One of Chambers’ favorite hobby horses was what he perceived as the corruption and/or dilution of the English language. He was also not the sort of man who would be afraid to insert his commentary or his wit into an encyclopedic entry. This sometimes results in entries like this:

ABAPTISTON, or ANABAPTISTON, a Name antiently given to an Instrument in Chirurgery, by the modern Writers call'd Trepan, Modiolus, Terebra, Terebellum, and Trafine. See TREPAN, MODIOLUS, &c.

The Word is a mere Stranger in our Language. It seems to be one of those Exoticks imported by the Dictionaries and never taken notice of but by themselves.

Posted at 9:25 AM | Permalink

Clearing out stored links:

Good Copy, Bad Copy, which got boingboinged awhile back. I’ll be using it the next time I teach IP.

Dylan Hears a Who. When a musician recorded "Green Eggs and Ham" in the voice of vintage Bob Dylan and posted it online, the Grinch estate promptly replied: One fish, two fish, cease and desist.

London Review of Books piece on Disney's artistic limitations and personal practices of originality. Disney was not just an attention-hog but always irritable about the limitations of his own fakery: ‘Disney was continually, if mildly, irked because he could not draw Mickey or Donald or Pluto . . . Even more embarrassingly, he could not accurately duplicate the familiar “Walt Disney” signature that appeared as a trademark on all his products. As Mister Husband pointed out to me when he sent it, not only did the man sign everyone else’s hard work, he was signing with a signature he had asked a studio employee to redesign.

Remember that interview on women and blogs that I did a year ago and then forgot about? I was doing some vanity googling, and found the article in the Hindu Business Online and Domains Magazine. The latter wins for most misogynist title. Since when does representing half of anything count as ‘hogging’? Only when women do it, apparently.

The new journal Writing Technologies looks promising.

The Encyclopedia of Life aims to provide a free, public electronic page for each species of organism on Earth. There's some things to be said here about why this project should or shouldn't be rolled into other major digital encyclopedic projects like Wikipedia. Personally, I think a unified project has the most value.

QB discusses Doing Time, Doing Vipassana

Aaand a note-to-self to retrieve "Law Booksellers and Printers As Agents of Unchange" (2007) Cambridge Law Journal, vol 66, issue 2, p 389. Also Katharina de la Durantaye, "Origins of the Protection of Literary Authorship in Ancient Rome". Columbia Public Law Research Paper No. 07-139. Boston University International Law Journal, Spring 2007.

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The modern is yet wild and unascertained.
(Chambers, 1728 Preface, xxvii)

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At the end of his Preface, Chambers describes the purpose of his project:

Such a Variety of Views, Principles, and Manners of thinking, is a sure Remedy against being too violently attached to any one ; and is the best way of preventing the making of Pedants, Bigots, &c. of any kind. It may be said, that every Art tends to give the Mind a particular Turn ; and that the only way of maintaining it in its natural Rectitude, is by calling in other opposite ones, by way of Counter-balance. Thus we find nothing more perverse and unsufferable than a mere Mathematician, mere Critic, Grammarian, Chemist, Poet, Herald, or the like ; and the proper Disposition is only to be had from a just Temperament or Mixture of them all. (XXX)

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About a third of the way through the Preface, Chambers argues that there are two kinds of poets: “The first, those on whom the Inspiration falls, as it were, from Heaven ; without any thought or seeking, or least by means of Prayer or Invocation. The second, those in whom it is procured by the Fumes of Wine.“ After a lengthy consideration of the first sort, he turns his attention to the others.

As to the second Kind of Poets, in whom the Inspiration is promoted or excited by means of Wine ; Casaubon is perfectly frighted at it ; judging it the highest strain of Impeity, to suppose a Man may be divinely inspired by the Fumes of Liquor.----And yet I don’t know whether his Fright be not founded on a Misapprehension. ... I do not see what Religion has to do here, more than in any other Enthusiasm. The use of such a means, is no ways derogatory to the Power of Goodness of God ; who still remains the Author of this, as of any other Inspiration ; whether it be by Visions, by Voices, Dreams, or the like. What matters it whether the Sound of a Cymbal, or the Sight of an Image, or the Effluvia of a Liquor be the Occasion [for inspiration]? So long as he is the Cause, what matters it what Instrument he makes use of? And of all the Blessings this Juice is made the Occasion of to us, why should it be precluded from that, which none of God’s Creatures, not even the vilest, but occasional ministers? The Ancients did not think so meanly of it ; they set up a God on purpose to preside over it ; and it even had the largest Share in their most solemn Ceremonies of Religion. (XIII)

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Every degree of Knowledge is valuable. It would be an unreasonable, as well as an incommodious Sullenness in us, to refuse all light, except that of Noonday. We find our Ease and Happiness frequently depend on the doing of things by Twilight, or even Moonlight, or the still more dubious Light of, perhaps, a Rush or a Glow-worm.

Ephraim Chambers, 1728 Preface

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If the world could be contained in a single room, it was because no natural object was devoid of significance, but rather everything was a manifestation of a plan or a latent meaning. Everything, concluded the rhetorician Emanuele Tesauro, was a metaphor, ‘and if nature speaks to us through these metaphors, it follows that an encyclopaedic collection, as the sum of all possible metaphors, must logically become the all-encompassing metaphor for the world.’

Mauries, Patrick. Cabinets of Curiosities. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2002.

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Oh, the blessing and curse that is the "keep new" feature in Bloglines. It means that I’ve cluttered up that place with all sorts of good stuff, some of it a year old now. It’s all links that I meant to do something with or save for some wonderful future purpose, but never deployed. The end of the year compels me to clean some of it out, so I’m moving it over here where it can go safely into the archives of oblivion for future reference. (Am I the only one who still likes storing links in the same place I keep everything else instead of keeping them in deli.cio.us?)

New Media
Andrew Lih on How Wikipedia Ranks
danah boyd on making net neutrality relevant and writing community into being on social network sites
The blogging special issue of Reconstruction
Media from Johndan’s old blog: the Eames’ Information Machine and the original iPod launch video
Via Infocult: timeline of the Wikipedia/Britannica controversy, a history of FaceBook, the Foucault-Chomsky debates on YouTube, and frightening instructional AT&T videos.
Information Aesthetics spotlights email thread visualizations, blogosphere linkology, and treemaps
Clay Shirky argues that news of Wikipedia’s death is greatly exaggerated
Anne Galloway’s working bib on The Internet of Things

Fodder for Teaching Presentation Skills
Guy Kawasaki on the art of panels
Dean Dad’s interesting threads on grading group presentations and ">handling difficult classmates

Academic Whatnot
50 ways to take notes

Book History
From Old Books: images from, um, old books
Jill points out material aspects of the original publication of “Death of the Author”

Professionalization
Via Prolurker: The Academic Departments: Home Base for Doctoral Students and the Center of the Graduate Mission of the Institution and Thinking Beyond the Dissertation
AKMA on productively structuring argument in academic writing
Sherry on study breaks (I’d send this to new grad students if I were putting together a comprehensive advice file.)

Pop Culture
scribblingwoman rounds up Brokeback spoofs
The 50 Greatest Cartoons of All Time, with linked video for each. (High ratio of Warner Brothers, of course.)

Just Beautiful
Aunt B: Breathe In, Breathe Out.

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Another thing we did Friday evening was go to the library to pick up some point-to-point and interlibrary loan orders. (I ordered Irving’s The Cider House Rules, A Coney Island of the Mind by Ferlinghetti, Flannery O’Connor’s letters, and The Power and Passion of M. Carey Thomas. I’m 80 pages into The Cider House Rules so far and really enjoying Irving’s style.)

Mister Husband picked up For a Burning World is Come to Dance Inane: Essays By and About Jim Pomeroy. On the back cover I found this:

One man’s museum is another man’s graveyard is another’s goldmine is another’s dungheap is another’s pretension is another’s encyclopedia is another’s holy shrine is another’s balance sheet...promotional display...conqueror’s trophy case...cultural atrophy index...social registry...reliquary...hall of fame...wall of frames...hollow games....

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I’ve been thinking I’d have time to sit down and write about Colbert and Wikiality, but it’s become apparent that’s not going to happen soon. Instead, I’m settling for ripping the clip and preserving commentary links for future reference:

Johndan: Facts are Unfortunately Democratic
Rice on collective repetition
John Q tracks the Wikipedia response
Michael Calore's coverage on Wired Monkey Bites

Aaaand the Wikipedia Signpost entry: Wikipedia satire leads to vanadlism, protections.

Bonus: Wikipedia-related but not Colbert-related: Patry on Wikipedia and Digital Maoism

Completely unrelated but completely excellent: Muppet Wiki

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THRO’OUT the Whole, we have had a particular regard, both in the Choice of the feveral heads, and in dwelling or amplifying upon ’em ; to the extending our Views, dilating our Knowledge, opening new Tracks, new scents, new Viftas. We have endeavour’d not only to furnifh the Mind ; but to inlarge it, and make it in fome meafure co-extend with the Dimenfions of all minds, in all Ages and Places, and under all Situations and Circumftances : as Language, in fome meafure, makes our Senfes do. With which view, we have given the Sentiments, Notions, Manners, Cuftoms, &c. of moft People, that have anything new, unufual, or hardy in ’em.

Chambers Cyclopaedia, 1728 preface

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Cyclopaedia.org, a very thorough compendium. Includes links to the University of Wisconsin Digital Collections complete digitization of the 1728 edition and notes on navigating within that site.

Wikipedia entry on the Cyclopaedia.

Britannica Online entry, which points out the relation to Brockhaus.

Ephraim Chambers:
Obligatory biographical Wikipedia entry (Lists several good references.)

Articles:
Yeo, Richard R. 1948- "A Solution to the Multitude of Books: Ephraim Chambers's Cyclopaedia (1728) as "the Best Book in the Universe " Journal of the History of Ideas - Volume 64, Number 1, January 2003, pp. 61-7. abstract here.

---. Ephraim Chambers's Cyclopaedia (1728) and the tradition of commonplaces. Journal of the History of Ideas. Jan96, Vol. 57 Issue 1, p157.

Only semi-related, but don’t want to lose it:
Dacome, Lucia "Noting the Mind: Commonplace Books and the Pursuit of the Self in Eighteenth-Century Britain." Journal of the History of Ideas - Volume 65, Number 4, October 2004, pp. 603-625.

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Arner, Robert D. Dobson's Encyclopaedia : the publisher, text, and publication of America's first Britannica, 1789-1803. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, c1991.

Blom, Philip. Encyclopedie: the triumph of reason in an unreasonable age. London; New York: Fourth Estate, 2004.

---. Enlightening the world: Encyclopedie, the book that changed the course of history. New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.

Butterfield, Herbert. The History of Encyclopedias. Times Literary Supplement 17 May, (1974): 531-34.

Collison, Robert Lewis. Chronology of encyclopaedias till 1900. Journal of World History v. 9 no. 3 (1966): 453-6.

---. Encyclopaedias: their history throughout the ages; a bibliographical guide with extensive historical notes to the general encyclopaedias issued throughout the world from 350 B.C. to the present day [by] Robert Collison. New York, Hafner Pub. Co., 1966.

Eco, Umberto. “The Platypus between Dictionary and Encyclopedia.” Kant and the Platypus. New York: Harcourt, 1997. 224-279.

Kafker, Frank. A. Notable encyclopedias of the late eighteenth century: eleven successors of the Encyclopedie. Oxford : Voltaire Foundation at the Taylor Institution, 1994.

McArthur, Tom. Worlds of reference: lexicography, learning, and language from the clay tablet to the computer. Cambridge [Cambridgeshire]; New York : Cambridge University Press, 1986.

Wells, James M. The circle of knowledge; encyclopaedias past and present, compiled and with an introductoryessay by James M. Wells. Chicago, Newberry Library, 1968.

West, William N. Theatres and encyclopedias in early modern Europe. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

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(In case you wonder why all the encyclopedia posts: I have an upcoming project that will involve their historical development and cultural functions. Since my blog is my commonplace book, I’m filing things here as I run across them.)

The business of books both derives from and distances the temple; it grew alongside the commercial revolution and prefigured the industrial revolution (the book was one of the first manufactured items to be made cheaper by standardization); it favors the kind of independent revelation championed by Protestantism (which abolished the selling of indulgences, but made the Bible a bestseller) and also the French Revolution, which, some might say, began with the sale of encyclopedias [Robert Darnton, The Business of Enlightenment: A Publishing History of the Encyclopédie 1775-1800]

Zaid, So Many Books, 55

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It was in this old-fashioned manner that at the close of the eighteenth century the public of the educated strata expanded to include strata of the self-employed petty bourgeoisie. At that time retailers, who as shopkeepers were usually excluded from bourgeois clubs, in many places established their own associations; still more widespread were the trade societies which took the form of reading societies. In many cases they were branches of the bourgeois reading societies: their direction and also the selection of the reading materials were left to dignitaries who, so very much in the fashion of the enlightenment, wanted to improve the education of the so-called lower classes. Anyone who owned an encyclopedia was educated; this standard was subsequently taken over also by grocers and craftsmen. The “people” were brought up to the level of culture; culture was not lowered to that of the masses.

Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, 165-66.

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