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Charles Darwin notebooks lost and assumed stolen

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Charles Darwin notebooks lost and assumed stolen

#111

Post by mschuster91 »

crazygringo wrote: post #75

I'm curious if there have been any tech advances in tracking valuable objects in like rare books, sketches, paintings, etc. that are currently actually used by institutions or considered a best practice. Whether it's RFID chips, Bluetooth tags, security cameras that do "book recognition", or something else. Heck, even something as simple as a barcode per object, shelf, cart and holding area, and you've got to scan th…

One problem is that you somehow need to attach the security element to the book in question. Glues can damage the substrate.

Re: Charles Darwin notebooks lost and assumed stolen

#112

Post by TwoBit »

jgwil2 wrote: post #85

> They were taken to a temporary studio, which at the time was in a temporary building in the grounds of the university library because building work was taking place. Given how small and inconspicuous they are, is it possible they simply got thrown away in the midst of the construction? Perhaps when the temporary building was disassembled?

I seriously wonder what their security policies were and how seriously they took the chain of posession. Something that valuable probably shouldn't even be allowed out of sight.

Re: Charles Darwin notebooks lost and assumed stolen

#113

Post by ystad »

romwell wrote: post #104
antpls wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe it is important to keep the physical version at a safe place for as long as possible. How long before a new wave of "flat earthers" decides the digital version is just a deep fake and it never existed?

They'll say the physical version is a fake too. Though I say for really important works, having a physical copy in addition to the digital one is a must. Digital data is easy to copy — and easy to lose. And bit rot is a thing.

well it is important, that the digitized version can be traced back to the original.

Re: Charles Darwin notebooks lost and assumed stolen

#114

Post by ystad »

konschubert wrote: post #11

Who steals this stuff? If you want them because you care about enlightenment, wouldn't you also want them to be publicly accessible?

When you have a lot of money, and you do not know what to do with it. You then resort to buying stuff that no one should attain

Re: Charles Darwin notebooks lost and assumed stolen

#115

Post by boomboomsubban »

ystad wrote: post #113
romwell wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They'll say the physical version is a fake too. Though I say for really important works, having a physical copy in addition to the digital one is a must. Digital data is easy to copy — and easy to lose. And bit rot is a thing.

well it is important, that the digitized version can be traced back to the original.

Why is it important? So we can show that it couldn't have been faked after the digitizing process?

Re: Charles Darwin notebooks lost and assumed stolen

#116

Post by hydroxideOH- »

tomcatfish wrote: post #109
mhh__ wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really want to do this, i.e. document basically everything I know for the rest of my life but I genuinely can't bring myself to have the attention span to stick to it. Maybe it's the way the computer effects one's brain (I'm relatively convinced I have ADHD to at least some degree too). At very least procrastination-orbiting around that task has meant that I have a fairly functional set of scripts for blogging in L…

This isn't an ad, I'm not affiliated with the program. I recently tried https://obsidian.md and found it really helped me overcome my laziness and take notes down. Another thing I have found that helps is to just make the note and deal with organization later. I started by making several unconnected notes, but they quickly grow into small graphs. IMPORTANT WARNING: This is not FOSS and has a weird licensing model. Yo…

There seems to be a Show HN nearly every week of a Roam-like tool that I would be surprised if there wasn't already a well supported open source clone.

Re: Charles Darwin notebooks lost and assumed stolen

#117

Post by koonsolo »

antpls wrote: post #100
interestica wrote: post #58

Luckily: "The two Darwin notebooks had previously been digitised and their content is available online." . University of Cambridge has a bit more on their "appeal" site ( https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/DarwinAppeal ) The digitized notebooks are available: [1] https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-DAR-00121/1 [2] https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-DAR-00122/1 Also, yesterday was the anniversary of the release of On the Or…

I believe it is important to keep the physical version at a safe place for as long as possible. How long before a new wave of "flat earthers" decides the digital version is just a deep fake and it never existed?

Flat earthers are lunatics, and you have to ask the question who the bigger fool is: The fool or the on who tries to argue with the fool.

I don't believe anyone has ever convinced a flatearther with reason.

Re: Charles Darwin notebooks lost and assumed stolen

#118

Post by philjohn »

ThePhysicist wrote: post #17
konschubert wrote: post #11

Who 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…

Well, we know some of them were illegally smuggled by Hobby Lobby into the US.

https://www.npr.org/2018/06/28/623537440/hobby-lobbys-illega...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobby_Lobby_smuggling_scandal

Re: Charles Darwin notebooks lost and assumed stolen

#119

Post by PostOnce »

romwell wrote: post #104
antpls wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe it is important to keep the physical version at a safe place for as long as possible. How long before a new wave of "flat earthers" decides the digital version is just a deep fake and it never existed?

They'll say the physical version is a fake too. Though I say for really important works, having a physical copy in addition to the digital one is a must. Digital data is easy to copy — and easy to lose. And bit rot is a thing.

Something else important w/r/t keeping originals: Who could have foreseen that our new imaging technology would allow us to read the otherwise-unreadable original text of palimpsests, or the insides of scrolls too brittle to unroll?

What other discoveries might be unpredictable right now? For example, some new development might tell us two things were made in the same place and time, leading to discovery by inference, or something.

Originals might prove valuable in ways not yet known.

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