Another 3 week book just nearing the end - The American West by Dee Brown
As well as filling my head with facts and stories of Texas, Kansas, Wyoming and Montana it
has a fantastic bibliography - titles referenced include
Triggernometry
Davy Crockett - American Comic Legend
Helldorado
Hot Irons - Heraldry of the Range
Marquis de Mores at War in the Bad Lands
The works of Sitting Bull
Lead and Likker
Let 'er Buck - a story of the passing of the old west
Last of the Bad men - Tom Horn
The Ghost-Dance religion
A Lone star bo peep and other tales of texan ranch life
And of course a number of biographiies including Billy the Kid by Pat Garrett and the book on Wyatt Earp by Stuart Lake. Then the autobiographies such as Them was the days by Owen P White and
Gun Smoke by Sarah Grace Bakarich - published in Tombstone in 1947
wouldnt it be great browse them all.
particularly poignant were the chapters on the Sioux and Cheyenne wars. The book is full of detailed maps of the battles leading up to little big horn, the river crossings and movement of the tribes as the buffalo were slaughtered. Two weeks ago it was the tribal leaders - Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Crazy in the Lodge, Red Cloud, Swift Bear, Spotted Tail. Dull Knife, Captain Jack of the Modocs and the great Joseph of the Nez Perces. LAst week it was the Goodnight-Loving ranchers in Texas, setting up the giant cattle empires and spreading northwards. culminating in the Billy the Kid Legend in 1881. Today i read about the Blizzard Winter in Montana at the end of 1886. Montana Ranchers had already evolved into Stuart's Stranglers, a vigilante group set up in 1884. Then after the devastation of the herds in the winter the feuding between Cattle ranchers and rustling homesteaders that culminated in the Johnson County War
So only about 40 pages to go including the life of Geronimo. - who died only in 1909. Wyatt Earp survived him until 1929. So much evocative history sprawling across the landscape of the States from 1850 to 1900.
Hope others can follow and try this ramble across the wild west with me
Monday, 30 November 2009
Monday, 12 October 2009
California at Last
Staying in Half Moon Bay, its about 9am and we have already been up and spent time in the Jacuzzi. Nice peaceful place, so pleased with the choice of Hotel. Yesterday was long travelling via Vancouver with the highspot a view of the Rockies from the plane.
Wednesday, 7 October 2009
Clive Sinclairs True Tales of the Wild West
Another find from the Fiction section of the library - What struck me was the elaboration he uses in the stories. You need to pay attention when you read Clive Sinclairs short stories. for a couple of pages you can drift, he even includes photos, then he'll have you reaching back for an allusion to a character that you nearly missed.
I enjoyed the second story in the book - Calamity Jane turns the tables even more than the first one about Custers last stand and wounded knee. And of course its hard to tell where the autobiography stops and the fictionalising begins. The hint at the start of the story that the Observer/Artist and Subject/Model roles interact takes on a rather surprising turn at the end, and I'm looking forward to more convolutions of character and observer in the next section
so a 5 star find for me - Clive Sinclair - i suppose its a style of literature i like - Annie Proulx, Murakami and David Mitchell all seem in a similar vein
and a quick postscript. Ive kept up the 19th Century reading as well. This evening i made it half way through a Henry James short story published in "the Yellow Book 1894 called "the Death of the Lion". This one is hard work not only because im reading a facsimile edition as a PDF. the language really doesnt say much at all. You have to work out the drama almost as a side issue. The style is so allusional so many references i couldnt understand - i suppose thats what attracts me to it is the attention it needs
I enjoyed the second story in the book - Calamity Jane turns the tables even more than the first one about Custers last stand and wounded knee. And of course its hard to tell where the autobiography stops and the fictionalising begins. The hint at the start of the story that the Observer/Artist and Subject/Model roles interact takes on a rather surprising turn at the end, and I'm looking forward to more convolutions of character and observer in the next section
so a 5 star find for me - Clive Sinclair - i suppose its a style of literature i like - Annie Proulx, Murakami and David Mitchell all seem in a similar vein
and a quick postscript. Ive kept up the 19th Century reading as well. This evening i made it half way through a Henry James short story published in "the Yellow Book 1894 called "the Death of the Lion". This one is hard work not only because im reading a facsimile edition as a PDF. the language really doesnt say much at all. You have to work out the drama almost as a side issue. The style is so allusional so many references i couldnt understand - i suppose thats what attracts me to it is the attention it needs
Sunday, 20 September 2009
Friday, 11 September 2009
why i'm interested in 19th century right now
Heres some first thoughts on why I'm interested in the 19th Century, Science, Victorian Art and then start twittering on Nanotechnology and Genetics
I did my degree in History and History of Art, after originally studying Chemistry. At the time I was concerned that the future was heading towards the industrialisation of the world and increasing commericalisation. I switched to Art History to learn about Surrealism, Leonardo, Renoir and Photography and for a few years my scientific interest was submerged. Gradually i reawakened my interest and now revel in the connectedness of science, from genetics to quantum physics. I still dread the dominance of science by business : the promethean implications of modern possibility when linked to human weakness.
At the end of the 19th century there seems to have been a general respect for Science, as well as a mystery and risk about it. The early science fiction of Jules Verne was linked to the adventure fiction of Conan-Doyle and Rider Haggard. Writing about things that seemed "incredible". Scientists were independent and focussed on finding out "why". If they received an income it was as a lecturer, but there was a competitiveness about them and a desire for glory and recognition. Its also hard now to imagine the mystery of finding out the interconnectedness of the infinitely small. Atomic Particles, Rays, Chemical Elements were all being investigated with a care and attention to detail.
Theres such a breadth to what is encompassed in 19th Century Science and the eminent figures themselves bridge disciplines They explored technique in the same way that a traveller would a landscape. Painters such as Cezanne would look for new ways to make pigment (philip ball's book on Colour) . Darwin would grow seeds in his potting shed. Travel had broadened the mind, Darwin, Dickens, Stevenson, Gauguin,
Subjects weren't dumbed down. daily life was influenced by the commercial product - wrights coal tar soap, mass produced goods available, train travel. The range of possibility continued for year.
Then the interest in what it was possible to discover, either by endless repetitive experiment - Darwin, or using new techniques in chemistry and academic discipline in measurement in physics - Kelvin. engineered Microscopes, Vacuums in glass tubes. Electricity. i suppose im less interested in the mathematical reasoning of Einstein and the philosophic logic of Russell. The real mountain the late victorians climbed was to take on the world around them and measure it in the lab.
So back to what fascinates and inspires me. Could Marconi have imagined the world connected by mobile phones carried everywhere by 2 billion people?. The first recording of sound by Alexander Bell has now transformed into music on demand. The electronic word has replaced the hand-written text and notebooks the 19th Century genius's used. But theres also a greater disconnect. We cant conceive the historic innnovations that have gone in to transforming a few rare minerals and metals into minute electronic components, being manufactured in world wide supply chains controlled by computer networks themselves built of millions of electronic machines. When you take this back to a 19th century starting point, you wonder how such evolution and revolution comes about.
But has art improved in the same way? I remember the Art History lectures on Mannerism as an artistic evolution of the Renaissance Painting. The theory that as the technique gets popularised, so the subject matter and content become more bizarre and off-key. I wonder: Has the direction of travel be positive for Music, Painting and Literature in the last 100 years? Im not convinced. The Art of Noise by Alec Ross was a book i expected to read and enjoy. Instead i found it lacking a real sense of pleasure in the Music of the twentieth century, reciting details of 20th Century composer's lives and the reactions of the critics to their work didnt really inform me enough to make me want to hear the works.. But i can play recordings of Brahms and Mahler, and they are different to hearing the music fresh in the concert hall. The fact that musicians use recorded medium hasnt necessarily improved the content, though one can now hear it in any location, not just a concert hall or a music room.
So, "whats there to like" in the late 19th century? - for me there are unexplored poets and novels and coherent pieces of music that are 20 minutes long, with no simplified guide to decode them. I could embrace it with more passion, but now i'm dabbling to find out more of an arcane world which has left its remains just below ground.
and we're now at the twentyfirst century! From Twitter I get news of new products, inventions, created and broadcast to me. But im sceptical that nanotech is already being treated as a commercial and investment subject: enabling better beauty products and building up expectations in another financial bubble. The marketing of new toys and gadgets is apparently to access electronic media that are dominated by celebrity cults. And nothing now lasts or seems designed for permanent ownership. The art has no frame. The music exists only mp3, the words are generated in hours and read, then discarded as papertrash. Twitter in fact seems in total contrast to the way that knowledge was shared in the 19th Century. A mass of people get access to snippets of information which has no permanence and gets overcovered by a snowstorm of vanity networking and commercial exploitation. The 19th Century use of knowledge focussed on disciplined individuals, with a genuine interest occasionally collaborating with a few other individuals. Their approach was personalised and not necessarily efficient, but it required a greater focus and attention, and im convinced that those whos discoveries and inventions we now rely on were supremely able scientists.
Well this is a blog. i could write anything here. I have no dependence on it and it can be dissolved into electrons in a keystroke. It passes time while on the train but my time could instead be spent reading Coventry Patmore or Arthur Hugh Clough. One final thought is that i think we gain by some form of recycling of other knowledge. This is at the heart of Consilence the main theme in www.siev.co.uk.
.
I did my degree in History and History of Art, after originally studying Chemistry. At the time I was concerned that the future was heading towards the industrialisation of the world and increasing commericalisation. I switched to Art History to learn about Surrealism, Leonardo, Renoir and Photography and for a few years my scientific interest was submerged. Gradually i reawakened my interest and now revel in the connectedness of science, from genetics to quantum physics. I still dread the dominance of science by business : the promethean implications of modern possibility when linked to human weakness.
At the end of the 19th century there seems to have been a general respect for Science, as well as a mystery and risk about it. The early science fiction of Jules Verne was linked to the adventure fiction of Conan-Doyle and Rider Haggard. Writing about things that seemed "incredible". Scientists were independent and focussed on finding out "why". If they received an income it was as a lecturer, but there was a competitiveness about them and a desire for glory and recognition. Its also hard now to imagine the mystery of finding out the interconnectedness of the infinitely small. Atomic Particles, Rays, Chemical Elements were all being investigated with a care and attention to detail.
Theres such a breadth to what is encompassed in 19th Century Science and the eminent figures themselves bridge disciplines They explored technique in the same way that a traveller would a landscape. Painters such as Cezanne would look for new ways to make pigment (philip ball's book on Colour) . Darwin would grow seeds in his potting shed. Travel had broadened the mind, Darwin, Dickens, Stevenson, Gauguin,
Subjects weren't dumbed down. daily life was influenced by the commercial product - wrights coal tar soap, mass produced goods available, train travel. The range of possibility continued for year.
Then the interest in what it was possible to discover, either by endless repetitive experiment - Darwin, or using new techniques in chemistry and academic discipline in measurement in physics - Kelvin. engineered Microscopes, Vacuums in glass tubes. Electricity. i suppose im less interested in the mathematical reasoning of Einstein and the philosophic logic of Russell. The real mountain the late victorians climbed was to take on the world around them and measure it in the lab.
So back to what fascinates and inspires me. Could Marconi have imagined the world connected by mobile phones carried everywhere by 2 billion people?. The first recording of sound by Alexander Bell has now transformed into music on demand. The electronic word has replaced the hand-written text and notebooks the 19th Century genius's used. But theres also a greater disconnect. We cant conceive the historic innnovations that have gone in to transforming a few rare minerals and metals into minute electronic components, being manufactured in world wide supply chains controlled by computer networks themselves built of millions of electronic machines. When you take this back to a 19th century starting point, you wonder how such evolution and revolution comes about.
But has art improved in the same way? I remember the Art History lectures on Mannerism as an artistic evolution of the Renaissance Painting. The theory that as the technique gets popularised, so the subject matter and content become more bizarre and off-key. I wonder: Has the direction of travel be positive for Music, Painting and Literature in the last 100 years? Im not convinced. The Art of Noise by Alec Ross was a book i expected to read and enjoy. Instead i found it lacking a real sense of pleasure in the Music of the twentieth century, reciting details of 20th Century composer's lives and the reactions of the critics to their work didnt really inform me enough to make me want to hear the works.. But i can play recordings of Brahms and Mahler, and they are different to hearing the music fresh in the concert hall. The fact that musicians use recorded medium hasnt necessarily improved the content, though one can now hear it in any location, not just a concert hall or a music room.
So, "whats there to like" in the late 19th century? - for me there are unexplored poets and novels and coherent pieces of music that are 20 minutes long, with no simplified guide to decode them. I could embrace it with more passion, but now i'm dabbling to find out more of an arcane world which has left its remains just below ground.
and we're now at the twentyfirst century! From Twitter I get news of new products, inventions, created and broadcast to me. But im sceptical that nanotech is already being treated as a commercial and investment subject: enabling better beauty products and building up expectations in another financial bubble. The marketing of new toys and gadgets is apparently to access electronic media that are dominated by celebrity cults. And nothing now lasts or seems designed for permanent ownership. The art has no frame. The music exists only mp3, the words are generated in hours and read, then discarded as papertrash. Twitter in fact seems in total contrast to the way that knowledge was shared in the 19th Century. A mass of people get access to snippets of information which has no permanence and gets overcovered by a snowstorm of vanity networking and commercial exploitation. The 19th Century use of knowledge focussed on disciplined individuals, with a genuine interest occasionally collaborating with a few other individuals. Their approach was personalised and not necessarily efficient, but it required a greater focus and attention, and im convinced that those whos discoveries and inventions we now rely on were supremely able scientists.
Well this is a blog. i could write anything here. I have no dependence on it and it can be dissolved into electrons in a keystroke. It passes time while on the train but my time could instead be spent reading Coventry Patmore or Arthur Hugh Clough. One final thought is that i think we gain by some form of recycling of other knowledge. This is at the heart of Consilence the main theme in www.siev.co.uk.
.
Monday, 7 September 2009
Reading on tuesday morning
A day at home so i start by finishing "Gun - with occasional music" excellent turns of phrase and wit throughout. at the end the whodunnit plot does seem completely superfluous and you want a few more wisecracking pages to appear.
then time for a change - Victorian verse by Christopher Ricks an anthology. Started today with a very short poem by Matthew Arnold on Old Age - Destiny - then another called Growing Old - both written when he was less than 50. I read the rest of MA's poems in the anthology. Sense of melancholic distance in them all. I felt an empathy to him, particularly in his search for feeling and desire to link the present and the past. They are not "inspirational" poems, but left me seeking more about him.
So more to come of the poems - see if i can find a link to a web site with them on
the rest of the day stretches ahead. A visit to opticians, then a trip to Goodwood Races,
then time for a change - Victorian verse by Christopher Ricks an anthology. Started today with a very short poem by Matthew Arnold on Old Age - Destiny - then another called Growing Old - both written when he was less than 50. I read the rest of MA's poems in the anthology. Sense of melancholic distance in them all. I felt an empathy to him, particularly in his search for feeling and desire to link the present and the past. They are not "inspirational" poems, but left me seeking more about him.
So more to come of the poems - see if i can find a link to a web site with them on
the rest of the day stretches ahead. A visit to opticians, then a trip to Goodwood Races,
Tuesday, 1 September 2009
Book review Q is for Quantum
Q is for Quantum by John Gribbin
encyclopedia format which helps for cross referencing (who was the Bose in Bose-Einstein condensate?) but impossible to read cover to cover. Quantum physics is chock full of new terms so helpful to have dictionary definitions, but the mixing of reference to things and the biographical entries doesnt work for me. So on a plus side i now know there is a family relationship between George Thomson and JJ, but no relation to Lord Kelvin (William Thomson). Id actually never heard of Count Rumford (Sir Benjamin Thompson )and intrigued by him
So Lots of journalised snippets in this, but did this book need to be written. the "timeline" section at the back, where peoples birthdates and events are shown side by side appears extraneous. trying to show relationship between people and discoveries by year. the physicists Birth-dates stop after 1950 (havent there been any prodigy quantum scientists recently?) and page after page of discovery since the sixties.
Its a chunk block of reading, reasonable for reference though of course outdated within months of publication. Dont think it will get revised. id like to know if if there is an online source on Quantum Physics which shows more Consilience.
encyclopedia format which helps for cross referencing (who was the Bose in Bose-Einstein condensate?) but impossible to read cover to cover. Quantum physics is chock full of new terms so helpful to have dictionary definitions, but the mixing of reference to things and the biographical entries doesnt work for me. So on a plus side i now know there is a family relationship between George Thomson and JJ, but no relation to Lord Kelvin (William Thomson). Id actually never heard of Count Rumford (Sir Benjamin Thompson )and intrigued by him
So Lots of journalised snippets in this, but did this book need to be written. the "timeline" section at the back, where peoples birthdates and events are shown side by side appears extraneous. trying to show relationship between people and discoveries by year. the physicists Birth-dates stop after 1950 (havent there been any prodigy quantum scientists recently?) and page after page of discovery since the sixties.
Its a chunk block of reading, reasonable for reference though of course outdated within months of publication. Dont think it will get revised. id like to know if if there is an online source on Quantum Physics which shows more Consilience.
Thursday, 6 August 2009
Widescreen
Why has everything gone widescreen?. My global market sense tells me its related to entertainment product. perhaps theres a whole trend to getting wide rather than tall or square format images. in printers theres still the ubiquitous A4 but the PC screen is now trendily wide.
Tuesday, 2 June 2009
identity on the web
Shouldnt i remove my identity from the internet?
Got a phone call from someone who found my CV on Google. Rang to see if i was interested in Contract. The CV is my market stall, so the caller is welcome. Some sites i use however do keep my identity and contact number well out of sight.
I've no real worries about my real name being found. I will use a alias like sievpeople because it gives some branding away from the corporate me. Im still not a twitterer or facebook tag, so no need to pass round a list of friends of sievpeople or other social network links. if they do get set up they are there for occasional use.
came across this article about the different types of blogs today -
http://blogs/telegraph.co.uk and look up Dan Monsieurle
and about Tumblr which i might try next
Got a phone call from someone who found my CV on Google. Rang to see if i was interested in Contract. The CV is my market stall, so the caller is welcome. Some sites i use however do keep my identity and contact number well out of sight.
I've no real worries about my real name being found. I will use a alias like sievpeople because it gives some branding away from the corporate me. Im still not a twitterer or facebook tag, so no need to pass round a list of friends of sievpeople or other social network links. if they do get set up they are there for occasional use.
came across this article about the different types of blogs today -
http://blogs/telegraph.co.uk and look up Dan Monsieurle
and about Tumblr which i might try next
Tuesday, 19 May 2009
new things im listening to today
got an eemail today about London Jazz concerts - wondered whats on next week. my eye caught by the serious website andy shepherd playing with a norwegian guitarist called eivind aarset. from there to the wikipedia norwegian guitarists page with terje rypdal. So from there to the extraordinary Esjborn Svennson trio and the album leucocyte. got it on the ipod so...headphones on..
Includes
One track of just over a minutes silence - very strange on the i-pod - reminding me to make more time for silence.. and dont random play this stuff.
later exploring a new postrock band was called i think 1099 found from prog archives
Includes
One track of just over a minutes silence - very strange on the i-pod - reminding me to make more time for silence.. and dont random play this stuff.
later exploring a new postrock band was called i think 1099 found from prog archives
in London today - as usual faced with endless free newspapers and their obsession with celebrity. Can i really criticise their view of the world?
managed to connect to internet at work - first stop was Chelsea Flowere show from there to the daily telegraph site, from there to technology page and from the to new download tool called dropbox - free internet storage in the cloud
from there it went even more sideways - into the wikipedia site which gave me a random link to a book by arthur c clarke called Firstborn and from there to new physics page called Big Rip.
just a cheery thought that mathematicaly the universe will end in 50 billion years
plenty of time for a few more blog posts then
managed to connect to internet at work - first stop was Chelsea Flowere show from there to the daily telegraph site, from there to technology page and from the to new download tool called dropbox - free internet storage in the cloud
from there it went even more sideways - into the wikipedia site which gave me a random link to a book by arthur c clarke called Firstborn and from there to new physics page called Big Rip.
just a cheery thought that mathematicaly the universe will end in 50 billion years
plenty of time for a few more blog posts then
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