Second Variety, by Philip K. Dick. Published May 1953.

The claws were bad enough in the first place—nasty, crawling little death-robots. But when they began to imitate their creators, it was time for the human race to make peace—if it could!

After doing several “fluffy” SF stories, I was completely blown away by this one. It’s got sex, murder and post-apocalyptic evil humanoid robots. Dated only by the Cold War setting, the story is tight, creepy and totally Philip K Dick.

The Mirror of Taste and Dramatic Censor, Volume 1, Number 5, May 1810, edited by Stephen Cullen Carpenter. Published 1810.

This issue includes the play Alfonso, King of Castile, by M. G. Lewis.

Thanks to Josephine Paolucci for post-processing this project!

Bookp(h)ile

The public mind has been greatly stirred upon the subject of monopolies and legislative abuses; but there are some glaring evils, which a short statute might suppress, that are flourishing unchecked.

Speculative dealers in the necessaries of life have learned how to build colossal fortunes by extortion from the entire nation, and the nation submits quietly because gambling competition is the fashion. The late Charles Partridge endeavored to show up these evils and have them suppressed. We need another Partridge to complete the work he undertook.

A despatch to the Boston Herald, March 5, shows how the game has been played in Chicago on the pork market:

“‘Phil Armour must have been getting ready for this break for three months,’ said a member of the board of trade to-day. ‘Since September last he has visited nearly every large city in the country. He knows from observation where all the pork is located, and, having cornered it, his southern trip was a scheme to throw his enemies off the scent, and enable his brokers to quietly strengthen the corner. His profits and Plankinton’s cannot be less than $3,000,000.’

“But if Armour and his old Milwaukee side partner have made money, so have hundreds of others here. A messenger boy in the board of trade drew $100 from a savings bank on Monday last at 11 o’clock and margined 100 barrels of pork. To-day the lad deposited $1,000, and has $300 for speculation next week.

“Those poor snorts who are expecting to have pork to-day to make their settlement, paid $21. Anything less was scouted. ‘You will have to pay $25 next Saturday night,’ was all the comfort afforded.

“An advance of 2 cents a bushel in wheat was also scored by the bulls to-day. The explanation is that the several big wheat syndicates encouraged by the action of pork have made an alliance. The talk at the hotels to-night is that Armour has started in to buy wheat.”

We have laws that forbid boycotting, and they are enforced in New York and New Haven by two recent decisions. Financial extortion is an equal crime, and needs a law for its suppression. Why is the metropolitan press silent? Have the syndicates too much influence? Will editors who read these lines speak out?

In the last North American Review, James F. Hudson, in an essay on “Modern Feudalism,” says:–

“The conquest of all departments of industry by the power of combination has just begun. But the mere beginning has imposed unwarrantable taxes on the fuel, light, and food of the masses. It has built up vast fortunes for the combining classes, drawn from the slender means of millions. It has added an immense stimulant to the process, already too active, of making the rich richer and the poor poorer. The tendency in this direction is shown by the arguments with which the press has teemed for the past two months, that the process of combination is a necessary feature of industrial growth, and that the competition which fixes the profits of every ordinary trader, investor or mechanic, must be abolished for the benefit of great corporations, while kept in full force against the masses of producers and consumers, between whom the barriers of these combinations are interposed.”

From Buchanan’s Journal of Man, May 1887.

Gleanings from Old Journals.

Old newspapers make good reading–if they are old enough. Like the deciphering of moss-covered epitaphs, the reading of journals of other days gives rise to reflections that mingle the sweet with the sad. It shows plainly that time does not alter human nature, much as customs may change.

The Scrap Book, Volume 1, Number 3, published May, 1906 by Frank A. Munsey.

The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, Volume 23, Issue 5.

Volume Bookp(h)ile

There is not a railway man on the New York Central who runs on freight trains that does not believe that the through freight known as A. S. No. 1, is a “hoodooed” train. The train runs from Albany to Suspension Bridge, and in the past few years has met with many accidents. Saturday morning the “hoodooed” train left Syracuse on time. Charles Detsel, a brakeman, who has been running on the road for the past five years, was assigned to make the run as forward brakeman. Detsel did not wish to take the run, saying to his companions that the train was “hoodooed,” and that he believed that he would meet with some bad luck. Everything went right until the train reached Coles’ bridge, between Lock Berlin and Lyons. A brakeman on a westbound local that followed saw Detsel lying in the ditch at one side of the track, and the train was stopped and the injured man taken to Lyons. The entire scalp was torn off his head and he is in a dying condition. It was this train upon which Conductor Gowan was killed at Adams Basin Wednesday of last week. His death was caused in a similar manner. Conductor Orr met his death last summer on this train, and it is a fact that the “hoodooed” train met with five accidents on five consecutive days about a year ago.

[tags]Ann Arbor Register, May, 1895[/tags]

There was begun in the last week or two a very thorough revision of the telegraphic cipher codes in use by people in this city doing business with european countries, says the New York Sun. The revision is in order to conform with a new regulation of the International Telegraph bureau, designed to put an end to the difficulties, disputes and inconveniences that have been connected with international telegraphing for very many years. The International Telegraph bureau is a telegraphic clearing-house and intelligence office located at Berne, Switzerland, of which all the governments of Europe, and all the important nations of the world, with the sole exception of the United States, are members. “Berne,” as the bureau is generally referred to, is the central information bureau of the telegraph service of the whole world. Any interruption to a cable or land line, the opening of a new line, or rearrangement and shortening of an old one; all delays to telegraphic communication, anywhere and from any cause, such as storms or earthquakes, or censorship on telegrams because of war or civil disturbances in Cuba or Armenia, or anywhere else; anything or everything that improves or disturbs the telegraph service in any part of the world, is at once reported from the affected locality directly to Berne, and the information is promptly sent out from there to the headquarters of every government and telegraph company, and so on to every telegraph office of importance in the world.

The bureau was first established as a result of an international telegraph convention held at St. Petersburg in 1875, to settle all matters of rules and regulations for the interchange of telegrams among the various countries; to collect and apportion the charges on international telegrams, according to the proportion of work done by each country, and generally to do the work of the telegraph companies and systems that the clearing-house does for the banks. Every five years a convention is held, at which all the governments are represented, and the rules to govern Berne are considered and revised and enacted.

There has always been difficulty between the telegraph service and its customers over the use of cipher words. Of course, where the cost of telegraphing runs to several dollars a word, every effort is made to be brief. Most elaborate and really wonderful codes have been constructed, some at a cost of thousands of dollars, by the aid of which one word is made to express a whole sentence, or paragraph, of commercial information. To such a science has this matter of codes been reduced that the bulk of telegrams passing between this country or England and distant places like China an Australia rarely consist of more than two or three words. Many hundred contain only one word, besides the name and address. And one word often sums up a whole day’s business. To insure accuracy and speed the convention decided many years ago that only legitimate words, belonging to one of eight languages, should be allowed in codes, and no word should contain more than ten letters. Arbitrary combinations of letters, such as xqp, or wzy, are only accepted on a basis of three letters to a word. While cable operators are not expected to know eight languages, yet there is something about legitimate words of a modern language that makes it easily recognized. It sounds all right on the Morse instrument and looks all right on the cable slip. A mutilated word is as readily distinguished and stopped. The sender of a foreign telegram of eight words may use a word each from English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch and Latin, but they must be good words and not over ten letters long. The receiving clerk in a cable office will almost infallibly spot an illegitimate word, and, as he is held responsible at the rate of several dollars a word for any wrong word he may pass, he lets very few indeed get by him.

[tags]Ann Arbor Register, May, 1895[/tags]

The cold backward spring weather which we are experiencing has led to much surmises as to the cause of the failure of the earth’s heating apparatus to do its work. In regard to the matter a contemporary remarks:

Some have supposed that we are entering upon a change of seasons, and the rather appalling theory has been broached that the poles are changing position, and that the arctic region is to swop places with the equator. The astronomers have, however, brought forward an explanation of the late “cold spell” somewhat less disturbing to the nerves, though not altogether tranquilizing. They say that the sun’s disc is at present riddled with holes, in other words, with spots, one of which is of very considerable size. It is a deep cavity in the photosphere, and so wide that the whole terrestrial globe would find room in it without touching edges. There is another spot which, though much smaller, still has one of its diameters as large as that of our earth. Herschel and Arago having conceived the idea of comparing the annual price of corn to the number of solar spots observed each year, found on comparing a series of twenty-five results, that the greater the number of spots the higher was the cost of bread-stuffs. This shows that these phenomena may reduce the heat of the sun considerably.

On this theory a piece of smoked glass will be a handy thing to have about the house; and in laying in the coals or providing for winter clothing the first thing in order will be to take a squint to ascertain the dimension of the holes in the solar atmosphere.

[tags]Peninsular Courier and Family Visitant, May, 1868[/tags]