A few Safaitic inscriptions were even found in Pompeii, on the walls outside a small theatre, probably scribbled by Arabian members of the Roman army.

Inscriptions, Al-Jallad explained, tend to cluster on higher ground, where nomadic herders could keep an easier watch for predators. In a landscape with no other traces of human civilization, the rocks preserved the nomads’ names and genealogies, along with descriptions of their animals, their wars, their journeys, and their rituals. There were prayers to deities, worries about the lack of rain, and complaints about the cruelty of Romans.

He added, “The linguists are going to be well excited about what they’re finding. But the historian is still, like, ‘Yeah, it’s good. You’ve got names. You’ve got lots and lots of names.’ ”

he province of archeology, a fictional archeologist once said, is the search for facts, not truth.

In 2013, Al-Jallad used the Safaitic database as he worked on an inscription containing several mysterious words: Maleh, Dhakar, and Amet. Earlier scholars had assumed that they were the names of unknown places. Al-Jallad, unconvinced, searched the database and discovered another inscription that contained all three. Both inscriptions discussed migrations in search of water, and a possibility occurred to him: if the words referred to seasons of migration, then they might be the names of constellations visible at those times.

Al-Jallad began pulling up every inscription that mentioned migrating in search of rain, and soon he had a long list of terms that had resisted translation. Comparing them with the Greek, Aramaic, and Babylonian zodiacs, he started making connections. Dhakar matched up nicely with dikra, the Aramaic word for Aries, and Amet was derived from an Arabic verb meaning “to measure or compute quantity”—a good bet for the scales of Libra. Hunting for Capricorn, the goat-fish constellation, Al-Jallad found the word ya’mur in Edward Lane’s “Arabic-English Lexicon,” whose translation read, “A certain beast of the sea, or . . . a kind of mountain-goat.” He stayed up all night, sifting the database and checking words against dictionaries of ancient Semitic languages. By morning, he had deciphered a complete, previously unknown Arabian zodiac. “We’d thought that they were place names, and, in a way, they were,” he told me. “They were places in the sky.”

Michael Macdonald amassed a vast collection of photographs of these texts and launched a digital Safaitic database, with the help of Laïla Nehmé, a French archeologist and one of the world’s leading experts on early Arabic inscriptions. “When we started working, Michael’s corpus was all on index cards,” Nehmé recalled. “With the database, you could search for sequences of words across the whole collection, and you could study them statistically. It worked beautifully.”

Enno Littmann, an Orientalist who visited Syria in 1899, with a contingent from Princeton University, and completed the decipherment, labored over what he found on the rocks.

In 1877, an Orientalist from Ottoman Edirne deciphered most of the alphabet, bringing the language of the inscriptions into blurry focus.

he effort to decode the Safaitic texts began in the spring of 1857, when a young Scotsman named Cyril Graham set off from Jerusalem on a tour of Syria.

The inscription on Macdonald’s rock included the name of a person (“Ghayyar’el son of Ghawth”), a narrative, and a prayer. It was the narrative that stood out to Al-Jallad. Reading it aloud, he noted a sequence of words repeated three times, which he suspected was a refrain in a poetic text.

The history of Arabia just before the birth of Islam is a profound mystery, with few written sources describing the milieu in which Muhammad lived. Historians had long believed that the Bedouin nomads who lived in the area composed exquisite poetry to record the feats of their tribes but had no system for writing it down. In recent years, though, scholars have made profound advances in explaining how ancient speakers of early Arabic used the letters of other alphabets to transcribe their speech. These alphabets included Greek and Aramaic, and also Safaitic; Macdonald’s rock was one of more than fifty thousand such texts found in the deserts of the southern Levant. Safaitic glyphs look nothing like the cursive, legato flow of Arabic script. But when read aloud they are recognizable as a form of Arabic—archaic but largely intelligible to the modern speaker.

It was Safaitic, an alphabet that flourished in northern Arabia two millennia ago, and Al-Jallad and Macdonald are among a very small number of people who can read it.

"I made a great study of theology at one time," said Mr Brooke, as if to explain the insight just manifested. "I know something of all schools. I knewWilberforce in his best days.6Do you know Wilberforce?"

"I made a great study of theology at one time," said Mr Brooke, as if to explain the insight just manifested. "I know something of all schools. I knewWilberforce in his best days.6Do you know Wilberforce?"Mr Casaubon said, "No.""Well, Wilberforce was perhaps not enough of a thinker; but if I went intoParliament, as I have been asked to do, I should sit on the independent bench,as Wilberforce did, and work at philanthropy."Mr Casaubon bowed, and observed that it was a wide field."Yes," said Mr Brooke, with an easy smile, "but I have documents. I began along while ago to collect documents. They want arranging, but when a question has struck me, I have written to somebody and got an answer. I have documents at my back. But now, how do you arrange your documents?""In pigeon-holes partly," said Mr Casaubon, with rather a startled air of effort."Ah, pigeon-holes will not do. I have tried pigeon-holes, but everything getsmixed in pigeon-holes: I never know whether a paper is in A or Z.""I wish you would let me sort your papers for you, uncle," said Dorothea. "Iwould letter them all, and then make a list of subjects under each letter."Mr Casaubon gravely smiled approval, and said to Mr Brooke, "You have anexcellent secretary at hand, you perceive.""No, no," said Mr Brooke, shaking his head; "I cannot let young ladies meddle with my documents. Young ladies are too flighty."Dorothea felt hurt. Mr Casaubon would think that her uncle had some special reason for delivering this opinion, whereas the remark lay in his mind aslightly as the broken wing of an insect among all the other fragments there, anda chance current had sent it alighting on her.When the two girls were in the drawing-room alone, Celia said —"How very ugly Mr Casaubon is!""Celia! He is one of the most distinguished-looking men I ever saw. He is remarkably like the portrait of Locke. He has the same deep eye-sockets."

Lisa, Apple's demonstration of its leadership,in bringing technology to the knowledge worker.

[Narrator]: The power of the MC 68000 permitted another breakthrough:the common user interface.[Bill Atkinson]: On Lisa we make each of the programs have a similar user interface,so that what you've learned from using one programcarries over and you feel naturally how to use the next.

[Steve Jobs]: If you sort of dig beneath the surface,one of the real successes of the Lisa programwas creating an environment where all these crazy people that could reallybe very, very successful.And I guess that's one of the things that Apple's done best.

[Narrator]: The Cluttered Desk, Index Card,file folders, the in-out basket, the calculator.These are the tools of the office professional's past.Since the dawn of the computer age, better machines have always meant bigger and more powerful.But the software could not accommodate the needs of office professionals who are responsiblefor the look, shape and feel of tomorrow.

Reply by writing a blog post

The system will check if the link being submitted has an associated RSS feed, particularly one with an explicit title field instead of just a date, and only then allow posting it. Blogs, many research journals, YouTube channels, and podcasts have RSS feeds to aid reading and distribution, whereas things like tweets, Instagram photos, and LinkedIn posts don’t. So that’s a natively available filter on the web for us to utilize.

Katherine Hayhoe, author of “Saving Us: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World,” serves as Chief Scientist for the Nature Conservancy and is a distinguished professor at Texas Tech. You might expect that she would be considered a legitimate authority on the subject. p span[style*="font-size"] { line-height: 1.6; } But in the Meta-verse, where it seems virtually impossible to connect with a human being associated with the administration of the platform, rules are rules, and it appears they would prefer to suppress anything that might prove problematic for them. p span[style*="font-size"] { line-height: 1.6; } Hayhoe expressed her personal frustration in a recent post on Facebook. p span[style*="font-size"] { line-height: 1.6; } “Since August 2018, Facebook has limited the visibility of my page,” she writes, “labelling it as ‘political’ because I talk about climate change and clean energy. This change drastically reduced my post views from hundreds to just tens, and the page’s growth has been stagnant ever since.” p span[style*="font-size"] { line-height: 1.6; } The implications of such policies for our democracy are alarming. Why should corporate entities be able to dictate what type of speech or content is acceptable?

With permission from the Kansas Reflector, I’m sharing the column verbatim here in an attempt to sidestep Meta’s censorship. I hope you’ll share it far and wide—and I really hope Meta doesn’t block this version.

There is an ʻŌlelo Noʻeau, a Hawaiian proverb, that states: I ka ʻolelo no ke ola, i ka ʻolelo no ka make. This translates to “in speech is life, in speech is death.”

In 1622, the famous poetand clergyman John Donne wrote of Virginia in this fashion, describing thenew colony as the nation’s spleen and liver, draining the “ill humours of thebody . . . to breed good bloud.”

History of the United States (1834)

The years between 1607 and 1610 are biographically murky. Theletters are hard to date and hard to decipher, and the best historicalrecords we have are of jobs that didn’t happen. He failed to get aposition in the Queen’s household in 1607, and there are referencesin the letters to his application to jobs in Ireland or, even moreremotely, Virginia, but neither came to anything, if they were everserious prospects to begin with. It’s equally likely that they were anattempt on his part to look industrious, both to his friends and tohimself; neither Ireland nor Virginia were at all desirable places atthe time.

Discrimination

In this connection it is also usefulsometimes to bear in mind, that the small article does not as-a rule admit of systematic treatment of a given subject, thatperiodical literature is tied to time for its appearance, thatnovelty and notoriety, catering to the masses, i.e. to thealmighty dollar, play a good part in the production of unripeliterature, that some sort of news may be supplied merely tohelp us swallow the ubiquitous advertisement.

it would in most cases be sufficient to indexfrom the most authoritative paper

If a variation of any importancebecomes necessary then it is best to start a new index.

Experiencein dealing with quantities of literature and our special knowledgein our particular field should enable us to discriminate so thaton the one hand no information of value is allowed to slip byand on the other hand we are not burdening ourselves withuseless material.

Advertising although somewhat discredited is anart which rests for its success on a close study of psychology.

The quantity of literature has increased but the methods of 82•dealing with it or controlling it have not advanced proportion-

Quantity

to the change from books to articles and papers, whichleads to a large amount of duplication, and the ne-cessity of wading through a great deal of what doesnot interest us directly.

The small article does reflect however one very general feature 79in modern activity i.e. to treat the specific rather than thegeneral.

The neglect of the book is however not altogether advanta- 78geous.

The tendency is becoming more and moreThe Article pronounced to reduce the bulky volume toarticles published in periodical literature, sothat information formerly printed in book form is now cutup into slices and published at intervals. Collective bodies ofall kinds, increasing ad infinitum, almost always have theirorgans of publicity, again mostly periodicals. These and otherfacilities for publishing articles have brought to light innumer-able authors. Who does not read a paper or write an articlenowadays ? Whatever our opinion, we have to deal with thefact that this tendency exists and that it is largely instrumentalin swelling the bulk of indexable literature to almost unmanage-able proportions.

For the purpose of indexing we shall divide 73our stock of names or terms into those ofconcretes, processes and countries, concretes being the com-modities with which we are concerned, processes indicatingtheir actions, and countries indicating the localities with whichthe concretes are connected (295 et seq.) .

it may even be desirable toindex illustrations without description.

We quote because we are afraid to-change words, lest there be a change in meaning.

Description and illustration are^ comple-mentary, they give together a more complete picture than citherwithout the other.

Form u hi l

Whether we can ex-press in words or not what we observe, has nothing to do withthe fact of observing and reasoning, which must be regardedas quite independent and separate from any record in words.When we arrive at a stage where we desire to reproduce ourobservations by means of language, we enter an entirely newfield of reasoning.

Divergence of views istherefore universal and necessarily so. This is of immensevalue to us, difference of opinion is in fact the parent of im-provement and progress. Divergence causes us to comparenotes as it were, it helps to broaden our views.

Concretes are only known to us superficially.

emphasises thenecessity of taking note of any serious assertion even if contraryto our own ideas.

Words are brought into relation according to recognised rulesand thus give language. Language is that by means of whichwe describe or record intelligently. Records represent know-ledge, they give information, information belongs to our businessmaterials; we use it, we apply it, hence we group it into classesto make it accessible, we index it. Broadly speaking literatureis the result of1 observation of concretes2 translating our observations into language.

What we record is whatwe observe, what we reason out. The subjects of our observingand reasoning arc things in general, real or imaginary, andthe conditions attaching to them. We shall call them concretesand processes respectively.

.Summarising is optional.

summarisingwe bring the various extracts into one consistent statement.

Stated briefly the work of the intelligence department can be 50brought under the three heads: filing, indexing and summarising.

A few moment's reflection will showus that if our pieces are too large, we shall not have the same•opportunity of building up. The process of summarising orbuilding up is in fact restricted by the size of the pieces,generally speaking the smaller the pieces the better the chanceto build up. Too large pieces will preclude us altogetherfrom reporting on smaller subjects.

By the process of indexing therefore we boildown, we reduce our materials to that which is essential forour purpose, we create a nucleus of effective information, in-formation which will be of real use to us in the pursuit ofour business. We cast aside what after due examination isfound to be of no value or to lie outside our field of action.

ur materials naturally fall into two classes,Materials Camples and literature; they represent oneand the same thing— commodities, the one inconcrete form and the other in abstract form. One is thecommodity and the other describes it.

Classification work is however not quite as simple as it maylook, on the contrary, it is a rather tricky subject, for wemust give our classes a name, we must define them, we mustknow at any rate ourselves where they begin and where theyend. It would never do for the classes to interfere with each,other, they must be defined so that they neither overlap amongthemselves nor leave any ground of the organisation as a wholeuncovered. That is certainly a difficulty but it is not insur-mountable where patience and perseverance are brought to»bear.

Since a smaller number can be more easily 29of numbers controlled than a larger one, the aim of or-ganisation obviously is to reduce the numbersto a manageable compass so as to assure adequate control.That is done by dividing the numbers off into groups, depart-ments, classes etc. Thus we may have classes of materials,labour etc, or we may have classes of kinds of materials,labour etc, according to the nature of our business and theextent of our organisation. These classes provide us with thefoundation, the fixed points on which our organisation can bebuilt up.Classification — the mapping out of the various classes— is there- 30fore a subject of the greatest importance in all organisationwork.

The same applies to reorganisation, whoseobject is merely to substitute superior for inferior control oradequate for inadequate control.

Organisation may be called the science of the 27numbers simultaneous control of numbers. Organisa-tion whether small or large, is the directconsequence of numbers and the greater the numbers, the moreneed for organisation. Numbers compel us to organise, withoutsome organisation there can be no effective management, noeffective control

an organisation, i.e. a set of specialised systemscoordinated to work collectively with the same end in view.

One transaction at a time would generallynot lead either to much work or muchbusiness, and besides, a transaction cannot always be completedwhile you wait. The consequence is that we arrive at a num-ber of transactions going on simultaneously. When we nowreach the stage of too much work, then we must find waysand means to supplement our energy. Thus we arrive at amultitude of transactions by means of concerted action.

Our individuality is our greatest asset.

The unit of our activity is the single transac-tion. The activity of the large'st organisationis but a multiple of the single transaction

Reference numbers to paragraphs in vol I are distinguishedby a preceding I

The first draft of this scheme of indexing was worked out inPhiladelphia in 1896-7 and after some years of constant appli-cation involving an index of some 50,000 cards it was re-written-in the light of experience gained.

by system we eliminate duplication, we concentratecontrol;

means of control.

You cannot buy a ready-made intelligence departmenton which to run your business.

what little indexing is attempted can only 14be described as an unsystematic effort. The catchword methodof the catalogue has been bodily transplanted to indexing,which makes it very difficult to control our indexed informationproperly, and limits our supply of information to that whichwill fall in with the catchword method

The dif-ference between a catalogue and an index is so great thatthey ought not to be confused; a catalogue mainly deals withbooks, an index mainly handles information.

t our index would refer us to electricitywherever mentioned in the text of our literature if usableinformation is given, and it should also tell us something more—the aspect under which it is treated in each case. Whetherand from what aspect information is usable, that we must decidefor ourselves.

printed indexes leave the contents almost entirelyuntouched.

it follows that no purchasable articlecan supply our individual wants so far as a key to our stockof information is concerned. We shall always be mainly de-pendent in this direction upon our own efforts to meet ourown situation.

That is not the case.It is true, a variety of published indexes, catalogues and biblio-graphies to periodical and other literature exists, but they donot and cannot meet our individual case, for1 Every individual moves in a sphere of his own and coversindividual ground such as a printed index cannot touch.2 Printed indexes although they give usable information,cannot go sufficiently into details, they must studyabove all the common requirements of a number ofsubscribers sufficiently large to assure their existenceand continuance (apart from the question of adver-tising).

Indexing, whichis the process by which our information is collected and madeaccessible is therefore a subject whose importance it would bedifficult to overestimate; it is. a subject which no man aspiringto success can afford to ignore altogether.

When our stock of information has been systematically arranged,and is available for use, it has ceased to be a mere note-book,which it may have been at the start; it h;i^ x'adually developedinto tin- nucleus of an intelligence department, «>\crin- .-illthe subjects and their ramifications within the scope of oaractivity.

we are not giving ourselves a deal of trouble merely forthe pleasure thereof

we shall beginto realise that a more judicious selection may be desirable.Experience alone can guide us in this.

We make notes mentally too,for that is the only way to gather knowledge, and a well trainedmemory is always a great asset,

wait his future volumes with aconsiderable amount of interest. The third volume — namely, " The

The volume we have before us, is thefirst of a series of three,

The book is excel-lently arranged and printed ; it is provided with a full index, and is-bound in a limp cover, which renders it easily handled by a busyman.

The subject is treated quite dispassionately,no particular file or cabinet is thrust upon the reader, but the re-quirements of ideal appliances and the state of existing ones aredescribed.

Automobile and Carriage Builders' Journal, October 1908. Duringthe last five or six years the carriage builder has been adopting,perhaps slowly, and often unwillingly, the card system in his office.,owing to the extra detail the motor business has brought with it.It will have probably been introduced by a new partner who hasbrought new money into the business, when extra funds were necessaryto cope with the new state of affairs. The motor manufacturer usesit instinctively, for he brings with him,

card system are indebted tothese catalogues for their information. But all these publications areprimarily concerned with the particular cabinet or file of the firm inwhose interest they are published.

o businesses of varied sizes are set forth and their working illustrated."We note with appreciation the author's use of "flags" as indic.itors.Our experience of these handy and ingenious little devices datesfrom their first introduction in the States, and we can endorse all that"he says in their favour.

Yet it is doubtful whether since theintroduction of the typewriter there has been an invention so beneficialto modern business as the card-index system.

The progress of the card system in England has•undoubtedly been very slow; a fact which may be due primarilyto the constitutional conservatism of English business men, althoughprobably it is partly accounted for by the natural irritation and reaction•caused by the hustling but not always tactful enthusiasm of the manyAmerican salesmen who for several years past have been its principalmissionaries.

So far as we are aware, this is the first adequatebook on the card system which has been published in this country.In the main, information on the subject has only been procurablefrom the catalogues and booklets (many of them excellent andinforming; issued by the manufacturers of the impedimenta of thesystem,

So last move (2 years ago) my Kiddo(chronic mental and medical high time demand) dumped my cards and I am still trying to sort them back. ** As of now I am using hair ties to make sure they don't get "accidentally" dumped again. If they do it will have to be done with some fore thought.

…he showed up at our door with a backpack and blue notebook…Each day, my roommates and I would leave for school or work while he stayed in our apartment alone writing feverishly in that notebook.

Ironmonger,3rd October1908.Mr.Kaiserisapastmaster__inallthatappertainsto carding,filing,andindexing systems.

BACK OF CARDS 188, 246, 263

357 It is this great difficulty involved in consistency which is responsiblefor the fact that however much we may try or desire to do otherwise,the best man to run a system effectively is he who has devised it,''^for however careful and painstaking we may be in trying to repro-duce his system accurately on paper, these reproductions are merelyabstracts of the original ; reproduction can never be absolutelycomplete. We may reproduce a system on paper in clearly markedoutlines, we may add within the general configuration all the inter-woven details, all of which may be concise and manageable, butbeyond the confines of the system there are blank margins in alldirections, which cannot be filled in until such cases arise as willcompel us to extend the ramifications of our system into thesemargins. It is not possible to express these ramifications before-hand on paper, but they no doubt have been allowed for in themind of the originator of the system, even supposing that he is notalways conscious of it. It is precisely these undefined marginswhich in most cases put consistency on its trial ; hence consistency,already a difficult factor in cases where the deviser deals with hisown system, is doubly so in other cases, for the unexpressed rami-fications which remain in suspense until called into being by unfore-seen circumstances can only be depicted consistently with therest of the system in the mind of the originator, who will have tobe consulted in each case for the purpose.

It is prudent to maturewell before improvements are adopted. Improvements rashlyintroduced may give cause for regret when it is too late to turn back.

don't supervise too little, otherwise your staff will soonbecome prolific in the production and application of all manner ofimprovements, which must eventually prove fatal ; superviseenough to assure adequate continuity and consistency in the system,and to leave your staff sufficient of their individuality to make theirwork interesting to them.

the supervisormust therefore be prepared to carry the system a step furtherwhenever occasion arises. There is therefore an opportunity tobring individuality into play. If we are not prepared to assert ourindividuality within and without the limits set by the system, wemay depend upon it that our collaborators or subordinates willassert theirs, consciously or unconsciously, and we shall find inthe end that our system has been distorted in all directions, withoutnecessarily transgressing our rules, although the latter will be buta matter of time.

The measure of control is also the measure of responsibility. Respon-sibility without control is a hopeless proposition.

System without consistency is an impossibility. 356But let us realise what a difficult matter it is tobe consistent. We are surrounded by changes and inconsistencieseverywhere. Language above all, which we must needs constantlyuse, is not a perfect instrument for giving expression to consistency.We may have our rules all nicely worded and filed in the key cabinet,but if we have not taken the greatest pains in constructing them,if we have not subjected each one to the most searching criticismbefore they are applied, v/e shall find sooner or later that in one

To run a system effectively, we must be prepared 355Servant to uphold it ourselves, we must give the examplein effective work, we must be the first to submitto it although we supply the directing energy to run it. If we thinkourselves above our own system, then it has already ceased to exist.We must bear in mind therefore that any rules we may make, anyinstructions we may give, any supervision we may effect, applyto ourselves equally with others. We may be the masters of thesystem, we are also its servants, but for all that we need not beslaves to it.

It is therefore best to prepare a Daily List

A four drawer cabinetis as a rule ample for the purposes of the key cabinet.

Business In former years the account ledger representedLedger

Chronological registers or directories may beRegisters used for a variety of purposes in almost everyoffice, not only as future reminders^ but alsoas records of past events.

By this plan the subjects of the books may be scattered, but thatis no disadvantage, for they are brought together by the cards.

For larger collections of books it may be thought preferable to use a libraryclassification, such as Mr. Dewey's Decimal Classification, but I doubt very muchif the gain will be in proportion to the additional labour involved.

Summaries*

Since leaving office in 2021, former President Donald J. Trump has spent more than $100 million on lawyers and other costs related to fending off various investigations, indictments and his coming criminal trials, according to a New York Times review of federal records.

There is a reason that the abolitionist Frederick Douglass said that between the Christianity of this land (America) and the Christianity of Christ, he recognized the “widest possible difference.”

Whether this Bible is an example of Christian nationalism I will leave to others. It is at least an example of Christian syncretism, a linking of certain myths about American exceptionalism and the Christian faith. This is the American church’s consistent folly: thinking that we are the protagonists in a story that began long before us and whose main character is in fact the Almighty.