Pater Familias

TRAVELING WITHOUT GUIDEBOOKS. I carry a heavy load of guidebooks when I travel, but Laurence Sterne’s A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY turned out to be one of the best. Yorick, Sterne’s narrator, says, “What a large volume of adventures may be grasped within this little span of life by him who interests his heart in everything…..” Notice the dashes in the following excerpt: “—–If this won’t turn out something—-another will—-no matter—-‘tis an assay upon human nature—-I get my labor for my pains—tis enough—….” Yorick describes how he visited Versailles: “Before I was halfway down the street, I changed my mind…..so I changed my mind a second time—-In truth it was the third…..—-but I am governed by circumstances—-I cannot govern them…..” I have always done well as a tourist when I have drifted, making one of three choices when I come to an intersection.

TRAVELING WITH GUIDEBOOKS. I posted here about this article by Wendy MacCleod, which expressed dissatisfaction with European travel. She wrote that, “The problem with guidebooks is that they’ve given everybody the same itinerary,” and pointed out that there are sights you are expected to see, and if you fail to get to them, you have failed as a traveler. My family loves to remind of my declaration on one of our trips, “We don’t have time to stop and look at that. We’re too busy sightseeing.” Of course, I said it ironically.

PUNCTUATION AND A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY. Paul Collins in the article I linked to yesterday points out that in the 18th century punctuation was not used to express grammar or to relate clauses, but to indicate “oratorical pauses” He cites a 1737 guide which describes the length of the pause associated with each punctuation mark. At Nick’s suggestion, during our recent vacation in Europe I read with plesure Laurence Sterne’s A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY (in full, A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY BY MR. YORICK), which was published in 1768. In addition to recommending it, Nick pointed out that the liberal use of dashes on every page of Yorick’s narrative expresses the book’s approach to travel and to life. Yorick uses multiple dashes to convey his changes of mind while on his travels. The pages are splashed with dashes; many sentences contain multiple dashes. Yorick changes his mind from minute to minute.

CRIME AND THE SEMI-COLON. Collins points out that the New York Police Department once speculated that the Son of Sam serial killer could be a freelance journalist because of the use of a semi-colon in the letters he sent.

PASSIONS AND THE SEMI-COLON. A lot of writers have a favorite punctuation mark. I worked with a lawyer whose favorite was the parenthesis and another whose favorite was the dash. My own favorite is the colon. Mary Jane’s is the semi-colon. Preferences are not necessarily passions. This wonderful article about the semi-colon by Paul Collins in Slate begins with a description of a duel fought in swords in 1837 in France over whether a colon or a semi-colon should be used in a particular point in a prose passage. The article by Collins led to a large number of responses from readers who are apparently passionate about the semi-colon. A surprising number of the responses said that they had been taught never to use the semi-colon.

DOES ALL PHYSICAL REALITY CONSIST OF MATHEMATICS? The cosmologist Max Tegmark believes that the answer is yes. He says in this interview that, “Mathematical things actually exist, and they are actually physical reality…..A mathematical structure doesn’t describe a universe, it is a universe….[and] every mathematical structure is another universe.” I began this blog with a reference (I didn’t know how to do links) to an article that said that there is evidence of the Big Bang; the echo makes up a lot of the static you hear on the radio. I can’t imagine the kind of evidence that could exist for an infinite number of parallel universes. But apparently that’s what the mathematical equations say if you take them as seriously as Tegmark takes them. (Link via Instapundit).

RESTORING STREAMS. I posted here about the subterranean rivers of London, including the Walbrook, now underground, which was probably important in the original location of Londinium. The thousands of dams and millponds built in this country in the 18th and 19th centuries altered the landscape. This article describes the difficulties that scientists have in trying to restore the flow of streams, now that the dams and mills are gone. Attempts to create a meandering channel for aesthetic reasons may fail because the natural form of the stream happens to be a “braided channel” with sandbars. Removing debris to improve stream flow may destroy fish habitats. One scientist thinks it is impossible to restore the streams; too many valleys have been affected by huge amounts of silt because of old mill dams.

THE GREATEST CATCH THAT WAS NEVER MADE. I am not referring to a leaping catch by a ballgirl that was on the internet yesterday, and which turned out to be a commercial. This is a link to Rodney McCray running through an outfield fence in a minor league game to catch a flyball. McCray was extraordinarily fast and hit the fence at full speed. There were posts in the fence that would have caused a lot of damage. And he didn’t make the catch.

WHERE LONDON BOOKS TAKE PLACE. Henry Nejako sent me this link, which leads to a Google-based map showing where in London various books are set. There is a variety of books located on the map—books about Sherlock Holmes, Nell Gwyn and Madame Tussaud; histories of London concert life and the underground; mysteries, thrillers; books by Nick Hornby, THE JOURNAL OF THE PLAGUE YEAR……

LOCAL COLOR: MCDONALD’S IN HONG KONG. I went to a McDonald’s restaurant in Hong Kong once. I strongly prefer to eat in local restaurants, but I had taken as much time as I could in the wonderful aviary, and had to leave for the airport. The lady in front of me in line evidently asked for assistance. The server produced a laminated menu with a picture of each item on the menu, and the lady and the server discussed each item at some length. I wasn’t in enough of a hurry that I failed to enjoy how the lady’s approach differed from that of American customers.