Clipmarks | invictus's 'books' clips

Date set for Odysseus' return from Trojan War

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 23:30:56 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks: Although I read this story with caution and I still remain very sceptical about the astronomical references and interpretations, I'm posting it here for those who may be interested.

Clip Source: news.yahoo.com

Using clues from star and sun positions mentioned by the ancient Greek poet Homer, scholars think they have determined the date when King Odysseus returned from the Trojan War and slaughtered a group of suitors who had been pressing his wife to marry one of them.

It was on April 16, 1178 B.C. that the great warrior struck with arrows, swords and spears, killing those who sought to replace him, a pair of researchers say in Monday's online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

Experts have long debated whether the books of Homer reflect the actual history of the Trojan War and its aftermath.

Marcelo O. Magnasco of Rockefeller University in New York and Constantino Baikouzis of the Astronomical Observatory in La Plata, Argentina, acknowledge they had to make some assumptions to determine the date Odysseus returned to his kingdom of Ithaca.

Tags: ancient history, greece, trojan war, homer, odysseus, archaeoastronomy

Little arrow that rewrites history books

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 18:25:15 GMT

clipped by: invictus

Clip Source: www.pretorianews.co.za

Two researchers from Wits University believe that what they have discovered is a 60 000-year-old arrow that was fired from the earliest known bow. Their discovery has pushed back the origins of bow-and-arrow technology by 20 000 years.

The bow, probably made of wood and long since decayed, was used at a time when Neanderthals in Europe were using large spears in duels with woolly mammoths and other large prehistoric game.

The bone arrow, just 5cm long, was excavated by Wadley at the Sibudu cave, near the coastal town of Ballito in KwaZulu Natal, two years ago.

It's mystery who the people were who fashioned the arrow.

Also at this time, humankind was leaving an ever-increasing archaeological record of the first inklings of modern human behaviour. They were burying the dead, using coloured pigments and wearing jewellery.

"This at a time a few thousand years before they walked out of Africa, to become the ancestors of all humans," said Backwell.

Tags: archaeology, anthropology, south africa, prehistory, arrow, science

Allegory of the Continents - Great illustrations

Tue, 11 Dec 2007 22:13:30 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks: 16th century illustrations, depicting "the characteristics" of the continents. Awesome scans again, from BibliOdyssey.

Clip Source: bibliodyssey.blogspot.com

Tags: illustrations, art, culture, rare books, scans

Shooting War: A Graphic Novel on Iraq (video)

Sat, 08 Dec 2007 15:34:02 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks: A video preview, based on a graphic novel by Anthony Lappé. Iraq war in 2011.

Clip Source: www.alternet.org

Shooting War, a graphic novel set in Iraq in the year 2011, has been chilling readers and making headlines about its vivid and surreal depiction of the war zone.

It's the year 2011. John McCain is our unpopular president, the war in Iraq rages on, gasoline is $10 a gallon, and Tom Cruise and Mary-Kate Olsen have just called it quits. When videoblogger Jimmy Burns captures on camera a suicide bomb blast that rocks a Brooklyn Starbucks (destroying his apartment above), he's immediately hired by maverick network Global News and packed off to Iraq.

[Video]

Tags: iraq, iraq war, graphic novel, books, video

Notes on a Sick Planet

Sat, 13 Oct 2007 17:45:06 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks:

The authors may reach a bit when they try to sound less square, likening the buying of compact fluorescent light bulbs to “an upgrade on your iTunes software.” But they make the science relevant and enjoyable with abundant visuals and conclude with some meaty ways for kids to make a difference. The old standbys are all there (switch light bulbs, recycle, use canvas bags at the grocery store). But I smiled on noticing something new: the authors suggest some “sustainable careers” kids can consider, like meteorologist and “glacial geologist.”

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

There’s no use avoiding it: our kids need to know about the global environmental crisis — climate change, deforestation, species extinction. And as long as we’re teaching them about all that, we may as well teach them some science at the same time. Learning about evaporation can be as boring as watching a pot boil, but if it’s part of a habitat-destroying, polar-bear-killing, actually-somewhat-interesting environmental disaster, maybe that’s something kids could enjoy reading.

Here are two new books that don’t shy away from the complexity of the science or the gravity of our environmental situation, but which also don’t forget their audience. Never before have so many serious ecological ideas been mixed so heavily with flatulence jokes and sad pictures of cute animals. The details of global warming boggle some of the world’s finest minds, but Laurie David and Cambria Gordon’s “Down-to-Earth Guide to Global Warming” actually makes it easy to understand.

Tags: environment, books, kids, learning, education, earth, book review, science

Google Books Redesign

Thu, 27 Sep 2007 01:27:14 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks: Now it looks much better; like a real online library.

Clip Source: blogoscoped.com

The Google Book search homepage just received a redesign (some of you were able to spot this prototype before, but it just went live for all). It now looks more like book shelf than straight-forward search engine; instead of the typical Google logo + input box, you’ll be seeing a couple of pre-selected covers as images, making for a more explorative approach.

Tags: google, books, book search

Rare Book Room

Tue, 21 Aug 2007 14:19:20 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks: An awesome reference site with a good collection of scanned rare books.

Clip Source: rarebookroom.org

Introduction

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 ten years, a company called "Octavo" embarked on digitally photographing 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.

Tags: books, rare books, reference

The Original Wizard of Oz

Fri, 10 Aug 2007 20:42:01 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks: "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz", with William Wallace Denslow's awesome illustrations, published in 1900.

Clip Source: bibliodyssey.blogspot.com

'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz' was an innovative book not least because of the twenty four full colour plates and myriad monochromatic illustrations in which the colour changed according to the location in the story (Kansas = grey, Emerald City = green and so on). With the illustrative vignettes often encroaching on the text area, the type was cleverly printed over the top of the coloured images. Such elaborate printing techniques again required that Baum and Denslow fund the printing costs and the book was published by George M Hill and Company of Chicago and New York in 1900 for $1.50 per copy. It was apparently successful.

'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz' is online in its entirety at the Library of Congress [Rare Book and Special Collections Division].

'The Wizard of Oz - An American Fairy Tale' exhibition site at the Library of Congress.

Tags: wizard of oz, books, rare books, illustrations, page scans, william denslow

Aztec Mexico: Page Scans From Ancient Manuscript

Wed, 11 Jul 2007 22:41:44 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks: Awesome prints from centuries old manuscripts: Aztec calendar, rituals and culture. Another gem from BibliOdyssey. I recommend visiting the source.

Clip Source: bibliodyssey.blogspot.com

Aztec Mexico

This is an absolutely outstanding collection, with more than 4000 images of 'books, maps, and manuscripts relating to the colonial period of the Americas, North and South, from 1492 to ca. 1825'. I am amazed I had never, to my recall, seen this InsightBrowser site before. I've only had a very modest perusal of their holdings so far, but I will definitely return in the near future. It's great to see any material relating to the Caribbean and the Guyanas, but there is so much more in here. The extent of the background notes is commendable too.

Tags: books, rare books, manuscripts, aztecs, ancient, history, illustrations

Google Books Text Versions

Thu, 05 Jul 2007 21:30:34 GMT

clipped by: invictus

Clip Source: blogoscoped.com

Google Books Text Versions

Some of Google’s full view books can now be seen in a plain text version, additional to the existing images of text. This will allow you to copy the text for personal use, or to create a website of it, or have it be read by a screen reader, or do anything else you want (commercial and non-commercial). To search for full view books, use the advanced search page of Google Books and check the “full view” option. Now when you’re in the book view of a result, click the “view plain text” link at the top right. (Not all full view books were showing this link when I tried.)

Tags: books, google, ocr, character recognition, etext, reference

Happiness wins science book prize

Mon, 28 May 2007 14:32:19 GMT

clipped by: invictus

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Happiness wins science book prize

Daniel Gilbert beat five other shortlisted titles

A scientific exploration of the various ways people attempt to make themselves happy has won the annual Royal Society Prize for Science Books.

Daniel Gilbert's Stumbling on Happiness had been tipped as the favourite to win the prestigious £10,000 award.

It beat five other titles including Henry Nicholl's Lonesome George, an account of the last known individual of a subspecies of Galapagos tortoise.

Tags: books, daniel gilbert, happiness, royal society prize

The World Before The Deluge

Wed, 02 May 2007 23:24:15 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks: An awesome feature again, from BibliOdyssey. Illustrations from a 1872 edition book, depicting the prehistoric world.

Clip Source: bibliodyssey.blogspot.com

"The object of "The World before the Deluge" is to trace the progressive steps by which the earth has reached its present state, from that condition of chaos when it "was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the the deep," and to describe the various convulsions and transformations through which it has successively passed."

'The World Before the Deluge' by Louis Figuier (1872 revision of the 1862 text) is online at 19th century science.

Tags: books, rare books, illustrations, prehistory, art, earth, deluge

Atheism - BBC Reference Site

Thu, 29 Mar 2007 04:24:22 GMT

clipped by: invictus

Clip Source: www.bbc.co.uk

Atheists are people who do not believe in a god or gods (or other immaterial beings), or who believe that these concepts are not meaningful.

Some atheists put it more firmly and believe that god or gods do not exist.

Features

Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins is one of the most famous scientists in Britain, has authored many popular books, and is a vocal pro-humanist.
Reasons
This article is an indepth look at some of the reasons why people choose atheism, and some of the most influential atheist thinkers and their arguments.

Full list of articles in Atheism

Tags: atheism, reference, bbc

Some Books on Critical Thinking

Wed, 28 Feb 2007 15:45:23 GMT

clipped by: Djiezes

Clip Source: rtnl.wordpress.com

“Teaching Critical Thinking“

There are hundreds of books on thinking and how to improve it, ranging from airport junk to turgid academic treatises. Here is a short list of some of the best, focusing on critical thinking

Cialdini, R. B. (1984). Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.

Giere, R. N. (1996). Understanding Scientific Reasoning

Heuer, R. J. (1999). Psychology of Intelligence Analysis.

Kepner, C. H., & Tregoe, B. B. (1997). The New Rational Manager

Minto, B. (1995). The Pyramid Principle: Logic in Writing and Thinking.

Myers, D. G. (2002). Intuition: Its Powers and Perils.

Paul, R. W., & Elder, L. (2002). Critical Thinking: Tools for Taking Charge of Your Professional and Personal Life

Piatelli-Palmarini, M. (1994). Inevitable Illusions: How Mistakes of Reason Rule our Minds.

Salmon, M. (1989). Introduction to Logic and Critical Thinking

Spence, G. (1995). How to Argue and Win Every Time

Whyte, J. (2004) Crimes Against Logic

Tags: books, book, literature, help, start, thinking, critical, critical thinking, skepticism, skeptic, academic, logic, science, psychology

Aztec Calendars and Sun Stone (page scans)

Tue, 20 Feb 2007 18:39:26 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks: BibliOdyssey does it again: Here, you can find awesome pagescans from a 1790 book, describing the Aztec finds in Mexico, by Antonio de León y Gama. The pagescans include an awesome illustration of the famous Aztec Sun Stone (a.k.a "Calendar".) BibliOdyssey says, Library of Congress digitized the whole book and added to the online collection - can be found at this link. (The book is in Spanish.)

Clip Source: bibliodyssey.blogspot.com

This is a slight but worthwhile repeat of sorts. Aztec sunstones discovered in Mexico in 1790 were described by Antonio de León y Gama in 'Descripción Histórica y Cronológica de las dos Piedras..' [An historical and chronological description of two stones found under ground, in the great square of the City of Mexico]. Since I last posted (more info) a couple of images, the Library of Congress have digitized the whole book.

Tags: books, archaeology, mexico, aztecs, rare books, page scans