British Library to Acquire Oldest European Book

15 July 2011

Well, sort of. They already have it on long-term loan from Durham Cathedral, which is the owner. If you’ve got a couple million pounds to spare, you can help the British Library complete the acquisition.

The book is St. Cuthbert’s gospel, a late-seventh century copy of the Gospel of St. John in Latin. It’s believed to be the oldest European book that survives intact. Cuthbert, the bishop of Lindisfarne, is an enormously important figure in early English history.

The British Library press release and accompanying materials are a good example of how to produce a good press kit. Click on the video link to see the inside of the book.

Hat tip to the Medieval and Earlier Manuscripts Blog

S&W Slash Fiction

11 July 2011

XKCD has done it again:

Cartoon from the internet comic XKCD

Sunday Funnies: SMBC & Thesauri

3 July 2011

Cartoon from the internet comic Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

SMBC is always one of my faves.

Video Tuesday: History of English in Ten Minutes

28 June 2011

An amusing series of videos.

Of course, it’s superficial and simplistic, but essentially correct. I can’t find a site where these are all located for easy reference, but clicking around YouTube will get you all ten without too much trouble.

(Hat tip to Mr. Verb)

Update: Metafilter has linked all ten videos.

30 Harshest Author-on-Author Insults in History

21 June 2011

These are definitely quite harsh, and I don’t agree with most of them. (Although Wilde was dead on when he said, “There are two ways of disliking poetry; one way is to dislike it, the other is to read Pope.")

One caveat: I am very skeptical of quotes found on the internet. They usually are found to have been invented after the fact. I haven’t verified any of these. (One good sign, though, is that all of them have dates attached, which hints that someone did actual research to verify them.) But even if some turn out to be fake, they’re still fun.

(Tip o’ the hat to AnotherPhD2B’s Twitter feed)