Read-Think-b4-u-Write

In 1899, French artists presented the world of 2000 . They see the 21st century filled with flying fire fighters, postal deliveries, and the police catching the bad guy. School teachers feed books into a machine that will speak the books to students wearing headphones. Everything has wires - no wi fi here - yet.  These drawings remind me of the original Superman - Action Comics No. 1, July 1938. Maybe it is the printing. The pictures were printed as "illustrated trade cards" for public consumption.  Whenever I see pictures or stories like this, they are always filled with flying vehicles and people. But I always wonder where is my flying car or my wings? While we don't have people with wings delivering packages and such, we have gone a step further further, removing the human equation and allowing drones to deliver packages and unmanned cars to deliver us. It's interesting that these futurists never remove the human element in their visions. People are always present;

  Over at Lapham's Quarterly there is a story entitled "Flesh and Page" . I knew a bit about the making of parchment and the switch to paper because it seemed like a good story. But this article is a full-blown history of how parchment was made--animal by animal. The author of the article, Bruce Holsinger, asserts instructions for making parchment were not well written, often incomplete, or even insensible. But since parchment was an expensive commodity, medieval creators more likely were loath to reveal their recipes. When making a local product with local animals and local organic base and acidic compounds, recipes were bound to vary and vary widely. Regardless, there are dozens of recipes left from medieval times. Parchment had a reverential place in most societies. So much so, that it caused religious uproars regarding the manner in which animal skins were prepared especially among Jews, Christians, and Muslims. But another argument seems to rival religious authority.