I mentioned in my comment to the State of Massachusetts (which I’ve now put under a Creative Commons non-commercial share-alike licence) about the fact that the real treasure of archaeology are the written words that have survived down to our times from ages past.

Here are some links to give you an idea of the ones that I mention:

• The Roman ink writing tablets from Vindolanda have been scanned and are online at Oxford University. Google for Vindolanda for more information.
• There is a Wikipedia entry on birch bark letters such as those found at Novgorod which show a society where the majority of people were literate, when previously we thought only the highest classes of society would be taught to read or write.
• Here is a lecture on Bactrian documents found in Afghanistan and what we’ve learned from them. Apparently it’s only been in the last 40 years that we’ve had anything asides from coins to go on!

But the quote that stood out to me as demonstrating the importance of these is from a webpage on Novgorod that says:

After a closer look, the roll appeared to
carry the text of letters, pressed into the bark. The sensation could be
compared with finding Troy, or the recovering of the Avesta. A whole city of
literate people, who just scratched notes to each other every now and then. Due
to these rolls the scientists were able to look into the everyday life of
ordinary people of which the chronicles had little to say.

I’ll leave you with words from two Romans, one writing a note for someone to possibly let them know what they’re in for and another on more prosaic matters.

“… the Britons are unprotected by armour (?). There are very many cavalry. The cavalry do not use swords nor do the wretched Britons mount in order to throw javelins.”

… I have sent (?) you … pairs of socks from Sattua, two pairs of sandals and two pairs of underpants, two pairs of sandals … Greet …ndes, Elpis, Iu…, …enus, Tetricus and all your messmates with whom I pray that you live in the greatest good fortune.

Sam, the worlds ugliest dog 2003, 2004 & 2005.

Well I did email a comment to the state of Massachusetts to support their latest draft on document formats that has nominated OpenDoc (the format that OpenOffice.org v2 will use), and I’ve put into this blog so people can see why I personally think it is important.

Think of it as taking a more long term view..

Read on for what I have to say..
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The wonderfully named CSS Zen Garden is a great little demonstration of what you can do with CSS to customise a website. The demo is a single page of HTML and a whole raft of original and submitted CSS’s that you can see by clicking on the links on the right hand side. Pretty neat!

Now the scale of the disaster in New Orleans has had time to sink in, the media are starting to ask awkward questions about how the US has so badly fumbled its emergency response.

There are some telling points from a rather biting BBC News editorial on the problems with the disaster response for Hurricane Katrina:

The havoc of Katrina had been predicted countless times on a local and federal level – even to the point where it was acknowledged that tens of thousands of the poorest residents would not be able to leave the city in advance.

No official plan was ever put in place for them.

The famous levees that were breached could have been strengthened and raised at what now seems like a trifling cost of a few billion dollars.

The Bush administration, together with Congress, cut the budgets for flood protection and army engineers, while local politicians failed to generate any enthusiasm for local tax increases.

[…]

When President Bush told “Good Morning America” on Thursday morning that nobody could have “anticipated” the breach of the New Orleans levees, it pointed to not only a remote leader in denial, but a whole political class.

The Australian ABC News has a story on the US and international medias response to the handling of the crisis, and both the ABC and the BBC have reports on comments by rapper Kanye West criticising President Bush and according to the ABC report, rascism through neglect, quoting him as saying that America was set up “to help the poor, the black people, the less well-off, as slow as possible”.

For those wanting to help the best bet at present seems to be the American Red Cross.

ABC News is reporting that “Three new research papers debunk earlier research that showed the planet was not warming up“.

This includes the data from the NOAH-11 satellite that at first seemed to show that the troposphere was not warming as predicted. But now researchers have found:

“As it turns out one particular satellite, know as Noah 11, a number of years back was spliced slightly incorrectly. There was mistake made in the correction for the time it actually travelled overhead and that’s just recently come to light.

“The correction’s been made and now we find the satellite data shows a much more rapid warming and a warming which is very consistent with what we see at the surface.”

This comes at the same time that the 11,000 year old Siberian permafrost is thawing out.

Via Alec Muffett.

Let us remember that there are multiple theories of Intelligent Design. I and many others around the world are of the strong belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster. It was He who created all that we see and all that we feel. We feel strongly that the overwhelming scientific evidence pointing towards evolutionary processes is nothing but a coincidence, put in place by Him.

Hmm, perhaps this is the opposite number of Cthulhu? They could be related too. I mean, look at the tentacles!