Jr. Sherlok Holmes

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Jr. Sherlok Holmes

Sherlok Holmes

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Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, who first appeared in publication in 1887. He is the creation of Scottish author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. A brilliant London-based detective, Holmes is famous for his intellectual prowess, and is renowned for his skilful use of "deductive reasoning" while using abductive reasoning (inference to the best explanation) and astute observation to solve difficult cases.

Conan Doyle wrote four novels and fifty-six short stories that featured Holmes. All but four stories are narrated by Holmes' friend and biographer, Dr. John H. Watson; two are narrated by Holmes himself, and two others are written in the third person. The first two stories, short novels, appeared in Beeton's Christmas Annual for 1887 and Lippincott's Monthly Magazine in 1890. The character grew tremendously in popularity with the beginning of the first series of short stories in The Strand Magazine in 1891; further series of short stories and two serialised novels appeared almost right up to Conan Doyle's death in 1930. The stories cover a period from around 1878 up to 1903, with a final case in 1914.

The word Sherlock has since entered the English language as to mean someone who is both highly intelligent and observant. It is also used sarcastically to mean someone who states the obvious.

[edit] The character

[edit] Knowledge and skills

Sherlock Holmes (right) and Dr. Watson, by Sidney Paget.

In the very first story, A Study in Scarlet, something of Holmes' background is given. In early 1881, he is presented as an independent student of chemistry with a variety of very curious side interests, almost all of which turn out to be single-mindedly bent towards making him superior at solving crimes. An early story, "The Adventure of the Gloria Scott", presents more background on what caused Holmes to become a detective: a college friend's father complimented him very highly on his deductive skills. Holmes always uses scientific (or supposedly scientific) methods and focuses on logic and the powers of observation and deduction. He is an eccentric character and always remains objective. He only reveals things to us gradually.

In A Study in Scarlet, Dr. Watson assesses Holmes's abilities thus:

Knowledge of Literature.—Nil.
Knowledge of Astronomy.—Nil.
Knowledge of Politics.—Feeble.
Knowledge of Botany.—Variable. Well up in belladonna, opium and poisons generally. Knows nothing of practical gardening.
Knowledge of Geology.—Practical, but limited. Tells at a glance different soils from each other. After walks, has shown me splashes upon his trousers, and told me by their colour and consistence in what part of London he had received them.
Knowledge of Chemistry.—Profound.
Knowledge of Anatomy.—Accurate, but unsystematic.
Knowledge of Sensational Literature.—Immense. He appears to know every detail of every horror perpetrated in the century.
Plays the violin well.
Is an expert singlestick player, boxer and swordsman.
Has a good practical knowledge of British law.

Later stories make clear, however, that the above list is misleading, and that Holmes—who has just met Watson—is 'pulling Watson's leg'. Two examples: despite Holmes' supposed ignorance of politics, in "A Scandal in Bohemia" he immediately recognizes the true identity of the supposed Count von Kramm. Regarding non-sensational literature, his speech is replete with references to the Bible, Shakespeare, and even Goethe. This is somewhat inconsistent with Holmes's rebuking Watson for telling him that the Earth revolves around the Sun instead of the other way around, saying it would not matter to him one bit if it was true the other way around. He goes on to say that he avoids cluttering his memory with information that is of no use to him in detective work.

Also, in "The Boscombe Valley Mystery," Holmes expresses his knowledge of different varieties of tobacco ash, and tells of the monograph he wrote on the subject, a very strange field of knowledge, but it is understandable seeing as how it relates to his detective work. Holmes states, "I found the ash of a cigar, which my special knowledge of tobacco ashes enables me to pronounce as an Indian cigar. I have, as you know, devoted some attention to this and written a little monograph on the ashes of one hundred forty different varieties of pipe, cigar, and cigarette tobacco."

Moreover, in "The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans" Watson reports that in November 1895, "Holmes lost himself in a monograph which he had undertaken upon the Polyphonic Motets of Lassus"—a most esoteric field of knowledge, for which Holmes would have had to "clutter his memory" with an enormous amount of information which had absolutely nothing to do with crime fighting—knowledge so extensive that his monograph was taken as "the last word" on the subject.^[1] The later stories abandon the notion that Holmes did not want to know anything unless it had immediate relevance for his profession; in the second chapter of The Valley of Fear, Holmes instead declares that “all knowledge comes useful to the detective”, and near the end of "The Adventure of the Lion's Mane", he describes himself as “an omnivorous reader with a strangely retentive memory for trifles”.

Already in A Study in Scarlet, Conan Doyle compares his sleuth with two earlier, more established fictional detectives: Edgar Allan Poe's C. Auguste Dupin and Emile Gaboriau's Monsieur Lecoq. The former had first appeared in "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," first published in 1841, and the latter in L'Affaire Lerouge (The Lerouge Affair) in 1866. The brief discussion between Watson and Holmes about the two characters begins with a comment by Watson:

"You remind me of Edgar Allan Poe's Dupin. I had no idea that such individuals did exist outside of stories."

Sherlock Holmes rose and lit his pipe. "No doubt you think that you are complimenting me in comparing me to Dupin," he observed. "Now, in my opinion, Dupin was a very inferior fellow. That trick of his of breaking in on his friends' thoughts with an apropos remark after a quarter of an hour's silence is really very showy and superficial. He had some analytical genius, no doubt; but he was by no means such a phenomenon as Poe appeared to imagine."

"Have you read Gaboriau's works?" I asked. "Does Lecoq come up to your idea of a detective?"

Sherlock Holmes sniffed sardonically. "Lecoq was a miserable bungler," he said, in an angry voice; "he had only one thing to recommend him, and that was his energy. That book made me positively ill. The question was how to identify an unknown prisoner. I could have done it in twenty-four hours. Lecoq took six months or so. It might be made a textbook for detectives to teach them what to avoid."

Holmes seems convinced that he is superior to both of them, while Watson expresses his admiration of the two characters. It has been suggested that this was a way for Conan Doyle to pay his respects to characters imagined by writers who had influenced him, while insisting that his creation was an improvement on theirs. (Doyle did in fact express his own admiration for Holmes's two predecessors.) However, Holmes pulls a very Dupin-esque mind reading trick on Watson in "The Adventure of the Cardboard Box" (repeated word for word in the story, "The Resident Patient," when "The Cardboard Box" was removed from the Memoirs), and, to a lesser extent, in "The Adventure of the Dancing Men".

Holmes is also a competent cryptanalyst. He relates to Watson, "I am fairly familiar with all forms of secret writing, and am myself the author of a trifling monograph upon the subject, in which I analyse one hundred and sixty separate ciphers." One such scheme is solved using frequency analysis in "The Adventure of the Dancing Men" which uses a series of stick figures, for example:

Holmes has shown himself to be a master of disguise from his earliest cases, adopting personas from all walks of life: he appears as a seaman in “The Sign of the Four”, a stable groom and a humble clergyman in "A Scandal in Bohemia", an opium addict in "The Man with the Twisted Lip", an old Italian priest in "The Adventure of the Final Problem",a poor bibliophile in "The Adventure of the Empty House", a plumber in "The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton" and even as a woman in "The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone".

Although Holmes looks upon himself as a disembodied brain, there are times when he can become very emotional in a righteous cause, such as when he disapproves of how the banker Holder treated his son in "The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet", and rounds on the Duke in "The Priory School" for putting his own son in danger. At the end of "The Adventure of the Six Napoleons", he is touched by Inspector Lestrade's deep gratitude for his assisting Scotland Yard. Watson says, "he was more nearly moved by the softer human emotions than I had ever seen him." And, in "The Adventure of the Three Garridebs", Watson is wounded by a forger he and Holmes are pursuing. While the bullet wound proved to be "quite superficial," Watson is moved by Holmes' reaction.

It was worth a wound—it was worth many wounds—to know the depth of loyalty and love which lay behind that cold mask. The clear, hard eyes were dimmed for a moment, and the firm lips were shaking. For the one and only time I caught a glimpse of a great heart as well as of a great brain. All my years of humble but single-minded service culminated in that moment of revelation.

Holmes’ analysis of physical evidence is both scientific and precise. His methods include the use of latent prints such as footprints, hoof prints and bicycle tracks to identify actions at a crime scene (“A Study in Scarlet”, "The Adventure of Silver Blaze", "The Adventure of the Priory School", "The Hound of the Baskervilles", "The Boscombe Valley Mystery"), the use of tobacco ashes and cigarette butts to identify criminals ("The Adventure of the Resident Patient", The Hound of the Baskervilles), the comparison of typewritten letters to expose a fraud ("A Case of Identity"), the use of gunpowder residue to expose two murderers ("The Adventure of the Reigate Squire"), bullet comparison from two crime scenes ("The Adventure of the Empty House") and even an early use of fingerprints (The Norwood Builder). Holmes also demonstrates knowledge of psychology in "A Scandal in Bohemia", luring Irene Adler into betraying where she had hidden a photograph based on the "precis" that an unmarried woman will seek her most valuable possession in case of fire, whereas a married woman will grab her baby instead.

Despite the excitement of his life (or perhaps seeking to leave it behind) Holmes retired to the Sussex Downs to take up beekeeping ("The Second Stain"), and wrote a book on the subject. His search for relaxation can also be seen in his love in music, notably "The Red Headed League" where Holmes takes an evening off from a case to listen to Pablo de Sarasate play violin.

[edit] Personality and habits

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Monument of Sherlock Holmes in London

Holmes is not the stuffy strait-laced Victorian gentleman as one might perceive him to be; in fact, he describes himself and his habits as "Bohemian." Modern readers of the Holmes stories might be surprised that he was an occasional user (sometimes habitual, when lacking in stimulating cases) of both cocaine and morphine. Watson, however, describes this as the detective's "only vice", and later "weaned" Holmes off of drug use, citing its destructive qualities ^[2]. In his personal habits, he is very disorganized, as Watson notes in "The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual", leaving everything from notes of past cases to remains of chemical experiments scattered around their rooms and his tobacco inside his Persian slipper. Dr. Watson also states in "The Adventure of the Speckled Band" that Holmes is generally late to rise.

It is said in the 'Adventure of the Norwood Builder', that he often goes without food during his more intense cases. "My friend had no breakfast for himself, for it was one of his peculiarities that in his more intense moments he would permit himself no food, and I have known him to presume upon his iron strength until he has fainted from pure inanition." This is very suggestive of how seriously Holmes takes all of his cases. This also helps to emphasize the fact that Watson had brought up before, that Holmes had some unhealthy habits. He advised against a number of things Holmes did during the series. Including his occasional use of cocaine and morphine, and though he believed to have cured him from it he often referred to seeing it as "dormant" and "not dead, but merely sleeping". mainly in The Adventure of the Missing Three-quarter, where the fact that he had in the past used drugs came up twice. On one such occasion, Watson actually assumed that he had taken the drug after staying up much of the night.

Nevertheless, Watson is very typical of his time in not considering a vice Holmes' habit of smoking (usually a pipe) heavily, nor his willingness to bend the truth and break the law (e.g., lie to the police, conceal evidence, burgle, and housebreak) when it suited his purposes. In Victorian England, such actions were not necessarily considered vices as long as they were done by a gentleman for noble purposes, such as preserving a woman's honour or a family's reputation (this argument is discussed by Holmes and Watson in "The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton"). Since many of the stories revolve around Holmes (and Watson) doing such things, a modern reader must accept actions which would be out of character for a "law-abiding" detective living by the standards of a later time. (They remain staples of detective fiction, however.) Holmes has a strong sense of honour and "doing the right thing".

Holmes can often be quite dispassionate and cold; however, when hot on the trail of a mystery, he can display a remarkable passion despite his usual languor. He has a flair for showmanship and often prepares dramatic traps to capture the culprit of a crime which are staged to impress Watson or one of the Scotland Yard inspectors (e.g., Inspector Lestrade at the end of "The Norwood Builder" or the capture of Jonathan Small in "The Sign of the Four"). He also holds back his chain of reasoning, not revealing it or giving only cryptic hints and surprising results, until the very end, when he can explain all of his deductions at once.

He is also quite an actor, in several of his adventures he has feigned being wounded or ill to give effect to his case, or to incriminate the people involved, as in "The Adventure of the Dying Detective". In The Adventure of the Reigate Squires, Holmes uses dramatic and effective means to assure that the Cunninghams did not realise the importance of the sheet of paper, or the fact that a corner was found in the dead man's grip. For he believed that this would cause the Cunninghams to destroy the paper "without delay" and the detection of this sheet was crucial to the success of the case. Also in the case of Irene Alder, Holmes staged a shooting, and a fire to get her to give away the hiding place of her picture. This worked at first, but after his departure she realised what had occurred and immediately left the country taking her picture with her. She is later described as the only woman to outwit Sherlock Holmes.

Holmes is also proud of being British, as demonstrated by the patriotic "VR" (Victoria Regina – i.e. Queen Victoria) made in bullet pocks in the wall by his gun. He has also carried out counterintelligence work for his government in several cases, most conspicuously in His Last Bow, most often tracking down stolen state documents or thwarting the work of foreign spies.

Holmes does have an ego that sometimes seems to border on arrogance; however, he has usually earned the right to such arrogance. He seems to enjoy baffling police inspectors with his superior deductions. However, he is often quite content to allow the police to take the credit for his work, with Watson being the only one to broadcast his own role in the case (in "The Adventure of the Naval Treaty", he remarks that of his last fifty-three cases, the police have had all the credit in forty-nine), although he enjoys receiving praise from personal friends and those who take a serious interest in his work.

Although he initially needed Watson to share the rent of his comfortable residence at 221B Baker Street, Watson reveals in "The Adventure of the Dying Detective" (when Holmes was living alone) that "I have no doubt that the house might have been purchased at the price which Holmes paid for his rooms," suggesting he had developed a good income from his practice, although it is never revealed exactly how much he charges for his services. He does say, in "The Problem of Thor Bridge" that "My professional charges are upon a fixed scale. I do not vary them, save when I remit them altogether..." This is said in a context where a client is offering to double his fees; however, it is likely that rich clients provided a remuneration greatly in excess of Holmes's standard fee: in "The Adventure of the Final Problem", Holmes states that his services to the government of France and the royal house of Scandinavia had left him with enough money to retire comfortably, while in "The Adventure of Black Peter" Watson notes that Holmes would refuse to help the wealthy and powerful if their cases did not interest him, while he could devote weeks at a time to the cases of the most humble clients. Holmes also tells Watson, in "A Case Of Identity", of a golden snuff box received from the King of Bohemia after "A Scandal In Bohemia" and a fabulous ring from the Scandinavian royal family; in "The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans" Holmes receives an emerald tie-pin from Queen Victoria. Other mementos of Holmes' cases are a gold sovereign from Irene Adler {"A Scandal in Bohemia"} and an autograph Letter of thanks from the French President and a Legion of Honor-for tracking down an assassin named Huret {"The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez"}. In "The Adventure of the Priory School", Holmes "rubs his hands with glee" when the Duke notes the sum, which surprises even Watson, and then pats the cheque, saying "I am a poor man", an incident that could be dismissed as Holmes's tendency toward ironic humour. Certainly, in the course of his career Holmes had worked for both the most powerful monarchs and governments of Europe (including his own) and various wealthy aristocrats and industrialists, and had also been consulted by impoverished pawnbrokers and humble governesses on the lower rungs of society. The Victorian class system was much more complex than today's — it would have been degrading to offer a bill to a royal figure, but such a figure might well provide recompense of the equivalent of millions in modern currency. On the other hand, Holmes has been known to charge clients for his expenses, and to claim any reward that might be offered for the solution's problem: he says in The Adventure of the Speckled Band that Miss Stoner may pay any expenses he may be put to, and requests that the bank in The Red-Headed League remunerate him for the money he spent solving the case. As well as accepting the reward from the Duke of Holdernesse in The Adventure of the Priory School, Holmes has his wealthy banker client in The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet pay him both for the costs of recovering the stolen gems, and also claims the reward the banker had put for their recovery.

Holmes is generally quite fearless. He dispassionately surveys horrific, brutal crime scenes; he does not allow superstition (as in The Hound of the Baskervilles) or grotesque situations to make him afraid; and he intrepidly confronts violent murderers. He is generally unfazed by threats from his criminal enemies, and indeed Holmes himself remarks that it is the danger of his profession that has attracted him to it. The only thing that truly bothers Holmes is boredom, and he can become very agitated and upset when there is no case set before him.

On occasion Holmes and Watson carry pistols with them; however, these weapons are only used on five occasions.^[3] Besides a pistol, Holmes twice uses a riding crop/cane as a weapon.^[4]

Finally, Holmes does have capacities for human emotion and friendship. He has a remarkable ability to gently soothe and reassure people suffering from extreme distress, a talent which comes in handy when dealing with both male and female clients who arrive at Baker Street suffering from extreme fear or nervousness. In "The Adventure of the Norwood Builder", we see an example of Holmes's affection for Dr. Watson when it is revealed that Watson has sold his practice as a doctor to a man named Verner, who, "...[gave] with astonishing little demur the highest price that I ventured to ask — an incident which only explained itself later, when I found that Verner was a distant relation of Holmes, and it was my friend who had really found the money." Again we are shown his close personal friendship with Watson, whose near-death at the hands of a counterfeiter in "The Adventure of the Three Garridebs" elicits much grief and anger from Holmes. Over time, Holmes's relations with the official Scotland Yard detectives goes from cold disdain to a strong respect. And the classic "might-have-been" in Holmes's life is, of course, Irene Adler (from "A Scandal in Bohemia"), who is later referred to in the most laudatory terms by Watson. This is the only such canonical incident, however; despite signs of interest in other women, Watson is frequently disappointed that Holmes shows no further interest in them once the case is solved.

[edit] Relationships

An estimate of Holmes's age in the short story "His Last Bow" places his year of birth around 1854 although there is no authoritative biography. At the beginning of "The Adventure of the Veiled Lodger", Watson states that Holmes "was in active practice for twenty-three years"; during seventeen of these years, Watson "was allowed to cooperate with him and to keep notes of his doings".

Historically, Holmes lived from the year 1881 at 221B Baker Street, London (in early notes it was described as being situated at Upper Baker Street), a flat up seventeen steps, where he shared many of his professional years with his good friend Dr. Watson for some time before Watson's marriage in 1887 and after Mrs. Watson's death. The residence was maintained by his landlady, Mrs. Hudson.

In almost all of the stories, Holmes is assisted by the practical Watson, who is not only a friend but also his chronicler (his "Boswell"). Most of Holmes's stories are told as narratives, by Watson, of the detective's solutions to crimes brought to his attention by clients. Holmes sometimes criticizes Watson for his writings, usually because he relates them as exciting stories rather than as objective and detailed reports focusing on what Holmes regards as the pure "science" of his craft.

Holmes has an older brother, Mycroft Holmes, a government official, who appears in three stories: "The Greek Interpreter", "The Final Problem", and "The Bruce-Partington Plans". He is also mentioned in a number of others, including "The Empty House". Mycroft had a unique civil service position as a kind of memory-man for all aspects of government policy — a kind of walking database. Sherlock thought Mycroft more gifted but not a man of action, preferring to spend his time at the Diogenes Club, described as a club for the most un-clubbable men in London.

In "The Greek Interpreter", Holmes also claims that his grandmother was the sister of Vernet, the French artist.

In three stories (The Sign of the Four, A Study in Scarlet, and "The Adventure of the Crooked Man"), Holmes is assisted by a group of street children he calls the Baker Street Irregulars. The Irregulars' initial meetings with Holmes are not covered in any great detail, but he seems to have known them for at least a short period of time before meeting Watson. Exactly when they came into his service is unknown, but the boys show great respect for Holmes and he treats them with a surprising kindness, as he has shown little interest in children at all outside of cases involving them. He also speaks of them with a certain respect, due to the fact that, in the stories in which they appear, they are quite literally capable of going anywhere and seeing and hearing virtually anything, thus giving him increased ability to solve cases by taking in their reports. He pays the boys for their services, offering bonuses to any boy (or boys) who found a vital clue in the case. The Irregulars are mentioned a few times more in the Granada television series featuring Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke (though they are not seen much) than they are in the actual novels. Sometimes as a means of explaining the gathering of a clue or the means by which such a clue may yet be obtained.

Law enforcement officers with whom Holmes has worked include Inspector Lestrade, Tobias Gregson, Stanley Hopkins, Alec MacDonald, and Athelney (or Peter) Jones, all five of Scotland Yard, and Francois Le Villard of the French police. Holmes usually baffles the police with his far more efficient and effective methods, showing himself to be a vastly superior detective, a fact that the police seem to have learnt to take with good grace — witness Lestrade at the end of "The Six Napoleons".

Holmes's archenemy and popularly-supposed nemesis was Professor James Moriarty ("the Napoleon of Crime"), who fell, struggling with Holmes, over the Reichenbach Falls. Conan Doyle intended "The Final Problem", the story in which this occurred, to be the last that he wrote about Holmes. However, the outpouring of protests and letters demanding that he bring back his creation convinced him to continue. He did so with The Hound of The Baskervilles, although this was a case Holmes was involved in before his supposed death. His return in "The Adventure of the Empty House" had Conan Doyle explaining that only Moriarty fell over the cliff, but Holmes had allowed the world to believe that he too had perished while he dodged the retribution of Moriarty's underlings. Also, numerous sources^{[citation needed]} claim that Moriarty was initially Holmes' mathematics tutor, as is also referenced in the work of William S. Baring-Gould. Professor Moriarty also has a presence in The Valley of Fear.

[edit] Holmes and women

The only woman in whom Holmes ever showed any interest that verged on the romantic was Irene Adler. According to Watson, she was always referred to by Holmes as "The Woman." Holmes himself is never directly quoted as using this term — though he does mention her actual name several times in other cases. She is also one of the few women who are mentioned in multiple Holmes stories, though she actually appears in person only in one, "A Scandal in Bohemia". She is often thought to be the only woman who broke through Holmes's reserve. She is possibly the only woman who has ever "beaten" Holmes in a mystery; this point is unclear owing to a comment with some chronological problems in one of the stories (see the Irene Adler or "The Five Orange Pips" articles for details). However, it is important to note that Watson explicitly states, "It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler."

In one story, "The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton", Holmes is engaged to be married, but only with the motivation of gaining information for his case. He clearly demonstrates particular interest in several of the more charming female clients that come his way (such as Violet Hunter of "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches", whom Watson thought might become more than a client to Holmes). However, Holmes inevitably "manifested no further interest in her when once she had ceased to be the centre of one of his problems." Holmes found their youth, beauty, and energy (and the cases they bring to him) invigorating, as opposed to an actual romantic interest.

These episodes show that Holmes possesses a degree of charm, yet, apart from the case of Adler, there is no indication of a serious or long-term interest. Watson states that Holmes has an "aversion to women" but "a peculiarly ingratiating way with [them]." Holmes states, "I am not a whole-souled admirer of womankind"; in fact he finds "the motives of women... so inscrutable... How can you build on such quicksand? Their most trivial actions may mean volumes... their most extraordinary conduct may depend upon a hairpin."

Another point of interest in Holmes's relationships with women is that the only joy he gets from their company is the problems they bring to him to solve. In The Sign of the Four, Watson quotes Holmes as being "an automaton, a calculating machine." This references Holmes's lack of interest in relationships with women in general, and clients in particular, as Watson states that "there is something positively inhuman in you at times."

Watson writes in "The Adventure of the Dying Detective" that Mrs. Hudson is fond of Holmes in her own way, despite his bothersome eccentricities as a lodger, owing to his "remarkable gentleness and courtesy in his dealings with women." Watson notes that while he dislikes and distrusts them, he is nonetheless a "chivalrous opponent." However, Holmes cannot be said to be misogynistic, given the number of women he helps in his work.

Watson, on the other hand, boasts in The Sign of the Four of "an experience of women which extends over many nations and three separate continents." In addition, he speaks favourably of some women — indeed, in virtually all the longer stories he remarks on the exceptional beauty of at least one female character — and actually marries one, Mary Morstan of The Sign of the Four.

[edit] Influence

[edit] Holmesian deduction

"Holmes' belongings" including a magnifying glass, calabash pipe, and a deerstalker cap at the Sherlock Holmes Museum in London.

"From a drop of water," Holmes wrote in an essay described in A Study in Scarlet, "a logician could infer the possibility of an Atlantic or a Niagara without having seen or heard of one or the other." Holmes stories often begin with a bravura display of his talent for "deduction". It is of some interest to logicians and those interested in logic to try to analyse just what Holmes is doing when he performs his deduction. Holmesian deduction appears to consist primarily of drawing inferences based on either straightforward practical principles — which are the result of careful inductive study, such as Holmes's study of different kinds of cigar ashes — or inference to the best explanation. In many cases, the deduction can be modeled either way. In 2002, Holmes was inducted as an honorary fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry — the only fictional character so honoured — in appreciation of his contributions to forensic investigation.^[5]

Holmes's straightforward practical principles are generally of the form, "If 'p', then 'q'," where 'p' is observed evidence and 'q' is what the evidence indicates. But there are also, as one may observe in the following example, often some intermediate principles. In "A Scandal in Bohemia" Holmes deduces that Watson had got very wet lately and that he had "a most clumsy and careless servant girl." When Watson, in amazement, asks how Holmes knows this, Holmes answers:

"It is simplicity itself... My eyes tell me that on the inside of your left shoe, just where the firelight strikes it, the leather is scored by six almost parallel cuts. Obviously they have been caused by someone who has very carelessly scraped round the edges of the sole in order to remove crusted mud from it. Hence, you see, my double deduction that you had been out in vile weather, and that you had a particularly malignant boot-slitting specimen of the London slavey."

In this case, we might say Holmes employed several connected principles such as these:

If leather on the side of a shoe is scored by several parallel cuts, it was caused by someone who scraped around the edges of the sole in order to remove crusted mud.
If a 19th-century London doctor's shoes are scraped to remove crusted mud, the person who so scraped them is the doctor's servant girl.
If someone cuts a shoe while scraping it to remove encrusted mud, that person is clumsy and careless.
If someone's shoes had encrusted mud on them, that person has been very wet lately and has been out in vile weather.

By applying such principles in an obvious way (using repeated applications of modus ponens), Holmes is able to infer from

'p': The sides of Watson's shoes are scored by several parallel cuts.

'q1': Watson's servant girl is clumsy and careless.

and

'q2': Watson has been very wet lately and has been out in vile weather.

But perhaps Holmes is not giving a proper explanation — after all, Holmes may be well aware of Watson's servant girl. As Watson is a doctor and it has been raining, it is likely he has been out in the rain.

Of course, Holmes's deductive reasonings are a common tool by which certain characters (particularly his astonished clients) are introduced by Holmes himself into the story. For example, in Conan Doyle's story The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist, Holmes's observations allow him to deduce that the client, Violet Smith, enjoys bicycling, due to slight roughenings of the sides of her shoe's soles from friction with the pedals. He also notes that the lady has spatulated finger-ends, which he initially assumes had been acquired from typewriting. However, he then openly corrects himself by commenting on Ms. Smith having a certain spirituality about the face (which he commented would not come from working with a typewriter), and remarks how such fingers can also develop from playing musical instruments; thus, he identified Ms. Smith as being a musician (a music teacher, to be precise).

In other instances of Holmesian deduction, it is more difficult to model his inference as deduction using general principles, and logicians and scientists will readily recognize the method used, instead, as an "inductive" one — in particular, "argument to the best explanation", or, in Charles S. Peirce's terminology, "abduction". However, that Holmes should have called this "deduction" is entirely plausible.

The instances in which Holmes uses deduction tend to be those where he has amassed a large body of evidence, produced a number of possible explanations of that evidence, and then proceeds to find one explanation that is clearly the best at explaining the evidence. For example, in The Sign of the Four, a man is found dead in his room, with a ghastly smile on his face, and with no immediately visible cause of death. From a whole body of background information as well as evidence gathered at and around the scene of the crime, Holmes is able to infer that the murderer is not one of the various people that Scotland Yard has in custody (each of them being an alternative explanation), but rather another person entirely. As Holmes says in the story, "How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?" This phrase has entered Western popular culture as a catchphrase.

In the latter example, in fact, Holmes' solution of the crime depends both on a series of applications of general principles and argument to the best explanation.

Holmes' success at his brand of deduction, therefore, is due to his mastery of both a huge body of particular knowledge of things like footprints, cigar ashes, and poisons, which he uses to make relatively simple deductive inferences, and the fine art of ordering and weighing different competing explanations of a body of evidence. Holmes is also particularly good at gathering evidence by observation, as well locating and tracking the movements of criminals through the streets of London and its environs (in order to produce more evidence) — skills that have little to do with deduction per se, but everything to do with providing the premises for particular Holmesian deductions. Four examples of Holmes' deductions of an owner's lifestyle are: Dr. Watson's old pocket watch in The Sign of the Four, Dr. Mortimer's walking stick in The Hound of the Baskervilles, Mr. Grant Munro's pipe in "The Adventure of the Yellow Face" and Henry Baker's hat in "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle."

In the stories by Conan Doyle, Holmes often remarked that his logical conclusions were "elementary," in that he considered them to be simple and obvious. He also, on occasion, referred to his friend as "my dear Watson." However, the complete phrase, "Elementary, my dear Watson," does not appear in any of the sixty Holmes stories written by Conan Doyle. One of the closest examples to this phrase appears in the "The Adventure of the Crooked Man". Upon Holmes's explanation of a deduction:

"Excellent!" I cried "Elementary." said he

It does appear at the very end of the 1929 film, The Return of Sherlock Holmes, the first Sherlock Holmes sound film, and may owe its familiarity to its use in Edith Meiser's scripts for The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes radio series. The phrase was first used by American actor William Gillette though.

It should be noted too, that our modern stereotype of police procedure — someone who looks for physical clues, rather than someone who examines opportunity and motive — comes from Holmes.

Conan Doyle was an admirer of Oliver Wendell Holmes. In 1858, Holmes had written, in his Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, “Tell me about Cuvier’s getting up a megatherium from a tooth … so all a man’s antecedents and possibilities are summed up in a single utterance….” This recalls what Schopenhauer had written in 1851, “Just as a botanist recognises the whole plant from one leaf and Cuvier constructed the entire animal from one bone, so from one characteristic action of a man we can arrive at a correct knowledge of his character.” (Parerga and Paralipomena, Vol. II, §118) These assertions are echoed in "The Five Orange Pips", in which Sherlock Holmes declared, “As Cuvier could correctly describe a whole animal by the contemplation of a single bone, so the observer who has thoroughly understood one link in a series of incidents should be able to state all the other ones, before and after.”

Readers of the Sherlock Holmes stories have often been surprised to discover that their author, Conan Doyle, was a fervent believer in paranormal phenomena, and that the logical, sceptical character of Holmes was in opposition to his own in many ways.

It must be noted that, in Holmesian deduction, it is important to attempt to eliminate all other possibilities, or as many as possible. As Holmes says to Watson,"Eliminate all that is impossible, whatever remains is the explanation, however improbable." This requires quite a bit of practice to reach. Watson attempts several times to perform Holmesian deductions, and even gives his explanations. However, he fails to recognize other equally probable circumstances, and is wrong on almost every count. As of 2007, the MI5 and MI6 are training their agents in Sherlockian Deduction ^[6].

[edit] Role in the history of the detective story

A popular misconception is that the Sherlock Holmes stories gave rise to the entire genre of detective fiction. In fact, the Holmes character and his modus operandi were inspired by two predecessors, C. Auguste Dupin and Monsieur Lecoq and their technique for solving crime. Created by Edgar Allan Poe and Émile Gaboriau respectively, they were both investigators to whom even Holmes himself alluded. Many fictional sleuths have imitated Holmes' logical methods and followed in his footsteps, in various ways.

The Doctor takes his cue from Holmes' dress sense to disguise himself in The Talons of Weng-Chiang

Writers have produced many pop culture references to Sherlock Holmes, Conan Doyle, or characters from the stories in homage, to a greater or lesser degree. Such allusions can form a plot development, raise the intellectual level of the piece or act as Easter eggs for an observant audience.

Some have been overt, introducing Holmes as a character in a new setting, or a more subtle allusion, such as making a logical character live in an apartment at number 221b. Often the simplest reference is to dress anybody who does some kind of detective work in a deerstalker and cloak (as seen right). Another rich field of pop culture references is Holmes' ancestry and descendants (as discussed above) but really the only limit is the writer's imagination. A third major reference is the quote, "Elementary, my dear Watson," (which, as mentioned above, was never actually said by Holmes). Another common misattributation is that Holmes, throughout the entire novel series, is never described as wearing the 'deerstalker hat', although Sidney Paget had drawn Holmes donning it on two occasions.

[edit] As an inspiration for speculation by fans

Main article: Sherlock Holmes speculation

The 56 short stories and 4 novels written by Conan Doyle are termed "the Canon" by the Sherlockians. A popular pastime among fans of Sherlock Holmes is to treat Holmes and Watson as real people, and attempt to elucidate facts about them from clues in the stories or by combining the stories with historical fact. Early scholars of the canon included Ronald Knox in Britain and Christopher Morley in New York.

[edit] Societies

In 1934 were founded the Sherlock Holmes Society, in London, and the Baker Street Irregulars, in New York. Both are still active today (though the Sherlock Holmes Society was dissolved in 1937 to be resuscitated only in 1951). The two initial societies founded in 1934 were followed by many more Holmesians circles, first of all in America (where they are called "scion societies" - offshoots - of the Baker Street Irregulars), then in England and Denmark. Nowadays, there are Sherlockian societies in many countries like India and Japan being the more prominent countries which have a history of such activity.

[edit] Museums

During the 1951 Festival of Britain, Sherlock Holmes' sitting-room was reconstructed as the masterpiece of a Sherlock Holmes Exhibition, displaying a unique collection of original material. After the 1951 exhibition closed, items were transferred to the Sherlock Holmes Pub, in London, and to the Conan Doyle Collection in Lucens (Switzerland). Both exhibitions, each including its own very good Baker Street Sitting-Room reconstruction, are still to be seen today. In 1990 The Sherlock Holmes Museum was opened in Baker Street London and the following year in Meiringen Switzerland another Museum was also opened, but naturally they include less historical material about Conan Doyle than about Sherlock Holmes himself. The Sherlock Holmes Museum at 221b Baker Street London was the first Museum in the world to be dedicated to a fictional character.

[edit] The Great Hiatus

Holmes fans refer to the period from 1891 to 1894 — the time between Holmes' disappearance and presumed death in "The Adventure of the Final Problem" and his reappearance in "The Adventure of the Empty House" — as "the Great Hiatus".^[7] It is notable, though, that one later story ("The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge") is described as taking place in 1892.

Conan Doyle wrote the stories over the course of a decade. Wanting to devote more time to his historical novels, he killed off Holmes in "The Final Problem", which appeared in print in 1893. After resisting public pressure for eight years, the author wrote The Hound of the Baskervilles, which appeared in 1901, implicitly setting it before Holmes' "death" (some theorise that it actually took place after "The Return" but with Watson planting clues to an earlier date).^[8]^[9] The public, while pleased with the story, was not satisfied with a posthumous Holmes, and so Conan Doyle resuscitated Holmes two years later. Many have speculated on his motives for bringing Holmes back to life, notably writer-director Nicholas Meyer, who wrote an essay on the subject in the 1970s^{[citation needed]}, but the actual reasons are not known, other than the obvious: Publishers offered to pay generously. For whatever reason, Conan Doyle continued to write Holmes stories for a quarter-century longer.

Some writers have come up with alternate explanations for the hiatus. In Meyer's novel The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, the Hiatus is depicted as a secret sabbatical following Holmes' treatment for cocaine addiction at the hands of Sigmund Freud, and presents Holmes making the light-hearted suggestion that Watson write a fictitious account claiming he'd been killed by Moriarty, saying of the public: "They'll never believe you in any case."

In his memoirs, Conan Doyle quotes a reader, who judged the later stories inferior to the earlier ones, to the effect that when Holmes went over the Reichenbach Falls, he may not have been killed, but he was never quite the same man after.

The differences in the pre- and post-Hiatus Holmes have in fact created speculation among those who play "The Great Game" (making believe Sherlock Holmes was a historical person). One theory^{[citation needed]} holds that the later Holmes was in fact an impostor (perhaps even Professor Moriarty), the later stories were fictions created to fill other writers' pockets (this is often used to deal with the stories which supposedly are written by Holmes himself), and Holmes and Professor Moriarty were in fact a variation of Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Among the more fanciful theories, the story The Case of the Detective's Smile by Mark Bourne, published in the anthology Sherlock Holmes in Orbit, posits that one of the places Holmes visited during his hiatus was Alice's Wonderland. While there, he solved the case of the stolen tarts, and his experiences there contributed to his kicking the cocaine addiction.

[edit] Adaptations

[edit] Canonical adaptations

Main article: Sherlock Holmes in other media

Vasily Livanov was awarded the OBE for his portrayal of Sherlock Holmes in the Soviet TV series.

As Sherlock Holmes is such a popular character, there have been many theatrical stage and cinematic adaptations of Conan Doyle's work — much in the same way that Hamlet or Dracula are often revised and adapted.

The Guinness World Records has consistently listed him as the "most portrayed movie character" with over 70 actors playing the part in over 200 films.

Basil Rathbone starred as Sherlock Holmes, alongside Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson, in fourteen films (two for 20th Century Fox and a dozen for Universal Pictures) from 1939-1946. Jeremy Brett is generally considered the definitive Holmes of recent times, having played the role in four series ("The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes") created by John Hawkesworth for Britain's Granada Television from 1984 though to 1994 as well as depicting Holmes on stage. Brett's Dr. Watson was played by David Burke and Edward Hardwicke in the television series.

[edit] Related and derivative works (non-canonical)

Main article: Non-canonical works related and derived from Sherlock Holmes

In addition to the canonical Sherlock Holmes stories, Conan Doyle's "The Lost Special" (1908) features an unnamed "amateur reasoner" clearly intended to be identified as Holmes by his readers. His explanation for a baffling disappearance, argued in Holmes' characteristic style, turns out to be quite wrong — evidently Conan Doyle was not above poking fun at his own hero. A short story by Conan Doyle using the same idea is "The Man with the Watches". Another example of Conan Doyle's humour is "How Watson Learned the Trick" (1924), a parody of the frequent Watson-Holmes breakfast table scenes. A further parody by Conan Doyle is "The Field Bazaar". He also wrote other material, especially plays, featuring Holmes. Many of these writings are collected in the books Sherlock Holmes: the Published Apocrypha edited by Jack Tracy, The Final Adventures of Sherlock Holmes edited by Peter Haining and The Uncollected Sherlock Holmes compiled by Roger Lancelyn Green.

Sherlock Holmes' abilities as both a good fighter and as an excellent logician have been a boon to other authors who have lifted his name, or details of his exploits, for their plots. These range from Holmes as a cocaine addict, whose drug-fuelled fantasies lead him to cast an innocent Professor Moriarty as a super villain (The Seven-Per-Cent Solution), to science-fiction plots involving him being re-animated after death to fight crime in the future (Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century).

Some authors have supplied stories to fit the tantalising references in the canon to unpublished cases (e.g. "The giant rat of Sumatra, a story for which the world is not yet prepared" in "The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire"), notably The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes by Conan Doyle's son Adrian Conan Doyle with John Dickson Carr; others have used different characters from the stories as their own detective, e.g. Mycroft Holmes in Enter the Lion by Michael P. Hodel and Sean M. Wright (1979) or Dr. James Mortimer (from The Hound of the Baskervilles) in books by Gerard Williams.

On the TV series Star Trek: The Next Generation Lt. Cmdr. Data is depicted as a fan of Holmes, and portrays him in a holodeck recreation in the episode "Elementary, My Dear Data." The estate of Arthur Conan Doyle objected, claiming a copyright on the character, but allowed the performance to be reprised in the episode "Ship In A Bottle," with attribution in the closing credits.^[10]

The main character in the TV series House, M.D., a medical doctor with a Holmesian approach to diagnosing diseases, is named as a pun on the near-homophone "Homes" for "Holmes" as Dr. Gregory House. The show draws heavily upon Holmes' archetypes, including a drug addiction (in the show, Vicodin instead of cocaine), a quirky sense of humour and complete disregard for social mores, personal talents (piano and guitar, like Holmes' violin), as well as Holmes' characteristic ability to judge a situation correctly with almost no effort. House's apartment number is 221B. Dr. House's confidant and sounding board is Dr. James Wilson, whose initials coincide with Dr. John Watson.

[edit] Sherlock Holmes in reality

Whenever Arthur Conan Doyle was asked if there was a real Sherlock Holmes, his answer never changed. Holmes was inspired, Doyle said, by Dr. Joseph Bell, for whom Doyle had worked as a clerk at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. Like Sherlock Holmes, Bell was noted for drawing large conclusions from the smallest observations. Dr. Bell was also interested in crime and assisted the police in solving a few cases.^[11]

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] Novels

A Study in Scarlet (serialised 1887)
The Sign of the Four (published 1890)
The Hound of the Baskervilles (serialised 1901–1902 in The Strand; original illustrations by Sidney Paget)
The Valley of Fear (serialised 1914–1915)

[edit] Short stories

For more detail see List of Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes short stories.

The short stories were originally published in periodicals; they were later gathered into five anthologies:

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes Contains stories published 1891–1892 in The Strand.
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes Contains stories published 1892–1893 in The Strand as further episodes of the Adventures.
The Return of Sherlock Holmes Contains stories published 1903–1904 in The Strand.
His Last Bow Contains stories published 1908–1913 and 1917.
The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes Contains stories published 1921–1927.

[edit] Lists of favourite stories

There are two famous lists of favourite stories: that of Conan Doyle himself---in The Strand in 1927, and that of the Baker Street Journal in 1959.

[edit] Works by other authors

Baring-Gould, William S. (1967). The Annotated Sherlock Holmes. Clarkson N. Potter, Inc., New York & John Murray Publishers, London. ISBN 0-517-50291-7
Klinger, Leslie S. (2004-5). The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York & London. ISBN 0-393-05916-2

[edit] See also

Solar Pons
Harry Dickson
Arsène Lupin
List of people who have played Sherlock Holmes
List of authors of new (i.e. Non-Conan Doyle) Sherlock Holmes stories
HOLMES2 (police computer system)
Professor Challenger (another Conan Doyle character)
Meiringen
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
William Gillette
Case Closed - features a "Detective Conan"
Naked is the Best Disguise
The Sleuth
Dr. Gregory House

[edit] References

^ http://webpages.charter.net/lklinger/lassus.htm
^ Dalby JT. (1991). "Sherlock Holmes' Cocaine Habit". Irish Journal of Psychological Medicine 8: 73-74.
^ In The Sign of the Four they both fire at the Andaman Islander; they both fire at The Hound of the Baskervilles; in "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches" Watson fires at the mastiff; in "The Adventure of the Empty House" Watson pistol-whips Colonel Sebastian Moran; in "The Adventure of the Three Garridebs" Holmes pistol-whips Killer Evans after Watson is shot; in "The Musgrave Ritual" it is revealed that Holmes decorated the wall of their flat with a patriotic "V.R." (Victoria Regina) done in bullet marks.
^ In "The Red-Headed League" to knock the pistol from John Clay's hand; in "The Adventure of the Speckled Band" to lash out at the snake.
^ This news article mentions Holmes's honour at the bottom of the page.
^ http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23392707-details/Can+Sherlock+Holmes+restore+the+reputation+of+our+bungling+spies/article.do "Can Sherlock Holmes restore the reputation of our bungling spies?" accessed 26th June 2007 at 21:07
^ http://www.bookreporter.com/authors/au-king-laurie.asp
^ Dakin, D. Martin (1972). A Sherlock Holmes Commentary. David & Charles, Newton Abbot. ISBN 0-7153-5493-0
^ McQueen, Ian (1974). Sherlock Holmes Detected. David & Charles, Newton Abbot. ISBN 0-7153-6453-7
^ [1]
^ 1992 Reader's Digest (Australia) PTY LTD (A.C.N. 000565471)

[edit] External links

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

Sherlock Holmes

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

Sherlock Holmes

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Sherlock Holmes

The Sherlock Holmes Museum 221b Baker Street, London England.
The Sherlock Holmes Society of London
Baker Street Dozen Sherlock Holmes in Books, Film and Media
The Complete Sherlock Holmes All 56 short stories and four novels, with original magazine illustrations
Bert Coules' website (BBC Radio 4 canonical and original stories, 1989–2004)
Discovering Sherlock Holmes at Stanford University
Sherlock Holmes Special Collections at Marylebone Reference Library, City of Westminster, London
The Sherlock Holmes Collections at the University of Minnesota Special Collections and Rare Books
Sounds of the Baskervilles BBC Radio 4 programme on Holmes and music
Sherlock Holmes radio dramas Public domain audio radio dramas adapted from the canonical texts

[show] v • d • e Sherlock Holmes books by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Novels	A Study in Scarlet · The Sign of the Four · The Hound of the Baskervilles · The Valley of Fear
Short story collections	The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes · The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes · The Return of Sherlock Holmes · His Last Bow · The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes
Major characters	Irene Adler · Inspector Bradstreet · Tobias Gregson · Mycroft Holmes · Sherlock Holmes · Stanley Hopkins · Mrs. Hudson · Inspector Lestrade · Sebastian Moran · Professor Moriarty · Mary Morstan · Doctor Watson
Related topics	Canon of Sherlock Holmes · 221B Baker Street · Other Media · Sherlockiana

[show]

v • d • e

Arthur Conan Doyle

Dislexeya

2008-01-03T04:30:00.000-08:00

Question:

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i dont no every thing about learning disabilities,but i think i was born with them, i have some dislexeya,and a.d.d. and other learning disabilities, when i was in school i was called a retard by other kids it was a very tough time. i try and i try but my brain does not work like others i feel like i am at a disadvantage, i think people love it because they can tell when a person has learning disabilities and they no its just that much eazy for them to blow past them at work because lets face it some one with out learning disabilities can learn things faster, how do people really look at people like me, and what do they really know about learning disorders, i have been acused of being a pot head and druger, people say thats why you have those problems, people make fun of my spelling and are very cold about it,like i have no feelings, so like i said how do people veiw people with learning disabilities, and any one out there with learning disabilities what has been your experence ?

Answer:
The world is a cruel place, and not everyone is understanding. I happen to be someone who is. I have not shared your personal experience, but I can empathasize with you.

You sound like you're really trying to overcome your disabilities and be successful. You might look into the Learning Disabilities Association of America. There are a lot of resources on their web site that could help you. Here's the link:

http://www.ldaamerica.org/

I think it's horrible that people have made fun of your spelling. I work in a technical field with people who are very good at math and science. Most of them can't spell though, and they've even asked me how to spell simple words before. There are tons of brilliant people who can't spell, so no one should make you feel bad because of a disability. Even though you have a hard time spelling, it doesn't make you stupid. You need to figure out what you're good at and pursue it so that you can be successful.

Good Luck!

I work within an FE Learner support college and a assess, moniter and teach students who have a learning difficulty of somesort or another. The main thing is to think of the condition that you have as a quality and look at the areas that you are good at.
Most students that I work with are incredibly good at something, they just need the confidence and oportunity to seek what it is and work on it.

As with everyone in the whole world, confidence is the key, you need to start to thing positivly about yourself, there are loads of others who have the same difficulites/experiences that you have had (hopefully some will contact you via this question) and that there is opportunity and support available to you.

Through having difficulty whilst at school it is tough, and there is lots of stigma attached. Hopefully you willrecieve the support and be able to have the chance to work on your qualities. With a growth in confidence you will find ways and strategies that will help you deal with the difficulites that you have in a more rewarding and clear way.

Good luck and rememeber that everyone has problems; and that there are always ways to work with them, focas on people's qualities and abilites and eventually we will have a more fruitful, rich and tolerant society.

mrben

Well, your posting was a lot more literate and well-written than many postings on here, and your spelling wasn't too bad either.

Try to have more sentences and more paragraphs, and you will be an above-average poster.

People with learning disabilities have a tough time, and it's easy for other people not to make allowances for them, or to take the time to teach them. When other people are rude to you, you should always bear in mind that in overcoming your difficulties, you have probably achieved far more than they ever will.

Hey, stigma are dying fast, so hold your head up high!
Because of what you've been through, you would make a fabulous teaching assistant for Special Needs kids... Have you thought of that? In any case, your writing is remarkable.

Hi,my nephew has learning difficulties.He went to a school for special needs so he was not treated in the way you were.Kids are cruel.Your question is well presented.Try to learn not to let people affect you also you come accross has intelligent & a kind person.I wish you luck in the future im certain you will go far.Good Luck

My 2 sons were born almost deaf, and both have learning disabilities, they also have spina bifida. They did have a lot of trouble in school, mostly before high school with kids picking on them. The teachers didn't help either. They had sucker sticks with needles stuck in the ends thrown at them, yet they had to serve in school suspensions while the bad kids got away with it. They were never allowed to fight back. They do have troube finding and keeping jobs, and it just isn't fair at all. That is why they do have SSI for people, but getting on it is very hard if you only have learning disabilities. My younger son is with a girl who has learning disabilities, and they now have a son who is just over a year old. He shows no signs of it, and seems to be very smart so far. I love my sons just as much with their problems as though they were normal, to me they are. They are honest, hard working, and good at things a lot of normal people can't do. One is a mechanic, and can build or fix pc's. He taught himself. The other can do computer programs and has restored old photo's that are amazingly done. He could even be a comedian, he is so funny. When I broke my leg, he had me laughing so hard and so much, they didn't think it was broke. Just be yourself, and everything will work out sweetie. Don't let those other kids or people get to you. There are lots of people out there just like you.

EFA's (Essential Fatty Acids) are beneficial for people with dyslexia and other learning abilities. EFA's consist of Omega 3 and Omega 6 fatty acids which feed the brain. They can be found in many fish forms. They must be taken in certain proportions, the ideal ratio of omega-6:omega-3 being from 3:1 to 5:1.

Go see a doctor and discuss whether you should take an EFA supplement (some pills); also discuss the proportions. It is fully natural, so you have nothing to fear.

It is important to understand that a learning disorder or disability does not necessarily reflect an inferior intelligence, In fact a genius could have a learning disorder. This only means that you receive information and process it differently than the average person. The unfortunate part is that it can be difficult to find a way of learning that works for you. I have been working with my daughter for years with her disorder. As difficult as it may be you must try to ignore peoples ignorance.

You seem very clever to me! your spelling and diction are great, you can explain how you are feeling about this and you also can comprehend what is going on. You seem a lot smarter than the ones who are taunting you! Have a good life and know where you are going and what you will do in it.
All my best wishes to you.....stay strong!

i have dyslexia to and all my life i have been called thick, dumb, retarded, that i will never achieve anything i may as well give up on live now because i will never ever be anything other then thick all of this was said by my family
i had no confidence at all this time last year i couldn't even tell you the difference between the there's and things like that i couldn't spell small words like the word does and i got funny looks when i got excited because i could spell the word does.
i can spell a lot better now because i go college and i have help with my dyslexia i have qualifications now when last year i didn't have any
when i tell some people i'm dyslexic they look at me like i'm an alian but the real intelligent people are fine with it
you should find something that you are good at and concentrate on that just because you're not good at spelling it doesn't make you an idiot and i bet that you're good at something that a person who is good at spelling isn't
don't let what pathetic small minded people say get to you x

hi, i have dyslexia in numbers, i am not to bad at the spelling though.
I know how you feel its horrible, when i was at high school i had a teacher that taught business studies, when he found out that i had dyslexia he treated me different compared to the other kids, ie talking very slow, making me stay behind after class to talk to me to see if i understood what it was, he just taught.
I guess he was just trying to be helpful, but really he was making me feel different compared to the other kids.
I am now 23 getting on with life, everyday i am learning myself how to count better, as you know yourself maths is in everyday tasks.
I know how difficult it can be it is so furstrating when you are showed how to do something and everyone else gets it first time, where as in me and you're case its not like that a tall, it takes us longer, and i know i feel like a right idiot cos everyone is looking at you as if you are stupid, well we are not just unique.
I am starting college in august to study nursing as i want to be a mental health nurse, i know it is going to be hard, but i am not going to be embarassed to use learning support if i need it.
All the best

Roald Dahl

2007-12-24T20:19:00.000-08:00

Roald Dahl

Biography

Children of all ages have read and enjoyed books by Roald Dahl. Many of his stories, such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant Peach, have become classics in their own time.

As recounted in Boy, Roald Dahl's father, Harald Dahl, immigrated to England from Norway around the turn of the century (1900). Not long after the death of his first wife, he took a trip back to Norway in hopes of finding a wife to help him raise his young son and daughter. He married Sofie Magdalene Hesselberg in 1911 and the couple moved to Dahl's home in Llandaff, Wales. Over the next six years they had five children: Astri, Alfhild, Roald, Else, Asta. Roald was born on September 13, 1916 in Llandaff. Unfortunately Astri, the eldest, died of appendicitis in 1920. Harald Dahl quickly deteriorated after his daughter's death and he died of pneumonia a few months later. Sofie Dahl, pregnant at the time with Asta, was left with three of her own children, two step–children, a sizeable estate, and her husband's dying wish that his children would be educated in English schools, which he thought the best in the world.

A less determined woman would have packed up and moved back home to Norway, but Sofie decided to stay in Wales and carry out Harald's wish. But she wasn't ready to move to England yet. First she moved the family into a smaller, more manageable home in Llandaff and then one–by–one sent each of her children to Elmtree House, a local school, for kindergarten. When Roald was seven Sofie decided it was time for him to go to a proper boy's school, so she sent him to nearby Llandaff Cathedral School. He spent two years there and his only memories of it are described in Boy – one involves an older boy whizzing by on a bicycle, and the other involves The Great Mouse Plot that earned him and his friends a savage caning by the school's headmaster. This violent incident was what prompted Sofie to withdraw Roald from the Llandaff school and finally send him off to an English boarding school: St. Peter's. St. Peter's Preparatory School in Weston–super–Mare was founded in 1900 and is described at length by Dahl in his book Boy (published in 1984). Roald attended St. Peter's from ages nine to thirteen, and he was so homesick at first the he even faked the symptoms of appendicitis (which he remembered from Astri and his older half-sister Ellen) [see note] to earn a trip home. He eventually adjusted to school life, but he never learned to like it. In Boy he describes savage beatings, sadistic headmasters, prejudiced teachers, and even an abusive dormitory Matron. His nightmarish description though, is somewhat tempered by his concession that his memory of it was "coloured by my natural love of fantasy" (Treglown, 20). Schoolmates remembered him as a tall, soft–faced boy, not especially popular but very close to the few boys who became his friends. He was good at sports like cricket and swimming, but academically he was toward the bottom of his class. One of his main hobbies was reading, and some of his favorite novelists were the adventure writers Rudyard Kipling, Captain Marryat, H. Rider Haggarrd, and G.A. Henty. Their books emphasized a kind of heroism and masculinity that would later influence both Dahl's life and his own writing.

By the time Roald was thirteen the family had moved to Kent in England, and he was soon sent off to the famous Repton Public School. His sisters all attended Roedean in Sussex. To Roald, Repton was even worse than St. Peter's. His account of it in Boy includes fagging (younger boys, "fags", were basically personal slaves to the older prefects, called "boazers"), beatings, the torture of new boys, and other miseries common to many, although not all, boys' boarding schools of the time. One particularly scandalous section alleges that a former headmaster of Repton, Geoffrey Fisher (who had subsequently become Archbishop of Canterbury), was a sadistic flogger. According to Dahl, the vicious beatings that this man would deliver, combined with the fact that twenty years later he crowned Queen Elizabeth II in Westminster Abbey, made Dahl doubt the existence of God. In Jeremy Treglown's biography, however, he discoveres that Dahl got his dates mixed up. The beatings he was referring to happened in 1933, a year after Fisher left Repton. Dahl must have gotten Fisher mixed up with J. T. Christie, his successor.

Not all memories of Repton were bad, though. Dahl fondly recalls in Boy that "every now and again, a plain grey cardboard box was dished out to each boy in our House, and this, believe it or not, was a present from the great chocolate manufacturers, Cadbury" (BOY, 147). Inside were twelve new chocolate bar inventions that the boys were asked to sample and critique. Dahl and his schoolmates took this very seriously, and Roald used to dream of working in a chocolate company's inventing room. He said in Boy, "It was lovely dreaming those dreams, and I have no doubt at all that, thirty–five years later, when I was looking for a plot for my second book for children, I remembered those little cardboard boxes and the newly–invented chocolates inside them, and I began to write a book called Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" After completing his education at Repton, Dahl decided that he wanted a career that would take him to "wonderful faraway places like Africa or China" (BOY, 166). He won a coveted position with the Shell Company and spent two years training in England. Soon after he was posted to East Africa and started off on the two week sea voyage to get there. This voyage marks the end of Boy and the beginning of Going Solo. Once he reached Mombasa (in Kenya), Dahl transferred to another ship for the voyage down to Dar es Salaam in Tanganyika (now Tanzania). There he lived with two other Shell representatives and the three of them together administered the entire vast East African territory. Going Solo describes many of the exciting adventures Dahl lived through, including the time a green mamba entered his friend's house and the snake–catcher had to be called in. Another time a lion carried off a native woman, and Dahl's subsequent account of her rescue was printed in an African newspaper and became his first published work.

In 1939, it became clear to Dahl that something big was coming. It was World War II. Soon all the Englishmen in the territory were rounded up and transformed into temporary soldiers, responsible for containing the German population. This experience prompted Dahl to formally join the RAF (Royal Air Force) and learn to fly warplanes. Thus in November 1939 he drove cross–country to Nairobi to enlist and was awarded with the rank of Leading Aircraftman (LAC). After eight weeks of basic training and six months of advanced flying instruction, the RAF deemed him ready for battle.

Unfortunately Dahl's very first venture into combat territory resulted in his famous 1940 crash in the Libyan desert. He was flying an unfamiliar airplane (a Gladiator) and was supposed to join 80 Squadron in the Western Desert. Unfortunately the co–ordinates he was given were incorrect, and he suddenly found himself losing both daylight and fuel in the middle of nowhere. He was forced to attempt a crash landing, praying for luck that he didn't get. His undercarriage hit a boulder and the nose of the Gladiator slammed into the sand at over 75 miles an hour. Dahl's head struck the reflector–sight and fractured his skull, pushing his nose in and blinding him for days. He managed to pull himself from the burning wreckage, though, and was later rescued by three brave soldiers from the Suffolk regiment. After convalescing for months in various army hospitals, Dahl was finally deemed fit to resume flying duties again in the spring of 1941.

80 Squadron was now engaged in the tragic RAF campaign in Greece, and after rejoining them Dahl was soon thrust into the desperate routine of trying to stay alive. On his first trip up, he encountered six Ju 88's (enemy planes) and managed to shoot one of them down. The next day he shot down another over Khalkis Bay. His victory was short–lived, though, as the German Messerschmitt fighters swarmed down upon him and he barely made it back to the base alive. Over the next four days he went up twelve more times, fighting against incredible odds and miraculously making it back to base each time. On the 20th of April the Germans discovered the camp and ground–strafed it, but luckily they didn't hit any of the seven remaining aircraft. Dahl and the other man in 80 Squadron fought bravely for many more months, and their battles are described at length in Going Solo. Dahl was not fated to remain with them for long though, and when he began to get blinding headaches (from his earlier accident) he was invalided back home to Britain. His career in the RAF was over. One of Dahl's first duties in America was to get close to as many well–placed people as possible. Newspaper–owner Charles Marsh was one of these, and he and Dahl struck up an immediate friendship. Another duty was to help create a kind of British propaganda to keep America interested in the war and sympathetic to Britain's effort. Famous English author C.S. Forester asked Dahl to tell him his own story, so that he could write it up. Dahl thought it easier to put something on paper himself, and the result was so good that Forester decided not to change a thing. The finished story appeared anonymously in The Saturday Evening Post in August 1942 under the title "Shot Down Over Libya."

The story was introduced as a "factual report on Libyan air fighting" by an unnamed RAF pilot "at present in this country for medical reasons." Of course, the "factual" part might have been a little bit of a stretch. As mentioned previously, Dahl's crash was actually caused by lack of fuel and wrong directions, not from any enemy shooting. Much later, when this discrepancy was pointed out to him, Dahl claimed that the story had been edited and misleadingly captioned by magazine editors looking for a more dramatic tale.

As time passed and Dahl became more popular among Washington's rich and famous, he became known for the wild yarns he would spin about his RAF adventures. He even wrote a story called "Gremlin Lore" about the mythical creatures that supposedly sabotaged RAF planes. Since he was a serving officer, Dahl was required to submit everything he wrote for approval by British Information Services. The officer who read it, Sidney Bernstein, decided to pass it along to his good friend Walt Disney, who was looking for War–related features for his fledgling film company. Disney decided to turn Dahl's story into an animated feature called The Gremlins.

Problems immediately began to surface with the project. What did Gremlins look like? How could Disney copyright a name already known (and invented) by countless RAF pilots? Should the film be satirical or purely fantastic? Beyond these concerns, audience enthusiasm for the film began to wane as the War dragged on. Ultimately the project was scrapped, though Disney did put together a picture book in 1943 entitled Walt Disney: The Gremlins (A Royal Air Force Story by Flight Lieutenant Roald Dahl). This book, published by Random House in the United States and by Collins in Australia and Great Britain, is extremely rare and is considered a prize by any serious Dahl collector. It was his first book. If the Gremlins never reached the big screen, the experience certainly made Dahl's name as a writer. By the fall of 1944 he had a literary agent, Ann Watkins, and he had published a number of stories in American magazines: "Shot Down Over Libya" in The Saturday Evening Post; The Gremlins both and Cosmopolitan and in book form; "The Sword" in The Atlantic Monthly; "Katina" and "Only This" in the Ladies' Home Journal; and "Beware of the Dog" in Harper's. While Dahl, like any young writer, was trying out styles, he was also making sure each story contained some overt propaganda for the War effort. It's also worth nothing (in light of Dahl's later career) that two of these stories – The Gremlins and "Katina" – either featured or were written for children.

In 1945 Dahl moved back home to Amersham, England to be near his mother, Sofie. He enjoyed the rustic country life, making friends with some of the working–class men in the village. Among them was a butcher named Claud Taylor, who would later be immortalized in the "Claud's Dog" series of stories. Meanwhile, in 1946 Reynal and Hitchcock published Over to You, a collection of Dahl's war stories. It was released in England soon after by Hamish Hamilton. The book received mixed reviews but was ultimately successful enough to prompt Dahl's next effort: a full–blown novel about the possibilities of nuclear war.

The novel Dahl wrote, Sometime Never, was published in the United States in 1948 by Scribner's, and in England a year later by Collins. There's no easy way to put this: the book was a total flop. It was almost an adult version of the Gremlins story, beginning with the Battle of Britain and continuing on to the end of the world. Despite its utter failure, the book is remarkable for being the first book about nuclear war to be published in the United States after Hiroshima.

In the years following Sometime Never, Dahl renewed his friendship with American Charles Marsh, helping the newspaper man amass a valuable collection of British art and antiques. Dahl also helped his mentor set up a charity known as the Marsh's Public Welfare Foundation. In return, Marsh set up a trust in Dahl's name and invested thousands of dollars in a Dahl–family forestry operation in Norway.

These years in England had been profitable ones for Dahl, but he came to miss the sophistication of New York life. As the 1950's began, Dahl finally began to see some money from stories sold to Collier's and The New Yorker. He applied for and was granted a permanent American visa, and soon found himself taking up residence with the Marsh family back in the Big Apple. He slid easily back into the circuit of celebrity parties, and it was at one of these functions in 1951 that he met his future wife, actress Patricia Neal.

Patricia Neal was born in Packard, Kentucky on January 20, 1926. Her father was a manager for the Southern Coal and Coke Company, and though the family was not sophisticated, they were comfortably well off. Neal's theatrical ambitions were evident early in her school career, and she later enjoyed a measure of success at Northwestern University. After her father's early death, Neal left to pursue life as an actress in New York. "Before she was twenty–one, she had been taken to lunch by Richard Rodgers, pursued by David O. Selznick, had turned down one Broadway role in favor of another, and had made the cover of Life" (Treglown, 111).

Patricia Neal's most scandalous claim to fame, however, was her long affair with Gary Cooper, her co–star from The Fountainhead (King Vidor, 1949). The affair with Cooper began two years earlier, in 1947, and by 1950 Cooper's wife had found out and joined the battle. On one occasion, Treglown reports, Neal received the following telegram: "I HAVE HAD JUST ABOUT ENOUGH OF YOU. YOU HAD BETTER STOP NOW OR YOU WILL BE SORRY. MRS. GARY COOPER." Eventually Mrs. Cooper got her way, but not before her husband had made Pat pregnant and persuaded her to have an abortion. Guilty and scared, Neal called off the relationship.

After this trying period, Neal won a part in The Children's Hour, a new play by Lillian Hellman. It was at one of Hellman's dinner parties in 1951 that she first met the newly relocated author Roald Dahl. He had become quite a favorite amongst the New York elite, and he loved to shock and scorn unsuspecting newcomers with his wit and sarcasm. When he found himself seated next to the beautiful (and ten years his junior) rising star Patricia Neal, his tactic was to ignore her all evening. It wasn't long, though, before the two of them were going out together on a regular basis.

Dahl was also enjoying a measure of commercial success now as well. The sixty–year–old publisher Alfred Knopf had recently discovered some of Dahl's short stories and was eager to sign him to a deal. The collection Dahl later delivered in 1953 included such tales as "Taste," "My Lady Love, My Dove," "Skin," and "Dip in the Pool." Also included were four country stories gathered under the sub–title "Claud's Dog." The resulting book was entitled Someone Like You and received some very good reviews: "At disconcertingly long intervals, the compleat short–story writer comes along... Tension is his business; give him a surprise denouement, he'll give you a story leading up to it. His name in this instance is Roald Dahl" (James Kelly, quoted in Treglown, 119).

The publicity department at Knopf soon had even more to work with: Roald Dahl and Patricia Neal were married on July 2, 1953 at Trinity Church in New York. [Note: I am compiling this biography myself from various sources, and unfortunately it's still not finished yet. Sorry! This page just has some random information on it.]

In 1953 Dahl married actress Patricia Neal, whom he had first met at a party in 1951. She was a promising Warner Bros. star who had recently ended a much–publicized affair with Gary Cooper. They had five children together and he attributes his success as a writer of children's books to them. "Had I not had children of my own, I would have never written books for children, nor would I have been capable of doing so." Neal suffered a series of near–fatal strokes in 1965 and her road to recovery (with Roald's help) was described in Barry Farrell's book Pat and Roald (later made into the film The Patricia Neal Story).

In 1983, Roald Dahl and Patricia Neal divorced after thirty years of marriage. Dahl quickly remarried Felicity Dahl, with whom he had fallen in love and carried on an affair for some time. Thus the last years of his life were relatively happy and productive, and some of his best books were written during this period: The BFG, The Witches, and Matilda. Roald Dahl died on November 23, 1990 in Oxford, England. He was buried in Great Missenden.

Taare zameen par

2007-12-23T03:01:00.000-08:00

Taare zameen par

Cast: Aamir Khan, Tisca Chopra, Darsheel Safary, M. K. Raina, Tanay Cheda, Sachet Engineer, Vipin Sharma

Producer: Aamir Khan

Director: Aamir Khan

Music Director: Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy

Rating: ****

Indian cinema was always colourful, vibrant and full of life, but it sadly lacked soul. Aamir Khan's Taare Zameen Par changes the face of Indian cinema as we know it, infusing life into it and giving it its soul. This star twinkles and catches your attention and amazement, tugging at your heart throughout its two-and-a-half-hour plus playing time, bringing the shades of a child's imagination in blazing colour onto the screen canvas, and making us realize that truly every child is special, all we have to do is help them attain their true potential.

Yes, Aamir Khan's directorial debut is special, a heart-warming tale of a small child who has learning difficulties and is largely misunderstood by his parents. Darsheel Safary as Ishaan Awasthi is simply marvellous, making you believe that he is Ishaan and not just an actor enacting a role.

When the parents see Ishaan's academic performance deteriorate, they send him to a boarding school for disciplinary measure. Finding himself away from his doting mother and lovable family, Ishaan gets grief-stricken and lonely. Failing to understand why he has been removed from the shade of his mother and family, his otherwise vivid imagination withers and life turns into a morose black-and-white pattern. But a saviour in the form of Arts teacher Ram Shankar Nikumbh enters his life, and the colours creep back in slowly, as Nikumbh works hard on reviving the child's spirit, peeling away the layers that have clouded the taara. Aamir Khan as Nikumbh is outstanding, playing a man who has been through life trying to help children find themselves and their true calling, and in the process finding his own true self.

Inclusion, empathy and emotional bonding with caring is what this film beautifully propagates, telling an entertaining story that at the same time makes you sit up and take notice of what we must do for our next generation. The film also encourages every individual to repose faith in himself against all odds, advocating the concept of multiple intelligences. In an age of competitive fervour, this film takes the solid stand of individualistic innate skills to shine with support and encouragement, making it topical considering the academic pressure tragedies that one finds on front pages today.

Taking his time to set up the story, the director extracts a most believable and genuine performance from Darsheel, and the deft helming ensures that the efforts don't show. Even the other children slip into their characters comfortably, becoming the characters to the finest of details. Worthy of mention are Sachet Engineer as Yohaan Awasthi, Ishaan's bright elder brother, and Tanay Cheda as Rajan Damodaran. While the veteran actor himself is bound to give a great performance which he does, what truly amazes one is the genuinely fine performances by Tisca Chopra as Ishaan's mother and Vipin Sharma as the father. Both don't look like actors at all but are truly the characters in every sense, and every mother in India will identify with Tisca's Maya Awasthi.

Maa is Tisca's song as much as Darsheel's, and when she weeps while flipping through the flip-book of Ishaan, your heart truly goes out to her, bringing a lump to your throat. All other songs are genuinely from the heart, and Shankar Ehsaan Loy are at their very best, giving Prasoon Joshi's soul-stirring lyrics great music. The title song Taare Zameen Par is poetic, with no line being repeated in its sea of similes, and Bum Bum Bole is joyful with Aamir swinging with the kids to the catchy rhythm with Shiamak Davar's inventive choreography; Kholo Kholo is a true eye-opener, inspiring and uplifting in mood and content, making a fine album that will keep shining in music stores for a long long time.

This one is from the heart, uplifting and inspiring cinema that is a must-see for every parent and to-be parent, with lots to offer for kids also, who will no longer hesitate to follow their true calling. Aamir Khan, the filmmaker, has arrived!

2007-12-23T01:35:00.000-08:00

Dhamaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaal

2007-12-22T01:06:00.001-08:00

GHOST

The belief in ghosts as souls of the departed is closely tied to the ancient concept of animism, which attributed souls to everything in nature, including human beings, animals, plants, rocks, etc. ^[5] As the nineteenth-century anthropologist James Frazer explained in his classic work, The Golden Bough, souls were seen as the creature within that animated the body:

"If a man lives and moves, it can only be because he has a little man or animal inside, who moves him. The animal inside the animal, the man inside the man, is the soul. And as the activity of an animal or man is explained by the presence of the soul, so the repose of sleep or death is explained by its absence; sleep or trance being the temporary, death being the permanent absence of the soul... "^[6]

Although the human soul was sometimes symbolically or literally depicted in ancient cultures as a bird or other animal, it was widely held that the soul was an exact reproduction of the body in every feature, even down to clothing the person wore. This is depicted in artwork from various ancient cultures, including such works as the Egyptian Book of the Dead, which shows deceased people in the afterlife appearing much as they did before death, including the style of dress.

Another widespread belief concerning ghosts is that they were composed of a misty, airy, or subtle material. Anthropologists speculate that this may also stem from early beliefs that ghosts were the person within the person, most noticeable in ancient cultures as a person's breath, which upon exhaling in colder climates appears visibly as a white mist.^[5] This belief may have also fostered the metaphorical meaning of "breath" in certain languages, such as the Latin spiritus and the Greek pneuma, which by analogy became extended to mean the soul. In the Bible, God is depicted as animating Adam with a breath.

An artist's interpretation of a ghostly woman on a flight of stairs, based on common descriptions.

Although the evidence for ghosts is largely anecdotal, the belief in ghosts throughout history has remained widespread and persistent.

In many historical accounts, ghosts were thought to be deceased people looking for vengeance, or imprisoned on earth for bad things they did during life. Most cultures have ghost stories in their mythologies. Many stories from the Middle Ages and the Romantic era rely on the macabre and the fantastic, and ghosts are a major theme in literature from those eras.

Ghost stories date back to ancient times, and can be found in many different cultures. The Chinese philosopher, Mo Tzu (470-391 BC), is quoted as having said:

"The way to find out whether anything exists or not is to depend on the testimony of the ears and eyes of the multitude. If some have heard it or some have seen it then we have to say it exists. If no one has heard it and no one has seen it then we have to say it does not exist. So, then, why not go to some village or some district and inquire? If from antiquity to the present, and since the beginning of man, there are men who have seen the bodies of ghosts and spirits and heard their voices, how can we say that they do not exist? If none have heard them and none have seen them, then how can we say they do? But those who deny the existence of the spirits say: "Many in the world have heard and seen something of ghosts and spirits. Since they vary in testimony, who are to be accepted as really having heard and seen them?" Mo Tzu said: As we are to rely on what many have jointly seen and what many have jointly heard, the case of Tu Po is to be accepted."^[7] (note: King Hsuan (827-783 BC) executed his minister, Tu Po, on false charges even after being warned that Tu Po's ghost would seek revenge. Three years later, according to historical chronicles, Tu Po's ghost shot and killed Hsuan with a bow and arrow before an assembly of feudal lords.)

One of the earliest known ghost "sightings" in the west took place in Athens, Greece.^[8] Pliny the Younger (c. 63 - 113 AD) described it in a letter to Licinius Sura: Athenodoros Cananites (c. 74 BC – 7 AD), a Stoic philosopher, decided to rent a large, Athenian house, to investigate widespread rumors that it was haunted. Athenodoros staked out at the house that night, and, sure enough, a disheveled, aged spectre, bound at feet and hands with rattling chains, eventually "appeared". The spirit then beckoned for Athenodoros to follow him; Athenodoros complied, but the ghost soon vanished. The philosopher marked the spot where the old man had disappeared, and, on the next day, advised the magistrates to dig there. The man's shackled bones were reportedly uncovered three years later. After a proper burial, the hauntings ceased.^[9]

Many Eastern religious traditions also subscribe to the concept of ghosts. The Hindu Garuda Purana has detailed information about ghosts.^[10]

The Hebrew Torah and the Bible contain few references to ghosts, associating spiritism with forbidden occult activities cf. Deuteronomy 18:11. The most notable reference is in the First Book of Samuel (I Samuel 28:7-19 KJV), in which a disguised King Saul has the Witch of Endor summon the spirit of Samuel. In the New Testament, Jesus has to persuade the Disciples that he is not a ghost following the resurrection, Matthew 24. In a similar vein, Jesus' followers at first believe him to be a ghost when they see him walking on water.

The Child ballad Sweet William's Ghost recounts the story of a ghost returning to beg a woman to free him from his promise to marry her, as he can not, being dead; her refusal would mean his damnation. This reflects a popular British belief that the dead would haunt their lovers if they took up with a new love without some formal release.^[11]

The Unquiet Grave expresses a belief even more widespread, found in various location over Europe: ghosts can stem from the excessive grief of the living, whose mourning interferes with the dead's peaceful rest.^[12]

2007-12-22T00:07:00.001-08:00

Bats

2007-12-21T00:32:00.000-08:00

There are a lot of different kinds of bats -- from the tiny bumblebee bat (which is the size of a jellybean and weighs less than a penny) to the huge Bismarck flying fox (with a wingspan as long as an average man).

In fact, there are over 900 different species of bats -- they make up one fifth of the world's mammals. They are the second largest group of mammals (rodents are the largest). Bats live all over the world, from the United States to Australia except for in the coldest parts.

Bats are grouped into two main groups -- the large fruit eating bats (also known as "flying foxes" or "megabats") and the smaller bats ("microbats") who eat insects, blood, fish, lizards, birds and nectar.

Megabats and microbats are quite different from one another. Microbats live worldwide, except for Antarctica and most of the arctic region. Most of the world's bats are microbats.

Megabats include nearly 200 species and live in tropical regions. They look a lot more like land mammals we're familiar with -- which is why they're called "flying foxes". Most megabats are unable to echolocate, although there are a few (like the Egyptian Rousette) that can.

2007-12-20T19:33:00.000-08:00

Bhool Bhulayia

let's play football !!!

2007-12-20T19:23:00.000-08:00

Dhan Dhana Dhan

Goal

YAHOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!! it's Christmas!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!the X-MasYahooooooooo!!!!

2007-12-20T19:14:00.000-08:00

Merry christmas to all!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

let me tell you something on christmas now:-)

Christmas is an annual holiday that celebrates the birth of Jesus. The date of the celebration is traditional, and is not considered to be his actual date of birth. Christmas festivities often combine the commemoration of Jesus' birth with various secular customs, many of which have been influenced by earlier winter festivals.

In most places around the world, Christmas Day is celebrated on December 25. Christmas Eve is the preceding day, December 24. In the United Kingdom and many countries of the Commonwealth, Boxing Day is the following day, December 26. In Catholic countries, Saint Stephen's Day or the Feast of St. Stephen is December 26. The Armenian Apostolic Church observes Christmas on January 6. Eastern Orthodox Churches that still use the Julian Calendar celebrate Christmas on the Julian version of 25 December, which is January 7 on the more widely used Gregorian calendar, because the two calendars are now 13 days apart.

The word Christmas originated as a contraction of "Christ's mass". It is derived from the Middle English Christemasse and Old English Cristes mæsse, a phrase first recorded in 1038, compounded from Old English derivatives of the Greek christos and the Latin missa.^[1] In early Greek versions of the New Testament, the letter Χ (chi), is the first letter of Christ. Since the mid-16th century Χ, or the similar Roman letter X, was used as an abbreviation for Christ.^[2] Hence, Xmas is often used as an abbreviation for Christmas.

After the conversion of Anglo-Saxon Britain in the very early 7th century, Christmas was referred to as geol,^[1] the name of the pre-Christian solstice festival from which the current English word 'Yule' is derived.^[3]

The prominence of Christmas Day increased gradually after Charlemagne was crowned on Christmas Day in 800. Around the 12th century, the remnants of the former Saturnalian traditions of the Romans were transferred to the Twelve Days of Christmas (26 December – 6 January). Christmas during the Middle Ages was a public festival, incorporating ivy, holly, and other evergreens, as well as gift-giving.

Modern traditions have come to include the display of Nativity scenes, Holly and Christmas trees, the exchange of gifts and cards, and the arrival of Father Christmas or Santa Claus on Christmas Eve or Christmas morning. Popular Christmas themes include the promotion of goodwill and peace.

dragon ballz

2007-11-05T08:18:00.000-08:00

Dragon Ball Z commonly abbreviated as DBZ) is an anime series produced in Japan by Toei Doga. Dragon Ball Z is the sequel series to the Dragon Ball anime and Japanese comics of the same name, which covers the first 16 volumes of a 42 volume manga series created by manga artist Akira Toriyama. Dragon Ball Z adapts the last 26 volumes of the original manga, which portrays the adulthood of the series main character, Son Goku.
Dragon Ball Z first aired in Japan from April 26, 1989, to January 31, 1996, and was dubbed in several countries around the world, including Latin America and the United States. The American themes and soundtracks were produced in part by Bruce Faulconer.
The series continues the adventures of Goku as an adult who, along with his companions, defend the Earth and many other planets against various villains. While the original Dragon Ball anime followed Goku through childhood into adulthood, Dragon Ball Z is a continuation of his adulthood life, but at the same time parallels the maturation of his first child, Gohan, as well as the slow evolution of his rival, Vegeta from evil to good. The separation between the series is also significant as the later series takes on a more dramatic and serious tone.

doraemon

2007-11-05T08:06:00.000-08:00

Doraemon is a Japanese manga series created by Fujiko F. Fujio (the pen name of Hiroshi Fujimoto) which later became an anime series and Asian franchise. The series is about a robotic cat named Doraemon, who travels back in time from the 22nd century to aid a schoolboy, Nobita Nobi.
The series first appeared in December 1969, when it was published simultaneously in six different magazines. In total, 1,344 stories were created in the original series, which are published by Shogakukan under the Tentōmushi manga brand, extending to forty-five volumes. The volumes are collected in the Takaoka Central Library in Toyama, Japan, where Fujio was born.
Doraemon was awarded the first Shogakukan Manga Award for children's manga in 1982, and the first Osamu Tezuka Culture Award in 1997.
In Vietnam, Doraemon has become the series with largest amount of publishing to date (totally 40 million) and is continually printed and released[1].

Shinchan

2007-11-01T07:35:00.000-07:00

Shin-chan first appeared in a Japanese weekly magazine called Weekly Manga Action, which is published by Futabasha. Crayon Shin-chan began broadcasting on TV Asahi on April 13, 1992, and has also been aired by the anime television network, Animax across Japan , Hungama TV(India) and Latin America.

Much of the humor in the series stems from Shin-chan's occasionally weird, unnatural and inappropriate use of language, as well as from his inappropriate behavior. Therefore much of this humor is untranslatable for Western readers and viewers, and a few jokes can't even be translated into other East Asian languages. In Japanese, certain set phrases almost always accompany certain actions; many of these phrases have standard responses. A typical gag involves Shin-chan confounding his parents by using the wrong phrase for the occasion; for example, saying "welcome home!" when he arrives instead of "I'm home!".[1]

During the beginning of the series, the TV show was mostly based on the storyline in the comic books. As the show progressed, more and more episodes became anime-original.

Kochikame

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What is Kochikame?
The actual title of the series is Kochira Katsushika-ku Kameari Kouenmae Hashutsujo quite a mouthful that literally means 'this is the police box in front of Kameari Park in Katsushika'. Often referred to as just Kochikame, the series was created by AKIMOTO Osamu, and it first appeared in 1976, in the weekly comic magazine Shonen Jump. Since then, Kochikame has become the longest-running manga in existence since its serialisation, accumulating to a record 1,100 separate issues and over 110 books--as well as total sales of up to 130 million yen in Japan.

Kochikame is a comedy revolving around RYOUTSU Kankichi (or Ryo-san, as he's affectionately called), a burly police officer working in a police box around Kameari in Katsushika, downtown Tokyo. Though having a good heart, Ryoutsu's also gamble-loving, short-tempered, and has an enormous list of hobbies and interests that include video games and and model kits. More significantly though is Ryoutsu's knack for getting into all sorts of trouble--much to the dismay of his colleagues AKIMOTO Reiko and NAKAGAWA Keiichi, and especially his long-suffering boss OHARA Daijiro. What makes the series so popular is its outrageous and satirical humour, not to mention the many bizarre scenarios (super police cars armed with missiles, for instance) and Ryoutsu's ability to pull off the impossible.

In 1996, 20 years after the manga was first serialised, the series was made into an animated TV series (currently aired on Fuji Television). Kochikame has also ended up as various console games, and it also enjoyed a successful run on the stage as a musical written, directed, and starred by La Salle Ishii, the voice-actor for Ryo-san.

Kochikame the Movie marks the series transition to the big screen.

Jr. Sherlok Holmes

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Jr. Sherlok Holmes

Sherlok Holmes

Contents

[edit] The character

[edit] Knowledge and skills

[edit] Personality and habits

[edit] Relationships

[edit] Holmes and women

[edit] Influence

[edit] Holmesian deduction

[edit] Role in the history of the detective story

[edit] As an inspiration for speculation by fans

[edit] Societies

[edit] Museums

[edit] The Great Hiatus

[edit] Adaptations

[edit] Canonical adaptations

[edit] Related and derivative works (non-canonical)

[edit] Sherlock Holmes in reality

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] Novels

[edit] Short stories

[edit] Lists of favourite stories

[edit] Works by other authors

[edit] See also

[edit] References

[edit] External links

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Shinchan

Kochikame