Adieu for now!

Hey fellow members! I just wanted to say thanks for the great time I had working with you all this semester. I learned a lot from each of you and it's been difficult but I'm glad we could work in groups so often. Hope you all you have a great Christmas vacation and who knows, maybe we'll all find ourselves in a class again!

Arrivaderci!

A Medium for Every Nation

                Different forms of media have existed for each generation of Americans today just as for any civilization in history. Some forms of knowledge are more suited to the nation’s size and structure than others in keeping the peace, establishing law and general management. Although multiple forms of media for knowledge exist in a society, the dominant media of that people affects the size and control of governmental power.

Final Post: Superiority of Folk Knowledge

Throughout this semester, we have investigated four different types of knowledge: folk knowledge, oral knowledge, written knowledge, and print knowledge. Folk knowledge we defined as knowledge that you come by informally, usually from some kind of expert. Examples of folk knowledge can include how to breed bunnies, how to crack a bull whip, and how to play an instrument or a sport. Due to the nature of this unique type of knowledge, folk knowledge accommodates collaboration and building a community more than other types of knowledge.

Final Blog: Why Print Knowledge Continues to Dominate

Although digital knowledge has expanded, and continues to expand, the way the world interacts and gains information, digital knowledge has not yet replaced print as the dominant form of knowledge.  All of the forms of knowledge that have dominated the world thus far (folk, oral, written and print) have encountered a transition period in which a new medium of knowledge is introduced, but the previous medium remains more influential.  Print and digital knowledge are in the middle of this time of transition.

Final blog post: collaboration and community-building

Although oral, written, and print forms of knowledge do accommodate collaboration and community-building, folk knowledge accommodates collaboration and builds community more because it requires human connection. 

Knowledge. Picture by me.

Reinventing Knowledge Final: The Strongest Form of Knowledge

As knowledge forms have progressed from folk, to oral, to written, and finally to print, institutions of knowledge have slowly graduated towards more formality. Because of this, it is easy to assume that with formality comes a loss of humanity, a loss of connection between learners. Therefore, among the four forms of knowledge, folk manifests itself as the most reasonably personal. However, this is not true. While folk knowledge at first appears to be the most collaborative and easily connective form of knowledge, the prior experience of individuals better indicates which knowledge form they connect to best.

FINALS FINALS FINALS!!!!!

Hello everyone! It's sort of weird to think we're coming to an end! I could go on and on about the weirdness of it, but for now, let's cut to the chase. BEHOLD! My notes for today's discussion:

Preparation For the Final!

Hey Everyone! Well, I'm excited to be able to gather all the information we've learned over the semester into one big discussion. I think it will be enjoyable and we can reminisce as well.

Finals fun + salon prep + conclusions

Hey guys! Enjoy my table! 

But before you check out the table, a bit of fun...

Source. No. 3 is my favorite lol.

Final Notes

This has been a great semester!
Here are my notes for the final:

Notes on the Semester for the Final

This is my little table of notes for the semester.  It makes sense to me, if it does not make sense to you I apologize.

Rosetta project: revisiting history

(Get it? Because I'm just posting this blog now?!)

I participated in part two of the Rosetta project (unit 3 final). It was fascinating!

Research paper: problems and solutions

Here is a summary of problems I've encountered and solutions I've found as working on my research paper.

Photo by me.

Children's Literature and History

HELP!!! I need some body help! Not just any body! Help! You know I need someone! Won't you PLEASE help me?!!

Okay, so I'm not quite that desperate, but with the stress of finals and the end of the semester, I thought we could all use a good laugh and take solace in the fact that at least we don't have it as bad as these people. In any case, I have a confession and I'm going to be an adult about it and take whatever pains will come with this confession: I'm horribly behind on this paper. Do you ever feel that you're drowning in papers and no matter how hard you try they just keep piling up and you just get less and less sleep and though you try to finish things by an ideal time, it's just not happening? That was me this past week.

So after  my momentous struggle with myself and my papers, I'm finally getting to posting my ideas for this paper. I know it's so last minute, but if any one has any contributions I'd greatly appreciate them! Without further ado, I give you Children's Literature and History!

Publishers and Typesettings: The Land that Grows them

North vs South!

So I've been putting the finishing touches on my draft for today's paper (okay it's definitely a draft!) and I have some thoughts that I am excited to use and others that I'm not so sure about, so I could use some feedback. I'll give you a brief road map of my thoughts and then the themes that I am wondering about using.

Persuasive Paper about the Book Trade

The immediate predicament I discovered when presented with this assignment was the question of what I was supposed to argue about?  I chose the very broad topic of publishingand bookselling before 1700 for my annotated bibliography and was unable to foresee a persuasive writing assignment, or I might have chosen a different topic that I could argue about.  For example, if I had print’s effect on the Protestant Reformation, I might argue that it was the deciding factor in the reformation and what enabled change.  Instead I have publishing and bookselling and a dearth of ideas.

Typography basics

In my research about typography, I've found that the most important tools used to describe and classify fonts are the physical attributes of type.

Let's learn some of these attributes through a quiz! :)

Response to Kacee's blog post ("Children's Literature, an Annotated Bibliography")

I really have been thinking recently a lot about what Kacee said in her last paragraph, about the Google Trap.

Related to the Google Trap is what I call Google Brain, in which we depend on Google (or other things that aren't our brains) for things our brains are capable of...

People of the (Group 4) world, I give you Google Brain!!! (Also known as "Google and Memory," an infographic.)

From here. Click to view larger.

We use Google as "extensions of our knowledge." The infographic gives good consequences and bad consequences. While I agree with these, I think the authors of the infographic missed an important point. By using our Google Brains, we can choose to spend our memories, our brains, on things that are more important than remembering to send an email, remembering every item on a grocery list, and remembering what 12x4 is... Spend your brain power studying for a test, practicing for an upcoming concert (shameless plug for the BYU Harp Solo and Ensemble Concert--I am playing the piece I blogged about earlier this semester!), or doing other things that you care about (and which require brain power). I don't mind leaving it to Google to remind me what I have due tomorrow and who I need to call about what.

What do you think?

Children's Literature, an Annotated Bibliography

Some of my favorite children's books.

The greatest difficulty I face in most of these units is figuring out what to write about. I like to keep my writing interesting and the best way for me to do that is to write about what interests me. Last Saturday, I was perusing the of topics we could write our annotated bibliographies about. I came across visual arts and how these were affected by printing. This led me to think about illustrations in books, which led me to thinking about picture books, which led me thinking about children's books, which led me to writing my last post on Monday. The more I have learned about the history of children's literature, the more enamored I become with it. THEREFORE I give you an annotated bibliography about children's literature, its history, criticism, and evaluation of the genre as it affects the printed word.

Typography annotated bibliography

I began this assignment with a general search on Wikipedia. I found the Typography article and looked at its sources to find some books that might be found at the HBLL. I looked up these books at lib.byu.edu and wrote down the first few characters of their call numbers.  I just recorded the general area of the call numbers so I could browse the proper section of the library.

Browsing

I found {1} and {3} browsing the library stacks.

I noticed a couple of interesting things while browsing. First, there is only a very small area dedicated to typography in the library—only about three cabinets. Additionally, I found that the topics covered in this area were broad. They included connections between typography and the following fields: graphic design, web design, print design, history, and international typeface references.

I used the bibliography in {1} to find {2}.

Finding a reference work

I found an encyclopedia {4} through the HBLL website. I found {5} in the references section of {4}.

Finding a periodical

I found a typography periodical {6} by searching “typography” at lib.byu.edu, and then selecting “Journals” under “Resource Type” in the navigation bar to the left of the search results. I found {7} via {6}. It is important to note that {6}, my periodical print reference contained no actual bibliography, footnotes, or endnotes (!). But Milton Glaser, the author of {7}, was listed as a contributor. I searched for him on the library website and found a work he authored.

Bibliographry

I chose to research the effects of print on the Reformation. The beginning of my bibliography is as follows:

Cracium, Maria and Ghita, Ovidiu and Murdock, Graeme and the contributors. Confessional Identity in East-Central Europe. Ashgate Publishing Company, 2002. Covers several topics relating to the role of printing in the Reformation.

Eisenstein, Elizabeth L. Divine Art, Infernal Machine. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011. According to Dr. Burton, Eisenstein is "the major person to have assessed the influence of printing upon Western culture." The second chapter "After Luther: Civil War in Christendom" should be especially pertinent. 

Fudge, John D. Commerce and Print in the Early Reformation. Brill Academic Publishers, 2007. This covers the topic of the effect of printing on the Reformation in detail.

Lindberg, Carter. A Brief History of Christianity. Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2006. This concise history of the development of Christianity goes into detail about the Reformation in Europe in chapter 8.

Tyson, Gerald P. and Wagonheim, Sylvia S. Print and Culture in the Renaissance. Associated University Presses, 1986. Covers a range of topics related to printing and the Renaissance, most notably two chapters dealing specifically with the Reformation.

I went to the Harold B. Lee Library, searched for "reformation and printing," and explored the shelves in both the religion section. Like Royal Skousen, I like browsing. I nabbed the books that sounded relevant and left the library.

Against the Current of Change

The Tyndale Bible

What kind of stamina and character would it require to take the most revered, authoritative and regulated book in all of Europe and modify it so that it was in a lower, common everyday language, the same one used by commoners, everyday untaught peasants and servants. This was William Tyndale's work as one of the pioneers to the translation of the Latin Bible into English. What struck me as amazing as I was shuffling slowly through the large display cases filled with different Bible translations was the effort, undying patience and pure boldness required to defy all authority in pursuit of what you believe to be a higher cause. The Exhibit of the King James Bible in the library was quite the collection which showed the history and progression of each Bible into English, usually accompanied by a martyr.

Joseph Smith reading the family Bible

As a brief history, William Tyndale was a very well educated individual, known for his ability to speak languages such as Greek, Hebrew, Latin, Spanish, Italian, and German. He studied at Oxford and during his time he would sputter off his wild opinions in the realms of religion. At one famous encounter John Foxe wrote in Foxe's Book of Martyrs that a man told William, "We had better be without God's laws than the Pope's", to which came the vehement response, "I defy the Pope, and all his law's; and if God spares my life, ere many years, I will cause the boy that driveth the plow to know more of the Scriptures than thou dost!"

Literature that Relfects Society

As I anticipate completing the bibliography assignment, I find myself reflecting on the time in my life when weekly visits to the library found me bringing home the likes of these books:

Do you remember library day in elementary school? -- That half hour or 45 minutes set aside each week where you traverse the halls in a single file line with your class as you journey to the library in search of a new book? From third grade up, my personal book selections consisted of chapter books. Yours probably did too. But think back to the time before novels. Think back to the time when going to the library meant finding a new picture book. Think back to the time when Curious George, Green Eggs and Ham, and Alexander and the Horrible, Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Day meant more to you than any other reading you did. For me, this was the time when the printed word meant the most to me. This was when reading was exciting!

The history of children's literature greatly reflects and has been profoundly influenced by the history of the printing press. Spanning folk, oral, written, and print knowledge, children's literature is an ever-changing genre that manifests cultural perceptions of childhood.

Bookselling and Publishing

Bookselling and publishing address the main points of the economy of the printed book.  This bibliography lists some books that cover these two topics.

Of Printing Presses and the Publishers who use them...

Knight, Death and the Devil by Durer

I had the opportunity Monday to spend a few hours sitting between the bookshelves of the library and in researching some of the topics I found myself getting lost just taking in all the knowledge around me! In creating my bibliography, the first thing that I learned is that five hundred years is too much time to have only a handful of authoritative sources for research purposes. Many of the books that I perused contained the same information, maybe with an emphasis on one part of the story over another, or explaining how it related to their perspective. I learned to love the fact that books are grouped by subject and finding one good source usually means you've found two or three others next to it on the shelves! This isn't necessarily the case with search engines that return a search based on your input.

Many of the texts that I looked through were surrounded by older sources written in Italian, a point that we have an amazing library at BYU. I served as a missionary in Rome for two years and my Italian definitely was helpful for more than a few of the books that would reference a quote by Aldo Manuzio the way he said it, or even the Latin which I could sort of make out. In all, I actually enjoyed looking through the books and in its own way I felt immersed in the research.

Life and Legacy of the King James Bible

What do hard core drugs, stolen diamonds, and the Bible have in common? Smuggling! That's just one of cool facts I learned when I visited the Life and Legacy of the King James Bible exhibit in the library last Saturday. Besides featuring genuine Bibles dating back to the pre-Renissance era, the exhibit gave a brief history of how the King James version of the Bible came into existence as well as provided an interactive section where vistors could compare different versions of the Bible. Since Catherine's post on the exhibit focused mainly on her experience with examining the fonts of the different Bibles, I wanted to focus my visit (and my post) more on the history of the King James Bible itself and the process through which it came to be. 

The coming about of the King James Bible was an evolutionary process, nearly 1600 years in the making. Its creation stemmed from the desires of  John Wycliffe to provide the Bible to the masses. He wanted the book to be published in more than just Latin. As it contained several "inerrant truths," Wycliffe wanted the common man to be able to acess, read, and understand the Bible (lib.byu.edu). Thus, a miraculous spin of events began which eventually led to the coming forth of the King James Bible.

Artisan for a Day

The Greek Rosetta Stone!

I belonged to the Greek group who was responsible for creating an authentic text in Greek for another group to struggle with. Since other methods of writing such as papyrus weren't readily available, our group met a fair Wednesday night and took a trip to the local hobby shop. We found good oven baking clay that would work for molding and went to work. Driving together in Brett's car we all returned to the Wilk. We found text that we wanted to use, from the Odyssey, outlined how it would all fit onto the miniature clay tablet and went to work carving. Using the ancient mechanical pencil, we each took a turn inscribing the greek symbols into the tablet. I've taken many math and physics classes so for me the characters were all familiar although I couldn't understand the phrase without help. I noticed that each group member preferred a different amount of depth to each line. I liked a dark thick engraving while others preferred a lighter more brush on method.

The Bible Exhibit

I went down to BYU's special collections exhibit "The Life and Legacy of the King James Bible" and noticed some things by looking at the different editions of the Bible.

The font the Bible is printed in has become more legible over time.  This occurred in correlation with the with the Bible being printed.  As more people had access to Bible's and gained the ability to read, the beauty of the Bible became less important than the words themselves.

The shapes of letters has changed over the last 500 years.  We no longer use elongated "s"s which are easy to confuse with "f"s.  Also, "u"s were shaped like "v"s, so the word fun would look like fvn.

The spelling of words became more standard as printed material became more popular.  "The Great Bible," which was handwritten, has the full title "The Byble in Englishe that is the Olde and New Testament, after the translacion appointed to bee read in the churches."  The Geneva Bible published in 1594 contains the message "translated according to the Ebrew and Greeke and conferred with the best translations in diuers languages."  By the time the King James Bible was first printed, most of the spellings of words was more like what we see today.  The full title of the King James Bible is the King James Bible (The Holy Bible containing the Old and New Testaments.

Interesting fact: Robert Barker, who had a monopoly on the printing of the King James Bible, continued to print the Geneva Bible while printing the King James Bible because the Geneva Bible still brought in a lot of revenue.

The printing of the Bible was highly influential, as it led to the average person having greater access to the word of God.  Poets and prose writers was often alluded to the book which continues to be the most read book in the world.

Lost in Translation

In my previous post about the midterm assignment, I talked about the difficulties my group and I faced in trying to create our artifact. Now, I would like to discuss the difficulties we faced in trying to translate another group's artifact. Our assigned group was the Africa group, otherwise known as the Egypt group, otherwise known as the group with the language that seems impossibly difficult to interpret. In a word, trying to figure out the Egyptian was hard. In many words it was infuriatingly difficult.

Within our group, each of us was assigned different tasks. My assigned task was to figure out how to translate the message from English to Arabic once we had translated the Egyptian to English. Unfortunately our group couldn't really make it even that far. Whether or not there is a specialist in Egyptian at BYU or not we either chose not to meet with that person or could not meet with them for whatever reason. In any case, we found ourselves in the library pouring over books about the Egyptian language for hours trying to find some sort of meaning in the assigned artifact. Here's the difficulty we discovered: there's too many meanings to each symbol!

In Egyptian, there are a multitude of different symbols, all of which can stand for individual letters or even complete words. Additionally different arrangements of different symbols can completely change the individual meaning of each symbol. In the assortment of different books we used (there were about six) we found some of the symbols used by the Egypt group, but a large majority of their symbols were no where to be found.

Eventually, we created a sentence that may or may not have had the intended meaning of the Egypt group's original message. From the group, we found out that each symbol was suppose to be a word in itself. So we wrote down a line of blanks (one for each word in the sentence) and started filling in each blank with the different meanings of each symbol that we could identify. From there we had to do a little bit of guess work. Altogether, we came up with a sentence that basically stated that a man from a city identified by a river  traveled to a different city (a city of strength?) where he was killed. We think perhaps the sentence is suppose to be talking about Christ's crucifixion, but without actually talking to the source of the sentence, it's hard to say.

Because of this, I am really starting to relate to the frustrations that interpreters must have felt in trying to translate Egyptian hundreds of years ago. And really, with all the double meanings and ever changing use of each symbol it's a wonder that any one actually could translate Egyptian with out divine assistance. I know I certainly couldn't!

Midterm

For our midterm assignment, we created a Rosetta Artifact. Since only three of our civilizations had a written language to choose from, we decided to encode our message in the ancient written language of Ogham. Finding something in Brythonic proved to be the real difficulty: when we met at my apartment last Wednesday, we spent the first few hours google-ing up a storm trying to find something authentic we could write. We finally found a book with some authentic Brythonic words. I quickly wrote out the Ogham on a sheet of loose paper, which we then transferred to a sheet of news print (which I thankfully had just lying in my car) so we could draw it to scale before transferring it to stone. That's when the fun part began: chiseling our midterm into rock.

We didn't want to run out of stone before we finished what we had to say, so we wrote it out on news print and followed the spacing very closely.

 

See the three horizontal lines that are not very evenly spaced? I carved them :)
Being able to look at that stone and know that I made my mark on it is kind of cool.

Ink, Sweat and Keeping the Press Moving

"Before printing was discovered, a century was equal to a thousand years." Henry Thoreau

Pauper's Bible - The First Cartoon Strips

Let's start a printing business! We are both venture capitalists with a bit of money and an itch to get into the printing business. What should we print? Who's going to buy and why would they buy it? Well, to start I'd like to mention a few of the types of books that were the "Bestsellers" of the early Renaissance, and maybe then we'll be able to answer these questions.

What were the "Must Reads" of the 1500's?


Nowadays, if you want to know which books are the most popular you can go check a status on the New York Times Bestseller list. However, due to the limited number of books that went into each printing, it was more easy to determine how a book was doing by the number of different editions which were printing. Many editions generally meant that the book was a very popular one. So what were people reading 500 years ago? Well, the obvious one that we can accredit is the Bible, one that has held the title defiantly throughout the Medieval period. The renaissance however gave rise to new tastes and likes. One print of the Bible was the Bibla Paupernum ("Pauper's Bible"), a sort of illustrated text or cartoon strip where more than words were characters talking to one another. Also "Emblem Books" were popular, lessons in book format which seem to be the precursors of the picture book or textbook with pictures and commentary. Andrea Alciato unintentionally started this explosive craze that swept over Europe. He treated his emblems as highly valuable and prefaced his book Emblemata with

Emblem Book Example. What's under the table?

"While boys are entertained by nuts and youths by dice, so playing-cards fill up the time of lazy men. In the festive season we hammer out these emblems, made by the distinguished hand of craftsmen. Just as one affixes trimmings to clothes and badges to hats, so it behooves every one of us to write in silent marks. Though the supreme emperor may give to you, for you to own, precious coins and finest objects of the ancients, I myself shall give, one poet to another, paper gifts: take these, Konrad, the token of my love."

Another popular genre was in the medical field. Books of Secrets as they were called were filled with remedies and cures to all sorts of sicknesses, problems and worries. Translated into almost every European language and in print for well over 200 years, this was the beginning of science in the public eye and a more public or social obligation of the scientist to the community. Reading a bit from the English translation of "Secrets" by Alexis of Piedmont, the author frequently references his remedies to help the sick while holding the value of his "secrets" like a trade secret. I guess everyone likes their secrets!

Printing Volume Geographically over first five decades of the press

What were other secrets? Machiavelli's The Prince was a most curious read where a the destined Medici family was to be instructed in the ways of a true leader. Royals and commoners alike enjoyed learning because it was an increase of knowledge. Like the "secrets" of Alexis, most people understood the connection between knowledge and power, thus taking every opportunity to learn about the world they did not understand. It was a sort of reality TV show for the 16th century fanclub!

Other popular books during the 16th century included: Gargantua and Pantegruel by Rabelais, Sir Thomas Moore's Utopia (however I'm not sure if it was popular then), books on European Folklore, The founding myths of Rome.

Suleiman The Magnificent (1530).
As an aside, some Literature didn't catch on, like this fashion. Maybe some day!

One thing is for sure, the influx of published literature from the printing press allowed for the more curious reader, one who could question things, read more and gain knowledge more readily. By only the end of the 15th century, over 20 million copies of printed books were in circulation, with that number growing exponentially by the year.

Translating part II

So, after my previous adventure, the second half of translating was not nearly as exciting, but we got done what we needed to.

See No Evil

"Censorship has followed the free expressions of men and women like a shadow throughout history." Mette Neweth

I recently came across the following video:

Given Jimmy Kimmel's compilation of unnecessarily censored videos clips and Catherine's post on newspapers, I've been thinking a lot about censorship lately and wanted to learn more about the subject.

Newspapers

When I was 8 years old, my mom took my siblings and I on a trip around the border of the united states.  We stopped in a lot of states and saw a lot of interesting things.  I remember visiting a print shop that produced newspapers and being in awe of the huge machinery.  Later, when I was in fourth grade, I had the opportunity to stay the night at Sutter's Mill for a field trip.  One of the activities we were able to participate in while we were there was assembling our own newspaper.  Well, only partially.  I was able to assemble the type for my own name for trip, "Clara Greenly" and pick one out of a list of predetermined headlines to have my name inserted into.  Probably the most informative part of the experience was watching how the machinery was operated and the ink applied.  I still have that newspaper in a drawer somewhere back home.

Adventures in the Life of Catherine Hawkley

Over the past two days I've kinda felt like a drug dealer.  I arranged drop off meetings, one of which occurred in a deserted lobby, and transported goods from one place to another.  These "goods" were actually and a page of translation we needed to create our tablet, so theses meetings were all completely legal, the setup just made me laugh.

She can sing. She can dance. But she can't do calligraphy.

I'm a girl. As a girl I feel like there are a few chief components to life that I should be the master of. Handwriting is one of those things. Calligraphy? Of course I should be able to handle it. WRONG! Such was the discovery I made tonight whilst working on the Rosetta project with my civilization group.

First and foremost, I now have a deep and abiding respect for anyone who can successfully manage a calligraphy pen. Those things are difficult! As such, it was my responsibility to acquire the calligraphy pen with which we were to write our message. Perhaps I didn't buy the highest quality pen (college budget... hehe), but still it was a good pen. Despite my most valiant efforts though, I could not make that pen work for me. On our practice page, I managed to convince the pen to write one word: "Mom." Thanks Mom!

In our group, the process of creating our "artefact" happened like so:

• We met at the library with supplies in hand.
• We journey through the library to find a suitable place to work
• We select parallel verses from the Qur'an and Bible about Joseph in Egypt to compare and contrast the two works.
• We each take turns writing the Hebrew/Arabic calligraphy in pencil on our medium. Hebrew on one side, Arabic on the other.
• We each take turns tracing the pencil with the calligraphy pen (except for me who couldn't get the pen to work).
• We examine our work.
• We celebrate!

I'm amazed at the time it must have taken monks to slowly and meticulously write this calligraphy. Theirs was much more detailed and much higher quality than our artifact, and ours took nearly two hours to complete! I'm definitely grateful I do not have to copy all my books by hand, and especially that I do not have to use a calligraphy pen in doing so. Maybe one day I'll figure out how to use one. Or maybe I'll simply be forever haunted by the memory.

Questions to answer about fonts and typefaces during the print unit

I'd like to use this post (don't forget about my other one!) to jot some ideas down about what I'd like to get out of and questions I'd like to answer during the print unit. Please feel free to bring up any issues I might be missing, suggest subjects to research, and give me your feedback!

Why fonts and typefaces? Design really interests me. I think I have a good eye for design, and I actually enjoy designing things myself. I've learned that well-used fonts and typefaces are an integral part of good design.

I think these are pretty fonts, especially together.

Why were different fonts and typefaces created?

What's the difference between fonts and typefaces?

How were different fonts and typefaces used? (Were they used like we use them today--emphasis, readability, etc.?)

Who designed fonts and typefaces? Were they artists? Printers? Both?

How did various fonts and typefaces get used in religious texts?


Did any scientific research go into fonts and typefaces? Researching readability, perhaps?

I think I'll start my research simply--with Wikipedia. Then onto its references and "external links".

This website also seems to have a pretty good list of published sources.

Illiterate for a day

About a week and a half ago, Group 4 got together to try our hands at calligraphy. Here's how it turned out!

Ancient Illustration

Before movable type, wood cuts were difficult to make, 

but easy to mass produce. See the detail in this carving? 

Unfortunately, there's no way to correct any mistakes!

After seeing the codices held in special collections, and after trying my hand at calligraphy from the perspective of an illiterate, I have a new appreciation for the effort and time it took to create a single book. 

Now that we are moving on to printed knowledge, I want to explore the illustrative printing processes. Before the advent of movable type, printing consisted of wood cuts and engravings. Wood cuts were very difficult to make, but were very cheap to reproduce. Prints made from wood cuts became very widely circulated in Europe during the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries as paper became more common.

Cryptograwhat?

In light of recent news on the BYU Frontpage, there have been many advances, discoveries, and funds put towards hacking, code cracking and holding trade secrets secure. For one, my roommate claims he is very good (or was back in the day) at breaking into any computer he wishes that's attached to a network. This got me thinking, how am I going to secure my computer and my files to best his attempts? Maybe I'll try to secure my computer and one file and see if he can penetrate it sometime!

As Kacee was saying yesterday, people have been the same over generations of time with typically the same worries. Although earlier people weren't trying to secure terabytes of data, they may have been protecting valuable secrets. Things of value that should not be disclosed to a select group whom the author chooses, he wishes  to barricade his knowledge against their learning. Thus cryptography is born!

Code your own message with a simple
pinwheel (from here).

What is Cryptography? The word actually is greek for "hidden"+"writing" or "study" and we do have ancient examples of the Greeks using coded messages. It's medium is anything written and in it's basic form, it means to translate a message in a way that the message is unreadable to anyone but the intended reader who must translate into the original. Cryptography can be simple, such as a pinwheel with a principle letter or "key" that all the other letters align with, then the code can be decrypted. It can be something similar to the Caesar Shift as Caesar in order to communicate with his generals would code his messages so that each letter in the message was shifted down the alphabet a set amount. He shifted by three.

 It can also be mind numbingly difficult like the Vigenere square, invented by Leon Baptist Alberti (who I learned about in my Italian History class as the first "Renaissance Man"). Here, a Caesar shift is written down in a matrix so that each column represents the alphabet shifted a certain number of times. The coder chooses a message (e.g. "attackatdawn"), and a key word (e.g. "lemon"). The key is repeated until it is the same length as the plain text ("lemonlemonle"). From there you just take one letter at a time from the message and the key (L from the key, A from the message) and match the "L" row with the "A" column to get your first code letter (coincidentally and L!). When you're done your message will be LXFOPVEFRNHR. It's pretty hard to crack that!!!

Vigenere Square

An ancient Greek Skytale. This little instrument would have
you wrap your message in such a way that the lines matched
up. When literacy was uncommon, simple methods such as
this were adequate means of coding.

How do you determine how much time and effort to put into a code ? I could jumble the words of a message all day, but how tough does it need to be to crack? This question may be solved by considering what the task is. Let's say we're are roman soldiers back in the 3rd century AD stationed in Brittania with knowledge of a mutiny army bent towards Italy. We wish to relay our knowledge to Rome but without the perpetrating general's knowledge. The message needs to be coded well enough that the messenger, should he be caught and questioned along his 1100 mile journey that nothing be revealed. Maybe the message should be hidden within a routine message that would calm any prying eyes. Armies, Diplomats and Majesties were the principle curators of coded messages for many centuries. However, those under fear of their text calling them out as heretics would eventually join the ranks among the greats of hiding a message within a message. The value of written knowledge is amply evident in the extent to which people will go to make it unreadable to all but intended eyes.

Altered Perceptions? Also, Architecture is a Metaphor. But Actually, I think this is a Post about Journals. Maybe. Or maybe I just want you to think. Enlighten me.

I really don't know what happened...

I'm always so stuffy in my blogposts. In my attempts to sound scholarly or academic or professional or whatever it is I try to sound like in my blogposts, I sometimes lose myself. No, I almost always lose myself. I could even say I always lose myself. This is a tragedy.

So what does this have to do with written knowledge, architecture, or anything worth noting? Well, as I was contemplating how to write this blogpost, I got thinking about all the different voices we use in writing. There's our personal voice, our formal voice, our persuasive voice, our objective voice -- so many voices! Then comes the editing. Think of how much we edit our thoughts as we create the final product (Even as I attempt to type this I'm editing like crazy, and I was trying so hard to just speak my mind!).

A Brief Look at the Number Systems and Mathematics of Mesopatamia

So if Assyria had its own number system, it was not important enough for anyone to write about.  As it stands, most the information about Mesopotamian number systems is about Babylonian's system, with only  a little knowledge about its predecessor, Akkadian, and Akkadian's predecessor, Sumerian.

A Sumerian List of Amounts of Grain

Lehi in the Desert

As a child, I learned the Book of Mormon story of the prophet Lehi, who followed a dream to take his family into the deserts surrounding ancient Jerusalem. Now, as a university student, I am finding new depth to the story by reading Hugh Nibley’s book Lehi in the Desert. In this scholarly approach to a religious topic, Nibley explores the so-called “Egypticity” of the story of Lehi by investigating its historical and geographical background. By noting innumerable small coincidences, Nibley points out that The Book of Mormon, first published in 1829, is consistent with our cultural knowledge of Egypt.

Movin' Around

Going to San Diego with digital navigators is how
it's done today.

Hey everyone and greetings from San Diego! I'm writing on a bit of 'travel-lag' after 13 hours in a BYU van and little sleep, but the Sun is shining! As I was thinking about this post I wanted to incorporate the usefulness of travel and written knowledge. Today we use "written" (a bit more digital version now) knowledge to get from Provo on I-15 to Las Vegas to San Diego in half a day. The co-pilot (guy in the passenger seat) as soon as he settled in got out his inverter, his laptop, his Garmin GPS and his GPS on his smart phone. It was a mobile command hub in about 45 seconds! We had maps, routes, audio feeds into the speakers on the van so that the little phone gps could have "Ashley" (so the female talking voice is named) tell us the next exit coming up and when we merge where.

Pomponius Mela's Map from AD 43. Notice the
Three Major Continents known at the time arranged
in a circle

So what's the point with all this technology? It facilitates our transportation in a way unprecedented only fifteen years ago. Now let's go back in time to what was around fifteen hundred years ago and earlier. I'm going to use the argument that what stands the test of time is the most valuable to people and the advancement of knowledge. We have more advanced GPS devices and smart phones to tell us more detailed information about maps, navigation and directional knowledge. Cartography, or the making of maps have existed since knowledge was first written. Cave paintings of star charts, landscape drawings to point out land markers, or clay tablets with simple pictures identifying land markers all give evidence to the utilitarian value and significance of maps for early peoples. Maps were based in the past with emphasis on land markers and what oral tradition and experience would pass on.

Where a Roman Merchant Might Travel during the 2nd Century AD

Let's take an example, you are a merchant from a small island outside Naples during the height of the Roman Empire. The fact that you are a roman citizen helps you move around easily within the empire so business goes well. Which new route do you wish to try to pick up if it means doubling your money? How do you get there? Traveling can mean traversing fifty miles up the road or thousands of miles across seas. How valuable is someone who can get you there or a map with good directions? What if one of those directions is completely wrong? Jumping back quickly to the present, last night I took the van to a nearby pharmacy to get one of the guys some medicine, but due to a GPS error I took a wrong turn, just in time before the battery went dead. I was practically flying blind on the foggy I-5 interstate trying to get back to the hotel. I knew how important that knowledge was right then! Needless to say I spent an hour learning the nearby roadways and now I'm the most knowledgeable one of the placee. Today's transportation and technology make simple mistakes like this not so costly, but as a Roman merchant I may have wandered into dangerous territory or hazardous terrain. Mistakes were less merciful back then in my opinion. Like Sam's great article on the Polynesian sea-farers, anyone who wishes to move around must have the means of doing so.

Now, was there tourism like there is today? According to Tony Perrottet in a National Geographic article, Augustus was a sort of its founder in the Roman Empire when he created highways and rid the Mediterranean of pirates. The favorite places were the ancient ruins of Troy in Turkey, a place immortalized by Homer's Odessey and Iliad. There was a sense among the more elite class that you weren't cultured until you had been to see where Helen was battled over, seen the great pyramids and the tombs and had these adventurous journeys. It's interesting how writing helped to create a legacy for these areas. In addition to maps, stories were a written knowledge fueling transportation by creating interest in the minds of young and old to go see what they were missing.

Written knowledge incites and motivates us to reach out to the world. It provides us with the means to arrive there by way of maps outlining what we should look for, how long to pack, what to stay clear of and what to expect when we arrive. We have built upon the knowledge of the ancients to advance the industry of transportation and tourism in a way that helps us all see the world and experience life outside of our childhood neighborhoods.

Q & A with Dr. Toronto: A discussion on Written Knowledge

This past week I was able to interview Dr. James A. Toronto about the significance of written knowledge in the Middle East. Dr. Toronto has a Ph.D from Harvard in Islamic Studies and currently teaches at BYU. 

A Fighting Librarian?

They don't really seem to go together.

The case of the Mayan codices

History has left us clues about Mayan codices. What can we find out about Mayan codices from these clues?

VASES

Mayan vase depicting scribes. (Source.)

Parts of the writing on Mayan vases follows specific patterns which name the owner or patron of the piece and his titles. This pattern is also evident in the codices.

Additionally, some Mayan vases depict scribes making and writing on codices. We learn more about how Mayans made codices from these images.

SPANISH MISSIONARIES

Sixteenth-century Spanish missionaries in Central America deliberately destroyed codices they found. They were concerned that the presence of these books would distract the would-be converts or remind them of their "pagan past." Most codices sent back to Europe were damaged or discarded en route.
Additionally, Spanish book-making and the Spanish alphabet took over Mayan paper- and book-making processes. The missionaries placed great importance on the printing press to make books for proselyting.

1940s OBSERVATIONS

Von Hagen with his wife. (And a vicuña.) (Source.)

Antrhopologists Victor von Hagen and Hans Lenz in the 1940s independently observed descendants of Mayans making paper--the same way their ancestors did. They learned that paper was "bark-cloth"--a material made from tree bark fiber and solidified with oil.

CODICES

A page from a Mayan codex. (Source.)

There are only four Mayan codices left, and all of these are incomplete and partially deteriorated. Evidence shows that these four are probably copies, made when the condition of the originals were no longer sustainable. This suggests that Mayan codex-making is a more ancient practice than we realize.

We also learn from the surviving codices the page formatting. Long pages were folded to create many pages. The longest page of the four surviving codices measures over 22 feet, folding into 112 pages.

CONCLUSION

We still have much to learn about codices, but vases, the visitation of Spanish missionaries, modern observations, and surviving codices teach us much about the content, format, construction, and history of Mayan codices.

The Construction of the Codex...
Maya codices
Barkcloth

The Pe'a

Pen

Paper