#low bible literacy

[ladybracknellssherry]

Why didn't anyone tell me this is a play on a bible quote? First time I regret being raised by atheists.

Can't believe some gay ass show got me reading the bible.

[fang-toothed]

I feel like we need to talk about how increasingly poor reading literacy (in America, ofc) is causing subtle negative effects that affect daily lives and make it extremely difficult to understand arguments, analysis, data, and other content, and it is undoubtedly affecting the political sphere.

Over half of Americans 16-74 have a reading comprehension lower than 6th-grade level (source linked below). This is honestly a crisis, yet we already have so many other critical emergencies going on that it’s put on the back-burner. Many people are looking at headlines referencing studies and assuming that whatever’s put in the headline is the truth (they’re often directly against findings or based on deeply flawed studies/surveys). Many don’t understand speeches and debates from politicians (and definitely not the implications they house). In this confusing, heavily biased and illicitly-funded era of endless headlines and content, many don’t even have a 6th-grade level of reading comprehension - how the hell are they going to understand even the basics that are already from unreliable sources?

I can’t help but to think that this may be part of the reason extremist ideologies (MAGA, anti-vaxxers, cultists, TRAs) are becoming increasingly popular. Now, people need to be told what an article or survey or study means - usually by the same people who are trying to get them on their side. Every single TRA I’ve encountered has had massive misunderstandings in the very basics of radfem ideology: they believe we want to kill all gender-nonconforming people, that we think trans-identified people should kill themselves, that we are all conservatives, that JKR has outright advocated for the murder of trans-identified people.

What scares me is that we have one side with all of the anti-vaxxers, MAGA-enthusiasts, and creepy religious cults, and on the other we have the TRA movement absolutely screaming we need for trans people to be catered for in every possible public setting or we’ll “have blood on our hands.” I think anti-vaxxers and the Bible-enthusiasts are more dangerous than TRAs, but at least they are recognised as dangerous. Both sides are controlled by at least one extremist ideology. What the hell are we to do in the 2024 election?

PLEASE take a college reading comprehension course if possible. Many community colleges offer courses cheap, and if it still isn’t feasible, there are plenty of sources online to help improve your reading comprehension.

[ao3cassandraic]

Angels, demons, language, and culture: part 3

(Part 1 and Part 2 for those interested.)

"I play an ineffable game of my own devising. For everyone else, it’s like playing poker in a pitch dark room with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a dealer who won’t tell you the rules and who smiles all the time." --God, Good Omens

This is just. Creepy and awful and so, so wrong for a quasi-omnipotent being. Ugh. Good Omens!God is an abject horror.

But if you're one of the poker players at that table, what do you do? You try to figure out the rules and mark the cards, naturally. Especially if leaving the table only happens via swan dives into burning sulphur, or getting kicked out of the only home you've known into a hostile desert with lions in it. While pregnant, yet.

So, I did a Bat Mitzvah back in the day, as it happens, and my Torah portion was from Deuteronomy. Which is, as I am hardly the first to notice, chockablock full of rules. Good Omens definitely leveraged (rather than inventing) the idea of trying to figure out Her rules and codify them in writing! Note, however, that the Bible per Word of Gaiman is a human thing. Codifying divine rules? Therefore also a human thing, minus I suppose the Ten Commandments -- though I can certainly envision a Good Omens in which Moses was, um, not exactly telling the truth about the source of the tablets; we only really have his word for it.

Angels and demons, who have a low opinion of literacy and just generally don't seem to be very good at it, never did this. We see that Aziraphale, Before the Beginning, has intuitively figured a few rules out: don't question Her, don't comment on (much less critique) Her decisions or designs, don't ever ever piss Her off. The Starmaker hasn't gotten this far, tragically, and our Crowley remains confused throughout the show as to what rule he can possibly have broken that earned him the identity-changing torture She inflicted on him.

Fundamentally, Crowley doesn't want to -- perhaps can't -- believe that She is capricious and cruel. He thinks there are rules, "don't test to destruction" being a major one. We know he's wrong, however. She straight-up told us so, in the quote at the top of this post! Aziraphale, too, knows, though he buries this knowledge as deep under the words "ineffable" and "Great Plan" (there is no Great Plan, She told us so, it's all a game to Her) as he possibly can -- I think as a coping mechanism -- and does his best to avoid drawing Her attention again after the Sword Incident.

But we see angelic and demonic confusion about the rules of Her game again and again. It's at the root of Aziraphale's successful Great Plan/Ineffable Plan hairsplitting at the airbase. It's why Aziraphale has to (with Muriel's help) dig through the contract for Job, and why Gabriel and Michael can't even be arsed to, even revising Job's reward on the fly. They're guessing! They're guessing about the rules based on what they've seen of Her caprices! She likes sevens!

It's how Crowley rules-lawyers the demons into letting the Whickber Street tradespeople go. If there are actual rules of Heaven-Hell engagement -- and there may not be! Crowley's pulled plausible-sounding lies out of his arse before! -- I'll bet you anything you like practically nobody in Heaven or Hell has actually read them. (My top picks for rules-of-engagement authors, if those rules actually do exist, would be Satan and the Metatron.)

And it's why Uriel has to ask the Metatron, as unsure and afraid as Uriel has ever looked in the entire series, whether the remaining archangels have done something wrong. The Metatron's response refuses to clarify what's at issue -- he, like Her, won't tell anybody the rules. If I'm feeling extremely cynical, I think She and he refuse to explain the rules because they're more powerful if there's no rulebook that rank-and-file angels can use to contest them with.

It makes me so sad. The legions of Heaven would assuredly have followed Her rules, if they only knew what those rules were! Fanart of the just-fallen Starmaker routinely breaks my susceptible heart, not least because the commonest expressions on his face are agony, sorrow -- and confusion. It's just all so damn unfair.

Same with Job, and Peter Davison sells it beautifully. Poor Job assumes he must have broken Her rules somehow, and blames himself for not even knowing how. That's totally on Her, though! If Her rules aren't clear enough for righteous Job to be able to trust his own righteousness under a horrible test, that's Her fault, not his!

The closest that Heaven and Hell -- and humanity, for that matter -- have to Her rules is prophecy. I probably don't need to spill many pixels on how vague and confusing prophecy is, how often it's counterfeited, and how pointless it is to try to live your life by (or trying to avoid) true prophecies; prophecies will invariably gotcha you. Good Omens is hardly the first work of literature to point this out. (Try the story of Oedipus. That's a good one. Yeesh. Or, if we want to be all Biblical about it, Moses again.) Agnes Nutter may well be the only genuinely well-meaning prophet in the entire history of prophets! Even so, her book is incredibly bewildering! Generations of her descendants try to figure it out, and mostly they fail -- look at the annotations we see on Anathema's index cards.

So when @thundercrackfic asks me what Aziraphale gets out of books, my first (though not only) answer is "rules for living." Not just rules for living as safely as possible around Her, though -- rules for living among humans, too. I headcanon (and posited in "Endgame") that Aziraphale has been collecting human etiquette manuals as long as humans have been writing etiquette manuals. Codified rules, like the ones in Deuteronomy, likely help him feel more secure.

I think this is also why Muriel characterizes books as portable people. Muriel is trying their sweet adorable best to figure out the Earth rules on the fly, since nobody Upstairs told them (or indeed knows, the Metatron aside) what those rules are. They do have Aziraphale to help them along -- Aziraphale is so much better than Upstairs! he doesn't condescend or insult, he just gently instructs -- but Aziraphale can't teach full-time, he has other things on his plate. So Muriel the scrivener, one of the few angels who would have a clue about literacy due to the nature of their job, gravitates to books and discovers that they too can be gentle and compassionate teachers.

The final question outstanding is how well Aziraphale understands and assimilates human books, especially fiction, especially especially non-literal figures of speech. It's an excellent and complicated question, and I don't think I have The Answer to it, but I'll see what I can do.

[saintmelangell]

If one wanted to read the Bible from a scholarly and literature perspective, what would you recommend? I’m not religious but I would like to read the Bible to understand it. If that makes sense. Thank you so much!

i'd recommend, truly, just reading the bible and investing in good translations. i have always recommended the nrsv with apocryphal books and the jewish annotated new testament. both of these have been invaluable to me as a scholar and, though not especially beautiful, hold up as good translations. i've also heard robert alter's translation is good for a literary translation. "the hebrew bible as literature" from the very short introduction series may also be a good starting point. but truly just reading the bible is something very few people do- even among theologians, excepting biblical theologians biblical literacy is often very low. mine is above average and i don't consider myself to be especially learned in scriptural theology! and that just comes from reading and rereading the bible, from cover to cover, like i would read a novel.

i will add that one thing i can't stress enough is the importance of reading jewish scholars to learn about scripture, especially the figure of christ and the new testament. i recommend the essay "the dogma of christ" by erich fromm, and the work of david mishkin and geza vermes.

[tanadrin]

That is correct, I didn't think the Mosaic law would be a practical way of running a society but that's what my client wanted so that's what I wrore

I don't really get the joke here, so I'm just going to take an opportunity to add another fact I found pretty interesting:

It was common in the Ancient Near East to create codes of law for display purposes (and outside it--cf. the Twelve Tables). This wasn't so much so that the common person could know and understand the law, because literacy rates were pretty low, but served a similar function as monumental architecture, to display the power of the ruler and at least notionally their justice. But in practice, the law as it actually functioned could be pretty different from the law as these monuments proclaimed it.

I think it's interesting to consider the law-as-a-symbol. There was some incidental discourse crossing my dash recently about whether "law" as a general concept protects the weak from the strong, or whether it legitimates the rule of the elites. And I think the answer is that is obviously does neither: that a society has a system of law tells you nothing about how that system functions, and you have to dig into the nitty-gritty details to determine whether the society has "rule of law" (which is good) or "rule by law" (which is bad). The former is, hopefully, a system where the law binds everybody, attempts to be fair, and there is at least some effort to enforce it equally; the latter is where law is a justification for a system power that makes no pretense at that sort of thing.

And I think rule by law is a very common state of affairs, especially pre-French Revolution! I might be generous and say pre-Enlightenment at best. Because before you have an ideological starting point of "ok, everybody should be equal before the law and the law should be impartially enforced," one-off privileges, aristocracies, and random exemptions from various rights and duties are pretty normal, and one of the major functions of law is to codify these inequities to make sure the king or his judiciary respects them. There is a reason one of the big components of revolutionary projects historically has been administrative reform, because in redrawing internal boundaries and revising old law codes, you can do away with these inequities and legally enshrined hierarchies.

And that pattern of inequity, of legally enshrined hierarchy, is of course thoroughly present in Leviticus and Deuteronomy. As Dan McClellan points out, agency in these codes flows downhill and it flattens everything in its path. The agency of men erases that of women: the law treats what happens if a man violates the property rights of another man over the women under his dominion (his daughters or wives), but the agency of the women ("consent" in modern parlance) simply makes no difference to the law. The only place women's sexual agency shows up in the law is in the one situation where a woman is interacting with a creature lesser than her, i.e., if she lies with an animal.

Even in the European Middle Ages I think there were real disjuncts between the worldview of the people using these law codes for devotional purposes and the worldview of their authors. In the modern era, of course, those disjuncts are yawning chasms, and as a result you get some really weak apologetic attempts to try to reconcile modern ethics with (again, impractical, unworkable, entirely theoretical) Iron Age legal theory. But there are lots of places in the Bible--both in the law codes and in the narrative portions--where I think the disjunct is so great that the aftercomers can't really make heads or tails of the worldviews of their predecessors. This is where the apologists (and before them, the commentaries of the Talmud) often have to invent major details out of whole cloth to try to turn the situation into one that makes sense to them. It would be better, and easier to construct a more consistent system of ethics, to just jettison the bits that clearly aren't applicable to the concerns of your community--but then of course once you admit that what parts of your scripture you do and don't accept are contingent on their relevance to your community, it is no longer the timeless and authoritative book from God, and it ceases to be a useful way of structuring power.

And as with codes of law, holy writ is (among other things) about structuring power! Otherwise all religion would approximately resemble Unitarian Universalism, an honest, gentle, thoughtful faith that is approximately irrelevant.

[passiveincomemoney]

Top 5 Investment Books for Beginners: Start Your Financial Journey with Confidence

Starting out in the world of investing can feel like stepping into a thrilling adventure, but it's totally normal to feel a bit overwhelmed, especially if you're new to it all. The financial landscape can seem huge and complicated, but don't worry! There are plenty of tools out there to help you navigate this journey more easily and grasp the ins and outs of investing. One of the most valuable resources you can tap into is books authored by experienced investors and financial gurus. We've rounded up five of the top investing books for beginners, each packed with wisdom and practical tips to guide you on your investment journey.

“The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need” by Andrew Tobias This book is a timeless resource that has been updated to reflect the current financial landscape. Tobias combines his wit with practical advice, making the complex world of investing accessible to beginners. His guide covers everything from saving to investing strategies, all while helping you avoid common financial pitfalls.

“The Little Book of Common Sense Investing” by John Bogle John Bogle, the founder of Vanguard Group, advocates for the power of low-cost index funds in this concise yet comprehensive guide. Bogle's philosophy centres on the idea that keeping investment costs low is key to maximizing returns. This book is a must-read for those looking to understand the fundamentals of index funds and their role in a long-term investment strategy.

“Richer, Wiser, Happier: How the World’s Greatest Investors Win in Markets and Life” by William Green William Green provides a compelling narrative by profiling some of the world's most successful investors. Through these profiles, readers can glean insights into the traits that contribute to investment success, such as resilience and clarity of thought. This book is not only about financial wealth, but also about enriching one's life through wise investment practices.

“A Random Walk Down Wall Street” by Burton Malkiel Burton Malkiel's book is a staple for beginner investors, offering a deep dive into investment strategies and stock market behaviour. Malkiel challenges the idea that stock picking can outperform market averages and instead promotes a “random walk” approach, emphasizing the unpredictability of the markets and the benefits of a diversified portfolio.

“The Intelligent Investor” by Benjamin Graham Often referred to as the bible of investing, Benjamin Graham's work lays the foundation for 'value investing'—a method that involves picking undervalued stocks that show promise for long-term growth. Graham's principles have stood the test of time and continue to influence investors around the world, including the legendary Warren Buffett.

These books are more than just manuals; they are gateways to understanding the principles that have shaped the investment world. They offer a blend of historical context, practical advice, and philosophical insights that can empower any beginner to make informed and confident investment decisions. As you embark on your investment journey, let these books be your companions, guiding you towards financial literacy and success. Happy reading and investing!

[trickstarbrave]

media literacy and analysis seems like an all time low.

i do not know how to explain to dudes on reddit "vivec isnt lying in the 36 sermons, they are metaphors and parables meant to teach moral and spiritual lessons. they are not literal retellings of factual events you can prove or disprove. if you told vivec "you werent really born from an egg! you fucking liar!" he would blink at you before going "do you really think i meant that literally?" and then think you're too hopeless to have a conversation with

i was about to say "what do you guys take the bible literally too" and the answer to that question is probably "yeah they do" bc they would be that redditor brand of dumb atheist who thinks because the dimensions of the arc in the great flood aren't actually good for a boat means christianity has been #debunked

[misseffie]

Is Gendry illiterate?

Short answer: Probably not. 

Long answer: 

I’ve noticed a lot of fanfiction trying to address Gendry’s illiteracy once he becomes a noble. Most fics depict him as being completely illiterate. Some depict him as having some level of literacy, but not enough for his new position. So let’s try to figure it out, shall we?

Part 1: Literacy

We have this assumption that in medieval times no one could read or write unless they were part of the nobility. That is not quite true. Firstly, we have to understand what it meant to be literate by medieval standards: 

“In Medieval times, “Literate” actually meant able to read and write in Latin, which was considered to be the language of learning. Being able to read and write in the vernacular wasn’t considered real learning at all. Most peasants prior to the Black Death (which really shook up society) had little chance to learn - hard labouring work all of the hours of daylight does’t leave a lot of energy for reading or writing.

It’s worth noting, however the panic amongst the ruling classes when translations of The Bible started to appear written in English. This really started in the late 14th Century (about 30 years after the Black Death). The level of panic suggests that the Ruling Classes knew that the numbers of people who could read and write English was far greater than the numbers who could read Latin.”

However, there is no language quite like Latin in Westeros. The closest we come to something similar is High Valyrian. Which noble children seem to have a basic understanding of. We can safely assume that Gendry doesn’t have extensive knowledge of High Valyrian - so he is illiterate in that regard. But I don’t think High Valyrian is as widely used as Latin was in the Middle Ages. It’s also not a language with religious significance. As the Faith of the Seven doesn’t use High Valyrian the way that the Catholic Church used Latin.

So… taking that into account. What I assume that is meant by “literate” in Westeros is being able to read and write in the Common Tongue. 

I will say that even by those parameters I don’t think most of the commoners would have been literate. However, Gendry was not in the same situation as most of the commoners.

Which leads me to... 

Part 2: Socio-economic class in Medieval Times

The level of literacy among the commonfolk has to be examined on a case by case basis.

Literacy among “peasants” varied a lot depending on circumstance. So, for example, it’s not strange that Davos, who was a smuggler prior to meeting Stannis, was illiterate. Or Gilly, who was completely isolated from the world and in terrible conditions.

But Gendry is in a different situation.

As @arsenicandfinelace pointed out in this cool meta:

Gendry was definitely born low-class, as an unrecognised bastard whose mother was a tavern girl (read: one step away from prostitute). But the whole point of apprenticing with Tobho Mott is that that was a major leap forward for him, socially.

As Davos put it in 3x10, “The Street of Steel? You lived in the fancy part of town.” Yes, a tradesman of any kind is leagues below the nobility, and could never ever be worthy of marrying a highborn girl like Arya. But Tobho Mott is a master craftsman, the best armourer in the capital city of a heavily martial country. As far as tradesman go, he’s the best of the best, and charges accordingly.

There’s a reason Varys had to pay out the ass to get Gendry apprenticed there. If he had stayed, completed his apprenticeship, and eventually taken over the workshop, he would have been very wealthy (by commoner standards) and respectable (again, by commomner standards), despite his low birth.

Tobho Mott is a tradesman and a craftsman. He is part of the merchant class. * Merchants are often referred to as a different class from the rest of the population. The merchant class in Medieval Times was closer to the middle class of contemporary times.

“By the 15th century, merchants were the elite class of many towns and their guilds controlled the town government. Guilds were all-powerful and if a merchant was kicked out of one, he would likely not be able to earn a living again.”

Mott would be considered to be part of the merchant class - and not even a common kind of merchant either. He was the best Blacksmith in all of King's Landing, the capital of the Seven Kingdoms. So we can assume that Tobho Mott was a very wealthy and powerful craftsman and merchant.  

“That many 'middle class' people (tradesmen, merchants and the like) could read and write in the late middle ages cannot be disputed.”

I’m not saying that all tradesmen/merchants/craftsmen were literate back then. It was still a smaller percentage than the nobility. Only the richer and more influential of tradesmen would learn Latin. But I think most of them would be literate enough in the vernacular to run a business. Considering Mott’s reputation and his clientele I’m certain that Mott is part of that literate percentage.

In season 2, Arya accidentally reveals to Tywin that she can read. Realizing her mistake she covers up by saying that her father, a ’stonemason', taught her. Of course, I don’t think that completely fooled Tywin but why did Arya say her father was Stonemason. Why did his profession matter at all? Surely it wouldn’t have mattered if he was a fisherman or a farmer... a peasant is a peasant, right?

Wrong.

“The Medieval Stonemason asserts that they were not monks but highly skilled craftsmen who combined the roles of architect, builder, craftsman, designer, and engineer. Many, if not all masons of the Middle Ages learnt their craft through an informal apprentice system”

“Children from merchants and craftsmen were able to study longer and continuous, so they were able to learn Latin at a later age. This way, everyone learned to read and write (some better than others) sufficiently for their trade.”

Stonemasons were the architects of the time and no doubt the top tier was literate.

Many trades (by the 15th C) required reading and writing, so it was taught to apprentices by the masters. We know from apprenticeship agreements that many masters were expected to continue the apprentice's literacy or start it, which makes sense for the wider viability of the trade.

The War of the Roses took place in the late 15th Century. So I’m guessing that that’s the time period that ASOIAF is mostly based on.

Part 3: Level of literacy

I think it’s safe to say that Gendry has some level of literacy. However, his “level” is pretty much up for debate. If he’d finished his apprenticeship it’s likely he’d have a decent level of reading/writing comprehension. However, near the end of his apprenticeship he was kicked out.

I’m not sure how much Gendry could read/write by the time that he was kicked out by Tobho Mott. But he’d already been his apprentice for 10 years (in show canon). More than enough time to get some basic reading/writing/basic math lessons. 

It seems that show!Gendry is more likely to have a higher level of literacy than book!Gendry. In the show, he leaves Tobho Mott at 16, while in the book he is 14. This is just my own impression, but I think his education would be more complete by age 16 than age 14.

Not to mention that book!Gendry is still in the Riverlands and working for outlaws. But in the show we can assume that Gendry has been smithing in King’s Landing for years and it is insinuated that he owns a shop. Meaning he might have reached “Master” status and can take on apprentices of his own. It might seem like Gendry is too young for that. But it’s actually not that strange. 

“Apprentices stayed with their masters for seven to nine years before they were able to claim journeyman status. Journeyman blacksmiths possessed the basic skills necessary to work alongside their master, seek work with other shops, or even open their own businesses.”

Considering that Gendry has been with Mott for 10 years in show!canon, it’s possible that Gendry was a “journeyman” and not an “apprentice” by the time that Ned meets him in season 1. But he might be nearing the end of his apprenticeship in the books.

Guilds also required journeymen to submit work for examination each year in each area of expertise. So, a journeyman who perhaps crafted swords, locks, and keys would need to submit each item to his guild annually for inspection. If the guild approved the craftsmanship of the products, the journeyman could eventually move up to master status.

The process of becoming a master could take from 2 to 5 years. Considering that Gendry is regarded as talented, it’s likely that he achieved this in a shorter period of time. As a journeyman he also needed to work alongside a master for 3 to 4 years before he could obtain master status. Which would still explain why he was so upset at being kicked out by Mott - it’s like someone getting kicked out while they’re trying to obtain a PHD. 

By the time we meet him in season 7 it’s very possible that Gendry is now considered a master of his trade.

He also seems to be making armour and weapons for “Lannisters” which means he has a mostly noble clientele. He probably has plenty of fancy clients asking for custom-made products. With sketches and measurements and all that shit. Which is not surprising since he probably has a de facto reputation simply by merit of being Tobho Mott’s apprentice (lets ignore how dumb it is that no one discovered that Gendry was in King’s Landing since he made no effort to hide who he was or try to hide from the nobility lol).

Conclusion: 

It’s safe to say that Gendry had some access to higher education. He can probably read and write enough for his line of work. It’s likely that his level would still leave much to be desired once he became a noble though. For comparison, imagine if someone left school at age 11 and was then required to write a college-level thesis. So he’d definitely need some “lordly” writing lessons and further education.

Gendry is still wildly uneducated for what he needs to do. So...

This meme is still gold 10/10

* Correction: Though Mott would be considered part of the same socio-economic class as merchants he is primarily a tradesman/craftsman, and would be referred to as such. Since merchants didn’t produce the goods they sold. However they could belong to the same guild, along with artisans and craftsmen. 

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Carly Cassella

Published: Aug 29, 2021

More Americans are coming to accept Charles Darwin's "dangerous idea" of evolution, according to thirty years' worth of national surveys.

Researchers have found that public acceptance of biological evolution has increased substantially in the last decade alone, following twenty years of relative stagnancy.

Between 1985 and 2010, roughly 40 percent of surveyed adults in the US agreed that "human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals". Taking into account the small number of fence-sitters, this suggests much of the nation was evenly divided on the theory.

By 2016, that percentage had, at last, become a majority, reaching 54 percent.

As it turns out, education has played a crucial role in that shift. When researchers began to analyze the demographics of survey respondents over the past thirty years, they noticed the completion of one or more college science courses was the strongest predictor of evolution acceptance.

"Almost twice as many Americans held a college degree in 2018 as in 1988," says Mark Ackerman, who studies collective intelligence at the University of Michigan.

"It's hard to earn a college degree without acquiring at least a little respect for the success of science."

In the current analysis, the proportion of American adults with scientific literacy increased from 11 percent in 1988 to 31 percent in 2019.

That rise in knowledge can also easily spread to others. For instance, research suggests fewer students are exposed to creationism in the science classroom due in part to new teachers replacing a generation of educators less suited to teaching evolution.

Still, even a healthy dose of education can only go so far. Some researchers, for instance, think religious beliefs are a stronger predictor of accepting evolution than educational attainment. But this is an area of research that is still hotly debated. It could be, for instance, that education only works for some individuals who don't interpret the Bible literally.

In the US, evolution has become a highly politicized topic, especially among supporters of the Republican party, which tends to align its policies with evangelical Christian values.

The result is that today, the US has some of the lowest acceptance rates for evolution in the developed world, with only Turkey scoring lower.

Even now that a majority of Americans do not reject evolution, the rate of acceptance is still low compared to other nations and much lower than scientific consensus.

In recent years, religious adherence has begun to decline in the US, but the political divide on evolution still very much exists.

In 2019, researchers found 83 percent of liberal Democrats accepted evolution, whereas only 34 percent of conservative Republicans felt the same.

The driving force behind this huge difference is probably not ideological partisanship, experts say, but fundamental religious beliefs, which Republicans tend to hold more.

For instance, roughly 30 percent of American adults hold fundamental religious beliefs that directly contradict evolutionary theory, which is almost the same percentage of conservative Republicans that rejected evolution in the current analysis.

The authors of the current study are not ruling out religion as an influential factor. Their analysis still shows that fundamental religious beliefs can change the acceptance of evolution among American adults. But at least according to their analysis, it seems that educational attainment is the more influential factor.

According to their analysis, the recent increase in acceptance mostly comes from American adults who were previously unsure about the theory. Only some who outright rejected evolution had their mind's changed over time.

"Although scientific literacy has grown, and science continues to have pervasive influence in American society," the authors write, "a tension between religious fundamentalism and evolution remains."

While religion clearly remains a barrier to further public acceptance of evolution, that's gradually beginning to change. In 1988, the current analysis found only 8 percent of religious fundamentalists accepted the theory of evolution. Whereas in 2019, nearly a third did.

Along with growing exposure to scientific courses, a decline in religious fundamental beliefs will no doubt see the minority of Americans that reject evolution continue to shrink.

Last year, Pew conducted a more global survey that showed a slightly higher acceptance of evolution in the US at around 64 percent.

It's a number that nonetheless falls far below nations such as Canada (77 percent), Germany (81 percent), and Japan (88 percent), showing the US still has some catching up to do.

The study was published in Public Understanding of Science.

==

While this is good news, the study doesn't distinguish the nature of the evolution that people accepted; whether it's actual evolution ("secular evolution"), or evolution by supernatural selection ("goddidit", aka magic).

[ultraviolet-techno-ecology]

I for one would actually love to hear what you have to say on Braille literacy

Braille should be integrated into early childhood lessons alongside letter recognition. 

Not only would braille keyboards help teach braille - they would remove the need for specialized keyboards which cost thousands of dollars. Similarly USB displays for braille would be easy to create, but remain basically nonexistent due to being a niche market. 

Electro-mechanical braille tablets/ebooks are an energy-efficient alternative to those with illuminated screens and fulfill the role of being readable in the dark. 

People who print braille dots on a flat surface (instead of embossing them) should be attacked with water guns for their crimes.

We need more reading material than the goddamn bible being produced by insufferable missionaries who can’t even leave blind people alone. (A problem  immediately solved by braille tablets.) 

Braille books should not be confined to special remote libraries. Additionally there should be no additional requirements to access a braille book than any other library book. (Many libraries require letters from eye doctors, etc.) 

Street names should be embossed into sidewalks. 

The fact that braille literacy is declining is not simply because blind people have other options (like audiobooks) but also due to sighted people making a bigoted assumption that blind people don’t need to read! 

Tangential - a major way that bias against blind / low vision people manifests is through the assumption that we are unable to do anything ourselves, and thus there is no reason to teach a variety of life skills. That we have no need to learn cooking, cleaning, the use of transit systems, and so on. 

[pp-research]

Rich Dad Poor Dad Review in 2021: #1 Personal Finance Book? why

Although there are many opportunities around the world, people are still struggling to manage finances because of their lack of knowledge. Robert Kiyosaki , the author of this book is fortunate to learn from the experience of the two fathers. One is his real father, and the other is the father of his best friend.

His real father had a good education, but his financial situation was not good. After finishing the eighth grade, he had to give up his studies. However, nothing can stop him from becoming a millionaire. He learned financial knowledge from his second father and encountered many problems at home because of his real father.

From the perspective of managing personal finances, rich fathers and poor fathers are best sellers . In this summary, we will provide you with the details of what Kiyosaki taught in this book.

Poor dad about rich dad:

Although Robert is poor, the schools he goes to are mainly rich people. We all know that teenagers may be cruel to their partners in poor physical condition, and Robert has to face a similar problem, which led him to an answer to the question: "How can I make money?" He and him My best friend Mike decided to make money and came up with the illegal idea of ​​removing nickel from lead. But Robert's poor father explained to him the drawbacks of the business, and they gave up the idea.

The poor father told them that Mike's father was very good at making money and they should learn to make money from him. Therefore, Mike arranged a meeting with the father of the rich man, and this is how Robert's journey towards financial independence took place.

The meeting with Mike's father went well, and he agreed to teach them, but by the way, life would teach them, not in a classroom way, so he asked them to work for him. He rented these two people for 10 cents an hour and asked them to work 3 hours on Sunday. One of the main rules of trading is that the duo should not ask any questions about the transaction. Therefore, the first lesson they learn from rich fathers is that when they come, you must seize the opportunity.

A few weeks later, Robert wanted to resign. His poor father asked him to ask for 25 cents an hour, but he did not give him a raise. He had to quit. But before the meeting, Robert had to wait 60 minutes, which made him angry, and he told his rich father that he was just exploiting him. Father Rich now explained to him that he sounded like an employee and suggested that he find another way to make money by working with other people. He tells him that he has two options: one is that he can become an employee and blame others for his problems, or he can choose a difficult path and become a rich man.

The second lesson he learned from Robert Kiyosaki is the middle class work for money, but the rich make money work for them. He also told them that he was angry with robbers and he was happy because in addition to passion, when employees are controlled by fear, you must also generate anger and sparks internally, which is why they allow themselves to be exploited. They have a lot of fears, such as being fired and they will have to look for work again. They will have no money to pay bills or more. Therefore, even though employees are dissatisfied with their salary, they continue to work for the rest of their lives, and the tax cut makes them unhappy. This was the first time that Robert introduced the tax system when he was only 9 years old.

After that, Robert and Mike reached a new agreement. They started working for Robert again, but this time they worked with him for free. This process lasted three weeks. While working with him, he taught them another lesson.

The third lesson he told him was that they should work because they love their job, not because they want money or fear. This inspired two boys, and they opened a comics library and made about $10 a week. Although the struggle between them broke down after three months and they were advised to close the company, the two boys did learn how to make money at a very young age.

The author says that rich people will never work for money. According to this book, rich people work for them to make money. However, most people do not understand the meaning of this sentence when trying to arrange their financial situation.

Many people around the world want a raise because they believe that more money will make them happier. But in reality, making money means taking risks and getting out of your comfort zone. In order to take risks, you will have to use your knowledge instead of relying solely on your salary to work hard. But due to limited income options, low salaries and debt, this seems impossible.

Working for money will produce fear and greed, which will guide your life and give you a label at a low price. But you can get out of this vicious circle.

Rich Dad Poor Dad Book & Why teach financial literacy?

The author talks about saving money. He said that it has nothing to do with how much money you make, but with how much money you save. By depositing money, he means acquiring assets instead of locking them in your bank account.

He said that the middle class works for three key groups:

#1 Companies: They make owners and shareholders richer.

#2 Government: You work for the government because a large part of your income goes to taxes.

#3 Bank: One of the biggest expenses of the middle class is bank mortgages and credit card debt.

he said that people should receive financial education. In his book, he mentioned that many people around the world are educated but are blind in economics. If you have no economic education, then you will fail. He also cited examples of millionaire Americans in different industries who suddenly lost everything. When you recognize the importance of capital flow and learn to invest in valuable assets, you will have real financial knowledge. This kind of financial knowledge is your way to a successful start.

Some examples of debt owned by the middle class are:

1. car loan

2. mortgage

3. School loan

4. Credit card debt

5. Bank loan

Some examples of assets owned by the affluent class are:

1.share it

2.Construction real estate

3.stock

4.Bond

5.intellectual property

6.Description

Three key difference between rich and poor:

1. The rich will buy assets.

2. The poor will only have expenditures.

3. People belonging to the middle class only buy debt, and they mistakenly believe that debt is an asset.

According to this book, what is the main difference between the rich and the poor?

Poor father said that the rich should pay more taxes.

Rich dad said that if you generate taxes, you will be rewarded.

The poor father asked him to study hard so that he could find a job in a good company.

Rich dad asked him to study so that he could buy a good company.

The poor father told him that he could not bear children because he had children.

The rich father told him that he had children, so he became rich

Asked the poor father not to talk about money and business while eating.

Rich dad asked him to do the opposite.

The poor father would ask him not to take risks.

Instead, the rich father told him to manage the risk.

Final words: Rich Dad Poor Dad Book Review 2021:

This book is a bible for those who dream of achieving financial freedom and reading from their debts and debts. Therefore, if you want to get rich and improve your financial IQ, I suggest that you must read and actually apply this book.

We hope this article suits your purpose well. If this article is helpful to you, please share it on social media channels.

Thanks for reading , 🙏🙏

[apocalypseinlatin]

Ownership

Manuscripts required the time and effort of multiple people. It had to go through the process of binding, ink creation, ruling, illustration, copying text, correction, annotation, and many others. The manuscripts required painstaking effort and precision and took long periods of time to create and complete. Due to this and low literacy rates, manuscripts were not widely available to the general public. Therefore, many medieval manuscripts were reserved for noble families who could afford to purchase them or religious guilds or members who used them for Bible study.

Apocalypse in Latin with commentary by Berengaudus was not different from other medieval manuscripts in this way. The manuscript most likely belonged to a religious guild in England called the Guild of Kalendars. This estimate is based on an inscription that reads “Liber Domus Kalendarum,” which is associated with this particular guild according to a blog post from the British Library about the manuscript. Based on the handwriting the inscription is written in, they likely held the manuscript at some point during the 15thcentury.

Apocalypse in Latin then made its way to Cockfield Hall in Yoxford, Suffolk where it belonged to the notable Blois family. They had it during the 1800s, and there is not much knowledge on where the manuscript was between the Guild of Kalendars and Cockfield Hall. After the Blois family, the manuscript was purchased by Reverend S. H. Turner of Beccles, Suffolk. The British Museum then purchased the manuscript from the Reverend, and there is an inscription on f. 2r that reads “Purch[ase]d of Rev[erend] S. H. Turner, 4 April, 1898.” An Apocalypse in Latin with commentary by Berengaudus still remains at the British Museum today, and it was only digitized fairly recently. The British Museum has a considerable collection of medieval manuscripts that they digitize and are available to view through their website.

[mail-me-a-snail]

In the Woods Somewhere

the Hugo Wallace fic, as promised :3

tag list: @crypticphantom17​ @immabethehero​ @iv0ry-keys​

In the deep, secluded wood surrounding the small village of Honeycliff, which has quite the low literacy rate, there walks a Bird Man, using his lantern to guide himself through the night and ward off preying souls. He offers flowers and useful, charming plants, but never gets too close. He is kind. His voice sounds like the wind passing along the branches in the overhang, or as the frightened novice hunter told the townsfolk, the soft padding of a wolf prowling through the undergrowth.

 The hunter tells them all about his encounter with the Bird Man in the town square, where any willing ear has formed a circle around him.

 "First, a bloody plague," complains the farmer's wife, once the hunter finishes his story, "Now a bloomin' bird man in these woods. I don't want the kids runnin' around there no more."

 "Perhaps he's our cure," the lumberjack suggests, "Them herbs might do us good."

 "What might do you good, good sirs and madams," A new voice interrupts, his cane clacking against the cobblestone, "is keeping ten feet away from each other. This plague transmits through touch, don't you know."

 "Docta Wallace," the farmer's wife exclaims, and that is indeed who the stranger is. "We didn't see you there. The hunter was just telling us a story about the Bird Man of the woods."

 "The what of the woods?" Hugo Wallace, the plague doctor dispatched to Honeycliff a few months prior, swings his beak around to look at the hunter. He doesn't miss the big gulp that bobs the hunter's Adam's apple, even through the yellow tinted lenses of his goggles.

 “The Bird Man, doctor," the man explains, and retells the story. Hugo fiddles with the raven topper of his cane. "I swear it on me mum's gravestone, Dr. Wallace, he's real! He has a beak like yours and this great lantern, bright as the sun, it is!"

 "And on what night did you see this?"

 "Last night, sir!"

 Hugo's heart sinks, and then shoots up as he realizes what's exactly going on; they've mistaken him picking herbs in the dead of night as some sort of woodland monster. It all makes sense. He should say that it is actually him, but he doesn't. He feels that some sort of mystery would liven things up around Honeycliff.

 "Fairytales," Hugo sniffs, "Pish-posh. If I were you, hunter, I wouldn't spread such stories. As the farmer's wife said, we have enough trouble on our hands—my hands—as it is with the plague. We don't need a corvid walking around on two legs as well."

 "But it was real," the hunter shakes his head frantically, "Saw it with me own two eyes."

 “Those two eyes of yours better be seeing the door to your home soon," Hugo turns to the townsfolk, who have since made the circle bigger. "That goes for all of you! You are to return to your homes. Contact is highly dangerous."

 He taps his cane on the cobblestone. Everyone takes it as a sign to leave and they do, heads hanging and stomachs grumbling for the night's supper. The hunter trudges back into the woods with the lumberjack by his side.

 Hugo sighs in relief.

 "Bird Man," he scoffs, "Balderdash."

 ----

 The lumberjack goes home. He tells his seven sons and his wife the hunter's story over supper. His wife barely believes it, while the two twins of the seven children are in awe.

 The next morning, after school is let out, the lumberjack's twins tell their friends all about it. Being children, they believe that the Bird Man is real. They make up stories to scare each other, like the Bird Man being an actual raven who comes and steals people from their beds, or even that the Bird Man is a demon straight from Hell.

 Sister Bellum, a teacher at the school, is shaken to her core when she hears such utterance, and she doesn't take it lightly. The children get a scolding and are sent home.

 ----

 Hugo picks dandelions tonight. He has more than enough stores of yarrow and nightshade to last him a week. He thinks dandelions are beautiful. His lantern hangs from a stick, swinging as he walks through the woods. He ducks into a grove with curtain of lichen, spotting clumps of mycelium growing at the base of one of the trees. He puts the lantern behind him as he starts picking them gently.

 He freezes when someone speaks.

 "Oh, Lord—" a woman gasps, and the grass shuffles where she steps back. Hugo can't see anything but her silhouette from behind the lichen. But for the woman, she can see Hugo's large, sharp beaked silhouette against a lantern's light, like a shadow puppet show. "It's you! You are the Bird Man! I've found you."

 Hugo pauses. He's sweating under his mask, more than usual. He tries hard to remember how the hunter described the Bird Man's voice; croaky and soft. It wasn't his fault he had had a sore throat that night.

 "It is I," he croaks like a fat toad, "The Bird of these woods. What have you come for, human?"

 "My husband is as dead as a nail," she says, "There's no joy in his eyes anymore! It is like he's lost the life in them eyes. He doesn't attend to the crops!"

 Hugo realizes it's the farmer's wife from earlier. It sounds like her husband's drained of vitality. He knows just the herb. He digs around his bag and brings out a root of ginseng. He throws it onto the grass in front of her. She jumps back.

 "What is it?" She asks.

 "One of my herbs, my dear," Hugo explains, "It will revitalise your husband and bring him back to life, so to speak. It goes very well with tea."

 "T-thank you," she stutters, "Truly, this is a gift from God. I will never forget your kindness."

 Once she leaves, he comes out of the grove and puts his hands on his hips. "Bloody mess, this is." He shakes his head.

 ----

 Another woman interrupts his foraging the next night.

 "What is it?" Hugo croaks in frustration, "What do you want?"

 "Not herbs, good sir," she speaks well, especially for a citizen of Honeycliff. "But...to keep good company."

 “What are you saying?"

 "You are an attractive mystery, sir, and I have...thought about you, so to say. In ways the church might have me hung for—"

 Hugo's cheeks catch on fire as he blushes. "No, no!" He squawks, "I d-do not mingle with humans in such ways! Begone!"

 "But..."

 "I beg of you, begone!" He spreads his hands out like wings and curls his fingers into claws to make a big, scary shadow.

 The woman turns tail and runs away. Hugo settles down, everything neck up completely warm with embarrassment. He can't believe it. He just can't. A mysterious stranger turns up in the woods and someone from town just wants to bed it? The plague has made everyone truly lose their minds, Hugo would say.

 ----

 It is the baker that finds him the following night in the same grove.

 "Mr. Bird Man," the baker greets politely, a hint of Scottish on the tongue. "I believe you know why I've come."

 Hugo doesn't have to see him to know it's him. He's had the baker in his mind for quite some time. It makes his heart thump against his chest.

 "And what is that, dear baker?" Hugo says over the sound of his heart shaking. "Herbs? A cure for your ailment?"

 The baker, with his thick, muscular arms for lifting sacks of flour and rough, strong hands that he kneads dough with every day, and every one of those days Hugo watches from the bakery's display window, as the dough is folded and flattened and coated with flour then flattened again, always with those beautifully freckled knuckles worrying at it. The bread comes out golden brown and beautiful, because he's mastered his craft. Hugo longs for the days when he can go inside and actually pick up the bread instead of having it delivered to his house at the edge of the village. His hair is a fiery, shaggy red, like a sheepdog, as is his beard. His freckles are numerous.

 "No. Not plants, not weeds." The baker wrings his hands. "I've come for you."

 Silence. "What?" Hugo prompts, not daring to hope that he's asking what he thinks he's asking.

 "I find you are rather a beautiful mystery. A mystery I would like to unfold, if you'd have me. Unfold, as in...You already know."

 His heart explodes. He's dead, he's sure of it. This must be heaven. It's everything Hugo ever could've wanted.

 And yet...

 Even to the baker, despite the way he smiles so brightly and the charming puff of flour still in his beard, even to him Hugo (reluctantly) says, "No, thank you." As much as he wants those calloused hands to sandpaper his own and ruin him, he can't have it.

 In the morning, the baker claims the Bird Man had sent him away with mysterious and supposedly blessed herbs. They weren't mysterious or holy; they were clumps of yarrow, corn mint, and dandelions. He doesn't expect them to know them, though. He never lets anyone see his medical process or stashes. Hugo passes by the bakery and is surprised to find it completely packed. Everyone wants to hear about the latest encounter with the Bird Man.

 The doctor couldn't care less. He just wants a loaf of bread.

 He's pissed about the whole affair and rightly so. He can't stop the thoughts of the baker that enter his head—thoughts that would make Father Avery and the Sisters thump him over the head with their bibles and have him pray for a month straight.

 Hugo goes out again that night to the forest, picking another batch of herbs, mumbling angrily to himself the whole way.

 ----

 It is a hodgepodge of people who visit him over the next few nights, an even balance of men and women townsfolk. Even the hunter was among them. He said no to each of their sexual advances, though some by personal distaste rather than touch aversion.

 The ones he sends away spread all sorts of rumours.

 The Bird Man's voice changes with your personality! Hugo had forgotten to do the voice a couple of times. He had been tired!

 The Bird Man walks with a limp. He might've tripped over a rock trying to get into the grove one of those nights.

 They are all very amusing, in retrospect. Still, Hugo thinks they're amusing in the silly, childish way. It's a lot of good fun, even with the embarrassment of the one thing they all want.

 Eventually, the baker comes back, and keeps coming the next few nights.

 He doesn't talk at first, but Hugo knows it's him by his large silhouette. Hugo sits and so does the baker, and they stare at the approximate location of where the other would be. They want to talk, but what is there to say? Hugo's already declined. Hugo cannot have him and vice versa. It's too dangerous. His clothes—they're filthy with sickness. He doesn't know what he'll do if the baker gets sick.

 They see each other in the mornings and afternoons. The baker smiles at the doctor as he passes the window. It always does something funny to his stomach, but leaves a sour taste in its wake, like yarrow. He wishes they could stop playing this cat and mouse game. Hugo wants so badly to yell in the square that he is the fabled Bird Man, and it was nothing but balderdash this whole time, so the baker would snap out of it and fall in love with Hugo Wallace instead of this...shadow.

 In that scenario, love is possible, and there is no plague. It amuses him to no end.

 In the quiet of the nights, the time after, when Hugo heads home and lies in bed, staring up at his ceiling, he has...ideas.

 Thoughts.

 Thoughts of calloused hands holding his cheek like a warm ray of sunlight, ruffling his closely shorn, messy hair, the hair that his mother had affectionately told him reminded her of a, "Shaggy black sheepdog."

 Thoughts of those hands holding his, fitting so perfectly; the doctor's palms were smoothened soft by leather gloves.

 Thoughts of those hands going...farther. Holding him down by the wrists, taking what is theirs...ruining him entirely. If they can handle sacks of flour and turn dough into beautiful pieces of art, they can shatter Hugo into billions of pieces.

 It's hard to sleep that night when warmth pools in the doctor's stomach and doesn't go away.

 On the last night of the week, the baker comes again, but this time he speaks.

 ----

 "A demon?" Hugo stands in his doorway, clutching his teacup tightly. "That's a little extreme, don't you think?"

 Father Avery stands in his yard, looking very grim indeed. "A demon, Dr. Wallace, that's what this Bird Man is."

 "He—it—hasn't hurt anyone!"

 "Demons needn't physically harm mortals to be called demons. They are masters of influence—do you know what they're saying, the townsfolk, concerning the Bird Man?"

 "What?"

 "They are saying...well..." Now, the Father looks flustered, pink round cheeks pinker. "...they would very much like to invite the Bird Man into their beds."

 "Oh, my." Hugo tries to act surprised. It's one of the mornings after he's been met with a crowd of townsfolk thirsting after him.

 "It is sin, doctor! Sin! To practice premarital sin with a...a demon, of all things—why, it's preposterous. That is why it is a demon—it's an aphrodisiac!"

 ----

 "It is a sin to love you," is what the baker says when he speaks, quiet. "That's what the church says."

 "Then, do not commit it. You are not a man of sin," Hugo says, "You are a pure, kind-hearted soul."

 "Then, I will pray," The baker speaks quickly, breathlessly, "I will pray every verse I know, that I've been taught. I will attend every one of Father Avery's less than joyful Sunday services and I will pray to God above for forgiveness. I'll spend the rest of my days as a man of God to repent for this sin that I am guilty of."

 "What are you saying?"

 "I love you, with all my heart. I do not know your name, or what you look like, but I love you."

 "You love the mystery of me. The story. You don't love me." Hugo is ecstatic his hopes are true but would rather ingest nightshade than have this conversation. "You love this shadow—" he gestures to the canvas of lichen that separates them. "—not the man behind the curtain."

 "...then show me. Show me your true form."

 "Is that really what you want?"

 "Yes."

 Hugo takes a breath.

 Another.

 He turns off his lamp. The area grows dark around him. He faces the curtain of lichen and pulls it aside with one gloved hand.

 In the woods somewhere, the baker finally sees the true form of the fabled Bird Man, and he gasps,

 "Doctor Hugo Wallace. It's you—you were the Bird Man this whole time?" His hazel eyes are wide in shock and his bushy red eyebrows are raised. The surprise in his eyes reminds Hugo just how stupid the people of this town are—they couldn't even connect the dots.

 "Do you still love me?" He finds himself saying through gritted teeth.

 “I cannot believe this—"

 "Do you still love me?" Hugo grips his cane tightly.

 The baker furrows his eyebrows. He takes his time to answer.

 "I don't know."

 Hugo's heart sinks. "I thought as much," he mutters, and grabs his lantern and goes. The baker springs up to chase after him, but the doctor yells behind him, "Do not follow me! Tell no one of this."

 A painful warmth is building behind his eyes. Fool he was to hope that love would stay true. In the woods somewhere, Hugo Wallace, puppeteer of the Bird Man and plague doctor, runs away and doesn't look back.

[fall-from-typeface]

Early Book Cover Design - The Birth of the Printing Press

Invented in Germany around 1440 by Johannes Gutenberg the mechanized printing press gave way to the printing revolution. Up until the time, hand-printing, a woodblock printing technique from the Han Dynasty in China, could produce around 40 sheets in a day, Gutenberg’s printing press could produce 3600 pages in a day. The world’s oldest mechanically printed book, the Gutenberg Bible was printed by Johannes Gutenberg in 1454 and to this day 49 partial copies still exist and are thought to be world’s most valuable books. Of the 21 complete copies existing one is held in The National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh.

The Gutenberg Bible, Wiganlanebooks, 2018

For 350 years the principle of the design on Gutenberg’s press remained unchanged. By the dawn of the industrial revolution at the start of the 19th Century steam power replaced hand operated presses with Friedrich Koenig’s designs devised between 1802 and 1818. Working with the German Engineer Andreas Friedrich Bauer the pair sold two models of their press to The Times in London and the first edition of The Times Newspaper rolled off the press on 28th November 1814. As literacy rates improved book production became standardized making it cheaper and therefore more widespread.

It was at this time that book covers took on a new importance, no longer there purely for the protection of the pages, book covers became the key selling point for what was contained within. Leather gave way to cloth which was not only cheaper but was able to be printed upon. The opportunity for design flourished with illustrators and designers making full use of the new printing techniques available to them, including embossing, gilding and colour lithography. Below are a sample of 19th Century book cover designs with an excellent range of topics from ‘Care of the Feet’ to ‘Practical Taxidermy’ and ‘Successful Advertising’!

 A - John Lord Peck. Dress and Care of the Feet. New York: Fowler & Wells, 1871. B -  Montague Browne. Practical Taxidermy. London: 'The Bazaar' Office, 1878. C -  Cordelia Harris Turner. The Floral Kingdom. Chicago: M. Warren,1877. D -  Moses Wolcott Redding. Standard Ahiman Rezon and Blue Lodge Guide. New York : Redding & Co., 1889. E -  Henry. E. Roscoe. Spectrum Analysis. London: MacMillan and Co, 1869. F -  Jonathan Swift. Voyages de Gulliver dans des contrées lointaines. Paris: Delarue, 1855. G -  Jules Verne. From the Earth to the Moon. London, Sampson Low, Marston, Low, and Searle, 1873. H -  Charles Kingsley. The Water Babies. London: Macmillan and Co., 1886. I -  Thomas Smith and J.H. Osborne. Successful Advertising: It’s Secrets Explained. London: Smith’s Printing, Publishing and Advertising Agency, 1897. J -  Evelyn Sharp. Wymps. New York & London: John Lane, 1897.

References

Wikipedia Contributors (2018). Printing press. [online] Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printing_press.  

Wikipedia. (2020). Gutenberg Bible. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutenberg_Bible.

wiganlanebooks (2018). 10 of the Oldest Known Surviving Books in the World. [online] Wigan Lane Books. Available at: https://wiganlanebooks.co.uk/blog/interesting/10-of-the-oldest-known-surviving-books-in-the-world/.

The Public Domain Review. (n.d.). The Art of Book Covers (1820–1914). [online] Available at: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-art-of-book-covers-1820-1914 [Accessed 14 Feb. 2021].

[apenitentialprayer]

Is it true that most Medieval Christians were ignorant of the Bible and their own religion? Or is this an exaggeration?

Ignorant of the Bible? Probably. Literacy rates were abysmally low, so the number of people who could actually read the Bible was limited. Keep in mind that even among those who could read, sacred learning -and learning in general- was usually done in Latin, and while translations into the vernacular did exist, they were not considered authoritative, and were thus less common. Which means you’d really have to be literate in Latin to have access to the authoritative Biblical text.Ignorant of their religion? Absolutely not! The problem is that we moderns, as a result of the Protestant Reformation and Scientific Revolution, have privileged textual experience as the defining feature of culture. And that’s… simply not true. Religion is much more than the writings deemed canonical by the tradition; there are other forms of religiosity, and other ways of educating people about the central truths of their religions.Iconography, from paintings to stained glass, offered visual representations through which illiterate people were familiarized with the gospel stories. Sermons and preaching likewise offered a way in which the Christian faithful learned about the Life and actions of the Man whom they worshiped.In some places, like York, the mystery play was a primary way in which people experienced the sacred stories of their faith; different guilds would put together plays depicting particular scenes, Biblical and otherwise, and perform them for the rest of their town. Christians new their story, and even specific details from the canonical accounts, and these plays reveal that.Oral traditions, artwork, and folk traditions all enriched the lives and faiths of medieval Christians. They might not be able to quote Bible verses verbatim the way some Christians can do today (and sometimes smugly so, I may add), but that doesn’t mean that they didn’t know their faith. You know?