A Commonplace book is a scrapbook of notes, sayings, thoughts, anything you want to keep, really. I have been keeping a Commonplace book since the early 1980s: I add entries that particularly intrigued me on average of a few times a year. Since starting my website in the early 1990s, I've had a place to put quotes from books , random factoids , etc. But there are some things that don't fit anywhere logically except in The Book. So this is my electronic version of the paper original (I confess that some of the entries don't intrigue me now as much as they did at the time; but that's life).
There are several entries just labelled "book title". Charles and I like making up book plots, particularly on long car journeys. It's easier to make up and discuss the plot than it is to actually write it, of course, and we haven't got as far as that. But we have three plots still on the go that sometimes cause additional entries in The Book. Our first foray was " If Only the Stars Could Talk ", a murder mystery set in an observatory, with a geography loosely based on the Royal Greenwich Observatory in Herstmonceux, but relocated to Cambridge, to disguise this fact. (That the RGO subsequently relocated to Cambridge in 1990 is mere coincidence; that it was eventually closed in 1998 is an outrage .) Around the same time came " Ninety Minutes ", a Dr Who plot based on a microscopic black hole escaping from CERN, and needing to be captured before it ate the Earth. A key plot device was that it had swallowed a magnetic monopole, which was messing with predictions about its orbit through the earth. The plot required Adric's mathematical capabilities, which shows how long ago we started (Adric was a companion from 1980-82). More recently (!) we've also been plotting " Cold Sproing ", a techno-thriller about one of the curled up space-time dimensions starting to uncurl when a low enough temperature is reached, causing spreading devastation around an Oxford cryogenics lab. But, as I say, nothing actually written (yet?)
So, on to The Book (note: I have moved book quotations to my relevant book review page, which is why some otherwise unreviewed books have quotations appearing). Earlier entries are less well documented, as I often noted just the quote, not the source. Later ones: well, I've learned better. Blue san serif = external stuff; brown Garamond = Charles and me riffing.
It lands on caterpillars
and eats them from inside.
To make sure that the meat's fresh
it keeps the thing alive
-- The Mark Steel Lecture, BBC4, 4 February
2009
Extra verse suggested for "All Things Bright And Beautiful"
(in the tradition of Monty Python's "
All
Things Dull and Ugly
"
The things that are always 20 years away:
The first AI will be in a fusion-powered robot body, running on a quantum computer, building a device to detect gravitational waves.-- January 2009
-- Michelle Brown, British Library
"The Celts", C4, 18 February 2006
on
The Book of Kells
(pointing to the Chi and the Rho)
-- Steve Jones
"John Wyndham", BBC4, December 2005
-- Christopher Eccleston, Teletext
p132:4/5, 2 April 2004
on his new Dr Who role
I first parsed this with a more interesting verb: "You can
parallel-world situations with science fiction."
-- "Gardeners' World", BBC2, 15 December 2002
-- Adam Hart-Davies and Roger Evans, Humber
Bridge
"Science Shack", BBC2, 7 December 2001
-- John Romer, "Great Excavations",
C4, 27 April 2000
on archaeological evidence for Jesus' existence
-- excited BBC commentator, 11:12pm, 31 December 1999
-- "Apocalypse When?", C4, 3
January 1999
approximate quotation
-- thoughts while watching "Earth
Story", 22 November 1998
So okay, they were ~10-100 kyr earlier, but there's wiggle
room...
-- 20 July 1998
-- adopted child
"Torres Islanders", Horizon, BBC2, 27 February 1998
-- Alan Millard, letter to the Times
as quoted on Ceefax p146, 22 January 1998
-- statement after leak to the BBC, 9 December 1997
-- Flt Lt Dave Morgan, Sea Harrier pilot
"Decisive Weapons -- Harrier", BBC2, 20 October 1997
on the 10:1 odds against them in the Falkland's War
-- BBC News, 6 July 1997
reporting on the Mars Pathfinder Sojourner rover
-- "O-Zone", BBC2, 27 May 1997
the Internet allows pop groups not to be "..."
-- 1997
-- Jonathan Meades, "Even Further Abroad", BBC2, 5 March 1997
-- 29 November 1996
-- 21 November 1996
book title idea, suggested after watching an Oliver Sacks TV
programme on autism
-- September 1996
-- Newsnight, BBC2, 6 August 1996
... and not on Mars!
on reports of a Martian fossil in a meteorite
-- ibid
-- Campbell. "Takin' Over the Asylum", BBC2, 3 August 1996 (repeat)
-- Larry Ellison, "Triumph of the Nerds", C4, 28 April 1996
"The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste. They have absolutely no taste, and what that means is --- I don't mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way, in the sense that [pause] they don't think of original ideas, and they don't bring much culture into their product. And you say "why is that important?" Well, proportionally spaced fonts come from typesetting and beautiful books. That's where one gets the idea. If it weren't for the Mac, they would never have that in their products. And so I guess I am saddened , not by Microsoft's success... I have no problem with their success. They've earned their success. For the most part. I have a problem with the fact that they just make really third-rate products."-- Steve Jobs, ibid
-- 16 April 1996
book title idea, for story about a new dimension uncurling at
low temperatures
-- Aids Research, "Horizon", BBC, 4 December 1995
-- Teletext letters page, 23 November 1995
-- 28 October 1995
-- 11 May 1995
-- John McPhee,
Basin
and Range
as quoted by
Stephen Jay Gould
, on his radio item "Deep Time and
Ceaseless Motion", 5 April 1995
-- title for a Wizard's magazine?
1995
-- 22 February 1995
-- 1995
-- Dr Akira Tonomura, Royal Institution Christmas Lecture, Friday, BBC, December 1994
-- December 1994
-- 11 December 1994
of certain old-fashioned computer bods
-- title idea
1994
--
New Scientist
on the subject of cold fusion
name for a (chemistry!) pop group ("kT and the...")
-- Review, BBC2, 22 April 1988
-- Bernard Wooley, "Man Overboard", Yes Prime Minister, 1987
-- "A Double Life", Star Cops, BBC2, 17 August 1988
-- Col. Oliver North, "Irangate"
hearings
on being queried about shredding documents
-- unknown
-- various General Election quotes, June 1987
-- "Micro Live", BBC
-- character name idea
(the Jansky is a unit of EM flux in radio astronomy: 10
-26
W m
-2
Hz
-1
)
-- Dr Herbert Lim, MIT, "The Real
World"
criticism of SDI
-- source unrecorded
-- presenter of an Open University programme
-- source unrecorded
this
must
be useful as a plot device!
later:
especially
as I have discovered that it is
also known as Banana oil
-- Nicholas Humphrey, "Right to Reply", C4
-- spoof book title
2009: however, a Web search finds that: it was a
nominated
for the Diagram Prize
in 1984; the Telegraph
obituary
of Antony Rowe
cites him as the author.
-- fortune cookie program
-- car sticker
-- source unrecorded
-- Richard Dawkins, on the Gaia hypothesis
(transcribed from short term memory)
-- Richard Dawkins, on the Gaia hypothesis
undated clip shown in "Beautiful Minds"
BBC4, 14 April 2010
-- cited as seen on the wall of a graduate student's office, Stanford
-- overheard conversation in Cambridge
-- Max "open the pod door, Hal" Phillips, PCN vol 1(20), p54
-- story titles
-- 27 August 1982
during a conversation where we were exploring the "Ninety
Minutes" story idea.
The best part (apart from the units!) was that he answered
without
pausing
.
-- heard during a seminar in 1982,
as the speaker indicated the
y
-axis on a graph
-- Falklands crisis, 1982
later: it wasn't referred to as a
war
at the time.
-- source unrecorded
although it usually refers to the oil industry,
I like to think of it in terms of robot-human relationships