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Codex Fejérváry-Mayer is a 15th or early 16th century Aztec (or Mixtec) manuscript on deer skin from Veracruz in central Mexico. Named for a Hungarian collector and British patron, this pre-Columbian accordion-style document outlines the cosmological and calendrical orientations of the Mayan people. As a typical calendar codex tonalamatl dealing with the sacred Aztec calendar -- the tonalpohualli -- it is grouped in the Codex Borgia group.
link: BibliOdyssey: Codex Fejervary Mayer
The "Rare Book Room" site has been constructed as an educational site intended to allow the visitor to examine and read some of the great books of the world. Over the last decade, a company called "Octavo" digitally photographed some of the world ’s great books from some of the greatest libraries. These books were photographed at very high resolution (in some cases at over 200 megabytes per page). This site contains all of the books (about 400) that have been digitized to date. These range over a wide variety of topics and rarity. The books are presented so that the viewer can examine all the pages in medium to medium-high resolution.
link: Rare Book Room
This web site is an excellent resource, full of information and photographs that will inflame the bibliophilic passion of all writers and readers.
Most Interesting Libraries of the World
The surviving parts of the world's oldest Christian bible will be reunited online on Monday, generating excitement among biblical scholars still striving to unlock its mysteries.
The Codex Sinaiticus was hand written by four scribes in Greek on animal hide, known as vellum, in the mid-fourth century around the time of the Roman emperor Constantine the Great who embraced Christianity.
link: Oldest Christian bible made whole again online | Technology | Internet | Reuters
Chris Buckley writes:
China has called a riot that shook the capital of western Xinjiang region on Sunday a plot against its power, after at least three people died in the eruption of ethnic unrest and authorities launched a crackdown.
Hundreds of locals took to the streets of the regional capital, Urumqi, some burning and smashing vehicles and confronting police and anti-riot troops, following a protest there against government handling of a clash between Han Chinese and Uighur factory workers in far southern China in late June, when two Uighurs died.
On Monday morning "the situation was under control," the state-run Xinhua news agency reported. There were no immediate reports of violence in other parts of Xinjiang.
Officials ordered traffic off the streets in parts of the city of 2.3 million residents -- 3,270 km (2,050 miles) west of Beijing -- to ensure there was no fresh unrest, Xinhua added.
"The city is basically under martial law," said Yang Jin, a dried fruit merchant in Urumqi contacted by telephone. "It would be wrong for anyone to say he wasn't afraid, but the situation looks calm for now."
The Chinese government blamed the riot on exiled Uighur groups demanding independence from Beijing, which they say is stifling their culture and exploiting their homeland's resources.
"The facts demonstrate this was controlled and instigated from abroad," an unnamed official said of the riot, according to Xinhua, which also said the "unrest was masterminded by the World Uyghur (also spelt Uighur) Congress led by Rebiya Kadeer."
link: China calls Xinjiang riot a plot against rule | International | Reuters
When the Online School for Girls flickers to life this fall on computer screens across the country, students will take part in an unusual experiment that joins two trends: girls-only schooling and online teaching.
A consortium that includes the 108-year-old Holton-Arms School in Bethesda is driving the project, in the belief that girls can benefit from an Internet curriculum tailored just to them.
"There's been a lot of research done on how girls learn differently with technology than boys," said Brad Rathgeber, Holton-Arms's director of technology. "Part of this is a little bit of theory that we're trying to put in practice to see if it really does play out."
link: Md. School Joins Test of Online Courses Tailored to Girls - washingtonpost.com
Fun Forever writes:
It always puts a smile on my face when I see such clocks. I enjoy the different and sometimes bizarre designs but when it comes to telling time that’s where the problems start. We are accustomed to round clocks with 3 (sometimes 2) hands. So this is a time cube but instead of hands it has triangles. The large one is the hour hand the middle one - minutes and the smallest one is for minutes. I think and this is only a guess, that you can tell time by looking at the numbers near the black line. What I like about this clock is that it transform into different shapes for 12 hours.
link: Fun Forever - Luxury fun is affordable for everyone! » Time Cube
Archeologists say the hand stencils created by ancient Europeans were mostly artworks imprinted by female members of prehistoric societies.
Measuring and analyzing the hand stencils surrounding the famous 'Spotted Horses' mural in France's 25,000-year-old Pech Merle cave, Pennsylvania State University archaeologists found that most of them belonged to females.
"Even a superficial examination of published photos suggested to me that there were lots of female hands there," National Geographic quoted archaeologist Dean Snow as saying.
link: Study finds that prehistoric cave artists were women -- Signs of the Times News
Wilbert Prysock, 2 February 1926, Greensboro, North Carolina, USA, d. 19 February 1993, Chicago, Illinois, USA. After attempting to learn piano, organ, clarinet and trumpet, Prysock received a tenor saxophone from his sister for his seventeenth birthday. He learned to play the instrument during his military service in World War II. Prysock turned professional upon his demobilization in 1947 and joined Tiny Grimes' Rocking Highlanders, with whom he recorded for the fledgling Atlantic Records. He left them in 1950 to join Roy Milton's Solid Senders before finding fame with Tiny Bradshaw's band and such recordings as "Soft", "Off And On" and "Free For All" (which became known as "Go, Red, Go") on King Records. Prysock formed his own band in 1953, after experimenting with three releases on Bobby Robinson's Red Robin label, and was signed by Mercury Records the following year, for whom he notched up many big sellers, among them "Hand Clappin'", "Jump, Red, Jump" and "Finger Tips". He played with the Alan Freed Big Band, backing all the top rock 'n' roll artists of the 50s, and was able to switch styles with the advent of soul music in the 60s, recording for King and Chess and supporting many of the era's big names. In 1971, Red teamed up with his famous elder brother, Arthur Prysock, and toured and performed together - the saxophone and the voice.
link: Red Prysock Biography : OLDIES.com
Vowing to return home to recover his presidency, Mr. Zelaya boarded a plane in Washington for Honduras on Sunday afternoon with the United Nations General Assembly president, Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann, and a small group of advisers and others.
But the leaders who expelled Mr. Zelaya in an early-morning coup last Sunday announced bluntly that the plane carrying the deposed president and other aircraft accompanying it would be denied permission to land. “If he pushes it, there will be 10,000 people on the runway to prevent him,” said Enrique Ortez, foreign minister of the caretaker government.
The government’s announcement did little to dissuade crowds of Mr. Zelaya’s supporters from ringing the airport on Sunday evening, where hundreds tried to break down the fences to get in.
Soldiers, standing in formation at one end of the runway and in trenches dug into a hillside, fired in the air and set off tear gas, while a helicopter hovered overhead.
A least one person was killed and two were badly wounded, a medic and emergency services at the airport said, according to Reuters.
Adding to the drama, Mr. Zelaya was giving interviews from the air as he approached Central America. “No one can obligate me to turn around,” he told Telesur, a Venezuelan network that had reporters on the plane. “The constitution prohibits expelling Hondurans from the country. I am returning with all of my constitutional guarantees.”
link: Ex-Honduran President Tries to Return as Clashes Erupt - NYTimes.com
"This is an age which happily invades its own privacy," writes Charles Nevin in "Taking liberties" an alarming feature in the summer issue of Intelligent Life. We have become so cavalier about our privacy (on Facebook and Twitter, for example) that we don't seem to mind that the British government is constantly watching us, recording everything we do--in shops, classrooms and on the street. The cameras are everywhere.
“Around midnight a big toad will appear—no-one knows where from—and then healing water will flow from the spring, only to dry up a couple of minutes later," said Iso, a 53-year old hodja fresh from reciting the Koran to sanctify the slaughter of six sheep. A volley of gunfire would then be needed to summon three angels to restart the flow, so the 200 pilgrims could take a bottle home.
link: WAITING FOR MAGIC IN MACEDONIA | More Intelligent Life
Anne Trubeck writes:
The chattering classes have become silent, tapping their views on increasingly smaller devices. And tapping they are: the screeds are everywhere, decrying the decline of smart writing, intelligent thought and proper grammar. Critics bemoan blogging as the province of the amateurism. Journalists rue the loose ethics and shoddy fact-checking of citizen journalists. Many save their most profound scorn for the newest forms of social media. Facebook and Twitter are heaped with derision for being insipid, time-sucking, sad testaments to our literary degradation. This view is often summed up with a disdainful question: “Do we really care about what you ate for lunch”
Forget that most of the pundits lambasting Facebook and Twitter are familiar with these devices because they use them regularly. Forget that no one is being manacled to computers and forced to read stupid prose (instead of, say, reading Proust in bed). What many professional writers are overlooking in these laments is that the rise of amateur writers means more people are writing and reading. We are commenting on blog posts, forwarding links and composing status updates. We are seeking out communities based on written words.
Go back 20, 30 years and you will find all of us doing more talking than writing. We rued literacy levels and worried over whether all this phone-yakking and television-watching spelled the end of writing.
Few make that claim today.
link: WE ARE ALL WRITERS NOW | More Intelligent Life
Leading up to the AU Summit, advocates for women's rights stressed the necessity of implementing existing protocols on gender equality on the continent. In a two-day pre-summit on women, the AU Agricultural Commissioner Rhoda Peace Tumuslime delivered a report on the status of gender equality on the continent.
Tumuslime discussed some aspects of the history of women's status in Africa and stressed the necessity of the AU to effectively address these issues with specific reference to agricultural production and food security. In many African countries women are responsible for the production of 80% or more of the food supply, yet women's decision-making authority falls far short of their overall economic contribution to society.
"The women have always been there and they starve in order to feed their husbands. They starve in order to feed their children, and they starve in order to look after the sick, to look out for the HIV people in the hospitals. Without women, I don't think, we would be anywhere," Tumuslime stated in her address. (VOA, June 18)
The AU Agricultural Commissioner also examined why the existing initiatives aimed at development have not done nearly enough to guarantee women's equality. "We need to look at approaches that have been used in the past in trying to improve the status of rural women, build on what has worked and change strategies that have not worked." (VOA, June 18)
link: Pan-African News Wire: African Union Summit Faces Challenges on Gender Equality
“Status Update,” an exhibition named for Facebook’s popular communication format. Nearly 50 works from more than a dozen artists will be on display through Aug. 1 at Haskins Laboratories in New Haven, a private nonprofit group affiliated with Yale and the University of Connecticut that specializes in communication: mainly speech, language and reading research.
link: Arts - Connecticut - A New Haven Show of Art Shaped by Social Networking Sites - NYTimes.com
hat tip to Willow Gray/Sophie Floats
We've been working on producing mazes by computer, with input from a human designer. We're interested in two complementary questions with respect to maze design:
* Complexity: What makes a maze difficult to solve? The more we consider this question, the more elusive it becomes. It's certainly possible to begin defining mathematical measures of a maze's complexity, but complexity must depend on aspects of human perception as well. For example, the eye can easily become lost in a set of parallel passages. Complexity also depends on how the maze is to be solved. Are you looking down on the maze, solving it by eye? With a pencil? What if you're walking around inside the maze? And of course, complexity isn't necessarily what we want to measure. Ultimately we'd like to generate compelling puzzles, which may or may not have a high degree of complexity.
* Aesthetics: How do we construct attractive mazes, particularly mazes that resemble real-world scenes? Here, maze design interacts with problems in non-photorealistic rendering. There are many great projects for producing line drawings from images. Our goal is similar, except that our lines must also contrive to have the geometry of a maze. This additional constraint affects how we think about creating a line drawing in the first place.
link: Maze Design
Africa's last scheduled steam train service was suspended late last month, dashing hopes that it could be a hook to attract tourists to the Garden Route, one of South Africa's most beautiful coasts, during next year's World Cup.
The Outeniqua Choo-Tjoe, which ran a daily service between George and Mossel Bay during the busy summer months, would no longer operate as it had become too expensive for its State-run owner, Transnet, to maintain after flooding damaged the line. Prior to landslides in 2006 it was possible to take the train between George and Knysna too, which crossed the Garden Route’s most iconic railway bridge, but, with an estimated repair cost of R65-million (€6-million), funds to repair the line have not been available.
link: AfricaNews - Africa's last scheduled steam train stops - The AfricaNews articles of pejomo
Niger President Mamadou Tandja has come under intense pressure by world leaders, government and regional bodies after he dissolved Parliament and assumed "emergency powers". Tandja faced stiff resistance by the international community in his bid to stay in power at "all cost."
Niger which has one of the world’s largest uranium deposit is among one of the world poorest nations with over 80% of its population living below $1 a day while a huge percentage of its national budget depend heavily on donor funding.
The European Union – the main source of funding for West African States - warned of aid cuts if Tanja failed to respect the Constitution. Louis Michel, European Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Aid warned: "Any changes to the constitution, notably its fundamental articles, should not be made in the absence of consensual and inclusive dialogue."
link: AfricaNews - International pressure mounts on Niger - Murtala
Libyan leader and current head of the African Union Muammar Gaddafi is pushing hard at a summit he is hosting for African leaders to adopt his age long and 'controversial' plan of turning the African Union (AU) into a bloc similar to the European Union (EU).
Meanwhile, media reports being monitored by AfricaNews have it that the African heads of state at the dawn of today approved a plan to enhance the powers of the AU. The plan mandates the AU to coordinate defence policy and trade negotiations, Reuters quoted a participant at the summit to have said.
The report said a document enhancing the powers of the African Union's executive body was approved at about 4 a.m. (0200 GMT) after many hours of discussions at the summit, Benin's Foreign Minister Jean-Marie Ehouzou, told reporters.
"We have given agreement for the coordination of foreign affairs and defence," he said. "The states are ready to cede a little bit a part of their sovereignty for the benefit of the (Union)."
The document has to be ratified by member states' parliaments before it comes into force.
link: AfricaNews - Gaddafi pushes AU to adopt EU style - The AfricaNews articles of accreporter
Bishops in Cameroon have expressed disdain against the imminent legalization of abortion and homosexuality following the country's ratification of the Maputo Protocol permitting States to legalize homosexuals and abortion. They are calling on the general public to protest against the move.
In a declaration at the end of their 34th Plenary Assembly in Yaounde, the Bishops disagreed vehemently with Cameroon's ratification of the law, calling on Cameroonians to categorically say no to it.
Christian Cardinal Tumi told the press that the Bishops will in the days ahead organize a protest march throughout the national territory to show their indignation and disillusionment with the Head of State for “ratifying such a bad law.”
link: AfricaNews - Abortion, homosexual row erupt in Cameroon - Solomon Mforgham weblog
United Nations-backed Congolese armed forces conducting intensified military operations in eastern and northern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have failed to protect civilians from brutal rebel retaliatory attacks and instead are themselves attacking and raping Congolese civilians, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Thursday.
The attacks on civilians from all sides have resulted in a significant increase in human rights violations over the past six months.
"The Congolese government's military operations have been a disaster for civilians, who are now being attacked from all sides," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of HRW, on a visit to eastern Congo. "Congo and the U.N. need to take urgent measures to protect people and keep this human rights catastrophe from getting even worse."
Since January 2009, nine HRW fact-finding missions to frontline areas found a dramatic increase in attacks on civilians and other human rights abuses in Lubero, Rutshuru, Masisi and Walikale territories in North Kivu, Kalehe and Shabunda territories in South Kivu, and Haute Uele district in northern Congo.
link: allAfrica.com: Congo-Kinshasa: UN-Backed Troops Abusing Civilians, HRW Says (Page 1 of 1)
AUSTRALIAN-BORN workers have been shielded from the worst of the global recession, as employers have mainly restricted the economy-wide job losses to migrant workers.
Although unemployment is rising across the board as opportunities vanish, there is a clear divide emerging between the treatment of local and overseas-born workers.
Australian-born workers dropped 22,000 full-time jobs in the 12 months to May but picked up an extra 74,500 part-time jobs for a net gain of 52,500 positions.
By contrast, migrant workers lost 37,100 full-time jobs, offset by 21,600 extra part-time jobs for a net loss of 15,500.
The detailed research by The Australian suggests employers have been laying off workers on a last-on, first-off basis.
This puts the migrants who claimed the majority of the jobs available at the top of the boom, when the economy faced acute skills shortages, in the employment firing line now.
The surprise in the figures is that English-speaking migrants, mainly from New Zealand, have fared the worst.
link: Job slump hits migrants most | The Australian
"The crescent Earth rises above the lunar horizon in this spectacular photograph taken from the Apollo 17 spacecraft in lunar orbit during final lunar landing mission in the Apollo program."
link: TYWKIWDBI: Crescent Earth
At least 12 people have been killed in heavy shelling between Somali troops and anti-government fighters near the presidential palace in the capital, Mogadishu, witnesses have said.
The latest casualties came a day after 23 people were killed and 51 injured on Saturday in fighting between the two sides.
"It was a very gruesome scene," a local resident, who saw dead bodies and wounded people running away from the scene on Sunday, said.
link: Al Jazeera English - Africa - More die in Mogadishu fighting
The stereotypical view of two sexes - me Tarzan, you Jane - is not only cartoonish, it limits our understanding and appreciation of our own biology.
We still see a gap where none exists," Callahan writes, "a mirage that shimmers over the hot land of sex." He argues instead that there is a range of sexual characteristics that stretches from the testosterone-inflated Tarzan to the womanly "perfection" of a stereotypical Jane and all the variations that lie in between. "In truth, we are all intersex," he concludes.
link: Review: Sex in shades of grey - opinion - 05 July 2009 - New Scientist
While foreign diplomats hold out hope that the August presidential elections and President Obama’s new troop deployments could change things here, Afghans are voting with their feet.
Last year about 18,000 Afghans applied for asylum in Europe, a figure nearly double the 2007 total. The spike was the highest increase for any major country in 2008, according to the United Nations. By comparison, applications from Iraqis fell 10 percent.
“People can’t find jobs here,” Mr. Ahad said. “And if you go to a place where there’s work, you’ll be killed in a week.
“I’m desperate,” he added. “It’s not a big dream. I just want to finish my studies and live normally.”
link: Running Out Of Options, Afghans Pay For an Exit - NYTimes.com
The operator of a monorail at Walt Disney World died Sunday morning when two monorails crashed. About five or six guests were on the monorail at the time of the accident, but they are not seriously injured. It happened at the Ticket and Transportation Center station.
link: Fatal monorail collision at Walt Disney World - Boing Boing
Togo W. Tanaka, a former journalist and businessman whose reports on life inside the Manzanar internment camp illuminated divisions in the Japanese American community after the attack on Pearl Harbor and the tensions that eventually erupted in riots at the World War II-era detention center, has died. He was 93.
Tanaka died of natural causes May 21 at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, according to his daughter, Christine.
The developer of this abandoned model home, Michael Roberts, chief executive of Charlevoix Homes, intended to turn a 35-acre former alfalfa farm into a community of 92 luxury houses, with prices starting around $500,000. During the boom, Charlevoix Homes grew to 32 employees; it was recognized in 2006 by the state’s small-business association as one of the “50 Arizona Companies to Watch.”
He is now bankrupt. More at the New York Times, via Andy Revkin, who asks:
Are these portraits, perhaps, of the end of the age of unfettered consumption, simply a short pause before human communities resume their 150-years-and-counting fossil-fueled sprint, or a foretaste of Alan Weisman’s 2007 thought experiment, “ The World Without Us”?
link: Ruins of the Second Gilded Age in the New York Times : TreeHugger
This is an excellent translation of The Prince by Parks, accessible and gripping without diluting Machiavelli's message one iota. His sense of this masterpiece as an essentially psychological work, one that looks at the effects of power of the mind, infuses his translation, and he never forgets its origins as a letter, as a means of conveying a message to a new ruler.
Parks shows, too, in his introduction, how amenable this text has been to both right- and left-wingers over the centuries: the right saw it as a warning about the power of the people, the left as a vindication.
link: The Prince, By Niccolo Machiavelli, trs Tim Parks - Reviews, Books - The Independent
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said he wants to engage President Obama in "negotiations" before international media, a semi-official Iranian news outlet reported on Saturday.
Speaking at a meeting of medical school deans, Ahmadinejad said Iran "will soon pursue a new round of diplomatic activity" amid a new position of strength for the Iranian government, the Iranian Student News Agency quotes him as saying.
"I will go to the United Nations and will invite Obama to negotiations," Ahmadinejad said, adding that such talks would be "in front of the international media, not a sit-down behind closed doors in order to talk about matters."
The Obama administration has sought dialogue with Iran but also criticized the government for its handling of unrest after disputed presidential elections.
Last week, Obama said Iran's government must justify itself not in the eyes of the United States, but in the opinion of its own people.
link: Report: Ahmadinejad says he wants public talks with Obama - CNN.com
The wife of the new head of Britain's spy agency has posted pictures of her husband, family and friends on Internet networking site Facebook, details which could compromise security, a newspaper said on Sunday.
Sir John Sawers is due to take over as head of the Secret Intelligence Service in November. The SIS, popularly known as MI6, is Britain's global intelligence-gathering organization.
In what the Mail on Sunday called an "extraordinary lapse," the new spy chief's wife, Lady Shelley Sawers, posted family pictures and exposed details of where the couple live and take their holidays and who their friends and relatives are.
The details could be viewed by any of the many millions of Facebook users around the world, but were swiftly removed once authorities were alerted by the newspaper's enquiries.
"There were fears that the hugely embarrassing blunder could have compromised the safety of Sir John's family and friends," the newspaper said.
link: British spy chief's cover blown on Facebook | Technology | Internet | Reuters
American attitudes have changed and the "don't ask, don't tell" policy toward gays serving in the U.S. military should be reviewed, former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Colin Powell said on Sunday.
President Barack Obama favors overturning the policy, which bars gay troops from serving openly in the military. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has asked military lawyers to look at ways to make the law more flexible, hailed by gay rights groups as a "seismic political shift".
"The policy and the law that came about in 1993, I think, was correct for the time," Powell said on CNN's State of the Union.
"Sixteen years have now gone by, and I think a lot has changed with respect to attitudes within our country, and therefore I think this is a policy and a law that should be reviewed." he added.
link: Time to review policy on gays in U.S. military: Powell | U.S. | Reuters
A pro-reform Iranian clerical group said on Sunday the outcome of last month's presidential vote was "invalid," even though Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has upheld the result.
In a sign of a deepening rift among Shi'ite clerics, the Assembly of Qom Seminary Scholars and Researchers also called for the release of Iranians arrested in protests after the hardline president was declared winner of the June 12 vote.
"Other candidates' complaints and strong evidence of vote-rigging were ignored ... peaceful protests by Iranians were violently oppressed ... dozens of Iranians were killed and hundreds were illegally arrested," said a statement published on the Assembly's website. "The outcome is invalid."
link: Iranian clerical group says vote result invalid | International | Reuters
Bangladesh is the most crowded place on Earth and will become even more impossibly packed in the next 30 years.
Approximately 20% of its land, it is feared, will be lost to the rising waters brought about by climate change.
Today's 150 million Bangladeshis also have to face cyclones and arsenic-contaminated water. About half of the population is illiterate and a third live on less than one US dollar a day.
While others make plans for overpopulation, global warming mitigation and sustainable development, in Bangladesh, it is time for action. And the leadership is coming from within.
link: BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Building a secure future in Bangladesh
Hundreds of ultra-Orthodox Jews clashed with riot police in central Jerusalem on Saturday night in the latest protest against the city's decision to open a municipal parking lot on the Jewish Sabbath.
Dressed in traditional cloaks and fur hats, demonstrators forced the closure of several major streets, and some hurled rocks at motorists along a Jerusalem highway, said police spokesman Mickey Rosenfeld. No injuries were reported.
link: Ultra-Orthodox Jews, Riot Police Clash in Jerusalem Over Opening of Parking Lot - washingtonpost.com
