Google Art Project

I just found out about the Google Art Project, an online compilation of high-resolution images of artworks from galleries worldwide, which makes masterpieces accessible to all.

On-line Archives

Text Archives

AntiqueBooks.Net
Archimedes Project Texts
Archive
Babson College -Online Newton Project
Biblioteca Virtual del Patrimonio Bibliográfico (BVPB)
أعـظـم 100 كتاب فـي تـاريخ الـبشريـة
books.google.com
books.google.com[India]
British Museum -Online Gallery
Confucius Lun Yu or Analects
Corpus Scriptorum Latinorum
Digital Assets Repository (DAR)
Digital Internet Astrology Library (DIAL)
Digital Library of India (Bangalore)
Digital Library of India (Hyderabad)
Digital Library of India (Noida)
DML: Digital Mathematics Library
Documenta Catholica Omnia
ECHO (European Cultural Heritage Online)
ETANA
Euler Archive
Eureka
Gallica
GandhiServe
Geeta Supersite
Google Books για ΦιλολÏŒγους
GRETIL - Göttingen Register of Electronic Texts in Indian Language
Gutemberg
hellenisticastrology.com
Indology E-Texts
La Biblioteca di BASE Cinque
Leibniz: Sämtliche Schriften und Briefe (Akademie-Ausgabe), Reihe VII
Library of Ancient Texts Online (LATO) (Greek)
Linda Hall Library History of Science Collection
List of Great Mathematicians
Michio Yano's Webpage ( digitized versions of many Sanskrit texts )
Million Books Project
Neoplatonic texts
O'Reilly Open Books
Online Library of Liberty
Open Library
Oxford Text Archives
Perseus (Tufts)
Princeton University Digital Library Collection - Islamic Manuscripts
Public Domain Classics Books
Public Literature
Quran translation and commentary
Ramayana
Sacred Text Archives
Sanskrit Documents List
St. Augustine in Latin
St. Thomas Aquinas in Latin
University of Strasbourg Old Book Collection
Vienna University Observatory Library
Vishnu Purana
Wiki with links to online texts in Latin and Greek
Works of Gauss Online
textkit.com (PDFs for learning Latin and Greek)
The Latin Library
The Philological Museum-An Analytic Bibliography of Online NeoLatin Texts
The Sanskrit Library
The Universal Digital Library (UDL)
ZVDD

Bookstores / Publishers/ Libraries

Bagchee( India)
Biblia Imex (India)
Bodleian Library request form for reproductions
Fadak Books (USA)
Kessinger Publishers (reprints)
Laurentianus Library request form for reproductions
List of booksellers from Columbia University
Motilal Banarasidass (India)
Nataraj Books (India)
New Age Books (India)
Saujanya Books (India)
Schoenhof's (USA)
South Asia Books (USA)
Vatican Library request form for reproductions

(I took the majority from Dr. Joseph G. Leichter website Wilbourhall and I'll try to improve them)

Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is one of the world's most prominent and controversial public intellectuals. He is an internationally renowned professor of linguistics at MIT. You can find some about his political views here. You can see an interview with him on HardTalk and his view about 9-11. And here is his website and his profile on NNBD. "Noam Chomsky’s books are in print, much of his writing is Web-accessible, and there are his steady contributions to Z magazine. He can be viewed on film, video, and in cyberspace. But Chomsky is not a seer, nor is he prone to dispensing easily quotable maxims. What is to be done, of course, is up to us."

George Henrik von Wright (1916 - 2003)

Georg Henrik von Wright was a Finnish philosopher and logician the successor of the famous philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein at the University of Cambridge. You can find some info about him here and here. I heard firstly about him some years ago, when I started to read 'Language and Thought in Indian Culture' of our regretted Doctor and Orientalist, Sergiu Al-George. I recently found on-line two of his books: Norm and Action and The Varieties of Goodness.

One Hundred Reasons to be a Scientist

International Center for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) was founded in 1964 by Pakistani scientist and Nobel Laureate Abdus Salam. It operates under a tripartite agreement among the Italian Government, UNESCO, and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and provides advanced studies and researches to scientists from developing countries. While the name of the centre reflects its beginnings, its activities today encompass most areas of physical sciences and mathematics including their applications. It is located near Miramare Park, about 10 kilometres from the city of Trieste, Italy. Personally, I know it to be a great institution and I enjoyed a lot the time spent there with the occasion of some of their schools and workshops.
On 2004 they published a very nice collection of essays where the scientists have distilled their messages for budding researchers.

You can read it here in english or italian if you'll ignore the copyright message.

SeaBiscuit

Motto: "You know, everybody thinks we found this broken-down horse and fixed him, but we didn't. He fixed us. Everyone of us. And I guess, in a way, we kind of fixed each other too." John (Red) Pollard

Vincent, I've seen seen the movie you told me about, Sea Biscuit (2003), just today, on the day when you left.

It is a very nice movie about a great horse, Sea Biscuit (1933-1947), the 1938 Horse of the Year (following the famous one-on-one match-up against War Admiral on November 1, 1938). It was directed by Gary Ross, with a great casting: Tobey Maguire star of Spider Man (as jokey Red Pollard), Jeff Bridges (Seabiscuit's owner, Charles Howard), Chris Cooper (Seabiscuit's trainer, Tom Smith) and Elisabeth Banks (as Marcela Howard).
You can read the Roger Ebert's review here (and another one here) and see some pictures here.
It is based on the book SeaBiscuit by Laura Hillenbrandt, a great read also. An interview with her is here.

Sea Biscuit was a hard-luck hero for Depression-era America being the first horse to top $400,000 in winnings. An unlikely winner with short legs, perpetually-bent knees, and an oddball gait, Seabiscuit became a national celebrity. In six years of triumphs and disasters, Seabiscuit compiled 33 wins, 15 second places, and 13 thirds in an incredible 89 races. You can hear the most important one's on radio and see some vintage photos on TIME.

Something I found about it:
"Initially dismissed as lazy, it took the understanding of trainer Tom Smith to bring out the best in Sea Biscuit - and create an American legend. He raced at a time when unemployment and poverty stalked the land, but his sheer will to win transformed him from mere horse to inspiration. He wasn't unbeatable, and at times it looked as though injuries might overwhelm him, but his fighting spirit saw him through, including spectacular wins over War Admiral at Pimlico and Kayak II at Santa Anita."
and
"In the spring of 1939 Red Pollard married his private duty nurse, Agnes Conlon, who cared for him after he shattered his leg. The two married at Charles Howard's ranch in Ridgewood, California. The movie unfortunately omitted Agnes, who did play a significant part in Pollard's recovery and return to the track. It was actually Agnes who hung the medal of Saint Christopher around Pollard's neck for good luck on the day of Seabiscuit's last race, not Charles Howard's wife. Agnes and Red had two children, a daughter born in 1940 and son born several years later."

Seabiscuit died May 18, 1947, at the age of 14.

July 18th - Mandela Day

This weekend, on July 18th, was Nelson Mandela’s 91st birthday.

Some of the world’s top musical talent gathered in New York to put on a three-hour spectacle celebrating Nelson Mandela’s birthday and life as well as the launch of the Mandela Day initiative.

Mandela Day is about ordinary people being positive. In short, Mandela Day celebrates the idea that each individual has the power to transform the world, the ability to make an imprint.

46664 (four, double six, six four) was the prison number of Nelson Mandela on Robben Island, Cape Town where he was held in captivity for 18 years. The issue in South Africa then was Apartheid. The issue today across the continent is AIDS. 30 million people in Africa are currently imprisoned by the HIV virus, a death sentence among the poor due to lack of affordable medicines -- since the start of the pandemic 2 decades ago, 17 million Africans have died. You can make a donation at 46664.

Thank you Vincent for visiting me on this special day and for the Great Heart moments spent together.

Johnny Clegg

Jonathan (Johnny) Clegg, born 7 June 1953 in Rochdale, Lancashire, England, is a musician from South Africa, who has recorded and performed with his bands Juluka and Savuka. Sometimes called Le Zoulou Blanc ("The White Zulu"), he is an important figure in South African popular music history, with songs that mix Zulu with English lyrics, and African with various Western European (such as Celtic) music styles.

Already in his youth, Johnny Clegg, a white, English-speaking person with what he called a "secular Jewish" upbringing in the UK, Israel, Rhodesia (present-day Zimbabwe), Zambia and South Africa, became interested in Zulu street music and took part in traditional Zulu dance competitions.

As a young man, in the early stages of his musical career, he combined his music with the study of anthropology, a subject which he also taught for a while at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, where he was influenced, among others, by the work of David Webster, a social anthropologist who was assassinated in 1989.

Clegg formed the first racially mixed South African band, Juluka (Juluka means "sweat", and was the name of a bull owned by Mchunu) , with gardener and Zulu musician Sipho Mchunu. In 1976 they had their first hit single Woza Friday. Because it was frowned upon (although not actually forbidden by law) for racially mixed bands to perform in South Africa during the apartheid era, their first album Universal Men released in 1979 received no air play on the state owned SABC, but it became a word-of-mouth hit.

The album "Work for All" picked up on South African trade union slogans in the mid-80's. Even more explicit was the later Savuka album Third World Child in 1987, with songs like "Asimbonanga" ("We haven't seen him"), which called for the release of Nelson Mandela, and which called out the names of three representative martyrs of the South African liberation struggle - Steve Biko, Victoria Mxenge, and Neil Aggett.

Juluka were able to tour in Europe and had two platinum and five gold albums becoming an international success. Juluka was disbanded in 1986, when Mchunu was asked by his father to return home and herd the family goats, although Mchunu made some solo recordings afterwards. Clegg went on to form his second inter-racial band, Savuka, continuing to blend African music with European, especially Celtic, influences. Savuka is based on the Zulu word for "we have risen" or "we have awakened".
The Savuka albums Shadow Man (which sold 250,000 copies within a week after its release went on to sell more than 1,000,000 copies in France alone), and Cruel Crazy, Beautiful World were dealing with more romantic topics, including "Cruel Crazy Beautiful World", where a father gives a message to his son, "Dela" where the essence of love is explored.

His song Scatterlings of Africa was featured on the sound track to the 1988 academy award wining film Rain Man starring Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman.In 2002 Clegg provided several songs and incidental background music for Jane Goodall's "Wild Chimpanzees" DVD.

In 2007, Clegg received an honorary doctorate in music from the University of the Witwatersrand. “It was a wonderful moment for me,” says Clegg. “The great irony for me is I don’t read a note of music! My music comes to me like it does to many Africans, through ear and feeling.” You can read an interview with Wits’ music man Johnny Clegg (or here).

46664 (four, double six, six four) is a series of AIDS charity concerts played in honour of Nelson Mandela by South African musicians in the 2000s.

2nd 46664 Concert 19.03.2005 in Fanfourt, SA

You can see more concert photos captured at Fête de l'humanité and at the Festival of World Sacred Music 2007.
On YouTube you can enjoy IMPI, Scatterlings of Africa, Great Heart, Dela (It means "Come Closer" in Zulu), Cruel, Crazy, Beautiful World, Asimbonanga, Zulu Dance (Isoka liyatatazela'), December African Rain, In my African Dream, Siyayilanda and Kilimanjaro.
And others: Circle of Light, Devana, I Call Your Name, Inkunzi Ayihlabi Ngokumisa, Gijim'beke, Makhabeleni, Moliva, Sonqoba, Thula 'Mtanami, Unkosibomvu The Red King, Uwinile Unumber One, Wangizonda, Woza friday.

I enjoyed the most the documentaries and interviews Un Zoulou Blanc - The Dancer, Chez Ses Freres 1987, Zulu Street Guitar Songs, Interview 1 & 2, Interview Australia Tour 2005 1 - 2 - 3, Interview La Voix De La Liberte 1988, Report Festival 'Fiesta Sète' 2007, Asimbonanga & Nelson Mandela, Dis Hoe Dit Is, docu from Renaud 1987 (2), Interview France 12/2007, Oor Die Kole 1 & 2 and Scatterlings of Africa.

You can find more informations about him on the Official Johnny Clegg Website, Johnny Clegg Blog, Scatterlings Club, johnnyclegg.de.vu and In my African Dream website.