I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: PHISH-Live Bait Vol 3 (2010).

This selection of free Phish songs is notable because of a couple of items.

1. All of the songs were recorded at the Worcester Centrum in Worcester, MA.  Although the first three songs were recorded in 1993, the fourth song was recorded in 1997 and the final track was recorded in 1991.
2. The first three songs were recorded on New Year’s Eve–technically on New Year’s Day.  The first track actually counts down the seconds until midnight, when the band bursts into Auld Lang Syne
3. Probably the biggest deal of all: the band plays a version of “Runaway Jim” that lasts 58 minutes and 48 seconds.  That’s right, nearly an hour on one song.  I think if I went to see them live and they did that I’d be pissed, but it sounds great on this recording.  “Runaway Jim” is not one of my favorite songs, but this extended jam is really good–they break into several different sections and it doesn’t feel like a long version of this song so much as a bunch of different jams thrown together.  At one point it almost seems like the band thought they began with “Weekapaug Groove,” but they push back against that.  I’m very curious to know what happened after that song was over, but the end of the disc takes on an early recording of “Llama, ” a song I like quite a lot.

This is yet another great addition to the free Live Phish pantheon of music–I mean, an hour version of one song, how cool!

[READ: August 1, 2012] “Volumes of Knowledge”

Encyclopedias date back thousands of years–Pliny the elder tried to write everything he knew in Historia Naturalis and a Chinese emperor created a similar book Emperor’s Mirror in 220 A.D.  But the art and craft of creating books that contain all the world’s knowledge flourished in the 1700s.  Increased wealth and education in the French bourgeois, a flood of information and a decline of interest in religion all led to the desire to learn more.  The printing press helped to disseminate the information.

It was Denis Diderot, a French enlightenment polymath who best explained the concept of the encyclopedia:

the purpose of an encyclopedia is to collect knowledge disseminated around the globe; to set forth its general system to the men with whom we live, and transmit it to those who will come after us, so that the work of preceding centuries will not become useless to the centuries to come; and so that our offspring, becoming better instructed, will at the same time become more virtuous and happy, and that we should not die without having rendered a service to the human race in the future years to come.

But Diderot recognized the limits of a one-author encyclopedia: “I do not believe it is given to a single man to known all that can be known.”   From 1751 to 1772 he and his assistants edited more than 70,000 articles from 140 authors to create his first Encyclopedie.  Of course having many authors had drawbacks–differences in style, length and quality.  But Diderot shied away from nothing and in many locations the book was banned.  Some of the ideas in the book shook the very foundation of accepted ideas.  And many of the authors hoped to change the world.  Diderot himself even hoped to usurp religion with his knowledge: “It is not enough for us to know more than Christians, we must show them we are better.”

And competitors flourished in this time.  By 1750, more than thirty different encyclopedias were printed.  But Diderot also delved into commonplace matters, which is why historians like his encyclopedias so much.  He has images of agriculture. weaving, glass blowing, nail making and much more.  This is especially useful at Colonial Williamsburg because the historians try to recreate history exactly.  However, they have learned to use some caution when examining these documents–for instances, the illustrations used are (obviously) French tools, yet Anglo Americans used different styles of tools.  The techniques were the same, but the tools varied in different ways.  For example, “Colonial Williamsburg made a lathe in the 1950s that was based on Diderot.  We know now it wasn’t an English lathe”

Diderot’s encyclopedia led directly to Encyclopaedia Britannica which first came to the Unites State in 1790 (in pirated form).  Owners of this edition included George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton.  Encyclopaedia Britannica, like Diderot’s book was written by amateurs and experts, but since little was known about the contributors, it’s not always obvious which is which.  The same is true for Wikipedia.  Michael Twomey, a professor at Ithaca basically says Wikipedia is useless: the only way to know if the material is accurate, up-to-date, and valuable is if you are already an expert in the field.  Wikipedia is otherwise worthless.”  But other historians disagree: “Wikipedia is a fairly open-minded and very useful compendium of information.  While some entries are biased, so are some of the entries in paper encyclopedias.”

The interesting thing now is that Diderots’ Encyclopedia is slowly being translated into English thanks to volunteers.  Anyone who wants to volunteer can translate an article.