dual personalities

Month: July, 2021

July 2, 2021

Geography is just physics slowed down, with a couple of trees stuck in it.*

by chuckofish

One of the things that attracted me to the digital history workshop I’ve been attending was the prospect that I’d learn how to produce a map, and wonder of wonders, I have. My first effort doesn’t look like much — Assur is in slightly the wrong place for starters — but I’m proud of it anyway. I had to find and insert the base map, add a layer of rivers, and input all the location data. I’m still working on how to label geographical features like rivers, lakes and mountains.

Besides the mechanics of digital map-making, I have learned quite a bit about cartography in general. When I was a kid, I liked to pour over the atlas to find funky place names like Moosejaw or Punkeydoodle’s Corners (both in Canada), but I had never thought much about what happens when you try to represent a 3-dimensional sphere in 2-dimensions. The Mercator Projection that we all take for granted really messes things up.

the Mercator projection

Greenland is not really the same size as Africa. Go play around at The True Size of to see just how this projection distorts reality. I had never thought about the fact that even our maps lie to us, but now I have a book that shows me how they do it.

The next time you see a map that purports to show something like the number of people who own guns in Manhattan, take a minute to think about scale. What would happen to all those dots if you zoomed in? What is it that the map-maker wants you to think/feel? It turns out that maps get manipulated just as often as statistics. Is nothing sacred?

Despite a few naughty cartographers, most try hard to present information clearly and honestly. Spend some time at the Stanford Libraries’ exhibition on data visualization, and then go play around with the interactive map of the Roman world at Stanford’s Orbis. Both are wonderfully interesting and very eye-catching. I know that last week I complained about computers and I admit to having a love/hate relationship with them, but I’ll be the first to admit that in the right hands they accomplish amazing things.

This post wouldn’t be complete without a familiar song about two famous cartographers.

Finally, a shout-out to our beloved brother who will enjoy a milestone birthday this Sunday! We will celebrate properly when next we meet. In the meantime, let us all be Yankee-doodle-dandies, play music, sing and dance, shoot off rockets and make joyful noise to celebrate the birthday of two greats — our brother and our country!

*Terry Pratchett

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July 1, 2021

“So from today I’m travellin’ light. “*

by chuckofish

Yesterday morning they were cutting down trees somewhere in my neighborhood and grinding up the branches into mulch for hours on end. That has to be one of the most stressful sounds one can be forced to listen to I think. I mean it’s not like having your apartment building collapse underneath you, but seriously, I loathe it.

Anyway, I took out my latest book purchase, Selected Poems by Jorge Luis Borges, and started to read.

Camden, 1892

The smell of coffee and the newspapers,
Sunday and its lassitudes. The morning,
and on the adjoining page, that vanity—
the publication of allegorical verses
by a fortunate fellow poet. The old man
lies on a white bed in his sober room,
a poor man’s habitation. Languidly
he gazes at his face in the worn mirror.
He thinks, beyond astonishment now: that man
is me, and absentmindedly his hand
touches the unkempt beard and the worn-out mouth.
The end is close. He mutters to himself:
I am almost dead, but still my poems retain
life and its wonders. I was once Walt Whitman.

JLB is just so great. Here is an interesting interview with him on Firing Line in 1977. I can’t imagine anyone today having such an intelligent conversation on television. I have to hand it to Buckley who just lets him talk. He asks some questions to pull him back on track, but he isn’t concerned with inserting himself.

I watched a good movie the other night–The Fugitive Kind (1960)–an adaption of Tennessee Williams’s play Orpheus Descending. It stars Marlon Brando, Anna Magnani and Joanne Woodward and is directed by Sidney Lumet. It is your typical overwrought Williams story of gothic southern proportion, but I still enjoyed it.

The characters are compelling, the acting is very good, and it is certainly better than anything new you will find on Netflix or Amazon Prime. And I forget how handsome and appealing Marlon Brando was in his prime.

I went to a third retirement party on my final day at work yesterday and was hugged a lot. I felt very appreciated and loved. I was asked a million times what my plans are and I thought I really needed an answer, so I started saying, “I’m joining the circus.” The truth is I have no plans. I want to enjoy every day and read a lot of poetry by Jorge Luis Borges and watch Marlon Brando movies. I think that is okay.

“Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.” –Corrie Ten Boom

*Johnny Mercer

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