She's Going Places (textless Alt Beneath The Thingy)

Tentative Timeline for the Jeeves Stories

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.)

Sorrow

It is another kind of sorrow,

To watch the words that have once played with you -

Run away,

Afraid,

For they cannot bear the burden

Of your heavy heart.

physics is scary what the hell is the Riemann zeta function doing in the equation for the critical temperature of a Bose-Einstein condensate

(Gordon ramsay chewing out a restaurant owner over his old expired ingredients) And where the fuck does this door lead? If I see a- (there is a hallway miles long, with ashen black walls and no end in sight)¹

1. oh for fucks sake

I'm boggled. This isn't the same thing as in the letter, is it?

Thank you so much for the ask!! Good job on spotting the difference!

Posting the letter again for reference:

So you're right, on the rock it reads 張仲仁 (Cheung Chong Yan in standard cantonese romanisation), while on the envelope the name is 張仲文 (Cheung Chong Man). Hergé’s real life Chinese friend is 張充仁 (Cheung Chong Yan), so the romanisation would be the same as the name in your ask. 

HOWEVER, those are just romanisations (which are less accurate but easier for foreigners to pronounce). Their actual pronunciations in cantonese (spoken in Hong Kong) / mandarin (spoken in mainland China including Shanghai) are different:

張充仁 = Tcheung Chong Yun* / Zhang Chongren

張仲文 = Tcheung Tchong Mun / Zhang Zhongwen

張仲仁 = Tcheung Tchong Yun / Zhang Zhongren 

* 'Tch-' is similar to J sound; '-ong' is OW-ng; '-un' as in under

As you can see, there’s a bit of a mix and match. But I think it makes sense to change the first word in his given name into 仲 given that the story says Chang is from HK, because we seldom use 充 in our names (perhaps more common in mainland China, not 100% sure). 

Another fun fact for you on the meanings of those given names~ 

充 = full of

仲 = still be (only in cantonese)

仁 = love for all beings/ benevolence

文 = cultured/ gentle

Both 仁 and 文 are commonly used here across different generations and genders. So I think both translations are pretty nice!!

Also, I just spotted that the stamps in the top right corner are of Queen Elizabeth II and King George VI:

Not so good at maintaining consistency but good attention to detail, I must say :)

So I recently stumbled on the Wikipedia article for the Grothendieck-Riemann-Roch theorem, which is an algebraic geometry thing that I'll hopefully learn some day once I actually have the prerequisite knowledge =w= But at the top of the article was this letter, which I thought was a wild thing to have at the top of a Wikipedia article about a niche abstract math thing - here's a translation:

Witches' Kitchen 1971 Riemann-Rochian Theorem: the latest craze*: the diagram

is commutatif**! To give this statement about f: X->Y some approximative meaning, I had to abuse the listeners' patience for nearly two hours. In black and white (in Springer's Lecture Notes) it seems like it will take up to about 400, 500 pages. A gripping example of how our thirst for knowledge and discovery indulges itself more and more in a(n il?)logical delirium far removed from life, while life itself is going to hell in thousandfold ways - and is threatened with absolute annihilation. High time to change our course! (6.12.1971) Alexander Grothendiek

* "der letzte Schrei" is a reasonably common German idiom meaning "the latest craze", but here it could alternatively be translated non-idiomatically as something like "the last cry". I think its more fun to imagine he means the idiom. ** I'm assuming this is a weird old-timey spelling probably taken from french but googling it I can find no examples of anybody using this spelling in German besides this letter

Note that this is 20 years before all of this happens:

Happy 2025!

I worked like mad to finish this but here it is – some insanely large number of words about the year that was, through the lens of Billy Joel songs with "night" in the title because they are fascinating as all get out.

Interchanges, rambles, and confluences

Sing Us A Song To Night: The Night-time Motif in Billy Joel’s Songwriting

Some reviews are so esoteric or so literal rather than musical in their outlook that they just confuse the issues involved. —Billy Joel, int

Special shoutout to @thebreakfastgenie for helping to infect me with the urge to go even deeper into the old man research.

Thoughts on the phrase ‘Knowledge is power’, and on learning ‘enough’ about a skill/topic before doing a project about it

I’ve thought for a long time about the phrase ‘Knowledge is power’, and have lived most of my life aware of the negative impact of ignorance and lack of knowledge on our lives. But the more I think about it, I feel like a better phrase would be ‘It is the application of knowledge that brings true wisdom and power’. Knowledge can only help us to a certain extent - what is the point of knowledge, if we’re unable to utilise it well, and if we’re not strong or able to apply knowledge into our lives? It requires both strength and wisdom to be able to apply what we’ve learnt into real life.

This is kind of linked to a conversation I had with someone recently.

During that conversation, they told me that they prefer learning everything - or learning enough - before starting a project, because they were afraid of failure or messing things up along the way. I feel like that’s something many people do, but by doing that, they’re overlooking the importance of learning from experience and failure. Learning the theoretical knowledge, and trying to retain all the knowledge you gain, is helpful - but what is not helpful is NOT doing the project, NOT learning to apply your knowledge into life or into ongoing problems because you believe you aren’t ‘ready’ or that you don’t know ‘enough’ to do the project.

It is important to enhance your ability to apply your knowledge in creative ways in real life to deal with complex situations - and that means being able to put aside some time to apply your limited skills - be it your art skills, music skills, math skills, critical thinking skills, reflection skills, socialising skills etc. To use and learn more about your flaws and areas of improvement. Knowing is helpful, knowing theories and a methodical step by step way of solving things is useful - but being able to do things as you learn, being able to spot your mistakes and learn from them WHILE doing the project you’re doing, is so, so important.

It’s important to allow yourself the grace to make mistakes, to learn from failure, to pick yourself up, to cope with pain, guilt, anger, sadness, and grief - even if you think you aren’t ‘fully’ ready or prepared for certain things sometimes. DO that project, TRY that new activity, APPLY whatever limited knowledge you have into your life or personal goals after you’ve learnt enough to do some basic things. Of course, keep learning, do spend more time learning, but as you slowly become advanced and no longer a ‘newbie’, I hope you don’t restrict yourself in the ‘newbie’ section just because you aren’t a master, and create that new song, create that new artwork, try writing a critical review on a historical source or critical response to a philosophical argument. You might make mistakes, you might mess up a bit, but you will also learn along the way!

There are some things you can only learn through experience.

Ok, I think I yapped enough ahaha.

TLDR; While knowledge may bring power, it is the application of knowledge that brings true wisdom and strength.

And God said, "Behold! I have created the fourth primordial force: the weak interaction!"

And the angels all clapped and nodded politely, and there was a long silence; and finally Verchiel, the Angel of Grace, spoke up and asked, "Er, what exactly does it do, O Fashioner?"

And God said, "What do you mean, 'what does it do?' It's the fourth fundamental force of the universe."

And Verchiel said, "You mentioned that. Um. But it's just that the other three sort of have a brand, you know? Gravity helps build large-scale structures, acts over vast cosmic distances, shapes time and space. The strong force is secret, hidden, binding together quarks and all that. Electromagnetism, very cool stuff, somewhere in between. We're all big fans of the whole magnetic monopole double bluff, very clever. But, er. What does this 'weak interaction' do?"

And God said, "It mediates radioactive decay. Sort of."

And Verchiel said, "Radioactive decay? All radioactive decay?"

And God said, "No. Just some kinds."

And Zephaniel, the Chief of the Ishim spoke, and he said, "A whole independent force just to mediate some kinds of radioactive decay?"

And God said, "Well. Not totally independent. Technically it's related to electromagnetism."

And Zephaniel said, "Wait, it's not even a real force?"

And God said, "It's totally a real force. It's just that it's one aspect of a combined electromagnetic and weak force. An electro-weak force, if you will."

And Metatron, the Celestial Scribe, scratched his head at this, but said nothing.

And Cambiel, the Angel of Transformation, said, "Maybe you can walk us through it from the top."

And God Sighed an immense Sigh, and said, "All right, fine.

"So the way it works is that all of space and time is permeated by a field that has imaginary mass."

And Cambiel said, "Imaginary mass, O Generous Provider?"

And God said, "Yes, imaginary mass. It's tachyonic, d'you see?"

And Sarathiel, the Angel of Discipline, said, "Wait a minute, I thought we agreed nothing was going to travel faster than light? All that 'c' business and the whole Lorentz transformation thing. What's happening with that?"

And God said, "Let me finish. The field is tachyonic. The particles in the field all move slower than light."

And Sarathiel had to think about this for a second.

And God said, "The point is, a field with imaginary mass has a non-zero vacuum expectation value."

And this really gave Sarathiel trouble, since he had never been very good at math.

And God, seeing this, went back to explain. "Most fields, like the electromagnetic field, have no effect when they are at their lowest energy state. It's like they're not there at all. If you give a field imaginary mass, then it vanishes only when it's at a very high energy state, and at a low energy state, it has a nonzero value everywhere."

And Sarathiel nodded, but he was confused, because he didn't understand why God would create such a thing.

But Verchiel thought he saw where God was going with this, and he was amazed.

"Truly, you are cunning beyond measure, O Only One Certainly Sound and Genuine in Truth! Only now do I understand your design! For in order to make the universe homogenous and isotropic, it is necessary that all large-scale fluctuations in temperature and mass must be evened out early in the history of the cosmos; and therefore, you have designed a field which will rapidly expand space after the Big Bang, many orders of magnitude in brief moments, and then swiftly and spontaneously decay as it gives up the energy it began with, giving rise to radiation and particles of all kinds as it does, which will condense into the material universe! It is a wonder to behold."

And God said, "What? No. I mean I did, but this isn't the inflaton field I'm talking about. This is something else."

And Verchiel said, "Wait, it's not?"

And God said, "No, I'm going to use a different field to drive cosmic inflation. The properties of this field are totally different."

And now Verchiel was also confused, and lapsed into silence.

And God said, "Like I was saying, this field is a scalar field with imaginary mass, and it does spontaneously decay to a ground state with a non-zero value. But it's not the inflaton field. Instead it combines with the W1, W2, W3, and B bosons."

And Metatron began to flip back through the pages of the Heavenly Record trying to figure out where he'd lost the thread.

And Zephaniel said, "The what bosons?"

And God said, "The W1, W2, W3, and B bosons. I'm sure I mentioned them. You know, the massless bosons?"

And Zephaniel said, "I'm pretty sure we only talked about the W+, W-, and Z0 bosons. All of which you said were going to have mass, O Owner of All Sovereignty."

And God said, "Yes, but this is how they get them, you see. Once this field acquires a nonzero value everywhere, the massless bosons interact with it and get mass. Well, some of them do. They turn into the W+, W-, and Z0 boson. And the photon."

And Zephaniel said, "…and the photon, O Accepter of Invocation?"

And God said, "Well, I did say I was going to unify the electromagnetic force and the weak interaction, didn't I? This is how. Above the critical temperature--right now I'm thinking 10^15 K, but I'm open to feedback on that one--electromagnetism and the weak force act as a single unifying force. Below that temperature, the field gets a nonzero value, you get three massive bosons to mediate the weak interaction, and the photon pops out seperately."

And Zephaniel said, "That seems… a bit overly complicated, doesn't it, O Reinstater Who Brings Back All?"

And God said, "No, it's exactly what we need. Look, that way the W and Z bosons have something to do, but the weak interaction still only travels short distances. Gravity is still the star of the show on cosmic scales, as it were. But now quarks and leptons can swap their flavor!"

And Zephaniel said, rather weakly, "Their… flavor, O Source of Good?"

And God said, "It's this new quantum number I'm trying out, to give the three generations of matter more unique identities."

And Cambiel said, "Three generations of matter? Now I'm really confused."

And God said, "I'm sure I mentioned this. You've got the lightest quarks and leptons, and then two heavier versions of each that can decay into the lighter versions."

And Cambiel said, "What do they do? New kinds of chemistry, is it?"

And God said, "Well, no. Mostly they just decay in a couple microseconds. Or even faster."

And Zephaniel began to rub his temples, and Cambiel sniffed.

And Cambiel said, "This all seems a bit ad hoc to me. Not really the stuff of an elegant and obviously ordered Creation. Why not have four generations of matter? Why not a trillion?"

And God began to grow irritable, and said, "Well, that's not really up to you, now is it? We're going to have three generations of matter, and the electroweak force, and that's that!"

And Zephaniel said, "As long as we are unifying fundamental forces, perhaps we could somehow also unify the electroweak interaction with the strong interaction, or even gravity."

And God hesitated saying, "Well, I haven't decided about that yet. I'm not sure I want gravity to be quantized, you know? Seems to take some of the geometric elegance out of general relativity."

And now it was Zephaniel's turn to sigh, and he bowed his head. "As you wish, O Possessor of Authority of Decisions and Judgement."

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.