Thursday, October 20, 2011

Ribbons on kittens...

Cave dwellers counting on bones, medieval manuscripts hiding ancient Greek mathematics, comets that crash into alien worlds, a Viking burial mound in Scotland, these are a few of my favorite things...


5 comments:

Steve Bates said...

"Raindrops on roses
and whiskers on kittens..."

Steve Bates said...

The Archimedes palimpsest is fascinating. Palimpsests occur pretty often in the world of medieval music; I've seen several in museums. Parchment must have been too precious to "waste" on music no longer in use... our good fortune in deciphering history.

Steve Bates said...

Ha! HPL has the Archimedes Codex book, and I'm now only the 2nd person on the hold list! Thanks for alerting me to its existence.

ellroon said...

Dammit... uh. I LIKE whiskerless kittens with ribbons on them.


And that's so cool, Steve, about getting in line for the Archimedes Codex book. ... HPL?...OHHh.. Houston Public Library.

Steve Bates said...

ellroon, I spent many happy hours as a child... perhaps my happiest hours as a child... in what is now the Central branch of HPL, the old Julia Ideson building (now restored!) before they built the "new" one (itself recently restored... that's how old I am).

Now I never go downtown. Instead, I visit my neighborhood branch (there are 30 or 40 branches), a truly lovely space with floor-to-ceiling windows (yes, they survived Hurricane Ike) and a space-age-looking roof. HPL has a single online searchable catalog from which a cardholder can place a hold on any book in circulation in the whole system; it will be delivered when available to the branch you request. Not fancy, but very, very convenient... lo-tech at its finest!