Posted by Jerry on May 14th, 2004 — Posted in History, Journal, Travel, Writing
The Brits have a real penchant for anything related to the Arthurian legend and the quest for the Holy Grail. And now it seems that a mysterious 18th Century inscription has set people again wondering if the Grail might yet be found. Now some of the best codebreakers have got together to see if they can read the inscription – including past and present codebreakers from Bletchley Park and its present day version, GCHQ.
It may of course just be a special message to a dear departed loved one. Some of those who have begun to examine the inscription feel that it contains Classical allusions, but it remains to be seen whether there is enough of the inscription to provide a key or way into the code. The inscription is on a monument at Shugborough Hall in the grounds of Lord Lichfield’s estate in Staffordshire, UK, and The Guardian has a picture of the inscription here
Cheers
Jerry
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Posted by Jerry on May 11th, 2004 — Posted in Journal, Writing
As the blurb says – who has the time to read a whole book these days? The bods at Book-A-Minute have ultra condensed a whole bunch of classics, sci fis, even movies down to a bare sentence or two – it’s a great hoot!
Cheers
Jerry
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Posted by Jerry on May 10th, 2004 — Posted in Journal, Travel, Writing
Yup, Winter is on the way – you can tell, because the road signs start to show how the wildlife has adapted to the weather conditions…
But it’s also interesting to see how people interact with signs and in the process add layers of meaning.
cheers
Jerry
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Posted by Jerry on May 9th, 2004 — Posted in Journal, New media, Technology, Writing
There seems to have been something of a debate regarding a shift in assumptions about how cuneiform scripts were to be read, whether left-to-right or top-to-bottom in columns. Some argue that top-to-bottom makes more sense given certain assumptions about the way the stylus would have been held.
According to Madelaine Fitzgerald of UCLA (see the short paper in the link above) there does appear to have been a protocol to allow readers to identify the direction of reading. This involved the use of holes in the clay tablets to allow them to be held on a string – and if the tablet were raised on the string it would fall in a way that would indicated the reading direction, thus distinguishing between the earlier cuneiform scrpts of the Old period Babylonians (which ran in vertical columns) to those of the later period which ran horizontally.
And then there remains the question of why the Babylonians changed direction of their script from columns to lines. Fitzgerald gives a tantalising hint that it may have been because of the international climate of the time – ie to bring Babylonians in line with contemporary practices in other (more economically powerful) neighbours. What this seems to indicate is the application of an internationally agreed interface standard to facilitate ease of communication.
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Posted by Jerry on May 6th, 2004 — Posted in New media, Technology, Writing
Well I’m skipping around the place – it’s that time of year again – another royalties cheque from my publisher Routledge (UK). The book is called: Virtual States: The Internet and the boundaries of the nation-state – and yes it’s about the impact of the internet on society.
But the word “royalties” is a curious word. There are of course all the prosaic definitions but I wondered about the royal connection, so I went to my trusty Compact Oxford and found a raft of references. The relevant one appears to be that of a “royal prerogative granted by the sovereign to an individual or corporation” granting jurisdiction or rights over something, such as mining rights, or rights over an invention or work of art or book. It dates back to at least 1483 where there is a reference in the Rolls of the UK Parliament to the siezing of, among other things, the royalties belonging to a hapless lordship and manor of Coverton. It seems somehow strange and anachronistic that even in the staunchly Republican US, there is so much litigation over “royalties” where there is clearly no regal sovereign to grant such rights…
And amidst all the clamour about internet piracy, there seems to be at least some evidence that piracy on the internet does not harm CD sales. According to research published in New Scientist, researchers from the Harvard business School and the University of North Carolina have found that in a statistical study tracking millions of music files downloaded over the internet, and comparing them with sales of the same music on CDs, the study found that the most heavily downloaded titles suffered no decrease in CD sales. In fact among the most popular, those that sold more than 600,000 copies over the study period appeared to sell better when downloaded more heavily.
Moreover, unless the work is selling fabulously, my own experience suggests that the authorial benefits are derived more from externalities, such as paid trips to speak at conferences and experts forums in the US and UK – that and the great people I’ve met as a consequence, than from the actual money earned by sales. I reckon we could all learn a lot from the Clue-train Manifesto philosophy. It still holds true regardless of the dot com tech wreck!
Cheers
Jerry
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