Stamp Collecting Research Articles

The Ear, the Foot, the Gut: The Metaphoric Body of the Timer Tradition of Old English Metrics

The Ear, the Foot, the Gut:The Metaphoric Body of the Timer Tradition of Old English Metrics David O'Neil Though at first glance an unlikely topic for the current issue, metrical theory is deeply indebted to embodied experience. Poetic meter has often been described in terms of corporeal cadences such as the pulse, the breath, and the step, and technical terms such as arsis and thesis are based in corporeal metaphor. As a harnessing of our speech's inherent prosody, meter may even be felt to express the internal rhythms of our bodies, which, like the celestial bodies, are bound in regularly recurring natural cycles. This is not to say that metered language must be regular at every level of description, but rhythm implies regularity at some level. For example, while a line of ancient Greek dactylic hexameter may admit sixty-four unique sequences of twelve to seventeen heavy and light syllables, rhythmic performance may be inferred from its regular quantitative pattern of six tetramoraic feet. When a meter is described in such a way that it seems to lack any such regularity, we may perceive the apparent absence of rhythm as uncomfortably disembodied. This has sometimes been the case for students of the Anglo-Saxon alliterative tradition, who have identified over a hundred metrical subtypes in Beowulf alone,1 but no metrical generalization (or at least one that has been agreed on) that might provide a basis for rhythmic performance. Some degree of irregularity is apparent in syllable count, mora count, the position and number of syllables of primary and secondary stress, the position and number of unstressed syllables, and the occurrence of stress clash.2 While stress-based typologies such as Eduard Sievers's attain a kind of regularity, they generalize only halfway, leaving the impression that the meter is based not on a single system, but on a collection of systems that each features its own distinct prosodic contour.3 Such irregularities appear even greater when one considers how frequently syllables must be marked extrametrical due to anacrusis and resolution, operations which Chris Golston succinctly describes as [End Page 65] accommodations in which syllables are "split apart, joined together, or ignored,"4 and which Ian Cornelius includes among the "three salient problems" or "conceptual embarrassments" of stress-based theories.5 Even Geoffrey Russom's insight that the alliterative half-line is prosodically the equivalent of two OE words does not eliminate the appearance of unusual metrical complexity.6 Word-feet range in length from two to six syllables, are subject to strict combinatorial rules, and (like OE words) are structured in varied concatenations of heavy and light syllables at three distinct stress levels. The extent of this complexity is exceptional and contravenes what Golston calls the "basic tendency in language and meter to have one set of feet" ("Old English Feet," p. 112). The tolerance (or intolerance) of individual metrists for rhythmic irregularity accounts for important historic divisions in the field—most notably between the "stressers" and the "timers." The stressers accept metrical diversity as a simple fact that should be cataloged rather than regularized, while the timers prioritize rhythmic reconstruction as the fundamental objective of metrical theorization. As I will demonstrate in this essay, timer theory was an explicit reaction against the stressers' seeming lack of concern for rhythm, as inferred from analytic typologies that in their most extreme form might fairly be described as a kind of metrical "stamp collecting."7 Cornelius has recently interrogated stresser theories of OE meter, coining the term "the accentual paradigm" to describe the focus on stress that has predominated since the mid-nineteenth century.8 This essay complements that work, presenting a rhetorical analysis of the argumentation of the timers. In keeping with the theme of this issue, I am particularly interested in appeals to the body that function as a counter to the essentially cognitive (or "disembodied") analyses of the stressers. These appeals support claims that traditional Anglo-Saxon verse was musical ("the ear"), timed in isochronic units ("the foot"), and intuitive ("the gut"). In the conclusion, I consider a broader implication for the rift between the stressers and the timers, arguing that the persistent lack of...

Carl H. Muendel

Carl H. Muendel, 86, died on April 22 in Hockessin, Del. “Carl had a lifelong passion for mineral and stamp collecting, was an active member of the Delaware Mineralogical Society, and also served in Meals on Wheels and Read Aloud Delaware during his retirement. He maintained close ties to his relatives in Germany and traveled there extensively. Carl was a man of strong faith and moral convictions; his modesty, kindness, and intellect will be treasured and dearly missed.”—Christopher Arico-Muendel, son Most recent title: technical service manager for engineering and product safety, DuPont Education: B.S., chemical engineering, 1952, and Eng.Sci.D., chemical engineering, 1959, Columbia University Survivors: wife, Renate; daughter, Anne; sons, Martin and Christopher Arico-Muendel; four grandchildren To recognize your late loved one or colleague, submit obituary information at cenm.ag/obits.

Managing Metadata for Philatelic Materials

Stamp collectors frequently donate their stamps to cultural heritage institutions. As digitization becomes more prevalent for other kinds of materials, it is worth exploring how cultural heritage institutions are digitizing their philatelic materials. This paper begins with a review of the literature about the purpose of metadata, current metadata standards, and metadata that are relevant to philatelists. The paper then examines the digital philatelic collections of four large cultural heritage institutions, discussing the metadata standards and elements employed by these institutions. The paper concludes with a recommendation to create international standards that describe metadata management explicitly for philatelic materials.

Studying the Solar System Can Be More Than Just “Stamp Collecting”

While teaching his first-ever introductory college astronomy course, I heard a graduate student make the comment that compared to other areas of astronomy, studying the solar system is just “stamp collecting.” Coverage of the solar system in an introductory college astronomy course certainly could consist mostly of showing images and reporting facts, but by using observations that can be made from images and also data and other known facts about the objects, instruction on solar system topics can be more conceptual, involving just as much inquiry and discovery as any area of astronomy or physics.

Fortieth Lauriston S. Taylor Lecture: Radiation Protection and Regulatory Science.

It took about 30 y after Wilhelm Konrad Roentgen's discovery of x rays and Henri Becquerel's discovery of natural radioactivity for scientists in the civilized world to formulate recommendations on exposure to ionizing radiation. We know of these efforts today because the organizations that resulted from the concerns raised in 1928 at the Second International Congress of Radiology still play a role in radiation protection. The organizations are known today as the International Commission on Radiological Protection and, in the United States, the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements (NCRP). Today, as we have many times in the past, we honor Dr. Lauriston Sale Taylor, the U.S. representative to the 1928 Congress, for his dedication and leadership in the early growth of NCRP. NCRP's mission is "to support radiation protection by providing independent scientific analysis, information, and recommendations that represent the consensus of leading scientists." The developments in science and technology, including radiation protection, are occurring so rapidly that NCRP is challenged to provide its advice and guidance at a faster pace than ever before. NCRP's role has also expanded as the Council considers newer uses and applications of ionizing radiation in research and medicine as well as the response to nuclear or radiological terrorism. In such a technical world, new areas have been established to deal with the nexus of science and regulation, especially in the United States. Lord Ernest Rutherford supposedly said, "That which is not measurable is not science. That which is not physics is stamp collecting." I wonder what he would say if he were alive today as now many embrace a new field called "regulatory science." This term was suggested by Professor Mitsuru Uchiyama in Japan in 1987 and was reviewed in literature published in English in 1996. Some have attributed a similar idea to Dr. Alvin Weinberg, for many years Director of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He actually introduced the term "trans-science," which he defined as the policy-relevant fields for which scientists have no answers for many of the questions being asked. He was influenced by the heavy involvement of the Laboratory in developing methods to assess environmental impacts as mandated by the 1969 National Environmental Policy Act. Professor Uchiyama defined regulatory science as "the science of optimizing scientific and technological developments according to objectives geared toward human health." In essence, regulatory science is that science generated to answer political questions. This paper will introduce regulatory science and discuss the differences between what some call "academic science" and "regulatory science." In addition, a short discussion is included of how regulatory science has and will impact the practice of radiation protection and all areas involving the use of radiation and radioactivity.

Academic Finance: Responsible Enquiry or Stamp Collecting?

The underlying assumptions and ethos of markets and market behavior as encapsulated and advanced by academic output serve to influence how financial markets are perceived and therefore manipulated by regulatory and supervision authorities. Thus, as well as sustaining individual academic careers and contributing to the prestige of academic institutions, academic finance, for better or for worse, continues to influence financial practice. This paper explores how academic thinking has helped shape how markets are perceived and thereby acted upon in practice.

Managing Brands In a Prickly Digital World

As a young boy, I remember ordering a stamp collection that looked wonderful in a full-page advertisement in what we now would call a “graphic novel,” but back then we called it a comic book. With considerable anticipation, I waited for the package to arrive only to find that the “stamp

Logan Medallist 3. Making Stratigraphy Respectable: From Stamp Collecting to Astronomical Calibration

The modern science of stratigraphy is founded on a nineteenth-century empirical base – the lithostratigraphy and biostratigraphy of basin-fill successions. This stratigraphic record comprises the most complete data set available for reconstructing the tectonic and climatic history of Earth. However, it has taken two hundred years of evolution of concepts and methods for the science to evolve from what Ernest Rutherford scornfully termed “stamp collecting” to a modern dynamic science characterized by an array of refined methods for documenting geological rates and processes. Major developments in the evolution of the science of stratigraphy include the growth of an ever-more precise geological time scale, the birth of sedimentology and basin-analysis methods, the influence of plate tectonics and, most importantly, the development, since the late 1970s, of the concepts of sequence stratigraphy. Refinements in these concepts have required the integration of all pre-existing data and methods into a modern, multidisciplinary approach, as exemplified by the current drive to apply the retrodicted history of Earth’s orbital behaviour to the construction of a high-precision ‘astrochronological’ time scale back to at least the Mesozoic record. At its core, stratigraphy, like much of geology, is a field-based science. The field context of a stratigraphic sample or succession remains the most important starting point for any advanced mapping, analytical or modeling work.RÉSUMÉLa science moderne de la stratigraphie repose sur une base empirique du XIXe siècle, soit la lithostratigraphie et la biostratigraphie de successions de remplissage de bassins sédimentaires. Cette archive stratigraphique est constituée de la base de données la plus complète permettant de reconstituer l’histoire tectonique et climatique de la Terre. Cela dit, il aura fallu deux cents ans d’évolution des concepts et des méthodes pour que cette activité passe de l’état de « timbromanie », comme disait dédaigneusement Ernest Rutherford, à l’état de science moderne dynamique caractérisée par sa panoplie de méthodes permettant de documenter les rythmes et processus géologiques. Les principaux développements de l’évolution de la science de la stratigraphie proviennent de l’élaboration d’une échelle géologique toujours plus précise, l’avènement de la sédimentologie et des méthodes d’analyse des bassins, de l’influence de la tectonique des plaques et, surtout du développement depuis la fin des années 1970, des concepts de stratigraphie séquentielle. Des raffinements dans ces concepts ont nécessité l'intégration de toutes les données et méthodes existantes dans une approche moderne, multidisciplinaire, comme le montre ce mouvement actuel qui entend utiliser la reconstitution de l’histoire du comportement orbital de la Terre pour l’élaboration d’une échelle temporelle « astrochronologique » de haute précision, remontant jusqu’au Mésozoïque au moins. Comme pour la géologie, la stratigraphie est une science de terrain. Le contexte de terrain d’un échantillon stratigraphique ou d’une succession demeure le point de départ le plus important, pour tout travail sérieux de cartographie, d’analyse ou de modélisation.

The Observer in Complex Systems: the Gateway Papers

Complexity demands a more sophisticated epistemology, where the mere complicatedness of old conceptions becomes inadequate. The past was modernist realism, where improved quality corresponded to a closer proximity of models to an external reality (Funtowicz and Ravetz 1992). The aim was for ecology to find out about the objective truth, but that can only be shown through distortion. The arts have gone through a similar transition from truth to post-modernity. Picasso’s modernist cubism distorts appearances so as to get closer to reality. There is still a profile to be viewed even if the image is seen in full-face, so cubism includes them both to capture that reality, and it all seems twisted and strange. In one sense cubism is a sophisticated view. But it still embraces a crude modernist pretense that the observer can be pried loose from experience. The observer was denied in distorted early television programs that appeared on black and white screens in living rooms, hiding the fact they were in fact contrivances in a studio. By contrast, David Frost’s BBC television show of 1962 “That Was The Week That Was,” (TW3) was suddenly post-modern. TW3 made no attempt to bend programming to make it seem real. It abandoned reality, and became the first show to allow the audience to see the contrivance of cameras and lights (tired nightly news does it all the time now!). TW3 credits were purposefully not slick, but consisted of pieces of cardboard hand written, held awkwardly in front of each cast member. Modernist distortion is alive and well in normal science ecology. Most ecology is still written up sanitized, hiding the mess of actually doing science, just like 1950s television hid studio devices. But now we live in a world where big problems manifest complexity; we simply cannot get away with hiding the observer, and the mess they bring. A more honest epistemology is required if ecology is to get beyond stamp collecting, so as to address real problems. The papers that influenced me admitted that observations require an observer.

Shop Talk Fantasies, or: Looking at Roth from Both Sides

This article adopts an essayistic approach: it discusses the work and influence of Philip Roth from the perspective of a literary scholar and a writer of fiction working in German. Taking The Plot Against America as a starting point, the article first examines the stamp collection motif in Roth’s novel and in Hans Keilson’s novel The Death of the Adversary (1959). The article then proceeds to a discussion of Philip Roth’s work with regard to the concept of the Great American Novel before it suggests what a “Great German Novel” might look like if someone attempted to create one today.

Explorer, Nobel laureate, astrobiologist: things you never knew about Barry Blumberg.

Baruch S. “Barry” Blumberg, winner of the 1976 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine and founding director of the NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI), passed away suddenly of a heart attack at age 85 on April 5, 2011, during a conference at Ames Research Center. That Barry spent his last day conceptualizing an International Research Park on the Moon befits the unflagging curiosity that characterized his life in general and his scientific career in particular. In this paper I trace Barry's scientific career, including his early formative years and the unexpected path that led to the Nobel Prize. I also show that Barry's perspective and approach to science in general made astrobiology a natural area to attract his attention after he had retired from medical research. Indeed, his priorities as NAI director reflect directly things that were important to him throughout his career.

Offline: The moribund body of medical history

A former editor of one notable American medical journal once said that an interest in the medical past was a sign that one no longer had anything useful to contribute to medicine's future. This view reflects the way some physicians see historical progress in their chosen specialty—like stamp collecting, accumulating and displaying one discovery after another to illustrate the collective force of past achievement. But the discipline of medical history has more to offer than simply an album of colourful inventions. Owsei Temkin, who directed the Institute of the History of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University, saw medicine as embedded in the cultural and social life of a particular period. The role of the historian was to interpret, not merely document. If a scientist or physician made a claim, the duty of the historian was not to report that claim, but to ask if the claim was true. Historians should not be concerned only with the technical progress of medicine. They should also be interested in the political and economic conditions that shaped the advances (and setbacks) of a time, as well as the thoughts and feelings of the protagonists themselves—scientists, doctors, nurses, patients. They should ask themselves how an exploration of the past connects with our present. Medical history should provide a “humanistic counterweight to the claims of allegedly irresistible developments”—teasing out aims, attitudes, motives, moral and religious convictions. Temkin argued that historians could never be prophets or preachers. But they should be concerned with human reactions to events and circumstances, from the transformation of medicine into a business to the evolution of medical research to satisfy the concerns of the market (his examples, not mine). The historian's task is to strengthen our ability to resist the adverse trends and demands of our age. And yet, today, the vast majority of medical historians have abandoned any pretence to such ambitions. Most medical historians, it seems, have nothing to say about important issues of the past as they might relate to the present. They are invisible, inaudible, and, as a result, inconsequential.

P. J. Lynch: Ireland ⋆ Illustrator

P. J. LynchIreland ⋆ Illustrator Tia Lalani Born in Belfast Ireland in 1962, the youngest of five children, P. J. Lynch has noted that "burying [himself] in books, and the little worlds they created on a page, was a good way of escaping for a while from the horrors that were happening around [him] in the real world." Lynch pursued his own personal form of escape and studied under Raymond Briggs at Brighton College of Art. Studying in Brighton lead directly to Lynch's first publication, the illustrations for a collection of tales from England and Wales titled A Bag of Moonshine, which won him the Mother Goose award in 1986, and he has won several awards since. Lynch's impressive use of light and contrast creates his characteristic serious style. Instead of simply describing the text at hand, Lynch works hard to point the reader towards his or her own observations about atmosphere and emotion, using warm colors or cool colors where appropriate. Lynch's original illustrations only made use of ink and watercolor, though he has now includes oils, and uses computer graphics when he begins a project. The way Lynch goes about his illustrations proves just as interesting as the finished product. He takes his time in researching image and text before he even attempts a story, and often uses photographs or real life models on which to base his characters. Although Lynch does not have a large body of work, his meticulous attention to detail inspires the reader to go beyond the surface in each and every one of his illustrations. The work itself is also quite varied, as Lynch's images can quickly go from endearing to grotesque, and he demonstrates skill in portraying an epic landscape on one page while conveying the intimacy of a domestic scene on the next. Lynch has illustrated stories from some of the greats, including Edith Nesbit, William Butler Yeats and Oscar Wilde. He has also created posters for Opera Ireland and the Abbey Theatre, as well as a Christmas stamp collection for the Irish post, and in 2006, completed two largescale oil murals depicting scenes from Gulliver's Travels at the Cavan County Library. Lynch's ability to branch out of the conventional mold of a children's book illustrator is a testament to his diverse skill, and although Lynch professes to draw not only for children but also for all ages, he has had great success in the field of children's literature. Selected Bibliography • A Christmas Carol. Text Charles Dickens. UK: Walker, 2006. Print. Google Scholar • The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey. Text Susan Wojciechowski. UK: Walker, 1994. Print. Google Scholar • Mysterious Traveller. Text Mal Peet and Elspeth Graham. UK: Walker, 2013. Print. Google Scholar • The Steadfast Tin Soldier. Text Hans Christian Andersen. UK: Andersen, 1993. Print. Google Scholar • When Jessie Came Across the Sea. Text Amy Hest. UK: Walker, 1996. Print. [End Page 30] Google Scholar Copyright © 2014 Bookbird, Inc.

Two Poems

Two Poems Grace Chua (bio) instincts That winter the animals committed suicide.Instead of hibernating, the moles and bearsembroidered their comrades’ coriander shrouds.Beavers in their bundled-down beds gnawedapart their own dams. Badgers roastedin their setts, fish flung themselveson ice and lay there gasping, frogs rustleddown in their thistled holes and refused to breathe.Down the middle of the road, skunks and squirrelsventured to the line between north and death,bursting one by one as the cars trundled past,red and gaping as they rolled overand over into winter’s unmade dry ditches. We hunkered unrepentant,squirming, not animal enoughto live or go. They say rats jumpa sinking ship. But for our cowardice,snow-laden willows hung their necks in shame. [End Page 93] after the warmth After the warmth of you in the morning,like sugar, like ozone, the sweatof pines, after the knotting and twining, you came unravelling inside me,the wound skein of yourselfbursting like the blood from the skinsof split grapes, bursting. Each molecule of you,particle or wave, movinginside me like live light. [End Page 94] Grace Chua Grace Chua is a journalist with the Straits Times. Her poems have been published in such journals as Quarterly Literary Review Singapore and Softblow, and anthologized in From Boys To Men. Her first collection of poetry, The Stamp Collector’s Wife, was published in 2010. Copyright © 2014 University of Hawai‘i Press

Lucien E. Morris, MD, Aqualumnus, Inventor, Academic and Historian

Lucien E. Morris, MD, Aqualumnus, Inventor, Academic and Historian

“Disaster Stamps”: The Significance of Philately in Louise Erdrich's The Plague of Doves

Near the end of Louise Erdrich's 2008 novel The Plague of Doves, in a section called “Disaster Stamps of Pluto,” Cordelia Lochren interviews Neve Harp about the history of the stamp collection that...

The Great Texas Stamp Collection: How Some Stubborn Texas Confederate Postmasters, a Handful of Determined Texas Stamp Collectors, and a Few of the World's Greatest Philatelists Created, Discovered, and Preserved Some of the World's Most Valuable Postage Stamps by Charles W. Deaton (review)

The Great Texas Stamp Collection: How Some Stubborn Texas Confederate Postmasters, a Handful of Determined Texas Stamp Collectors, and a Few of the World's Greatest Philatelists Created, Discovered, and Preserved Some of the World's Most Valuable Postage Stamps by Charles W. Deaton (review)

Who goes there? Accounting for gender in the urge to explore abandoned military bunkers

This article enquires into the motivations of ‘bunkerologists’ – a term coined for analytic convenience by the author to describe those who research, explore and survey twentieth century military bunkers as a hobby. Specifically, it considers the gendered dimension of this predominantly male pastime. In doing so, the article examines the role of a range of cultural influences, including signification of militarism, inter-generational initiation and remembrance around themes of defence and labour, human-technology relations, conquest, and hermitic escapism. These factors all appear to have roles to play in disposing individuals towards participation in this practice. The analysis finds the source of many of these influences within a particular mode of English male socialisation, and masculinities related to it, prevalent in the late twentieth century. The analysis presented is also grounded in an auto-ethnographic exploration of the biographical roots of the author's own choice of this research topic and the effect of the research upon him and his family. Whilst the subject matter of the study may be regarded as somewhat arcane, the analysis of the role of socialisation within routes to participation in this predominantly masculine pastime may help to illuminate the motivational frameworks of other rarely studied, and seemingly introverted, ‘male’ hobbies such as train spotting, stamp collecting and sport fishing (angling).

El monasterio de la isla de cabrera (islas baleares. siglos V-VIII d.c.). Testimonios arqueológicos de los monjes reprobados por el papa Gregorio Magno

The Ajuntament de Palma has coordinated and funded an archaeological project called “Recuperació, consolidació i museïtzació del monastir bizantí de l’illa de Cabrera”. The project has been coordinated by Maria Magdalena Riera Frau and Mateu Riera Rullan and its main objective was to understand how the monastery of which the Epistle XIII, 47 of Pope Gregory I refers had been. A letter written in 603 A.D. which talks about the existence of a male monastic community in the Balearic Island of Cabrera. After several field surveys and carried out seven small archaeological sondages, we think that we are in a position to defend the existence of a coenoby and several hermitages in the archipelago of Cabrera, which would have been active between the sixth and seventh centuries A.D. and, most likely, from the fifth century A.D. The architectural structures and the mobile materials that we know so far of the monastic community will be known in this intervention. Among the latter we want to highlight the marbles, ceramics, numismatics and vitreous. Also a collection of graffiti and stamps and other representations apparently Christian will be presented.

Sub-200 ps CRT in monolithic scintillator PET detectors using digital SiPM arrays and maximum likelihood interaction time estimation

Digital silicon photomultiplier (dSiPM) arrays have favorable characteristics for application in monolithic scintillator detectors for time-of-flight positron emission tomography (PET). To fully exploit these benefits, a maximum likelihood interaction time estimation (MLITE) method was developed to derive the time of interaction from the multiple time stamps obtained per scintillation event. MLITE was compared to several deterministic methods. Timing measurements were performed with monolithic scintillator detectors based on novel dSiPM arrays and LSO:Ce,0.2%Ca crystals of 16 × 16 × 10 mm3, 16 × 16 × 20 mm3, 24 × 24 × 10 mm3, and 24 × 24 × 20 mm3. The best coincidence resolving times (CRTs) for pairs of identical detectors were obtained with MLITE and measured 157 ps, 185 ps, 161 ps, and 184 ps full-width-at-half-maximum (FWHM), respectively. For comparison, a small reference detector, consisting of a 3 × 3 × 5 mm3 LSO:Ce,0.2%Ca crystal coupled to a single pixel of a dSiPM array, was measured to have a CRT as low as 120 ps FWHM. The results of this work indicate that the influence of the optical transport of the scintillation photons on the timing performance of monolithic scintillator detectors can at least partially be corrected for by utilizing the information contained in the spatio-temporal distribution of the collection of time stamps registered per scintillation event.