Friday, October 8, 2010

Various News

This story is about an Antiquarian book fair in Frankfurt, Germany.  I love old books and have been collecting them for years, but not based on worth, but interest to me.  Some of the little known titles of Christian works from the 1800's go for pennies, and I'm not talking about reprints. 

I find this portion interesting:
"But even in the musty sanctuary of the antique book tent, there is no escape from the subject of digitalisation and ebooks that has so dominated the 62nd edition of the fair.




Dan Burnstone, from ProQuest, is trying to do exactly that. His company has launched a project that aims to get all early European books printed between 1475 and 1700 online.

"We don't know how many books we are ultimately dealing with, but we think it's something like one million," said Burnstone during a high-tech presentation in the main fair halls.

"Our plan is to digitalise the holdings of several European libraries over several years."

More digital book news.  Google already has a huge selection of ebooks online, and now Microsoft is getting in the business.

Is it real or is it a forgery?  Remember the James, son of Joseph brother of Jesus ossuary?  The jury is still out as to whether this is authentic or not.  Even if it were ancient, Jesus' name is Greek-i-cized in the New Testament.  Jesus was really called "Joshua" or "Yeshua" and that was a very common name, as was Joseph and James.  In other words, it doesn't prove a thing one way or the other.  But it is fun to think this could be James of the New Testament. 

This is scary.  If you can't stay at New York City's Waldorf-Astoria without worrying about bedbugs, where CAN you stay?  What is this resurgence of such a nasty organism?  Makes you want to stay home.

Speaking of the insect world, perhaps a temporary marriage between the Army and bee scientists has finally reaped results regarding bee colony collapse disorder.  I see very few bees these days in sunny South Florida and I have a butterfly garden with lots of flowers.  It's disconcerting to say the least.




1 comment:

Unknown said...

Your blog comments seem to be about different stories - were there links to these different stories. What is the one about Jmes??