Non-USA Aberdeens

On May 27, 2001, Robert Lookup assembled the following list of non-USA cities named Aberdeen.

Aberdeen, Saskatchewan (Just NE of Saskatoon)

Aberdeen, Jamaica

Aberdeen, Andaman Island (Bay of Bengal)

Aberdeen, Sierra Leone

Aberdeen, Australia

Aberdeen, South Africa

Aberdeen, Hong Kong

Aberdeen, Scotland

Aberdeen, Tasmania

Aberdeen, Guyana (South America)

Aberdeen, Nova Scotia

Aberdeen, Ontario

Aberdeen, British Columbia

Aberdeen, British Columbia

Aberdeen, Antigua

* * * 

Observations

First, the geographic spread is remarkable. All these Aberdeens give evidence to the global reach of the former British Empire. We see Aberdeens in Europe, North America, the Caribbean, South America, Africa, Asia and Australia/Oceania. That immediately suggests that the list is really a little map of the British Empire and Scottish migration. The original Aberdeen supplied a place name that traveled with settlers, administrators, merchants and colonial institutions.

Aberdeen, Hong Kong has an especially interesting history. The district was named for George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th Earl of Aberdeen, who served as British prime minister and foreign secretary—not simply after the Scottish city. So not every Aberdeen necessarily traces its name through the same route.

The Andaman Islands entry is intriguing. “Aberdeen” refers to the Aberdeen area/settlement around Port Blair, and the Battle of Aberdeen was fought there in 1859 between British colonial forces and indigenous Andamanese people. Every place name has its "origin story."

It's interesting that Robert Lookup identified two Aberdeens in British Columbia. One is a residential hillside area in Kamloops. The other is a suburban community within Aberdeen, Abbotsford.

When I Googled >>Robert Lookup ennyman<< the following information was generated by Google's AI Overview:

Background: He experienced homelessness and lived as a "street person" in Duluth, where he was befriended by local writer and artist Ed Newman* (the author behind the Ennyman's Territory blog) and his wife for the final decade of his life. 

Nicknames & Passions: He was affectionately nicknamed "Train Man" due to his deep obsession with trains. He meticulously watched every single movie available in the Duluth Public Library system and rated each one entirely on the accuracy and entertainment value of its train scenes. 

The Index Cards: Robert recorded his massive volumes of research on 4x6 index cards using a tight, crimped handwriting style. Newman frequently compares the visual look of his handwriting to Bob Dylan’s handwritten lyrics for the song Desolation Row. 

Obsession with Birthdays: He possessed a savant-like memory for dates and famously remembered almost everyone he interacted with by their birthday. 

 

Robert Wesley Lookup, 61, of Superior, died Friday, Dec. 12, 2003 in St. Luke's Hospital, here in Duluth.

* All credit goes to Susie for introducing us.

Nota Bene: Take Careful Note

David Foster Wallace, known for his intricate and linguistically rich prose, had a deep-seated passion for language that was displayed in his habit of compiling extensive lists of words. He did this primarily to fuel his writing process, seeking out precise, evocative, or obscure terms that could add layers of meaning, texture, and innovation to his work—such as in novels like Infinite Jest, where his vocabulary often included jargon, archaisms, and neologisms to create a distinctive voice. 

I'd read of this habit of his and later was gratified to find a lengthy list of his words in one of his books whose title I can no longer recall. I found it interesting to read through a catalog of words someone else was fascinated by.

One of James D. Nickel's several 
books on Mathematics

What brought this Wallace habit to mind was stumbling into another collection of interesting words on the website Biblical Christian Worldview. which features the research and writings of math scholar and author James D. Nickel. It was fun to skim through his lists of words on a page titled Nota Bene, which is Latin for Take Careful Note. Of this page on his much broader website he writes, This page is devoted to an investigation of the depth, versatility, and heritage of English words; i.e., here is a vocabulary list with some "bark and bite."

Here's a taste from a portion of words in the category E.

e pluribus unum: from many, one (the motto of the United States_
ebullience: the quality of being optimistic in speech or writing
ecce homo: behold the man
eccentricity: odd or whimsical behavior
ecclesiastical: pertaining to church
echelon: a level of command; military organizational structure
eclectic: choosing from a variety of sources or origins; something that offers a diverse selection of items, styles, or approaches
eclipse: any obscuration of light ecumenical: universal
edification: to instruct or enlighten in an encouraging way
educe: to draw out (education)
effeminate: more reminiscent of women than men
effete: lacking robust vitality; sterile; without force
efficacious: having the power to produce a desired effect
efflorescent: blossoming
effrontery: shameful boldness
effulgent: radiant; brilliantly shining egalitarian: arising from a belief in the equality of all persons
egocentric: selfish
egregious: flagrantly incorrect or bad

* * * * *

Before posting the above, I email James and asked, "Since you are a 'math guy'... what prompted you to build these lists of words?"

James replied: A "math guy" interested in words (i.e., the humanities)? Seems oxymoron, but no.

For a math guy to have interest revealed in "Nota Bene" is meant to show that Math/Technology/Science/Servile Arts and Humanities (High tech, high touch) flow together.

Ed: Two thumbs up.

* * * * *

I encourage you to not only check out the rest of the E-words but all the other lists as well. And while you're in the neighborhood, explore his primary work on the history of mathematics and his understanding of the relationships between math, science, God and meaning. 

Here's one additional word, for James, from his pages devoted to the letter K:

kudos: honor or accolades

My Top Five Stories on Medium This Week

FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH DEPT

For a lot of people Top Five lists are like digital dopamine hits—crisp, scannable, and instantly gratifying. In a scroll-fatigued world, they promise order amid chaos: five bullet-sized insights instead of a 3,000-word ramble. Readers devour them because the brain loves completion; crossing off “5/5” triggers the same reward loop as finishing a game level. Curiosity hooks first (“Who made the cut?”), then validation or surprise. 

A few years ago I invested some time posting some of my writing on Medium, an online social publishing platform designed for writers and readers. Like everything else, the platform had its pros and cons. Nevertheless, there are people still reading what's been planted there, and Medium still send a weekly email to each writing noting what others are reading.

Here are my top five Medium stories that readers clicked on and read this week. 

He Who Controls the Narrative Controls the People

 

Curses, Foiled Again

 

A Lesson from 29 Golden Gate Suicide Attempts

 

Who Are Five Extraordinary People From History You Want to Meet?

 

The Real Reason They Punish Horse Thieves

Is 2017 Too Late to Start a Blog?

In 1995–96 I authored a column in Printwear magazine that aimed to teach people about the Internet. Articles included, “What is a Browser?” and “How does email work?” One article was about search engines. I listed and ranked 25 search engines, sharing features, advantages, pros and cons. Google did not even exist until 2 year later. Had Google looked at all those search engines and said, “Wow, the search engine field is really crowded. Maybe we should do something else”… well they did not.

The MacIntosh was introduced despite all the other computers on the market. A million new books are written each year, and though most go nowhere in terms of generating wealth and fame, there are always new writers being catapulted up the bestseller lists.

In short, it is not too late to start a blog.

The value of blogging goes beyond whether it is successful or not. It will teach you about your own passions and how deep they are. It will connect you to people and places you never dreamed of (if you keep going). It will give you an opportunity to practice your communication skills so you can improve as a writer or storyteller. It will give you a portfolio of published work so that if you decide blogging isn’t really for you, you’ll be able to point to your best blog posts and demonstrate that you are a writer who knows how to generate interesting work.

So go for it. What have you got to lose? You will learn a lot.

A Good Day For Lists: 35 Items of Greater or Lesser Insignificance

I've been recently bitten by the David Foster Wallace bug. That is, I keep finding myself drawn to reading more of his work. Impressive is an understatement. Pow! Blam! Ouch.

Wallace liked lists. Or so I've been led to believe. Here's a list of miscellaneous observations, notes to myself of things to read or do, and ideas to ponder. There's always more to do than there is time, so a list is all we end up with in the meantime.

1. Game 1 of the World Series is tonight featuring the Chicago Cubs and the Cleveland Indians, the two teams that have gone longest without winning a World Series championship.
2. Today is World Pasta Day.
3. Who comes up with these things? World Pasta Day?
4. Why is it called the World Series when it only involves a competition North American teams?
5. Blog topic: young bull, Death in the Afternoon, good and bad bulls.
6. Last Friday's Fall Art Show at Goin' Postal was a lot of fun for a lot of people.
7. Blog Idea: Series of blog posts featuring the songs on Dylan's Oh Mercy album, beginning with "Political World."

We live in a political world
Love don't have any place
We're living in times
Where men commit crimes
And crime don't have any face

8. Trivia: Teddy R changed name of Executive Mansion to White House
9. Worth re-reading: How To Lie With Statistics
10. Don't forget to pay your bills.
11. Learn more about Will Rogers.
12. Einstein was a pacifist who became a non-pacifist because of Hitler
13. Item 13 is now removed and has been replaced with this sentence.
14. What are your goals for the next 30 days? Do you have goals or do you simply drift?
15. Submissions are now open for the Water-Stone Review through December 1. They are seeking original, unpublished creative fiction, essays, poetry.
16. In 2009 the richest man in Asia had 168 cars. The average income in India at that time was $500 a year.
17. Jay Leno had more cars than the richest man in Asia.
18. I'm curious how much money the DAI raised last Friday in their Make Your Mark fund raising event.
19. A million square miles of land was added to U.S. as a result of the Mexican War.
20. WikiLeaks: No one likes what Mr. Assange did yet everyone seems glad to have found out about what's been going on underneath Washington's skin.
21. Most dangerous jobs in America #1: Crack Dealer #2: Logging
re: crack dealers... 1 in 4 killed who serve four years on job
22. Fear of being shunned causes people to avoid honesty; takes courage to speak honestly
23. “A hard day’s work never really killed anyone, but why risk it?” ~Ronald Reagan
24. The great virtue of capitalism is that it decentralizes power and minimizes coercion. One nation’s gain does not necessitate another nation’s loss, and it doesn’t discriminate; it is open to anyone.
25. The Man by Irving Wallace made an impression on me as a teen in the Sixties, a novel about the first black U.S. president and the special challenges he would experience.
26.  "Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God." ~Corrie ten Boom
27. In Muslim culture hypocrisy is not as serious of a vice as here because it is better to uphold ideals we fail to live up to than to just give up and say “anything goes.”
28. Blog Entry idea: Great Gatsby and Lady Chatterley’s Lover both have as a theme the difference between good adultery and bad adultery.... A noble adultery and ignoble....
29. Blog Exploration: Do the strong stay strong forever or do they weaken over time (eg. Buddenbrooks)
30. Blog Exploration: What if our brain lost its "sort" function.
31. Life can only be understood backwards, but must be lived forwards." ~Kierkegaard

32. In the "good old days" New York City had 40,000 horses that generated 400 tons of manure a day, 20,000 gallons of urine and nearly 200 carcasses. (19th century stat.)
33. “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” ~Eleanor Roosevelt
34. What are you doing today that will make a difference tomorrow?
35. Another verse from Political World:

We live in a political world 
Wisdom is thrown in jail 
It rots in a cell 
Is misguided as hell 
Leaving no one to pick up the trail

The times are most definitely a-changin'.

"The future depends on what you do today." ~Mahatma Gandhi

Throwback Thursday: Why We Like Lists (Six Years Ago Today)

Why are we so fascinated with lists? You can't turn around without seeing them. I'm talking here about the kinds of lists that we read in magazines and newspapers or see on television.

For example, you're watching a football game and they show the ten greatest plays of the most recent NFL season. They could just show great plays, but no, they give you a countdown. Number 10, number nine, etc. Rolling Stone will have the 100 Greatest Rock Albums of all time... The 100 Greatest Male Vocalists.... the 500 Best Album Covers. Forbes annually does profiles on the 400 richest people in the world.

Our fascination with lists never ends, and we keep making more of them. Perhaps it's because we have an innate desire to organize the universe. I mean, if you just had everything out there in piles of information without lists, what would that be like? So we number things and rank them, greatest actors, greatest films, most beautiful out of the way places to hike, most exciting places take a romantic vacation, most helpful websites, shortest NBA professionals, best golfers, greatest battles, top party schools... There's no end to it. And the appeal seems equally endless.

Here are two sites that assemble unusual lists. Some in the previous paragraph came from http://www.toptenz.net/, a site that seems to exist solely for the purpose of assembling lists of ten. Today's list of lists begins with Top 10 Mind-Blowing Movies.

Maybe that's the fun part, just trying to guess which films or items will end up on their list. We can even argue with them about it. "Why wasn't Psycho on the list?" you want to ask.

http://listverse.com/ is another website that lists lists. Listverse differs from TopTenz in that they don't just have lists of ten. The second list here today is Top 15 Greatest Silent Films. Other lists this morning include, 10 Male Supporting Actors w Deserved Oscars, 10 Fascinating Facts About The Gift of Life, 10 Gamblers Who Beat The Casino and 10 Places With Morbid Names. (You always wanted to know, didn't you?"

So, why do we love list making so much? Here are the top ten reasons inquiring minds want to know...

Originally posted six years ago today here at Ennyman's Territory. 

Lists

Lists can be fun. I've compiled my share over the years. Favorite movies, favorite songs, favorite authors, favorite books by favorite authors. In fact one of the earliest pages on my original website is called My Favorite Things and is a page of lists of this kind.

Then there are to do lists. Lists of character traits for an upcoming novel. Restaurant menus are little more than elaborate lists of dining options... Appetizer list, desserts, lunch fare, dinners, sides. Oh, and let's not forget the wine list.

When I was young and seeking employment after a year in Mexico, the book What Color Is Your Parachute was recommended to me. I'll never forget the exercises in the Appendix of this book, designed to help us gain self-understanding so we can better determine what kind of career would most suit who we are. It's a great book, continuously updated and relevant. Anyways, one exercise was to make a list of seven things you did up to that point in your life that brought you personal satisfaction. Then you were to run this list through an analytical process to see what the elements were that made these particular life victories so meaningful. It's a great exercise and can potentially change your life. And immensely useful for job seekers.

Most serious artists have lists of shows where they've exhibited their work. And most writers keep a log of published works, something like this one (though not current.)

Yesterday I had lunch with Brian Lukasavitz, a lawyer who has been involved in contract law related to the music, arts and entertainment scene. One thing led to another and he shared one of B.B. King's Ten Commanments of Bluesville: "Never make a deal with the devil without first consulting your lawyer." It's a humorous observation because how it ties in with other music legends. Go here to read the rest of B.B. King's Bluesville Ten Commandments.

Some people keep lists in their heads about all the things that make them angry. They arrange and re-arrange their list of peeves till it makes them sick. Other people make lists of things that they are grateful for. These people can be nice to be around. 

All my albums have playlists. Many of us have listened to our music so much that we know the order of every song on the album. I'm fairly certain at least one and maybe two of my brothers can, like I, recite in order the titles on all four sides of the Beatles' White Album.

The website ExpectingRain.com compiles a daily list of new and interesting items pertaining to Dylan. Today's list several new YouTube videos and a letter Dylan wrote to Jerry Garcia. And this page at BobDylan.com lists all Dylan's concerts, including the Set List for each concert. For example, you can see what songs Bob played in Santiago, Chile Wednesday night. It must have been a great concert beginning with Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat and concluding with an encore of Blowin' In The Wind.

Do you make lists? If you're not finished with your To Do list for today, I hope you'll include a visit to the Ochre Ghost Gallery on Second Avenue East to check out two of my paintings that we included in the Homegrown Art Festival this year. The opening is at 6:00 p.m.  I'll be there for about 25 minutes before heading off to the Cirque Du Soleil, another item you might want on your To Do list for to-night.

Whatever your plans on this weekend, make the most of it. Get enriched, and enrich another.

Lists

Why are we so fascinated with lists? You can't turn around without seeing them. I'm talking here about the kinds of lists that we read in magazines and newspapers or see on television.

For example, you're watching a football game and they show the ten greatest plays of the most recent NFL season. They could just show great plays, but no, they give you a countdown. Number 10, number nine, etc. Rolling Stone will have the 100 Greatest Rock Albums of all time... The 100 Greatest Male Vocalists.... the 500 Best Album Covers. Forbes annually does profiles on the 400 richest people in the world.

Our fascination with lists never ends, and we keep making more of them. Perhaps it's because we have an innate desire to organize the universe? I mean, if you just had everything out there in piles of information without lists, what would that be like? So we number things and rank them, greatest actors, greatest films, most beautiful out of the way places to visit, most exciting places to go in the world, most helpful websites, shortest NBA professionals, best golfers, greatest battles, top party schools... There's no end to it. And the appeal seems equally endless.

Here are two sites that make unusual lists. Some of those in the previous paragraph came from http://www.toptenz.net/, a site that seems to exist solely for the purpose of assembling lists of ten. Today's list of lists begins with Top 10 Mind-Blowing Movies.

Maybe that's the fun part, just trying to guess which films or items will end up on their list. We can even argue with them about it. "Why wasn't Psycho on the list?" you want to ask.

http://listverse.com/ is another website that lists lists. Listverse differs from TopTenz in that they don't just have lists of ten. The second list here today is Top 15 Greatest Silent Films. Other lists this morning include, 10 Male Supporting Actors w Deserved Oscars, 1o Fascinating Facts About The Gift of Life, 10 Gamblers Who Beat The Casino and 10 Places With Morbid Names. (You always wanted to know, didn't you?"

So, why do we love list making so much? Here are the top ten reasons inquiring minds want to know...