Note: This is almost impossible to get exactly accurate and should be viewed as hypothetical. Wodehouse himself seemed to pay little attention to chronology and consistency of cultural references, so the best I can do is guess. The novels in particular are difficult to arrange, since they are supposed to take place in such a short time period, yet seem to require more time if they are to occur as described.
According to this hypothetical timeline, Bertie Wooster was born around 1901. If so, he would have been seventeen when World War I ended and so could not have participated. If we suppose Jeeves to be ten to twenty years older, he would have been born around 1881-1891, making him between twenty-three and thirty-three when WWI began and ensuring that he would definitely have “dabbled in it to a certain extent,” as he tells Lord Rowcester in Ring for Jeeves.
“Jeeves Takes Charge” – Summer 1925 (Bertie is twenty-four, and the narration is taking place six years in the future, presumably 1931.)
“Extricating Young Gussie” – September 1925 (This story isn’t usually included in the series, but its events are referred to in later stories and so it’s clearly part of the timeline.)
“The Artistic Career of Corky”- Autumn 1925-sometime in 1926 (Necessarily takes place over a long period of time, possibly the entire New York trip.)
“Jeeves and the Hard-boiled Egg” – Autumn 1925 (A few months into the NY stay.)
“Jeeves and the Chump Cyril” – 1925 or 1926
“Jeeves and the Unbidden Guest” – Autumn 1926 (Set during Coolidge’s presidency (1923-1929), about a year into the stay in NY, “about the time of the year when New York is at its best.”)
“The Aunt and the Sluggard” – Spring 1927
“Jeeves in the Springtime” – April/May 1927
“Scoring off Jeeves” – Summer 1927
“Sir Roderick Comes to Lunch” – Summer 1927
“Aunt Agatha Takes the Count” – Summer 1927
“Comrade Bingo” – Late July or early August 1927 (Around the time of the Goodwood Cup.)
“The Great Sermon Handicap” – August 1927
“The Purity of the Turf” – August or September 1927 (Three weeks into the stay at Twing.)
“Bertie Changes His Mind” –
“The Metropolitan Touch” – November-December 1927 (A Friday, December 23 is mentioned, making the only possible years in the right range 1921, 1927, or 1932. In light of information in later stories, 1927 seemed the most plausible option.)
“The Delayed Exit of Claude and Eustace” – Probably early in 1928 (Set during the time of an unspecified Oxford term. Bertie’s age is given as around twenty-five or –six.)
“Bingo and the Little Woman” – Between October 1927 and February 1928 (Invitation received to go shooting in Norfolk indicates that it’s sometime during the hunting season.)
“Without the Option” – March or April 1928 (Boat Race Night is usually the last weekend in March or the first weekend in April.)
“Clustering Round Young Bingo” – Sometime in 1928
“Jeeves and the Impending Doom” – Spring[?] 1928
“The Inferiority Complex of Old Sippy” – Spring[?] 1928 (Takes place sometime before June 1.)
[“The Rummy Affair of Old Biffy” – The mention of the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley would set it around April-October 1924 or 1925. However, this does not fit the timeline as I’ve guessed at it, because it’s clearly set after Bertie’s brief engagement to Honoria Glossop. Adjusting the timeline to fit around this date would cause other problems, so I’ll call this an anomaly.]
“Fixing It for Freddie” – Summer[?] 1928
“Jeeves and the Yule-tide Spirit” – December 1928
“Jeeves and the Song of Songs” – Sometime in 1929
“Episode of the Dog McIntosh” – Spring[?] 1929
“The Spot of Art” – Summer[?] 1929
“Jeeves and the Kid Clementina” – Summer[?] 1929
“The Love that Purifies” – August 1929
“Jeeves and the Old School Chum” – Autumn 1929
“Indian Summer of an Uncle” – Sometime in 1929
“The Ordeal of Young Tuppy” – November 1929
“Jeeves Makes an Omelette” – Winter 1929 or 1930
Thank You, Jeeves – July 1930
Right Ho, Jeeves – July 29-31, 1931 (Cannot take place the same year as Thank You, Jeeves, because TYJ begins around July 15 after a three-month trip to America, while RHJ opens around July 25 after a trip to Cannes that started at the beginning of June.)
The Code of the Woosters – Autumn 1931
“Jeeves and the Greasy Bird” – December 1931 (It’s said to be more than a year after Sir Roderick’s engagement in Thank You, Jeeves, and Bertie’s awareness of the Junior Ganymede Club suggests that it’s after The Code of the Woosters.)
The Mating Season – April 1932 (The events of Right Ho, Jeeves occurred the previous summer, while the mention of Boat Race Night and Bertie’s cousin Thomas returning to school—presumably for the summer term—suggest an early April date.)
Joy in the Morning – Summer 1932
Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit – July 1932 (Aunt Dahlia is said to have been running Milady’s Boudoir, first mentioned in “Clustering Round Young Bingo,” for three years.)
How Right You Are, Jeeves – Summer 1933 (Jeeves goes on holiday, not the same one mentioned in Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit. Bertie’s moustache from the previous book is mentioned as having occurred a year ago. Aunt Dahlia is said to have run her journal for four years. The one thing I can’t account for is the claim that the events of Right Ho, Jeeves occurred the previous summer, so for purposes of expediency I will consider it an error.)
Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves – Fall[?] 1933
Jeeves and the Tie That Binds – Fall[?] 1933 (Tuppy and Angela have been engaged for two years.)
Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen – Spring or summer 1934
Ring for Jeeves – June, sometime between 1946-1953 (Set explicitly post-World War II, with an emphasis on societal changes in the UK. Television is mentioned.)
“It’s simple, really. If a person is easy to draw, he’ll do well [in politics]. Because the likelihood is he’ll have other interesting characteristics too, which will make him appealing to journalists, thus raising the party’s profile in the media. And people watching are more likely to remember him, which is a bonus!
A quick cartoon-test shows that Nick Clegg, probably the favourite in the party at the moment, will lead the party into eternal oblivion, if elected. He is Mr. Some Bloke embodified – despite the fact that he can speak several languages.
I did a couple of quick sketches, and worringly for him, the best caricature came after I in frustration drew a lifeless mask.
People will see Nick Clegg on TV and wonder whether he’s that guy from marketing whose name they can’t recall – or someone they’ve met at All Bar One.
Chris Huhne on the other hand, is better. Not great, but better. He’s got a prominent crazy eye – a feature that he famously shares with both Maggie and Tony. His mouth is similar to that of a hamster…or a mouse, and remember, those ears will keep growing.
Between Clegg and Huhne, there really is no contest.”
In full here: http://poldraw.wordpress.com/2007/10/15/lib-dems-insist-on-having-an-election/
I have a new post up on my blog, continuing the Fictional History of Numbers series. In part 1 we started with the natural numbers and built up the algebraics, which let us solve equations. In part 2 we started asking geometric questions, and constructed the real numbers.
But the real numbers are weird and hard to define. In part 3 we see one way they're extremely strange, and then talk about why we want them anyway. In the end, we shouldn't worry about the definition of the reals; we should worry about what they allow us to do. And it turns out they're exactly what we need to make calculus function as it should.
It’s impossible to give directions in Boston. Nothing makes sense. There are inexplicable one way streets, there are streets that change their names as you move from one area to another. There’s a road in my area where the gps literally tells you to take TWO full right turns to “stay on” the same road which is at a right angle to the original. There’s like four different Massachusetts Avenues. Sometimes you have to be in the left lane to turn right. The gps can’t even get directions to my workplace correct; it tells me to take a left on a road where lefts are not allowed, and the only way to not have to go across the river and take 15 minutes to turn around is to remember this shit one block early and make the left THERE. Recently, they’ve restricted 1 of 2 lanes on each side of major thoroughfares to only allow bikes and buses, and the government officials seemed to genuinely believe that would somehow EASE traffic. Oh and don't try to drive on Memorial Drive on Sundays; they close it for pedestrians. Just because. And when you DO drive on Memorial, there's one exit that will make your gps lose its mind and start chanting random sequences of numbers for four minutes straight. You can't take a Uhaul on Storrow Drive because the bridges that go over it are too short, and every year some doofus college student ignores this rule and proceeds to "get Storrowed" when they shave off the top of the truck on the overpass and get stuck. I-93 turns into I-95 and makes a big circle around the city, so a lot of the time you'll be on I-95 north but driving east or west.
It’s not limited to driving either. The Arlington train station is not in Arlington, it’s in the middle of downtown. Harvard Square is not a square, it’s more like a pentagon. There are four different green line train routes, and they’re labeled B for Boston College, C for Cleveland Circle, D for… Riverside, and E for… Heath Street. The Silver line is listed on the train map but is entirely run on buses which have to be connected and disconnected from power lines every time you go through the route. The Blue line goes to (and I’m not joking) Wonderland. The two red lines are labeled for their southern points: Braintree line goes to Braintree, and the Ashmont line goes to… Mattapan. To be fair, the train itself stops in Ashmont and you continue to Mattapan on a trolley, but that doesn't make it better. South Station and North Station are 1 mile apart and the easiest way to get from one to the other is just to walk it because otherwise you have to travel through 4 or 5 train stops on two different lines. But make sure you memorize the route because there's a good chance your gps will lose signal in the Financial district because it can't get through the buildings. In Boston Commons there are two train stops within line of sight of each other, on the same street, and one of them screams. To get to the trains at Porter Square, you have to ride down escalators 105 feet below street level, or you could just take the 3 flights of stairs totaling 199 steps (presumably because the engineers had something against nice even numbers). The North End is south of East Boston. Castle Island is part of the mainland.
No matter where you're going or how you're getting there, it takes 45 minutes (no wrong turns) or an hour and a half (one wrong turn). It doesn't matter if you're going one stop on a train; it will take 45 minutes. If it's summer, there's a better than 50% chance you'll be in the train car that lost it's AC; if it's winter, you're guaranteed to be in the car where the heat has it up to 80 degrees and the inside of your winter coat will be a sauna. Check the Red Sox schedule before you go south of the river, or you'll be trapped in the waves of baseball fans flooding the streets and days will go by before you're found again. And just... don't go outside on September 1.
If you're thinking that this sounds eldritch as shit, you're right. The entire city is an arcane lock keeping the ghoulies and ghosties from haunting the rest of the nation. We charge it with every "fuck" we utter while we travel our labyrinthine paths and drink our Dunks. You're welcome.
I have a new post up on my blog, continuing the Fictional History of Numbers series. In part 1 we built on the natural numbers using algebraic operations, and got the algebraic numbers. In part 2 and part 3 we used geometric and analytic arguments to build up the real numbers.
These two sets of numbers overlap, but aren't the same; there are real numbers that aren't algebraic (as we saw in part 3) but also algebraic numbers that aren't real. So what happens if we combine the two? We get the complex numbers, which are complete and also algebraically closed. But proving this is a little tricky, and touches on the deep strangeness of complex analysis.
And in the process of adding algebraic closure to the real numbers, we lose the ability to order them, which has its own consequences.
A new post up on my blog! Last time we talked about the algebraic numbers, and how just wanting to solve simple equations can create a ton of different numbers. But they don’t get us everything.
So this time we start off with the idea of measurement, and wind up inventing the real numbers. The real numbers are weird. Real weird. But they show up when we start asking questions about size or measurement. And in part 3, we’ll see they’re exactly the right way to do calculus.
I learned today that the International Baccalaureate organization (the ones who run the IB tests) consider the topics lists for their courses to be copyrighted and confidential. They won't share them without a signed release.
I'm genuinely offended by this. I don't know how the fuck you're supposed to evaluate or understand the program without knowing what topics it covers! (They'll share the topics list with me, specifically, in the course of evaluating the test for my university; but I have to sign a release, and have to promise not to share them with colleagues, because they want my colleagues to sign the same release.)
And there's, like, no point to this. It's not a major secret what the topics a calculus course should cover are. (And sure, they do some stats and matrices or something too, and that's all the added info.) I think you can't even legally "copyright" the contents of these lists, because it's factual information and that's not copyrightable.
I'm really seriously tempted to issue an official recommendation to my university to stop giving any credit for IB tests until this policy gets reversed. If they won't freely share information on the program and the test, we'll have to assume that it's valueless and shouldn't earn credit.
(My only hesitation to that is it's probably a quixotic quest that would just hassle some innocent IB students. But if I can get a bunch of other departments to sign on I'll absolutely do it; IB can't sustain that policy if universities stop rolling over for it.)
In 2011 a woman named Maureen Seaburg wrote a book about synesthesia called Tasting the Universe and there's a whole chapter about Billy Joel that he did a fairly extensive interview for and I have literally found no other evidence of him discussing synesthesia before or since.
Full chapter under the cut:
I got the Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage for free from Thriftbooks (after much fussing about getting the book rewards points spent for the best value) and it's like YES, SOMEONE WHO LIKES FOOTNOTING THEIR COMICS AS MUCH AS ME.
Also it's an amazing set of 4 panels
Why do we use the symbol for partial derivatives as the symbol for boundaries of manifolds?
Interchange station for a variety of parallel lines
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