To the Internet’s prolific meme machine, the coincidence must have been irresistible. In the same week earlier this winter that Britannica talked publicly about “opening” our editorial process, Wikipedia mulled changes to its own methods deemed less open by some. Britannica was inviting readers to contribute; Wikipedia might “flag,” or hold, some user revisions for administrative review before they were published. From this did the trend-spotters of the media and blogosphere detect a harmonic convergence between the two antipodes of the encyclopedia world, and they were happy to proclaim, almost as one: Britannica, Wikipedia, each becoming more like the other.

How perfectly symmetrical.

The truth, as usual, was far more complex. Let’s take a look at it.

Encyclopaedia Britannica recently introduced some new features to Britannica Online that make it easy for our readers to suggest edits, revisions, updates, amplifications, and corrections to our articles and to submit their handiwork to our editors for consideration.

Several Wikipedians have contributed, and we’d welcome others And yes, anyone who has Internet access can do this. Not only will our editors review your suggestions promptly, but if they’re accepted for publication you’ll get credit in the article history for that entry in your own name.

Nothing Wiki This Way Comes
Ha! User-generated content, you say. Well, yes. But a wiki? No. Because the operative word in the paragraph above is suggest. Britannica users don’t have the ability or authority to publish the edits they propose; only Britannica editors can do that, and that’s the way it will stay.

And even though we plan to introduce new features and sections on our site where our users and expert contributors will be able to publish their own work and collaborate with one another without editorial oversight by us, when it comes to the Encyclopaedia Britannica itself, all of the suggested revisions we get, no matter whom they come from, will be reviewed, checked, and approved by our editors before they’re published. All of them.

To make this even clearer, let’s look at some of the key features of Britannica’s editorial method that distinguish it from Wikipedia and other collaborative enterprises on the Internet.

We’re always open. We don’t close or freeze any articles or put them off limits to revision. All articles at Britannica are open, always. Users may submit suggestions for revisions to any article, and the editors will review the suggestions based on the same criteria we use for all revisions. If they find that the suggestions will improve the article, those revisions will be published and the person who submitted them will be recognized by name in the Topic History for that article.

Since we introduced our new online feedback system recently, many of our users have done this and seen their names appear with the articles to which they contributed. While we haven’t published every suggestion we’ve gotten, we have published many, including several from people who’ve told us they also edit Wikipedia. (We’re delighted to have them, incidentally, and would welcome other interested Wikipedians.) We’ve been generally impressed with the level of quality of the suggestions we’ve received.

Impressed, but not entirely surprised, because corresponding with our readers about the contents of Britannica is not a new practice for us. Even before the advent of e-mail we got thousands of hard-copy letters each year from readers who had suggestions for us or disputes about something we’d published. We read them, reviewed them, answered them, and made many changes to the encyclopedia as a result. Our new online system is simply a more efficient mechanism for interacting with our readers in a way we have done for decades. It makes it smoother, faster, and much easier to submit specific text changes.

Professional editors, professional editing. Our editors are all skilled, well educated, and trained in the strong editorial methods we’ve developed over many years. They learn to use good judgment, consult with colleagues as needed, and make decisions consistently, not on the basis of their personal whims. Many of them are subject-area specialists, with doctorates in their areas of editorial responsibility.

Today, as always, new articles and proposed revisions go through a rigorous editorial process before they’re published. As we get more submissions from users we’ll put more resources into reviewing and publishing them promptly, but the process will remain the same. All of our articles—not just some—will get the full treatment before readers see them.

Expert contributors. Our articles are written by people who know the subject they’re writing about and are qualified to do so. Major articles are written by senior scholars and experts who have achieved a high degree of mastery in their fields. We’re proud that more than 100 Nobel Prize winners have written for Britannica.

“Transparency”
This may be the foremost buzzword on the Web today, the Holy Grail of publishing and many other Internet enterprises. Ours is a skeptical age in which anyone on the Web laying claim to authority is expected to spell out for visitors how he or she works. Fair enough. Here’s how transparency works for us.

• We communicate with everyone who submits revisions to us in good faith. Everyone gets an e-mail thanking them and acknowledging their submission. After our editors have reviewed the submission and decided how to act on it, the user is again notified. In between these two steps, the review process can become directly collaborative. Not infrequently, the editor in charge will communicate with the user with questions for more information or clarification. People know that we’re looking at their suggestions and taking them seriously, and we always tell them what we plan to do with them.
• Each of our online articles includes a “topic history” describing the revisions that have been made to it for the past several years, when those revisions were made, and who was responsible for them.
• Major articles are signed by leading experts and senior scholars, and their names and affiliations are given.
• We list our editors by name here.

Collaboration. We have a highly collaborative editorial process. Editors have a wide range of latitude in which to work to make articles as good as possible, and they’re trained to take advantage of the people and resources at their disposal. In addition to extensive interaction with their staff colleagues—copy editors, fact checkers, cartographers, and photo and media editors—article editors also consult with the authors of their articles, expert advisers all over the world, our Board of Editorial Advisors, and readers who’ve taken an interest in an article.

While the editorial systems of Wikipedia and other online collaborative enterprises may have their rationales and advantages, this is what works best for us. It’s different from others in key respects, though it’s consistent with standards of scholarship that have developed in the encyclopedia world as well as in the broader realm of publishing and produced excellent results for many years. We alter our method when necessary, as we’re doing now, to keep the contents of Britannica relevant, reliable, and up to date, but our commitment to producing sound, quality products and to the processes responsible for such products doesn’t change.

Our method is highly transparent, collaborative, and it works. We invite you to take part in it.

[Reposted from the Britannica Blog]

Steven Chu—director of the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, a professor of physics at U.C. Berkeley, a 1997 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics, and author of Britannica’s entry on spectroscopy—has been tapped by President-elect Barack Obama to be his Secretary of Energy.

He joins on Obama’s team another Berkeley colleague and Britanncia contributor, economist Christina Romer, author of the economic sections of Britannica’s extensive article on the Great Depression. Professor Romer will be chairing the White House Council of Economic Advisers.

Reposted from the Britannica Blog

Coming to a library near you:

Beginning in January of next year, Encyclopaedia Britannica’s Great Books of the Western World will be available electronically, in its entirety, at libraries and institutions. Through an agreement between Britannica and Ingram Digital, the Great Books will be accessible through Ingram’s industry-leading MyiLibrary e-book platform.

The electronic Great Books will contain precisely the same contents as the printed version, with hypertext links from entries in the Syntopicon—the idea index—and the places in the text those entries refer to. The digital corpus will be fully searchable.

If your library doesn’t subscribe, you will have the option of purchasing the electronic version of the Great Books yourself. We’ll have more details when the product becomes available next month.

The Art of Reading
Another new Great Books product we’re delighted to announce is a series of long-lost videos on the art of reading with Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren, which will be distributed by the Center for the Study of the Great Ideas.

Adler’s How to Read a Book was an off-the-charts bestseller when first published in 1940. In 1972 he and Van Doren collaborated on the book’s third edition, and a few years later they sat down for several conversations on the book’s main themes. The result was a series of thirteen videos that Britannica issued in the late 1970s.

Somehow, those videos got lost in the sturm and drang of the past three decades, and they would have remained forever so had it not been for the intrepid sleuthing of the Center for the Study of the Great Ideas, which tracked down what may have been the only extant set and made it possible for them to be reissued today on a single DVD.

We’re happy now to work in partnership with the Center to make these intriguing conversations available again. To get more information about the DVD, watch a sample, and place an order, go to:

www.thegreatideas.org/HowToReadABook.htm.

Reposted from the Britannica Blog

The prestigious Nobel Prizes are awarded annually on this day (Dec. 10) in twin ceremonies in Stockholm and Oslo. Britannica has been fortunate to have more than 110 Nobel Prize winners write for the encyclopedia and its related products, and in honor of today’s occasion, here’s a link to three of these posts by our many Nobel Prize-winning contributors:

• President Jimmy Carter (Peace, 2002): “Camp David Accords“
• Jody Williams (Peace, 1997): “International Campaign to Ban Landmines“
• Marie Curie, the first woman to receive a Nobel Prize (Physics, 1903; Chemistry, 1911): “Radium“

[Reposted from the Britannica Blog]

Revisiting (yet again) those classics that refuse to die

In 1948 a panel of distinguished Chicagoans held a symposium on one of Plato’s dialogues on the stage of Orchestra Hall and invited the public to attend. What in the world were they thinking? Plato? The public? Epic fail, you figure, right?

Think again. Every seat in the house was filled, and 1,500 people were turned away.

This odd colloquium was part of Great Books Week in the Windy City, an event the like of which it is hard for us even to imagine today. In those days the classics were hot. Homer, Aristotle, Shakespeare, and all the others who would later be reviled as “dead white men” were for a time there all the rage. Thousands of Great Books reading groups cropped up across America. Celebrities from boxer Gene Tunney to actress Julie Adams (Creature from the Black Lagoon) were caught pawing over the august tomes of Lucretius, Pascal, and Rousseau. The beautiful people jetted out to Colorado for Great Books seminars at the Aspen Institute. Encyclopaedia Britannica published Great Books of the Western World and sold 50,000 copies of the pricey set in one year alone.

And then it ended.

Sales declined, reading groups folded, and everyone, it seemed, went back to watching TV. “The Great Conversation,” as it was called, and as the companion volume (below) to the Great Books is titled, had ended.

What happened? Why did the popularity of the Great Books tank? Or perhaps the proper question is: Why on earth were they so popular in the first place?

Whatever the questions, they’re raised anew by A Great Idea at the Time, by Boston Globe columnist Alex Beam, a book that explores “The Rise, Fall, and Curious Afterlife of the Great Books” with panache and no small measure of vitriol. Here at Britannica we’ve enjoyed this entertaining and highly readable history of the Great Books movement, even if it does direct considerable snark at some of our corporate forbears, notably Mortimer Adler, Robert Maynard Hutchins, and William Benton.

This week at the Britannica Blog we’ll revisit the Great Books, those works that New Yorker film critic David Denby termed “indestructible” for their ability to survive eternally, despite censorship, intellectual fashion cycles, and putative irrelevance, to continue giving pleasure and enlightenment to many people in every generation.

We’ve invited an assortment of latter-day Great Bookies to discuss the place of the classics in the world today and probe some of the issues about reading and liberal education that linger fifty years after the height of the Great Books “craze,” as the Wall Street Journal recently called it; and fifteen years, give or take, since the so-called “canon wars” of the eighties and nineties ended, more, it seems, from battle fatigue among the combatants than a decisive victory by either side.

Please tune in each day this week to watch the conversation and, as always, take part in it by leaving comments of your own.

[Reposted from the Britannica Blog]

Britannica.com Week in Preview: September 8-14

With the end of two weeks of political theater that we call conventions in the United States, now we can finally focus on things that are important–such as the 25th birthday on Sunday of British diva Amy Winehouse. In song she refused to go, but in May she finally succumbed and said yes to Rehab. But rehab didn’t stop her from winning a Grammy–the show even set up a special satellite performance in London for her to accept the award, because she couldn’t obtain a visa to travel to the United States.

Among the other features on Britannica’s homepage this week are:

September 8: Duh-duh, duh-duh, duh-duh, duh-duh, duh-duh, duh-duh, duh-duhhhhhhh. Monday is the 83rd anniversary of the birth of the late Peter Sellers, who played the magnificently inept Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther and appeared in Dr. Strangelove (pictured below). Monday is also the 579th anniversary of Joan of Arc’s attempt to take Paris and the 504th anniversary of the unveiling of Michelangelo’s David in front of the Palazzo Vecchio.

September 9: George W. Bush’s favorite member of the axis of evil, North Korea, turns 60 on Tuesday. The proclamation of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea by the country’s Eternal President, Kim Il-sung, set the stage for the Korean War. Speaking of war, War and Peace author Leo Tolstoy was born 180 years ago Tuesday. And, now back to communists and founders; China will also be marking an anniversary–32 years since the death of Mao Zedong, who founded the People’s Republic of China.

September 10: Who was the first American president? George Washington, you say? No. It was John–not John McCain (he’s not that old)–Smith. Maybe I am stretching the definitional bounds a bit, I know. But, still, it was 400 years ago Wednesday that John Smith became president of Jamestown Colony, the first permanent English settlement in North America. And, 20 years ago tennis star Steffi Graf completed the tennis Grand Slam by capturing the U.S. Open (she added Olympic gold three weeks later). And, happy birthday to golfer and Britannica contributor (our Masters Tournament article) Arnold Palmer, who turns 79 years young.

September 11: Thursday Americans remember the 9/11 attacks of 2001. Britannica looks back at the events of that tragic and world-changing day. Thursday also marks the 33rd anniversary of Pete Rose becoming Major League Baseball’s all-time hit leader when he broke Ty Cobb’s record of 4,191 career hits. And, it’s happy birthday to Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, who turns 43, and the 123rd anniversary of the birth of English writer D.H. Lawrence.

September 12: Well, it wasn’t exactly to infinity and beyond, but it was to the Moon. It was 49 years ago Friday that the Soviet Union launched Luna 2, the second of a series of Soviet lunar probes and the first spacecraft to strike the Moon. Also, the Philippines was in a political tussle a year ago, when former president Joseph Estrada was convicted of plundering–only to be pardoned a month later. China and Houston will be celebrating basketball star Yao Ming’s 28th birthday; he may not have won gold in Beijing last month, but he has done much to popularize the sport in the country.

September 13: An aloof ruler who spent lavishly and exacerbated his country’s economic problems. Hmmm…who could that be? Depending on what country you’re from, you probably have a different answer, but it was on this day in 1598 that Philip III, who was such a ruler, was crowned king of Spain and Portugal. Saturday is also the 67th birthday of Oscar Arias, president of Costa Rica and a Nobel Peace Prize winner who helped negotiate a Central American peace agreement and wrote an essay on the Lessons of the 20th Century for Britannica.

September 14: And, finally, wrapping up the week, everybody’s favorite (or not) cartel, OPEC, turns 48 this week; its birthday present was being spurned by Brazil, which opted last week not to join the multinational organization. As Americans debate abortion and other issues surrounding pregnancy in the upcoming presidential election, feminists (and others) celebrate the 129th anniversary of the birth of Margaret Sanger, who is credited with originating the term birth control. And, finally, the Mexican-American War was brought to an end 161 years ago Sunday as Mexico City fell to advancing American forces.

This and other information is available this week via Britannica’s homepage. Or, you can search the site to read other articles of interest. I’ll be back next week with another preview of Britannica’s weekly content.

[Reposted from the Britannica Blog]

Britannica.com Week in Preview: August 18-24

Two years ago it became a little smaller world, and many of us were grumpy about it. On August 24, 2006, the International Astronomical Union sent the textbook and reference world into a tizzy when they demoted Pluto to a dwarf planet. Dwarf planet/smaller world? Perhaps someone at the IAU had some Disney fetish when they came up with this new classification? You know it’s a tough economy when even a planet can get laid off. Well, not to worry, the demotion sparked a cottage industry, and many scientists, businessmen, school children, and lawmakers have spent the better part of two years trying to restore Pluto to its former glory.

Other features this week at Britannica.com’s homepage include:

August 18: On Monday film director Roman Polanski turns 75. His Chinatown (1974) reinvigorated the moribund film noir genre, and several later films, including The Pianist (2002), received wide acclaim, though Polanski’s life evoked controversy after he fled to France in 1977 after pleading guilty to having sex with a minor. Mongolia isn’t often in the international news, but this week it’s in celebratory mode. Last week Tuvshinbayar Naidan captured the country’s first Olympic medal, and it was on this day in 1227 that the great Mongolian warrior-ruler Genghis Khan died. Though he lived 800 years ago, he continues to cast a huge shadow over the modern world, and he even had time to make a cameo appearance in the film Night at the Museum in 2006. Also on Monday, twos are wild as the Bay of Smokes, Reykjavík, celebrates the 222nd anniversary since it was designated the administrative capital of Iceland; and it was this day in 1587 that Virginia (I was actually born in what is now North Carolina) Dare became the first English child born in the New World.

August 19: Bill Clinton was a controversial figure as president, and this year he became embroiled in a controversy over race during the Democratic primary. All may not be forgiven and forgotten, but as Bill prepares for his convention speech next week in Denver the former president celebrates his 62nd birthday. Am I alone in wondering what gift Barack Obama will be sending? Tuesday is also the 125th anniversary of the birth of one of the queens of fashion–Gabrielle Chanel; she ruled over Parisian haute couture for almost six decades. It was the beginning of the end for Mikhail Gorbachev and the beginning of the beginning for Boris Yeltsin on this day in 1991, as hard-line communists staged a coup against Gorby. Also on Tuesday, Afghanistan celebrates its 89th anniversary of independence from Great Britain.

August 20: Soviet communists may have been unsuccessful in 1991, but they sure were successful in 1968. It was 40 years ago that Soviet troops crushed the Prague Spring liberalization in Czechoslovakia–a country that still exists sometimes in the words of one presidential candidate. With the conflict in South Ossetia, many historians are harkening back to Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. It was also 33 years ago on Wednesday when the Viking 1 spacecraft was launched; after its 7 year mission was completed, it had mapped and analyzed large expanses of the Martian surface. Though he died young, architect Eero Saarinen (born 98 years ago this week) left a lasting impression as one of the leaders in a trend toward exploration and experiment in American architectural design during the 1950s; though his TWA terminal at JFK Airport in New York City was a major achievement, I wonder if he would be quite proud of being associated with what was allowed to become a pretty drab spectacle on the interior.

August 21: As John McCain and Barack Obama prepare for their conventions and debates, we can be pretty sure that they won’t reach the rhetorical (or historical) quality of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, which kicked off 150 years ago in Ottawa, Illinois. Those seven debates ran three hours long each, and apparently reporters weren’t there to ask ridiculous questions such as this gem from the 2008 Democratic debate by ABC moderator George Stephanopoulos to Barack Obama: “But do you believe he’s [Obama’s erstwhile pastor Jeremiah Wright] as patriotic as you are?” With fabrications about Obama continuing to swirl (13% of Americans continue to believe Obama is a Muslim) and even making their way into a #1 NYT best seller, one has to wonder if these debates would have had the same historical impact if cameras were there and reporters able to moderate. Communists just didn’t have a good time this week in 1991. While communists were attempting to oust Gorbachev in the U.S.S.R., they were losing their grip on Latvia, which declared its independence 17 years ago Thursday. Also on Thursday, music fans remember Count Basie, one of the giants of jazz, who was born 104 years ago.

August 22: Friday marks the 144th anniversary of the Geneva Convention, which gave international recognition to the Red Cross. The neutral organization has been awarded three Nobel Peace Prizes, and the use of its symbols during the rescue of Ingrid Betancourt and other hostages held by the FARC in Colombia led to charges that the government’s actions might jeopardize the organization’s relief efforts. It was also 19 years ago this week that the Ryan Express notched his 5,000 strikeout. Nolan Ryan eventually retired at age 46 with 5,714 K’s.

August 23: While U.S. basketball star Kobe Bryant prepares for what he hopes will be the gold medal match on Saturday, he will be celebrating a birthday. The soon-to-be 30-year-old phenom has already played 12 seasons in the NBA and is 24th on the NBA’s all-time scoring list. Queen Noor of Jordan, wife of former King Hussein, turns 57. She is engaged in many philanthropic efforts, particularly land mine elimination, and a few years ago she wrote a piece for Britannica on their danger (see The Hidden Dangers of Land Mines). Miscarriage of justice? Eighty-one years ago Sacco and Vanzetti were executed. Historians continue to debate their guilt–on the 50th anniversary of their execution Massachusetts governor Mike Dukakis issued a proclamation stating that Sacco and Vanzetti had not been treated justly and that no stigma should be associated with their names. Saturday also marks the 399th anniversary of Galileo’s presentation of his design for the telescope to the Venetian Senate.

August 24: Pluto’s status as a planet occurred two years ago; Pompeii’s destruction occurred 1,929 years ago. On this day in 79 CE, the Roman city was buried in an ocean of ash after the eruption of Vesuvius. Also on Sunday is the anniversary of the births of former Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat and Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges.

This and other information is available this week via Britannica’s homepage. Or, you can search the site to read other articles of interest. I’ll be back next week with another preview of Britannica’s weekly content.

[Reposted from the Britannica Blog]

Britannica.com Week in Preview: August 11-August 17

You talkin’ to me? Well, Robert De Niro, the star who has captivated audiences with memorable roles such as Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver and Jake La Motta in Raging Bull (not to mention as the crazy father in the Meet the Parents series), has been talkin’ to us for decades, and on Sunday August 17 he officially becomes a senior citizen. Joining him in these ranks this week (August 11) is another tough guy, one who took over control of Pakistan following a coup in 1999; the news for this tough guy, Pervez Musharraf, however, isn’t so upbeat on his 65th: he faces impeachment hearings from the anti-Musharraf coalition government that came to power earlier this year. Pakistan itself celebrates its 61st year of independence as a sovereign country on Thursday.

Also featured at Britannica.com this week is Lord Sutherland of Houndwood’s Scottish Enlightenment article in Britannica. On August 14 at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, Sutherland, a member of Britannica’s Editorial Board of Advisors and outgoing president of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland’s National Academy of Science & Letters, is chairing a discussion on the importance of the Enlightenment in the 18th century and how its key philosophical, scientific and democratic ideas have shaped our contemporary society. Also participating is A.C. Grayling, contributor to Britannica’s entry on metaphysics.

Other features this week at Britannica.com’s homepage include:

• August 11: Monday is the 87th anniversary of the birth of Alex Haley, whose Roots and its television adaptation gripped the United States more than 30 years ago. This day 24 years ago at the Los Angeles Olympics, Carl Lewis ran and jumped into history as he became only the third track-and-field athlete to win four golds in a single Olympics.

• August 12: My kind of (home) town, Chicago, turns 175 this week, incorporated as a town this day in 1833 with a population of 350. The city of nearly 3 million, led by its long-time mayor Richard M. Daley, is bidding to becoming the host city for the 2016 Olympics. The history of recording also celebrates the first of two anniversaries this week: Tuesday is the 131st anniversary of Thomas Alva Edison’s invention of the phonograph, while Sunday is the 26th anniversary of the the compact disc.

• August 13: She may have been born 148 years ago, but American marskwoman Annie Oakley, “Little Sure Shot,” still has street cred. In April Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama invoked her name (see video), deriding his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton following an exchange on guns. According to Princeton’s Sean Wilentz, howveer, Obama was firing blanks; Wilentz calls Oakley one of the “heroines of American history” and that any woman “would be proud to be linked to her memory.” Latin America marks two major events on Wednesday: longtime Cuban leader Fidel Castro turns 72, and it was 487 years ago that Hernan Cortes captured Mexico City, a move that destroyed the Aztec Empire. Earlier this year Triple Crown hopeful Big Brown suffered a stinging defeat at the Belmont Stakes (though he returned to racing on August 3 with a big victory in the Haskell Invitational in New Jersey); Wednesday is the 87th anniversary of Man o’ War’s only loss in his storied racing career.

• August 14: He’s wild and crazy, a jerk, a dirty rotten scoundrel, and a father of the bride, but please excuse him–he’s turning 63 on Thursday. Steve Martin, who has excelled on the stage and on both the big and small screens, got his big break on the show Saturday Night Live, which he has hosted more than 25 times in his storied career. Cologne Cathedral, the largest Gothic church in northern Europe, took more than six centuries to complete, but it’s now a World Heritage site, and on Thursday it celebrates 128 years since its completion in 1880.

• August 15: Friday is the 239th anniversary of the birth of the Little Corporal–Napoleon–who plunged Europe into war and whose final defeat at Waterloo inspired ABBA nearly 260 years later; ABBA’s Waterloo fared better than Napoleon’s, winning the 1974 Eurovision song contest (see video). Speaking of music, the Woodstock festival opened 39 years ago on Friday; the three-day fair drew some 400,000 people, who bonded to peace, love, and music (not to mention some illegal substances) over performances by Santana, Crosby, Still and Nash, and Jimi Hendrix.

• August 16: Ladies Love Cool James. Or, so this musician/actor claims. James Todd Smith, aka LL Cool J, turns 40 on Saturday; the American hip-hop star took to the stage at age 16 and sold more than 100,000 copies of his first single, “I Need a Beat,” in 1984. Longevity has been one of the hallmarks of the career of Shimon Peres, who turns 85. The current Israeli president’s resume includes a Nobel Peace Prize (with Yitzhak Rabin and Yasir Arafat), and he is a two-time Israeli prime minister and a three-time leader of the Israel Labor Party.

• August 17: While China hosts the Olympics this month, one of the leaders of its opening, Jiang Zemin, turns 82. Jiang, general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party from 1989 to 2002 and president of the country from 1993 to 2003, was a key figure in helping the country land the 2008 Games. Also in Asia, Indonesia celebrates a birthday; it was 63 years ago Sunday that Japanese forces surrendered and Sukarno declared independence.

Well, time’s getting late, and I am off to rent De Niro’s Cape Fear to celebrate his birthday. This and other information is available this week via Britannica’s homepage. Or, you can search the site to read other articles of interest. I’ll be back next week with another preview of Britannica’s weekly content.

[Cross-posted from the Britannica Blog]

Today is 08-08-08, and according to news reports, the Chinese authorities were to take full advantage of the fortuitous numerical convergence and start the opening ceremonies for the Olympic Games precisely at 8:08 Beijing time. Under the circumstances, it seems only fitting that we repost these observations by our own resident numbers maven, Professor Ian Stewart:

“The number 8 is generally considered to be an auspicious number by numerologists. The square of any odd number, less one, is always a multiple of 8 (for example, 9 - 1 = 8, 25 - 1 = 8 x 3, 49 - 1 = 8 x 6), a fact that can be proved mathematically. In Babylonian myth there were seven spheres plus an eighth realm, the fixed stars, where the gods lived. As a result, 8 is often associated with paradise. Muslims believe that there are seven hells but eight paradises, signifying God’s mercy. In Buddhism 8 is a lucky number, possibly because of the eight petals of the lotus, a plant associated with luck in India and a favourite Buddhist symbol.

“In China, just as the number 7 determines the life of a woman, 8 determines that of a man. A boy gets his milk teeth at eight months, loses them at eight years, reaches puberty at 2 x 8 = 16, and loses sexual virility at 8 x 8 = 64. The I Ching, which describes a system of divination using yarrow stalks, involves 64 = 8 x 8 configurations.”

Ian’s full blog post is here. Go here for his larger article on “number symbolism” in Encyclopaedia Britannica.

[Cross-posted from the Britannica Blog]

You can post these related widgets on your blog or Web site and give your readers the Britannica articles on each topic:

Britannica.com Week in Preview: August 4-August 10

8s are wild this week, as the Games of the XXIX Olympiad open in Beijing at 8:08 PM local time on 8/8/08. Get background on the Chin and the Games in Britannica’s new presentation, Beijing 2008 Olympic Games: Mount Olympus Meets the Middle Kingdom, which features an array of information on China and the Olympics: a brief history of China’s association with the Olympics; articles and facts about Beijing, the six other Olympic cities, and China itself; the Olympics story, including tables of officials and recent winners; a colorful photo gallery; and details of the events.

For those not Olympically inclined, there are myriad other features this week at Britannica.com’s homepage.

• August 4: Happy Birthday, Mr. President? Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic Party nominee–when can we take presumptive off? it’s kind of like saying alleged when you know someone has committed a crime– turns 47 on Monday. For equal time, presumptive nominee John McCain turns 72 later this month. Birthday party guests for Obama include the #2 and #3 celebrities in the world Britney Spears and Paris Hilton–invited at Senator McCain’s request, of course. Also on Monday, Jeff Gordon started his engine 37 years ago; the NASCAR star is remembered in Chicago well for not paying homage to Harry Caray when he sang “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” at Wrigley Field in 2005 (see video). And, it was one year ago on Monday that the Phoenix space probe was launched by NASA; it landed in the north polar region of Mars on May 25, 2008.

• August 5: He was not an animal! Joseph Merrick, better known as the Elephant Man and perhaps the best known English Patient, was born 146 years ago on Tuesday. He’s not as old as the Elephant Man, but the ageless Dick Clark, host of American Bandstand and countless New Year’s Rockin’ Eves, celebrates another birthday, turning 79; he has $175 million reasons to celebrate after last year’s sale of Dick Clark Productions. And, the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty was signed 45 years ago on Tuesday in Moscow by the U.S., U.K., and U.S.S.R.

• August 6: Tuesday’s anniversary of hope for limiting nuclear tests is followed by among the somberest of remembrances. Wednesday marks the beginning of the atomic age and the 63rd anniversary of the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima. Most of Hiroshima was destroyed, and estimates of the number killed outright or shortly after the blast have ranged upward from 70,000. If you need a pick-me-up after that, it was 82 years ago that Gertrude Ederle became the first woman to swim the English Channel, completing the 35-mile journey in 14 hours, 31 minutes. I once took a 35 mile boat trip. And, the King of Pop (Art), Andy Warhol, would have turned 80; he continues to be a subject of great fascination–last year he was portrayed quite unflatteringly in the film Factory Girl.

• August 7: One year after breaking Hank Aaron’s home-run record, Barry Bonds is out of baseball and continues under a cloud of suspicion (and curious sports fans wonder if the Yankees may take a chance on the slugger). The player every fan loves to hate enjoyed his shining night in San Francisco, knocking #756 against the Washington Nationals’ Mike Bacsik. Thursday is a chilling anniversary for Londoners–as the city marks the 120th anniversary of the first of Jack the Ripper’s murders. The unsolved murder mystery continues to fascinate–countless folks in London take Jack the Ripper tours, and we still speculate on whodunnit. Recently, How Stuff Works, one of my favorite Podcasts, did a little feature on Ripperology. From murder and mayhem to espionage. Mata Hari, the famed dancer and courtesan accused of espionage and shot by the French, was born 132 years ago this week.

• August 8: Contrary to protestations, he was a crook. From the birthday of a potential U.S. president on Monday to the downfall of another on Friday. It was 34 years ago that Richard M. Nixon became the first U.S. president ever to resign from office. Roger Federer, long-time number one in the tennis world, turns 27 on Friday; he has been having a rough time of it lately, losing the French Open and Wimbledon finals to 22-year-old Spanish phenom Rafael Nadal. Nadal’s birthday present to Federer: yanking away the #1 ranking.

• August 9: La Matadora, Conchita Cintrón, turns 76 on Saturday. Her career ended, as Orson Welles wrote in the introduction to Cintrón’s autobiography, Memoirs of a Bullfighter (1968), “in a single burst of glorious criminality. You can’t keep a lady waiting forever, and there came an afternoon when she decided that she’d waited long enough.” Read about how her career ended in 1949 in Britannica’s biography. Also on Saturday, literatis celebrate one of the classics of American literature; Walden, Henry David Thoreau’s masterwork, was published 154 years ago.

• August 10: “Mister, we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again,” sang Archie Bunker in the sitcom All in the Family. I am sure the Republicans don’t want that this year, as the former U.S. president lost his reelection bid in 1932 to FDR by the count of 472 to 59 in the electoral college. The humanitarian, who helped save millions in Europe from starvation after World War I, was born 134 years ago Sunday. At least Hoover didn’t suffer the fate of his French counterpart Louis XVI, who was imprisoned with his wife Marie-Antoinette 216 years ago this week during the French Revolution; the following year the two faced the guillotine, and 213 years after that Kirsten Dunst appeared in one of the worst biopics ever released (stick to Spiderman movies, Kirsten, PLEASE!). Also, one of America’s most famous institutions celebrates an anniversary: the Smithsonian Institution, founded by the bequest of the English scientist James Smithson, turns 162. And, wrapping up the week, the Latin heartthrob Zorro, aka Antonio Banderas, turns 48. Discovered by Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar, he has been nominated for three Golden Globes, including as Ché opposite Madonna in Evita.

Well, that’s all for me this week, folks. This and other information is available this week via Britannica’s homepage. Or, you can search the site to read other articles of interest. I’ll be back next week with another preview of Britannica’s weekly content.

[This post appeared originally on the Britannica Blog.]