Weierstrass meets Kovalevsky

From Too Much Happiness by Alice Munro:

Weierstrass had no more idea than his sisters of Sophia’s age or mission. He told her afterwards that he had thought her some misguided governess who wanted to use his name, claiming mathematics among her credentials. He was thinking that he must scold the maid, and his sisters, for letting her break in on him. But he was a courteous and kindly man, so instead of sending her away at once, he explained that he took only advances students, with recognized degrees, and that he had at the moment as many of those as he could handle. Then, as she remained standing — and trembling — in front of him, with that ridiculous hat shading her face and her hands clutching her shawl, he remembered the method, or trick, he had used once or twice before, to discourage an inadequate student.
“What I am able to do in your case,” he said, “is to set you a series of problems, and ask you to solve them and bring them back to me one week from today. If they are done to my satisfaction, we will talk again.”
A week from that day he had forgotten all about her. He had expected, of course, never to see her again. When she came into his study he did not recognize her, perhaps because she had cast off the cloak that had disguised her slender figure. She must have felt bolder, or perhaps the weather had changed. He had not remembered the hat — his sisters had — but he had not much of an eye for female accessories. But when she pulled the papers out of her bag and set them down on his desk, he remembered, and sighed, and put on his spectacles.

Great was his surprise — he told her this too at a later time — to see that every one of the problems had been solved, and sometimes in an entirely original way. But he suspected her still, thinking now that she must be presenting the work of someone else, perhaps a brother or lover who was in hiding for political reasons.
“Sit down,” he said. “And now explain to me each of these solutions, every step taken.”
She began to talk, leaning forward, and the floppy hat fell over her eyes, so she pulled it off and let it lie on the floor. Her curls were revealed, her bright eyes, her youth, and her shivering excitement.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes. Yes. Yes.” He spoke with ponderous consideration, hiding as well as he could his astonishment, especially at the solutions whose method diverged most brilliantly from his own.
She was a shock to him in many ways. She was so slight and young and eager. He felt that he must soothe her, hold her carefully, let her learn how to manage the fireworks in her own brain.
All his life — he had difficulty saying this, as he admitted, being always wary of too much enthusiasm — all his life he had been waiting for such a student to come into this room. A student who would challenge him completely, who was not only capable of following the strivings of his own mind but perhaps of flying beyond them.

woman, the scientist

From The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow:

We can be fairly certain there was no Neolithic equivalent of Edmund Cartwright or Thomas Edison, who came up with the conceptual breakthrough that set everything in motion. Still, it often seems difficult for contemporary writers to resist the idea that some sort of similarly dramatic break with the past must have occurred. In fact, as we’ve seen, what actually took place was nothing like that. Instead of some male genius realizing his solitary vision, innovation in Neolithic societies was based on a collective body of knowledge accumulated over centuries, largely by women, in an endless series of apparently humble but in fact enormously significant discoveries. Many of those Neolithic discoveries had the cumulative effect of reshaping everyday life every bit as profoundly as the automatic loom or lightbulb.

Every time we sit down to breakfast, we are likely to be benefiting from a dozen such prehistoric inventions. Who was the first person to figure out that you could make bread rise by the addition of those microorganisms we call yeasts? We have no idea, but we can be almost certain she was a woman and would most likely not be considered ‘white’ if she tried to immigrate to a European country today; and we definitely know her achievement continues to enrich the lives of billions of people. What we also know is that such discoveries were, again, based on centuries of accumulated knowledge and experimentation — recall how the basic principles of agriculture were known long before anyone applied them systematically — and that the results of such experiments were often preserved and transmitted through ritual, games and forms of play (or even more, perhaps, at the point where ritual, games and play shade into each other).

‘Gardens of Adonis’ are a fitting symbol here. Knowledge about the nutritious properties and growth cycles of what would later become staple crops, feeding vast populations — wheat, rice, corn — was initially maintained through ritual play farming of exactly this sort. Nor was this pattern of discovery limited to crops. Ceramics were first invented, long before the Neolithic, to make figurines, miniature models of animals and other subjects, and only later cooking and storage vessels. Mining is first attested as a way of obtaining minerals to be used as pigments, with the extraction of metals for industrial use coming only much later. Mesoamerican societies never employed wheeled transport; but we know they were familiar with spokes, wheels and axles since they made toy versions of them for children. Greek scientists famously came up with the principle of the steam engine, but only employed it to make temple doors that appeared to open of their own accord, or similar theatrical illusions. Chinese scientists, equally famously, first employed gunpowder for fireworks.

For most of history, then, the zone of ritual play constituted both a scientific laboratory and, for any given society, a repertory of knowledge and techniques which might or might not be applied to pragmatic problems.

this natural forest

From The Man Who Planted Trees by Jean Giono:

En 1933, il reçut la visite d’un garde forestier éberlué. Ce fonctionnaire lui intima l’ordre de ne pas faire de feu dehors, de peur de mettre en danger la croissance de cette forêt naturelle. C’était la première fois, lui dit cet homme naïf, qu’on voyait une forêt pousser toute seule. En 1935, une véritable délégation administrative vint examiner la «forêt naturelle». Il y avait un grand personnage des Eaux et Forêts, un député, des techniciens. On prononça beaucoup de paroles inutiles. On décida de faire quelque chose et, heureusement, on ne fit rien, sinon la seule chose utile: mettre la forêt sous la sauvegarde de l’Etat et interdire qu’on vienne y charbonner.	En 1933 recibió la visita de un guarda forestal atónito. El funcionario le notificó la orden de no encender fuego al aire libre, con el fin de no poner en peligro el crecimiento del bosque natural. Era la primera vez, le dijo ese hombre ingenuo, que un bosque crecía por sí solo. En 1935, toda una delegación administrativa fue a examinar el bosque natural. Había un alto cargo de Aguas y Bosques, un diputado y varios técnicos. Pronunciaron muchas palabras inútiles. Decidieron hacer algo y, afortunadamente, no hicieron nada, salvo la única cosa útil que podían hacer: poner el bosque bajo la protección del Estado y prohibir que se cortara leña para convertirla en carbón.	In 1933 he received the visit of an astonished forest ranger. This functionary ordered him to cease building fires outdoors, for fear of endangering this natural forest. It was the first time, this naive man told him, that a forest had been observed to grow up entirely on its own. In 1935, a veritable administrative delegation went to examine this “natural forest”. There was an important personage from Waters and Forests, a deputy, and some technicians. Many useless words were spoken. It was decided to do something, but luckily nothing was done, except for one truly useful thing: placing the forest under the protection of the State and forbidding anyone from coming there to make charcoal.
L’homme qui plantait des arbres	El hombre que plantaba árboles (translated by Palmira Feixas)	The Man Who Planted Trees (translated by Peter Doyle)

playing the violin is easy

From The need for good nomenclature by Edward W. Godly:

[T]he IUPAC ‘Blue Book’ rules are something of a patchwork quilt. It is intended to cover the entire bed of Organic Chemistry although some parts are covered more than once.

Even if a beautifully simple and appealing new system were devised and promulgated now, it would not result in immediate abandonment of existing procedures nor even a gradual supplanting of them. An attempt was made to re-think the whole approach to systematic nomenclature following the discernment by the author of a lack of logicality in the patchwork of revision and extension to organic nomenclature over the past 200 years. This is the so-called HIRN system, the principles for which were published in 1984. Its author claims it to be simple, logically consistent and to use far fewer rules than those of IUPAC. So far, it has not won many converts and this characterizes the general attitude to chemical nomenclature, even among chemists, i.e. almost total lack of interest.

The mid-century devising of line notations was seen as a liberation from all the complexity of systematic naming. Unfortunately, the Wiswesser Line Notation — the one which most widely caught on — requires mastery of a set of encoding and decoding rules filling well over 200 pages of an instruction manual. The system is easy to apply in the sense that playing the violin is easy; in other words the required facility is achieved only by constant practice.

It probably comes as a shock to discover that the rules do not constitute a beginner’s instruction manual but are couched in terse language and require months if not years of study and practice before a fairly complicated molecule can be tackled with confidence. A commonplace reaction is to riffle through the Blue Book looking for an example that looks fairly close to the molecule in question and try to name it by analogy.

I tried to meet certain aspects of this demand by writing a stand-alone instruction manual on naming new organic compounds. <...> Initial trials on user panels gave promising results, the only failures being due to certain subjects inserting bits of their own knowledge instead of blindly following the instructions.

the great danger of the metric system

A few fact(oid)s about Dame Agatha Christie I haven’t been aware until now.

• Pharmacy and toxicology were among Christie’s many interests. During the the First World War, she took some time off her work as a nurse to study for the Apothecaries Hall Examination. She wrote in her autobiography:

  To be introduced suddenly to the periodic table, atomic weight, and the ramifications of coal-tar derivatives was apt to result in bewilderment. However, I found my feet, mastered the simpler facts, and after we had blown up our Cona coffee machine in the process of practising Marsh’s test for arsenic our progress was well on the way. <...>

  A chemist’s shop, the first time that you go behind the scenes, is a revelation. Being amateurs in our hospital work, we measured every bottle of medicine with the utmost accuracy. When the doctor prescribed twenty grains of bismuth carbonate to a dose, exactly twenty grains the patient got. Since we were amateurs, I think this was a good thing, but I imagine that any chemist who has done his five years, and got his minor pharmaceutical degree, knows his stuff in the same way as a good cook knows hers. He tosses in portions from the various stock bottles with the utmost confidence, without bothering to measure or weigh at all. He measures his poisons or dangerous drugs carefully, of course, but the harmless stuff goes in in the approximate dollops. Colouring and flavouring are added in much the same way. This sometimes results in the patients coming back and complaining that their medicine is a different colour from last time. <...>

  During the course of my pharmaceutical instruction on Sunday afternoons, I was faced with a problem. It was incumbent upon the entrants to the examination to deal with both the ordinary system and the metric system of measurements. My pharmacist gave me practice in making up preparations to the metric formula. Neither doctors nor chemists like the metrical system in operation. One of our doctors at the hospital never learned what ‘containing 0.1’ really meant, and would say, ‘Now let me see, is this solution one in a hundred or one in a thousand?’ The great danger of the metric system is that if you go wrong you go ten times wrong. <...>

  It was while I was working in the dispensary that I first conceived the idea of writing a detective story.

• It was not until 1920 that her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, saw the light of day. The corresponding episode of Poirot was released 30 years ago on occasion of Christie’s 100^th birthday. Now, to mark the centenary of Styles, the Royal Mint issued the new £2 coins featuring the author’s signature, a jigsaw puzzle and some instruments of murder.
  

• I visited Ayuntamiento de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria on many a bureaucracy-related occasion without knowing that its (pretty ugly) headquarters occupy the place of the former Quiney’s Hotel Metropole where Agatha Christie stayed in 1927.

  Las Palmas is still my ideal of the place to go in the winter months. I believe nowadays it is a tourist resort and has lost its early charm. Then it was quiet and peaceful. Very few people came there except those who stayed for a month or two in winter and preferred it to Madeira. It had two perfect beaches. The temperature was perfect too: the average was about 70, which is, to my mind, what a summer temperature should be.

  Agatha Christie: An Autobiography
  

• The Mousetrap was not only the longest-running West End show but it had the longest initial run of any play in history. It premiered in 1952 and ran continuously until March 2020 until it was rudely interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

staying indoors all night working

From Soul Music by Terry Pratchett:

A new day dawned.
It had hardly finished doing so before Ridcully hurried through the dewy grass of the University gardens and hammered on the door of the High Energy Magic Building.

The door opened.
‘Oh, it’s you, Archchancellor.’
Ridcully pushed the door open further.
‘Morning, Stibbons. Glad to see you’re up and about early.’
Ponder Stibbons, the faculty’s youngest member, blinked at the sky.
‘Is it morning already?’ he said.

‘You ain’t been out lately?’ said Ridcully.
‘No, sir. Er. Should I have been? I’ve been busy working on my Make‑It‑Bigger device. You know, I showed you—’
‘Right, right,’ said Ridcully, looking around. ‘Anyone else been working in here?’
‘Well . . . there’s me, and Tez the Terrible and Skazz and Big Mad Drongo, I think . . .’
Ridcully blinked.
‘What are they?’ he said. And then, from the depths of memory, a horrible answer suggested itself. Only a very specific species had names like that.
‘Students?’
‘Er. Yes?’ said Ponder, backing away. ‘That’s all right, isn’t it? I mean, this is a university . . .’
Ridcully scratched his ear. The man was right, of course. You had to have some of the buggers around, there was no getting away from it. Personally, he avoided them whenever possible, as did the rest of the faculty, occasionally running the other way or hiding behind doors whenever they saw them. The Lecturer in Recent Runes had been known to lock himself in his wardrobe rather than take a tutorial.

He stared at the students. It was a worrying sight, and not just because of the natural look of students. Here were some people who, while this damn music was making everyone tap their feet, had stayed indoors all night — working.

Borges-like dreaminess

From The Horse, the Wheel, and Language by David W. Anthony:

The Cucuteni-Tripolye culture first appeared around 5200—5000 BCE and survived a thousand years longer than any other part of the Old European world. Tripolye people were still creating large houses and villages, advanced pottery and metals, and female figurines as late as 3000 BCE. They were the sophisticated western neighbors of the steppe people who probably spoke Proto-Indo-European.

Cucuteni-Tripolye is named after two archaeological sites: Cucuteni, discovered in eastern Romania in 1909, and Tripolye, discovered in central Ukraine in 1899. Romanian archaeologists use the name Cucuteni and Ukrainians use Tripolye, each with its own system of internal chronological divisions, so we must use cumbersome labels like Pre-Cucuteni III/Tripolye A to refer to a single prehistoric culture. There is a Borges-like dreaminess to the Cucuteni pottery sequence: one phase (Cucuteni C) is not a phase at all but rather a type of pottery probably made outside the Cucuteni-Tripolye culture; another phase (Cucuteni Al) was defined before it was found, and never was found; still another (Cucuteni A5) was created in 1963 as a challenge for future scholars, and is now largely forgotten; and the whole sequence was first defined on the assumption, later proved wrong, that the Cucuteni A phase was the oldest, so later archaeologists had to invent the Pre-Cucuteni phases I, II, and III, one of which (Pre-Cucuteni I) might not exist. The positive side of this obsession with pottery types and phases is that the pottery is known and studied in minute detail.

mujer pelota

In her 2013 book La ridícula idea de no volver a verte (The ridiculous idea of not seeing you again), Rosa Montero wrote:

Simone de Beauvoir llamaba mujeres pelota a aquellas que, tras triunfar con grandes dificultades en la sociedad machista, se prestaban a ser utilizadas por esa misma sociedad para reforzar la discriminación; y así, su imagen era rebotada contra las demás mujeres con el siguiente mensaje: «¿Veis? Ella ha triunfado porque vale; si vosotras no lo conseguís no es por impedimentos sexistas, sino porque no valéis lo suficiente.» ¿Fue Marie Curie una mujer pelota?

the romance of science

From Uncle Tungsten by Oliver Sacks:

Scheele was one of Uncle Dave’s great heroes. Not only had he discovered tungstic acid and molybdic acid (from which the new element molybdenum was made), but hydrofluoric acid, hydrogen sulfide, arsine, and prussic acid, and a dozen organic acids, too. All this, Uncle Dave said, he did by himself, with no assistants, no funds, no university position or salary, but working alone, trying to make ends meet as an apothecary in a small provincial Swedish town. He had discovered oxygen, not by a fluke, but by making it in several different ways; he had discovered chlorine; and he had pointed the way to the discovery of manganese, of barium, of a dozen other things.

Scheele, Uncle Dave would say, was wholly dedicated to his work, caring nothing for fame or money and sharing his knowledge, whatever he had, with anyone and everyone. I was impressed by Scheele’s generosity, no less than his resourcefulness, by the way in which (in effect) he gave the actual discovery of elements to his students and friends – the discovery of manganese to Johan Gahn, the discovery of molybdenum to Peter Hjelm, and the discovery of tungsten itself to the d’Elhuyar brothers.

Scheele, it was said, never forgot anything if it had to do with chemistry. He never forgot the look, the feel, the smell of a substance, or the way it was transformed in chemical reactions, never forgot anything he read, or was told, about the phenomena of chemistry. He seemed indifferent, or inattentive, to most things else, being wholly dedicated to his single passion, chemistry. It was this pure and passionate absorption in phenomena – noticing everything, forgetting nothing – that constituted Scheele’s special strength.

Scheele epitomized for me the romance of science. There seemed to me an integrity, an essential goodness, about a life in science, a lifelong love affair. I had never given much thought to what I might be when I was “grown up” – growing up was hardly imaginable – but now I knew: I wanted to be a chemist. A chemist like Scheele, an eighteenth-century chemist coming fresh to the field, looking at the whole undiscovered world of natural substances and minerals, analyzing them, plumbing their secrets, finding the wonder of unknown and new metals.

some groups of people don’t use their language properly

From Mapping Applied Linguistics: A Guide for Students and Practitioners by Christopher J. Hall, Patrick H. Smith, and Rachel Wicaksono:

You can substitute several adjectives here for variations on the same myth. Among the most common: some ways of using your language are more beautiful, more complex, more pleasant, more efficient, more logical, more civilized... Many such beliefs arise naturally because of mistrust of ‘the Other’, but in large part language judgements follow from the notion of a ‘standard’ form of the language against which all other varieties can be measured — and found wanting. But in what sense do standard languages exist? They certainly seem to exist in forms of discourse such as newspaper editorials, national language policies and school textbooks. Standard forms of language are appealed to, often when people feel that their national or regional identities or interests are being threatened. Despite the social power of the belief, standard languages don’t exist in the minds of individual speakers; rather, groups of speakers share different degrees of awareness of a set of conventions about what is acceptable, prestigious and desirable. Written language has played perhaps the most important role in ‘fixing’ these conventions as the basis for how others should write and speak.

An extension of this dead end is the belief that some languages are better than others, for example that some are harder or easier to learn, some are closer to God(s), some are more beautiful, more complex, more pleasant, more efficient, more logical, more civilized, etc. Descriptive linguistics and sociolinguistics are useful here to expose the patent nonsense of such beliefs, by comparing the same linguistic unit in different languages or dialects. This allows us to see how the same or a similar element of phonology, for example, can have different linguistic value in different languages, without requiring or entailing any measurement of efficiency, complexity, logic or aesthetics. The /l/ and /r/ sounds of English and many other languages are not differentiated by Chinese speakers, for example, just as the tonal features of Chinese can seem indistinguishable to speakers of atonal languages, such as English. And the ‘illogical’ double negative of many English dialects (‘I ain’t got none’) is part of the ‘standard’ versions of French and Spanish.

dos MOOCs en Español

For a long while, there was no Spanish-language course of interest to me available at edX. Then, suddenly, there were two, both starting in February 2015: La España de El Quijote (Quijote501x) offered by Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and Advanced Spanish Language and Culture (ASLCx) by St. Margaret’s Episcopal School. My past experience taught me that it’s a bad idea to take two (or more) MOOCs at the same time. But which one to choose?

In the end, greediness won and I enrolled for both courses. However, given that I had to go to work, and even actually work, I had to make some sacrifices. Like (o horror!) skipping homeworks.

Advanced Spanish Language and Culture

Of course it’s cool to put something “advanced” on your CV but for me ASLCx, a ten-week course presented by Marta E. Moore-Austin, felt more like intermediate than advanced. To pass the course, one has to score at least 70% of the grade. Grades were assigned as follows:

• 12 quizzes (readings, videos, grammar) — 40% of the grade
• 17 homeworks (readings, recordings, discussion forums and two emails) — 20% of the grade
• Final exam — 40% of the grade

From this it was blindingly obvious to me that I should concentrate on quizzes and don’t waste my time on homeworks (each worth only 1 point). Especially I couldn’t bother with recording myself.

The topics of this course included:

1. La identidad personal y pública
2. Las familias y las comunidades
3. La vida contemporánea
4. La belleza y la estética
5. La ciencia y la tecnología
6. Los desafíos mundiales

The grammar points such as future, conditional and subjunctive, were presented rather formally and without much connection to the rest of the material. There were pleasant discoveries too, such as Ella o yo, or Nosotros, no, a short sci-fi story by José Bernardo Adolph.

To pass the final exam, one has to read five articles and answer multiple-choice questions. Easy, I thought, I had more than a week until a deadline, I can do one article a day or something. I started with a paper about Salvador Dalí, answered the multiple-choice questions and was about to go to bed (it was past midnight already) when by some reason I scrolled the page back to the top and read the following passage:

Contesta las siguientes preguntas de comprensión de lectura. Hay cinco selecciones. Debes terminar el examen dentro el tiempo en límite, 55 minutos, como el examen AP de College Board. ¡Buena suerte!

What?! I have only 55 minutes for all? Did the timer start when I opened the document about Dalí, or when I submitted my first response? In any case, I decided to carry on and, believe it or not, finished the remaining four tasks on time.

La España de El Quijote

I have to say straight away that this course, created and taught by Pedro García Martín, is not about Don Quixote, but rather about Siglo de Oro, Spanish Golden Age. I found it fascinating and challenging. The estimated effort (5—7 hours per week) sounds about correct... if you are a quick reader. In Spanish. I am not, and I some of the texts (all by Pedro García Martín) turned out to be rather demanding reading. On the other hand, I had no problems understanding the video lectures. And I did enjoy the Telenoticias. However, watching the videos is not enough to answer all the questions in the weekly exams. So you’d better do the readings.

Here’s the full program of the course.

Semana 1. Introducción: tiempo y espacio Tiempo. Espacio. El tiempo y el espacio en El Quijote. Semana 2. La vida cotidiana La vida privada. La vida pública. La vida cotidiana en El Quijote. Semana 3. Economía y sociedad Economía. Sociedad. Sociedad en El Quijote. Semana 4. Política, religión e Inquisición Política. Religión. Inquisición. Política en El Quijote. Semana 5. Literatura Escritores. Teatro. Literatura en El Quijote. Semana 6. Las bellas artes Arquitectura. Pintura. Música. Las bellas artes en El Quijote. Semana 7. La iconografía de El Quijote Iconografía de El Quijote. Adaptaciones nacionales. Cervantes, El Quijote y el Siglo de Oro en el cine.

Week 1. Introduction: time and space Time. Space. Time and space in Don Quixote. Week 2. Daily life Private life. Public life. Daily life in Don Quixote. Week 3. Economy and Society Economy. Society. Society in Don Quixote. Week 4. Politics, religion and the Inquisition Politics. Religion. The Inquisition. Politics in Don Quixote. Week 5. Literature Writers. Theatre. Literature in Don Quixote. Week 6. The fine arts Architecture. Painting. Music. The fine arts in Don Quixote. Semana 7. The iconography of Don Quixote Iconography of Don Quixote. National adaptations. Cervantes, Don Quixote and Spanish Golden Age in cinema.

Although the course started on 24 February, one could wait with weekly exams till April. The schedule as shown below could be fatal for procrastinators like me:

Weeks 1 through 3: exams due 3 April 2015
Week 4: exam due 10 April
Week 5: exam due 17 April
Weeks 6 and 7: exams due 20 April

As a result, I managed to miss a deadline for Week 1. Mind you, the task was not quite trivial: to adapt an excerpt from Quixote (there was a choice of three original fragments) by placing it in modern setting. I guess I could have done it by the end of the course. Oh well.

multifarious and took pride in it

From The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood by James Gleick:

No one doubted that Charles Babbage was brilliant. Nor did anyone quite understand the nature of his genius, which remained out of focus for a long time. What did he hope to achieve? For that matter, what, exactly, was his vocation? On his death in London in 1871 the Times obituarist declared him “one of the most active and original of original thinkers” but seemed to feel he was best known for his long, cranky crusade against street musicians and organ-grinders. He might not have minded. He was multifarious and took pride in it. “He showed great desire to inquire into the causes of things that astonish childish minds”, said an American eulogist. “He eviscerated toys to ascertain their manner of working”. Babbage did not quite belong in his time, which called itself the Steam Age or the Machine Age. He did revel in the uses of steam and machinery and considered himself a thoroughly modern man, but he also pursued an assortment of hobbies and obsessions — cipher cracking, lock picking, lighthouses, tree rings, the post — whose logic became clearer a century later. Examining the economics of the mail, he pursued a counterintuitive insight, that the significant cost comes not from the physical transport of paper packets but from their “verification” — the calculation of distances and the collection of correct fees — and thus he invented the modern idea of standardized postal rates. He loved boating, by which he meant not “the manual labor of rowing but the more intellectual art of sailing”. He was a train buff. He devised a railroad recording device that used inking pens to trace curves on sheets of paper athousand feet long: a combination seismograph and speedometer, inscribing the history of a train’s velocity and all the bumps and shakes along the way.

As a young man, stopping at an inn in the north of England, he was amused to hear that his fellow travelers had been debating his trade:

“The tall gentleman in the corner”, said my informant, “maintained you were in the hardware line; whilst the fat gentleman who sat next to you at supper was quite sure that you were in the spirit trade. Another of the party declared that they were both mistaken: he said you were travelling for a great iron-master.”
“Well”, said I, “you, I presume, knew my vocation better than our friends.”
“Yes”, said my informant, “I knew perfectly well that you were in the Nottingham lace trade.”

you get little credit for speaking swahili

From An Introduction to Sociolinguistics by Ronald Wardhaugh:

Monolingualism, that is, the ability to use only one language, is such a widely accepted norm in so many parts of the Western world that it is often assumed to be a world-wide phenomenon, to the extent that bilingual and multilingual individuals may appear to be ‘unusual.’ Indeed, we often have mixed feelings when we discover that someone we meet is fluent in several languages: perhaps a mixture of admiration and envy but also, occasionally, a feeling of superiority in that many such people are not ‘native’ to the culture in which we function. Such people are likely to be immigrants, visitors, or children of ‘mixed’ marriages and in that respect ‘marked’ in some way, and such marking is not always regarded favorably.

However, in many parts of the world an ability to speak more than one language is not at all remarkable. In fact, a monolingual individual would be regarded as a misfit, lacking an important skill in society, the skill of being able to interact freely with the speakers of other languages with whom regular contact is made in the ordinary business of living. In many parts of the world it is just a normal requirement of daily living that people speak several languages: perhaps one or more at home, another in the village, still another for purposes of trade, and yet another for contact with the outside world of wider social or political organization. These various languages are usually acquired naturally and unselfconsciously, and the shifts from one to another are made without hesitation.

There is a long history in certain Western societies of people actually ‘looking down’ on those who are bilingual. We give prestige to only a certain few classical languages (e.g., Greek and Latin) or modern languages of high culture (e.g., English, French, Italian, and German). You generally get little credit for speaking Swahili and, until recently at least, not much more for speaking Russian, Japanese, Arabic, or Chinese. Bilingualism is actually sometimes regarded as a problem in that many bilingual individuals tend to occupy rather low positions in society and knowledge of another language becomes associated with ‘inferiority’. Bilingualism is sometimes seen as a personal and social problem, not something that has strong positive connotations. One unfortunate consequence is that some Western societies go to great lengths to downgrade, even eradicate, the languages that immigrants bring with them while at the same time trying to teach foreign languages in schools. What is more, they have had much more success in doing the former than the latter.

a real team effort

From The Undercover Economist by Tim Harford:

We all know that in most countries the Ministry of Defense is in charge of attacking other countries and that the Ministry of Employment presides over the unemployment lines. Cameroon’s Ministry of Tourism is in that noble tradition. Its job is to discourage tourists from getting into the country.

But I don’t want to give too much credit to the Ministry of Tourism. Discouraging tourists is a real team effort. According to Transparency International, Cameroon is one of the most corrupt countries in the world. In 1999, it was the most corrupt country surveyed. When I visited in 2001 it was the fifth most corrupt, an improvement much celebrated by the government. A moment’s reflection should tell you that earning the title of ‘Most Corrupt Country in the World’ takes some effort. Because Transparency International ranks countries based on international perceptions of corruption, a winning strategy is to concentrate on screwing bribes out of foreign businessmen — for instance, at the airport. But the Cameroon authorities have spread themselves too thin, because Cameroon is massively corrupt at every level and does not just target foreigners. Perhaps it’s this lack of focus that caused them to slip from the top spot.

at cost of infinite suffering, we study to love whiskey and cigars

From Novel Notes by Jerome K. Jerome:

“Thought existed before the Printing Press; and the men who wrote the best hundred books never read them. Books have their place in the world, but they are not its purpose. They are things side by side with beef and mutton, the scent of the sea, the touch of a hand, the memory of a hope, and all the other items in the sum-total of our three-score years and ten. Yet we speak of them as though they were the voice of Life instead of merely its faint echo. Tales are delightful as tales — sweet as primroses after the long winter, restful as the cawing of rooks at sunset. But we do not write ‘tales’ now; we prepare ‘human documents’ and dissect souls.”

“Our religion hangs ready-made beside our cradle to be buttoned upon us by loving hands. Our tastes we acquire, with difficulty; our sentiments we learn by rote. At cost of infinite suffering, we study to love whiskey and cigars, high art and classical music. In one age we admire Byron and drink sweet champagne: twenty years later it is more fashionable to prefer Shelley, and we like our champagne dry. At school we are told that Shakespeare is a great poet, and that the Venus di Medici is a fine piece of sculpture; and so for the rest of our lives we go about saying what a great poet we think Shakespeare, and that there is no piece of sculpture, in our opinion, so fine as the Venus di Medici. If we are Frenchmen we adore our mother; if Englishmen we love dogs and virtue. We grieve for the death of a near relative twelve months; but for a second cousin we sorrow only three.”

the importance of knowing the rules

From The Kalahari Typing School For Men by Alexander McCall Smith:

The public office to which she was admitted had that typical look and smell of government offices. The furniture, such as it was, was completely functional-straight-backed chairs and simple two-drawer desks.

This clerk was not bright, and people like that could show a remarkable tenacity when it came to rules. Because they could not distinguish between meritorious and unmeritorious requests, they could refuse to budge from the letter of the regulations. And there would be no point in trying to reason with them. The best tactic was to undermine their certainty as to the rule. If they could be persuaded that the rule was otherwise, then it might be possible to get somewhere. But it would be a delicate task.

“Yes, Rra. I am sure that you are very good when it comes to rules. I am sure that this is the case. But sometimes, when one has to know so many rules, one can get them mixed up. You are thinking of rule 25. This rule is really rule 24(b), subsection (i). That is the rule that you are thinking of. That is the rule which says that no names of pensioners must be revealed, but which does not say anything about addresses. The rule which deals with addresses is rule 18, which has now been cancelled.”

The clerk shifted on his feet. He felt uneasy now and was not sure what to make of this assertive woman with her rule numbers. Did rules have numbers? Nobody had told him about them, but it was quite possible, he supposed.

“How do you know about these rules?” he asked. “Who told you?”

“Have you not read the Government Gazette?” asked Mma Ramotswe. “The rules are usually printed out in the Gazette, for everybody to see. Everybody is allowed to see the rules, as they are there for the protection of the public, Rra. That is important.”

The clerk said nothing. He was biting his lip now, and Mma Ramotswe saw him throw a quick glance over his shoulder.

“Of course,” she pressed on, “if you are too junior to deal with these matters, then I would be very happy to deal with a more senior person. Perhaps there is somebody in the back office who is senior enough to understand these rules.”

The clerk’s eyes narrowed, and Mma Ramotswe knew at that moment that her judgement had been correct: if he called somebody else, he would lose face.

“I am quite senior enough,” he said haughtily. “And what you say about the rules is quite correct. I was just waiting to see if you knew. It is very good that you did. If only more members of the public knew about these rules then our job would be easier.”

“You are doing your job very well, Rra,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I am glad that I found you and not some junior person who would know nothing about the rules.”

important scholarly considerations

From Portuguese Irregular Verbs by Alexander McCall Smith:

It was the lowest form of work in the academic hierarchy, made all the more difficult by the tendency of Professor Vogelsang to publish papers based almost entirely on von Iglefeld’s work, but under the Vogelsang name and with no mention made of von Igelfeld’s contribution. In one case — which eventually prompted von Igelfeld to protest (in the gentlest, most indirect terms) — Vogelsang took a paper which von Igelfeld asked him to read and immediately published it under his own name. So brazen was this conduct that von Igelfeld felt moved to draw his superior’s attention to the fact that he had been hoping to submit the paper to a learned journal himself.

‘I can’t see why you are objecting,’ said Vogelsang haughtily. ‘The paper will achieve a far wider readership under my name than under the name of an unknown. Surely these scholarly considerations are more important than mere personal vanity?’

As he often did, Vogelsang had managed to shift the grounds of argument to make von Igelfeld feel guilty for making a perfectly reasonable point. It was a technique which von Igelfeld had himself used on many occasions, but which he was to perfect in the year of his assistantship with Professor Vogelsang.

how not to ask for financial support

From Ansel Adams at 100 by John Szarkowski:

A small part of Adams’ correspondence is devoted to trying to persuade his rich friends that his work needed and deserved support. He was, alas, not good at writing the kind of letter that might have gotten results. In 1952 Adams wrote a seven-page, single-spaced, typewritten letter to his friends George and Betty Marshall which I believe is an appeal for financial help. I am, however, not sure; and it is possible that the Marshalls were not sure, either. Adams did get a little support from his friend[s] <...> But such help never gave Adams what he needed, and it is not clear that Adams ever told any of his friends or potential supporters, in one hundred words or less, precisely what it was that he did need. Perhaps he was not sure.

adios, CopyrightX

To my great surprise, my review of 3.091x course became the most popular post of all time on this blog. That is to say, more than 365 pageviews. I know, it’s peanuts, but then I never expected this blog to be much visited in the first place. Let’s see if my 100th post (!) will be a hit.

HLS1x Copyright, aka CopyrightX, was the second edX course I took. Apart from the fact that these are both edX courses, there is very little in common between CopyrightX and 3.091x. I intend to continue with edX next academic year and look forward to surprises. Yet I dare to suggest that there is very little in common between CopyrightX and any other edX course.

To start with, one cannot simply, single-clickingly (is there such a word?) register for CopyrightX, like for any old edX course. No sir, you have to apply. This year class was limited to 500 participants. Mmm, I thought, intriguing. I just had to apply and see what happens next.

the book has no future

In his recent article in Chemistry International [1], Peter Atkins wrote:

The book has no future. Most of us who have been brought up surrounded by the tactile pleasure of paper books (p-books) have a sentimental attachment to them, relishing their feel, enjoying being curled up with them in their friendly presence, responding perhaps subconsciously to their smell, enjoying their instant access, finding it easy to browse, serendipitously opening a page and lighting on an enjoyable enlightenment. For those like us in this respect, there will always be paper books, just as there are vintage cars for enthusiasts. The rest of the world, however, will have moved on.

With all respect to the author of the classic Physical Chemistry textbook — the Russian translation of which I was using in my university days — I disagree. The printed book existed for hundreds of years and it will take more than advent of cheap e-book readers to make p-book extinct. It was predicted that compact discs will kill vinyl, then that DVD-Audio and Super Audio CD will kill CDs, and that mp3 downloads will render all of the above obsolete. Today very few people remember what DVD-Audio or SACD was all about, while vinyl sales are on the rise. (The only SACD I have is 30^th Anniversary Edition of Dark Side of the Moon which I bought ten years ago and never had a chance to listen in all its 5.1 surround glory.)

If anything has no future, it is the traditional publishing model. The big publishing houses missed their many chances to make any meaningful contribution to e-books. Now, the main focus of Atkins’s article is on textbooks. He seems to be either unaware of the Open Access movement, or simply ignores it. He mentions some “wikitexts” but, amazingly, never names either Wikipedia, Wikibooks or Wikisource. Too bad. With all the wealth of free educational information on the Web, one must be mad to buy e-textbooks. In the meantime, the authors increasingly move to self-publishing. Who needs the middlemen?

Interestingly, in his earlier article on the same topic [2], Professor Atkins explained exactly why p-books will stay with us:

A p-book is a beautiful thing. It smells good when new, it generally looks good, and it has the virtue of serendipity, for casual browsing can bring the browser to an unexpected viewpoint. The approximate location of knowledge in books can be remembered, or at least half-remembered, for years. Books are life’s companions, and even the sight of a volume on a shelf can remind one of a special moment. But, most important of all, a p-book is “always on.” A book can be opened at a whim and immediately offers its contents to its reader. Books can be read in the brightest sunlight, on the balmiest beach, at almost any angle, in even the most bizarre bodily posture, for hours on end, even while one’s airplane is landing and taking off.

Printed matter is self-sufficient. You don’t need any device to read it. If hacker attacks destroy all Amazon Cloud services, or a hurricane plunges the cities into darkness, the books will still be there. If there are problems with sat nav reception or you forgot to charge the mobile phone, the map still can help. And so on.

But what the new generation think? My children love their PCs, Wii and MP3 players. I asked them today what they prefer, e-book or p-book. And the answer is: the real thing.

1. Atkins, P. (2013) The future of the book. Chemistry International 35, 3—6.
2. Atkins, P. (2009) Beyond the book. Chemistry International 31, 9—11.