Media « Isegoria

She had been designed and built specifically to be Grand Fleet Headquarters, and nothing else

Thursday, August 20th, 2026

As I’ve mentioned before, a modern warship’s Combat Information Center — that wonderfully telegenic room full of maps, computer consoles, and sweeping polar displays of radar and sonar echos — was, according to Rear Admiral Cal Laning, taken “specifically, consciously, and directly” from the spaceship Directrix in the Lensman novels of E.E. Smith, Ph.D.

Smith introduces Directrix in the fourth novel, Grey Lensman (1951, originally published in four parts, October 1939–January 1940, Astounding Science Fiction):

He jerked back to reality as he entered the gigantic teardrop which was technically the Z9M9Z, socially the Directrix, and ordinarily GFHQ. She had been designed and built specifically to be Grand Fleet Headquarters, and nothing else. She bore no offensive armament; but since she had to protect the presiding geniuses of combat, she had every possible defense.

Port Admiral Haynes had learned a bitter lesson during the expedition to Helmuth’s base. Long before that relatively small Grand Fleet got there he was sick to the core, realizing that fifty thousand vessels simply could not be controlled or maneuvered as a group. If that base had been capable of an offensive, or even of a real defensive, or if Boskone could have put their fleets into that star cluster in time, the Patrol would have been defeated ignominiously; and Haynes, wise old tactician that he was, knew it only too well.

Therefore, immediately after the return from that “triumphant” venture, he gave orders to design and to build, at whatever cost, a flagship capable of directing efficiently a million combat units.

The “tank”—the three-dimensional galactic chart which is a necessary part of every pilot room—had grown and grown as it became evident that it must be the prime agency in Grand Fleet Operations. Finally, in this last rebuilding, the tank was seven hundred feet in diameter and eighty feet thick in the middle—over seventeen million cubic feet of space in which more than two million tiny lights crawled hither and thither in hopeless confusion. For, after the technicians and designers had put that tank into actual service, they had discovered that it was useless. No available mind had been able either to perceive any situation as a whole, or to identify with certainty any light or group of lights needing correction. And as for linking up any particular light with its individual, blanket-proof communicator in time to issue orders in space combat—

Kinnison looked at the tank, then around the full circle of the million-plug board encircling it. He observed the horde of operators, each one trying frantically to do something. Next he shut his eyes, the better to perceive everything at once, and studied the problem for an hour.

“Attention, everybody!” he thought then. “Open all circuits—do nothing at all for a while.” He then called Haynes.

“I think that we can clean up this mess if you’ll send over some Simplex analyzers and the crew of technicians. Helmuth had a sweet set-up on multiplex controls, and Jalte had some ideas that we can adapt to fit this tank. If we add them all together, we may have something.”

—

And by the time Worsel arrived, they did.

“Red lights are fleets already in motion,” Kinnison explained rapidly to the Velantian. “Greens are fleets still at their bases. Ambers are the planets the greens took off from—connected, you see, by Ryerson string-lights. The white star is us, the Directrix. That violet cross ‘way over there is Jalte’s planet, our first objective. The pink comets are our free planets, their tails showing their intrinsic velocities. Being so slow, they had to start long ago. The purple circle is the negasphere. It’s on its way, too. You take that side, I’ll take this. They were supposed to start from the edge of the twelfth sector. The idea was to make it a smooth, bowl-shaped sweep across the Galaxy, converging upon the objective, but each of the fleet commanders apparently wants to run this war to suit himself. Look at that guy there—he’s beating the gun by nine thousand parsecs. Watch me pin his ears back!”

He pointed his Simplex at the red light which had so offendingly sprung into being. There was a whirring click and the number 449276 flashed above a board. An operator flicked a switch.

“Grand Fleet Operations!” Kinnison snapped. “Why are you taking off without orders?”

“Why, I … I’ll give you the vice-admiral, sir—”

“No time! Tell your vice-admiral that one more such break will put him in irons. Land at once! GFO—off!”

“With around a million fleets to handle, we can’t spend much time on anyone,” he thought at Worsel, “but after we get them lined up and get our Rigellians broken in, it won’t be so bad.”

The breaking in did not take long; definite and meaningful orders flew faster and faster along the tiny, but steel-hard beams of the communicators.

“Take off…. Increase drive four point five…. Decrease drive two point seven…. Change course to—” and so it went, hour after hour and day after day.

And with the passage of time came order out of chaos. The red lights formed a gigantically sweeping, curving wall, its almost imperceptible crawl representing an actual velocity of almost one hundred parsecs an hour. Behind that wall blazed a sea of amber, threaded throughout with the brilliant filaments which were the Ryerson lights. Ahead of it lay a sparkling, almost solid blaze of green. Closer and closer the wall crept toward the bright white star.

And in the “reducer”—the standard, ten-foot tank in the lower well—the entire spectacle was reproduced in miniature. It was plainer there, clearer and much more readily seen; but it was so crowded that details were indistinguishable.

Posted in Media, War, Weapons | No Comments »

Tubi has more than 110 million monthly active users

Wednesday, August 12th, 2026

I didn’t realize that Tubi was owned by Fox, but I’m not at all surprised that it has taken off, with more than 110 million monthly active users:

“It really feels like we are seeing both in Tubi’s results and in the market a clear validation of a strategy that Tubi has believed in and been executing for over a decade, which is the power of free streaming, and our belief that consumers — especially this next generation — increasingly want premium entertainment, they want choice, they want it to be on-demand, and they don’t want to have to pay more and deal with rising prices and paywalls and fragmentation,” [CEO Anjali] Sud tells The Hollywood Reporter in an interview, noting that other platforms like Disney are contemplating free tiers, while other premium players like Netflix push into the ad-supported business. “I think it’s encouraging that others are seeing the potential that we’ve long believed in in free streaming, and I think it’s validating that that is where the market is going.”

People like free stuff even more than they hate advertising.

The real allure is that they have plenty of classics.

Posted in Business, Media | No Comments »

Can you say…hero?

Thursday, August 6th, 2026

Tom Junod’s 1998 Esquire piece Can You Say…Hero? profiles Mr. Rogers:

He was barely more than a boy himself when he learned what he would be fighting for, and fighting against, for the rest of his life. He was in college. He was a music major at a small school in Florida and planning to go to seminary upon graduation. His name was Fred Rogers. He came home to Latrobe, Pennsylvania, once upon a time, and his parents, because they were wealthy, had bought something new for the corner room of their big redbrick house. It was a television. Fred turned it on, and as he says now, with plaintive distaste, “there were people throwing pies at one another.” He was the soft son of overprotective parents, but he believed, right then, that he was strong enough to enter into battle with that—that machine, that medium—and to wrestle with it until it yielded to him, until the ground touched by its blue shadow became hallowed and this thing called television came to be used “for the broadcasting of grace through the land.” It would not be easy, no—for in order to win such a battle, he would have to forbid himself the privilege of stopping, and whatever he did right he would have to repeat, as though he were already living in eternity. And so it was that the puppets he employed on The Children’s Corner would be the puppets he employed forty-four years later, and so it was that once he took off his jacket and his shoes…well, he was Mister Rogers for good. And even now, when he is producing only three weeks’ worth of new programs a year, he still winds up agonizing—agonizing—about whether to announce his theme as “Little and Big” or “Big and Little” and still makes only two edits per televised minute, because he doesn’t want his message to be determined by the cuts and splices in a piece of tape—to become, despite all his fierce coherence, “a message of fragmentation.”

He is losing, of course. The revolution he started—a half hour a day, five days a week—it wasn’t enough, it didn’t spread, and so, forced to fight his battles alone, Mister Rogers is losing, as we all are losing. He is losing to it, to our twenty-four-hour-a-day pie fight, to the dizzying cut and the disorienting edit, to the message of fragmentation, to the flicker and pulse and shudder and strobe, to the constant, hivey drone of the electroculture…and yet still he fights, deathly afraid that the medium he chose is consuming the very things he tried to protect: childhood and silence. Yes, at seventy years old and 143 pounds, Mister Rogers still fights, and indeed, early this year, when television handed him its highest honor, he responded by telling television—gently, of course—to just shut up for once, and television listened. He had already won his third Daytime Emmy, and now he went onstage to accept Emmy’s Lifetime Achievement Award, and there, in front of all the soap-opera stars and talk-show sinceratrons, in front of all the jutting man-tanned jaws and jutting saltwater bosoms, he made his small bow and said into the microphone, “All of us have special ones who have loved us into being. Would you just take, along with me, ten seconds to think of the people who have helped you become who you are….Ten seconds of silence.” And then he lifted his wrist, and looked at the audience, and looked at his watch, and said softly, “I’ll watch the time,” and there was, at first, a small whoop from the crowd, a giddy, strangled hiccup of laughter, as people realized that he wasn’t kidding, that Mister Rogers was not some convenient eunuch but rather a man, an authority figure who actually expected them to do what he asked…and so they did. One second, two seconds, three seconds…and now the jaws clenched, and the bosoms heaved, and the mascara ran, and the tears fell upon the beglittered gathering like rain leaking down a crystal chandelier, and Mister Rogers finally looked up from his watch and said, “May God be with you” to all his vanquished children.

Posted in Education, Media | 1 Comment »

Lloyd Vogel comes from the Neighborhood of Make-Believe

Tuesday, August 4th, 2026

I recently watched Tom Hanks’ Mr. Rogers movie, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (on Netflix), and I wasn’t expecting it to star Matthew Rhys, whom I know through The Americans and, more recently, Widow’s Bay.

Rhys plays a jaded journalist tasked with producing a puff piece on the popular children’s show host, but the experience changes him, and the piece grows into a deeply personal article that earns the cover spot on Esquire.

I may not be a jaded journalist, but I must say that my spider sense started tingling when the wife of Rhys’s character first appeared. Our White journalist in 1998 has a (light-skinned) Black wife? They wouldn’t race-swap a real-life person’s wife, would they?

Well, it turns out Rhys’s character is a made-up journalist, named Lloyd Vogel, and the actual writer was Tom Junod, who married a woman named Janet. They did not have a baby boy soon before the article came out; rather, they adopted a girl. I don’t think Junod had an estranged, alcoholic father, dying, either.

Posted in Media | 2 Comments »

Once they were no longer censored, they ceased to have a subject

Sunday, August 2nd, 2026

Fifteen summers ago, Ann Manov was spending 15 hours a week in a neurology lab, sorting fruit flies under a microscope, freezing them in liquid nitrogen, and pureeing their sliced-off heads, but the only thing that made her want to get out of bed in the morning was a class on the Russian short story that was taught by a nervous Russian woman:

I remember only a few things about that class, but among them is Venedikt Yerofeyev’s observation that much of Soviet literature collapsed remarkably quickly with the disappearance of censorship—the work of not just those who wrote in support of socialism, but of those who had opposed it too. Once they were no longer censored, they ceased to have a subject, a raison d’être.

Posted in Education, Media | 3 Comments »

The Senses Taker would love social media

Tuesday, July 21st, 2026

I haven’t read The Phantom Tollbooth since they had us read it in sixth grade. Like A Wrinkle in Time, it’s an elementary school teacher’s idea of science fiction.

I didn’t know the book’s origin:

Architect Norton Juster was living in his hometown of Brooklyn, after three years in the Navy. In June 1960, he gained a $5,000 grant from the Ford Foundation to write a children’s book about cities. Juster argued that the young baby boomers would soon have responsibility for the cities, and many lived in the suburbs and did not know them. In his proposal, he said he wanted “to stimulate and heighten perception — to help children notice and appreciate the visual world around them — to help excite them and shape their interest in an environment they will eventually reshape.” Beginning with great enthusiasm, he ground to a halt with too many notes and too little progress. He took a weekend break with friends at Fire Island, and came back determined to put aside the cities book and seek inspiration in another writing project.

[…]

Juster shared his house in Brooklyn Heights with cartoonist Jules Feiffer whose bedroom was immediately below, and who could hear him pacing in the night. Feiffer was surprised to learn that his friend’s insomnia was not caused by the cities book, but by a book about a boy. Juster showed Feiffer the draft to date and, unbidden, the artist began sketching illustrations. Feiffer knew Judy Sheftel, who put deals together in the publishing trade and was his future bride. Sheftel got Jason Epstein, an innovative editor at Random House with a deep appreciation for children’s literature, to agree to review the manuscript.

David Epstein thinks about Oliver Burkeman‘s advice (in Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals) to “consolidate your caring” whenever he reads The Phantom Tollbooth to his son:

There is a character in the book, dressed like a census taker, called the Senses Taker. He eagerly helps people “find what they’re not looking for,” and in so doing diverts them from their priorities and wastes their limited time. The Senses Taker, I’m sure, would love social media.

They made it into a movie, by the way:

Posted in Education, Media | No Comments »

At least 50 percent of ambulance services nationwide were being provided by morticians

Saturday, July 18th, 2026

Randolph Mantooth, known for playing paramedic Johnny Gage on the “Emergency!” TV series in the 1970s, died July 9 at age 80:

Mantooth broke out in 1972 when he was cast in “Emergency!,” which introduced the profession of paramedics to the public. He co-starred with Kevin Tighe in the popular NBC series which ran for six seasons, and performed most of his own stunts.

[…]

He played his “Emergency!” character Johnny Gage on other shows such as “Adam-12,” and remained an advocate for firefighters, paramedics and EMTs throughout his life.

The modern EMS system was instituted and funded in large part by the federal government through the Highway Safety Act of 1966 and the EMS Act of 1973:

In 1910, the American Red Cross began providing first-aid training programs across the country, initiating an organized effort to improve civilian bystander care. During World Wars I and II, further advances were made in EMS, although typically these were not replicated in the civilian setting until much later (Pozner et al., 2004). Following World War II, city EMS activities were for the most part run by municipal hospitals and fire departments. In smaller communities, funeral home hearses often served as ambulances because they were the only vehicle capable of transporting patients quickly in stretchers. With the advent of federal involvement in EMS in the early 1970s and the articulation of standards at the state and regional levels, these EMS providers were gradually replaced by others, including third-service providers, fire departments, rescue squads, and private ambulances (NHTSA, 1996).

By the late 1950s, prehospital emergency care in the United States was still little more than first aid (IOM, 1993). Around that time, however, advances in medical care began to spur the rapid development of modern EMS. While the first recorded use of mouth-to-mouth ventilation had been in 1732, it was not until 1958 that Dr. Peter Safar demonstrated it to be superior to other modes of manual ventilation. In 1960, cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) was shown to be efficacious. These two clinical advances led to the realization that rapid response of trained community members to cardiac emergencies could improve outcomes. The introduction of CPR and the development of portable external defibrillators in the 1960s provided the foundation for advanced cardiac life support (ACLS) that fueled much of the development of EMS systems in subsequent years.

In 1965, the President’s Committee for Traffic Safety published the report Health, Medical Care and Transportation of the Injured. The report recommended a national program to reduce highway deaths and injuries. The following year, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and National Research Council (NRC) released Accidental Death and Disability: The Neglected Disease of Modern Society (NAS/NRC, 1966). That report emphasized that the health care system needed to address injuries, which at the time were the leading cause of death for those aged 1–37. It noted that in most cases, ambulances were inappropriately designed, ill-equipped, and often staffed with inadequately trained personnel. For example, the report called attention to the fact that at least 50 percent of ambulance services nationwide were being provided by morticians.

The report contained a total of 29 recommendations, 11 of which applied directly to prehospital EMS (Delbridge et al., 1998). These included recommendations to (1) develop federal standards for ambulances (design, construction, equipment, supplies, personnel training and supervision); (2) adopt state ambulance regulations; (3) ensure provision of ambulance services applicable to the conditions of the local government; (4) initiate pilot programs to evaluate automotive and helicopter ambulance services in sparsely populated areas; (5) assign radio channels and equipment suitable for voice communications between ambulances and emergency departments (EDs) and other health-related agencies; and (6) develop a single nationwide telephone number for summoning an ambulance. The report also laid out a vision for the establishment of trauma systems as we know them today.

In addition to the momentum that had been provided by the President’s Commission, support for the NAS/NRC report was fueled by surgeons with military experience in Korea and World War II who recognized that the trauma care available to soldiers overseas was better than the care available in local communities. In 1966, Congress passed the Highway Safety Act, which led to the formation of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) within the Department of Transportation (DOT).

Posted in Media, Policy | 1 Comment »

She was delirious with an awful fever

Thursday, July 16th, 2026

In the fifth book of the Little House series, By the Shores of Silver Lake, Mary Ingalls goes blind due to scarlet fever — but that doesn’t seem to be what really happened:

In the spring of 1879, 14-year-old Mary “was taken suddenly sick with a pain in her head and grew worse quickly. She was delirious with an awful fever. We feared for several days that she would not get well,” Laura wrote. Laura vividly recounted the morning she looked at her sister and saw “one side of her face drawn out of shape.” Their mother Caroline explained Mary had suffered a stroke.

While Mary did slowly regain strength over the following weeks, her vision steadily faded. A doctor delivered the devastating verdict: “The nerves of her eyes had had the worst of the stroke and were dying — nothing could be done.” Charles Ingalls later took Mary to a specialist in Chicago, who confirmed there was no hope of recovery.

[…]

The Pioneer Girl manuscript makes no mention whatsoever of scarlet fever. And in a 1937 letter to her daughter Rose, Laura described Mary’s illness as “spinal meningitis” and “some sort of spinal sickness.” Meanwhile, the pupils’ register at the Iowa College for the Blind, where Mary later studied, listed her cause of blindness plainly as “brain fever.”

After continued analysis, Dr. Tarini published a 2013 study in the journal Pediatrics concluding that the true culprit was almost certainly viral meningoencephalitis — an inflammation of the brain and the membranes surrounding it.

So why blame scarlet fever? Turns out, scarlet fever was a household terror of the era, killing up to 30 percent of the children infected. It was so culturally embedded that it also appeared as a theme in Little Women and Frankenstein.

Posted in Media, Science | No Comments »

Runaway

Monday, July 6th, 2026

I have zero recollection of the movie Runaway coming out in 1984 — and, more tellingly, no recollection of it playing on cable or coming up in conversation after that. At some point in this last decade, it came up somehow, as a bit of a punchline, because it features Gene Simmons — yes, Gene Simmons of KISS — shooting a high-tech pistol with homing-missile rounds.

This did not sell me on the idea of seeking it out. Gene Simmons hams it up, but the other stars play their roles well enough — even though they’re hardly believable as a team of techies:

It turns out that this isn’t a sci-fi B movie — it’s by Michael Crichton — and it’s (unevenly) prescient about modern technology:

It’s about the introduction of smart weapons into civilian life – like the Exocet missile. The pilot who sunk the battleship Sheffield in the Falklands war never even saw the target. He just fired at it over the horizon. When people buy a coffeemaker these days, they expect it to have a microprocessor in it. What about when they buy a gun?

The setting feels like 1984, but with Heathkit robots that work like what we’re now expecting in the next few years. When a “runaway” robot goes rogue, they send in Tom Selleck’s character, who dons something like shark-diving chainmail and BMX gear — and calls for a “floater” drone with a TV camera to go in ahead of him. Prescient. He then dispatches the robot with a totally incongruous laser pistol, despite carrying a semi-auto pistol throughout the film. Again, its prescience is uneven.

Interestingly, the villain uses a “floater” with a smoke bomb, but when he goes to assassinate our heroes he uses what amounts to an RC car with a bomb — something we kids all came up with independently, back in the day.

Posted in Media, Technology, Weapons | 8 Comments »

His supposed deal with the devil became a marketing trope

Monday, June 29th, 2026

Blues music is respected now, but, as David Epstein’s explains (in Inside the Box), it was known in its early days as “the devil’s music.”

Pious families learned that blues shouldn’t be played in the house. [Robert] Johnson learned a different lesson: that competent guitar players could attract whiskey, women, and a little spending cash.

[…]

He was so poor that he had to start on a diddley bow—just a wire nailed to the side of a shack. At fifteen, he upgraded to a real guitar, albeit missing two strings.

[…]

Johnson played across the entire fretboard, using complex patterns and chords more typical of jazz. He used repetitive guitar riffs to add structure to a song, and he managed to emulate boogie-woogie piano players by doing two things at once with his right hand: picking out a steady, rhythmic bass line with his thumb while simultaneously playing elaborate melodies with his other fingers. That’s why Keith Richards, decades later, would think he was hearing two guitars.

[…]

During stops in San Antonio and Dallas in 1936 and 1937, Johnson recorded the only twenty-nine songs he left behind. A famous producer heard a recording and went looking for him. The producer meant to invite him to perform at a venue about as alien as possible to a juke joint: Carnegie Hall. He had trouble reaching Johnson, and before he could extend the invitation, the producer learned that Johnson was dead, the first member of what would become known as the “27 Club” of famous musicians who died at that age.

[…]

Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and The Doors all covered his songs. His supposed deal with the devil became a marketing trope.

[…]

Rather than to the crossroads, Johnson had gone back to Hazlehurst, and sought out Zimmerman, a proficient guitarist who was a few years his elder and could teach him how to play. Johnson moved in with Zimmerman and his family in nearby Beauregard, Mississippi. The teacher would take his student to Beauregard Cemetery at midnight, and joked about playing for ghosts, but the real reason was perfectly simple. As Zimmerman’s daughter told a historian in 2007: “He said [he’d go to the cemetery] ’cause he could play better ’cause it was still… real quiet. Real quiet…. And I think when he was carryin’ Robert up there it was so Robert could really concentrate on his guitar…. He was determined not to let him fail.” And why midnight? “I think because it was quiet and nobody around to walk and interfere.” Her father and Johnson would sit on two of the tombstones and carry on their lessons. Johnson’s progress, which seemed so magical that it engendered the most renowned ghost story in music, was the result of something more like the approach Isabel Allende employed to produce forty years of bestsellers.

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The result would be a new book about every eighteen months for the next forty-three years

Thursday, June 25th, 2026

I was only vaguely aware of Isabelle Allende — I knew she was a Spanish-speaking magical realist — when I came across David Epstein’s explanation (in Inside the Box) of her way of working — starting with a bit of backstory:

In 1970, Salvador Allende, the first cousin of Isabel’s father, was elected president of Chile. Three years later, he died during a military coup, and Augusto Pinochet began his long reign. After the coup, Allende’s grandfather warned her to keep a low profile, but she defied his instructions. She kept writing satirical columns for a feminist magazine and hosting a humorous television program until she was fired from everything as independent media withered. After that, she sheltered political fugitives in her house and helped them over the walls of foreign embassies.

In 1974, she began to realize how much danger she was in. Men in a black car stopped her two kids as they walked to school and told them, in vulgar terms, to let their mother know that she had better leave the country. Allende fled to Venezuela.

[…]

Six years later, Allende was still in Venezuela. She was thirty-nine and working a job she hated as a school administrator when she got a phone call informing her that her grandfather was dying. He was the anchor in the country of her childhood. Without him, her exile would feel complete. She could not return to visit, but she wanted him to know that the family stories he had imparted, many of them tinged with magic, would live on with her. He hated the telephone, so she decided to draft a letter. She took out an old Underwood typewriter, sat alone at the kitchen table at night, and began to write. That was January 8, 1981.

I didn’t realize the “Venezuelan” writer was Chilean and closely related to that Allende. The first mention of Salvador Allende on this blog naturally references A. Stafford Beer’s Cybersyn system. Jared Diamond noted, “The coup was welcomed with relief and broad support from centrist and rightist Chileans, much of the middle class, and of course the oligarchs.”

Back to her writing methodology:

What began as a letter to her grandfather turned into a ritual. Every January 8, she would clear her calendar and start a new book, assuming she had finished the previous one. The result would be a new book about every eighteen months for the next forty-three years.

[…]

Allende’s January 8 ritual is a form of what social scientists call a “commitment device”: a self-imposed restriction of freedom in service of a larger goal. There is no obvious reason that she couldn’t start on some other day of the year, but the ritual itself has become a promise that brings her predictably back to her most productive space (and keeps others out of it).

Commitment devices have been shown to help people save more money (when they open accounts with limited withdrawal windows) and exercise more (using voluntary contracts in which participants have to pay if they skip too many days). Behavioral scientist Katy Milkman would classify Allende’s January routine as a “soft” commitment device, because the immediate penalty for failure is psychological, not financial, but those often work too.

Allende’s reward for her rigid ritual is unadulterated focus. As computer scientist and author Cal Newport has noted, writers were, in a sense, the original remote workers, and anyone who studies the great ones will notice that they tend to go out of their way to designate specific space and time for their work. Maya Angelou famously rented hotel rooms and stripped even the bland artwork from the walls so as not to be engaged by anything extraneous. Victor Hugo locked away his own clothes so he wouldn’t be tempted to change and go outside while writing. Marcel Proust lined the bedroom where he worked with cork to dampen outside sound.

Those are extreme examples, but the reason such practices are important is that the kind of sustained focus Allende employs hour after hour, and year after year, is highly unnatural. Our brains evolved to be extremely distractible, to attend to any novel sights and sounds in our vicinity. Unsurprisingly, research has found that people instantly become more creative when distractions are removed. Science writer Annie Murphy Paul, in her book The Extended Mind, explains: “It was only when we found ourselves compelled to concentrate in a sustained way on abstract concepts that we needed to sequester ourselves in order to think. To attend for hours at a time to words, numbers, and other symbolic content is a tall order for our brains.” And we have been struggling.

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Lucy Westenra was apparently AB positive (AB+)

Saturday, June 20th, 2026

When I recently revisited Dracula, I noticed that Van Helsing treats Lucy Westenra with a blood transfusion, as Dr. Seward explains:

Van Helsing and I were shown up to Lucy’s room. If I was shocked when I saw her yesterday, I was horrified when I saw her to-day. She was ghastly, chalkily pale; the red seemed to have gone even from her lips and gums, and the bones of her face stood out prominently; her breathing was painful to see or hear. Van Helsing’s face grew set as marble, and his eyebrows converged till they almost touched over his nose. Lucy lay motionless, and did not seem to have strength to speak, so for a while we were all silent. Then Van Helsing beckoned to me, and we went gently out of the room. The instant we had closed the door he stepped quickly along the passage to the next door, which was open. Then he pulled me quickly in with him and closed the door. “My God!” he said; “this is dreadful. There is no time to be lost. She will die for sheer want of blood to keep the heart’s action as it should be. There must be transfusion of blood at once. Is it you or me?”

“I am younger and stronger, Professor. It must be me.”

“Then get ready at once. I will bring up my bag. I am prepared.”

I went downstairs with him, and as we were going there was a knock at the hall-door. When we reached the hall the maid had just opened the door, and Arthur was stepping quickly in. He rushed up to me, saying in an eager whisper:—

“Jack, I was so anxious. I read between the lines of your letter, and have been in an agony. The dad was better, so I ran down here to see for myself. Is not that gentleman Dr. Van Helsing? I am so thankful to you, sir, for coming.” When first the Professor’s eye had lit upon him he had been angry at his interruption at such a time; but now, as he took in his stalwart proportions and recognised the strong young manhood which seemed to emanate from him, his eyes gleamed. Without a pause he said to him gravely as he held out his hand:—

“Sir, you have come in time. You are the lover of our dear miss. She is bad, very, very bad. Nay, my child, do not go like that.” For he suddenly grew pale and sat down in a chair almost fainting. “You are to help her. You can do more than any that live, and your courage is your best help.”

“What can I do?” asked Arthur hoarsely. “Tell me, and I shall do it. My life is hers, and I would give the last drop of blood in my body for her.” The Professor has a strongly humorous side, and I could from old knowledge detect a trace of its origin in his answer:—

“My young sir, I do not ask so much as that—not the last!”

“What shall I do?” There was fire in his eyes, and his open nostril quivered with intent. Van Helsing slapped him on the shoulder. “Come!” he said. “You are a man, and it is a man we want. You are better than me, better than my friend John.” Arthur looked bewildered, and the Professor went on by explaining in a kindly way:—

“Young miss is bad, very bad. She wants blood, and blood she must have or die. My friend John and I have consulted; and we are about to perform what we call transfusion of blood—to transfer from full veins of one to the empty veins which pine for him. John was to give his blood, as he is the more young and strong than me”—here Arthur took my hand and wrung it hard in silence—“but, now you are here, you are more good than us, old or young, who toil much in the world of thought. Our nerves are not so calm and our blood not so bright than yours!” Arthur turned to him and said:—

“If you only knew how gladly I would die for her you would understand——”

He stopped, with a sort of choke in his voice.

“Good boy!” said Van Helsing. “In the not-so-far-off you will be happy that you have done all for her you love. Come now and be silent. You shall kiss her once before it is done, but then you must go; and you must leave at my sign. Say no word to Madame; you know how it is with her! There must be no shock; any knowledge of this would be one. Come!”

We all went up to Lucy’s room. Arthur by direction remained outside. Lucy turned her head and looked at us, but said nothing. She was not asleep, but she was simply too weak to make the effort. Her eyes spoke to us; that was all. Van Helsing took some things from his bag and laid them on a little table out of sight. Then he mixed a narcotic, and coming over to the bed, said cheerily:—

“Now, little miss, here is your medicine. Drink it off, like a good child. See, I lift you so that to swallow is easy. Yes.” She had made the effort with success.

It astonished me how long the drug took to act. This, in fact, marked the extent of her weakness. The time seemed endless until sleep began to flicker in her eyelids. At last, however, the narcotic began to manifest its potency; and she fell into a deep sleep. When the Professor was satisfied he called Arthur into the room, and bade him strip off his coat. Then he added: “You may take that one little kiss whiles I bring over the table. Friend John, help to me!” So neither of us looked whilst he bent over her.

Van Helsing turning to me, said:

“He is so young and strong and of blood so pure that we need not defibrinate it.”

Then with swiftness, but with absolute method, Van Helsing performed the operation. As the transfusion went on something like life seemed to come back to poor Lucy’s cheeks, and through Arthur’s growing pallor the joy of his face seemed absolutely to shine. After a bit I began to grow anxious, for the loss of blood was telling on Arthur, strong man as he was. It gave me an idea of what a terrible strain Lucy’s system must have undergone that what weakened Arthur only partially restored her. But the Professor’s face was set, and he stood watch in hand and with his eyes fixed now on the patient and now on Arthur. I could hear my own heart beat. Presently he said in a soft voice: “Do not stir an instant. It is enough. You attend him; I will look to her.” When all was over I could see how much Arthur was weakened. I dressed the wound and took his arm to bring him away, when Van Helsing spoke without turning round—the man seems to have eyes in the back of his head:—

“The brave lover, I think, deserve another kiss, which he shall have presently.” And as he had now finished his operation, he adjusted the pillow to the patient’s head. As he did so the narrow black velvet band which she seems always to wear round her throat, buckled with an old diamond buckle which her lover had given her, was dragged a little up, and showed a red mark on her throat. Arthur did not notice it, but I could hear the deep hiss of indrawn breath which is one of Van Helsing’s ways of betraying emotion. He said nothing at the moment, but turned to me, saying: “Now take down our brave young lover, give him of the port wine, and let him lie down a while. He must then go home and rest, sleep much and eat much, that he may be recruited of what he has so given to his love. He must not stay here. Hold! a moment. I may take it, sir, that you are anxious of result. Then bring it with you that in all ways the operation is successful. You have saved her life this time, and you can go home and rest easy in mind that all that can be is. I shall tell her all when she is well; she shall love you none the less for what you have done. Good-bye.”

When Arthur had gone I went back to the room. Lucy was sleeping gently, but her breathing was stronger; I could see the counterpane move as her breast heaved. By the bedside sat Van Helsing, looking at her intently. The velvet band again covered the red mark. I asked the Professor in a whisper:—

“What do you make of that mark on her throat?”

“What do you make of it?”

“I have not examined it yet,” I answered, and then and there proceeded to loose the band. Just over the external jugular vein there were two punctures, not large, but not wholesome-looking. There was no sign of disease, but the edges were white and worn-looking, as if by some trituration. It at once occurred to me that this wound, or whatever it was, might be the means of that manifest loss of blood; but I abandoned the idea as soon as formed, for such a thing could not be. The whole bed would have been drenched to a scarlet with the blood which the girl must have lost to leave such a pallor as she had before the transfusion.

“Well?” said Van Helsing.

“Well,” said I, “I can make nothing of it.” The Professor stood up. “I must go back to Amsterdam to-night,” he said. “There are books and things there which I want. You must remain here all the night, and you must not let your sight pass from her.”

“Shall I have a nurse?” I asked.

“We are the best nurses, you and I. You keep watch all night; see that she is well fed, and that nothing disturbs her. You must not sleep all the night. Later on we can sleep, you and I. I shall be back as soon as possible. And then we may begin.”

“May begin?” I said. “What on earth do you mean?”

“We shall see!” he answered, as he hurried out. He came back a moment later and put his head inside the door and said with warning finger held up:—

“Remember, she is your charge. If you leave her, and harm befall, you shall not sleep easy hereafter!”

Dr. Seward watches over her for a few nights. Then, when he returns after finally getting a good night’s sleep…

As I raised the blind, and the morning sunlight flooded the room, I heard the Professor’s low hiss of inspiration, and knowing its rarity, a deadly fear shot through my heart. As I passed over he moved back, and his exclamation of horror, “Gott in Himmel!” needed no enforcement from his agonised face. He raised his hand and pointed to the bed, and his iron face was drawn and ashen white. I felt my knees begin to tremble.

There on the bed, seemingly in a swoon, lay poor Lucy, more horribly white and wan-looking than ever. Even the lips were white, and the gums seemed to have shrunken back from the teeth, as we sometimes see in a corpse after a prolonged illness. Van Helsing raised his foot to stamp in anger, but the instinct of his life and all the long years of habit stood to him, and he put it down again softly. “Quick!” he said. “Bring the brandy.” I flew to the dining-room, and returned with the decanter. He wetted the poor white lips with it, and together we rubbed palm and wrist and heart. He felt her heart, and after a few moments of agonising suspense said:—

“It is not too late. It beats, though but feebly. All our work is undone; we must begin again. There is no young Arthur here now; I have to call on you yourself this time, friend John.” As he spoke, he was dipping into his bag and producing the instruments for transfusion; I had taken off my coat and rolled up my shirt-sleeve. There was no possibility of an opiate just at present, and no need of one; and so, without a moment’s delay, we began the operation. After a time—it did not seem a short time either, for the draining away of one’s blood, no matter how willingly it be given, is a terrible feeling—Van Helsing held up a warning finger. “Do not stir,” he said, “but I fear that with growing strength she may wake; and that would make danger, oh, so much danger. But I shall precaution take. I shall give hypodermic injection of morphia.” He proceeded then, swiftly and deftly, to carry out his intent. The effect on Lucy was not bad, for the faint seemed to merge subtly into the narcotic sleep. It was with a feeling of personal pride that I could see a faint tinge of colour steal back into the pallid cheeks and lips. No man knows, till he experiences it, what it is to feel his own life-blood drawn away into the veins of the woman he loves.

The Professor watched me critically. “That will do,” he said. “Already?” I remonstrated. “You took a great deal more from Art.” To which he smiled a sad sort of smile as he replied:—

“He is her lover, her fiancé. You have work, much work, to do for her and for others; and the present will suffice.”

When we stopped the operation, he attended to Lucy, whilst I applied digital pressure to my own incision. I laid down, whilst I waited his leisure to attend to me, for I felt faint and a little sick. By-and-by he bound up my wound, and sent me downstairs to get a glass of wine for myself. As I was leaving the room, he came after me, and half whispered:—

“Mind, nothing must be said of this. If our young lover should turn up unexpected, as before, no word to him. It would at once frighten him and enjealous him, too. There must be none. So!”

When I came back he looked at me carefully, and then said:—

“You are not much the worse. Go into the room, and lie on your sofa, and rest awhile; then have much breakfast, and come here to me.”

I followed out his orders, for I knew how right and wise they were. I had done my part, and now my next duty was to keep up my strength. I felt very weak, and in the weakness lost something of the amazement at what had occurred. I fell asleep on the sofa, however, wondering over and over again how Lucy had made such a retrograde movement, and how she could have been drained of so much blood with no sign anywhere to show for it. I think I must have continued my wonder in my dreams, for, sleeping and waking, my thoughts always came back to the little punctures in her throat and the ragged, exhausted appearance of their edges—tiny though they were.

Lucy slept well into the day, and when she woke she was fairly well and strong, though not nearly so much so as the day before. When Van Helsing had seen her, he went out for a walk, leaving me in charge, with strict injunctions that I was not to leave her for a moment. I could hear his voice in the hall, asking the way to the nearest telegraph office.

This process of getting better and getting worse again goes on for ten days, as she receives fresh blood from each of our four heroes:

”Ten days! Then I guess, Jack Seward, that that poor pretty creature that we all love has had put into her veins within that time the blood of four strong men. Man alive, her whole body wouldn’t hold it.” Then, coming close to me, he spoke in a fierce half-whisper: “What took it out?”

The novel is from 1897, and blood transfusion was not a safe and effective procedure:

Working at the Royal Society in the 1660s, the physician Richard Lower began examining the effects of changes in blood volume on circulatory function and developed methods for cross-circulatory study in animals, obviating clotting by closed arteriovenous connections. The new instruments he was able to devise enabled him to perform the first reliably documented successful transfusion of blood in front of his distinguished colleagues from the Royal Society.

According to Lower’s account, “…towards the end of February 1665 [I] selected one dog of medium size, opened its jugular vein, and drew off blood, until its strength was nearly gone. Then, to make up for the great loss of this dog by the blood of a second, I introduced blood from the cervical artery of a fairly large mastiff, which had been fastened alongside the first, until this latter animal showed … it was overfilled … by the inflowing blood.” After he “sewed up the jugular veins”, the animal recovered “with no sign of discomfort or of displeasure”.

Lower had performed the first blood transfusion between animals. He was then “requested by the Honorable [Robert] Boyle … to acquaint the Royal Society with the procedure for the whole experiment”, which he did in December 1665 in the Society’s Philosophical Transactions.

The first blood transfusion from animal to human was administered by Jean-Baptiste Denys, eminent physician to King Louis XIV of France, on June 15, 1667. He transfused the blood of a sheep into a 15-year-old boy, who survived the transfusion. Denys performed another transfusion into a labourer, who also survived. Both instances were likely due to the small amount of blood that was actually transfused into these people. This allowed them to withstand the allergic reaction.

Denys’s third patient to undergo a blood transfusion was Swedish Baron Gustaf Bonde. He received two transfusions. After the second transfusion Bonde died. In the winter of 1667, Denys performed several transfusions on Antoine Mauroy with calf’s blood. On the third account Mauroy died.

Six months later in London, Lower performed the first human transfusion of animal blood in Britain, where he “superintended the introduction in [a patient's] arm at various times of some ounces of sheep’s blood at a meeting of the Royal Society, and without any inconvenience to him.” The recipient was Arthur Coga, “the subject of a harmless form of insanity.” Sheep’s blood was used because of speculation about the value of blood exchange between species; it had been suggested that blood from a gentle lamb might quiet the tempestuous spirit of an agitated person and that the shy might be made outgoing by blood from more sociable creatures. Coga received 20 shillings (equivalent to £206 in 2025) to participate in the experiment.

[…]

Finally, in 1668, the Royal Society and the French government both banned the procedure. The Vatican condemned these experiments in 1670.

[…]

In the early 19th century, British obstetrician James Blundell made efforts to treat hemorrhage by transfusion of human blood using a syringe. In 1818, after experiments with animals, he performed the first successful transfusion of human blood to treat postpartum hemorrhage at Guy’s Hospital in London. Blundell used the patient’s husband as a donor, and extracted four ounces of blood from his arm to transfuse into his wife. During the years 1825 and 1830, Blundell performed 10 transfusions, five of which were beneficial, and published his results.[96] He also invented a number of instruments for the transfusion of blood.[97] He made a substantial amount of money from this endeavour, roughly $2 million ($50 million real dollars).

In 1840, Samuel Armstrong Lane, aided by Blundell, performed the first successful whole blood transfusion to treat haemophilia at St George’s Hospital Medical School in London.

However, early transfusions were risky and many resulted in the death of the patient.

[…]

Only in 1901, when the Austrian Karl Landsteiner discovered three human blood groups (O, A, and B), did blood transfusion achieve a scientific basis and become safer.

Lucy Westenra was apparently AB positive (AB+), a universal recipient.

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I thought it was some trick of the moonlight, some weird effect of shadow

Thursday, June 18th, 2026

When I finally read Dracula, I was struck by the number of visually interesting scenes that I didn’t remember from any of the movie versions I’d seen. For instance, when Harker is a prisoner in Dracula’s castle, he sees something he can’t quite believe:

As I leaned from the window my eye was caught by something moving a storey below me, and somewhat to my left, where I imagined, from the order of the rooms, that the windows of the Count’s own room would look out. The window at which I stood was tall and deep, stone-mullioned, and though weatherworn, was still complete; but it was evidently many a day since the case had been there. I drew back behind the stonework, and looked carefully out.

What I saw was the Count’s head coming out from the window. I did not see the face, but I knew the man by the neck and the movement of his back and arms. In any case I could not mistake the hands which I had had so many opportunities of studying. I was at first interested and somewhat amused, for it is wonderful how small a matter will interest and amuse a man when he is a prisoner. But my very feelings changed to repulsion and terror when I saw the whole man slowly emerge from the window and begin to crawl down the castle wall over that dreadful abyss, face down with his cloak spreading out around him like great wings. At first I could not believe my eyes. I thought it was some trick of the moonlight, some weird effect of shadow; but I kept looking, and it could be no delusion. I saw the fingers and toes grasp the corners of the stones, worn clear of the mortar by the stress of years, and by thus using every projection and inequality move downwards with considerable speed, just as a lizard moves along a wall.

What manner of man is this, or what manner of creature is it in the semblance of man? I feel the dread of this horrible place overpowering me; I am in fear—in awful fear—and there is no escape for me; I am encompassed about with terrors that I dare not think of….

15 May.—Once more have I seen the Count go out in his lizard fashion. He moved downwards in a sidelong way, some hundred feet down, and a good deal to the left. He vanished into some hole or window. When his head had disappeared, I leaned out to try and see more, but without avail—the distance was too great to allow a proper angle of sight.

It turns out this has appeared briefly, and not particularly faithfully, in a number of films, including Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which I had watched just a few years earlier:

My favorite scene in the whole novel comes when Lord Godalming demonstrates how prepared for Dracula’s minions he is, while our heroes explore the London property that Harker helped the Count buy:

A few minutes later I saw Morris step suddenly back from a corner, which he was examining. We all followed his movements with our eyes, for undoubtedly some nervousness was growing on us, and we saw a whole mass of phosphorescence, which twinkled like stars. We all instinctively drew back. The whole place was becoming alive with rats.

For a moment or two we stood appalled, all save Lord Godalming, who was seemingly prepared for such an emergency. Rushing over to the great iron-bound oaken door, which Dr. Seward had described from the outside, and which I had seen myself, he turned the key in the lock, drew the huge bolts, and swung the door open. Then, taking his little silver whistle from his pocket, he blew a low, shrill call. It was answered from behind Dr. Seward’s house by the yelping of dogs, and after about a minute three terriers came dashing round the corner of the house. Unconsciously we had all moved towards the door, and as we moved I noticed that the dust had been much disturbed: the boxes which had been taken out had been brought this way. But even in the minute that had elapsed the number of the rats had vastly increased. They seemed to swarm over the place all at once, till the lamplight, shining on their moving dark bodies and glittering, baleful eyes, made the place look like a bank of earth set with fireflies. The dogs dashed on, but at the threshold suddenly stopped and snarled, and then, simultaneously lifting their noses, began to howl in most lugubrious fashion. The rats were multiplying in thousands, and we moved out.

Lord Godalming lifted one of the dogs, and carrying him in, placed him on the floor. The instant his feet touched the ground he seemed to recover his courage, and rushed at his natural enemies. They fled before him so fast that before he had shaken the life out of a score, the other dogs, who had by now been lifted in the same manner, had but small prey ere the whole mass had vanished.

With their going it seemed as if some evil presence had departed, for the dogs frisked about and barked merrily as they made sudden darts at their prostrate foes, and turned them over and over and tossed them in the air with vicious shakes. We all seemed to find our spirits rise. Whether it was the purifying of the deadly atmosphere by the opening of the chapel door, or the relief which we experienced by finding ourselves in the open I know not; but most certainly the shadow of dread seemed to slip from us like a robe, and the occasion of our coming lost something of its grim significance, though we did not slacken a whit in our resolution. We closed the outer door and barred and locked it, and bringing the dogs with us, began our search of the house. We found nothing throughout except dust in extraordinary proportions, and all untouched save for my own footsteps when I had made my first visit. Never once did the dogs exhibit any symptom of uneasiness, and even when we returned to the chapel they frisked about as though they had been rabbit-hunting in a summer wood.

Lastly, when it comes time to confront Dracula, Harker pulls out one of the most visually distinctive weapons ever, a Kukri knife, as made famous by the Gurkhas of Nepal:

“He will be here before long now,” said Van Helsing, who had been consulting his pocket-book. “Nota bene, in Madam’s telegram he went south from Carfax, that means he went to cross the river, and he could only do so at slack of tide, which should be something before one o’clock. That he went south has a meaning for us. He is as yet only suspicious; and he went from Carfax first to the place where he would suspect interference least. You must have been at Bermondsey only a short time before him. That he is not here already shows that he went to Mile End next. This took him some time; for he would then have to be carried over the river in some way. Believe me, my friends, we shall not have long to wait now. We should have ready some plan of attack, so that we may throw away no chance. Hush, there is no time now. Have all your arms! Be ready!” He held up a warning hand as he spoke, for we all could hear a key softly inserted in the lock of the hall door.

I could not but admire, even at such a moment, the way in which a dominant spirit asserted itself. In all our hunting parties and adventures in different parts of the world, Quincey Morris had always been the one to arrange the plan of action, and Arthur and I had been accustomed to obey him implicitly. Now, the old habit seemed to be renewed instinctively. With a swift glance around the room, he at once laid out our plan of attack, and, without speaking a word, with a gesture, placed us each in position. Van Helsing, Harker, and I were just behind the door, so that when it was opened the Professor could guard it whilst we two stepped between the incomer and the door. Godalming behind and Quincey in front stood just out of sight ready to move in front of the window. We waited in a suspense that made the seconds pass with nightmare slowness. The slow, careful steps came along the hall; the Count was evidently prepared for some surprise—at least he feared it.

Suddenly with a single bound he leaped into the room, winning a way past us before any of us could raise a hand to stay him. There was something so panther-like in the movement—something so unhuman, that it seemed to sober us all from the shock of his coming. The first to act was Harker, who, with a quick movement, threw himself before the door leading into the room in the front of the house. As the Count saw us, a horrible sort of snarl passed over his face, showing the eye-teeth long and pointed; but the evil smile as quickly passed into a cold stare of lion-like disdain. His expression again changed as, with a single impulse, we all advanced upon him. It was a pity that we had not some better organised plan of attack, for even at the moment I wondered what we were to do. I did not myself know whether our lethal weapons would avail us anything. Harker evidently meant to try the matter, for he had ready his great Kukri knife and made a fierce and sudden cut at him. The blow was a powerful one; only the diabolical quickness of the Count’s leap back saved him. A second less and the trenchant blade had shorne through his heart. As it was, the point just cut the cloth of his coat, making a wide gap whence a bundle of bank-notes and a stream of gold fell out. The expression of the Count’s face was so hellish, that for a moment I feared for Harker, though I saw him throw the terrible knife aloft again for another stroke. Instinctively I moved forward with a protective impulse, holding the Crucifix and Wafer in my left hand. I felt a mighty power fly along my arm; and it was without surprise that I saw the monster cower back before a similar movement made spontaneously by each one of us. It would be impossible to describe the expression of hate and baffled malignity—of anger and hellish rage—which came over the Count’s face. His waxen hue became greenish-yellow by the contrast of his burning eyes, and the red scar on the forehead showed on the pallid skin like a palpitating wound. The next instant, with a sinuous dive he swept under Harker’s arm, ere his blow could fall, and, grasping a handful of the money from the floor, dashed across the room, threw himself at the window. Amid the crash and glitter of the falling glass, he tumbled into the flagged area below. Through the sound of the shivering glass I could hear the “ting” of the gold, as some of the sovereigns fell on the flagging.

It takes on an even more prominent role as the final confrontation approaches:

25 October, Noon.—No news yet of the ship’s arrival. Mrs. Harker’s hypnotic report this morning was the same as usual, so it is possible that we may get news at any moment. We men are all in a fever of excitement, except Harker, who is calm; his hands are cold as ice, and an hour ago I found him whetting the edge of the great Ghoorka knife which he now always carries with him. It will be a bad lookout for the Count if the edge of that “Kukri” ever touches his throat, driven by that stern, ice-cold hand!

Mina Harker describes the final confrontation:

All at once two voices shouted out to: “Halt!” One was my Jonathan’s, raised in a high key of passion; the other Mr. Morris’ strong resolute tone of quiet command. The gypsies may not have known the language, but there was no mistaking the tone, in whatever tongue the words were spoken. Instinctively they reined in, and at the instant Lord Godalming and Jonathan dashed up at one side and Dr. Seward and Mr. Morris on the other. The leader of the gypsies, a splendid-looking fellow who sat his horse like a centaur, waved them back, and in a fierce voice gave to his companions some word to proceed. They lashed the horses which sprang forward; but the four men raised their Winchester rifles, and in an unmistakable way commanded them to stop. At the same moment Dr. Van Helsing and I rose behind the rock and pointed our weapons at them. Seeing that they were surrounded the men tightened their reins and drew up. The leader turned to them and gave a word at which every man of the gypsy party drew what weapon he carried, knife or pistol, and held himself in readiness to attack. Issue was joined in an instant.

The leader, with a quick movement of his rein, threw his horse out in front, and pointing first to the sun—now close down on the hill tops—and then to the castle, said something which I did not understand. For answer, all four men of our party threw themselves from their horses and dashed towards the cart. I should have felt terrible fear at seeing Jonathan in such danger, but that the ardour of battle must have been upon me as well as the rest of them; I felt no fear, but only a wild, surging desire to do something. Seeing the quick movement of our parties, the leader of the gypsies gave a command; his men instantly formed round the cart in a sort of undisciplined endeavour, each one shouldering and pushing the other in his eagerness to carry out the order.

In the midst of this I could see that Jonathan on one side of the ring of men, and Quincey on the other, were forcing a way to the cart; it was evident that they were bent on finishing their task before the sun should set. Nothing seemed to stop or even to hinder them. Neither the levelled weapons nor the flashing knives of the gypsies in front, nor the howling of the wolves behind, appeared to even attract their attention. Jonathan’s impetuosity, and the manifest singleness of his purpose, seemed to overawe those in front of him; instinctively they cowered, aside and let him pass. In an instant he had jumped upon the cart, and, with a strength which seemed incredible, raised the great box, and flung it over the wheel to the ground. In the meantime, Mr. Morris had had to use force to pass through his side of the ring of Szgany. All the time I had been breathlessly watching Jonathan I had, with the tail of my eye, seen him pressing desperately forward, and had seen the knives of the gypsies flash as he won a way through them, and they cut at him. He had parried with his great bowie knife, and at first I thought that he too had come through in safety; but as he sprang beside Jonathan, who had by now jumped from the cart, I could see that with his left hand he was clutching at his side, and that the blood was spurting through his fingers. He did not delay notwithstanding this, for as Jonathan, with desperate energy, attacked one end of the chest, attempting to prize off the lid with his great Kukri knife, he attacked the other frantically with his bowie. Under the efforts of both men the lid began to yield; the nails drew with a quick screeching sound, and the top of the box was thrown back.

By this time the gypsies, seeing themselves covered by the Winchesters, and at the mercy of Lord Godalming and Dr. Seward, had given in and made no resistance. The sun was almost down on the mountain tops, and the shadows of the whole group fell long upon the snow. I saw the Count lying within the box upon the earth, some of which the rude falling from the cart had scattered over him. He was deathly pale, just like a waxen image, and the red eyes glared with the horrible vindictive look which I knew too well.

As I looked, the eyes saw the sinking sun, and the look of hate in them turned to triumph.

But, on the instant, came the sweep and flash of Jonathan’s great knife. I shrieked as I saw it shear through the throat; whilst at the same moment Mr. Morris’s bowie knife plunged into the heart.

It was like a miracle; but before our very eyes, and almost in the drawing of a breath, the whole body crumbled into dust and passed from our sight.

I shall be glad as long as I live that even in that moment of final dissolution, there was in the face a look of peace, such as I never could have imagined might have rested there.

It turns out that Bram Stoker’s Dracula does in fact feature a kukri, but a bit too subtly:

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The ideas that made an impact in the long run were those that embedded something new in something already established

Wednesday, June 17th, 2026

In Shakespeare’s era, David Epstein explains (in Inside the Box), creativity was more associated with the ability to improve upon something that existed than with sheer originality:

If the audience already knew the story, they could readily take in the unique aspects that each new creator brought to it.

[…]

Robert McKee, in his classic screenwriting book Story, coined the term “Archplot” to describe the structure of nearly every Hollywood hit.

[…]

The more creative the setting of a film, McKee explains, the more closely it must hew to Archplot in order to resonate with a wide audience. He points to the counterintuitive fact that “of all genres Fantasy is the most rigid and structurally conventional.”

[…]

The stranger the setting, the more conventional the plot. (Conversely, for Woolf to use new narrative methods, she had to stick with extremely conventional settings.)

[…]

In a classic paper on technological innovation, a pair of researchers coined the term “robust design” to describe features that help the intended audience immediately place a new thing in the context of a familiar world.

[…]

At every turn, Edison used design choices that made adoption easy. He initially limited bulbs to 13 watts so that they would produce light similar to familiar gas lamps, and he retained lampshades even though they were no longer needed to protect gas flames from a draft. The effect was such that adopters might hardly realize that they were bathed in a new kind of light. For charging customers, Edison employed meters based on the familiar devices used by gas companies, even though this meant that early customers got six months of free lighting because he hadn’t yet figured out a way for meters to measure usage. Every choice Edison made prioritized the social context, even when that made his job more difficult, and even when it meant defying his most important backers.

In order to mimic the existing utility distribution system, Edison wanted to use underground wires to carry electricity from a central generation point to many buildings. But two of his biggest investors, William Vanderbilt and J. P. Morgan, insisted that Edison instead sell isolated systems of small generators, wires, and lights to individual customers. Edison had to threaten to resign to get his way. It led to lighting that was far easier for new customers to understand and use than if everyone had to manage their own isolated system. In just a decade, Edison replaced not only New York City’s gas lights with incandescent bulbs, but the gas infrastructure that had been both physically and deeply politically ingrained in the city for fifty years. “Edison triumphed over the gas industry not by clearly distinguishing his new system,” the researchers wrote, “but, rather, by initially cloaking it in the mantle of these established institutions.”

[…]

What I’ve been calling “Virginia Woolf’s rope”—the link to something familiar when trying something new—a Harvard Business School professor referred to with the more management-like moniker: “optimal newness.”

[…]

Some papers relied on highly novel combinations of knowledge: They primarily cited areas of research that rarely (or never) appeared together. Others cited only familiar combinations that recur constantly. But the “hit” papers, those that went on to be used by a huge number of other scientists, struck a balance. Papers that were grounded in conventional knowledge combinations, but featured an injection of unusual combinations, were at least twice as likely as average papers to become scientific blockbusters.

[…]

Most management concepts were fads that disappeared quickly. The ideas that made an impact in the long run were those that embedded something new in something already established.

[…]

Whether it is making new music, new Broadway shows, new movies, new video games, or new companies, the most successful teams tend to comprise members who have a wide variety of prior work experiences, but also some team members with prior collaborations or common background experiences. Creative teams that include only repeat collaborators, or, conversely, teams with only new members who have no common background experience, are less likely to find their way to the familiarity/ originality sweet spot.

[…]

There was no need for many early electric vehicles to be charged via a cable that looks just like a gas hose with a gas nozzle that plugs into a port near where a nonexistent gas tank would be, nor for an electric pickup truck with no engine under the hood to keep the same shape as its gasoline-powered cousins.

[…]

Today, this design principle is sometimes called skeuomorphism: New stuff retains facets of old stuff (like the “folders” on your computer) in order to communicate to users what the new stuff can do. “Without invoking existing understandings,” the Edison researchers warned, “innovations may never be understood and adopted in the first place.”

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DC Comics became its distributor and limited Atlas to eight newsstand titles each month

Thursday, June 11th, 2026

As the editor in chief of Atlas Comics, Stan Lee, David Epstein explains (in Inside the Box), led a revenue strategy of cranking out tons of dispensable romance, Westerns, and science fiction:

Then in 1957, Atlas’s rival DC Comics became its distributor, and limited Atlas to eight newsstand titles each month. With the high-volume strategy precluded, Atlas reduced expenses and experimented with stories that might have more lasting appeal for readers. They landed on superheroes with real-life problems, like broken families or teen anxiety, and rebranded as Marvel.

Atlas Comics was the successor to Timely Comics, which had reached the peak of its popularity during the war years with the Human Torch, the Sub-Mariner, and Captain America.