To Live to Tell the Tale

carrucates and bovates

2011-11-01T15:10:00.000Z

It seems a carrucate should be the area that a team of eight oxen can plough in a year. It's about 2000 (English) acres, whereas a bovate is one-eighth of that, about 250 acres. Here, I take it from D. Holloway and T. Colton, The Knights Templar in Yorkshire, a very interesting read. Bovate derived from bos, bovis, as you would expect. But Webster says a carucate (note the single r) is the same as a bovate, same as a (Kent and Domesday Book) hide, equal to 120 acres. Hmmm. A toft, on the other hand, is not at all a precise area, but, like a vill, describes a kind of unit of the landscape. A toft is a dwelling, together with a plot of cultivable land, a house-and-garden. A county could be divided into hundreds, and a hundred into vills. Chain-mail is hammered chain!

Bookshelf

2011-07-14T17:44:00.001+01:00

Philippe Aries. Centuries of Childhood. Penguin. 1960. 414pp.
Traces the evolution of the modern concept of childhood. Turns out that the way we think of children is a recent invention.

Gerd Gigerenzer. Reckoning with Risk. Learning to live with uncertainty. Penguin. 2002. ISBN-13: 978-0-14-029786-7.
Gift from Ian Short.  Disturbing evidence of innumeracy in the general public, and, chillingly, among doctors. Many people do not understand risks stated in percentage terms, and many medical professionals do not correctly interpret the results of screening tests to their patients. This makes informed consent unlikely. He advocates the use of proportions, instead of percentages, and other specific measures. Specific case areas considered include screening and counselling for cancers and AIDS, the use of DNA evidence in criminal cases, and even grant proposal evaluation.

Daniel Domscheit-Berg with Tina Klopp. Inside WikiLeaks. My time with Julian Assange at the world's most dangerous website. Jonathan Cape. 2011. 9780224094016.
Quick read.   Lifts the lid on something of a mess. DD-B fell out with JA, and now runs an alternative, OpenLeaks, together with the key technician from the old site.
Looking at the sites, it would appear that WikiLeaks is still not accepting submissions. This supports DD-B's suggestion that their submission software is in a mess. The submissions page carries no update date. On the other hand, nothing seems to be happening at OpenLeaks, either. Most of the material is quite old. On both sites, the recent material is essentially polemical.

Michael Smith. An Unsung Hero. Tom Crean - an antarctic survivor. The Collins Press. 2009. 9781905172863.
Gift from KK, for Christmas. Interesting and well-researched story, worth reading for the facts, despite the mediocre style.

Novels:
*** John le Carré. A Most Wanted Man. Hodder. 2008. 978-0-340-97708-8.
** John Banville. The Sea. Picador. 2005. 978-0-330-48329-2.
* Anthony Cronin. The Life of Riley. 2010. New Island. fp 1964. 978-1-84840-083-2.
**** Yoko Ogawa. The Housekeeper + The Professor. Vintage. 2010. fp 2003. 978-0099521341.
*** Ian McEwan. Solar. Jonathan Cape. 2010. 9780224090506.

Only Ogawa's made an impression that still lasts, three months later. A beautiful story.

James Banford. Body of Secrets. How America's CIA and Britain's GCHQ eavesdrop on the world. Arrow. 2002. ISBN 0-09-9427745.
He has researched this, in part, by interviewing a number of participants who, late in life, decided to talk. I was amazed by three of the stories in this book: (1) The account of live firefights over Russia involving US bombers in the early fifties, in which over 40 of them (and an unstated number of Russian fighters) were shot down. The missions aimed to collect radar data, but would have appeared to the Russians as potential bombing raids. (2) The story of Ike's orders to all his subordinates to lie to a congressional committee (at an in camera hearing), to cover up his knowledge of the Gary Powers U2 mission.  His orders were followed. (3) The appalling story of the Israeli attack on the US Liberty in 1967, and the coverup ordered by Johnson.

Tom Holland. Persian Fire. The first world empire and the battle for the west. Abacus. 2005. 978-0-349-11717-1.
Very readable. Complements the usual Greek accounts with material from Asian sources and excavations, and allows us a better idea of how these wars were viewed from the Persian side.

Tom Holland. Rubicon. The triumph and tragedy of the Roman republic. Abacus. 2003. 978-0-349-11563-4.
Also very readable. The classicists of my acquaintance approve of Holland.

R.K. Narayan. The Abduction of Sita. Penguin. 2006. fp 1972. 978-0-141-02684-8.
An extract from a translation of the Ramayama. Downfall and enlightenment of Ravana, once "the supreme lord of this and other worlds". He underestimated Rama, which is a very, very bad idea.

I still haven't dented The Tale of Genji.

2011-06-13T23:44:00.000+01:00

The 12th of June, 2011: A Good Day.

2011-06-08T00:03:00.000+01:00

The guy with the beard is the proprietor of Uri-Buri, in Akko, reputedly the best sea-food restaurant in Israel.

Static pages

2011-02-14T20:01:00.000Z

Blow me! Static pages allow you to add stuff so that it goes at the end. Now, if I'd known this facility was available in Blogger -- maybe it wasn't until recently -- I would have used it for the Tipperary Tango. I ran a quick test to see if I could put the whole novel into a single static page, and it seems to be ok.

Catechism

2011-02-05T22:15:00.000Z

Finally finished typing in the old catechism, which didn't seem to be anywhere on the web. Been at it at odd times for over a year. My feelings about the old religion are rather mixed: they combine guilt, relief, anger, nostalgia and affection in roughly equal proportions.
One of the most interesting aspects concerns the stuff they just never mention any more, such as indulgences, the state of grace, mortal sin. Another is the number of iron rules that turned out to be malleable. And then there is the monumental consistency, certainty, and triumphalism of the establishment.
Another curiosity is that it all worked. I remember being very happy for years when I accepted all that. I had lots of questions, but had been trained to question within the system.
I just included, of the prayers, those I learned by heart as a child. I still like these, and am grateful to the people who made me learn them.
Perhaps the saddest Q+A in the whole thing is number 425, in the chapter on Extreme Unction and Holy Orders. Not many catholics have such an uncomplicated view of our priests as
this, nowadays.

B/S Bingo

2011-02-04T13:08:00.003Z

Here's the source. Copy to bsbingo.c and compile with some command such as
cc -o bsbingo bsbingo.c
Then use the commands given under usage (or package them in a little script and put a handy link on your desktop).
The resulting random 5x5 grid is used to relieve the tedium of an otherwise boring meeting.
/***********************************************************/

/* bsbingo
Generates a random bsbingo card.
AOF 4-ii-2011. Copyleft...
Usage:
bsbingo > temp
lpr -o landscape -P <printername> temp
*/

#include <stdio.h>
#include <math.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <time.h>

#define N 5  /* number of rows and columns*/
#define PHRASE_LENGTH 18
#define PHRASES {\
" outside the box  ",\
"end of the day    ",\
"   bottom line    ",\
"   iconic         ",\
"   leverage       ",\
\
"core competencies ",\
"   synergy        ",\
"   strategic fit  ",\
"   benchmark      ",\
"   24/7           ",\
\
"   empower        ",\
"   win-win        ",\
"   game plan      ",\
" above our weight ",\
"   bandwidth      ",\
\
"the good of the X ",\
"apples and oranges",\
" green field      ",\
" hopefully        ",\
" shoot ourselves  ",\
\
"game of two 1/2s  ",\
" rennaisance      ",\
"  transparent     ",\
" SWOT(any 2)      ",\
" meltdown         "\
}

void permutation(int* k, int M){
/* places a random permutation of 0,1,2,...,M-1
in the array k[0],...,k[M-1]
*/

int i,j,temp;
int P[M];

for (i=0;i<M;i++){ P[i]=i; }
/* start with the identity */

for (j=0;j<M;j++){
for(i=0;i<M;i++){
if (rand()%2){
/* randomly apply the transposition (ij) or not */
temp = P[j];
P[j] = P[i];
P[i] = temp;
}
}
}

/* copy P to k: */
for (i=0;i<M;i++){
k[i]=P[i];
}
}

void blanks(void){
/* print some spaces */
int i;
for(i=0;i<PHRASE_LENGTH;i++){
printf(" ");
}
}

void solids(void){
/* print some underscores */
int i;
for(i=0;i<PHRASE_LENGTH;i++){
printf("_");
}
}


int main(void)
{
int i,j;
int k[N*N];
char* phrase[N*N] = PHRASES;

srand( time(NULL) );

permutation(k,N*N);

printf("\n\n");

/* print the table, using k to randomise the entries: */


for(j=0;j<N;j++){
printf("_");
solids();
}
printf("\n");

for (i=0;i<N;i++){

printf("|");
for(j=0;j<N;j++){
blanks();
printf("|");
}
printf("\n");

for (j=0;j<N;j++){
printf("|%s", phrase[k[N*i+j]]);
}
printf("|\n");

printf("|");
for(j=0;j<N;j++){
blanks();
printf("|");
}
printf("\n");

for(j=0;j<N;j++){
printf("|");
solids();
}
printf("|\n");



}
printf("\n\n");
return 0;
}

/****************************************************************/

Speech Recognition Software that came with Vista

2011-01-31T23:33:00.000Z

Speech recognition in action:

What is the second commandment of god?
The second commandment of the garden is: adult shalt not take the name of the lord thy garden in vain

What is forbidden by the second commandment?
The second commandment forbids us to offer garden and of his saints go to the end last line speak with you reverence and garden or his saints borrow sacred persons and things

What is commanded by the second commandment?
We are commanded by the second commandment two speak with reverence of god and of his saints, and of sacred persons and things, and to keep OUR LAW FOR and valves

How should we use the name of god you love?? Yes
We should always use the name of god we had great respect and reverence.

What is a vial?
I have our is a binding promise made to god to do something that is especially pleasing to him.

What is an awful
An old is the calling of god to witness that what we say is true, or that we would do what we promise.

When the is an awful lot for? Foreign ought to be lawful we must have sufficient reason for taking it and, and we must say only what is true, after all is only what is lawful.

What are the chief send some against a the second commandment?
But you sins against the second commandment, blasphemy, perjury and caressing.

What is blasphemy?
It is blasphemy to express contempt of garden, or of sacred persons or things in so far as they are dedicated to god.

What is your injury?

Hmmm. This software needs work.

Literacy and Numeracy

2011-01-18T17:29:00.000Z

The draft plan (link from title of this) invites comments. I sent in this:
Dear Sir/Madam,
The quality and training of Primary teachers is critical
for success. We have to stop appointing teachers who
are afraid of Maths.
I favour making it a requirement for entry to ITE that
candidates have grade C in HLC maths, or an equivalent level
in some other jurisdiction. No ifs or buts.
Also, given my experience of incoming students with HLC Maths,
I favour further academic study (at least 15 ECTS credits)
in Maths (apart from study of Maths Education and methodology)
as part of teacher training courses.
This will ensure reasonable competence and
confidence in future teachers, in relation to Maths.

Similar requirements in English would be reasonable.

Your report does not deal with Irish, the state of which just makes
me weep. But there is a point to make. I date the really catastrophic
decline in the teaching and learning of Irish as following the
elimination of the HLC Irish requirement for entry to
the training colleges. After that, I started meeting teachers
at Parent-teacher meetings who could not conduct a simple
discussion with me in Irish about my childrens' progress.
You can't improve or even maintain
standards, if the teachers are incompetent.

We also need another report about science in primary schools.

Best regards,
Tony O'Farrell

The Recorded Music Business

2011-01-17T22:26:00.000Z

OK, so now I see that perhaps the industry has a future, after all. My first reaction to Youtube was that it should completely kill the business: Why would anyone ever buy a record again? But it turns out that you can listen to a song, but not a whole quartet, sometimes not even a whole movement, without interruption. For instance, I find half of the Beethoven Grosse Fuge, and the thing just stops slap in the middle. It seems the Youtube rules don't let you upload the whole movement. In the sixties, I used to hate turning over LP's in the middle of a piece, although it was better than what our parents had, when they had to play twenty or thirty 78 rpm records to hear a single piece. I thought we were finished with that kind of thing.
Also, I don't care much for the videos that go with the music. Is there a purely aural equivalent of Youtube? Youspeakers?

Mathematical Studies

2010-11-09T17:01:00.000Z

This is a letter to a blogger called Stewart Griffin who send me a link to his blog in which he denigrated Maths Studies degree programmes at Irish universities:

Dear Stewart,
Thank you for your message.
I looked at your blog. It does not appear to
take comments, so I am writing to you.
You are seriously misinformed about Maths Studies,
if you think that this order is reasonable:

Mathematics, Applied Mathematics, Physics, Engineering (with significant maths content), Computer Science, Mathematical Studies, Chemistry, Biology

as a ranking of fitness of degrees to prepare maths teachers.
I suggest that you start by getting the facts about the maths
content of these various kinds of degree programmes, before
you lay about you in this way. You will find that you have put
ahead of maths studies a number of programme-types that typically
involve the study of some rather small (typically well less than 50%)
subset of a maths studies programme, and certainly at no higher
level of rigour, to say the least. Maths studies programmes entail
between 80 and 110 ECTS credits in Maths courses, depending on
whether the student takes a double-hons or single-hons degree. You
make fun of the occurrence of a 5-credit module on History of Maths
in our programme. But this is an entirely appropriate module for a
prospective maths teacher, and it was not in put there to make the
programme easier. A maths teacher should have an understanding
of the origins and development of the discipline, and a broad and
sufficiently deep exposure to all the mainstream areas of maths.
Fifty years ago, the standard training for a maths teacher involved
the 3-subject general degree, with maths as one of the three. This
translates, in modern terms into 55 ECTS credits (15+20+20) in
maths, involving so-called general-level, (pass-level) courses. An
engineering graduate from UCD would have had a greater level
of exposure to maths, over the four years, except that they would
have been light on areas such as groups, rings, fields, and
number theory. Many people were, and
are teaching maths with much less exposure than this, such as
Arts, Science, and Commerce graduates with as little as
one year of maths (15 ECTS credits). With the elimination of
general degrees, the maths studies programmes were created by
adding to the general maths programmes. The additions, typically,
involve more exposure to proof, to modern geometries, and to
subjects that have become more important in the modern world,
such as symbolic computation, combinatorics, coding theory,
cryptography, as well as history and philosophy of maths.
In the meantime, most S+T programmes have gone
in the opposite direction, reducing exposure to maths to the
absolute minimum required for the later courses in the
application, usually confining it to the first two years,
emphasising drill at the expense of concept,
paying no attention to rigour, in short giving a narrower
and shallower maths education.
As a consequence, your school principal should on no account
send in recent graduates in any of the S+T areas you list,
except Maths, Applied Maths and Maths Studies, to teach
maths to his students, unless they have taken steps to
deepen and broaden their mathematical education.

Best regards,
Tony O'Farrell.

Sabbatical over

2010-10-02T09:43:00.000+01:00

Too much life for blogging, since July. Freud is supposed to have said that all that really matters is Love and Work. If that be so, then I live as one should, because all I do is love, and work. Term began on the 20th, and I enjoy the contact with bright, hopeful youngsters again.
In the tail end of the Summer, I read through some engaging stuff: (the English and Irish text of) a parallel-text anthology of Irish poetry with Czech translations (ISBN 80-86055-80-9), a collection of essays about Ireland, by a German journalist (Ralph Sotscheck, Saint Patrick in der Bingohalle, Irische Einblicke, ISBN 3-85452-718-7), Collected Stories by V.S. Pritchett (ISBN 0-7011-2305-2), a collection by Isaac Bashevis Singer (A Crown of Feathers and other stories, ISBN 0-224-00986-9),
a translation of The Analects of Confucius (ISBN 978-1853-26462-7), a biography of the poet Attila Josef, by Thomas Kabdebo (ISBN 1-89792202-7), a couple of rather dated books on cosmology:
G.J. Whitrow, the Structure and Evolution of the Universe, Hutchinson, 1959; and G.C. McVittie, Fact and Theory in Cosmology, Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1961, and I reread a translation of J.L. Borges collection Ficciones, Grove Press 1962 and Feynman's sparkling and provocative memoir, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! Pritchett and Singer are just brilliant, but I can't imagine what I saw in Borges.
Now I'm just reading Maths, apart from occasional dips into the Tale of Genji. It looks as though this novel will take me a long, long time.
I'm teaching introductory mathematical computing, with Maple, and basic real analysis.
I'm currently investigating the distribution of cubic residues to composite moduli, with an application in view to Diophantine approximation. I like number theory, but have a lot to learn.

Phil Hickey's Blog

2010-07-16T15:58:00.000+01:00

I went to school with Phil Hickey, who blogs at:

http://behaviorismandmentalhealth.com/

What he has to say is very interesting, and rather shocking. It appears that there is no scientific evidence of specific chemical imbalance in most people suffering from depression, and so no scientific basis for the treatment of depression by antidepressive drugs. The same applies to other disorders, such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. He cites specific sources for this finding. I had no idea. I've encountered many depressed students in my time, almost all on medicine, and never dreamed of suggesting they come off the medicine. In fact, I assumed that if they did so, they would be at increased risk of suicide, which is, along with road traffic accidents, one of the two main causes of death among our students. And everything I'd heard before this, including comments by professionals, was to the effect that "the drugs work", and in fact that "there has been no progress in psychiatry apart from the development of useful drugs."

I still won't advise people to stop taking the pills, but I won't encourage them to continue, either. Not my job, or competence. Patients should be able to trust their doctors.

You Tube

2010-07-01T23:09:00.001+01:00

The recorded music business is finished. And, I need never again be stuck for a word, a phrase, or a bar of any song. Everything is there.

Jessica

2010-07-01T10:42:00.000+01:00

Back Home

2010-06-24T23:17:00.002+01:00

Much peregrination since the start of May: Scotland, to hike up Ben Nevis; Madison, WI, to work on the biholomorphic group; conference in Edwardsville, IL; day in Chicago, mostly at the Art Institute; Helsinki; holiday in the Ebro delta; Valencia; Connemara, to hike the Maamturk mountains. Entertained visitors in between. Met many old friends, and perhaps some new. Now looking forward to some stability.

Recently read, or reread:

J.M. Castellano Gil and F.J. Macias Martin. History of the Canary Islands.
84-7926-114-5. English a bit broken. Interesting (and sad) story of the conquest. Some data on references in antiquity (Homer?, Hesiod, Pindar, Herodotus, Diodorus of Sicily, Strabo, Plutarch, Sallust, Pomponius Mela and Pliny the Elder. Also some folklore, including a story about Brendan the Navigator. Short chapters on links with America, the literature, and art.

S. Vere Benson. The Observer's Book of Birds. Ferederick Warne. Rev. ed. 1960. My old bird book, a very useful field guide.

Eric Dempsey and Michael Casey. Finding Birds in Ireland. The Complete Guide. 978-07171-3916-3. About places where birds may be found. It is very hard to use it to locate info about the location of a particular species, as the index is unhelpful in this regard. Has many maps, and has a glossary of Irish names for most species.

Colm O Lochlainn. Irish Street Ballads. Three Candles. Dublin. 1939. This and More Irish Street Ballads, 1965, are indispensible.

Henry James. The Wings of the Dove. Slow build-up to a classic disaster. After the first few hundred pages, I couldn't put it down, and stayed up far too late in Helsinki to finish it. Great book.

Tom Brown's School Days, by An Old Boy. Rev. ed. 1889, repr. 1890. (f.p. 1857). Not at all what I expected, and much more interesting. I expected something like a propotype of Frank Richards' books, but this is a far more sober affair, much concerned with moral matters, such as the duty to study honestly. In relation to the famous fight with Flashman, the author has a disquisition about the place of fighting in a boy's life. I was struck by: "After all, what would life be, without fighting?"

Ray Monk. Wittgenstein. The Duty of Genius. Vintage. 1991. 0-09-988370-8. Very good read, but every time I begin to think I understand W's point of view, he does something that proves me wrong. In the end, I am torn between the desire to read it again from the start (and spend serious time studying W's work) and the rather attractive idea that I should take W's advice to his various friends, and give up philosophy altogether to do something useful.

E.E. Cummings

2010-05-04T20:58:00.001+01:00

Selected Poems 1923-1958. Faber and Faber. ISBN 987-0-571-08986-4
(Selected by the poet)
I'd neglected this man, hitherto, for no better reason than my aversion to gimmickry: he uses idiosyncratic punctuation (frequently none) and rarely uses a capital letter. Then, a few weeks ago we watched a movie in which the always watchable Cameron Diaz played an almost illiterate girl, who slowly read one of EEC's love poems to a blind patient, and I was amazed by its beauty. Now I'm a convert.
Some are political, some humorous, some erotic, a few religious, but most are about love, and life, and light. In form, quite a few are sonnets, the style strongly reminiscent of Shakespeare. For instance:

true lovers in each happening of their hearts
live longer than all which and every who;
despite what fear denies,what hope asserts,
what falsest both disprove by proving true
....

But he uses all sorts of standard metrical and rhyming structures, with just an occasional innovation, in which the layout on the page suggests the intended phrasing, and pauses. Such as this:

...
so world is a leaf so tree is a bough
(and birds sing sweeter
than books
tell how)
so here is away and so your is a my
(with a down
up
around again fly)
forever was never till now

His word-order sometimes recalls Horace:

anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)

(-- the use of parentheses is a characteristic. Sometimes, there is just one short sentence outside the parenteses, and a whole world inside.)
So much, so beautiful -- read it!

Oliver Goldsmith: The Vicar of Wakefield

2010-05-04T20:12:00.000+01:00

Goethe thought this "one of the best novels ever written", although most discriminating critics (and even the author, in his 'Advertisement') point to the faults of its fantastically-improbable plot, in which coincidence is heaped upon coincidence. It has enjoyed enduring popularity, and this is clearly due to the great charm of its style, its wealth of aphorisms, and the singular character of the hero: upright, trusting, innocent of guile, vain about his writing, faithful and courageous. I loved it.
Life is full of coincidences. Last week my friend MN used the valediction:

Ná díol do chearc lá fliuch!
(Never sell your hen on a wet day!)

This was new to me, but soon after I ran across a reference to the same proverb in Goldsmith's novel. When the vicar becomes anxious that his son Moses has been away so long at the fair, where he went to sell a horse, the vicar's wife says that he need not worry..."Depend on it, he knows what he is about. I'll warrant we'll never see him sell his sell a hen on a rainy day." Sadly, her confidence is misplaced, and Moses returns, having exchanged the price of the horse for some rubbish.

Express Anchors

2010-04-29T21:11:00.000+01:00

These are a wonderful invention. They are used to fix a piece of timber to a concrete wall. I was putting a low wooden fence along the top of a concrete wall, and Mulligan, the man who makes fencing, told me about them. I fixed 4 by 1 inch battens vertically to the wall, and fastened the fence to them on top of the wall. In the past, I would have used rawl plugs or masonry nails to fix the battens. Express anchors are far superior. They are made (I think) of steel, plated with something brassy to delay corrosion, and are hollow incomplete cylinders, with a tapered point and a splayed head. By incomplete, I mean that the cylinder has a gap running the whole length. The ones I used are 90mm by 8. You drill a hole through the wood with a number 8 bit, then drill on through the wall with a number 8 masonry bit (and your trusty hammer-action Black-and-Decker drill), to a total depth of 90mm, and then you hammer in the anchor. It's made slightly fatter than no. 8, and the cylinder closes in a little as it penetrates the hole, so that, with the spring in the steel, it grips like you wouldn't believe. I imagine you would have to pull the wall down to get it out, so make sure it is going where you want it, in the first place.

Irish High Crosses

2010-04-26T15:21:00.000+01:00

by Roger Stalley. ISBN0-946172-56-0

Richly illustrated (22 B+W photos and 16 colour plates) and brief account of the high stone crosses, dating from about 800-1100 AD, with interesting data about specific crosses. Some noteworthy points:

Tradition names the soldiers who held up the sponge and who pierced the side of Christ as Stephaton and Longinus. These two soldiers at the crucifixion appear on many crosses.
The frequent occurrence of Adam+Eve+tree+serpent on the crosses is accounted for by the link enunciated by Fulbert of Chartres: "Christ, the beginning, end, resurrection and life...by hanging from a cross with a tree's help took away the poison that came from a tree, and opened again the closed doors to life."
Another popular scene shows St. Anthony and St. Paul being fed by the raven. These are the desert saints A+P, fathers of monasticism. After long trials, the raven brought them bread from heaven, which links to the Eucharistic sacrifice.

After You, Marco Polo

2010-04-26T15:02:00.000+01:00

by Jean Bowie Shor. McGraw-Hill. New York. 1955,

Describes a determined effort by the author and her husband to traverse the entire trail taken by the Venetian explorer. She managed to visit the tomb of Genghis Khan while investigating the route in western China. (I read somewhere lately that DNA studies show that GK has an estimated 7 million living descendants. He killed a great many men, but it seems he had another use for a good few women.) Her attempt to travel the rest of the route, from Venice, was supported by the National Geographic Society. In the end, the attempt is frustrated by the successful Communist takeover of the whole country. Her worldview was of her time and class, and shows little appreciation of the realities of power and the ways of despots. She had a picnic and flight-for-fun with the (last) Shah of Iran, and was received and helped by the King of Afghanistan (also a member of the NGS). The king and her husband were wearing the same tie, purchased, as it transpired, from the same shop in Paris. Obviously, it creates a bond. The most interesting part is the account of the trek up the Vackan (or Wackan): the very narrow tongue of Afghan territory, on the south bank of the Amu Darya (Oxus), reaching eastward along the Hindu Kush and High Pamirs between the USSR and Pakistan to the Chinese border at Wakhjir. The high plateau at the end was effectively independent of Kabul, controlled by a Kirghiz bandit called Rahman Kul. Their Afghan escort abandoned them to RK, and he, for reasons not entirely clear, decided to help them continue, instead of just robbing and murdering them. Unfortunately, RK's recent activities in Chinese
Turkestan had the effect that the Chinese border troops would have shot them on sight at the Wakhjir Pass, so they ended up walking across the 20000 foot Delhi Sang pass, and sliding down into Hunza, the original Sangri-La. Her husband almost died of fever before they got properly down, but all ended happily. They did go up and step into China at the Mintaka pass, but then retreated.
Very interesting photos, including one of a yak leaping a 5 foot crevasse. There must be an article or two in the National Geographic from the early fifties.

Archimedes

2010-04-26T14:23:00.000+01:00

Airciméidéas. Translated by Peadar Ó Casaide. Illustrations by Ghislaine Joos. Oifig an tSoláthair. 1979. (Irish. Original Dutch, Desclée De Brouwer, Bruges)

Short illustrated account, for children, of his life and inventions. I liked the cipher idea:
Wrap a ribbon of paper round a rod, in a spiral. Write the message along the stick, unwind and send. The recipient decodes by rewinding it on a rod of the same diameter.
Unless you assume uniform spacing of characters, this cannot be converted to any standard mathematical cipher. But it is rather like the following: (1) Write the message as an m by n matrix of characters, i.e. m rows of n characters. Then transpose the matrix, and transmit the rows one by one.
Easy enough to crack, to be sure. The original version could be a lot more trouble, since the sender can use any old scrawl, abbreviations, variations in calligraphy, and add noise in the form of doodles and dirt. However, careless doodles might assist alignment of the sections, so maybe better not to do that.

A Sorry Tale

2010-04-26T13:48:00.000+01:00

Philip Hughes: A Popular History of the Catholic Church. Burns and Oates. London.1958. (f.p. 1939)

Very interesting book, putting some flesh on many people and movements that were little more than names to me. The author's attitude to the temporal power and the wealth of the papacy differs radically from mine. I see these as the root of most of the truly horrible abuses that he faithfully catalogues. Hughes goes so far as to commend one pope for his talent as a commander on the field of battle.

Coincidentally, the authors of the history of the Canary Islands that I'm currently reading credit "Juan de Paris, William of Occam, and Mansilio de Padua" with proposing that the pope has no temporal power. The context for their interest in the matter relates to papal bulls of 1433 and 1436, granting control of the archipelago to, respectively, Prince Henry the Navigator and the crown of Castille.

Horace

2010-04-13T12:58:00.001+01:00

I re-read the odes, over a few weeks. I did not study these in school, possibly a blessing: one of my Russian friends tells me she can't enjoy Pushkin, ever since school. About forty years ago I became aware of the central place Q. Horatius Flaccus occupies in European civilization, and determined to get to grips with him. I've bought and inherited some material, over the years. Three slim volumes, and three fatter ones:

[1] A.H. Allcroft and B.J. Hayes (eds). Horace, Odes, Book I. Text and Notes. London. W.B. Clive. No date. Marked 2/- for second-hand sale.
Possibly belonged to my Uncle Billy, who finished at Synge St. CBS in the early 30's. Then again, I may have bought it somewhere, or it might have been Aunt Peggy's. Those two were the only two in my mother's family to complete secondary school. Includes an elaborate account of metres, besides the usual biography, dates, commentary, and vocabulary.
[2] Stephen Gwynn (ed). The Odes of Horace. Book III. Blackie. London, Glasgow and Bombay. No date. One colour plate. Once belonged to A. Lafferty.
[3] T.E. Page. Horace Odes IV. MacMillan 1933. Resold in Green's of Clare St. Owned by D.P. Moffitt, and by L. Sexton, of Ballineen, Ennis Road, Limerick and 64 O'Connell St., Limerick. Many (B+W) illustrations, with interesting commentary. All three of these school texts have extensive vocabularies, tailored to the volume in question.
[4] Horace Odes and Epodes, edited by C.E. Bennett and revised by J.C. Rolfe. Allyn and Bacon, Boston, etc. 1968. Bought this at Brown, in 1970. Text, followed by elaborate notes and commentary, but he expects you to work with a separate dictionary. This is a university text. In effect, he rubbishes what the English editors have to say about the metrical structure, and he has some interesting suggestions about pronunciation.
[5] Anon. The Complete Works of Horace. The original text reduced to the natural English order, with a literal interlinear translation. David McKay. New York. 1964 reprint. (Original Arthur Hinds, 1894). Also bought Brown, 1970, for $3.50. A brutal crib, but very handy, after you get a first impression of the text.
[6] James Michie. The Odes of Horace. Rupert Hart-Davis. 1964. This gives a very free verse translation (using unrelated metres suitable for English). This copy has been around: Simon J. Armad?, Sept 1981, Clare College. Lancashire Library (withdrawn from circulation). It came with some typed notes, as well as the usual (mostly pencil) glosses one finds in all the second-hand texts. Michie's objective was to make Horace accessible, and to compose English verse.

The commentators all agree that Horace had essentially nothing original to say, and that his fame rests on the utter perfection of his way of expressing the ideas. Gwynn says of the odes: "They are undoubtedly the best-known poetry in the world. If every copy of them were destroyed to-morrow, it would be easy to form for instance a committee of the House of Commons, which could restore from memory the entire text with in a week." This was written some time ago, and one doubts that it remains true. My own preference is for content over form, but one has to take seriously a writer of this reputation and perenniel impact. I found it hard work, when first I slogged though [4], using [5] as a crutch. For someone starting in, I think I'd recommend using [6], first. Read the Latin aloud. Then read the English on the opposite page, and go back. Later, poke at the details, referring to whatever you have handy, which should include a decent dictionary. It repays any effort expended.

Antigone

2010-03-26T11:23:00.001Z

George Huxley is speaking this afternoon, on Piety and Power in the Antigone of Sophocles.
Text translation online at http://classics.mit.edu/Sophocles/antigone.html

Antigone, on the gulf that separates her from her sister Ismene: "One world approved thy wisdom; another, mine."