- Why Written Languages Die Out "In the first study of its kind, three experts in the study of written language have described the common characteristics that caused three famous scripts - ancient Egyptian, Middle Eastern cuneiform and pre-Columbian Mayan - to disappear. 'Thousands of languages have come and gone, and we've studied that process for years. But throughout history, maybe 100 writing systems have ever existed. We should know more about why they disappear'." Washington Post 08/25/03
- What Happens If You Just Give Education Away? "When MIT announced to the world in April 2001 that it would be posting the content of some 2,000 classes on the Web, it hoped the program - dubbed OpenCourseWare - would spur a worldwide movement among educators to share knowledge and improve teaching methods. No institution of higher learning had ever proposed anything as revolutionary, or as daunting. MIT would make everything, from video lectures and class notes to tests and course outlines, available to any joker with a browser. The academic world was shocked by MIT's audacity - and skeptical of the experiment. At a time when most enterprises were racing to profit from the Internet and universities were peddling every conceivable variant of distance learning, here was the pinnacle of technology and science education ready to give it away. Not the degrees, which now cost about $41,000 a year, but the content. No registration required. It's a profoundly simple idea that was not intuitive." Wired 08/03
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The Greatest Rock Guitarists Of All Time? Jimi Hendrix and Duane Allman have been named to the top a Rolling Stone list of the top 100 guitarists of all time. "B.B. King, who turns 78 next month, came in at No. 3. 'His string-bending and vibrato made his famous guitar, Lucille, weep like a woman,' the magazine said." Yahoo! (Reuters) 08/25/03
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We Live In An 850-Year-Old House... The oldest continually-inhabited house in Britain has been identified. It was completed between 1148 and 1150 and is in Somerset. The news "stunned the owners of the house, James and Anna Wynn, who sold a small terrace house and left London five years ago to find somewhere with more room for their growing family and a bit of history." The Guardian (UK) 08/27/03
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All Things BBC Free For Download The BBC plans to make all of its radio and TV library available free for downloading over the internet. "The BBC probably has the best television library in the world. Up until now this huge resource has remained locked up, inaccessible to the public because there hasn't been an effective mechanism for distribution. But the digital revolution and broadband are changing all that." BBC 08/24/03
