genius, or chance?

Skeptics of EMH argue that there exists a small number of investors who have outperformed the market over long periods of time, in a way which is difficult to attribute to luck, including Peter Lynch, Warren Buffett, George Soros, and Bill Miller. [...] Adherents to a stronger form of the EMH argue that the hypothesis does not preclude - indeed it predicts - the existence of unusually successful investors or funds occurring through chance.

—Wikipedia page for Efficient-market hypothesis.

During the “Manhattan project” (the making of nuclear bomb), Fermi asked Gen. Groves, the head of the project, what is the definition of a “great” general [1]. Groves replied that any general who had won five battles in a row might safely be called great. Fermi then asked how many generals are great. Groves said about three out of every hundred. Fermi conjectured that considering that opposing forces for most battles are roughly equal in strength, the chance of winning one battle is 1⁄2 and the chance of winning five battles in a row is 1/2^5 = 1/32 . “So you are right General, about three out of every hundred. Mathematical probability, not genius.” The existence of military genius was also questioned on basic philosophical grounds by Tolstoy [2].

—This paper on arXiv.

Almanzor en Galicia

Luego, el golpe de gracia en 997, Santiago de Compostela. El relato que de esta incursión hace Ibn Idhari, sobre otro texto del gran Ibn Hayyan, que ahora se puede leer con facilidad en el trabajo de Martínez Díez, resulta un óptimo documento para apreciar la mentalidad de aquella gente islámica, su extrañeza al adentrarse por primera vez en la tierra desconocida de Galicia, la lucha contra las selvas y los ríos, una naturaleza por completo extraña que hace a los guías perderse una y otra vez, y fuerza a los ingenieros a intervenr con el hierro abriendo caminos. Por un instante, el lector se sorprende pensando en los primeros viajeros en medio de las selvas de América.

—José Luis Villacañas Berlanga: La formación de los Reinos Hispánicos.

frequented routes

Varhely is conspicuous for its dirt even among Wallachian villages, yet once it was a royal town. It is built on the site of the famous Sarmisegethusa, the capital of ancient Dacia. In Trajan's second expedition against Decebalus, King of the Dacians, he came from Orsova on the Danube by the same route that forms the highroad of this day--the same I had traversed in my way hither. It is curious to reflect how nation succeeding nation tread in each other's footsteps, through the self-same valley, beneath the shadow of the old hills. Here they have trudged, old Dacian gold-seekers, returning from the daily labours of washing the auriferous sands of the mountain streams; here, too, have tramped victorious Roman soldiers--Avars, Tartars, Turks, and other intruders. A long and motley cavalcade has history marshalled along this route for two thousand years and more!

—Andrew F. Crosse: Round About the Carpathians.

Valleys, passes, and gorges which have served many times throughout history as routes of invasion hold a special fascination. Like the Khyber Pass:

George Molesworth, a member of the British force of 1919, summarised: "Every stone in the Khyber has been soaked in blood."

I would like to know the context of that quote. Was Molesworth just making an hyperbole about the particular war in which he participated, or was he actually referring to all the blood spilled there over the centuries?

In the latter sense, the quote conveys a certain sense of world-weariness, of the oppressive weight of an extended past, that wouldn't be out of place in a piece of Dying Earth fiction.

ways of reading

Devoted to the adquisition of knowledge, he cultivated retirement as a means of facilitating the attainment of his object. His thirst for learning was so intense, that it held him under absolute sway, and he found it necessary at a later period to offer a systematic resistance to its exclusive demands. [...] In taking up a work, he first looked at the table of contents, and when it suggested an idea or fact which seemed to open before him a new path, he read that part of the volume which developed this idea or fact; the rest was overlooked. In this way, he accumulated a rich store of varied erudition.

(from the "Notice of the Author" in Jaime Balme's European civilization : Protestantism and Catholicity compared in their effects on the civilization of Europe [1844])

That kind of impatient, voracious scanning for relevant information while disregarding everything else in the text sounds surprisingly modern. I bet Balmes would have a ball browsing Wikipedia.

Here's an image of the guy:

He looks like a nerd. A Nerd of God, if you will. Drop those clerical garments, give him a t-shirt featuring some hilarious internet catchphrase, and he could pass a a hacker, a proponent of open source, or something of the sort.

fossil thoughts

Blogging is a geological process. Every post you make is like a little bit of sediment deposited by the stream of your thoughts. These sediments accumulate over the months and years; when you browse the archives, you are in fact inspecting ancient strata of your own mind.

In the archives, you may find the fossils of old opinions no longer extant in your mental ecosystem, and wonder at how such misshapen, ungainly mental constructs ever managed to thrive inside your skull.

musical occasions, merry and otherwise

A concert was going on, and I for the first time heard a gipsy band. Music is an instinct with these Hungarian gipsies. They play by ear, and with a marvellous precision, not surpassed by musicians who have been subject to the most careful training. Their principal instruments are the violin, the violoncello, and a sort of zither. The airs they play are most frequently compositions of their own, and are in character quite peculiar, though favourite pieces from Wagner and other composers are also given by them with great effect. I heard on this occasion one of the gipsy airs which made an indelible impression on my mind; it seemed to me the thrilling utterance of a people's history. There was the low wail of sorrow, of troubled passionate grief, stirring the heart to restlessness, then the sense of turmoil and defeat; but upon this breaks suddenly a wild burst of exultation, of rapturous joy--a triumph achieved, which hurries you along with it in resistless sympathy. The excitable Hungarians can literally become intoxicated with this music--and no wonder. You cannot reason upon it, or explain it, but its strains compel you to sensations of despair and joy, of exultation and excitement, as though under the influence of some potent charm.

—Andrew F. Crosse: Round About the Carpathians.

Reminds of a passage from Jack Vance's Trullion which describes a grisly and ritualistic public execution, with emphasis on the accompanying music provided by the gipsy-like Trevanyi:

Oh, the prutanshyr's a wicked place! And to hear the music! Sweet as flowers, strange and hoarse! It strikes through you as if your own nerves were being plucked for tones... Ah well, at any rate, a great pot of boiling oil was prepared, and a traveling-crane stood by. The music began; eight Trevanyi and all their horns and fiddles. How can such stern folk make such sweet music? It chills the bones and churns the bowels and puts the taste of blood in your mouth! Chief Constable Filidice was there, but First Agent Gerence was the executioner. One by one the starmenters were grappled by hooks, then lifted and dipped into the oil, then hung up on a great high frame; and I don't know which was more awful: the howls or the beautiful sad music. The people fell down on their knees; some fell into fits and cried out, for terror or joy I can't tell you; I don't know what to make of it...After about two hours all were dead."

—Jack Vance: Trullion.

Je veux apprendre le français (2)

In my last post, maybe I was too hash when I wrote "singularly bewildering and unproductive experience". Even without knowing what the words mean, the book has many things to recommend it. It produces agreeable sounds when read aloud, as I have already mentioned. The letters are all well arranged on the page, printed in an elegant and easy to read font. Paragraph organization is fine; not too short, not too long, and yet with some variety in size to spice things up.

I like the proper nouns I'm encountering, they have personality. It's a bit problematic to differentiate between places and persons, though. Maybe I'm getting the mountain and Mohammad mixed up, so to speak. That notwithstanding, I find myself getting attached to those characters. When their names do not recur for long stretches of prose, I worry that something bad has happened to them in the plot. Maybe they are even dead! My worst fear is that they are indeed dead, but their names keep reappearing like ghosts because other characters are remembering them. This is unlikely, however: introspective passages of that kind do not abound in science fiction.

Je veux apprendre le français

I'm currently reading Proust's In Search of Lost Time in the original French, and I must say that so far it has been a singularly bewildering and unproductive experience. I think at least part of the reason is that I don't know a word of French.

It does sound like an interesting book, though. And I mean it literally: when I try to pronounce the words in the pages, the sounds are pleasant enough, even if I don't know what they mean. Again, learning the language may make me appreciate the work on more levels. And I'm a sucker for time-travel stories.

To people who have read the work in a language they understand: how does it compare to H. G. Wells' The Time Machine, Asimov's The End of Eternity and Barrington J. Bayley's The Fall of Chronopolis?

A survivor of the Spanish Armada

I didn't know about Francisco de Cuellar's account until recently, when an article in a national newspaper brought it to my attention.

The account is available in English at the Internet Archive, and also here. See here for the untranslated Spanish text.

Avram Davidson

Here can be found an evocation of Avram Davidson by someone who knew him personally (spotted at sfsignal). Davidson seemed to be an interesting, if sometimes difficult, personality. His conversion from Judasim to Tenrikyo is somewhat unusual.

I've been meaning to read his works, especially the Peregrine novels, which are set in Late Antiquity. The first one was published in 1971, the same year as Peter Brown's seminal survey The World of Late Antiquity. Interest in that historical epoch was in the air at the time, it seems.

Then there are his Vergil novels. They are not about the historical Vergil, but about the medieval conception of him as a magician and wonder-worker.

And let's not forget his Dr. Esterhazy novels, set in Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania, the "waning fourth-largest empire in Europe", clearly an imaginary cousin to the Austro-Hungarian Empire of the nineteenth century.

Here is the page about Davidson in the Great SF & F site.