Categories
books organization

The Vagrant Book

I know it’s here somewhere.

I.

It’s been nearly three years since the move.

Really, everything should be in order by now (and by everything I mean, of course, the books). That’s hardly the case. The shelving is haphazard and volumes of recent interest trace my path through the house like intellectual bread crumbs.

Before the move, I’d long since resorted to double-shelving. This is a reprehensible practice, but not as bad as piling books on top of shelves or around the bed. Or on the piano. And the desk and dresser. And under the bed—I’m sure you understand.

Despite the demands of a program of thorough Austerity, the books kept creeping in. It’s not enough to stay out of the used bookstores almost all the time; a surprising number of book-feet can be acquired in the fit that follows six months of asceticism.

II.

Before the move, there was a semblence of categorization; indistinct, perhaps, but with logical nuclei. In the grand game of Tetris, everything was packed into boxes as it would fit, an orgy of gleeful bin-packing heuristics.

A month after closing, the walls are painted, the floor refinished. I’ve been eyeing the walls, trying to figure out how many additional bookcases might be slipped in. I fantasize about building barrister bookshelves into the ceiling, spines facing downwards, with shelves that rotate down by a hinged edge. M——. tells me that this is foolhardy and would be courting death. It’s a nice thought, though. How about a shelf around the top of the room, just for the mass markets? They’re impossible to store.

Three months later. The number of bookshelves has been augmented by a half-dozen or so. For convenience, some of the boxes have been unloaded directly onto the shelves, with very little sorting. There’s no double-shelving, so far. What virtue! But the bookcases are now full; what do with these, er, several dozen other boxes? [Update: M——. just told me sternly that once you pass forty-eight, you can no longer say ‘several dozen’.]

Six months later. All right! I agree they should probably go into the attic. Just for a bit . . . when I get some spare time, I’m quite eager to get everything sorted out.

III.

Yes, I have checked the office. Thoroughly? Well, not that thoroughly, perhaps. I searched it last week, looking for a different volume, and I’m sure this would have leapt to my attention. I know it was sitting on my desk before the move, and there was something I wanted to reread.

You really think you saw it there? Excuse me. Perhaps I’ll check just once more.

Categories
books languages

Latin Children's Books

Cover of Cattus Petasatus A major story on today’s NPR Morning Edition was the fiftieth birthday of The Cat in the Hat. Personally, I’ve never been much of a fan of Dr. Seuss. (When I was that age, I much preferred Mike Mulligan and His Steamshovel.) Still the mention of Cat reminded me of a Dr. Seuss I can really get behind: Cattus Petasatus, a translation of the original book into Latin by Jennifer and Terence Tunberg.

Some alterations to the meter were required, but the spirit remains intact:

Imber totum diem fluit
Urceatim semper pluit.
Taedet intus nos manere:
Numquam potest sol splendere.

The result is disconcertingly similar to authentic medieval Latin verse.

Primo pro nummata vini;
ex hac bibunt libertini;
semel bibunt pro captivis,
post haec bibunt ter pro vivis,

Thoughtfully, the publishers provide a guide for using Cattus to teach grammar.

This is certainly not the only children’s classic that has been translated into the language of Virgil. The Tunbergs have also tackled two other Seuss volumes: Virent Ova! Virent Perna! and the euphoniously-named Quomodo Invidiosulus nomine GRINCHUS Christi natalem Abrogaverit.

Moving beyond the basic readers, we have one of my favorites: Winnie ille Pu.

Ecce Eduardus Ursus scalis nunc tump-tump-tump occipite gradus pulsante post Christophorum Robinum descendens. Est quod sciat unus et solus modus gradibus descendendi, nonnunquam autem sentit, etiam alterum modum exstare, dummodo pulsationibus desinere et de eo modo meditari possit. Deinde censet alios modos non esse. En, nunc ipse in imo est, vobis ostentari paratus. Winnie ille Pu.

I recently happened across a mention of Aliciae per speculum transitus (quaeque ibi invenit). Sadly it looks like it’s been out of print for many years, along with its predecessor, Alicia in terra mirabili. Happily, the text of this latter is available online.

Itaque cogitabat (nempe ut lucidissime poterat, nam tempestate calida torpebat semisomna) num operae pretium esset surgere et flosculos carpere, modo ut sertum nectendo se delectaret, cum subito Cuniculus Albus oculis rubris prope eam praeteriit. Neque in eo erat quidquam magnopere dignum memoria: neque Aliciae valde insolitum videbatur ut Cuniculum sibi loquentem audivit: ‘Vae, vae! Sero perveniam!’

And you still want more? If you’re one of those people who actually likes the loathsome original, you might try Regulus. Do you prefer Beatrix Potter? Then Fabula de Petro Cuniculo would be more to your tastes. A final pair to mention (by Andrew Needham, who also translated Ursus nomine Paddington) is Harrius Potter et Philosophi Lapis and Harrius Potter et Camera Secretorum. No samples from these, I’m afraid . . . they’re both on the to-purchase list.  Still, see the Times review of Camera . . . in Latin, no less.

Categories
religion

Witchcraft Murder Round-up

The Bulldada News Blog mentions an article about two women who were killed for suspected witchcraft in Papua New Guinea. There’s quite a bit of this sort of thing going on, and not just in PNG. A few recent highlights:

  • In Nigeria, two brothers beheaded their mother, believing that she was magically responsible for a string of misfortunes in their lives. A son of one of the brothers was living in the same house; he was beheaded as well, presumably to keep him quiet.
  • The government of the South African province of Limpopo has created a special unit to investigate witchcraft, ritual murders, and “related activities.” Premiere Sello Moloto commented, “In the recent past, we have seen the escalation of these heinous acts of crime in an uncontrollable manner.”
  • Suspecting an 81-year-old Kenyan man of murdering his three grandsons by witchcraft (they were killed after falling into a collapsed septic tank), a gang of his fellow villagers beat him to death and set his body on fire.
  • Representatives of the Catholic Church, the Anglican Church of Kenya, and the Council of Imams and Preaches of Kenya have condemned the killing of suspected witches. Bishop Julius Kalu stated, (and it’s hard to argue with this) “It is against the principle of peaceful co-existence to lynch someone for suspecting them of witchcraft.”
  • On the other hand, “scholars” from the Catholic University of Eastern Africa (also in Kenya) are concerned that even though witchcraft is destroying the Catholic Church in Africa, the church continues “to dismiss the dark arts as mere superstition, thereby unwittingly assisting the devil.” Theologian Michael Katola wants priests to understand that they have the power to confront these evil powers . . . otherwise the Catholic Church will start losing members to evangelical movements that offer exorcisms.
  • In Kokrajhar, Assam, India, a man was arrested for beheading a housewife. After his arrest, he claimed that she had practiced witchcraft, and that two other men had participated in the murder.

It may be time to start translating The Crucible into a few more languages.

Categories
computer science

Two Stanzas on Euclid's GCD

Here’s an double tanka on Euclid’s algorithm (for finding the greatest common divisor of two numbers), executable as a Scheme program. My notes indicate that I wrote it during a tedious teleconference.

(define gcd
 (lambda (m n) (if (zero?
  n) m (gcd
   n (remainder m n))))) ; Look!
    ; Falling leaves unveil the tree.

      ; Two integers stand.
       ; They divide, m's ghost remains.
        ; As autumn passes,
         ; n succeeds m, floating down.
          ; Zero reveals the great truth.
Categories
discordianism games

Discordian Games

The Game of SinkIf you’re a Discordian (and who isn’t?), you’re probably familiar with the game of Sink. Unfortunately, if your intelligence is higher than that of a cabbage, this recreation will eventually lose a bit of its luster.

Fortunately, there are other Discordian Games suitable for even such jaded sophisticates.

  • Discordian Solitaire (for two players; suits do not matter because Eris is color-blind)
  • Hybrid: the role-playing game. “RULE # 223: You can using the cloning equation to figure out the # of people that you can effect telepathically. And, you can use the nuclear equation to figure out the radius within which that you can affect others, but you can use topology to increase the maximum distance that you can affect some particular individual. And, the same method of topology, you can, also, generate or simulate singularity (black hole): % = X^X, where X = (C2/M); or, % = Y^Z, where Y = (C1/10) & Z = exponent, which is inverse exponent that is used on his Life Span.”
  • Illuminopoly: Monopoly that forgot to take its anti-psychotics. “RACE CAR: Automotive interests. May roll 3d6 to move if it desires, or just 2d6. Wins if all four railroads are destroyed at any point in the game.”
  • Memetic Truth-or-Dare: Defend the indefensible.
  • Mao: Mao is a card game.  You want to know the rules?  That’s too bad.

And failing all of the above, you could always give Nomic a try.

Categories
miscellanea

How to Defend Yourself with a Stick against the most Dangerous Kick of an Expert Kicker

Illustration from Barton-Wright’s “Self Defense with a Walking-Stick”, 1901

Two masculine habits of previous decades have fallen into sad decline in these present times: the wearing of hats and the carrying of walking sticks. It falls upon those of us who appreciate what has gone before to make up for this modern degeneration. Despite my lack of avoirdupois, I feel great kinship with Douglas Adams’s Dirk Gently:

He was rounder than the average undergraduate and wore more hats. That is to say, there was just the one hat which he habitually wore, but he wore it with a passion that was rare in one so young.

Today, the hat marks its wearer as a mild eccentric (a label I do not eschew).  Sadly, the carrying of a walking stick would be truly outré.  I’ll be devilled, though, if this article by E. W. Barton-Wright (from Pearson’s Magazine, 1901) doesn’t make me want to round out my ensemble:

The student of the art of self-defence with a walking-stick might think it hardly worth while to study any particular method of defending himself which might insure him against an attack by a savater, or foot-boxer. You might suppose that there would be no great difficulty in guarding a high kick, provided you carried a stout stick in your hand. Those who have seen savaters at work, however, and realise the extraordinary swiftness of the kicks which they plant on their opponents’ bodies, will understand that scientific kicking can only be guarded with certainty by a scientific method of defence.

Categories
politics

Abandoning Our Legal Heritage

Winchester Mystery House - Aerial ViewThe edifice of Law could perhaps be described as a sort of Winchester House, obsessively extended and larded with unexpected features: stairs that lead nowhere and 47 fireplaces. Every so often, some reformer decides it’s time to root out some particular bit of cruft. The New Jersey state constitution, for example, holds this gem in Article II, Section I, paragraph 6:

No idiot or insane person shall enjoy the right of suffrage.

Leaving aside whether this rule is actually enforced, it is has been suggested that this provision is deeply insensitive to idiots and the insane. Thus, New Jersey Senate Concurrent Resolution 134 has been adopted, proposing a constitutional amendment removing the language.

Somehow, I can’t shake the feeling that there’s an ulterior motive, here. Perhaps certain senators wish to pack the polls with the feeble-minded and the mad to shift the balance of power that brought about certain recent legislation.

(via reddit)

Categories
discordianism

Robert Anton Wilson Festival: Music and Hot Dogs (Sorry, no buns)

A friend of Wigner’s friend tried to tell me that Robert Anton Wilson is dead, but I wouldn’t listen. He could be, but I haven’t looked in the box myself.

Still, I did just peek into my email inbox, and I found this:

Flyer for the Robert Anton Wilson Wake on 23 Feb 2007Robert Anton Wilson Wake and Erisian Festival
Friday, February 23

Bands:
Northern Liberties
Radio Eris
Yohimbe
Oneiric Imperium

EXTRAS:

Improvisation, Video Screeing, Poetry and Open-Mike, Crowd Participation,
+lasagna, text experiments (exquisite corpse and cut-up), hot dogs with no buns.

Eris Temple
602 S. 52nd St (52nd & Cedar), West Philly

Doors opens 7PM. Lasagna at 8.

$5 suggested donation for bands and temple renovation.

Oh, yeah. It looks like there’s some serious Erisian action happening in Philly. Radio Eris, Northern Liberties, and Oneiric Imperium have pages on MySpace . . . this could be Yohimbe referenced, but I’m not making any assertions.

Update 24 Feb 2007: I’d be very interested to hear from anyone who made it to this event . . please drop me a note or comment.

Categories
games

Textual Retrogaming: Nightfall Lives!

Nightfall MUD Login ScreenI am agog.

Please pardon the excursus – I have just discovered that Nightfall (a MUD that was founded back around 1990), is still alive and kicking. See for yourself:

telnet nightfall.org

and there it is. I was quite surprised to find that my old account and character are still there.

Back in the early nineties MUDding, was a de rigeur recreation for an undergraduate computer science major. I don’t care to think how many 3 AMs would find me still at a terminal in the computer lab, trying to get those just a few more points. The patterns of gaming haven’t changed that much over the years, even if the specifics have flashier graphics.

It’s very interesting to observe how much of a sense of place I still have for a world that exists only in textual form, and that I haven’t spend time exploring in well over a decade.

Novels are different; the details of navigation are brushed aside in the interests of telling a story. When interacting with the world of a MUD, your primary activity tends to be travelling from one point to another. I’m sure I still have the pages upon pages of maps that I drew as I explored Nightfall (and other MUDs, such as Ivory Tower): practical cartography for imaginary places. I remember the path from my house to the guildhall of the Seekers of Magic.

Like interactive fiction, MUDs are far from dead. They have been eclipsed by more elaborate successors, but some people always seem to prefer text to visuals.

Categories
mad science politics

Votergasm.org and Unintended Side-Effects

votergasm.org

votergasm.org promotes an interesting strategy to get more people to the polls on Election Day. Taking a page from Lysistrata, site visitors can pledge to (a) withhold sex from non-voters for a week following the elections, (b) have sex with a voter on election night and withhold sex from non-voters for the week following the election, or (c) have sex with a voter on election night and withhold sex from non-voters for the next four years.

Here’s the problem with this plan, though: nothing prevents non-voters from having sex with each other.

This is it: this is how Wells’s vision will be realized. As these pledges are carried to their logical conclusions, the population will divide into completely separate breeding populations, voters segregated from non-voters. I leave it to your prejudices to figure out which become the Eloi and which become the Morlocks.

(via the Bulldada NewsBlog)