this shows us definitively that "Protestant Nunnery" was a positive thing which filled a gap that was left when Henry VIII told the pope to get lost and subsequently all the convents sort of fell apart

  41. Dec 2018
    1. Her seduction

      Reminiscent of Henry Crawford's desire to make Fanny Price fall in love with him in Mansfield Park.

    2. .
        This chapter establishes familiar character dynamics that might elucidate the trajectory of the personas Austen presents in this unfinished text. The chapter begins with the introduction of Miss Esther Denham and Sir Edward Denham, a scheming sibling pair reminiscent of Mansfield Park’s The Crawfords and Northanger Abbey’s The Thorpes. Austen explicitly establishes the bald aim of the two to obtain wealth and status from advantageous matrimony, a characteristic that similarly mirrors the Crawfords and Thorpes. Sir Edward, in particular, resembles Austen’s past villainous men; throughout the Austen canon, coxcomb-esque behaviors are the cardinal sins of bachelors. Indeed, Willoughby, Wickham, Henry Crawford, Mr. Elton, Thorpe, and Mr. Elliot all receive biting characterizations by Austen, and thus, given the fates of these men in their respective novels, we can predict that Sir Edward is not the male love interest of this story. 
       Sir Edward’s dynamic with, and apparent longing for the affection of, Clara Brereton, additionally reverberate into the Austen canon in a meaningful way. Other Austen works present relationships between gentried men and pseudo-adopted young women; notably, Emma features Jane Fairfax and Frank Churchill’s secret engagement and Mansfield Park depict Henry Crawford’s arguably predatory pursuit of Fanny Price. These relationship both demonstrate wealth and class incongruities as interpersonal complications. Further, these dynamics are also characterized by the ignorance of other characters to the details of the relationship. Therefore, we cannot know from this unfinished account of Charlotte’s observations if Clara Brereton is a Fanny Price or a Jane Fairfax; we cannot fully know if the behaviors and dispassion Charlotte Heywood witnesses are evidence of a painful resistance to unwanted advances or red herrings to disguise an intimacy. Since speculation is the nature of this activity, however, it is notable that in both Mansfield Park and Emma, outside perceptions of the aforementioned relationships were incorrect. Therefore, paradoxically, Charlotte’s perception of Clara’s distaste for Sir Edward might in fact evince a returned affection and eventual marriage between the two. 
      
  42. Apr 2018
    1. General Advertizer

      The General Advertiser was an eighteenth-century newspaper. It was originally known as the London Daily Post and General Advertiser, and then became the General Advertiser. Printer Henry Woodfall took over the paper in 1713, renaming it the Public Advertiser. He operated it until his nineteen-year-old son, Henry Sampson Woodfall, took over the paper in 1769. relaunched as the Public Advertiser with much more news content. In 1758, the printer's nineteen-year-old son, Henry Sampson Woodfall took it over. During this time, The anonymous polemicist Junius sent his letters to the Public Advertiser. Henry Sampson Woodfall sold his interest in the Public Advertiser in November 1793. N. Byrne took it over and printed it as the Political and Literary Diary, but it went out of business by 1795.

    2. William De Grey

      William de Grey served as Attorney General under William Pitt the Elder from 1766-1771. In 1770, he took part in the trial of Henry Sampson Woodfall for printing and publishing the Letters of Junius, which he claimed contained seditious libel. Woodfall went free on the declaration of a mistrial. John Miller, printer of the London Evening Post was declared not guilty. Only bookseller John Almon was declared guilty, though he appears not to have been punished.

  43. Mar 2018
    1. “Appropriate” is another one. It is a word that creates space when we do not want to be precise—but when you are dealing with matters of law you need precision
    2. I anticipate that the test of necessity will be an easier one to apply for those entrusted with the power than the test of what is appropriate. The latter involves an element of judgment, which is not always easy to exercise;
    3. have had more representations on Clause 7 than on any other part of the Bill—representations from national organisations, human rights organisations, advocacy organisations, legal organisations, professional organisations, and from individuals.

      public and sector focus on this

    4. The powers given to Ministers are “appropriate”. That is a weasel word. Nobody is better placed than I to describe it as such. It is a subjective word, very difficult to define in advance, impossible to challenge and non-judicable. That is why, when I was a Minister, I used it often—at the Dispatch Box, in drafting and in correspondence. I knew full well, as does every person who has stood at the Dispatch Box, that “appropriate” means precisely what the Minister wants it to mean.
    5. I agree with the passionate remarks of my good friend, the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, about the dangers facing this Parliament—mainly the other House, of course, but also this one—in allowing these dangerous provisions to go through without any amendment
    6. When the bus with “£350 million a week” was going around the country, and when those who emerged from it, including the blonde bus conductor, told people, “We want to take power back from the European Union and Brussels”, no one said, “We want to take power back so we can give it to 109 Ministers or public authorities”. If they had said that, I rather fancy that the bus would not have received the generous welcome that it did on many occasions.
    7. As to the distinction between “appropriate” and “necessary”, the suggestion I have heard that Ministers do not realise they are open to legal challenge is, I think, quite wrong. Ministers are well aware that they might be open to legal challenge, and that is why they prefer “appropriate” to “necessary”. It gives them a “plump legal cushion”—that wonderful expression of the noble Lord, Lord Wilson—behind which they can hide.
    8. Then there was the Strathclyde review. Let us not forget what happened in 2015 when this House was criticised for flexing its political muscle. The review said that we should,“understand better the expectations of both Houses when it comes to secondary legislation and, in particular, whether the House of Lords should retain its veto”.We were openly bullied and told, “Don’t you dare challenge a statutory instrument again”. In fact, I remember in that debate, the Government went so far as to say, “You are threatening the very existence of this House if you threaten us any more”. Now we have the potential for thousands and thousands of statutory instruments. Are we going to challenge every one of them and threaten our very existence every day? Do Henry VIII clauses give Governments the power of royal despots?

      they're quite angry....

    9. “Appropriate” is so bland, broad and subjective as to be almost meaningless, as has been said, and it gives the Minister excessive influence and discretion. “Necessary”, by contrast, is more specific and requires justification—and I believe that the courts prefer to handle litigation over “necessary” than “appropriate”, for reasons one can understand. Clause 7 is stuffed with powers that need to be addressed in this way.
    10. The Bill confers on Ministers wider Henry VIII powers than we have ever seen”,
    11. These amendments would tighten, in two ways, the threshold which the Minister of the Crown has to reach in order to be able to exercise the powers. They would tighten it by providing, first, that the powers could be used only where it was “necessary” to use them, not where it was considered “appropriate”. Secondly, they would give an objective test for whether the use of the powers was necessary, rather than the subjective test of whether the Minister considered it appropriate.
  44. Feb 2018
  45. Jun 2017
  46. Apr 2017
    1. How inexplicable are these facts on the ordinary view of creation! Why should the brain be enclosed in a box composed of such numerous and such extraordinarily shaped pieces of bone? As Owen has remarked, the benefit derived from the yielding of the separate pieces in the act of parturition of mammals, will by no means explain the same construction in the skulls of birds. Why should similar bones have been created in the formation of the wing and leg of a bat, used as they are for such totally different purposes? Why should one crustacean, which has an extremely complex mouth formed of many parts, consequently always have fewer legs; or conversely, those with many legs have simpler mouths? Why should the sepals, petals, stamens, and pistils in any individual flower, though fitted for such widely different purposes, be all constructed on the same pattern ?

      Reminds me of Thoreau:

      We might try our lives by a thousand simple tests; as, for instance, that the same sun which ripens my beans illumines at once a system of earths like ours. If I had remembered this it would have prevented some mistakes. This was not the light in which I hoed them. The stars are the apexes of what wonderful triangles! What distant and different beings in the various mansions of the universe are contemplating the same one at the same moment! Nature and human life are as various as our several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to another? Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant? We should live in all the ages of the world in an hour; ay, in all the worlds of the ages. History, Poetry, Mythology!—I know of no reading of another's experience so startling and informing as this would be. The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well? You may say the wisest thing you can, old man—you who have lived seventy years, not without honor of a kind—I hear an irresistible voice which invites me away from all that. One generation abandons the enterprises of another like stranded vessels.

    1. We might try our lives by a thousand simple tests; as, for instance, that the same sun which ripens my beans illumines at once a system of earths like ours. If I had remembered this it would have prevented some mistakes. This was not the light in which I hoed them. The stars are the apexes of what wonderful triangles! What distant and different beings in the various mansions of the universe are contemplating the same one at the same moment! Nature and human life are as various as our several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to another? Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant? We should live in all the ages of the world in an hour; ay, in all the worlds of the ages. History, Poetry, Mythology!—I know of no reading of another's experience so startling and informing as this would be. The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well? You may say the wisest thing you can, old man—you who have lived seventy years, not without honor of a kind—I hear an irresistible voice which invites me away from all that. One generation abandons the enterprises of another like stranded vessels.

      Reminds me of Darwin:

      How inexplicable are these facts on the ordinary view of creation! Why should the brain be enclosed in a box composed of such numerous and such extraordinarily shaped pieces of bone? As Owen has remarked, the benefit derived from the yielding of the separate pieces in the act of parturition of mammals, will by no means explain the same construction in the skulls of birds. Why should similar bones have been created in the formation of the wing and leg of a bat, used as they are for such totally different purposes? Why should one crustacean, which has an extremely complex mouth formed of many parts, consequently always have fewer legs; or conversely, those with many legs have simpler mouths? Why should the sepals, petals, stamens, and pistils in any individual flower, though fitted for such widely different purposes, be all constructed on the same pattern ?

  47. Feb 2017
    1. He has a very bad influence over all his friends, with the exception of myself.”

      Maybe the world thinks of Wilde as a bad influence to his fans- but too intellectual and right on to be ignored.

  48. Oct 2016
    1. he was responsible for transforming the automobile from an invention of unknown utility into an innovation that profoundly shaped the 20th century and continues to affect our lives today.

      This is extremely crucial in pointing out that Henry Ford was not the originator of the automobile. But, he perfected the process in which they are made, and did it efficiently.