Monthly Archives: March 2009

princeton university library digital collection


One of the things I loved about the University of Manchester were the special collections (which date back to the 3rd millennium BC) held by the John Rylands Libraries. Stateside, Princeton University Library is digitising its rare books. Their latest addition is the Islamic Manuscripts Collection. The University Library holds approximately 9,500 Islamic manuscripts in

delayed reactions


“The thing to do is write something with a delayed reaction like those capsules that take an hour to melt in the stomach. In this way, it could be performed on Monday and not make them vomit until Wednesday, by which time they would not be sure who was to blame. This is the principle

native tongue


I’m not a dialects person, but I’ve chased down people who are and the general consensus of those ‘in the know’ seems to be that it’s the Appalachian tongue that’s closest to Shakespeare’s own. That the mountains have served as an insulator and protected the mother tongue of their earliest immigrants. In the days following