Shouldn’t it be ‘ceased’? Surely something that is de-ceased is restarting?
Daily Archives: 9/11/2005
As easy as aleph-beth-gimel
Perhaps not a very exciting thing for many people, but I was quite interested in this:
In the 10th century B.C., in the hill country south of Jerusalem, a scribe carved his A B C’s on a limestone boulder – actually, his aleph-beth-gimel’s, for the string of letters appears to be an early rendering of the emergent Hebrew alphabet.
Archaeologists digging in July at the site, Tel Zayit, found the inscribed stone in the wall of an ancient building. After an analysis of the layers of ruins, the discoverers concluded that this was the earliest known specimen of the Hebrew alphabet and an important benchmark in the history of writing, they said this week.
Isn’t that fantastic? An alphabet from 3000 years ago… We all deal with writing every day of our lives, and so I find the discovery of this quite exciting. It reminds me of our place in the continuum of existence on this planet, the way that there is a continuity of ideas that appeal and are passed on (‘memes’ to use Richard Dawkins’ idea UK link
It also makes me wonder what will be left of our time. Plastic bottles? Everything is biodegradable eventually, and the strongest materials aren’t commonly used any more because they’re so hard to work with. The vast quantity of data on the internet is most likely going to disappear in a magnetic blip, never to be seen again. Given some of the stuff online, perhaps that’s not such a bad thing, but the internet has been a true cultural revolution in indsutrialised countries of the world. For the first time in the history of mankind, people have got the power in their hands to publish information for the whole world to see and hear. The importance of this has been lost in the realisation that many people don’t have a lot to say, but maybe that idle chatter really is the significant thing after all.
Perhaps the greatest revelation about the internet for scholars should not be ‘it’s full of rubbish and Klingon’ but that people often don’t care about academic debate and just enjoy discussing the trivia of their lives with friends. That’s not so bad, is it? Is there any reason why every person on the planet should have something important to say? What does it tell us that when given the greatest public stage in the history of humanity we end up discussing our choice of clothing in a shop that day?
More on the Intelligent Design trial
This isn’t technically about the trial, but, after an election, all the supporters of Intelligent Design on the Pennsylvania school board have been voted off. It seems that parents in the area have had enough of the topic and would like teachers to get back to educating the children about science. That’s not too surprising really, but it’s heartening that it’s happened.
Full story here.
Is there such a thing as ‘religious studies’ in American schools? It’s a standard feature in the British curriculum. Admittedly, it is usually heavily biased towards Christianity, but we did cover other religions a little bit and I suspect things have got better in that regard since my time at school. I think it’s important for the peace of a country that people are taught about the alternative faiths that exist around them. From a personal perspective I think that knowing religious mythology gives you a richer insight into the archetypal images of humanity, but it can’t hurt to give people a greater understanding of why followers of Islam can be just as peaceful as those who follow Buddhism or any other religion.
You could probably write on the back of a small postage stamp the amount that most people know about different religions; I’ve taken an interest but I would still say that my knowledge is quite limited, so it wouldn’t hurt to bridge a few cultural gaps in people’s education… Although I think this moves us on to the rather touchy subject that perhaps not everything written in the American constitution is always a great idea, which I’m really not going to get into here. If anyone fancies discussing it, you could always start a topic up in the Issues section on my forum! http://www.matazone.co.uk/forums