Sermon on the nount

More uses for a scissors than distinguished Viennese-Albertan dialect experts think.

Reading in China

When people emerge from feudalism only to find themselves imprisoned once more by pyschopaths dressed as plumbers, it’s difficult to take exception to any desire they may have to change their condition and to make that change permanent. However, there is always the odd Cassandra in trousers determined to find defeat in victory. “In China…

karl rahner on demand

JA Millán points out that Barcelona’s Herder Editorial has gone over to print-on-demand. Given the nature of their catalogue (lots of Catholic history and theology), that’s a decision that is unlikely to make the world’s forests tremble like a Melief drinker. (That wasn’t a real post.)

political writing

Taking the view that the plain folk of Catalonia were illiterate and uncouth to a degree that would lead to ridicule in more cultured lands, Catalan language evangelists at the turn of the nineteenth century launched a barrage of self-help books. These guides taught business and social forms that will be familiar to English-speaking readers,…

inquisition manual

Normally I’ll read any kind of rubbish, but this has got me defeated and puzzled. It’s a collection of instructions dating from 1484 to 1576 on how to run an inquisition (there’s some Torquemada in there) that belonged to one Doctor Martín Yánez de Padilla. However, not only are there no bloodstains on the pages…

money, literature, access

Andrew Motion says that important manuscripts held in Britain shouldn’t be sold abroad. Since they’re currently only available to a very small group of people anyway, this seems pretty daft to me. I say digitalise them, publish them on the web, and use revenues from the sale of the originals to finance improvements in education,…

disintermediation and retro-tech

There they go again, blaming the courier (via Prandial). It would never have happened in Roxboro, where peaceful co-existence is the order of the day. In one of those coincidences that herald intestinal difficulties and a tepid spring, it turns out this week was also the last at work for the man know for inventing…

library books and cds: top 10 loans

These 3rd quarter 2003 charts are for municipal libraries in Barcelona province and are the result of running a reformatter on a page belonging to the library service. One of the interesting features is the suggestion that kids are reading Catalan while they go through the Catalan-language education system and that they shift into Castilian…