wednesday book about a Great Man
Sep. 17th, 2025 07:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
landofnowhereGauss, Titan of Science by G. Waldo Dunnington, with additional material by Jeremy Gray. I mentioned in last week's post that during recent air travel I watched a movie with a dubiously historical version of Gauss and was entertained but ultimately would accept no substitutes for actual historical Gauss.
This is the biography of Carl Friedrich Gauss that I picked up off a university library shelf when I was 15, and made me go all swoony over Gauss's letter proposing to his first wife (link is to the original German manuscript). Returning to it with less swooniness and a more mature ability to evaluate historical sources, and also reading a new edition with helpful front matter, it's clear the book is not 100% "actual historical Gauss": it starts off with a version of the famous 5050 story, which is based on an anecdote that Gauss reportedly told about his childhood, but probably didn't happen exactly that way.
Indeed, as I learned from the front matter, G. Waldo Dunnington was a professional Gauss stan; one of his elementary school teachers was a great-granddaughter of Gauss, and learning that there was no Victorian Great Man biography of Gauss, he spent his entire academic career (interrupted by WWII) remedying that lack. Since I'm also a Gauss stan, I found the book generally readable if sometimes a bit repetitive, and enjoyed various fun Gauss facts. (In the department of obscure historical figures who ought to be fictionalized, there is Friedrich Ludwig Wachter, Gauss's student who studied non-Euclidean geometry and vanished without a trace at age 25.)
I'll probably do more Gauss reading (though also I now have an unproofread scan of Teresa by Edith Ayrton Zangwill so I may read that first); I've started with the letters online, but may also seek out other biographies. I continue to be fascinated by Gauss's youngest daughter, whose story would make a good historical romance; and having done some Gauss reading I'm starting to think I can actually write this fic.
This is the biography of Carl Friedrich Gauss that I picked up off a university library shelf when I was 15, and made me go all swoony over Gauss's letter proposing to his first wife (link is to the original German manuscript). Returning to it with less swooniness and a more mature ability to evaluate historical sources, and also reading a new edition with helpful front matter, it's clear the book is not 100% "actual historical Gauss": it starts off with a version of the famous 5050 story, which is based on an anecdote that Gauss reportedly told about his childhood, but probably didn't happen exactly that way.
Indeed, as I learned from the front matter, G. Waldo Dunnington was a professional Gauss stan; one of his elementary school teachers was a great-granddaughter of Gauss, and learning that there was no Victorian Great Man biography of Gauss, he spent his entire academic career (interrupted by WWII) remedying that lack. Since I'm also a Gauss stan, I found the book generally readable if sometimes a bit repetitive, and enjoyed various fun Gauss facts. (In the department of obscure historical figures who ought to be fictionalized, there is Friedrich Ludwig Wachter, Gauss's student who studied non-Euclidean geometry and vanished without a trace at age 25.)
I'll probably do more Gauss reading (though also I now have an unproofread scan of Teresa by Edith Ayrton Zangwill so I may read that first); I've started with the letters online, but may also seek out other biographies. I continue to be fascinated by Gauss's youngest daughter, whose story would make a good historical romance; and having done some Gauss reading I'm starting to think I can actually write this fic.
If I press button A, all my pennies will go
Sep. 17th, 2025 04:25 amsovayI just had my first opportunity to shower in four nights, even without washing my hair, so I just had the same opportunity to free-associate in the shower.
I have no explanation for why I was singing the blessedly abridged setting of Kipling's "The Ladies" (1896) that I learned from the singing of John Clements in Ships with Wings (1941) except that it's been in my head ever since it displaced Cordelia's Dad's "Delia" (1992).
As a person who does think all the time about the Roman Empire, I am incapable of not associating Rosemary Sutcliff's "The Girl I Kissed at Clusium" (1954) with Sydney Carter's "Take Me Back to Byker" (1963)—as performed by Donald Swann, the only way I have ever heard it—even though Sutcliff was obviously drawing on Kipling's "On the Great Wall" (1906) with her long march and songs that run in and out of fashion with the Legions and the common ancestor of all of them anyway is almost certainly "The Girl I Left Behind Me" (17th-whatever).
Somehow I remain less over the fact that Donald Swann was the first person to record Carter's "Lord of the Dance" (1964) than the fact that he did a song cycle of Middle-Earth (1967) and an opera of Perelandra (1964).
Oh, shoot, Swann would have made a great Campion. You register the horn-rims and immediately tune out the face behind them.
Ignoring the appealingly transitive properties of Wimsey, Edward Petherbridge and Harriet Walter, I am not going to rewatch the episode of Granada Holmes starring Clive Francis, I am going to lie down before someone wakes me.
I have no explanation for why I was singing the blessedly abridged setting of Kipling's "The Ladies" (1896) that I learned from the singing of John Clements in Ships with Wings (1941) except that it's been in my head ever since it displaced Cordelia's Dad's "Delia" (1992).
As a person who does think all the time about the Roman Empire, I am incapable of not associating Rosemary Sutcliff's "The Girl I Kissed at Clusium" (1954) with Sydney Carter's "Take Me Back to Byker" (1963)—as performed by Donald Swann, the only way I have ever heard it—even though Sutcliff was obviously drawing on Kipling's "On the Great Wall" (1906) with her long march and songs that run in and out of fashion with the Legions and the common ancestor of all of them anyway is almost certainly "The Girl I Left Behind Me" (17th-whatever).
Somehow I remain less over the fact that Donald Swann was the first person to record Carter's "Lord of the Dance" (1964) than the fact that he did a song cycle of Middle-Earth (1967) and an opera of Perelandra (1964).
Oh, shoot, Swann would have made a great Campion. You register the horn-rims and immediately tune out the face behind them.
Ignoring the appealingly transitive properties of Wimsey, Edward Petherbridge and Harriet Walter, I am not going to rewatch the episode of Granada Holmes starring Clive Francis, I am going to lie down before someone wakes me.
Afghanistan banana stand
Sep. 16th, 2025 10:59 pmsovayWhen I heard tonight about Robert Redford, I did not think first of the immortal freeze-frame of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) or the righteous paranoia of All the President's Men (1976) or even the perfectly anachronistic jazz of The Sting (1973) where I almost certainly first saw him, effortlessly beautiful even before he shines up from street-level short cons to the spectacular wire of the title grift. I thought of The Hot Rock (1972), a freewheelingly dumb-assed caper film of which I am deeply fond in no small part because of Redford. Specifically, his casting makes it look at first like the inevitable Hollywood misrepresentation of its 1970 Donald E. Westlake source novel, a cool jazz glow-up of the canonically, lankily nondescript Dortmunder whose heists always look completely reasonable on paper and in practice like a Rube Goldberg machine whose springs just sprang off. Only as the setbacks of the plot mount past aggravation into absurdity approaching Dada, of which the attempt to sneak into a precinct house via helicopter must rate highly even before the crew land on the wrong roof and the siege-minded lieutenant mistakes their break-in for the revolution, does the audience realize that this Dortmunder has the face of a screen idol and the flop sweat of a shlimazl, a man whose charisma is not an asset when it makes people think he knows what he's doing. "I've got no choice," he says doggedly of the eponymous diamond which he did at least once successfully steal, whence all their troubles began. "I'm not superstitious and I don't believe in jinxes, but that stone's jinxed me and it won't let go. I've been damn near bitten, shot at, peed on, and robbed, and worse is going to happen before it's done. So I'm taking my stand. I'm going all the way. Either I get it, or it gets me." When he acquires an incipient ulcer at the top of the second act, who's surprised? He glumly chews antacids as one of his meticulously premeditated schemes trips over its own shoelaces yet again. It may be the only time Redford played so far against his stardom, but he makes such a gorgeous loser with that tousle of coin-gold hair and an ever more disbelieving look in the matinée blue of his eyes, the Zeppo of his quartet of thieves who only looks like the normal one and no slouch in a stack of character actors from Moses Gunn and Zero Mostel through Lee Wallace and even a bit-part Christopher Guest, not to mention George Segal by whom he is characteristically almost run into a chain-link fence, trying to collect him from his latest stint upstate in a hot car with too many accessories. "Not that you're not the best, but a layman might wonder why you're all the time in jail." Harry Bellaver figured in so many noirs of the '40's and '50's, why should he not have retired to run a dive bar on Amsterdam Avenue patronized by exactly the kind of never-the-luck lowlifes he might once have played? The photography by Ed Brown goes on the list of great snapshots of New York, the screenplay by William Goldman is motor-mouthed quotable, the score by Quincy Jones never sounds cooler than when the characters it accompanies are failing their wisdom checks at land speed. Watching it as part of a Peter Yates crime trilogy between Bullitt (1968) and The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973) may induce whiplash. It may not be major Redford, but it is beloved Redford of mine, and worthwhile weirdness to watch in his memory. This stand brought to you by my jinxed backers at Patreon.
Hello! But Keep It Moving, Human.
Sep. 16th, 2025 11:45 am![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
daily_otter_feed
Via Elakha Alliance, which writes:
New research alert! Sea otters, it turns out, aren’t fans of farm-fresh oysters in this study - no matter how fresh they are. In fact, researchers from the University of Alaska Fairbanks found zero evidence of otters dining on oysters, even when these bivalves were grown in farms right in their foraging zones.
So what’s the takeaway? Otters are simply being their smart, energy-efficient selves. Diving dozens of feet to access caged oysters takes too much effort compared to other options - though they did go for the more accessible mussel ropes at one mixed farm.
🦪 As Elakha is conducting our own research study with oyster farmers here in Oregon, these findings help us clarify how otter activity can coexist with coastal economies and ecosystems.
On the edge and off the avenue
Sep. 13th, 2025 11:35 pmsovayI had not thought there were any meteor showers of consequence this month, but it seems that the swift pale streak between the telephone wires southwest of Cassiopeia belonged to the September Epsilon Perseids, so named despite their radiant in β Persei, the demon-star of Algol. I can hope it was not wildfire drift that accounted for the candle-tint of the half-moon, which was doing its autumnal trick of hanging like a lantern in the not yet leafless trees. The last of this summer's monarchs flew just before sunset, the twenty-second of her name.
We just ended up clutching at the empty rituals like gamblers clutching long odds
Sep. 13th, 2025 04:11 amsovayI am glad to read that a classicist on Tumblr whom I do not know feels validated by a poem I wrote a dozen years ago, because she's right in turn about the linkage of ideas that led to its writing: the evocatio of Juno from Veii in 396 BCE, the evocatio of Tanit from Carthage in 146 BCE, the assimilation of Tanit to Juno Caelestis rather than Ištar-starred Venus, the self-fulfilling loop of enmity that a double-thefted goddess makes of the Aeneid and under it all the irony that Vergil even in his Renaissance aspect as magician could not foresee, that Carthage-haunted Rome was itself built on the needfire of the most famously sacked city of the ancient world, Troy whose gods Aeneas salvaged from the night of its destruction and now we remember Rome as the epitome of decadence, the eternally, contagiously falling city.
Also I had just been turned down by a housing situation that I had painfully wanted, but the classical stuff was all still bang on.
Also I had just been turned down by a housing situation that I had painfully wanted, but the classical stuff was all still bang on.
If one year's back on my shoulder
Sep. 12th, 2025 03:26 amsovayNot having read any of the source novels, approximately twenty minutes into the first series of Poldark (1975–77) as I lay on the couch self-medicating with the late eighteenth century, I remarked to spatch, "Is there any aspect of this homecoming that is not going to be a clusterfuck?" on which the answer turned out to be no, whence it seems the engine of the plot. Since I came to this show by having to wait for the third season of Turn: Washington's Spies (2014–17) to arrive at my local branch library, I was more than ordinarily entertained by the line pertaining to the hero's soldiering past, "Shocking business, eh? Losing the Colonies." The bomber leather frock coat is as impressive as advertised.
spatch, "Is there any aspect of this homecoming that is not going to be a clusterfuck?" on which the answer turned out to be no, whence it seems the engine of the plot. Since I came to this show by having to wait for the third season of Turn: Washington's Spies (2014–17) to arrive at my local branch library, I was more than ordinarily entertained by the line pertaining to the hero's soldiering past, "Shocking business, eh? Losing the Colonies." The bomber leather frock coat is as impressive as advertised.I saw the world crashing all around your face
Sep. 11th, 2025 07:55 pmsovayThis afternoon my godchild's school was locked down because one of the students had a gun and the nineteenth and twentieth monarchs of the summer hatched. What am I supposed to say about the day itself? That I am reminded even without the martial canonization of a never-laid grief that nothing is easier to shovel under six feet of lime than memory? The last cousin of my grandparents' generation died earlier this week at nearly a century. The lines to the past snap fast enough, no one needs to hurry them along.
On that note, Andrew Kozma's "The Black Death" (2025). I like that Ulysses S. Grant is top of the list of historical characters Jared Harris wants to play, in part because of his civil rights commitments as president and as a counterweight to his negative figuration in the mythos of the Lost Cause. I need a door in the hall closet to BFI Southbank if they are going to keep doing inaccessibly tantalizing series like last year's complete Powell and Pressburger or, currently, Anna May Wong.
On that note, Andrew Kozma's "The Black Death" (2025). I like that Ulysses S. Grant is top of the list of historical characters Jared Harris wants to play, in part because of his civil rights commitments as president and as a counterweight to his negative figuration in the mythos of the Lost Cause. I need a door in the hall closet to BFI Southbank if they are going to keep doing inaccessibly tantalizing series like last year's complete Powell and Pressburger or, currently, Anna May Wong.
Just Going with the Flow
Sep. 11th, 2025 12:18 pmdaily_otter_feed
Photo by Will Wade via Elakha Alliance
(no subject)
Sep. 11th, 2025 05:55 amsorcyressI spent most of the summer not doing my usual morning ritual*, just...travel, and Pinewoods, and surgery, and everything else. With the start of the school year I've gotten back into it, and wow, I have missed reading y'all's journals so much, I'm sorry to have deprioritized it because dreamwidth really is the only social media that I spend an hour on and feel refreshed and connected afterwards.
I'm glad y'all are still out here writing (and if you're someone I follow who hasn't posted in a while, I'd love to see posts from you too!)
~Sor
MOOP!
*Morning Ritual, which has gone through many iterations since 1995, but is mostly fundamentally the same: Wake up, get a bowl of cereal, open the comics, read comics until you've read all of them or it's time to go to school.
Comics were newspaper from first grade until I went to college (one of my favourite things about The Comics Curmudgeon is that he and I cut our teeth on the same Baltimore Sun comics page), by which point the webcomics slowly shifted until they were a morning game. I've got about two dozen tabs I open each morning these days, all comics except for the last two, which are a personal forum for the pie shop folks to blog about their lives, and here. The good kinds of social media!
I'm glad y'all are still out here writing (and if you're someone I follow who hasn't posted in a while, I'd love to see posts from you too!)
~Sor
MOOP!
*Morning Ritual, which has gone through many iterations since 1995, but is mostly fundamentally the same: Wake up, get a bowl of cereal, open the comics, read comics until you've read all of them or it's time to go to school.
Comics were newspaper from first grade until I went to college (one of my favourite things about The Comics Curmudgeon is that he and I cut our teeth on the same Baltimore Sun comics page), by which point the webcomics slowly shifted until they were a morning game. I've got about two dozen tabs I open each morning these days, all comics except for the last two, which are a personal forum for the pie shop folks to blog about their lives, and here. The good kinds of social media!
wednesday books from an alternate timeline
Sep. 10th, 2025 10:55 pmlandofnowhereShort post because (a) it's actually only been a week (b) busy and (c) while I did spend a bunch of time on planes it was mostly not reading. (I did watch the movie of Die Vermessung der Welt with English subtitles, and while it worked to keep me entertained while very sleep-deprived, on reflection I'm too invested in the actual historical Carl Friedrich Gauss to accept any ahistorical substitutes.)
To Shape a Dragon's Breath, Moniquill Blackgoose. I thought it would be appropriate to read about dragons on the plane trip, and then I didn't read very much, but that's fine as the dragons don't really get to fly in this book anyway. This book was not very subtle in a way that I suspect I'd have preferred if I was younger, which makes sense as it's YA. There are presumably people who would review this book as "I thought I was getting a story about dragons, not a story about how racism and colonialism are bad", but I had read enough reviews to know what I was getting, which was that, but also a school story with interesting alternate-history chemistry and telepathic pet dragons who are not yet a big part of the story, and I enjoyed it! I will definitely be reading book 2 (which I appreciate about summer vacation rather than skipping to the second year of school) when it comes out in January.
To Shape a Dragon's Breath, Moniquill Blackgoose. I thought it would be appropriate to read about dragons on the plane trip, and then I didn't read very much, but that's fine as the dragons don't really get to fly in this book anyway. This book was not very subtle in a way that I suspect I'd have preferred if I was younger, which makes sense as it's YA. There are presumably people who would review this book as "I thought I was getting a story about dragons, not a story about how racism and colonialism are bad", but I had read enough reviews to know what I was getting, which was that, but also a school story with interesting alternate-history chemistry and telepathic pet dragons who are not yet a big part of the story, and I enjoyed it! I will definitely be reading book 2 (which I appreciate about summer vacation rather than skipping to the second year of school) when it comes out in January.
Like a hundred fifty people singing about DVD logos? That part was great!
Sep. 10th, 2025 10:56 pmsorcyressTonight's adventure was going to a Jazz Emu concert with a bunch of my polycule!
The concert was at the Sonia, where I hadn't thought I'd ever been, but I looked up at one point to see the old sign for TT The Bear's Place and had my heart sing. The stage is a lot higher than it used to be, which was good for a concert where we were mostly sitting in chairs looking up to the stage.
He sang a bunch of new songs, interleaved with comedy Bits and other general nonsense. It was a lot of fun to go see a show for a guy who I kinda know of, but don't obsessively follow. Sometimes it's good to have a hundred people for whom you're the ninth favourite thing. I was delighted when he closed out with three of his already known and published songs --it was both fun to hear a live version of something at least two partners have separately made me watch, and REALLY fun to jam out to songs that I didn't know but the people around me were incredibly into. People watching is so good!
After, Tess-Todd-Phoebe-Austin went off to get ice cream, and me and Tuesday loitered for a bit. I purchased a cassette tape, mostly for the utter delight of purchasing a cassette at a kinda divey venue in the year that starts with a 20. This is 1980s shit, and I'm thrilled to be part of it!
We were rewarded by the man himself poking his nose out for the half dozen die-hards who had loitered. He was very clearly exhausted --and his accent is much easier to pin down when he's not Performing, so when he said "I'm exhausted from jet lag" I could make a much better guess about what that meant. But it was pleasing to get in the quick "you did awesome, it was a lot of fun!", and also nice to get that little peek behind the scenes.
It was a really delightful night, and a good reminder that actually there are some pretty awesome little concert spots tucked around my city, and I should find more of them and go to more shows just for the fuck of it. I mean, who has time and all, but live performances are a lot of fun, and I like having them in my life.
~Sor
MOOP!
PostScript: Okay, holy shit, was glancing at the wikipedia page and found out that before he was in full Jazz Emu mode, he wrote one of the best twitter threads of all time? It's rare to have such a Neil Cicierega moment that's not actually by NeilCic!
(the thread is the top song from every decade dating back to the 14000s BC. Grab your headphones, it's very stupid and funny)
[A Neil Cicierega moment is that moment when you are laughing at something funny on the internet, or reminiscing about something old, or being amused by a weird cool thing, and then you realize that it is yet another project by That One Guy]
The concert was at the Sonia, where I hadn't thought I'd ever been, but I looked up at one point to see the old sign for TT The Bear's Place and had my heart sing. The stage is a lot higher than it used to be, which was good for a concert where we were mostly sitting in chairs looking up to the stage.
He sang a bunch of new songs, interleaved with comedy Bits and other general nonsense. It was a lot of fun to go see a show for a guy who I kinda know of, but don't obsessively follow. Sometimes it's good to have a hundred people for whom you're the ninth favourite thing. I was delighted when he closed out with three of his already known and published songs --it was both fun to hear a live version of something at least two partners have separately made me watch, and REALLY fun to jam out to songs that I didn't know but the people around me were incredibly into. People watching is so good!
After, Tess-Todd-Phoebe-Austin went off to get ice cream, and me and Tuesday loitered for a bit. I purchased a cassette tape, mostly for the utter delight of purchasing a cassette at a kinda divey venue in the year that starts with a 20. This is 1980s shit, and I'm thrilled to be part of it!
We were rewarded by the man himself poking his nose out for the half dozen die-hards who had loitered. He was very clearly exhausted --and his accent is much easier to pin down when he's not Performing, so when he said "I'm exhausted from jet lag" I could make a much better guess about what that meant. But it was pleasing to get in the quick "you did awesome, it was a lot of fun!", and also nice to get that little peek behind the scenes.
It was a really delightful night, and a good reminder that actually there are some pretty awesome little concert spots tucked around my city, and I should find more of them and go to more shows just for the fuck of it. I mean, who has time and all, but live performances are a lot of fun, and I like having them in my life.
~Sor
MOOP!
PostScript: Okay, holy shit, was glancing at the wikipedia page and found out that before he was in full Jazz Emu mode, he wrote one of the best twitter threads of all time? It's rare to have such a Neil Cicierega moment that's not actually by NeilCic!
(the thread is the top song from every decade dating back to the 14000s BC. Grab your headphones, it's very stupid and funny)
[A Neil Cicierega moment is that moment when you are laughing at something funny on the internet, or reminiscing about something old, or being amused by a weird cool thing, and then you realize that it is yet another project by That One Guy]
Every song we sing and every kind of place
Sep. 10th, 2025 01:23 pmsovayIt is my fifteenth anniversary with rushthatspeaks and I am spending it with various doctors instead of my husband and our traditional restaurant. We had a better wedding the first plague year.
rushthatspeaks and I am spending it with various doctors instead of my husband and our traditional restaurant. We had a better wedding the first plague year.
