Category Archives: Story

Some things read this week, 11 – 17 Feb 2007

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Sunday, 11 Feb

Henricus Cornelius Agrippa. Declamation on the nobility and preeminence of the female sex. Translated and edited by Albert Rabil, Jr. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe series. Read pp. 13-65.

The resemblance [of sons to mothers] is often evident in their physical appearance but it is always present in their character: if the mothers are stupid, the sons are stupid; if the mothers are wise, the sons breathe wisdom. It happens otherwise with fathers, who, even if intelligent, very often beget stupid sons or who, stupid themselves, produce wise sons, provided that their mother is wise (57).

Tuesday, 12 Feb

Finished the above book. It is actually pretty good, although I have 2 small complaints. First, is the that translator/editor claims that the book is primarily for undergraduates. Maybe. It is extemely heavily footnoted; thankfully. But if we are to believe any of the stories told about people’s reading habits that will be a definite turnoff. I am certainly not saying it is above undergraduates; that is far from the truth. I am only wondering about whether they would engage with it. It is actually a fast read, especially if you avoid the footnotes, unlike me. Second, it is heavily biased towards beautiful, upper class, European, white women, and not necessarily all women. But considering it was delivered as a speech in 1509 and first published in 1529, it is a master work and an extremely important early work on “the querelle des femmes, the “Woman Question.”" Some more quotes:

Women, to the contrary, have invented all the liberal arts, every virtue and benefit, which the very names of the arts and virtues—being feminine in gender—show better than anything. Another remarkable fact is that even the terrestrial globe itself is called by women’s names, the nymph Asia, Agenor’s daughter Europa, Epaphys’s daughter Libya, also called Africa (76).

But in order that no one doubt that women can do everything men do, let us show it by examples; we shall discover that there has never been any exceptional or virtuous deed of any kind performed by men that has not been executed by women with equal brilliance (79).

Are not philosophers, mathematicians, and astrologers quite often inferior to country women in their predictions and diagnoses? Is it not often the case that a small, aging midwife outstrips a doctor (84)?

But since the excessive tyranny of men prevails over divine right and natural laws, the freedom that was once accorded to women is in our day obstructed by unjust laws, suppressed by custom and usage, reduced to nothing by education. … And so these laws compel women to submit to men, as conquered before conquerors, and that without reason or necessity natural or divine, but under the pressure of custom, education, chance, or some occasion favorable to tyranny (94-5).

And from the conclusion:

I have shown the preeminence of the female sex according to her name, order, place, and material of her creation, and the status superior to man she has received from God. Moreover, I have demonstrated this with respect to religion, nature, and human laws, and [in each case] through diverse authorities, reasons, and examples (96).

Amen, brother. “Down with the patriarchy!”

Neelameghan, A. “Lateral relationships in multicultural, multilingual databases in the spiritual and religious domains: The OM Information Service.” In Bean & Green, Relationships in the Organization of Knowledge. 185-198.

More Foucault.

Eliot, George. Silas Marner: Weaver of Raveloe. Read all introductory matter and first two chapters.

Wed-Thursday, 14-15 Feb

Finished Foucault. The Archaeology of Knowledge. Thankfully! I’m sure there was something of value in there; but I’m damned if I know what it was.

More Eliot.

Friday, 16 Feb.

Finished Silas Marner. An excellent book. I am definitely going to have to read more Eliot having only read Middlemarch and now this. The Introduction by Q. D. Leavis was also quite good. Eliot’s psychological insights are no less insightful here than in Middlemarch.

His life had reduced itself to the functions of weaving and hoarding, without any contemplation of an end towards which the functions tended. The same sort of process has perhaps been undergone by wiser men, when they have been cut off from faith and love — only, instead of a loom and a heap of guineas, they have had some erudite reasearch, some ingenious project, or some well-knit theory (20).

Hmmm…?

A dull mind, once arriving at an inference that flatters a desire, is rarely able to retain the impression that the notion from which the inference started was purely problematic (39).

And I dare say, quite a few not-so-dull minds also.

Satija, M. P. “Relationships in Ranganathan’s Colon Classification.” In Bean & Green, Relationships in the Organization of Knowledge. 199-210.

Saturday, 17 Feb

Mitchell, Joan S. “Relationships in the Dewey Decimal Classification System.” In Bean & Green, Relationships in the Organization of Knowledge. 211-226. Which also means I have now finished reading this book. I will have more to say about it in the future, as this is the book that I am reviewing for Representation & Organization this semester.

Garsol, Lars Marius. “What are topic maps.” For Representation & Organization.

Durusau, Patrick. “Babel and topic maps.” [pdf] For Representation & Organization.

Pepper, Steve. “The TAO of topic maps: Finding the way in the age of infoglut.” For Representation & Organization.

Martel, Yann. Life of Pi. Started on Read this novel, which my friend, Mo, gave me last October. Pretty good so far, but no George Eliot. Holy crap! I just read a whole book in one day, and all those other things, too.

Holy balls! I’ve read 8 books already this year. This is absolutely incredible for me. I guess it’s time to turn to the 400-600 page books at this point; those will properly slow me down, no doubt. Or I could actually start producing for my classes instead of just reading.

Scanned photos and bad metadata; a life story

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If you are a Flickr contact of mine, you might know that I have lately been scanning some photos (just a few, all told) from my photo albums. This has been, and is, odd for various reasons.

While the photo albums are “in order” (chronological), they aren’t perfect. For one thing, I’d often remove a partially shot roll of film to put another speed in, if needed, and switch back to the partially shot one later. There is also very little recorded data with the photos. This was my life. I should know more about it.

A fair amount of metadata exists. Somewhere. Somewhere, possibly multiple places, are some small notebooks with details about scores of rolls of film recorded. Where are they? What are the limits of that data? What is its quality? How variable is it? These are all highly interesting questions for one such as me.

So far, I have been dropping the new scans in the Assorted Scans set and then arranging the new photos in chronological order. They need arranging because the set was initially populated with a few scans that I already had or photos at hand prior to bringing the photo albums back from storage in Normal. The wedding photos had to fit in fairly quickly and the “original” scans covered almost a 25-year period. All new photos, when uploaded, go to the end of the set, too, which is probably not where they belong. For a long time still. Thus. Arranging.

Most photos have little real metadata. I find that somewhat disheartening. Even more disheartening, this was my life. I recognize it from behind the lens of my camera. [One should read Jacques Ellul on this: The Humiliation of the Word, chap. III, "Sight Triumphant," Photographs subsection in Section 1. The Invasion of Images (pp.121-24).] I can only plead youth and ignorance.

While I may not have specific dates, or place names, or something else, I do have stories about all of them, and of the many, many more that are left out. Honestly, the few I have been scanning don’t even add up to the outline of a story. Although stories are too wordy for Flickr, I need to find a way to tell some of them. For now, I’ll leave some of it up to prompting by others. In fact, I owe Miss E the story of why Jeremy had an “infamous nose blanket.” And I find it odd that I don’t seem to have a photo of the nose blanket in action, as it were. Maybe it was such a normal part of our odd little lives that it wasn’t worth photographing; although, it did make a great live demonstration. Little kids as “freaks” and all. ;)

At this point, I am up to the beginning of the 4th photo album and Sara’s arrival in the world (early Nov. 1983). These photo albums are of photos taken with my Canon AE-1 that I got in 1979. I actually have 2 albums of Polaroids from Basic and Advanced Individual Training (AIT), my leave before I headed for Germany the 1st time, and early barracks life on a nuclear missile site in West Germany. These are a preservation issue at the moment. They need some intervention before I can scan any of them. Getting them out of the albums will be the first step. These come before those in the numbered albums; chronologically-speaking.

It appears that I have just found my notebook that covers April 1985 to April 1995. I am not yet to that point in time in my scanning, but this is great news. Now where is the earlier one(s)? I also found a notebook from some time in 2003 that covers the last 8 or so rolls shot after I had my camera cleaned and refurbed, but I have no idea were any of the loose rolls of film are.

Well, I used a few tricks of the professional, individual, info manager/seeker and found the box with all the rolls of slides and most of the “loose” rolls of film, including up to the last ones I shot. It may not be everything, but it is probably most of the non-albumed photos.

Just who is going to do this, and just when is this going to be done?

I sure wish I could put a little of what I’m feeling by revisiting all of these photos into the scans so you could feel it, too. Might just help tell many of the stories. And I wish I could do better with the “facts” without having to rely on recorded “knowledge.”

It is only (representations of) my life. And of the stories that comprise it.