Who steals this stuff? If you want them because you care about enlightenment, wouldn't you also want them to be publicly accessible?
I guess either wealthy collectors, or creationist fanatics.
Charles Darwin notebooks lost and assumed stolen
21–30 of 123 posts
Re: Charles Darwin notebooks lost and assumed stolen
#22Hopefully it was all scanned and digitized?
Re: Charles Darwin notebooks lost and assumed stolen
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess it is the same scenario with art pieces or similar products. EG, the Leonardo Da Vinci painting Salvator Mundi was sold for $450M back in 2017, where is the justification for this pricing?
I don't know. I don't know why I'm being downvoted either. It seems really fascinating. Is it an investment? A storage of wealth? Or did someone really decide they wanted that painting in their life instead of a brand new Boeing 747, for example? It's obviously not really worth that much, so what's it all about? Inflation is mainly due to money being creamed off into the hands of rich people, but all they are getting…
At least in part, art is a great way to transfer large amounts of money for goods or services.
Re: Charles Darwin notebooks lost and assumed stolen
#24> The notebooks were last seen in November 2000... It was only during "a routine check" two months later that it was discovered they were missing. Why on earth is this just getting published now? The article reads like the library just found out they were missing.
Confirming that something was lost in a small sized archive, and not just misplaced was hard.
I cannot imagine how much harder it must be for such grand one.
Re: Charles Darwin notebooks lost and assumed stolen
#25Lost/theft is inevitable. Lying about it for 2 decades isn't.
Re: Charles Darwin notebooks lost and assumed stolen
#26Who steals this stuff? If you want them because you care about enlightenment, wouldn't you also want them to be publicly accessible?
Apparently there are a lot of high net-worth individuals that take pleasure in acquiring such cultural goods to hang them in their private studies or re-sell them. The Nebra Sky Disk ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebra_sky_disk ) was e.g. excavated by two "tomb raiders" who sold it on the black market, and only after the disk changed hands multiple times it was re-acquired by the federal government in a sting polic…
Sounds straight out of the movies. Black market for ancient/cultural artifacts that provide no practical benefits whatsoever to someone's life. Fascinating.
Re: Charles Darwin notebooks lost and assumed stolen
#27Who steals this stuff? If you want them because you care about enlightenment, wouldn't you also want them to be publicly accessible?
> If you want them because you care about enlightenment, wouldn't you also want them to be publicly accessible?
Obviously not.
And people have been stealing art and historical artefacts as long as we’ve had civilisation so not sure why people are surprised about it now.
Re: Charles Darwin notebooks lost and assumed stolen
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apparently there are a lot of high net-worth individuals that take pleasure in acquiring such cultural goods to hang them in their private studies or re-sell them. The Nebra Sky Disk ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebra_sky_disk ) was e.g. excavated by two "tomb raiders" who sold it on the black market, and only after the disk changed hands multiple times it was re-acquired by the federal government in a sting polic…
Sounds straight out of the movies. Black market for ancient/cultural artifacts that provide no practical benefits whatsoever to someone's life. Fascinating.
provide no practical benefits whatsoever to someone's life.
I guess it provides status and bragging rights within your social circle. When you and all your friends are rich enough to be able to buy basically anything that is legally for sale, owning stuff that your neighbor cannot also just go out and buy becomes the only interesting type of purchase left to make.
Re: Charles Darwin notebooks lost and assumed stolen
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess it is the same scenario with art pieces or similar products. EG, the Leonardo Da Vinci painting Salvator Mundi was sold for $450M back in 2017, where is the justification for this pricing?
I don't know. I don't know why I'm being downvoted either. It seems really fascinating. Is it an investment? A storage of wealth? Or did someone really decide they wanted that painting in their life instead of a brand new Boeing 747, for example? It's obviously not really worth that much, so what's it all about? Inflation is mainly due to money being creamed off into the hands of rich people, but all they are getting…
You should also listen to this Planet Money episode:
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/02/09/584555705/epis...
Episode 823: Planet Monet
> The art market is going nuts. People are spending record amounts of money of paintings like Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi. But not everyone is rushing home to hang their new artwork up on their walls. A lot of buyers are storing their art in vast warehouses near airports. They're called, "freeports."
> Freeports exist between countries, a sort of no man's land, which means you can store your artwork there as long as you want, without having to pay any taxes on it.
> Where are these freeports? How do they work, and are they even legal? Today on the show, we try to find out.
Re: Charles Darwin notebooks lost and assumed stolen
#30Hopefully it was all scanned and digitized?
And made freely available with a permissive licence