Scribd is becoming a force to be reckoned with on the Internet.
At ScribdBlog in their posting What ever happened to Fact Checking?, the Scribd Team goes one on one with the Times of London on copyright issues relating to Scribd, involving such famous novelists as J.K. Rowling, Ken Follett, Nick Hornby and John Grisham, who has the current Number 3 Bestseller on the New York Times list of hardcover fiction with his book, of all things, called The Associate, which Patrick Anderson of the The Washington Post calls "A DEVASTATING PORTRAIT OF THE BIG-TIME, BIG-BUCKS LEGAL WORLD."
We were gratified (but of course "legally shocked") at the Times of London article which incurred Scribd's wrath to learn that immensely popular and writingly gifted novelist Ken Follett's World without End (a New York Times No. 1 bestseller) had been uploaded to Scribd and had been viewed 500 times in five months.
We recently uploaded some of our own published works to Scribd. After only one month we have more than 500 views of two of our documents:
The Norse Pharaohs: Astronomical Decipherments re Tanum Hierakonpolis Nazca Sahara Near East DOC
The Origin of the Cult of Horus in Predynastic Egypt DOC
We are strongly considering entry into the publishing field with a novel of our own. Ken Follett and cohorts, look out, there is competition on the way!
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Intellectual Property Rights and Scribd : Uploading of Book Texts Online as a Violation of Copyrights
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Who Rules America? A Book by William Domhoff about Wealth Income and Power in the United States
Who holds America's riches?
Professor G. William Domhoff of the University of California at Santa Cruz is the author of Who Rules America?, a book which he describes online as follows:
Distribution of income in the United States, 1982-2000
These statistics will of course have gotten much worse during the Bush administration. Essentially, the top 1% of the population already in the year 2000 earned nearly double as much income as it did in 1982, while the bottom 80% of the population earned 16% less than it did 20 years previous.
This pattern of wealth misappropriation by the upper classes in America has been going on for quite some time now and the current financial credit crisis can in a Franz Kafka like way be viewed as the point in time when the paying public had been bled so bone dry that the entire mercenary system of income in America became its own exploiting impediment - the small guys ran out of money and could no longer make their mortgage payments to finance the money-grab of the big guys.
Things have gotten so bad that the United States, according to Domhoff, ranks 2nd in the world after Switzerland, a nation of banks, for God sake, in terms of the total national wealth held by 10% of the population:
Percentage of wealth held by the Top 10% of the adult population in various Western countries
The result of this increasing concentration of wealth is power and corruption -- under the motto that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
The only available solutions to keeping the United States from dropping further and further into its present near-status as a 3rd world country are: 1) rigorous, indeed draconic controls of its financial institutions, and 2) quick and speedy redistribution of the nation's wealth to the broad mass of America.
Indicative of the giant divide between reality and what you read in the newspapers is Domhoff's graphic comparing the development from 1990 to 2005 of CEO pay (up ca. 300%), the S&P 500 (up ca. 140%), corporate profits (up ca. 100%), production workers' pay (up ca. 4%), and the Federal minimum wage (down nearly 10%).
The papers are constantly full of overfed executives ranting about the minimum wage, but in reality, that is not the issue. A nation running its economy as a vast system of worker exploitation will not long endure and America must get its act together quickly if it is to survive the present financial crisis and move forward, or - perhaps forever - fall behind. Heed the warning signs.
Professor G. William Domhoff of the University of California at Santa Cruz is the author of Who Rules America?, a book which he describes online as follows:
"My book, Who Rules America?, presents detailed original information on how power and politics operate in the United States. The first edition came out in 1967 and is ranked 12th on the list of 50 best sellers in sociology between 1950 and 1995. A second edition, Who Rules America Now?, arrived in 1983 and landed at #43 on the same list. Third and fourth editions followed in 1998 and 2002, and the fifth edition, upon which most of this web site is based, came out in 2006. Keep an eye out for the sixth edition, due in summer of 2009, which updates the story to include the rise of Barack Obama and the nature of his administration." [emphasis added by LawPundit]The Amazon.com description of the book is enlightening about the subject matter:
"Drawing from a power elite perspective and the latest empirical data, Domhoff's classic text is an invaluable tool for teaching students about how power operates in U.S. society. Domhoff argues that the owners and top-level managers in large income-producing properties are far and away the dominant figures in the U.S. Their corporations, banks, and agribusinesses come together as a corporate community that dominates the federal government in Washington and their real estate, construction, and land development companies form growth coalitions that dominate most local governments. By providing empirical evidence for his argument, Domhoff encourages students to think critically about the power structure in American society and its implications for our democracy. . ."The current financial credit crisis in America can only be properly understood with a good background of knowledge about the wealth figures that Domhoff presents. Many important facts can be viewed at Who Rules America? online at Wealth, Income and Power, illustrative of which is the following graphic of the development of income in the United States between 1982 and 2000:
Distribution of income in the United States, 1982-2000
| Year | Top 1 percent | Next 19 percent | Bottom 80 percent |
| 1982 | 12.8% | 39.1% | 48.1% |
| 1988 | 16.6% | 38.9% | 44.5% |
| 1991 | 15.7% | 40.7% | 43.7% |
| 1994 | 14.4% | 40.8% | 44.9% |
| 1997 | 16.6% | 39.6% | 43.8% |
| 2000 | 20.0% | 38.7% | 41.4% |
| From Wolff (2004). | |||
These statistics will of course have gotten much worse during the Bush administration. Essentially, the top 1% of the population already in the year 2000 earned nearly double as much income as it did in 1982, while the bottom 80% of the population earned 16% less than it did 20 years previous.
This pattern of wealth misappropriation by the upper classes in America has been going on for quite some time now and the current financial credit crisis can in a Franz Kafka like way be viewed as the point in time when the paying public had been bled so bone dry that the entire mercenary system of income in America became its own exploiting impediment - the small guys ran out of money and could no longer make their mortgage payments to finance the money-grab of the big guys.
Things have gotten so bad that the United States, according to Domhoff, ranks 2nd in the world after Switzerland, a nation of banks, for God sake, in terms of the total national wealth held by 10% of the population:
Percentage of wealth held by the Top 10% of the adult population in various Western countries
| country | wealth owned by top 10% |
|---|---|
| Switzerland | 71.3% |
| United States | 69.8% |
| Denmark | 65.0% |
| France | 61.0% |
| Sweden | 58.6% |
| UK | 56.0% |
| Canada | 53.0% |
| Norway | 50.5% |
| Germany | 44.4% |
| Finland | 42.3% |
The result of this increasing concentration of wealth is power and corruption -- under the motto that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
The only available solutions to keeping the United States from dropping further and further into its present near-status as a 3rd world country are: 1) rigorous, indeed draconic controls of its financial institutions, and 2) quick and speedy redistribution of the nation's wealth to the broad mass of America.
Indicative of the giant divide between reality and what you read in the newspapers is Domhoff's graphic comparing the development from 1990 to 2005 of CEO pay (up ca. 300%), the S&P 500 (up ca. 140%), corporate profits (up ca. 100%), production workers' pay (up ca. 4%), and the Federal minimum wage (down nearly 10%).
The papers are constantly full of overfed executives ranting about the minimum wage, but in reality, that is not the issue. A nation running its economy as a vast system of worker exploitation will not long endure and America must get its act together quickly if it is to survive the present financial crisis and move forward, or - perhaps forever - fall behind. Heed the warning signs.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Vincent Varga : Library of Congress : Cartographia : Mapping Civilisations
We are a bit late on this, but Cartographia: Mapping Civilisations by Vincent Virga and the Library of Congress is a "Must Have Book" for your library shelves. For example, it features the Waldseemüller Map, the first map to ever use the term "America":
You can view 16 of the maps in small images at NPR.
The original Library of Congress press release stated:
"Waldseemüller map is the first map to include the name "America" and the first to depict the Americas as separate from Asia. There is only one surviving copy of the map, which was purchased by the Library of Congress in 2001 for $10 million."We show this map below from Wikimedia Commons but see also LOC:
You can view 16 of the maps in small images at NPR.
The original Library of Congress press release stated:
"September 26, 2007Library's Map Treasures Are Highlighted in "Cartographia"
New Publication to Be Subject of Program and Book Signing on Oct. 23
Maps are a visual record of human endeavor, each with a tale to tell. In their various forms, maps are models of time, diaries of political maneuverings and works of art that provide a unique vision of how the world evolved.
Drawn from the world’s largest cartographic collection, housed in the Geography and Map Division of the Library of Congress, "Cartographia: Mapping Civilizations," by Vincent Virga, has been published by the Library in association with Little, Brown and Company.
Comprising more than 250 maps, "Cartographia" celebrates the work of those who have charted the world from the dawn of civilization to the present. Among the rare gems included in the book are the 1507 Waldseemüller world map, the first to include the designation "America"; Orelius’s "Theatrum Orbis Terrarum" of 1570, considered to be the first modern atlas; rare maps from Africa, Asia and Oceania that challenge traditional Western perspectives; William Faulkner’s hand-drawn 1936 map of the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Miss.; and a map of the human genome.
Vincent Virga is the author of "Eyes of the Nation: A Visual History of the United States," which was a main selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club and the History Book Club.
Virga and co-author Ron Grim will discuss "Cartographia" as part of the Library’s Books & Beyond author series at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 23, in the Montpelier Room, located on the sixth floor of the Library’s James Madison Building, 101 Independence Ave. S.E., Washington, D.C. The program, which is free and open to the public, is sponsored jointly by the Center for the Book, the Geography and Map Division and the Publishing Office. For more information, contact the Center for the Book at (202) 707-5221.
"Cartographia: Mapping Civilizations," a 272-page hardcover book with more than 250 color maps and illustrations, is available for $60 from major bookstores nationwide and from the Library of Congress Sales Shop, Washington, D.C. 20540-4985. Credit card orders are taken at (888) 682-3557. Online orders can be placed at www.loc.gov/shop.
# # #
PR 07-192
09/26/07
ISSN 0731-3527"
Sunday, June 08, 2008
Bloody Old Britain by Kitty Hauser
Current Archaeology, in reviewing a new book on O.G.S. (Osbert Guy Stanhope) Crawford, known as "Ogs", titled Bloody Old Britain by Kitty Hauser, calls Crawford "one of the greatest figures of 20th century Archaeology" and writes next to a photo of Crawford as follows:
"Crawford on his bike. Note the roll of 6 inch Ordnance Survey maps across the handlebars. In the background is the garage at his lodgings where during the war he stored most of the archaeological records, thus preserving them from the bombing which destroyed the OS offices. These records now form the basis of Sites and Monuments Records throughout the country." (emphasis added)
Crawford was a controversial figure, who, among other things, served as the first field archaeologist at the Ordnance Survey, who was one of the inventors of aerial archaeology, and who in 1927 founded the well-known and still influential periodical Antiquity .
The book has also been reviewed by Tom Fort at the Telegraph in Mapping Britain's Archaeology, Simon Heffer at the Literary Review in No Ordinary Surveyor, and by Simon Garfield at the Guardian in A real backwards man.
A mention is found at the blog Carolyn Trant & Parvenu Press.
Tom Fort writes about Crawford in Hauser's book in this text, excerpted from his review :
"Crawford's supreme attribute was his eye; in Hauser's words, 'he saw things where others saw nothing.' With it, he was able, as he himself put it, to decipher the palimpsest: to make out the burial mounds, abandoned settlements, Celtic fields, Roman causeways, Iron Age tracks and other vestiges of the remote past.
"Crawford on his bike. Note the roll of 6 inch Ordnance Survey maps across the handlebars. In the background is the garage at his lodgings where during the war he stored most of the archaeological records, thus preserving them from the bombing which destroyed the OS offices. These records now form the basis of Sites and Monuments Records throughout the country." (emphasis added)
Crawford was a controversial figure, who, among other things, served as the first field archaeologist at the Ordnance Survey, who was one of the inventors of aerial archaeology, and who in 1927 founded the well-known and still influential periodical Antiquity .
The book has also been reviewed by Tom Fort at the Telegraph in Mapping Britain's Archaeology, Simon Heffer at the Literary Review in No Ordinary Surveyor, and by Simon Garfield at the Guardian in A real backwards man.
A mention is found at the blog Carolyn Trant & Parvenu Press.
Tom Fort writes about Crawford in Hauser's book in this text, excerpted from his review :
"Crawford's supreme attribute was his eye; in Hauser's words, 'he saw things where others saw nothing.' With it, he was able, as he himself put it, to decipher the palimpsest: to make out the burial mounds, abandoned settlements, Celtic fields, Roman causeways, Iron Age tracks and other vestiges of the remote past.
Having served as a mapper and aerial reconnaissance officer during the First World War, Crawford was aware of the extraordinary way in which photographs taken from the air could reveal whatHauser calls 'the ancient text' of the landscape.
Most famously, he used negatives stored by the RAF to identify the avenue leading from Stonehenge to the river Avon.
Until Crawford came along, field archaeology was pretty much left to gentleman amateurs interested in ley lines, morris dancing, obscure fertility rites and other aspects of imaginary Old England. As Hauser demonstrates, Crawford turned it into a professional discipline, both through his work for the OS, and his editorship of Antiquity, the journal he founded to promote his version of the search for the past.
He was a visionary, in a limited way, and prodigiously hard-working."Monday, January 22, 2007
Book Review : Wordgloss : A Cultural Lexicon
The following is our book review of Jim O'Donnell's book, Wordgloss : A Cultural Lexicon , which we have reviewed at Amazon.co.uk:
"Was this the wish of the Demiurge? Boston to Washington DC is a conurbation! Cui bono?! Do we live in a lexical dystopia awaiting a thaumaturgic gloss revival? Who today knows that "pleonasms are tautologous and should be avoided"? Errata need not be repetitive - a verisimilitude!
Do you need this book? Do you know the words?
Author Jim O'Donnell (book Foreword by John Banville) writes in his preface that "the extraordinary expansion of modern knowledge and its fission into micro-specialties" has created "a niagara of words and concepts flowing from a wide range of disciplines that we have never explored."
The everyday result is that our increasingly sophisticated modern world of communications is confronted by the Hydra-headed cultural stumbling block of a classics-based "verbal universe" manifesting an erstwhile lexical heritage to which most readers no longer have any personal or educational connection.
Wordgloss is not a quintessential corrective panacea for this problem, but O'Donnell writes that "Wordgloss is full of the words and concepts you always meant to look up. It tells you where they came from and how they acquired the meaning or meanings they now have."
The book is written "associatively", which is "pedagogically" more effective than the "linear" scientific style of dictionaries.
Definitely a fun and educating vade-mecum read.
Fons et origo!"
"Was this the wish of the Demiurge? Boston to Washington DC is a conurbation! Cui bono?! Do we live in a lexical dystopia awaiting a thaumaturgic gloss revival? Who today knows that "pleonasms are tautologous and should be avoided"? Errata need not be repetitive - a verisimilitude!
Do you need this book? Do you know the words?
Author Jim O'Donnell (book Foreword by John Banville) writes in his preface that "the extraordinary expansion of modern knowledge and its fission into micro-specialties" has created "a niagara of words and concepts flowing from a wide range of disciplines that we have never explored."
The everyday result is that our increasingly sophisticated modern world of communications is confronted by the Hydra-headed cultural stumbling block of a classics-based "verbal universe" manifesting an erstwhile lexical heritage to which most readers no longer have any personal or educational connection.
Wordgloss is not a quintessential corrective panacea for this problem, but O'Donnell writes that "Wordgloss is full of the words and concepts you always meant to look up. It tells you where they came from and how they acquired the meaning or meanings they now have."
The book is written "associatively", which is "pedagogically" more effective than the "linear" scientific style of dictionaries.
Definitely a fun and educating vade-mecum read.
Fons et origo!"
Science a Go Go : Evolution, Astronomy, Cosmology
Science a Go Go (http://www.scienceagogo.com/) has a zippy website from down under devoted to "the latest science news, research tidbits and science discussion".
What caught my attention were their science book reviews. See:
Science a Go Go Book Reviews 2005
Science a Go Go Book Reviews 2006
for a good overview of what is going on in science,
through the medium of books.
Online book reviews, still fairly rare outside of e.g. Amazon,
or involving the payment of online fees for viewing, as at Antiquity magazine,
will surely play an increasingly greater role in science and literature,
and we were gratified to see Science a Go Go review our book Stars Stones and Scholars
on the same page as their review of Evolution: The Remarkable History of a Scientific Theory
by legal expert and Pulitzer Prize winning author Edward J. Larson (2006).
Tim Radford in an interview with Larson in the Guardian titled A Life in Writing: A Voyage to the Origin of Species, writes:
"Larson won the Pulitzer Prize for his Summer for the Gods, a book on the Scopes trial, in which American anti-evolutionists challenged science in the 1920s. He followed with Trial and Error, once again about the creation-evolution controversy. Right now, he is contemplating one book on the coming of telegraphy, another on Antarctica. Evolution's Workshop grew out of a preoccupation with the history of ideas, rather than of kings and presidents. In the course of looking at the progress of the great Darwinian idea, it seemed to him that the Galapagos were the Clapham Junction of biology: all sorts of people passed through.
"I believed that ideas in general are the most powerful thing in the world. An idea was more powerful than an army. In the western world it seemed to me that science was the criterion for truth," [Larson] says. "Darwin wrote his Origin of Species in 1859. At that time Queen Victoria was on the throne in England and James Buchanan was president of the United States. Now who has a greater impact on us today? How we think, how we live, who we are?" "
We agree.
What caught my attention were their science book reviews. See:
Science a Go Go Book Reviews 2005
Science a Go Go Book Reviews 2006
for a good overview of what is going on in science,
through the medium of books.
Online book reviews, still fairly rare outside of e.g. Amazon,
or involving the payment of online fees for viewing, as at Antiquity magazine,
will surely play an increasingly greater role in science and literature,
and we were gratified to see Science a Go Go review our book Stars Stones and Scholars
on the same page as their review of Evolution: The Remarkable History of a Scientific Theory
by legal expert and Pulitzer Prize winning author Edward J. Larson (2006).
Tim Radford in an interview with Larson in the Guardian titled A Life in Writing: A Voyage to the Origin of Species, writes:
"Larson won the Pulitzer Prize for his Summer for the Gods, a book on the Scopes trial, in which American anti-evolutionists challenged science in the 1920s. He followed with Trial and Error, once again about the creation-evolution controversy. Right now, he is contemplating one book on the coming of telegraphy, another on Antarctica. Evolution's Workshop grew out of a preoccupation with the history of ideas, rather than of kings and presidents. In the course of looking at the progress of the great Darwinian idea, it seemed to him that the Galapagos were the Clapham Junction of biology: all sorts of people passed through.
"I believed that ideas in general are the most powerful thing in the world. An idea was more powerful than an army. In the western world it seemed to me that science was the criterion for truth," [Larson] says. "Darwin wrote his Origin of Species in 1859. At that time Queen Victoria was on the throne in England and James Buchanan was president of the United States. Now who has a greater impact on us today? How we think, how we live, who we are?" "
We agree.
Friday, January 12, 2007
New 13-Character ISBN Numbers required as of January 1, 2007
Are You Ready for ISBN-13?
and the fact that:
"Beginning January 1, 2007, all books will be published with ISBN-13s."
Click this link to go the ISBN-13 Online Converter.
Not everyone needs this, but every reader of books should know about it, and most authors and readers out there probably are not yet aware of what is going on, so we alert to it here.
The reason for this posting is that a monumental change which affects the entire world of books on our planet started January 1, 2007 (actually, the sunrise period began in 2005). It is a change in ISBN numbers. ISBN numbers are the unique numbers given to books by publishers and used to order books wherever you order them as a user. The reason for this change was that ISBN was running out of numbers.
Take a look at the following numbers for our book Stars, Stones and Scholars where the ISBN-10 numbers (the ISBN-10's) have been converted by our publisher to ISBN-13 numbers (the ISBN-13's). These will be called ISBN-10s and ISBN-13s.
Stars Stones Scholars (softcover)
# ISBN-10: 1412013445
# ISBN-13: 978-1412013444
Stars Stones Scholars (hardcover)
# ISBN-10: 1412201357
# ISBN-13: 978-1412201353
ISBN-10 Numbers
Prior to January 1, 2007, ISBN numbers had 10 characters.
Those are the ISBN-10 numbers.
ISBN-13 Numbers
Beginning on January 1, 2007, ISBN numbers are 13 characters.
Those are the ISBN-13 numbers.
"Beginning January 1, 2007, all books will be published with ISBN-13s."
Important Links
Below are important links from ISBN for authors, retailers, publishers and everyone interested in books and the book trade:
"Are You Ready for ISBN-13?
Pubnet EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) 13-Digit Conversion News
BISG Resources on ISBN-13
ISBN-13 Frequently Asked Questions (PDF)
Guidelines for the Implementation of 13-Digit ISBNs (PDF)
A BISAC Briefing on How to Manage the Transition (PDF)
The readability score for this posting:
Gunning-Fog Index: 20
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: 12
Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease: 41
and the fact that:
"Beginning January 1, 2007, all books will be published with ISBN-13s."
Click this link to go the ISBN-13 Online Converter.
Not everyone needs this, but every reader of books should know about it, and most authors and readers out there probably are not yet aware of what is going on, so we alert to it here.
The reason for this posting is that a monumental change which affects the entire world of books on our planet started January 1, 2007 (actually, the sunrise period began in 2005). It is a change in ISBN numbers. ISBN numbers are the unique numbers given to books by publishers and used to order books wherever you order them as a user. The reason for this change was that ISBN was running out of numbers.
Take a look at the following numbers for our book Stars, Stones and Scholars where the ISBN-10 numbers (the ISBN-10's) have been converted by our publisher to ISBN-13 numbers (the ISBN-13's). These will be called ISBN-10s and ISBN-13s.
Stars Stones Scholars (softcover)
# ISBN-10: 1412013445
# ISBN-13: 978-1412013444
Stars Stones Scholars (hardcover)
# ISBN-10: 1412201357
# ISBN-13: 978-1412201353
ISBN-10 Numbers
Prior to January 1, 2007, ISBN numbers had 10 characters.
Those are the ISBN-10 numbers.
ISBN-13 Numbers
Beginning on January 1, 2007, ISBN numbers are 13 characters.
Those are the ISBN-13 numbers.
"Beginning January 1, 2007, all books will be published with ISBN-13s."
Important Links
Below are important links from ISBN for authors, retailers, publishers and everyone interested in books and the book trade:
"Are You Ready for ISBN-13?
- An overview for publishers with the critical do's and don't and the recommended implementation timeline. Why is this transition taking place and how does it impact your copyright page, your book covers and your bar codes? Find out now.
Pubnet EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) 13-Digit Conversion News
- If you receive EDI orders via Pubnet, be sure to learn more about changes needed to support EDI transactions.
BISG Resources on ISBN-13
- The Book Industry Study Group, Inc. (BISG) ISBN-13 Task Force maintains this site as a source of authoritative information and recommended implementation guidelines for ISBN-13.
ISBN-13 Frequently Asked Questions (PDF)
- Brochure from Bowker, the US ISBN Agency
Guidelines for the Implementation of 13-Digit ISBNs (PDF)
- Information from the International ISBN Agency.
A BISAC Briefing on How to Manage the Transition (PDF)
- Information from BISG on operations planning.
The readability score for this posting:
Gunning-Fog Index: 20
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: 12
Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease: 41
Sunday, November 21, 2004
Wikipedia - The Faith-Based Encyclopedia
Wikipedia - The Faith-Based Encyclopedia
Tech Central Station (TCS) runs an article entitled The Faith-Based Encyclopedia by Robert McHenry, former Editor in Chief, of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and author of How to Know .
The Wikipedia does not fare that well in his analysis and there are certainly some reliability problems, but we have found the Wikipedia to be quite useful, even though we have two complete sets of the Britannica and one digital version at our fingertips. To put it bluntly, the Wikipedia is simply more up to date.
Tech Central Station (TCS) runs an article entitled The Faith-Based Encyclopedia by Robert McHenry, former Editor in Chief, of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and author of How to Know .
The Wikipedia does not fare that well in his analysis and there are certainly some reliability problems, but we have found the Wikipedia to be quite useful, even though we have two complete sets of the Britannica and one digital version at our fingertips. To put it bluntly, the Wikipedia is simply more up to date.
Raiders of the Lost Ark, Campbell Armstrong and George Lucas
Raiders of the Lost Ark, Campbell Armstrong and George Lucas
In the end, is it always about money?
The sundaymail has an article by Charles Lavery entitled RAIDER OF THE LOST FORTUNE involving a suit by author Cambell Black (who writes as Campbell Armstrong) against George Lucas for unpaid royalties on his book which was filmed as Raiders of the Lost Ark. Read the article for the full story.
In the end, is it always about money?
The sundaymail has an article by Charles Lavery entitled RAIDER OF THE LOST FORTUNE involving a suit by author Cambell Black (who writes as Campbell Armstrong) against George Lucas for unpaid royalties on his book which was filmed as Raiders of the Lost Ark. Read the article for the full story.
Monday, October 18, 2004
BookBlog by Adina Levin
BookBlog by Adina Levin
BookBlog is
"Adina Levin's weblog. For conversation about books I've been reading, social software, and other stuff too."
Adina has some excellently written book reviews on the BookBlog:
What Went Wrong: Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response
by Bernard Lewis
Adina writes e.g.:
"Contemporary Sharia systems in places like Iran and Afghanistan are
often mocked for being medieval and backward, legislating repression of
women and brutal corporal punshment (no, I'm not in favor of the Texas
death penalty, either). But there is no empirical reason that a system
of Muslim jurisprudence needs to be backward. After all, European laws
once featured trial by ordeal, and prevented women from owning property.
A living tradition of Muslim law might be able to adapt to current
economic and social conditions. How did the Sharia change from a system
that had once reflected the standards of justice of its time to one that
insisted on avoiding change?"
The Mapmakers
by John Noble Wilford
This book is of particular interest to me because of my own book,
Stars Stones and Scholars, which claims that the megaliths are remnants of ancient surveys, i.e. that they are Stone Age geodetic mapping systems triangulated by means of the astronomy, using stars much as in ocean navigation.
Adina writes, inter alia:
"The Mapmakers purports to be world history, but it has a strong European focus. Wilford does include few pages about sophisticated early mapmaking practices in China. But he almost completely ignores Muslim and Indian geography. The book contains just one brief reference to ibn Khaldun, the medieval Muslim traveler and geographer, and nothing on Al Idrisi, who was commissioned by Roger II, the Christian king of Sicily, to update navigational records, and created the famous early atlas called "The Book of Roger." The Mapmakers briefly mentions that one Francis Wilford, a member of India Survey, was a student of ancient Hindu geography. Given early Indian sophistication in astronomy, math, and government administration, one wonders what earlier sources of geographic knowledge he drew on. According to an Indian friend of mine, many early maps were destroyed to keep them out of the hands of British colonial rulers.
Wilford writes about the dire level of geographic ignorance of Medieval Europeans, whose maps routinely placed Paradise at the Eastern border of China, without noting that during the same period, there was a longstanding, ongoing system of travel and trade from Arabia through India and Southeast Asia to China (see books by Abu Lughod and KN Chaudhuri, among others), conducted by Arabs, Jews, Indians, and sometimes Chinese. I don't know what sorts of maps were used by these travelling merchants, but they must have used something, because they got from place to place regularly and routinely."
(crossposted to LawPundit)
BookBlog is
"Adina Levin's weblog. For conversation about books I've been reading, social software, and other stuff too."
Adina has some excellently written book reviews on the BookBlog:
What Went Wrong: Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response
by Bernard Lewis
Adina writes e.g.:
"Contemporary Sharia systems in places like Iran and Afghanistan are
often mocked for being medieval and backward, legislating repression of
women and brutal corporal punshment (no, I'm not in favor of the Texas
death penalty, either). But there is no empirical reason that a system
of Muslim jurisprudence needs to be backward. After all, European laws
once featured trial by ordeal, and prevented women from owning property.
A living tradition of Muslim law might be able to adapt to current
economic and social conditions. How did the Sharia change from a system
that had once reflected the standards of justice of its time to one that
insisted on avoiding change?"
The Mapmakers
by John Noble Wilford
This book is of particular interest to me because of my own book,
Stars Stones and Scholars, which claims that the megaliths are remnants of ancient surveys, i.e. that they are Stone Age geodetic mapping systems triangulated by means of the astronomy, using stars much as in ocean navigation.
Adina writes, inter alia:
"The Mapmakers purports to be world history, but it has a strong European focus. Wilford does include few pages about sophisticated early mapmaking practices in China. But he almost completely ignores Muslim and Indian geography. The book contains just one brief reference to ibn Khaldun, the medieval Muslim traveler and geographer, and nothing on Al Idrisi, who was commissioned by Roger II, the Christian king of Sicily, to update navigational records, and created the famous early atlas called "The Book of Roger." The Mapmakers briefly mentions that one Francis Wilford, a member of India Survey, was a student of ancient Hindu geography. Given early Indian sophistication in astronomy, math, and government administration, one wonders what earlier sources of geographic knowledge he drew on. According to an Indian friend of mine, many early maps were destroyed to keep them out of the hands of British colonial rulers.
Wilford writes about the dire level of geographic ignorance of Medieval Europeans, whose maps routinely placed Paradise at the Eastern border of China, without noting that during the same period, there was a longstanding, ongoing system of travel and trade from Arabia through India and Southeast Asia to China (see books by Abu Lughod and KN Chaudhuri, among others), conducted by Arabs, Jews, Indians, and sometimes Chinese. I don't know what sorts of maps were used by these travelling merchants, but they must have used something, because they got from place to place regularly and routinely."
(crossposted to LawPundit)
Tuesday, July 13, 2004
Amazon is not always Amazin'
Amazon is not always Amazin'
Amazon is not always Amazin', er, Amazon. In reply to my inquiry as to why certain books were available on amazon.com but not on amazon.co.uk, here is the reply which I received:
"Dear Customer
Thank you for contacting Amazon.co.uk with your enquiry.
Although we are affiliated, all orders with Amazon.com are
independent of any orders with Amazon.co.uk. This means that we
cannot order items from another Amazon site for you and that we
cannot combine orders across our different sites. Also, not all
items which are listed on Amazon.com are available within the UK.
...
Thank you for your interest in Amazon.co.uk.
Please let us know if this e-mail answered your question
...
Customer Service
Amazon.co.uk"
Amazon is not always Amazin', er, Amazon. In reply to my inquiry as to why certain books were available on amazon.com but not on amazon.co.uk, here is the reply which I received:
"Dear Customer
Thank you for contacting Amazon.co.uk with your enquiry.
Although we are affiliated, all orders with Amazon.com are
independent of any orders with Amazon.co.uk. This means that we
cannot order items from another Amazon site for you and that we
cannot combine orders across our different sites. Also, not all
items which are listed on Amazon.com are available within the UK.
...
Thank you for your interest in Amazon.co.uk.
Please let us know if this e-mail answered your question
...
Customer Service
Amazon.co.uk"
Thursday, July 01, 2004
Bill Clinton and Abebooks.com
Bill Clinton and Abebooks.com
AbeBooks features My Life by former US President Bill Clinton in its Avid Reader Newsletter quoting Allan Lichtman of American University:
"Whether you love him or hate him, he's an enigmatic, fascinating figure...."
To which I must add my own perhaps odd question about the human race: why do people feel a need to love or hate a man whom most do not know at all personally? and what is the fascination that people have towards people in political power?
Are they different than the man on the street? Seldom.
Those who ARE different than the man on the street seldom get elected.
Friday, May 14, 2004
Stars Stones and Scholars : The Decipherment of the Megaliths as an Ancient Survey of the Earth by Astronomy 2
Stars Stones and Scholars : The Decipherment of the Megaliths as an Ancient Survey of the Earth by Astronomy
The following book review by Steve Bodark appeared on Amazon.com on March 9, 2004:
Buckle up your seat belts, we are going for a ride., March 9, 2004
Reviewer: bodark@c-magic.com from Jefferson City, MO United States
It is rare for a book to cover the distance and depth found in Stars, Stones and Scholars by Andis Kaulins. However the conclusion of the book, that the ancient megaliths tell a story about a world wide system of surveying and measurement well in effect in 3000 BC, will turn the world of scholarship upside down. While it is a pioneering work, there is more than enough information here to prove the authors basic premise that the megalithic sites, all over the world, represent a map of the sky on the ground.
Implications in this book for historians include granting ancient peoples much more credibility for understanding our place in the solar system, movements of people and ideas in the ancient world, the origin of scientific methods and an uncanny knowledge of these ideas around the world.
When I was growing up I always heard that our human cognitive abilities were developed in part from observing the sun, moon and stars. This book begins to develop the meaning of that statement by showing that the depth of understanding of the relationship of the sky to terrestrial geography was profound in the human species for a very long time. It is a shame that most historians and archeologists have forgotten or never knew basic astronomy and its relationship with the reality structure of ancient people. This book begins to mend this problem.
A bonus with the book is the linguistic comparison of the names of the constellations, stars, megalithic sites and local town names with the local native language, and other languages including Latvian. This analysis supports the theory that the ancients were aware of precession, the pole of the ecliptic and other astronomical facts that historians are reluctant to admit.
The dating of the monuments by analyzing carvings on the stones to represent moments where solstices and other astronomical events occured in the past is revolutionary. The author presents the idea that "modern time" began on December 25, 3117 BC and is found in carvings supporting that idea located around the world.
This book requires close study but is extremely rewarding in understanding human development: As above, so below.
Stars Stones and Scholars : The Decipherment of the Megaliths as an Ancient Survey of the Earth by Astronomy 1
Stars Stones and Scholars : The Decipherment of the Megaliths as an Ancient Survey of the Earth by Astronomy
The following Author's Summary appeared on Amazon.com on January 13, 2004:
Author's Summary, January 13, 2004
Reviewer: Andis Kaulins from Traben-Trarbach, Rheinland-Pfalz, Germany
Stars, Stones and Scholars is a pioneer analysis of prehistoric art, megalithic sites, astronomy, archaeology and the history of civilization. The book title is an intentional play on the title of C.W. Ceram's famous book, Gods, Graves and Scholars, which analyzed the history of archaeology from a quite limited perspective - starting with the Gods and the Graves, placing too much emphasis on the Scholars, and ignoring the study of the Stars and the workmanship of Stones which PRECEDED them. Stars, Stones and Scholars presents the decipherment of the megaliths (standing stones) as an ancient survey of the Earth by astronomy. The book presents initial proofs and discussion claiming that ancient megalithic sites are remnants of ancient local, regional and worldwide Neolithic surveys oriented to the stars. This hypothesis is not even speculative - in ancient days, no other means except astronomy were available for earthly orientation. The book's ca. 40 photographs, 240 drawings and 80 maps show how megaliths were carved and "sculpted" with figures in relief (what can still be made of them) and with cupmarks (holes in the stones) to intentionally represent specific stars, constellations and asterisms, long before our modern astrological Zodiac was allegedly known. Megalithic sites from around the world are analyzed and shown to be part of ancient SYSTEMATIC survey systems covering entire regions ca. 3000 BC. The countries analyzed include, for example, England (all the major Neolithic sites including e.g. Stonehenge, Wayland's Smithy, Kents Cavern), Wales (all the major Neolithic sites including e.g. Paviland), Scotland (all the major Neolithic sites including e.g. the Clava Cairns), Ireland (all the major Neolithic sites including Newgrange, Knowth, Tara), Germany (most of the major sites including the Externsteine, Nebra, Gollenstein, Felsenmeer), Benelux (Weris), France (Carnac, Lascaux, Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc), Italy (La Spezia), all the Malta Temples (e.g. Tarxien and the Hypogeum), Scandinavia (Tanum), as well as individual sites in the Baltic, Russia, the Near East, the Far East (China - the Great Wall, and Japan - e.g. Asuka, Kanayama), Africa (e.g. the Central African Republic), Central and South America (Tikal), Oceania (Hawaii), the continental USA (Cahokia, Miami Circle) and Canada (the Peterborough Petroglyphs). Many of these sites are examined and deciphered in great detail showing a site such as the Peterborough Petroglyphs in Canada, for example, to be an ancient map of the heavens and the Ki'i Petroglyphs on the island of Hawaii to be an ancient map of the world. The intent of the author is not so much to convince the reader of the correctness of his analysis, but rather to urge the reader to look at ancient sites and stones differently than before and, for example, to examine old vacation photographs of Stonehenge or similar sites, and see the figures carved on the stones. As far as the interpretation of the megaliths is concerned, there is no question that this is the way of the future.
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