Books

Books on my Desk

I just finished reading The Ipcress File and now I've picked up The Terror again. I'm spent so much time with this book (a few pages at a time, whenever I have to wait for something, for months) that I feel compelled to finish it. 

We also have The C Programming Language here because I can never remember whether the source or the count is the second parameter to the library function movmem*. So these three books are on my desk, and I thought their physical condition is worth commenting on.

The Terror spent months being hauled around in my bag. It didn't seem to be of robust construction to start with, so it's no surprise that it's falling apart. This copy has a lived a full and useful life. When I have finished it, I will commit it to the great recycler in Toledo.

The Ipcress File is roughly the same thickness as The Terror even though it only holds one third the number of pages. I don't remember how I came by this copy, but it's a nice copy (Franklin Mystery Library) that's been sitting in the bookcase for eons. They (Franklin) inflate their pages to make their books look more impressive. At least they didn't inflate them with clay. I picked up a small atlas one time, 'one page for every country' or some such. It was a normal size book, not oversize like at atlas typically is, and I swear it weighed three pounds. Clay gives the paper a smoother finish which is what you want for detailed images. That's the story I remember anyway.

The C Programming Language is about half the thickness of The Ipcress File but has roughly the same number of pages - 280~. In spite of being a zillion years old and being well used (mostly the dozen or so pages in the back that describe the library functions) it is still mostly holding together. There are a few pages at the very back that will fall out occasionally and will have to be put back. So far, so good, i.e. I don't think I've lost any.

Cropped Screenshot of Google Lens Results

When I pulled up the image (top) on Google Photos, it asked if I wanted to extract the text, and I thought, sure, why not? Let's see what Google Lens can do. The words it found are the gray highlighted** text at the right side of this image. I don't know where it got 'trusted', but it got the SNOWWIS NE by reading the author's name backwards (the blue trapezoid enclosing most of the author's name).

* I asked Google about memove and the first page it returned is from a guy in Russia. That's pretty cool. He got the source and destination reversed, but what do you expect from a place where half their letters are backwards?

Short Faced Bear

Ice Age Short Faced Bear

The Terror by Dan Simmons tells the story of Sir John Franklin's expedition to the Canadian Arctic to find the Northwest Passage.  These guys sailed away and were never heard from again. It's only recently that the wrecks of the ships have been uncovered. Since there were no survivors, we can conclude that the expedition was a disaster. Just how things fell apart is open to speculation, and that's what Dan does in his book. He makes up a horrifying tale of what happened. Horrifying to my sensitive, coddled, modern self, but pretty much run-of-mill stuff for explorers on sailing ships in the 19th Century. 

Anyway, one of the horrors bedeviling this expedition is a giant bear-like creature, a monster. Was there such a creature? Imagine my surprise when this fellow (the short faced bear above) appears. Wikipedia says they died out 11,000 years ago, but did they? The far north was largely unexplored until a couple hundred years ago. There could have been a zillion of them up there, hiding behind ice bergs.

Map Porn

Discovery of the Northwest Passage Map
PBS has the key

It's common knowledge (or at least I hope it is) that men derive more pleasure from seeing women than women derive from seeing men. Or maybe that window of time in her month when a woman becomes interested in men is very narrow, so we seldom see that kind of behavior. Men, as we know, are always interested in women, in the biblical sense. Handwaving Freakoutery has a post explaining why that might be. Best, succinct explanation, I have seen.

Succinct. That reminds of Malcolm Gladwell and his bite-sized chunks of knowledge that are easy to swallow and digest. Which is what I try to be. Partly from my desire to avoid doing useless things (like filling in forms) and partly from my desire to follow the old engineering dictum of "necessary and sufficient". I am not a speedy typer. I write a sentence and then I have to go back and spend time fixing all the typo's. Wowzers, two sentences without a typo, except Google doesn't like 'typer'. Fine, whatever.

Got that established, now we come to what got me started on this. I'm reading The Terror by Dan Simmons and he's talking about other expeditions into the frozen north that came before this fatal voyage. In the 18th and 19th Century Brits were all over navigation and maps, so surely someone has put together a map of the various voyages. And where might I find such a map? I could ask Google, but if there isn't much out there, it''s going to throw up a whole bunch of unrelated shit. and then I remembered reddit/r/MapPorn, which got me to wondering why it's called MapPorn and not Maps R Us, or Crazy Map Land, and then I remembered all the times I've read that 'so and so was staring intently at the map', which reminds me that I do fair bit of that myself, and then I realized we (men) are staring at maps the same way we stare at pictures of attractive women, hence the addition of the 'porn' suffix.

I did find one map on reddit (at the top). It's not as hi-res as I would like, but it's not cluttered with too much information. Google did turn up a couple of good links this morning:

• What We Learned In The Search For Sir John Franklin on Arctic Kingdom. A good summary of this expedition and its aftermath.
• 19th-century attempts at the passage on Britannica
• Arctic Exploration on The Canadian Encyclopedia

I suspect the quality of your results depends at least partially on the wording of your search phrase.

P.S. Asking Google for a copy of the map posted at the top, Google identified it as 'world map of nuclear power'. Google doesn't know everything.

HBC York Factory

York Factory Tour – Video

I'm reading The Terror by Dan Simmons. About halfway through, the alcoholic Captain Crozier runs out of whiskey and suffers a period of agonizing withdrawal accompanied by some feverish dreams. Some of these dreams have the quality of a clear vision of the near future wherein his wife is berating the Lords of the British Admiralty to organize a search and rescue party to locate the two ships of Captain Crozier's expedition. 

In his imagination he sees they could send a rescue expedition up the MacKenzie River. That would be 'up' as in North as the MacKenzie flows north to the arctic ocean. In the summer time I imagine the river would be water as opposed to ice, so the relief party would be able to 'cruise' down the river to the arctic ocean. However they would still be a thousand miles west of where Captain Crozier's ships are currently frozen in.

The leftmost placemark is the mouth of the MacKenzie River
The center placemark is King William Island where the ships are locked in ice
The lower right placemark is the HBC York Factory

The Terror is a novel, albeit based on historical events, but was the MacKenzie River even a possibility? I do a little digging and I find 

Economic History Theme Study
STEAMBOATS ON THE RIVERS
AND LAKES OF MANITOBA
1859-96 (135 page PDF. I've only read the first few pages.)

and one of the first things that is mentioned is the HBC York Factory. HBC is the Hudson's Bay Company. You knew that, right? I didn't. I really hate it when writers assume everyone knows what their secret acronym stands for. Okay, that's enough whining. Back to our main thread.

York Factory was the HBC trading post on the shore of Hudson Bay. It's still standing. Ron Beck has a good summary of the place. Here's an excerpt:

This York Factory site, was, for over 200 years, the centerpiece, and headquarters in fact, of the most expansive, ambitious and successful business enterprise of its time. Maybe ever. Together with the East India Company of the Dutch (spices, rubber and coffee), the Hudson's Bay Company, "HBC," of the British (furs) dominated 18th and 19th century global commerce. The value of the furs passing through this remote spot, in 2018 US$ has been estimated to be well over $1billion dollars per year. The appetite of European (and US) well-to-do consumers for fur hats and coats in fact drove the opening up of the entire northern parts (Canada and northwestern USA) of North America. The settlements that fur trading created still are in place and the canoe routes still exist today.

I remember hearing about HBC when I was a kid in school. Never really understood just how big and powerful they were until today. Still hasn't sunk in.