Tuesday, May 26, 2020

Close Reading

Skip Reading Close Reading

Skip Reading, I've learned, is actually what scholars do with one anothers academic papers.  No one ever really close reads those things.  Skip Reading can be done if one has some command of the subject.  For example, I imagine when Einstein worked in the patent office, he could just glance at a patent application and know if it was a new thing, and a workable thing. 

I skip read poems by the ton, or did.  In the library, I'd find a step stool to sit on, and just go through book after book, magazine after magazine.  Poets churn out poems by the millions everyday.  And publishers follow suit.  And it's all too much, sadly.  Everyone finds themselves skip reading.  Which fosters skip writers, but that's another thing...

But making a patent application, making an invention, has to work, bear up under close scrutiny, close reading.  One can't worry about it being dismissed at a glance, as not being original, as not being workable.  If one thinks it works, it works, and one proceeds until persuaded otherwise.

Close Reading, I've learned, is a term Students of Philosophy use for a category.  Brbk....search/philosophy/close reading

quote

Watch "Philosophy 101 - Close Reading - Joel B. Hunter" on YouTube
https://youtu.be/vskv-4BuHMI

unquote

Actually what I had in mind is a theory of philosophy that the proponents present in such a fashion that is HAS to be close read.  Puzzling by design.  Maybe I made that up.  Brbk...search/figuritive/philosophy/close read...and, that search didn't work, and I didn't bookmark, dogear, note, what I just recently read about these philosophers with the presentation of their philosophy requiring close reading!  No matter, I've brought my thoughts along to James Joyce and his obsessive note taking.  Brbk...search/James Joyce/note taking...

And that search didn't turn up what I'd recently read, that he always had at hand note paper, and wrote notes in tiny handwriting he read back with a magnifying glass, as he was near blind.

Glosses, annotations, notes.  I go on and on about captions.  Motifs have captions, the playground of antiquarians, archaeologists.  History presents a set of motifs, and scholars caption them.  Not just scholars, everyone.  And not just History, Nature too.  Puzzling by design!

Anyway, note taking, annotation, captioning, glossing, have their extreme, and I happened on a good example, a web site that hot links just about every word of  James Joyce's Finnegans Wake.  Words highlighted in bold open windows about that word, or passage-a bit like Joyce looking at one his notes with a magnifying glass!

Joyce, I suspect, was a bit off, in a genius way verging on unintlligible madness.  One day, while being an activity assistant for alz patients, a hopeless task, as they have the skills of like one year olds, I presented a blank paper and crayon to a fellow who had once been a lawyer, and he wrote what was like a parody of what was once his craft-notes, notes that made no sense at all, like one of those unique languages sometimes savants make up.  I still have the page somewhere, a souviner.  Oh, I'm no better off, blogged many pages, a gloss on one song lyric...

"I will find a souvenir
Just to say the world was here."

-Nena, 99 Red Balloons

:)

DavidDavid

Monday, May 23, 2011

Cells

update..what's today, May 30, 2014?...it was on the web today that research with laser light has shown that it can regenerate dentine growth in teeth...the stem cells  in the tooth are illuminated with just enough laser light, and they grow!...doubt these experiments will proceed to success in the dental office anytime soon, soon being what my old teeth need!, but this is very cool!!!

(this bit moved here from Fauna Flora)
A Thought Hobby: I have in my noggin a collection of Thought Hobbies...an old one is about Optical Bio Physics, which I forget just how I got started on, but somewhere I saw an illustration of a cell which had like little Antennae Dishes, and the notion was that cells tele communicate....of late, I've begun to wonder if they even have a kinda media, weblike!...or to borrow from Starwars, where one community of cells has a name I cant recall (see quote below), Forcelike!....anyway, there are discussions here and there on the web of such musings. and I like this quote very much, as it is just the kind detective like reasoning that may actually lead somewhere...

quote
It is well known that retinal
photoreceptors are capable of meeting criterion 3 (receiving light) and 4 (processing light into information); it is proposed that retinal photoreception represents a functional specialization for reception of light in an evolutionary sense in the same way that macroscopicbioluminescence is a functional specialization for light emission: both specializations must be built upon more rudimentary capabilities of relatively primitive cells.
ENDOGENOUS LIGHT NEXUS THEORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS
http://light.simanonok.com/

unquote

The sense of this is that our eyes see, and fireflies can emit light (bio luminescence), this at our scale, which suggests, William Blake would follow this!, that cells can do this cell to cell on their micro scale....that cells are 'primitive', and, 'rudimentary' is kind of iffy.....along with 'must be built'...the web is more than an electrical nuts and bolts grid, it is the information being received and transmitted--our emotions....just so our bodies composed of cells, which we regard as monoliths, are suggested by all this to be realms within realms!

quote
Midi-chlorians are amicroorganism first mentioned inThe Phantom Menace. They are microscopic life-forms that reside within the cells of all living things and communicate with the Force.[6] They are symbionts with all other living things and without them life could not exist. The Jedihave learned how to listen to and coordinate the midi-chlorians. While every living being thus has a connection to the Force, one must have a high enough concentration of midi-chlorians in one's cells in order to be a Jedi or a Sith.[7][8]
Creator George Lucas says that the midi-chlorians are based on theendosymbiotic theory.[9]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_(Star_Wars)
unquote



Thursday, September 4, 2008

Palustrine Wetlands

quote

The park contains three major types of wetland: Riverine, Lacustrine, and Palustrine

http://www.nps.gov/archive/yose/nature/veg_wetlands.htm

unquote

quote

In the middle of the 19th century, Yosemite Valley encompassed vast palustrine emergent wetlands that extended in places from valley wall to valley wall.

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/650800/Final-YOSEMITE-VALLEY-PLAN-Supplemental-Environmental-Impact-Statement

unquote

Doing searches that uses words from the Vocabulary...the jargon the plan makers use...brings up stuff...but it's a slog to read through it!....and it's all a bit like looking at the Valley from Glacier Point...I see little in it of on the ground walkabouts...for instance it touts it's satellite maps!...I'd rather John Muir's sketches...many of which I found the other night!...I'll post up about that!

DavidDavid

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Water Level Boulder Mallards




This post belongs over in Fauna and Flora (what seems to happen is the last blog I post to goes to the top of the list...Fauna and Flora is usually at top..I think...because of active posting!..but last nite 'Tree in the Door' was top...and I didn't catch this and posted to wrong blog!!)...but I might use the pics and clip here...as there's a water level boulder...actually a kinda rock shelf...in the Yangtze River in China...and then there's the Old Egyptian water gauge carved into stone on the Nile...now that I think of it...oh!...if it wasn't so late I'd work this up!!...for sometime...

Plan Maps


The Creek is way over on the left edge...those familiar with the Valley will recognize nearly everything...a pretty good map...and the text at the site uses the vocabulary of those...who use that vocabulary!...see for oneself with the link!
I'm still mulling over Vacant Lots...because things haven't been posted to Tree in the Door for awhile...doesn't mean things haven't been thought!...delays happen, I'd say!!
DavidDavid
Tree in the Door

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

The Moraine

At the West end of the Valley is the Glacial Moraine...just about where Bridal Veil Falls is...at one time...well.... before it was blown up...the Moraine blocked the Merced enough that it caused water to fill the Meadows...making much of the Valley a kinda swamp...at Spring High Water...I imagine most of it!...and I was thinking on the value of Wetlands today over in Two Top Pine Meadow...the Ponds over there are beginning to recede...but this evening I saw more and different birds in one place thant I have anywhere in the Valley....lots of still water...lots of mud...and grasses and bugs...and if not for the Moraine's sorta dam being gone...there would be a lot more of this!...dont know but something like this is going on at Mirror Lake....

now!...here's a curio!...Galen Clark writes up a lament about the Valley in 1907...

quote

It may be interesting to the Public to know the cause of there being in recent years so much more activity in the river currents cutting away the river banks than during the earlier known history of Yosemite. When the El Capitan Iron Bridge was built in 1879 it was located across the narrow channel of the river between the two points of what remains of an old glacial terminal moraine. The river channel at this place was filled with large boulders which greatly obstructed the free outflow of the flood waters in the spring, causing extensive overflows of the low meadowland above, greatly interfering with travel, especially to Yosemite Falls and Mirror Lake. In order to remedy this matter the large boulders in the river channel at the Bridge were blasted and the fragments leveled down so as to give a free outflow of the flood waters. This increased the force of the river currents which now commenced its greater eroding work on the river banks and as the winding turns become more abrupt the destructive force annually increases. Some thorough system of protection should be promptly used to save the river banks from further damage.

http://www.yosemite.ca.us/library/early_days_in_yosemite/

unquote

and here...the culprit that dynamited the Moraine!...

quote

The road crosses the El Capitan recessional moraine. This Tioga till impounded the waters of the latest Lake Yosemite (Matthes, 1930). Early visitors to Yosemite Valley were treated to mosquito-ridden swamps because the recessional moraines impeded the flow of the Merced River. In 1879, Galen Clark had a deeper channel blasted through the moraine (Schaffer, 1997). The resulting lower water table may have allowed conifers to encroach the meadows at the lower part of the valley, and the river has entrenched several feet into the valley floor. The action did ease the mosquito problem, though.

http://virtual.yosemite.cc.ca.us/ghayes/roadside.htm

unquote

In the lament, Clark too mentions the encroachment of the conifers...basically the Valley floor was allowed to dry out...it doesn't seem likely in any conceivable scenario that it can be returned to being a wetland....

And this...

Two Top Pine meadow was control burned last Fall...and the Ponds there have black mud shorelines...in fact...the whole Meadow is kinda sticky slushy...over in Cook's there's no open black mud...the Hummocks are thriving...the Ponds sorta being taken over by the Grasses... Two Top may be the only meadow that is even remotely like what it was before the Tourists(no, I've learned Two Top was once plowed and pasture, while, from an overheard conversation, Cook's has never been plowed, which suggests it looks like a preTouirst Meadow...oh, but this something to determine! 8/3/10)...as I imagine the Indians in their Fall control burns kept the Meadows in an optimal wetland condition for the critters.

The Merced of course is now rip rapped in many places which prevented further wild erosion...the Creek from Wee Bridge to Lower Falls...in spite of protests that the paths and walk bridges would damage its hydrology...has pretty wild erosion...in fact I wonder if in twenty years or less it will begin to erode right up to the Bridge...right now it bends just at the last minute...from Wee Bridge to the Merced the Creek is rip rapped and banked...with some erosion...

What Clark recalls is the 'oxbows'...when the Creek and Merced were wild...they made loops through the Valley...the Floor being that flat...and the Moraine just enough of a dam to back things up all the way to Mirror Lake. The old loops are still visible in the Meadows...what I've been calling Ponds.

DavidDavid

Thursday, May 22, 2008

Infinitesimals

quote



Infinitesimals have been used to express the idea of objects so small that there is no way to see them or to measure them. For everyday life, an infinitesimal object is an object which is smaller than any possible measure. When used as an adjective in the vernacular, "infinitesimal" means extremely small, but not necessarily "infinitely small".



unquote



from wikipedia



well...on PBS there was a show with a Naturalist standing beside a lake in Central Park...making the lament...that if he had another life to live he'd be a Naturalist again...but would concentrate on micro organisms...one should be careful what one one wishes for...if the transmigration of souls has merit...one might come back as a micro organism!...brb...well...I went on a long search trying to find the bit in Ulysses by James Joyce about metampsychosis...reincarnation...and found this!...



How Did Buddhism Influence James Joyce and Kenji Miyazawa?



http://p-www.iwate-pu.ac.jp/~acro-ito/Joycean_Essays/J&KM_Buddha.html



and it pinpoints the take I was looking for...



quote



In the 4th episode Calypso, Bloom answers for Molly's question about metempsychosis. Bloom explains 1) Reincarnation and 2) metempsychosis:
1. Some people believe, he said, that we go on living in another body after death, that we lived before. They call it reincar- nation. That we all lived before on the earth thousands of years ago or some other planet. They say we have forgotten it. Some say they remember their past lives. (U 4.362-65)2. Metempsychosis, he said, is what the ancient Greeks called it. They used to believe you could be changed into an animal or a tree, for instance.What they called nymphs, for example. (U 4.375-77)



unquote



I gave my Kenji book of tales to a good friend a long time ago...and I spent a lot of money for it!...but was so taken with the tales that I had to have it...this was like one of the first expensive hardback books I ever bought just to read...thinking of text books and such...bought lots of those!...brb....well..it was called Winds from Afar...and can be found for bargan prices now!...



But this fellow standing by the Lake in Central Park...brb...he started up something that's on the web now called EOL...Encyclopedia of Life...



quote



Become a curator for a species page. Volunteer to be the curator (authenticator) for one or more of the minimal species pages. To do so, click here and send us your name, institutional affiliation, and the name(s) of the page(s) you would like to curate.



http://www.eol.org/



unquote



That's almost word for word an idea I posted to GEnie twenty some years ago...what I had in mind was everyone to adopt their favorite critter..species...and sort of sponser it....it was an idea to confront the fact that most people dont know what specie are endangered because they simply never heard of them!...and I envisioned everyone with their own web page...well...it would be a blog now...



and now I can explain something!....I wanted to chose a dolphin species...and when I began studying out the USS Panay...I came on the story of the Yangtze Baiji Dolphin...and adopted them...along with the Panay of course...the Yangtze White Dolphins are gone now...sigh..

“He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars" James Joyce

I snagged that from a myspace google page bit...the page opened...played loud music...and wouldn't shut off!...dont know where Joyce said it...

And Fergusons on again..keeping me awake!..or asleep...maybe I'm a butterfly!

Here's wiki's bio of E.O.Wilson..the fellow by the lake...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._O._Wilson

and EOL just started up in Feb. 2008...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopedia_of_Life

DavidDavid