brainwagon

Yes, Christmas is upon us again, and this year we are treated to a movie release about a character near and dear to my own heart: Sherlock Holmes. While I am rather fond of Robert Downey Jr., Jude Law, and even Rachel McAdams, I can’t help but think that this reinterpretation of the classic stories is going to make more than a little uncomfortable. If you enjoy the classic Sherlock Holmes, you can do worse than reread the originals, and in particular The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle which appropriately enough, takes place on the second morning after Christmas, when Watson arrives at Baker St. to wish Holmes “the compliments of the season”.

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

If you’d rather have an MP3 of the classic story, try this excellent version that is also part of Project Gutenberg’s collection.

The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle, part one.
The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle, part two.

I love old books, even  on technical subjects like radio.  Often, by looking at the books of the past, we find them more accessible (because there was less knowledge, they assume less as a precursor) and also possess considerable historical interest.

Letters of a Radio-Engineer to His Son is a nice little book by John Mills Sr. to his son back in 1922, which begins simply with:

My Dear Son:

You are interested in radio-telephony and want me to explain it to you. I’ll do so in the shortest and easiest way which I can devise. The explanation will be the simplest which I can give and still make it possible for you to build and operate your own set and to understand the operation of the large commercial sets to which you will listen.

I’ll write you a series of letters which will contain only what is important in the radio of to-day and those ideas which seem necessary if you are to follow the rapid advances which radio is making. Some of the letters you will find to require a second reading and study. In the case of a few you might postpone a second reading until you have finished those which interest you most. I’ll mark the letters to omit in this way.

All the letters will be written just as I would talk to you, for I shall draw little sketches as I go along. One of them will tell you how to experiment for yourself. This will be the most interesting of all. You can find plenty of books to tell you how radio sets operate and what to do, but very few except some for advanced students tell you how to experiment for yourself. Not to waste time in your own 4experiments, however, you will need to be quite familiar with the ideas of the other letters.

It’s a delightful little book, which talks about electrons, and waves, capacitance and inductance, audion tubes and continuous waves.  It’s not mathematical, but neither is it just handwaving.  It strikes a nice balance, and should be accessible to anyone with basic science knowledge. Check it out.

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Letters of a Radio-Engineer to His Son, by John Mills.

It’s been a while since I posted a link to a Gutenberg Gem. I am subscribed to the Project Gutenberg feed, and scan it from time to time. Today’s Gem is volume 8 from the Encyclopædia Britannica: which includes topics from Destructor to Diameter. Interestingly, it includes an entry for “Dialing”, which is also known as gnomonics: the construction of sun dials. I was thinking about constructing a high accuracy sun dial just the other day. Anyway, lots of good stuff to check out.

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Encyclopædia Britannica, Volume VIII slice III – Destructor to Diameter

Addendum: When I find something in Project Gutenberg which interests me, I somethings will just go search Google Books or the Internet Archive for other books on the same topic. Kind of bombed out on Google Books, but archive.org had the following:

Gnomonique by Bigourdan. In French, but it seems awesome.
Sundials: How to Know, Use and Make Them by Mayhall & Mayhall

Glancing through the recent additions to Project Gutenberg, I encountered this nice little book which details some of the pioneering scientists in the field of astronomy. It even has some nice illustrations which might be useful, such as the one on the right of Newton’s first reflecting telescope.

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Pioneers Of Science, by Oliver Lodge.

Project Gutenberg just released the following:

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Advice to Young Musicians. Musikalische Haus- und Lebens-Regeln, by Robert Schumann
It’s nominally a book of proverbs about learning how to become a musician, but music is like many other fields in which you might gain expertise, so the advice in general is quite appropriate to other disciplines. Some nice quotes.

When you play, never mind who listens to you.

When you have done your musical day’s work and feel tired, do not exert yourself further. It is better to rest than to work without pleasure and vigour.

As to choice in the study of your pieces, ask the advice of more experienced persons than yourself; by so doing, you will save much time.

Relieve the severity of your musical studies by reading poetry. Take many a walk in the fields and woods!

Highly esteem the Old, but take also a warm interest in the New. Be not prejudiced against names unknown to you.

In judging of compositions, discriminate between works of real art and those merely calculated to amuse amateurs. Cherish those of the former description, and do not get angry with the others.

Without enthusiasm nothing great can be effected in art.

and perhaps most importantly…

There is no end of learning.

One might just as well think he was talking about any of my other interests, like telescope making, mathematics, or amateur radio.

A couple of years ago, I blogged about H. E. Dudeney’s Amusements in Mathematics. Today, I noticed that Project Gutenberg had released a copy of The Canterbury Puzzles by Henry Ernest Dudeney – Project Gutenberg. This book has quite a few more nominally mathematical puzzles than its sibling. In particular, it introduces the game Kayles, which makes appearances in most of the books I have on combinatorial game theory such as Conway’s On Numbers and Games.

Addendum: Some information on strategy for Kayles can be found here.

Well, what would Christmas be without a link to that classic of classics: the immortal Dickens’ tale A Christmas Carol. This version is illustrated to boot. Nifty.

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens – Project Gutenberg.

Ever wanted to learn Latin? Well, perhaps it is just me then, but if you ever had the urge, you can check out Latin for Beginners by Benjamin Leonard D’Ooge courtesy of Project Gutenberg.

Perhaps then you could figure out:

Antiquis temporibus, nati tibi similes in rupibus ventosissimis exponebantur ad necem.

[tags]Project Gutenberg,Latin[/tags]

Children’s books are kind of cool, especially for the illustrations. Try checking out The Project Gutenberg eBook of Raggedy Ann Stories, by Johnny Gruelle for a nifty, fun example.

[tags]Raggedy Ann,Children’s Books,Project Gutenberg[/tags]

Today is the Ides of March, and as such, it seems appropriate to place a link to Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare, and to remind everyone that all of Shakespeare’s works are in the public domain and available from Project Gutenberg.

[tags]Julius Caesar,William Shakespeare,Ides of March[/tags]

Addendum: Okay, here’s a slightly more personal story to pad out this brief niglet. Despite being a dyed in the wool science geek, I did my got my B.S. from the University of Oregon. Fine educational institution that they are, they required undergraduates to pursue a somewhat diverse curriculum, including the completion of a number of classes in “arts”, which included literature, theater, and language skills. To pad out this part of my schooling, I decided to take a class in Shakespeare, and since I did reasonably well, I decided to take two more, all from Professor William Rockett. My recollections of him was that he always came into class with a smile, and would open discussion the with the same two questions:

1. “Did you read the play?”
2. “What did you think of it?”

But for reasons which aren’t all that clear to me, twenty-some odd years later, it is our discussion of The Tragedy of Julius Caesar which are embedded in my mind. We were discussing the funeral oration of Mark Antony, you know the one:

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears!
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them,
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious;
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answer’d it.
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest-
For Brutus is an honorable man;
So are they all, all honorable men-
Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me;
But Brutus says he was ambitious,
And Brutus is an honorable man.
He hath brought many captives home to Rome,
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill.
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept;
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious,
And Brutus is an honorable man.
You all did see that on the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse. Was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious,
And sure he is an honorable man.
I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause;
What cause withholds you then to mourn for him?
O judgement, thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
And I must pause till it come back to me.

Antony goes on to incite the crowd against Brutus and the traitors who conspired to murder him through his eloquence. Anyway, Professor Rockett said (from memory, but the general idea and flow is correct) “What did you think of this speech? Did it get you fired up? I was out in my garden, trying to transplant a rhododendren, and I was going over it in my mind again and again. You know rhododendrons have the most enormous rootballs? It took me well over an hour to dig it out, and as I was working, I kept thinking about the speech that so moved the Romans, until finally I managed to get the plant out. I then, ran in to the house and yelled to my wife, ‘My God, the traitors have slain Julius Caesar!’ She thought I was crazy. What about you?”

I took three semesters of Shakespeare from Professor Rockett, read every play, every sonnet. He had great enthusiasm and humor, and I enjoyed his classes immensely. Great stuff.

Addendum2: If you don’t have as great a passion for Shakespeare as I do, but nonetheless find yourself taking a class, try getting a recorded version of the play, and follow along by reading it. We used the Oxford Edition Shakespeare which had lots of footnotes, and I had no trouble following the language when I could both hear it and flit down to the various footnotes to figure out some of the idiomatic speech. Two hours, you can get through any play, and have a much easier time than trying to just read it.

Want some cute animal pictures?  Try checking out this minor gem: Animal Children by Edith Brown Kirkwood from Project Gutenberg.   It’s got lots of really strange pictures that look like conventional animal pictures cut up and then clothing drawn around them.  Strange stuff, but oddly kind of fun too, might be fun for a kid’s craft project, and heck: they are in the public domain.

[tags]Cute Clip Art,Project Gutenberg[/tags]

Well, “gem” is perhaps not the right term. Perhaps I should start a new category: Gutenberg Coal.

I’ve been interested in (and have from time to time posted here about) the seemingly never ending conflict between science and creationism. I found this book to be an interesting glimpse 80 years into the past, to see how people argued against evolution even before the famous Scopes trial.

The Evolution of Man Scientifically Disproved by William A. Williams – Project Gutenberg

It contains gems like this exchange:

The population of the world, based upon the Berlin census reports of 1922, was found to be 1,804,187,000. The human race must double itself 30.75 times to make this number. This result may be approximately ascertained by the following computations:

At the beginning of the first period of doubling there would just be two human beings; the second, 4; the third, 8; the fourth, 16; the tenth, 1024; the twentieth 1,048,576, the thirtieth, 1,073,741,824; and the thirty-first, 2,147,483,648. In other words, if we raise two to the thirtieth power, we have 1,073,741,824; or to the thirty-first power, 2,147,483,648 Therefore, it is evident even to the school boy, that, to have the present population of the globe, the net population must be doubled more than thirty times and less than thirty-one times. By logarithms, we find it to be 30.75 times. After all allowances are made for natural deaths, wars, catastrophes, and losses of all kinds, if the human race would double its numbers 30.75 times, we would have the present population of the globe.

Now, according to the chronology of Hales, based on the Septuagint text, 5077 years have elapsed since the flood, and 5177 years since the ancestors of mankind numbered only two, Noah and his wife. By dividing 5177 by 30.75, we find it requires an average of 168.3 years for the human race to double its numbers, in order to make the present population. This is a reasonable average length of time.

Can you spot the problem? Let’s imagine that he’s right. 5077 years ago, there was only Noah and his wife. It takes them 168.3 years to produce two children, and double there numbers. If we allow for 3000 years to pass, bringing us roughly up to 2000 years ago, around the time of Christ, the world population would have almost 18 doublings, bringing the total world population to about 260,000. Worldwide.

Inappropriate extrapolation is one of the silly errors that creationists use to argue using mathematics. But as they say, creationists use mathematics like a drunk uses a lamp post: for support, rather than illumination.

Read the entire thing, it’s really quite astounding.

It’s been a while since I posted a link to a Gutenberg Gem, so here’s to help make up for lost time. This neat little book includes thirty-something nice watercolors of flowers that can be turned into useful clipart. I mucked around a little bit with the picture of the Siberian Iris, and came up with the decoration to the right. I’m sure you can think of something artsy to do with ‘em. In any case, check ‘em out.

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Botanical Magazine, by William Curtis.
[tags]Project Gutenberg,Clip Art,Flowers[/tags]

A seasonal Gutenberg Gem: A Visit From Saint Nicholas, by Clement C. Moore. Enjoy the classic with illustrations.

Earlier in life, I was quite a wargame fan: I had dozens of games by Avalon Hill, and even experimented a bit with miniature wargaming. I still have a few interesting old rulebooks for games, like Fletcher Pratt’s Naval Wargame. I recall reading back then that H.G. Wells had published a set of rules called Little Wars which I just discovered is available via (you guessed it) Project Gutenberg. Neat!