This article on the NYRB website by Ian Johnson, one of the first I’ve seen, describes the rescue and piecing together of these ancient bamboo manuscripts (like the Vindalia bark manuscripts from the UK), called the Tsinghua slips, the understanding Chinese culture as well as early literacy and recording of texts in ancient China. If… Continue reading A Revolutionary Discovery in China (NYRB)
Month: April 2016
Malice and Stupidity
“Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity, but don’t rule out malice.” I’ve heard this aphorism called “Heinlein’s Razor,” but Wikipedia calls it Hanlon’s razor.
NYPL’s Photographers’ Biography Database
The New York Public Library has released an online biographical resources for photographers. Way to go! Here’s NYPL’s announcement:
Photographers’ Identities Catalog (PIC), a collection of biographical data for over 115,000 photographers, studios, manufacturers, dealers, and others involved in the production of photographs. PIC is world-wide in scope and spans the entire history of photography. So if you’re a historian, student, archivist, cataloger or genealogist, we hope you’ll make it a first stop for your research. And if you’re into data and maps, you’re in luck, too: all of the data and code are free to take and use as you wish.
Learning to write on Wax Tablets, 3rd C CE
Judith Weingarten at her blog writes about a student learning to write at Palmyra with some wax tablets surviving from the 3rd C CE, now in the Netherlands: All seven Tabulae ceratae Assendelftianae were written by a single schoolboy who lived in the city in the early third century CE (as can be determined from… Continue reading Learning to write on Wax Tablets, 3rd C CE