Perils of the Amazon

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beamjockey wrote about “The Worst Excuse for a Book I’ve Ever Seen.”

He compared a modern “print-on-demand” copy of a technical book with the 1912 original. OCR is clearly not ready for prime time.

The publisher

is flooding Amazon with these low quality prints and, unfortunately, many of them have the reviews associated with the original or with beter quality imprints associated with them.

Also, Jennifer Ouellette, in The Nays Have It looked at Amazon.com customer reviews of some well known science books. If you are thinking about buying a book there, don’t just count the stars. Again, you should check the reviews.

The Ancient Hebrew View of the Universe

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A scientific diagram of the ancient Hebrew cosmos, with a larger picture here, and a cautionary note:

The Bible is not a book of science. It was written in a pre-scientific era and its main purpose was to communicate moral and spiritual lessons. The Children of Israel had no advantage over their neighbors when it came to matters of science. In fact, this erroneous concept of the cosmos was quite common for that era. The Hebrews were inspired by nothing more than their political and religious motivations.

IIRC, this view came from Babylonia, and hence ultimately from the Sumerians.

Via the Episcopal Cafe.

Now I need to listen to Bill Cosby’s routine about Noah and the Ark again ;-)>