- Feb 2024
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The study ofwords and language, otherwise known as ‘philology’, was all the rage inEurope at the turn of the nineteenth century. European scholars haddeveloped their own methodologies to compare languages and to trace thesource of a word, which became known as ‘Continental philology’. It was halfa century until Britain took up these methods, which are still practised todayand form the basis of comparative linguistics
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We think of the OED as a radical dictionary because of its size, itsscholarship, and its methods, and it was radical for English. But if youcompare it with other languages, there was nothing about its creation in themid-nineteenth century that had not been done before in Europe. English wasrelatively late to the table. The English editors were able to pick and choosethe best methods from different European dictionaries. The OEDimplemented European lexicographic practices, and advanced upon them, tocreate something truly revolutionary, something that would in fact end upbeing the envy of Europe.
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A section of a wall of slips in the Grimmwelt Museum showinghow the Brothers Grimm pioneered the methods used by theOED twenty years later.
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By the time the OED project commenced, Europe already had majordictionaries under way or completed in German, French, Italian, Russian, andDutch, all of which were taking advantage of the new methodologies ofContinental philology. In Germany, the Brothers Grimm had begun theDeutsches Wörterbuch in 1838. In France, Émile Littré had begun theDictionnaire de la langue française in 1841 (a dictionary of post-1600French). In the Netherlands, Matthias de Vries had begun Woordenboek derNederlandsche Taal in 1852 (a dictionary of post-medieval Dutch).
Oxford English Dictionary (1857 - )
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showing the hundreds of volunteers who corresponded with the brothers; theeditors’ lists of words and statistical counts of entries; the tracing ofetymology using the new scientific philological methods of the day; thegathering of citations from historical, published sources. I had worked in theOED archives for years and the contents of the Grimmwelt Museum lookedidentical.
They looked exactly like the slips sent into the OED by the Dictionary People. There was a world map
Lexicographer Sarah Ogilvie, a previous editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, said she "had worked in the OED archives for years and the contents of the Grimmwelt Museum looked identical" to them. She indicated that the similarity of the dictionary projects extended to the hundreds of volunteers, lists of words, counts of entries, etymology work, citations from published sources, and general philological methods used by the editors of the era.
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There was a dramatic wall of vastnumbers of slips, or ‘zettel’, hanging from long nails.
The Grimmwelt Museum in Kassel, Germany is the home of some of the work of Grimm Brothers work on the Deutsches Wörterbuch which features a large wall of zettel or slips hanging from long nails.
The slips hanging on nails sounds similar to Thomas Harrison's 1740's wooden cabinet of hanging slips used for excerpts and isn't far off from the organizational structure used by the subsequent Oxford English Dictionary's pigeonhole system of organization for their slip collection.
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Jacob Grimm and his brother Wilhelm were also lexicographerswho created and edited the Deutsches Wörterbuch, the German equivalent ofthe OED. Or rather I should say, the OED is the English equivalent of theDeutsches Wörterbuch, because the German dictionary was started first (evenif it ended up being finished later because the Brothers Grimm died beforethe letter G, and it took another hundred years to complete).
The Deutsches Wörterbuch (DWB) was begun in 1838 by brothers Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm who worked on it through the letter F prior to their deaths. The dictionary project was ended in 1961 after 123 years of work which resulted in 16 volumes. A further 17th source volume was released in 1971.
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absolutely drew the line with a word which he considered so obscene it had tobe sent to Murray in a small envelope marked PRIVATE, sealed within alarger envelope. Inside the intriguing packaging was a message advising himnot to include the word condom. ‘I am writing on a very obscene subject.There is an article called Cundum ... a contrivance used by fornicators, tosave themselves from a well-deserved clap; also by others who wish to enjoycopulation without the possibility of impregnation’, he wrote to Murray.‘Everything obscene comes from France, and I had supposed this affair wasnamed after the city of Condom, which gives title to a Bishop.’ But he hadfound a quotation from 1705 referring to a ‘Quondam’ which made himrethink his assumption that it was named after the town in France. ‘I supposeCundom or Quondam will be too utterly obscene for the Dictionary’, heconcluded. Murray left it out.
Each of Murray’s advisers had different notions of what was offensively salacious. His adviser on medical terms, James Dixon, who was a retired surgeon living in Dorking, Surrey, had been all right with including cunt, but
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By the time that section of the letter C was published for the OxfordEnglish Dictionary the only cunt that was listed by Murray was cunt-, a cross-reference to the prefixes cont-, count- with no mention whatsoever of thefemale body part. Fuck was also left out. Although these old words had beenin use since the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries respectively, they wouldhave to wait until the 1970s to be included in the OED. Murray did, however,include pudendum, a word derived from Latin for ‘that of which one ought tobe ashamed’, which he defined as ‘the privy parts, the external genital organs’with no reference to a woman or – God forbid – her vulva.
1970s!
the shame attached to pudendum has lasted culturally for a terrifically long time in the West.
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a fellowlexicographer and one of the Dictionary People, John Stephen Farmer, hadhis own legal drama. Farmer was writing a slang dictionary with WilliamHenley, and was struggling to publish the second volume (containing theletters C and F) of his work on grounds of obscenity. Farmer took hispublisher to court for breach of contract in 1891, and tried to convince a jurythat writing about obscene words in a dictionary did not make him personallyguilty of obscenity, but he lost the case and was ordered to pay costs.Eventually, he found fresh printers and avoided the Obscene Publications Actby arguing that his dictionary was published privately for subscribers only, notthe public, and the remarkable Slang and Its Analogues by Farmer and Henleywas published in seven volumes (from 1890 to 1904), with cunt and fuck andmany other words regarded as lewd on its pages. Farmer’s legal case and thepublic outcry that ensued was a clear deterrent for Murray.
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He had helped Murray with the very firstentry in the Dictionary – A: not only the sound A, ‘the low-back-wide vowelformed with the widest opening of the jaws, pharynx, and lips’, but also themusical sense of A, ‘the 6th note of the diatonic scale of C major’, and finallythe algebraic sense of A, ‘as in a, b, c, early letters of the alphabet used toexpress known quantities, as x, y, z are to express the unknown’. Ellis washappy to see these and other results of his work on the printed page, includingthe words air, alert, algebra.
He here is A. J. Ellis
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a favourite quotation from Auguste Comte, the founder of altruism,‘Man’s only right is to do his duty. The intellect should always be the servantof the heart, and should never be its slave.’
original source?
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the outright winner was a mysterious character called Thomas Austin Jnr whosent Dr Murray an incredible total of 165,061 over the span of a decade.Second place goes to William Douglas of Primrose Hill who sent in 151,982slips over twenty-two years; third place to Dr Thomas Nadauld Brushfield ofDevon, with 70,277 over twenty-eight years; with Dr William Chester Minorof Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum coming in fourth place with 62,720slips.
Top slip contributors to OED: 1. Thomas Austin Jnr. 165,061 slips over 10 years (45.22 notes per day) 2. William Douglas 151,982 over 22 years (18.92 notes per day) 3. Thomas Nadauld Brushfield 70,277 over 28 years (1.98 notes per day) 4. William Chester Minor 62,720 slips over 23 years (to 1906) (7.5 notes per day)
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Over the seven years that archaeologist-to-be Margaret Murray sent in wordsto the Dictionary, she managed to contribute 5,000 slips.
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tensof thousands of books
Tens of thousands of books were used to draw the quotations used in the OED.
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The box in the archives held two further address books belonging toMurray, and the following summer, in a box in the Bodleian Library, I foundanother three address books belonging to the Editor who had preceded him,Frederick Furnivall. As I worked my way through them, it became clear thatthere were thousands of contributors. Some three thousand, to be exact.
Sarah Ogilvie found a total of three address books from Dr. Murray as well as three address books from Frederick Furnivall which contained details about the three thousand or so contributors to the OED.
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He had written the names and addresses of not just hundreds butthousands of people who had volunteered to contribute to the Dictionary.Finding Dr Murray’s address book
James Murray kept an address book with the names, addresses, and notations about the thousands of people who had volunteered contributions for the Oxford English Dictionary. Also included were the lists of material they read, the level of their contributions in number of slips and dates sent, as well as various personal details including relationships, marriages, and deaths.
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It was a treasure trove.
Curious that she doesn't use "thesaurus" here!!
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He devised a systemof storage for all the slips in shelves of pigeonholes that lined the walls of theScriptorium.
The scriptorium for the OED relied on shelves of pigeonholes into which the slips could be sorted and stored.
There are photos of Murray with these pigeonholes stuffed behind him. Dig one of these up.
This pigeonhole practice is in marked difference to other projects like the TLL which relied on boxes on shelves.
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urray’s house at 78 Banbury Road to receive post (it is still there today).This is now one of the most gentrified areas of Oxford, full of large three-storey, redbrick, Victorian houses, but the houses were brand new whenMurray lived there and considered quite far out of town.
Considered outside of Oxford at the time, Dr. Murray fashioned the Scriptorium at his house at 78 Banbury Road. Murray received so much mail that the Royal Mail installed a red pillar box just to handle the volume.
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Readers received a list of twelve instructions on how to select a word,which included, ‘Give the date of your book (if you can), author, title (short).Give an exact reference, such as seems to you to be the best to enable anyoneto verify your quotations. Make a quotation for every word that strikes you asrare, obsolete, old-fashioned, new, peculiar, or used in a peculiar way.’
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A 4 x 6-inch ‘slip’ sent in by one of the most prolific femalecontributors, Edith Thompson of Bath, who sent in 13,259slips. The underlinings and markings were made by Dr Murray.
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In addition tobeing Readers, volunteers could help as Subeditors who received bundles ofslips for pre-sorting (chronologically and into senses of meaning
The slips for the OED were sorted alphabetically and then grouped chronologically and by sense of meanings of the words.
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The volunteer ‘Readers’ were instructed to write out the words andsentences on small 4 x 6-inch pieces of paper, known as ‘slips’.
Volunteer 'Readers' for the Oxford English Dictionary were encouraged to write down interesting headwords along with their appearances in-situ along with the associated bibliographical information. The recommended paper size was 4 x 6-inch pieces of paper which were commonly called 'slips'.
(Double check this against the historical requests from James Murray.)
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Monday had been a walk around the deer park within the walls ofMagdalen College. C. S. Lewis had said that the circular path was the perfectlength for any problem. It was true.
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Ogilvie, Sarah. The Dictionary People: The Unsung Heroes Who Created the Oxford English Dictionary. 1st ed. New York: Knopf, 2023. https://amzn.to/3Un0sv9.
Read from 2023-12-04 to 2024-02-01
Annotation URL: urn:x-pdf:c95483c701c7fc677e89f2c44f98a30b
Tags
- intellect
- Jacob Grimm
- Thomas Austin Jnr
- thesaurus
- problem solving
- Dictionnaire de la langue française
- group note taking
- meaning order
- dictionaries
- genitals
- case law
- notes per day
- cunt
- Margaret Murray
- reading practices
- images
- C. S. Lewis
- chronological order
- fuck
- condoms
- Obscene Publications Act
- lexicography
- pudendum
- vacation ideas
- obscenity
- A. J. Ellis
- 4 x 6" index cards
- lexicographers
- rights
- zettelkasten examples
- Thesaurus Linguae Latinae
- public outcry
- William Chester Minor
- Magdalen College
- chilling effects
- crowdsourcing
- Frederick Furnivall
- James Murray
- XIX
- duty
- Deutsches Wörterbuch zettelkasten
- Oxford English Dictionary
- John Stephen Farmer
- Grimm Brothers
- shame
- William Douglas
- alphabetical order
- pigeonholes
- Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal
- intellectual history
- read
- Wilhelm Grimm
- mathematics
- zettelkasten for lexicography
- history
- heart
- quotes
- philology
- Slang and Its Analogues
- flâneur
- shifts in meaning
- Auguste Comte
- Thomas Harrison's Ark of Studies
- digitized examples
- slang
- crowdsourced zettelkasten
- zettelkasten history
- Oxford English Dictionary zettelkasten
- Thomas Nadauld Brushfield
- Sarah Ogilvie
- OED slip count
- slips
- card index for dictionaries
- scriptorium
- Grimmwelt Museum
- Deutsches Wörterbuch (DWB)
- address books
- want to visit
- William Henley
Annotators
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capacities.io capacities.io
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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I'm contemplating buying some nails to make a Brothers Grimm-esque zettelwand to arrange my next piece. Forget Post-It Notes! Chris Rock eat your heart out. (h/t Thomas Harrison, 1740s)
#OldSchool #analog #FTW
see also: https://hyp.is/lczNTMazEe6bU_fwliPccg/www.grimmwelt.de/en/exhibitions/grimmwelt
Syndication link: https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/1am3fz2/a_zettelwand/
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www.grimmwelt.de www.grimmwelt.de
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www.alamy.com www.alamy.com
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Almay Stock image of the zettel nailed to the wall of the Grimmwelt Museum.
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www.ebay.com www.ebay.com
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https://www.ebay.com/itm/186286893621
2024-02-06 Remington Rand 60 drawer modular card catalog offered for sale at $2,500 with local pick up only in Laurel, DE.
7 pieces: table/base; writing drawer with 2 pull outs, top, and 4 sections of 5x3 drawers.
Condition: Generally pretty good. Missing manufacturer plackard, Missing 15 rods. Some finish/paint peeling on the top.
Cost per drawer: $41.66
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URL
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www.ebay.com www.ebay.com
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https://www.ebay.com/itm/116060316468
2024-02-06 Gaylord Bros. modular 3 piece card catalog with 15 drawers (5x3), table, and top offered for bidding at $500 with a buy it now of $2,000. Local pick up only from Franklin Square, NY.
In pretty dreadful condition, mismatched drawers, wood and metal with plastic trays in drawers instead of wood. Heavy water damage to stain/finish on the top.
Cost per drawer: - minimum auction price of $500: $33.33 - buy it now price of $2,000: $133.33
I suspect this won't sell for quite a while at this price and in this condition.
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qnnnp.substack.com qnnnp.substack.com
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https://qnnnp.substack.com/p/zettelkasten-eb5
quick overview article of Luhmann research sources on his zettelkasten, nothing new to me here.
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qnnnp.substack.com qnnnp.substack.com
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Die Zettelkastenmethode. Kontrolliere dein Wissen
by Andrey Sukhovskii (transliteration) aka Sukhovskii https://qnnnp.substack.com/p/024#%C2%A7%D0%B8%D1%81%D1%82%D0%BE%D1%87%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%B8-%D0%BD%D0%B0-%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%BE%D1%81%D1%82%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%BD%D1%8B%D1%85-%D1%8F%D0%B7%D1%8B%D0%BA%D0%B0%D1%85
A fairly solid overview of lots of note taking texts, including some historical. Nothing new to me. Almost looks like he's collected everything I've mentioned in the past several years online. Originally written in Russian.
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www.indiamart.com www.indiamart.com
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https://www.indiamart.com/proddetail/library-catalogue-cards-23374811530.html
IndiaMart.com still selling 3x5" library catalog cards predrilled. Listing for 1,200 R for 1000 cards.
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www.libraryhistorybuff.org www.libraryhistorybuff.org
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sample catalog card included in a Gaylord Brothers supply catalog.
Gaylord Bros. sold several types of card catalog cards including:
- No. 301 medium weight
- No. 306 with red rules (classical three lines)
- No. 307 with blue rules
- No. 311 pain card
all were predrilled with holes
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www.thelibrarystore.com www.thelibrarystore.com
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https://www.thelibrarystore.com/ The Library Store
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www.gaylord.com www.gaylord.com
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The current incarnation of Gaylord Bros.
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www.vernonlibrarysupplies.com www.vernonlibrarysupplies.com
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https://www.vernonlibrarysupplies.com/
Vernon Library Supplies
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www.demco.com www.demco.com
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https://www.demco.com/demco-reg-permalife-catalog-cards
The old school Library of Congress card catalog cards with the red ruling.
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www.blyberg.net www.blyberg.net
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www.ihearofsherlock.com www.ihearofsherlock.com
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forum.the-big-bang-theory.com forum.the-big-bang-theory.com
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library card catalog featured in Leonard's apartment
https://forum.the-big-bang-theory.com/topic/357-card-catalog/
Likely just decoration, but did Leonard or Sheldon ever interact with the card catalog in their apartment? A zettelkasten perhaps?
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www.facebook.com www.facebook.com
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https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/899978637990824/
Steelcase 8 drawer (x 2 rows per drawer) card index offered for $450 in downtown Los Angeles area in late December 2023. Looks to be in good condition with some nice art deco detailing.
Antique two tone card file with 8 drawers. Extremely rare in excellent condition. Detailed handles and opener latch with beautiful metal work. These typically sell for $1400 or more so it is priced to sell. Possible delivey depnding on your location. 52" height x 15" across x 28" deep
Most likely for 4x6" index cards, but messaged owner to check
Cost per drawer: $28.12
Likely capacity: 57,000 cards
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www.campion.ox.ac.uk www.campion.ox.ac.uk
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Sarah is a Senior Research Fellow in the Faculty of Linguistics, Philology, and Phonetics, and Director of the Dictionary Lab at Oxford. She specializes in lexicography, endangered languages, language revitalization, the history of dictionaries, and the interface of technology with the Social Sciences and Humanities (digital humanities). Her research includes work on Australian Aboriginal and American Indian languages, especially relating to language documentation and revitalization. She is the Director of the new MSc in Digital Scholarship.
What a fascinating set of areas she's working in... I want to do this...
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quoteinvestigator.com quoteinvestigator.com
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A variation of this quote also appears in the movie Sweet Home Alabama (Touchstone Pictures, 2002) in the lightning sequence at the waterfront at the end of the picture:
What is it about you Southern Girls? You can't make the right decision until you tried all the wrong ones.<br /> —Jake Perry, portrayed by Josh Lucas
Link to: https://hypothes.is/a/EoLQ5MLkEe6lqTcB_otgdw a quote often misattributed to Winston Churchill.
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Abba Eban who was an Israeli politician and diplomat. In March 1967 Eban visited Japan, and the New York Times reported on a remark that he made:[1] 1967 March 19, New York Times, “Japan Welcomes Eban Warmly; Her Industry Impresses Israeli” by Robert Trumbull, Page 14, New York. (ProQuest) Commenting that the passage of time offered the best hope of an end to the problems of Israel and her neighbors, he said: “Men and nations behave wisely when they have exhausted all other resources.”
Potential origin of a phrase often misattributed to Winston Churchill in a slightly different form.
Later in June 1967 Eban commented similarly:
...nations do behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.
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www.npr.org www.npr.org
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As King put it: "Winston Churchill once famously observed that Americans will always do the right thing, only after they have tried everything else."
Apparently this quote about America is misattributed to Winston Churchill
Several, including Richard Langsworth, editor of the journal Finest Hour published by WinstonChurchill.org, have been unable to attribute this quote to him.
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Nigel Rees, the host of the long-running BBC quiz show Quote ... Unquote, found so many examples of this oratorical identity theft that he coined a phrase for it: Churchillian Drift.
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www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com
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Owners Paddy Calistro and Scott McAuley donated their publishing company Angel City Press to the Los Angeles Public Library in 2024.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/29/us/la-public-library-book-publisher.html
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www.metamute.org www.metamute.org
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Community activists will increasingly use hypermedia to replace corporate capitalism and big government with a hi-tech 'gift economy' in which information is freely exchanged between participants.
I know the idea "gift economy" was around in the late 2000's and even more prevalent in the teens, but not sure where it originated. This is one of the earliest settings I've seen (within tech).
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findingaids.lib.umich.edu findingaids.lib.umich.edu
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Joy, Bill. “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us.” Wired, April 1, 2000. https://www.wired.com/2000/04/joy-2/.
Annotation url: urn:x-pdf:753822a812c861180bef23232a806ec0
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the prevention of knowledge-enabled massdestruction
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The experiences of the atomic scientists clearly show the need to takepersonal responsibility, the danger that things will move too fast, andthe way in which a process can take on a life of its own. We can, as theydid, create insurmountable problems in almost no time flat. We mustdo more thinking up front if we are not to be similarly surprised andshocked by the consequences of our inventions.
Bill Joy's mention that insurmountable problems can "take on a life of [their] own" is a spectacular reason for having a solid definition of what "life" is, so that we might have better means of subverting it in specific and potentially catastrophic situations.
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Knowing is not a rationale for not acting. Can we doubt that knowl-edge has become a weapon we wield against ourselves?
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But many other people who know about the dangers still seemstrangely silent. When pressed, they trot out the “this is nothing new”riposte—as if awareness of what could happen is response enough.They tell me, There are universities filled with bioethicists who studythis stuff all day long. They say, All this has been written about before,and by experts. They complain, Your worries and your arguments arealready old hat.
For so many issues we face the "nothing new" argument seems to abound. It's not just the bioethics issues Joy points out, but even things like fascism and Nazism.
How to better argue these points for society so we aren't always having to re-hoe the same row?
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I havefound the ideas in the book Ethics for the New Millennium, by the DalaiLama, to be very helpful. As is perhaps well known but little heeded, theDalai Lama argues that the most important thing is for us to conduct ourlives with love and compassion for others, and that our societies need todevelop a stronger notion of universal responsibility and of our interde-pendency; he proposes a standard of positive ethical conduct for individ-uals and societies that seems consonant with Attali’s Fraternity utopia.The Dalai Lama further argues that we must understand what it is thatmakes people happy, and acknowledge the strong evidence that neithermaterial progress nor the pursuit of the power of knowledge is the key—that there are limits to what science and the scientific pursuit alone can do.
Dalai Lama throwing back to a large number of indigenous cultures and societies.... contemplate reading this book...
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Our Western notion of happiness seems to come from the Greeks,who defined it as “the exercise of vital powers along lines of excellencein a life affording them scope.”15
quote from <br /> Hamilton, Edith. The Greek Way. W. W. Norton & Co., 1942: 35.
Coincidence that I just started this a few weeks back...
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At the dawn of societies, men saw their passage on Earth as noth-ing more than a labyrinth of pain, at the end of which stood adoor leading, via their death, to the company of gods and to Eter-nity. With the Hebrews and then the Greeks, some men dared freethemselves from theological demands and dream of an ideal Citywhere Liberty would flourish. Others, noting the evolution of themarket society, understood that the liberty of some would entailthe alienation of others, and they sought Equality.
quote pulled from Jacques Attali's book Fraternités
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Thoreau also said that we will be “rich in proportion to the numberof things which we can afford to let alone.”
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Verifying compliance will also require that scientists and engineersadopt a strong code of ethical conduct, resembling the Hippocraticoath, and that they have the courage to whistleblow as necessary, evenat high personal cost.
another suggestion for professional ethics oaths for scientists and engineers...
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The GNR technologies do not divide clearly into commercial andmilitary uses; given their potential in the market, it’s hard to imaginepursuing them only in national laboratories. With their widespreadcommercial pursuit, enforcing relinquishment will require a verificationregime similar to that for biological weapons, but on an unprecedentedscale. This, inevitably, will raise tensions between our individual pri-vacy and desire for proprietary information, and the need for verifica-tion to protect us all. We will undoubtedly encounter strong resistanceto this loss of privacy and freedom of action.
While Joy looks at the Biological and Chemical Weapons Conventions as well as nuclear nonproliferation ideas, the entirety of what he's looking at is also embedded in the idea of gun control in the United States as well. We could choose better, but we actively choose against our better interests.
What role does toxic capitalism have in pushing us towards these antithetical goals? The gun industry and gun lobby have had tremendous interest on that front. Surely ChatGPT and other LLM and AI tools will begin pushing on the profitmaking levers shortly.
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We have embodied our relinquish-ment of biological and chemical weapons in the 1972 BiologicalWeapons Convention (BWC) and the 1993 Chemical Weapons Con-vention (CWC).
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As Thoreau said, “We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us”;and this is what we must fight, in our time. The question is, indeed,Which is to be master? Will we survive our technologies?
another variation of Thoreau on tools... source?
It's Walden. (see: https://hypothes.is/a/b10mJsGoEe6rgteMdxbwKQ)
Joy may have more profitably quoted the earlier Walden piece from p.41: "But lo! men have become the tools of their tools."
There also seems to be the idea of our slow evolution into cybernetic or Borg-like beings hiding not only in Joy's argument, but in Thoreau's. If we integrate so closely with our tools, where do they stop and we end and vice versa?
Compare this with the infamous problem of the ship of Theseus.
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I believe that we all wish our course could be determined by ourcollective values, ethics, and morals.
the collective "we" here must broadly be the West, but even there our values, ethics, and morals aren't all the same. Things devolve further and more quickly beyond the cis-gendered white male perspective which Joy represents here.
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It was Nietzsche who warned us, at the end of the 19th century, notonly that God is dead but that “faith in science, which after all existsundeniably, cannot owe its origin to a calculus of utility; it must haveoriginated in spite of the fact that the disutility and dangerousness ofthe ‘will to truth,’ of ‘truth at any price’ is proved to it constantly.”
Joy quoting Nietzsche
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In recent times, we have come to revere scientific knowledge.
Some do, yes, but it's interesting to note that when Bill Joy was writing this a strong anti-science movement was afoot in the United States of America.
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We have, as a bedrock value in our society, long agreed on thevalue of open access to information, and recognize the problems thatarise with attempts to restrict access to and development of knowledge.
Many academics and modern people may think this way, but it is far from a "bedrock value".
In many indigenous cultures knowledge was carefully sectioned and cordoned off.
And as we know that knowledge itself is power (ipsa scientia potestas est - Francis Bacon) many people have frequently cordoned off access to information.
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Aristotle opened hisMetaphysics with the simple statement: “All men by nature desire toknow.”
Bill Joy quoting Aristotle.
see original: https://hypothes.is/a/2LPjSMGkEe6K-4Oi8iIRmg
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The only realistic alternative I see is relinquishment: to limit de-velopment of the technologies that are too dangerous, by limiting ourpursuit of certain kinds of knowledge.
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Now, as then, we are creators of new technologies and stars of theimagined future, driven—this time by great financial rewards andglobal competition—despite the clear dangers, hardly evaluating whatit may be like to try to live in a world that is the realistic outcome ofwhat we are creating and imagining.
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In November 1945, three months after the atomic bombings,Oppenheimer stood firmly behind the scientific attitude, saying, “It isnot possible to be a scientist unless you believe that the knowledge ofthe world, and the power which this gives, is a thing which is of in-trinsic value to humanity, and that you are using it to help in the spreadof knowledge and are willing to take the consequences.”
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But thesewarnings haven’t been widely publicized; the public discussions havebeen clearly inadequate. There is no profit in publicizing the dangers.
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Among the cognoscenti of nanotechnology, this threat has becomeknown as the “gray goo problem.” Though masses of uncon-trolled replicators need not be gray or gooey, the term “gray goo”emphasizes that replicators able to obliterate life might be less in-spiring than a single species of crabgrass. They might be superiorin an evolutionary sense, but this need not make them valuable.
quote in Bill Joy originally from the book Engines of Creation.
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Drexler startedthe Foresight Institute in the late 1980s “to help prepare society for an-ticipated advanced technologies”
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I remember feeling good about nanotechnology after reading Enginesof Creation.
Here's an example of Bill Joy reading about nanotechnology and having positive feelings.
Why are people so pro-technology? Have we evolved this way over 10,000 years? Are there too many technologies with bad effects?
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If, for ex-ample, we were to reengineer ourselves into several separate and unequalspecies using the power of genetic engineering, then we would threatenthe notion of equality that is the very cornerstone of our democracy.
I find it hard to believe that equality is "the very cornerstone of our democracy".
Tags
- origin of life
- gun control
- surveillance capitalism
- Jacques Attali
- futurism
- happiness
- philosophy
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- weapons
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- Metaphysics
- weapons of mass destruction
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- truth
- artificial intelligence
- cornerstones
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- Eric Drexler
- tools
- cultural anthropology
- technologies
- ship of Theseus
- publicity
- genetics nanotechnology robotics (GNR)
- 1945
- Henry David Thoreau
- technophilia
- privatize profits socialize losses
- eudaimonia
- ipsa scientia potestas est
- open questions
- anti-science
- societal interests
- abortion
- intellectual history
- read
- Bill Joy
- riches
- artificial intelligence control
- professional ethics
- science as religion
- future of work
- uncontrolled self-replication
- Francis Bacon
- Edith Hamilton
- technopositivism
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- Foresight Institute
- Hippocratic oath
- Nazi bar problem
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- education
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- quotes
- Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) (1993)
- relinquishment
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- George Gilder
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- open access
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- science
- we shape our tools and thereafter they shape us
- whistle blowers
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- knowledge-enabled mass destruction (KMD)
- Fraternités
- techno-utopianism
- J. Robert Oppenheimer
- equality
- knowledge as a weapon
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buyolympia.com buyolympia.com
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https://buyolympia.com/Item/bumper-crop-ask-me-about-my-rich-inner-life
I saw a bumper sticker on a car this afternoon that read "Ask Me About My Rich Inner Life". I think I'm going to have to buy one to put on my zettelkasten.
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https://pages.oup.com/ol/cus/1646173949115570121/submit-words-and-evidence-to-the-oed
The modern day digital version of an OED contribution slip includes database fields for the following:
- Submission type (new word or sense of a word; information about origin/etymology; other)
- the word or phrase itself
- the part of speech (noun, verb, adjective, other)
- pronunciation (recording, IPA, rhyming words, etc.)
- the definition or sense number as defined in the OED
- quotation evidence with full text, and bibliographical references/links)
- additional notes
Only the first two fields are mandatory.
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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Image of slips used for gorilla in the first edition of the OED.
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www.oed.com www.oed.com
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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User input in OED entries https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UD7grPoShzA
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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www.neh.gov www.neh.gov
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Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That's why it's so hard.
McCullough, David. “David McCullough Interview with NEH Chairman Bruce Cole.” Humanities 23, no. 4 (August 2002). https://www.neh.gov/about/awards/jefferson-lecture/david-mccullough-biography.
Compare with: https://hypothes.is/a/yEFMHoCkEeyl34fItJe__w (Luhmann on thinking/writing in Sonke Ahrens)
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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Your zettelkasten, having a perfect memory of your "past self" acts as a ratchet so that when you have a new conversation on a particular topic, your "present self" can quickly remember where you left off and not only advance the arguments but leave an associative trail for your "future self" to continue on again later.
Many thoughts and associations occur when you're having conversations with any text, whether it's with something you're reading by another author or your own notes in your zettelkasten or commonplace book. For more conversations on this topic, perhaps thumb through: https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich?q=tag%3A%27conversations+with+the+text%27
If you view conversations broadly as means of finding and collecting information from external sources and naturally associating them together, perhaps you'll appreciate this quote:
No piece of information is superior to any other. Power lies in having them all on file and then finding the connections. There are always connections; you have only to want to find them.—Umberto Eco in Foucault's Pendulum (Secker & Warburg)
(Reply to u/u/Plastic-Lettuce-7150 at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/1ae2qf4/communicating_with_a_zettelkasten/)
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What you are reading is likely cleverer than you (of which reading as Mortimer J. Adler points out we should be doing), which constitutes "Like an intelligent and interesting conversation partner."
While Adler may say that a text could be cleverer than you are (is this a direct quote? reference if so), there is an associative nature to our thinking by which one can read further into a text than anything which is actually present. Did the author really mean to "say" the additional associative material? Was it in their lived experience to make such tangential references which associate things in your mind as well?
One ought to be careful that an author can only mean something so far, unless one has much more experience with their additional works and context. If it's not there, does it really exist? Did they mean it?
These associative tricks are what can make texts much richer and deeper than they may have claim to be. Though this doesn't mean that they aren't good "conversation partners."
compare this with doubletalk and https://boffosocko.com/2016/09/30/complexity-isnt-a-vice-10-word-answers-and-doubletalk-in-election-2016/
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/1ad72nw/soul_cards_by_hailey_ren%C3%A9/
Hailey Rene seems to have opened the breach of the space of self-help zettelkasten.
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/1aglte6/eink_tablets/
I've yet to run across anyone excited about zettelkasten on their e-ink device. The note taking experience for writing/capturing seems to be there, but a user interface for sorting, searching, and interlinking seems to be wholly missing.
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Local file Local file
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We do not ride on the railroad; it rides uponus. Did you ever think what those sleepers are thatunderlie the railroad ? Each one is a man, an Irish¬man, or a Yankee man. The rails are laid on them, andthey are covered with sand, and the cars run smoothlyover them. They are sound sleepers, I assure you.And every few years a new lot is laid down and runover; so that, if some have the pleasure of riding on arail, others have the misfortune to be ridden upon.
p100
This fits into the same sort of framing as Thoreau's earlier quote "men have become the tools of their tools." (p41)
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But lo!men have become the tools of their tools. The manwho independently plucked the fruits when he was hun¬gry is become a farmer; and he who stood under a treefor shelter, a housekeeper.
p41
This quote is fascinating when one realizes that the Thoreau family business was manufacturing pencils at John Thoreau & Co., one of the first major pencil companies in the United States. Thoreau's father was the titular John and Henry David worked in the factory and improved upon the hardness of their graphite. https://hypothes.is/a/sm7LUpazEe2tTq_GhGiVIg
One might also then say that the man who manufactured pencils naturally should become a writer!
This quote also bears some interesting resemblance to quotes about tools which shape us by Winston Churchill and John M. Culkin see: https://hypothes.is/a/6Znx6MiMEeu3ljcVBsKNOw
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Local file Local file
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All men by nature desire to know.
The famous, and oft-quoted first line of Aristotle's Metaphysics.
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METAPHYSICS
Aristotle. Hutchins, Robert M., and Mortimer J. Adler, eds. “Metaphysics (Metaphysica).” In The Works of Aristotle, Volume I, 1st ed., 8:495–626. Great Books of the Western World. Chicago, IL: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1952.
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Aristotle. The Works of Aristotle, Volume I. Edited by Robert M. Hutchins and Mortimer J. Adler. 1st ed. Vol. 8. 54 vols. Great Books of the Western World. Chicago, IL: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1952.
(Annotations in 1984, 27th Printing, though notes made on 1952 first edition)
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shop.neosmartpen.com shop.neosmartpen.com
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I think I like this better than the other current models in 2024.
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quantumgardener.blog quantumgardener.blog
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https://quantumgardener.blog/notes/replacing-goodreads-with-obsidian
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www.ebay.com www.ebay.com
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https://www.ebay.com/itm/395165358885
2024-01-30 3 Library card charging trays offered for $100 from Hondo, TX.
Cost per drawer: 33.33
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Local file Local file
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The bad reader is lost amonggood books. He lacks the highest pleasure available to man,according to Mrs. Woolf. If she is right, none but a fool would refuseto learn to read as well as he can.
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Reading is not a passive activity
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Perhaps the quickest way to understand the elements of what a novelistis doing is not to read, but to write; to make your own experiment withthe dangers and difficulties of words.
This seems to be the duality of Millard Kaufman (and certainly other writers'?) advice that to be a good writer, one must first be well read.
Of course, perhaps the two really are meant to be a hand in a glove and the reader should actively write as they read thereby doing both practices at once.
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www.facebook.com www.facebook.com
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https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/1511212389452724/
60 drawer wooden card catalog in a very long 12x5 configuration offered for sale at $800 on Facebook marketplace in September 2023. Sold in the fall for unknown price, though likely close to 800.
Cost per drawer: $13.33
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www.facebook.com www.facebook.com
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https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/7016702761714807/
2023-09 36 drawer wooden card catalog (no manufacturer; looks custom) offered for $850 and sold sometime in the fall 2023. Rough, but rustic shape. Possibly a modular unit of two 6x3 sections with a custom top attached.
Cost per drawer: $23.60
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myeatoncanyon.com myeatoncanyon.com
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See also Friends of Eaton Canyon Facebook group<br /> https://www.facebook.com/groups/76938058649/
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URL
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www.facebook.com www.facebook.com
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https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/2356693964529700/
2024-01 Offering three Cole Steel card filing cabinets for $165 each. Industrial beige 20 gauge steel in good condition with locks.
Size: 52 h x 19 w x 29 d
10 sections of 2 drawers for 20 actual drawers.
Based on communication with the seller their internal space is 4" high by 7.5" so they were likely designed for punch cards (7 3/8 by 3 1/4").
Cost per drawer: $8.25.
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azorion.tripod.com azorion.tripod.com
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https://azorion.tripod.com/whorf.htm<br /> The (Hopi) World According to Whorf -- a Brief Note<br /> by Gary A. David, 2004
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en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
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en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambergris
eggcorn: ambergrease
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www.ebay.com www.ebay.com
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https://www.ebay.com/itm/156034110049
Purchased for $106.00 + shipping
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www.hellingerinstitute.com www.hellingerinstitute.com
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en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
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To what extent in this process is the client reconfiguring and refocusing on their relationship with those around them? Does the past have absolute process (in the Zulu incarnation)? It obviously may not in the Western practice, but perhaps the client may more easily come to terms with those around them as a result, and this is more beneficial than a "truer" outcome?
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A healing resolution for the issue generally is supposedly achieved after repositioning the representatives and adding key members of the system who have been forgotten or written out of the family history. When every representative feels right in his or her place and the other representatives agree, the facilitator may suggest one or two sentences to be spoken aloud. If the representatives do not feel at peace with their new position or sentences, they can move again or try a different sentence. This is claimed, in an abstract way, to represent a possible resolution of the issues faced by the seeker. Sometimes the process concludes without a full resolution being achieved.
The focus of family constellations seems to be placing people with respect to not only their surroundings, but their family, ancestors, and those who create the web of the world around them.
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The connection with ancestors is a central feature of the Constellation process.
Relationship of stars to stories and people to each other (ancestors).
As above, so below...
Reflection of the skys to the earth and to its peoples
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The traditional Zulu people lived and acted in a religious world in which the central focal point was the ancestors.
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en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
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Hellinger told how one of the trainers asked the group, "What is more important to you, your ideals or people? Which would you sacrifice for the other?"
direct attribution?<br /> likely in <br /> Hellinger, B., Weber, G., & Beaumont, H. (1998). Love's hidden symmetry: What makes love work in relationships. Phoenix, AZ: Zeig, Tucker & Theisen. p. 328
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www.propublica.org www.propublica.org
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Ben started at ProPublica on 2024-01-24<br /> https://www.propublica.org/atpropublica/propublica-hires-first-senior-director-for-technology'
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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Okay folks. I think I better name my antinet before he gets too big and people start getting suspicious. After some thinking and googling words I don't know in order to make an acronym I think I've decided on "J.A.K.O.B". Which stands for "just a knowledgeable omnilegent box". Omnilegent apparently means reading or having read everything. The name is of course inspired by J.A.R.V.I.S (just a very intelligent system) the artificial intelligence created by Tony Stark.
u/tylermangelson named his zettelkasten J.A.K.O.B.
https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/1aecx27/naming_my_baby_antinet/
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- Jan 2024
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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With your Kokuyo Binder- do you know of a way to bind relatively large numbers of pages together? I want to use something like this as my commonplace book and archive as I go, but once I get enough archived on a given subject, I'd like to bind it as a sort of compendium. Does that seem possible with these or are they not good for larger numbers of pages?
reply to u/modspyder at https://www.reddit.com/r/commonplacebook/comments/18fbwqx/comment/ko8bksm/
The small plastic binder I use comfortably holds 50 pages, but has room for maybe 25 more (though not 50). You could use several of them for binding together groups of pages like that. Searching around might reveal larger ring binders here if you want larger books.
For larger quantities:
You can use book rings (sold in various sizes) or even binder clips to hold these sheets together in batches, but with the ability to remove them or add sheets later.
File folders might be a useful option too for holding things together in categories.
With some inexpensive book binder's glue and cardboard you could bind together much larger numbers of sheets into custom books for yourself. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nivNPCoAHcM is a good basic primer, but you could also do more complicated bindings and covers or have pages bound at FedEx/Kinkos or other higher end professional binders depending on your need and ultimate budget. For this the sky may be the limit, though anything over 1000 pages may be getting awfully bulky.
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www.mccoys-kecatalogs.com www.mccoys-kecatalogs.com
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www.mccoys-kecatalogs.com www.mccoys-kecatalogs.com
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www.mccoys-kecatalogs.com www.mccoys-kecatalogs.com
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Presuming my 1956 dating for my 4181-3 (SN 004365) slide rule is correct, the 1956 price list has the 10 inch ivorite 4181-3 model for $15.00.
https://www.mccoys-kecatalogs.com/KECatalogs/1954/1956Price/1956kecatprice43.htm
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www.mccoys-kecatalogs.com www.mccoys-kecatalogs.com
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www.mccoys-kecatalogs.com www.mccoys-kecatalogs.com
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1956 --- The ST scale on rules that had Decimal Trig scales were converted to an SRT scale.
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1956 0 88,500 88,500
My 4181-3 slide rule was likely manufactured in 1956 as it has the SRT scale initiated in 1955 and has a serial number 004365 which is in the series 3 segment which reset in 1956 and ran from 0 to 88,500 that year.
https://www.mccoys-kecatalogs.com/keserialnumbers/Dating-2.htm
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www.mccoys-kecatalogs.com www.mccoys-kecatalogs.com
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www.mccoys-kecatalogs.com www.mccoys-kecatalogs.com
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www.mccoys-kecatalogs.com www.mccoys-kecatalogs.com
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1955b - The scale set was changed. ST scale was changed to SRT on the 4081s only.
My 4181-3 was likely made in 1955 or after as it has the SRT and not the ST scale. (It has a 1947 copyright mark on it.)
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1955b (4081-3, 4081-5, 4181-1, 4181-1C, E4181J, 4181-3, 68 1200, 68 1205, 68 1210, 68 1215, 68 1220, 68 1251, 68 1256, 68 1261, 68 1282, & 68 1287) Scale sets: Front: LL02 LL03 DF = CF CIF CI C = D LL3 LL2 Rear: LL01 L K A = B T SRT S = D DI LL1
These are the scale sets on my K+E 4181-3 slide Rule
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www.mccoys-kecatalogs.com www.mccoys-kecatalogs.com
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4181-3 10" Log Log Duplex Decitrig Plastic 4081-3 family
The Keuffel & Esser 4181-3 was part of the 4081-3 family and was described in their catalogs as a 10 inch Log Log Duplex Decitrig Plastic slide rule.
via https://www.mccoys-kecatalogs.com/KEModels/kexrefmain.htm
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www.ebay.com www.ebay.com
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https://www.ebay.com/itm/126307745144
78 drawer library card catalog cabinet offered for sale for $850 with local pick up only from Bennington, VT on 2024-01-31.
Solid single cabinet likely in maple. Missing all rods, water spots, stain missing, lots of scratches and scrapes. Not in great condition. No manufacturer listed.
Cost per drawer: $10.90
(one of the lowest per drawer, but also in bad shape.)
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www.ebay.com www.ebay.com
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https://www.ebay.com/itm/325982555744
15 drawer card catalog offered 2024-01-31 for $2995.00 with freight shipping (extra) from South Bend, IN. Looks to be in walnut and chrome.
Unknown manufacturer and doesn't look familiar. Odd drawer pulls, but looks in good shape and has all rods. Bottom base in chrome.
Cost per drawer: 200.00
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www.ebay.com www.ebay.com
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https://www.ebay.com/itm/325982715454
35 drawer modular card catalog in light mid century modern design. Table with stick legs a 5x6 section including two pull out writing drawers, a 5x1 section and a top. Likely maple, in great shape. All wood and metal, includes all rods.
Listed in 2024-01-29 for $3995.00 with freight shipping extra from South Bend, IN
Labeled as a Centura 400 (model?)
Cost per drawer: $114.00
This is the first time I've seen a catalog from Sjöström on the market though on searching there are a handful floating around.
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writing.bobdoto.computer writing.bobdoto.computer
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Having at most four references to notes containing the same keyword (in an archive of sixty thousand notes / ZK II), the austerity of the keyword index's entries speaks to Luhmann's appreciation of meandering through relationships rather than searching for exact "hits."
re: open question about Luhmann's index at https://hypothes.is/a/NSo4ArxzEe6ElC-Cg7ex8g
Per personal communication with Bob Doto, the reference here about 4 references at most comes from:
Schmidt "serendipity":
"the file’s keyword index makes no claim to providing a complete list of all cards in the collection that refer to a specific term. Rather, Luhmann typically listed only one to four places where the term could be found in the file, the idea being that all other relevant entries in the collection could be quickly identified via the internal system of references described above."
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Doto, Bob. “What Do We Mean When We Say ‘Bottom-Up?’” Writing by Bob Doto (blog), January 25, 2024. https://writing.bobdoto.computer/what-do-we-mean-when-we-say-bottom-up/.
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Having at most four references to notes containing the same keyword (in an archive of sixty thousand notes / ZK II), the austerity of the keyword index's entries speaks to Luhmann's appreciation of meandering through relationships rather than searching for exact "hits."
Source for the claim of "at most four references"?
I could believe this on first blush, but has his archive done this work?
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This note would live among others of the same topic, only to be called upon when the topic was explored.
Not mentioned here is that with a top-down approach, if a card had related topics on it, then it would have to either be copied to those areas separately, or would need to be carefully cross-indexed to those areas to be able to be found again when needed.
When the number of topics, n, begins to exceed 2 the amount of additional work and cards can grow quite a bit, though generally only linearly with respect to n. (Don't discount the work on the back side of searching for and finding these easily at later dates.)
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Top-down approaches work in the opposite direction. Instead of allowing the materials to inform the whole, a perception of what the whole should be determines which materials are allowed to be used. It's "having an overarching concept before working out the details."5
One of the more notable adopters of this approach to design and architecture was the Bauhaus in the early 20th century. See: Owen, C. (2009). "Bottom-up, Top-down." https://id.iit.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Bottom-up-top-down-updown09.pdf↩
It's a question of teleology. Is there a goal or a purpose in mind? (teleology: the explanation of phenomena in terms of the purpose they serve rather than of the cause by which they arise.)
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working "bottom-up" pertains to the manner in which a sense of wholeness and coherence emerges from the information collected from the individual components that constitute or contribute to the whole.
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uni-bielefeld.de uni-bielefeld.de
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Contrary to the subject index of a book, the file’s keywordindex makes no claim to providing a complete list of all cards in the collection that refer to a specific term.Rather, Luhmann typically listed only one to four places where the term could be found in the file, theidea being that all other relevant entries in the collection could be quickly identified via the internal sys-tem of references described above
According to Schmidt, Luhmann's index typically had "only one to four places where [a] term could be found in the file" indicating among a total of 3,450 indexed topics just how sparse his index was for 90,000 cards.
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Whereas the index to the first collection was still of fairly manageable size with its 1,250 entries, thecontinuous updates of the index — as another part of the data base maintenance — to the second col-lection18 ultimately resulted in 3,200 entries.
Niklas Luhmann's ZKI had 1,250 entries in the index and ZKII had 3,200 entries.
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https://www.ebay.com/itm/176211857378
All wood and metal 12 drawer Brodart card index offered for auction on 2024-01-28 for $500.00 or best offer. Good condition despite missing a rod and having mixed silver and brass fittings on the unit. (3 silver drawer pulls/plackards and 5 silver rods with the remainder in brass.)
Local pick up only from Lock Haven, PA.
Cost per drawer: 41.66
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www.ebay.com www.ebay.com
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https://www.ebay.com/itm/305374515970
12 drawer (3 x 4) card index from Library Bureau in generally good looking shape from January 2024-01-28 listed for $385.00 (+ a ridiculous $203.77 shipping fee from North Canton, OH to Los Angeles).
Looks to be ex-library from Colgate University, in all wood and metal and in excellent shape. Missing all the catalog rods however.
I'm doing the cost per drawer based only on the opening bid price despite the gouging of the shipping price. Many sellers seem to be tacking on an above average shipping charge to pad their sale prices and potentially shift commissions from ebay.
Cost per drawer: $32.00
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www.kickstarter.com www.kickstarter.com
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www.ebay.com www.ebay.com
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Last Bookstore sold set of 11 + extras of The Story of Civilization by Will and Ariel Durant for $227.50 on 2024-01-31. Stunning condition, clean jackets including plastic protectors.
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Either index may be used.
If the numbers to be multiplied result in the hairline not being able to be used because the reading is off one side of the slide rule, then use the second index (the number 1) on the D scale.
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To find the product of two numbers, disregard the decimalpoints, opposite either of the numbers on the D scale set the index ofthe C scale, push the hairline of the indicator to the second numberon the C scale, and read the answer under the hairline of the D scale.The decimal point is placed in accordance with the result of a roughcalculation.
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Definitions. The central sliding part of the rule is called theslide, the other part the body. The glass runner is called the indi-cator and the line on the indicator is referred to as the hairline.
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Kells, Lyman M., Willis F. Kern, and James R. Bland. K+E Slide Rules: A Self Instruction Manual. New York: Keuffel & Esser Co., 1955.
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Accuracy of the slide rule. From thediscussion of § 2 it appears that we read fourfigures of a result on one part of the scaleand three figures on the remaining part.Assuming that the error of a reading is onetenth of the smallest interval following theleft-hand index of D, we conclude that theerror is roughly 1 in 1000 or one tenth of oneper cent. The effect of the assumed errorin judging a distance is inversely propor-tional to the length of the rule. Hencewe associate with a 10-inch slide rule anerror of one tenth of one per cent, with a20-inch slide rule an error of one twentiethof one per cent or 1 part in 2000, and withthe Thacher Cylindrical slide rule an errorof a hundredth of one per cent or one part.in 10,000. The accuracy obtainable withthe 10-inch slide rule is sufficient for manypractical purposes; in any ease the sliderule result serves as a check.
The accuracy of most 10 inch slide rules is approximately 1 in 1000 or one tenth of one percent.
Because the error in approximating distance is inversely proportion to the length of a slide rule, longer slide rules will have proportionally smaller errors, so while a 10 inch slide rule has an error of 1 in 1000, a 20 inch will have an error of 1 in 2000 and larger rules can be accurate to within 1 in 10,000 or better.
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lionsberg.wiki lionsberg.wiki
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https://lionsberg.wiki/lionsberg_wiki_books/lionsberg_wiki_books
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lionsberg.wiki lionsberg.wiki
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Jordan Nicholas Sukut's Lionsberg Wiki has approximately 1.3M words which could be turned into a NeoBook. He calls it a "wiki book".
https://lionsberg.wiki/
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wiki.openglobalmind.com wiki.openglobalmind.com
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en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exquisite_corpse
Could be used as the germ in the production of a fictional neobook...
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forum.zettelkasten.de forum.zettelkasten.de
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Chris, I read it some 40 years ago when as a school boy I began with my Zettelkasten journey. It is about the technique as well as the intellectuell framework behind it and was surely pointed to business aspects as well as running the civil service but also outspoken to the worker of the mind, the scientist and philosopher. Filing and indexing is crucial to all of these varied aspects of cultural life. But don't expect hitherto unknown magical practices to be revealed. It was commune practice then and you could find handbooks on indexing and filing in organisations also in America and England at that time. The new found way of personal knowlegde management just doesn't know about its predecessors with pen, ink, typewriter and other unbeliefable tricks.
quote from Martin <br /> https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/comment/19435#Comment_19435 on 2024-01-28
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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Lima, Manuel. The Power of Networks. RSA ANIMATE, 2012. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJmGrNdJ5Gw.
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10:57 reference to Weaver, Warren. “Science and Complexity.” American Scientist 36, no. 4 (1948): 536–44. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27826254
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lifelonglearn.substack.com lifelonglearn.substack.com
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Local file Local file
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Only reprints (without any alterations)retain the original call number, all revises or new editions howeversmall the alterations should be given a new call number, butdecimals may be used with advantage.
Though referring to catalogs and office literature, in 1908 it was known that using decimals would allow one to distinguish between slightly different versions of indexable items without running out of "space" for new additions.
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* Ticklers in U.S.A.
differentiation in terminology here between Britain and the US: future reminders vs. ticklers
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Call Numbers
Interesting to see a mix of numbers and letters in the indexing system here from 1908.
Numbers for companies and dates and letters as tags for a variety of business purposes as well as for month indicators.
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The Charging This consists in its interior arrangement ofCabinet rows of pigeon-holes constructed on an inclineupwards so that the base of each horizontalrow of pigeon-holes is higher than its predecessor. Into thesepigeon-holes the charging shps are placed and there is a guidecard to each pigeon-hole marking the divisions of the charging slipsby giving the number of the slip which is to be filed immediatelybehind it.
While slightly different in its physical configuration, the office charging cabinet (with a bleacher-like set up) is very similar to the similarly named library card charging tray.
Which came first?
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writingslowly.com writingslowly.com
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I've sketched it out elsewhere but let's memorialize the broad strokes here because we're inspired at the moment... come back later and add in quotes from Luhmann and other sources (@Heyde1931).
Luhmann was balancing the differences between topically arranged commonplaces and the topical nature of the Dewey Decimal System (a standardized version across thousands of collections) and building neighborhoods of related ideas.
One of the issues with commonplace books, is planning them out in advance. How might you split up a notebook for long term use to create easy categories when you don't know how much room to give each in advance? (If you don't believe me, stop by r/commonplacebooks where you're likely to see this question pop up several times this year.) This issue is remedied when John Locke suggests keeping commonplaces in chronological order of their appearance and cross-indexing them.
This creates a new problem of a lot of indexing and increased searching over time as the commonplace book scales. Translating to index cards complicates things because they're unattached and can potentially move about, so they don't have the anchor effectuated by their being bound up in a notebook. But being on slips allows them to be more easily shuffled, rearranged, and even put into outlines, which are all fantastic affordances when looking for creativity or scaffolding things out into an article or book for creation.
As a result, numbering slips creates a solid anchor by which the cards can be placed and always returned for later finding and use. But how should we number them? Should it be with integers and done chronologically? (1, 2, 3, ..., n) This is nice, but makes a mish-mash of things and doesn't assist much in indexing or finding.
Why not go back to Dewey, which has been so popular? But not Dewey in the broadest sense of using numbers to tie ideas to concrete categories. An individual's notes are idiosyncratic and it would be increasingly rare for people to have the same note, much less need a standardized number for it (and if they were standardized, who does that work and how is it distributed so everyone could use it?) No, instead, let's just borrow the decimal structure of Dewey's system. One of the benefits of his decimal structure is that an infinity of new books can be placed on ever-expanding bookshelves without needing to restructure the numbering system. Just keep adding decimal places onto the end when necessary. This allows for immense density when necessary. But, importantly, it also provides some fantastic level of serendipity.
Let's say you go to learn about geometry, so you look up the topic in your trusty library card catalog. Do you really need to look at the hundreds of records returned? Probably not. You only need the the Dewey Decimal Number 516. Once you're at the shelves, you can browse through that section to see what's there and interesting in the space. You might also find things on the shelves above or below 516 and find the delights of topology and number theory or abstract algebra and real analysis. Subjects you might not necessarily have had in mind will suddenly present themselves for your consideration. Even if your initial interest may have been in Zhongmin Shen's Lectures on Finsler geometry (516.375), you might also profitably walk away with James E. Humphreys' Introduction to Lie Algebras and Representation Theory (512.55).
So what happens if we use these decimal numbers for our notes? First we will have the ability to file things between and amongst each other to infinity. By filing things closest to things which seem related to each other, we'll create neighborhoods of ideas which can easily grow over time. Related ideas will stay together while seemingly related ideas on first blush may slowly grow away from each other over time as even more closely related ideas move into the neighborhood between them. With time and careful work, you'll have not only a breadth of ideas, but a massive depth of them too.
The use of decimal numbering provides us with a few additional affordances:
1 (Neighborhoods of ideas) 1.1 combinatorial creativity Neighborhoods of ideas can help to fuel combinatorial creativity and forge new connections as well as insight over time. 1.2 writing One might take advantage of these growing neighborhoods to create new things. Perhaps you've been working for a while and you see you have a large number of cards in a particular area. You can, to some extent, put your hand into your box and grab a tranche of notes. By force of filing, these notes are going to be reasonably related, which means you should be able to use them to write a blog post, an article, a magazine piece, a chapter, or even an entire book (which may require a few fistfuls, as necessary.)
2 (Sparse indexing) We don't need to index each and every single topic or concept into our index. Because we've filed things nearby, if a new card about Finsler geometry relates to another and we've already indexed the first under that topic, then we don't need to index the second, because our future selves can easily rely on the fact that if we're interested in Finsler geometry in the future, we can look that up in the index, and go to that number where we're likely to see other cards related to the topic as well as additional serendipitous ideas related to them in that same neighborhood.
You may have heard that as Luhmann progressed on his decades long project, broadly on society and within the area of sociology, he managed to amass 90,000 index cards. How many do you suppose he indexed under the topic of sociology? Certainly he had 10s of thousands relating to his favorite subject, no? Of course he did, but what would happen over time as a collection grows? Having 20,000 indexed entries about sociology doesn't scale well for your search needs. Even 10 indexed entries may be a bit overwhelming as once you find a top level card, hundreds to thousands around it are going to be related. 10 x 100 = 1,000 cards to flip through. So if you're indexing, be conservative. In the roughly 45 years of creating 90,000 slips, Luhmann only indexed two cards with the topic of "sociology". If you look through his index, you'll find that most of his topical entries only have pointers to one or two cards, which provide an entryway into those topics which are backed up with dozens to hundreds of cards on related topics. In rarer, instances you might find three or four, but it's incredibly rare to find more than that.
Over time, one will find that, for the topics one is most interested in, the number of ideas and cards will grown without bound. Here it makes sense to use more and more specific topics (tags, categories, taxonomies) all of which are each also sparsely indexed. Ultimately one finds that in the limit, the categories get so fractionalized that the closest category one idea has with another is the fact that they're juxtaposed closely by number. The of the decimal expansion might say something about the depth or breadth of the relationship between ideas.
Something else arises here. At first one may have the tendency to associate their numbers with topical categories. This is only natural as it's a function at which humans all excel. But are those numbers really categories after a few weeks? Probably not. Treat them only as address numbers or GPS coordinates to be able to find your way. Your sociology section may quickly find itself with invasive species of ideas from anthropology and archaeology as well as history. If you treat all your ideas only at the topical level, they'll be miles away from where you need them to be as the smallest level atomic ideas collide with each other to generate new ideas for you. Naturally you can place them further away if you wish and attempt to bridge the distance with links to numbers in other locations, but I suspect you'll find this becomes pretty tedious over time and antithetical when it comes time to pull out a handful and write something. It's fantastically easier to pull out a several dozen and begin than it is to go through and need to pull out linked cards in a onesy-twosies manner or double check with your index to make sure you've gotten the most interesting bits. This becomes even more important as your collection scales.
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Richard @ Writing Slowly. “Even the Index Is Just Another Note.” Personal website. Writing Slowly (blog), January 26, 2024. https://writingslowly.com/2024/01/26/even-the-index.html.
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My journey is subjective, because it’s my journey.
or as Vannevar Bush might have said, everyone will have their own idiosyncratic associative trails...
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The Dewey Decimal System pigeonholes all knowledge, like cells in a prison.
This analogy is kind of hilarious from the perspective of Luhmann's Zettelkasten.
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Luhmann’s claim in ‘Communicating with Slipboxes’, where he said: “it is most important that we decide against the systematic ordering in accordance with topics and sub-topics and choose instead a firm fixed place (Stellordnung).”
Curious that he quotes Luhmann from Manfred Kuehn's translation, but links to a separate translation
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forum.zettelkasten.de forum.zettelkasten.de
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Watching this thread for ideas.
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forum.zettelkasten.de forum.zettelkasten.de
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Sounds like Sascha Fast is doing a syntopical piece on the topic of Habit.
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quantumgardener.blog quantumgardener.blogQuartz 41
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https://quantumgardener.blog/notes/quartz-4
customizations for Quartz 4
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quartz.jzhao.xyz quartz.jzhao.xyz
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The goal of Quartz is to make hosting your own public digital garden free and simple. You don’t even need your own website. Quartz does all of that for you and gives your own little corner of the internet. https://github.com/jackyzha0/quartz
Quartz runs on top of Hugo so all notes are written in Markdown .
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github.com github.com
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niklas-luhmann-archiv.de niklas-luhmann-archiv.de
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ZK II note 9/8b 9/8b On the general structure of memories, see Ashby 1967, p. 103 . It is then important that you do not have to rely on a huge number of point-by-point accesses , but rather that you can rely on relationships between notes, i.e. references , that make more available at once than you would with a search impulse or with one thought - has fixation in mind.
This underlies the ideas of songlines and oral mnemonic practices and is related to Vannevar Bush's "associative trails" in As We May Think.
Luhmann, Niklas. “ZK II Zettel 9/8b.” Niklas Luhmann-Archiv, undated. https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_2_NB_9-8b_V.
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Top down thinking is when you plan a meal, find recipes, get ingredients, and then cook the meal. You started with the result and worked your way down to what was needed to make it happen.Bottoms up is when you rifle through your cabinets and fridge to try to cobble together something edible. You start with the components and figure out what you can do.
In this example both versions have a specific goal in mind: "to diminish hunger". What does this look like when we have no specific goal in mind, but are exploring a space without purpose, but only for cause?
exploring with relationship to: ᔥ[[Bob Doto]] in What Do We Mean When We Say "Bottom-Up?"
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www.vulture.com www.vulture.com
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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It's original purpose was definitely to create unique output but you can definitely use it for other reasons!
reply to u/chasemac_ at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/19ep9rc/comment/kjempeu/
I'm curious from where you draw your "original purpose" claim? This presupposes having identified a zettelkasten progenitor who has clearly made such a statement. (If you're thinking Luhmann, you're missing the mark by centuries. And even if you're thinking Luhmann, where did he say this specifically?) While Konrad Gessner seems to have been an early progenitor in 1548, the broader idea goes much further back. Even in the early days of the commonplace book, the primary analogy was using them as "storehouses" for collecting treasure (thesaurus) aka knowledge or wisdom.
Even Luhmann's framing of his zettelkasten as his "second memory" was old by the time he wrote it:
In a short academic dissertation on the art of excerpts, Andreas Stübel described the card index as a ‘secondary and subsidiary memory’ (‘memoria secundaria and subsidiaria’), summing up in just three words the dilemma scholars had been struggling with for two centuries with respect to the use of commonplace books. As far as I know, Stübel was the first among contemporaries to speak of secondary memory. —Alberto Cevolini in “Where Does Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index Come From?” Erudition and the Republic of Letters 3, no. 4 (October 24, 2018): 390–420. https://doi.org/10.1163/24055069-00304002.
If we look even further back we read Seneca the Younger in Epistulae morales, writing positively about collecting with respect to classic rhetoric:
"We should follow, men say, the example of the bees, who flit about and cull the flowers that are suitable for producing honey, and then arrange and assort in their cells all that they have brought in;
Without a clear originator, I might suggest that historically the first purpose was for memory followed closely by learning and then accumulating wisdom and knowledge (sententiae). Using them for output only came much later.
Why is there so much bad ink in the zettelkasten space about about "collecting"? (a la the "collector's fallacy") If you collect nothing, you'll have nothing. You have to start somewhere. Collecting happens first before anything useful comes out of the enterprise. Where are all these "people [who] do nothing but boast about the amount of cards in their box"? I'm not seeing lots of evidence of them in fora or online certainly. Show us your collection of examples of those to back up the claim. Are there index card hoarders out there who honestly have tens of thousands of notes with absolutely no purpose? I suspect it's rare.
If you're a collector, collect away! Take solace in the words of historian Keith Thomas:
Unfortunately, such diverse topics as literacy, numeracy, gestures, jokes, sexual morality, personal cleanliness or the treatment of animals, though central to my concerns, are hard to pursue systematically. They can’t be investigated in a single archive or repository of information. Progress depends on building up a picture from a mass of casual and unpredictable references accumulated over a long period. That makes them unsuitable subjects for a doctoral thesis, which has to be completed in a few years. But they are just the thing for a lifetime’s reading. So when I read, I am looking out for material relating to several hundred different topics.
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jillianhess.substack.com jillianhess.substack.com
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King’s box of notecards makes me think of Niklas Luhmann’s Zettelkasten. Did you come across any hint that King was familiar with Luhmann’s organizing structure? If he was, it’s unfortunate he missed the part about clearly identified reference notes!
reply to Karen Hume at https://jillianhess.substack.com/p/martin-luther-king-jrs-organizational/comment/47959537
It is incredibly unlikely that King was aware of Luhmann's organizational structure as their practices were contemporaneous right down to their starting years. Luhmann's ZK1 comprises 7 sections with about 23,000 notes written from about 1952 to 1961 while the Morehouse Collection indicates that concerning King's research notes archive "The bulk of the notes were taken as reference material for King’s coursework while a doctoral student at Boston University (1952-1955), including notes taken specifically as reference material for King’s dissertation..." I've been actively searching for several years now, and have yet to find anyone following Luhmann's structure until after the Marbach Exhibition "Zettelkästen. Machines of Fantasy" in 2013. Broadly most have historically followed a variation of a subject heading organization, with or without indexing, similar to that found in the commonplace book tradition and described in Johannes Erich Heyde's book Technik des wissenschaftlichen Arbeitens; eine Anleitung, besonders für Studierende (multiple editions including 1931 & 1951), which was a work Luhmann read when devising his own system.
Incidentally it looks like MLK was using Weis No. 35 boxes, a version of which is still available, now from Globe-Weis: https://amzn.to/3vVcO3c. Perhaps some enterprising teachers will help students create their own versions now?
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https://cultpens.com/products/exacompta-white-5-x-3-125-x-75-record-cards-pack-of-100
These are surprisingly inexpensive here at CultPens.com! They don't seem to have the larger 100x150s though.
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findingaids.auctr.edu findingaids.auctr.edu
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https://findingaids.auctr.edu/repositories/2/resources/159/collection_organization
Morehouse College Martin Luther King, Jr. Collection: Series 4: Research Notes<br /> Collection Identifier: 0000-0000-0000-0131i
This seems to be the bulk of where MLK's zettelkasten is maintained, in particular: - The General Subject file: https://findingaids.auctr.edu/repositories/2/archival_objects/176973 - The Theologian's Debate Box https://findingaids.auctr.edu/repositories/2/archival_objects/176974 - The Subject Index File: https://findingaids.auctr.edu/repositories/2/archival_objects/176975 - The Author Index File: https://findingaids.auctr.edu/repositories/2/archival_objects/176976
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morehouse.edu morehouse.edu
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https://morehouse.edu/life/campus/martin-luther-king-jr-collection/overview/
Pictured here are three card index files, one specifically labeled as "Subject Index File" and visibly labeled on the back wall as a "Weiss No. 35". One of the individual tabs in the rear of the subject index file behind the A-Z tabs is labeled "Salvation".
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findingaids.auctr.edu findingaids.auctr.edu
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Arrangement of the Series The series is organized into eight subseries: 1. General Subject file; 2. Theologian's Debate Box; 3. Subject Index file; 4. Author Index file; 5. Title Index file; 6. Notes on Books of the Bible; 7. Notes on the Latter Prophets; 8. Notes on Philosophers. The series is arranged alphabetically. Subseries 6 and 7 arranged in order of occurrence in the Bible. Separated Materials Newsprint items have been separated to proper housing.
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The series consists primarily of notes taken by Martin Luther King, Jr. The bulk of the notes were taken as reference material for King’s coursework while a doctoral student at Boston University (1952-1955), including notes taken specifically as reference material for King’s dissertation; these notes focus specifically on theology and theologians. Later notes relate to books and articles read by King on a wide variety of subjects (1943-1968), as well as publications that mention or publish work by King, his wife, his associates, or organizations related to King (1968-1969).
Morehouse College Martin Luther King, Jr. Collection: Series 4: Research Notes Collection Identifier: 0000-0000-0000-0131i
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findingaids.auctr.edu findingaids.auctr.edu
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morehouse.edu morehouse.edu
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Dr. Vicki Crawford, Endowed Chair and Director of the Morehouse Martin Luther King Jr. Collection and Professor of Africana Studies(470) 639-0569kingcollection@morehouse.edu.Mailing AddressMorehouse CollegeMartin Luther King Jr. CollectionLeadership Center830 Westview Drive S.W.Atlanta, Georgia 30314
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available at 