Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Old Bailey Online - The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 1674-1913 - Central Criminal Court
Old Bailey Online - The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 1674-1913 - Central Criminal Court
[courtesy of Auntie K. Thanks, K!]
First thing I did, of course, was pop /towse/ into the search to see what the Towses were up to from 1674-1913.
posted by Sal Towse at 9:56 AM|
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[courtesy of Auntie K. Thanks, K!]
First thing I did, of course, was pop /towse/ into the search to see what the Towses were up to from 1674-1913.
Labels: history, resource, URL
posted by Sal Towse at 9:56 AM|
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Saturday, April 26, 2008
Highland bagpipe is a recent invention for nostalgic Scotish émigrés, expert claims
By Patrick Sawer
Last Updated: 3:04am BST 21/04/2008
[telegraph.co.uk]
Whisper it if you dare, but the age-old Highland bagpipe - beloved of sentimental Scots and American tourists in search of their Highland roots - is in fact a recent invention.
A controversial new study has claimed that far from being the time-honoured instrument which led the clans into battle against the Auld Enemy, the bagpipe as we know it was developed in the early 1800s.
It now seems that, like the kilt and most tartans, the tradition of the great Highland bagpipe was something manufactured for the benefit of nostalgic Scottish émigrés.
[...]
[via Funky Plaid at Swirling Vortex of Verisimilitude]
posted by Sal Towse at 10:51 AM||
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Last Updated: 3:04am BST 21/04/2008
[telegraph.co.uk]
Whisper it if you dare, but the age-old Highland bagpipe - beloved of sentimental Scots and American tourists in search of their Highland roots - is in fact a recent invention.
A controversial new study has claimed that far from being the time-honoured instrument which led the clans into battle against the Auld Enemy, the bagpipe as we know it was developed in the early 1800s.
It now seems that, like the kilt and most tartans, the tradition of the great Highland bagpipe was something manufactured for the benefit of nostalgic Scottish émigrés.
[...]
[via Funky Plaid at Swirling Vortex of Verisimilitude]
Labels: history, information
posted by Sal Towse at 10:51 AM|
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Monday, January 21, 2008
Letter from Birmingham Jail
In honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. and his Day, I reprise a view from the Hill.
Read the post and the Letter from Birmingham Jail. (the "letter" on the blog post is 404).
posted by Sal Towse at 7:38 PM||
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Read the post and the Letter from Birmingham Jail. (the "letter" on the blog post is 404).
Labels: biography, history, people, politics
posted by Sal Towse at 7:38 PM|
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Wednesday, January 16, 2008
The Library of Congress Adds Photos To Flickr, Encourages Tagging
The Library of Congress Adds Photos To Flickr, Encourages Tagging
This is very very cool news.
[via Laughing Squid, natch.]
posted by Sal Towse at 7:21 PM||
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This is very very cool news.
[via Laughing Squid, natch.]
Labels: blog, history, photographs
posted by Sal Towse at 7:21 PM|
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Wednesday, November 14, 2007
The Fallon House (reprise)
I've written about the Fallon House before but because the folks over at Flickr's GUESSWHERESF photo pool asked, I'll gather together the loose threads.
The house that Carmel built, The Fallon House at 1800 Market St, across the street from Destino, home to the best Pisco sours in the City.
The Fallon House was named for Carmel Fallon, his nibs' grandmother's grandmother.
Family history is there on the site.
Carmel Lodge Fallon grew up outside Santa Cruz on her mother's Mexican land grant. Rancho Soquel included land from the Santa Cruz Mountains ridgeline to the sea, from Santa Cruz to Watsonville. Martina Castro Lodge lost it all within years of the American influx. She divvied up the grant amongst her children, including Carmel, sold off the rest (with her much younger third husband as witness to the transaction) and years later died penniless and crazed.
Simon Cota, Carmel Lodge Fallon's father, died when she was a toddler. Carmel's mother, Martina Castro, then married Michael Lodge, whose last name Carmel adopted.
Carmel was the classic spinster rich girl who fell for the dashing Irish adventurer Thomas Fallon. They married and raised a family. The children died of cholera and they moved to San Jose (where Fallon had raised the Bear Flag many years earlier) to raise another family. Carmel, never an easy keeper, wound up whacking Fallon over the head (with what is sometimes called a fireplace tool, sometimes a lead pipe) when she found him in "a compromising position" with the housekeeper/dressmaker/maid some twenty-seven years into the marriage.
Carmel left San Jose and Tom and with her younger unmarried children in tow resettled in San Francisco, where she used her divorce settlement to become a business woman and landlord, owning and operating the Hotel Carmel and the Fallon Hotel.
Carmel never remarried. She built the house at 1800 Market Street and lived in it until her death. Family legend has it that she was up beating out embers on the roof, helping save the building from the fires after the 1906 quake and that for the rest of her life she suffered from "weak lungs" due to smoke inhalation. She did save the house, though. Her house was the first house left standing and unburnt on Market Street after the earthquake and fire.
Carmel Lodge Fallon was in her nineties when she died. Her great-grandson, his nibs' father, could remember visiting his great-grandmother when he was young. She wasn't your warm, cuddly great-grandmother but rather a dour old woman, dressed in black.
One of the children Carmel brought with her to San Francisco, Isabella (Belle) Fallon, married Nathaniel Jones Brittan of the City. His father, John Wesley Brittan, had been a young hardware store clerk in New York until the hardware store owner had the brill idea to send his young clerk out to California shortly after the Gold Rush with a shipload of hardware supplies to sell to the 49ers.
JW Brittan sold out all the supplies he'd brought, kept his share of the profits and settled in the City, bringing more hardware on other ships around the Horn. He made a good living selling hardware, pans and pick axes to the gold miners and hinges, door knockers and nails to the San Franciscans.
NJ Brittan and Belle had three children, a set of twins Natalie and Belle, and Carmelita, his nibs' grandmother. The girls were raised for the most part down the peninsula on NJ Brittan's Rancho San Carlos. NJ's name and the ranch are entwined in the history of what eventually became San Carlos. You can still see Brittan Avenue and streets named after Belle and Carmelita (but not Natalie, why?) from when the ranch was subdivided and sold.
As was the case with many of the Brittan and Fallon holdings, there were squabbles over rights and inheritances. Lawsuits and lawyers ate up what money and property there was. The Fallon House in San Francisco was sold to honor a pledge Carmel Fallon had made to the San Francisco Opera -- but only after the Opera had to sue Carmel's estate.
Eventually, and appropriately enough -- our older son's gay -- Carmel's house became San Francisco's LGBT Community Center.
And there ends a short history of Carmel Fallon's house at 1800 Market.
posted by Sal Towse at 11:28 AM||
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The house that Carmel built, The Fallon House at 1800 Market St, across the street from Destino, home to the best Pisco sours in the City.
The Fallon House was named for Carmel Fallon, his nibs' grandmother's grandmother.
Family history is there on the site.
Carmel Lodge Fallon grew up outside Santa Cruz on her mother's Mexican land grant. Rancho Soquel included land from the Santa Cruz Mountains ridgeline to the sea, from Santa Cruz to Watsonville. Martina Castro Lodge lost it all within years of the American influx. She divvied up the grant amongst her children, including Carmel, sold off the rest (with her much younger third husband as witness to the transaction) and years later died penniless and crazed.
Simon Cota, Carmel Lodge Fallon's father, died when she was a toddler. Carmel's mother, Martina Castro, then married Michael Lodge, whose last name Carmel adopted.
Carmel was the classic spinster rich girl who fell for the dashing Irish adventurer Thomas Fallon. They married and raised a family. The children died of cholera and they moved to San Jose (where Fallon had raised the Bear Flag many years earlier) to raise another family. Carmel, never an easy keeper, wound up whacking Fallon over the head (with what is sometimes called a fireplace tool, sometimes a lead pipe) when she found him in "a compromising position" with the housekeeper/dressmaker/maid some twenty-seven years into the marriage.
Carmel left San Jose and Tom and with her younger unmarried children in tow resettled in San Francisco, where she used her divorce settlement to become a business woman and landlord, owning and operating the Hotel Carmel and the Fallon Hotel.
Carmel never remarried. She built the house at 1800 Market Street and lived in it until her death. Family legend has it that she was up beating out embers on the roof, helping save the building from the fires after the 1906 quake and that for the rest of her life she suffered from "weak lungs" due to smoke inhalation. She did save the house, though. Her house was the first house left standing and unburnt on Market Street after the earthquake and fire.
Carmel Lodge Fallon was in her nineties when she died. Her great-grandson, his nibs' father, could remember visiting his great-grandmother when he was young. She wasn't your warm, cuddly great-grandmother but rather a dour old woman, dressed in black.
One of the children Carmel brought with her to San Francisco, Isabella (Belle) Fallon, married Nathaniel Jones Brittan of the City. His father, John Wesley Brittan, had been a young hardware store clerk in New York until the hardware store owner had the brill idea to send his young clerk out to California shortly after the Gold Rush with a shipload of hardware supplies to sell to the 49ers.
JW Brittan sold out all the supplies he'd brought, kept his share of the profits and settled in the City, bringing more hardware on other ships around the Horn. He made a good living selling hardware, pans and pick axes to the gold miners and hinges, door knockers and nails to the San Franciscans.
NJ Brittan and Belle had three children, a set of twins Natalie and Belle, and Carmelita, his nibs' grandmother. The girls were raised for the most part down the peninsula on NJ Brittan's Rancho San Carlos. NJ's name and the ranch are entwined in the history of what eventually became San Carlos. You can still see Brittan Avenue and streets named after Belle and Carmelita (but not Natalie, why?) from when the ranch was subdivided and sold.
As was the case with many of the Brittan and Fallon holdings, there were squabbles over rights and inheritances. Lawsuits and lawyers ate up what money and property there was. The Fallon House in San Francisco was sold to honor a pledge Carmel Fallon had made to the San Francisco Opera -- but only after the Opera had to sue Carmel's estate.
Eventually, and appropriately enough -- our older son's gay -- Carmel's house became San Francisco's LGBT Community Center.
And there ends a short history of Carmel Fallon's house at 1800 Market.
Labels: history, photographs, San Francisco
posted by Sal Towse at 11:28 AM|
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Tuesday, August 07, 2007
ENQUIRE WITHIN UPON EVERYTHING
Today is the sixteenth anniversary of Tim Berners-Lee posting the first Web pages about his hypertext project that eventually evolved into the World Wide Web.
I mentioned that I'd come across my copy of WEAVING THE WEB yesterday, inscribed "To Sal" by Tim B-L, my hero.
PJ Parks, who used to have a very readable blog but now no longer does, wrote that she has a copy too and talked about ENQUIRE WITHIN UPON EVERYTHING, a Victorian factoid book and the motivation for TB-L to name his proto-WWW project ENQUIRE.
Today, while sorting books and packing up boxes, I found a copy -- well, not the Brit version, mine is the American version: INQUIRE WITHIN FOR ANYTHING YOU WANT TO KNOW, or Over Three Thousand Seven Hundred Facts WORTH KNOWING. Particularly intended as a book for Family Reference on Subjects connected with Domestic Economy, and containing the Largest and most Valuable Collection of Useful Information that has ever yet been published. INQUIRERS ARE REFERRED TO THE INDEX. (New York: Dick and Fitzgerald, No. 18 Ann Street. 1858 [maybe 1856, the numeral didn't print clearly])
The book has all =sorts= of useful (and quaint and dated and sometimes flat out wrong) stuff.
e.g.
794. YULECAKE -- Take one pound of fresh butter, one pound of sugar, one pound and a half of flour, two pounds of currants, a glass of brandy, one pound of sweetmeats, two ounces of sweet almonds, ten eggs, a quarter of an ounce of allspice and a quarter of an ounce of cinnamon. Melt the butter to a cream, and put in the sugar. Stir it till quite light, adding the allspice and pounded cinnamon; in a quarter of an hour, take the yolks of the eggs, and work them two or three at a time; and the whites of the same must by this time be beaten into a strong snow, quite ready to work in. As the paste must not stand to chill the butter, or it will be heavy, work in the whites gradually, then add the orange-peel, lemon, and citron, cut in fine stripes [sic], and currants which must be mixed in well with the sweet almonds; then add the sifted flour and glass of brandy. Bake this cake in a tin hoop, in a hot oven, for three hours, and put twelve sheets of paper under it to keep it from burning.
795. TO WASH CHINA CRAPE SCARFS, &c. -- ...
2004. Why does a lamp smoke, when the wick is cut unevenly? -- Because the points of the jagged edge (being very easily separated from the wick) load the flame with more carbon that [sic] it can consume; and as the heat of the flame is greatly diminished by these little bits of wicks, it is unable to consume even the usual quantity of smoke. The same applies when the wick is turned up too high.
Some of the stuff in INQUIRE WITHIN is word-for-word what's in ENQUIRE WITHIN. The scarf washing article above, f'rex, is word-for-word except that the title is "To Wash China Crêpe Scarves, &c." in ENQUIRE.
Other bits of information (the one about lamp smoke, f'rex) are not covered by ENQUIRE WITHIN at all.
All-in-all fun stuff. You can see why TB-L called his project ENQUIRE -- there's more than a bit of resemblance to the random collection of stuff on the Web.
How prescient of him.
Project Gutenberg has made a copy of ENQUIRE WITHIN UPON EVERYTHING available. Did TB-L even dream sixteen years ago that his nifty little project would some day offer up ENQUIRE WITHIN UPON EVERYTHING for anyone with Web access?
Thanks, TB-L!
posted by Sal Towse at 8:41 PM||
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I mentioned that I'd come across my copy of WEAVING THE WEB yesterday, inscribed "To Sal" by Tim B-L, my hero.
PJ Parks, who used to have a very readable blog but now no longer does, wrote that she has a copy too and talked about ENQUIRE WITHIN UPON EVERYTHING, a Victorian factoid book and the motivation for TB-L to name his proto-WWW project ENQUIRE.
Today, while sorting books and packing up boxes, I found a copy -- well, not the Brit version, mine is the American version: INQUIRE WITHIN FOR ANYTHING YOU WANT TO KNOW, or Over Three Thousand Seven Hundred Facts WORTH KNOWING. Particularly intended as a book for Family Reference on Subjects connected with Domestic Economy, and containing the Largest and most Valuable Collection of Useful Information that has ever yet been published. INQUIRERS ARE REFERRED TO THE INDEX. (New York: Dick and Fitzgerald, No. 18 Ann Street. 1858 [maybe 1856, the numeral didn't print clearly])
The book has all =sorts= of useful (and quaint and dated and sometimes flat out wrong) stuff.
e.g.
794. YULECAKE -- Take one pound of fresh butter, one pound of sugar, one pound and a half of flour, two pounds of currants, a glass of brandy, one pound of sweetmeats, two ounces of sweet almonds, ten eggs, a quarter of an ounce of allspice and a quarter of an ounce of cinnamon. Melt the butter to a cream, and put in the sugar. Stir it till quite light, adding the allspice and pounded cinnamon; in a quarter of an hour, take the yolks of the eggs, and work them two or three at a time; and the whites of the same must by this time be beaten into a strong snow, quite ready to work in. As the paste must not stand to chill the butter, or it will be heavy, work in the whites gradually, then add the orange-peel, lemon, and citron, cut in fine stripes [sic], and currants which must be mixed in well with the sweet almonds; then add the sifted flour and glass of brandy. Bake this cake in a tin hoop, in a hot oven, for three hours, and put twelve sheets of paper under it to keep it from burning.
795. TO WASH CHINA CRAPE SCARFS, &c. -- ...
2004. Why does a lamp smoke, when the wick is cut unevenly? -- Because the points of the jagged edge (being very easily separated from the wick) load the flame with more carbon that [sic] it can consume; and as the heat of the flame is greatly diminished by these little bits of wicks, it is unable to consume even the usual quantity of smoke. The same applies when the wick is turned up too high.
Some of the stuff in INQUIRE WITHIN is word-for-word what's in ENQUIRE WITHIN. The scarf washing article above, f'rex, is word-for-word except that the title is "To Wash China Crêpe Scarves, &c." in ENQUIRE.
Other bits of information (the one about lamp smoke, f'rex) are not covered by ENQUIRE WITHIN at all.
All-in-all fun stuff. You can see why TB-L called his project ENQUIRE -- there's more than a bit of resemblance to the random collection of stuff on the Web.
How prescient of him.
Project Gutenberg has made a copy of ENQUIRE WITHIN UPON EVERYTHING available. Did TB-L even dream sixteen years ago that his nifty little project would some day offer up ENQUIRE WITHIN UPON EVERYTHING for anyone with Web access?
Thanks, TB-L!
Labels: books, factoid, history
posted by Sal Towse at 8:41 PM|
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Friday, July 13, 2007
There goes an era ...
Porn lord Jim Mitchell dies at 63
You can Google all the particulars.
Jim and Artie were the godfathers of San Francisco smut.
Two friends from SJPL worked in San Francisco for a while back in the early seventies. The F half was the girl working the box office. She took your $ to get into the theater. The M half had experience working with the AV and film at San Jose Public: he cleaned the films after playing.
We always used to say that Richard cleaned dirty films for the Mitchell Brothers.
Ah, those were the days.
posted by Sal Towse at 10:31 PM||
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You can Google all the particulars.
Jim and Artie were the godfathers of San Francisco smut.
Two friends from SJPL worked in San Francisco for a while back in the early seventies. The F half was the girl working the box office. She took your $ to get into the theater. The M half had experience working with the AV and film at San Jose Public: he cleaned the films after playing.
We always used to say that Richard cleaned dirty films for the Mitchell Brothers.
Ah, those were the days.
Labels: history, life, obit, San Francisco
posted by Sal Towse at 10:31 PM|
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Tuesday, June 26, 2007
FOIA - CIA releases the "Family Jewels"
Available online at the CIA FOIA site
Two significant collections of previously classified historical documents are now available in the CIA's FOIA Electronic Reading Room.
The first collection, widely known as the "Family Jewels," consists of almost 700 pages of responses from CIA employees to a 1973 directive from Director of Central Intelligence James Schlesinger asking them to report activities they thought might be inconsistent with the Agency's charter.
The second collection, the CAESAR-POLO-ESAU papers, consists of 147 documents and 11,000 pages of in-depth analysis and research from 1953 to 1973. The CAESAR and POLO papers studied Soviet and Chinese leadership hierarchies, respectively, and the ESAU papers were developed by analysts to inform CIA assessments on Sino-Soviet relations.
According to ABC News The recruitment of mafia men to plan the assassination of Fidel Castro, the wiretapping and surveillance of journalists who reported on classified material, and the two-year confinement in the United States of a KGB defector -- those are just a few of the past CIA activities revealed in documents released Tuesday. [...]
Update:A more in-depth look at some of the "activities inconsistent with the Agency's charter" from The Seattle PI.
posted by Sal Towse at 5:48 PM||
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Two significant collections of previously classified historical documents are now available in the CIA's FOIA Electronic Reading Room.
The first collection, widely known as the "Family Jewels," consists of almost 700 pages of responses from CIA employees to a 1973 directive from Director of Central Intelligence James Schlesinger asking them to report activities they thought might be inconsistent with the Agency's charter.
The second collection, the CAESAR-POLO-ESAU papers, consists of 147 documents and 11,000 pages of in-depth analysis and research from 1953 to 1973. The CAESAR and POLO papers studied Soviet and Chinese leadership hierarchies, respectively, and the ESAU papers were developed by analysts to inform CIA assessments on Sino-Soviet relations.
According to ABC News The recruitment of mafia men to plan the assassination of Fidel Castro, the wiretapping and surveillance of journalists who reported on classified material, and the two-year confinement in the United States of a KGB defector -- those are just a few of the past CIA activities revealed in documents released Tuesday. [...]
Update:A more in-depth look at some of the "activities inconsistent with the Agency's charter" from The Seattle PI.
Labels: history, politics, resource, URL
posted by Sal Towse at 5:48 PM|
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Friday, June 15, 2007
Eric Burdon, remember him?
I'm just like so bummed.
His nibs sez, "Hey. Look at this!"
Eric Burdon and the Animals are playing at the Chukchansi Gold Resort And Casino in Coarsegold, CA.
Oh.
[heart sinks]
Those were the days, my friend.
[/heart sinks]
posted by Sal Towse at 9:39 PM||
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His nibs sez, "Hey. Look at this!"
Eric Burdon and the Animals are playing at the Chukchansi Gold Resort And Casino in Coarsegold, CA.
Oh.
[heart sinks]
Those were the days, my friend.
[/heart sinks]
posted by Sal Towse at 9:39 PM|
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Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451 Misinterpreted - Amy E. Boyle Johnston
Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451 Misinterpreted - Amy E. Boyle Johnston, LA Weekly.
[...]
Bradbury, a man living in the creative and industrial center of reality TV and one-hour dramas, says it is, in fact, a story about how television destroys interest in reading literature.
"Television gives you the dates of Napoleon, but not who he was," Bradbury says, summarizing TV's content with a single word that he spits out as an epithet: "factoids." He says this while sitting in a room dominated by a gigantic flat-panel television broadcasting the Fox News Channel, muted, factoids crawling across the bottom of the screen.
His fear in 1953 that television would kill books has, he says, been partially confirmed by television's effect on substance in the news. The front page of that day's L.A. Times reported on the weekend box-office receipts for the third in the Spider-Man series of movies, seeming to prove his point.
"Useless," Bradbury says. "They stuff you with so much useless information, you feel full." He bristles when others tell him what his stories mean, and once walked out of a class at UCLA where students insisted his book was about government censorship. He's now bucking the widespread conventional wisdom with a video clip on his Web site (http://www.raybradbury.com/at_home_clips.html), titled "Bradbury on censorship/television."
As early as 1951, Bradbury presaged his fears about TV, in a letter about the dangers of radio, written to fantasy and science-fiction writer Richard Matheson. Bradbury wrote that "Radio has contributed to our 'growing lack of attention.'... This sort of hopscotching existence makes it almost impossible for people, myself included, to sit down and get into a novel again. We have become a short story reading people, or, worse than that, a QUICK reading people."
[...]
"I was worried about people being turned into morons by TV," Bradbury says in the censorship/television video clip. The collection of clips includes his explanation of how he wrote Fahrenheit 451 in nine days in a clip titled (oddly enough) FAHRENHEIT 451.
The Bradbury site also includes a wonderful obit for Marguerite Susan McClure (Maggie) Bradbury, who died in 2003.
posted by Sal Towse at 1:44 PM||
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[...]
Bradbury, a man living in the creative and industrial center of reality TV and one-hour dramas, says it is, in fact, a story about how television destroys interest in reading literature.
"Television gives you the dates of Napoleon, but not who he was," Bradbury says, summarizing TV's content with a single word that he spits out as an epithet: "factoids." He says this while sitting in a room dominated by a gigantic flat-panel television broadcasting the Fox News Channel, muted, factoids crawling across the bottom of the screen.
His fear in 1953 that television would kill books has, he says, been partially confirmed by television's effect on substance in the news. The front page of that day's L.A. Times reported on the weekend box-office receipts for the third in the Spider-Man series of movies, seeming to prove his point.
"Useless," Bradbury says. "They stuff you with so much useless information, you feel full." He bristles when others tell him what his stories mean, and once walked out of a class at UCLA where students insisted his book was about government censorship. He's now bucking the widespread conventional wisdom with a video clip on his Web site (http://www.raybradbury.com/at_home_clips.html), titled "Bradbury on censorship/television."
As early as 1951, Bradbury presaged his fears about TV, in a letter about the dangers of radio, written to fantasy and science-fiction writer Richard Matheson. Bradbury wrote that "Radio has contributed to our 'growing lack of attention.'... This sort of hopscotching existence makes it almost impossible for people, myself included, to sit down and get into a novel again. We have become a short story reading people, or, worse than that, a QUICK reading people."
[...]
"I was worried about people being turned into morons by TV," Bradbury says in the censorship/television video clip. The collection of clips includes his explanation of how he wrote Fahrenheit 451 in nine days in a clip titled (oddly enough) FAHRENHEIT 451.
The Bradbury site also includes a wonderful obit for Marguerite Susan McClure (Maggie) Bradbury, who died in 2003.
Labels: biography, books, history, obit, video
posted by Sal Towse at 1:44 PM|
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Anthony Trollope
Welcome to Anthony Trollope
We're bringing Trollope's world to life with character descriptions, plot summaries, details of Trollope's career as well as free e-texts of the novels to download.
It's the 150th anniversary of Barchester Towers. Stop on by. Grab a piece of cake!
The folks behind the site are giving away 50 copies of Barchester Towers. You can't win unless you enter. Deadline 30 June 2007.
Must be resident of UK to win. (It's not fair, Mom!)
posted by Sal Towse at 12:52 PM||
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We're bringing Trollope's world to life with character descriptions, plot summaries, details of Trollope's career as well as free e-texts of the novels to download.
It's the 150th anniversary of Barchester Towers. Stop on by. Grab a piece of cake!
The folks behind the site are giving away 50 copies of Barchester Towers. You can't win unless you enter. Deadline 30 June 2007.
Must be resident of UK to win. (It's not fair, Mom!)
Labels: books, contest, history, URL
posted by Sal Towse at 12:52 PM|
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Sunday, June 10, 2007
Helvetica at 50
Helvetica at 50
[...]
The typeface's dominance over the past half-century, cemented by the release of Neue Helvetica in the 1980s, has now inspired a documentary, Helvetica, and exhibitions on both sides of the Atlantic.
Bland uniformity
But not everyone is a Helvetica lover. Type "I hate Helvetica" into Google and there are forums for people who rage at the mindless "corporate chic" of this dominant font. They see it as a vehicle for social conformity through consumerism, shifting product with a great big steam-roller of neutrality.
[...]
posted by Sal Towse at 8:51 AM||
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[...]
The typeface's dominance over the past half-century, cemented by the release of Neue Helvetica in the 1980s, has now inspired a documentary, Helvetica, and exhibitions on both sides of the Atlantic.
Bland uniformity
But not everyone is a Helvetica lover. Type "I hate Helvetica" into Google and there are forums for people who rage at the mindless "corporate chic" of this dominant font. They see it as a vehicle for social conformity through consumerism, shifting product with a great big steam-roller of neutrality.
[...]
posted by Sal Towse at 8:51 AM|
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Saturday, June 09, 2007
What do YOU want to be remembered for?
Obit in today's Chron: Edwin Traisman -- french fry innovator.
Seems Traisman bought the first McDonald's franchise in Madison, WI, in the late 1950s. At the time there was a problem getting the fresh potatoes to make fries. (McDonald's fries at that time were made fresh in each location.) Ray Kroc asked Traisman to help work on the problem of making tasty frozen fries and a "Method for Preparing Frozen French Fried Potatoes" (a Traisman innovation) was patented in 1962.
But wait. There's more.
Before becoming a McDonald's franchisee, Traisman was director of food research at Kraft where he was instrumental in the development of Cheez Whiz cheese spread, instant pudding and other food products.
Cheez Whiz AND McDonald's french fries! Where would we be today without Traisman?
posted by Sal Towse at 12:00 PM||
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Seems Traisman bought the first McDonald's franchise in Madison, WI, in the late 1950s. At the time there was a problem getting the fresh potatoes to make fries. (McDonald's fries at that time were made fresh in each location.) Ray Kroc asked Traisman to help work on the problem of making tasty frozen fries and a "Method for Preparing Frozen French Fried Potatoes" (a Traisman innovation) was patented in 1962.
But wait. There's more.
Before becoming a McDonald's franchisee, Traisman was director of food research at Kraft where he was instrumental in the development of Cheez Whiz cheese spread, instant pudding and other food products.
Cheez Whiz AND McDonald's french fries! Where would we be today without Traisman?
Labels: culture, history, obit
posted by Sal Towse at 12:00 PM|
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Tuesday, June 05, 2007
History of automatons, androids and artificial animals
From the Web site of T.I.L. ProductionsSARL (Paris), which specializes in production of videofilms about automata and mechanical music and creation and manufacture of music boxes) comes this History of automatons, androids and artificial animals.
(Found while tracking down information about Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin and his automatons.)
posted by Sal Towse at 4:17 PM||
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(Found while tracking down information about Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin and his automatons.)
posted by Sal Towse at 4:17 PM|
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SparkMuseum
John Jenkins' SparkMuseum
Welcome to my "virtual" radio and scientific instruments museum where I display the radios and other items I have collected over the past 35+ years. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do. I'm always interested in early wireless, radio, scientific and other electrical items up to about 1920 (including books and other publications)
Highlights of Jenkins' collection.
This site is amazing. A prime example of Web sites offering up a treasure trove of information simply because someone (in this case Jenkins) has a passion for a subject.
(Found whilst searching for information on Geissler tubes.)
posted by Sal Towse at 4:07 PM||
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Welcome to my "virtual" radio and scientific instruments museum where I display the radios and other items I have collected over the past 35+ years. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do. I'm always interested in early wireless, radio, scientific and other electrical items up to about 1920 (including books and other publications)
Highlights of Jenkins' collection.
This site is amazing. A prime example of Web sites offering up a treasure trove of information simply because someone (in this case Jenkins) has a passion for a subject.
(Found whilst searching for information on Geissler tubes.)
posted by Sal Towse at 4:07 PM|
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Friday, May 25, 2007
Sparkletack - the San Francisco History Podcast
Sparkletack - the San Francisco History Podcast
No kidding. How cool is that?
Started a little over two years ago (15 May 2005), Sparkletack now has an archive of sixty podcasts covering a wide range of San Francisciana.
Enjoy.
posted by Sal Towse at 2:31 PM||
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No kidding. How cool is that?
Started a little over two years ago (15 May 2005), Sparkletack now has an archive of sixty podcasts covering a wide range of San Francisciana.
Enjoy.
Labels: history, podcast, San Francisco
posted by Sal Towse at 2:31 PM|
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Thursday, May 03, 2007
[URL] John Woram's Galápagos History & Cartography
The Encantadas: Galápagos History & Cartography
Wide-ranging collection of materials on the Galápagos Islands, Ecuador, collected by the author of CHARLES DARWIN SLEPT HERE.
Ephemera, maps, texts, factoids. Darwin's Journal. Darwin's Diary. H.M.S. Beagle logs. Eleanor Roosevelt "My Day" (her description of her trip to the Galápagos in 1944).
More.
posted by Sal Towse at 12:49 PM||
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Wide-ranging collection of materials on the Galápagos Islands, Ecuador, collected by the author of CHARLES DARWIN SLEPT HERE.
Ephemera, maps, texts, factoids. Darwin's Journal. Darwin's Diary. H.M.S. Beagle logs. Eleanor Roosevelt "My Day" (her description of her trip to the Galápagos in 1944).
More.
Labels: history, science, travel, URL
posted by Sal Towse at 12:49 PM|
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The Siege and Commune of Paris (1870-1871)
His nibs' great great aunt, the peripatetic (and boat and horse and camel and stage coach) traveler, she of the photos of Venice, Japan and elsewhere in the late 1800s, was still in her teens, early twenties, on a trip with her parents when, family legend has it, they were caught up in the siege of Paris. We still have some books around that she bought at the time. French.
Some day (I have fifty or so more years, after all) I will learn me better French than I have and take a crack at reading the things she read while she was cooped up, unable to get home. That's the intent anyway. The old family books in French and Italian and German, the Spanish-Greek dictionary and the like, show that Americans, at least those in his nibs' family, used to be far more fluent in languages than we are today.
Northwestern University's McCormick Library of Special Collections has a terrific collection of photographs and images of the Siege and Commune of Paris (1870-1871).
This site contains links to over 1200 digitized photographs and images recorded during the Siege and Commune of Paris cir.1871. In addition to the images in this set, the Library's Siege & Commune Collection contains 1500 caricatures, 68 newspapers in hard-copy and film, hundreds of books and pamphlets and about 1000 posters. Additions are made regularly.
Search by word or phrase, browse by image type, scroll through the master index (title) and the subject index.
The collection doesn't let you just click [next] and get to the next item, which would be swell. You must click a link, check out the item, go back to the link list, click another link ...
Even so ... you are there and sometimes elsewhere and not always in the narrow date span that the title of the collection implies. Some of the photographs come from the early 1900s, f'rex, and yet, if you like looking at old photographs of people and buildings, come along and wander through this archive.
Amazing thing, this World Wide Web.
posted by Sal Towse at 9:30 AM||
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Some day (I have fifty or so more years, after all) I will learn me better French than I have and take a crack at reading the things she read while she was cooped up, unable to get home. That's the intent anyway. The old family books in French and Italian and German, the Spanish-Greek dictionary and the like, show that Americans, at least those in his nibs' family, used to be far more fluent in languages than we are today.
Northwestern University's McCormick Library of Special Collections has a terrific collection of photographs and images of the Siege and Commune of Paris (1870-1871).
This site contains links to over 1200 digitized photographs and images recorded during the Siege and Commune of Paris cir.1871. In addition to the images in this set, the Library's Siege & Commune Collection contains 1500 caricatures, 68 newspapers in hard-copy and film, hundreds of books and pamphlets and about 1000 posters. Additions are made regularly.
Search by word or phrase, browse by image type, scroll through the master index (title) and the subject index.
The collection doesn't let you just click [next] and get to the next item, which would be swell. You must click a link, check out the item, go back to the link list, click another link ...
Even so ... you are there and sometimes elsewhere and not always in the narrow date span that the title of the collection implies. Some of the photographs come from the early 1900s, f'rex, and yet, if you like looking at old photographs of people and buildings, come along and wander through this archive.
Amazing thing, this World Wide Web.
Labels: history, photographs, URL
posted by Sal Towse at 9:30 AM|
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Saturday, April 28, 2007
The earth shook, people died, the reefs rose, a PT boat is now sitting 10 feet out of water
Quake brings WWII PT boat up from ocean floor
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) -- Wreckage from a World War II torpedo boat was tossed up from the sea in the Solomon Islands after a powerful 8.1 earthquake hit the area in early April, an official said Friday.
Jay Waura of the National Disaster Management Office said the explosive-laden boat was exposed when reefs were pushed up three meters (10 feet) above sea level by the April 2 quake, which caused a devastating tsunami in the western Solomon Islands that killed 52 people.
The Solomons' coastline is still littered with decaying military wrecks from World War II, including the torpedo patrol boat commanded by U.S. President John F. Kennedy.
[...]
Do you have your earthquake kit ready?
posted by Sal Towse at 5:25 PM||
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WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) -- Wreckage from a World War II torpedo boat was tossed up from the sea in the Solomon Islands after a powerful 8.1 earthquake hit the area in early April, an official said Friday.
Jay Waura of the National Disaster Management Office said the explosive-laden boat was exposed when reefs were pushed up three meters (10 feet) above sea level by the April 2 quake, which caused a devastating tsunami in the western Solomon Islands that killed 52 people.
The Solomons' coastline is still littered with decaying military wrecks from World War II, including the torpedo patrol boat commanded by U.S. President John F. Kennedy.
[...]
Do you have your earthquake kit ready?
posted by Sal Towse at 5:25 PM|
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Friday, April 27, 2007
Film clips from yesteryear
Thursday, March 08, 2007
[BLOG] Today in Letters
Today in Letters: Letters and Diary Entries from this Day in Literary History.
Today (08 Mar) brings us
Lord Byron: March 8, 1816
A letter to Thomas Moore.
I rejoice in your promotion as Chairman and Charitable Steward, etc., etc. These be dignities which await only the virtuous. But then, recollect you are six and thirty, (I speak this enviously—not of your age, but the "honour—love—obedience—troops of friends," which accompany it,) and I have eight years good to run before I arrive at such hoary perfection; by which time,—if I am at all,—it will probably be in a state of grace or progressing merits.
[...]
posted by Sal Towse at 5:04 PM||
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Today (08 Mar) brings us
Lord Byron: March 8, 1816
A letter to Thomas Moore.
I rejoice in your promotion as Chairman and Charitable Steward, etc., etc. These be dignities which await only the virtuous. But then, recollect you are six and thirty, (I speak this enviously—not of your age, but the "honour—love—obedience—troops of friends," which accompany it,) and I have eight years good to run before I arrive at such hoary perfection; by which time,—if I am at all,—it will probably be in a state of grace or progressing merits.
[...]
Labels: blog, books, history, writing
posted by Sal Towse at 5:04 PM|
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Monday, February 26, 2007
Family histories of Sharpton, Thurmond collide
Family histories of Sharpton, Thurmond collide
Researchers from Ancestry .com traced Sharpton's roots using a database with access to 5 billion records including birth and death certificates, slave narratives, census and bank records, and United States Colored Troops documents.
They discovered that Sharpton's great-grandfather Coleman Sharpton was a slave owned by Julia Thurmond, whose grandfather was Strom Thurmond's great-great-grandfather.
"I know there's no such thing as a boring family tree," said the chief family historian for Ancestry.com, Megan Smolenyak, who presented the findings to Sharpton on Thursday. "I knew we would find something, but I certainly didn't anticipate this."
The information also showed his [Sharpton's] great-grandfather had been freed. Smolenyak said Sharpton was subdued and stunned when she told him about his family history.
Interesting histories.
Interesting times.
Update: Sharpton Wants DNA Test
posted by Sal Towse at 12:15 AM||
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Researchers from Ancestry .com traced Sharpton's roots using a database with access to 5 billion records including birth and death certificates, slave narratives, census and bank records, and United States Colored Troops documents.
They discovered that Sharpton's great-grandfather Coleman Sharpton was a slave owned by Julia Thurmond, whose grandfather was Strom Thurmond's great-great-grandfather.
"I know there's no such thing as a boring family tree," said the chief family historian for Ancestry.com, Megan Smolenyak, who presented the findings to Sharpton on Thursday. "I knew we would find something, but I certainly didn't anticipate this."
The information also showed his [Sharpton's] great-grandfather had been freed. Smolenyak said Sharpton was subdued and stunned when she told him about his family history.
Interesting histories.
Interesting times.
Update: Sharpton Wants DNA Test
posted by Sal Towse at 12:15 AM|
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Tuesday, January 30, 2007
[URL] Index of artists and architects
Index of artists and architects. Digital Imaging Project: Art historical images of European and North American architecture and sculpture from classical Greek to Post-modern.
Not just European and North American anymore. Also includes images from Vietnam and Cambodia.
Mary Ann Sullivan, Bluffton University, has pulled together more than 13,000 images. Index. Monthly featured site. More.
posted by Sal Towse at 12:36 PM||
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Not just European and North American anymore. Also includes images from Vietnam and Cambodia.
Mary Ann Sullivan, Bluffton University, has pulled together more than 13,000 images. Index. Monthly featured site. More.
Labels: architecture, art, history, URL
posted by Sal Towse at 12:36 PM|
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Friday, January 26, 2007
[URL] An elementary dictionary of the English language. By Joseph E. Worcester, LL. D.
From the Making of America collection comes a link to An elementary dictionary of the English language. By Joseph E. Worcester, LL. D. (1865).
I love old dictionaries. The actual wordstuff for this one begins at page 31, after all the frontal matter regarding pronunciation and all that.
Seeing how a word was used in 1865 gives one a glimpse at how the current day definition evolved. Some words in Worcester's dictionary have evolved beyond recognition. Some no longer exist.
e.g. p 168 (lacerable - lapful)
laconism - pithy phrase or expression
Lady-Day - 25th March. The Annunciation.
laic- a layman; -- opposed to clergyman.
lamantine - an animal; manatee or sea-cow.
lambative - a medicine taken by licking
laniate - to tear in pieces; to lacerate
lanuginous - downy; covered with soft thin hair
Some of those words are still in use today, although perhaps not in as common use as they were 142 years ago. "lanuginous" was used in the 2006 Scripps National Spelling Bee finals.
Fun stuff, words.
posted by Sal Towse at 2:20 PM||
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I love old dictionaries. The actual wordstuff for this one begins at page 31, after all the frontal matter regarding pronunciation and all that.
Seeing how a word was used in 1865 gives one a glimpse at how the current day definition evolved. Some words in Worcester's dictionary have evolved beyond recognition. Some no longer exist.
e.g. p 168 (lacerable - lapful)
laconism - pithy phrase or expression
Lady-Day - 25th March. The Annunciation.
laic- a layman; -- opposed to clergyman.
lamantine - an animal; manatee or sea-cow.
lambative - a medicine taken by licking
laniate - to tear in pieces; to lacerate
lanuginous - downy; covered with soft thin hair
Some of those words are still in use today, although perhaps not in as common use as they were 142 years ago. "lanuginous" was used in the 2006 Scripps National Spelling Bee finals.
Fun stuff, words.
Labels: books, history, information, URL, wordstuff
posted by Sal Towse at 2:20 PM|
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Ten (well, thirty) Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries
from Dr. Judith Reisman's site: Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries (31 May 2005). Reisman lifted the article whole cloth from Human Events: the national conservative weekly.
A description of the scoring method and a list of the people on the nominating committee are given. The top ten books are described in detail.
The books?
Six of these titles I've never heard of: Gramsci, Webb, Croly, Sorel, Adorno, Comte. (Yes, I'm sure not knowing Comte brands me jejune. Alas, that I am.) Five I read as part of the two-year Humanities series in college: Nietzsche, Fanon, JSM, Marx and Marx & Engels. Others I read on my own, including Carson, Skinner, Ehrlich, Reich.
Of the thirty titles listed, I've read (if memory serves) twelve, maybe thirteen. Those unread? Well, doesn't this list make you want to go out and read those you've missed, and reread those you have only a hazy memory of?
I came across this list today from a mention in John Baker's blog where he adds the comment, They turn out to be books that have a point of view different to the panel of conservatives who selected them. No surprises.
If I were to list what I thought were the "most harmful" books, of course the "most harmful" books would be those written by people with a viewpoint that I find poisonous. No surprises indeed.
My list of books would differ in many respects.
I'm having a problem coming up with a list of "harmful" books. Yes, millions of copies of Mein Kampf were published in Hitler's Germany, but was the book itself the cause of Hitler's Germany? How closely did the Soviet Union apparatchiks adhere to the dictums of Marx and Engels and Lenin? Would Communist China have never existed if the little red book had not been published?
My list of harmful books would include:
[note: I wandered over to John Baker's blog from a post at This Thing Of Ours. Thanks for the headsup!]
posted by Sal Towse at 11:19 AM||
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A description of the scoring method and a list of the people on the nominating committee are given. The top ten books are described in detail.
The books?
- The Communist Manifesto Authors: Karl Marx and Freidrich Engels
- Mein Kampf Author: Adolf Hitler
- Quotations from Chairman Mao Author: Mao Zedong
- The Kinsey Report Author: Alfred Kinsey
- Democracy and Education Author: John Dewey
- Das Kapital Author: Karl Marx
- The Feminine Mystique Author: Betty Friedan
- The Course of Positive Philosophy Author: Auguste Comte
- Beyond Good and Evil Author: Freidrich Nietzsche
- General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money Author: John Maynard Keynes
Also included on the list: - The Population Bomb by Paul Ehrlich
- What Is To Be Done by V.I. Lenin
- Authoritarian Personality by Theodor Adorno
- On Liberty by John Stuart Mill
- Beyond Freedom and Dignity by B.F. Skinner
- Reflections on Violence by Georges Sorel
- The Promise of American Life by Herbert Croly
- Origin of the Species by Charles Darwin
- Madness and Civilization by Michel Foucault
- Soviet Communism: A New Civilization by Sidney and Beatrice Webb
- Coming of Age in Samoa by Margaret Mead
- Unsafe at Any Speed by Ralph Nader
- Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir
- Prison Notebooks by Antonio Gramsci
- Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
- Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon
- Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud
- The Greening of America by Charles Reich
- The Limits to Growth by Club of Rome
- Descent of Man by Charles Darwin
Six of these titles I've never heard of: Gramsci, Webb, Croly, Sorel, Adorno, Comte. (Yes, I'm sure not knowing Comte brands me jejune. Alas, that I am.) Five I read as part of the two-year Humanities series in college: Nietzsche, Fanon, JSM, Marx and Marx & Engels. Others I read on my own, including Carson, Skinner, Ehrlich, Reich.
Of the thirty titles listed, I've read (if memory serves) twelve, maybe thirteen. Those unread? Well, doesn't this list make you want to go out and read those you've missed, and reread those you have only a hazy memory of?
I came across this list today from a mention in John Baker's blog where he adds the comment, They turn out to be books that have a point of view different to the panel of conservatives who selected them. No surprises.
If I were to list what I thought were the "most harmful" books, of course the "most harmful" books would be those written by people with a viewpoint that I find poisonous. No surprises indeed.
My list of books would differ in many respects.
I'm having a problem coming up with a list of "harmful" books. Yes, millions of copies of Mein Kampf were published in Hitler's Germany, but was the book itself the cause of Hitler's Germany? How closely did the Soviet Union apparatchiks adhere to the dictums of Marx and Engels and Lenin? Would Communist China have never existed if the little red book had not been published?
My list of harmful books would include:
- [FICTION] The Turner Diaries by Dr. William Luther Pierce (under the pseudonym Andrew Macdonald). Pierce is a white supremacist. This is his ode to the fictional day in the glorious future when the white race will exterminate the vermin who are not white and will rule the world. Yippy ky yay.
- [FICTION] The Protocols of the Meetings of the Learned Elders of Zion -- purported to be true, btw, by not just a few folks.
- [FICTION] The Left Behind series by Jerry B Jenkins/Tim LaHaye
[note: I wandered over to John Baker's blog from a post at This Thing Of Ours. Thanks for the headsup!]
posted by Sal Towse at 11:19 AM|
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Wednesday, January 24, 2007
[URL] Making of America - 19th c primary sources
Making of America -- 19th c primary sources (and some 20th c too)
Making of America (MoA) is a digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction. The collection is particularly strong in the subject areas of education, psychology, American history, sociology, religion, and science and technology. The collection currently contains approximately 10,000 books and 50,000 journal articles with 19th century imprints. For more details about the project, see About MoA.
Amazing collection of stuff.
I was wandering around today trying to see if I could find some written context for "The man who doesn't read books has no advantage over the man who can't read them" (and variations), attributed to Mark Twain -- a discussion that popped up yesterday on Project Wombat (formerly, the Stumpers list).
I never did find confirmation or attribution for the alleged Twain quote, but I did find an essay -- patronizing to say the least -- explaining to the dear little women what sorts of books they should be asking for their husband's permission to buy and read: a six-page article titled, "Reading," by L.L. Hamline, found in "The Ladies' repository: a monthly periodical, devoted to literature, arts, and religion."
Whoo boy.
With the thousands of books and thousands of articles the MOA folks have scanned and continued to scan, you could spend a long while in these archives.
Maneuverability is good. The search is FAST and can be simple, Boolean, &c. MOA pulls up matches giving title &c. and number of pages your search terms are on. You can wend through the pages of a given work or ask for those specific pages within the work that have your search term(s).
The app doesn't highlight the found word on the page, which is unfortunate when you have a dense page filled with tiny print.
Interesting stuff. A peek into where we've come from.
posted by Sal Towse at 12:52 PM||
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Making of America (MoA) is a digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction. The collection is particularly strong in the subject areas of education, psychology, American history, sociology, religion, and science and technology. The collection currently contains approximately 10,000 books and 50,000 journal articles with 19th century imprints. For more details about the project, see About MoA.
Amazing collection of stuff.
I was wandering around today trying to see if I could find some written context for "The man who doesn't read books has no advantage over the man who can't read them" (and variations), attributed to Mark Twain -- a discussion that popped up yesterday on Project Wombat (formerly, the Stumpers list).
I never did find confirmation or attribution for the alleged Twain quote, but I did find an essay -- patronizing to say the least -- explaining to the dear little women what sorts of books they should be asking for their husband's permission to buy and read: a six-page article titled, "Reading," by L.L. Hamline, found in "The Ladies' repository: a monthly periodical, devoted to literature, arts, and religion."
Whoo boy.
With the thousands of books and thousands of articles the MOA folks have scanned and continued to scan, you could spend a long while in these archives.
Maneuverability is good. The search is FAST and can be simple, Boolean, &c. MOA pulls up matches giving title &c. and number of pages your search terms are on. You can wend through the pages of a given work or ask for those specific pages within the work that have your search term(s).
The app doesn't highlight the found word on the page, which is unfortunate when you have a dense page filled with tiny print.
Interesting stuff. A peek into where we've come from.
Labels: books, history, information, URL
posted by Sal Towse at 12:52 PM|
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