L y aura un quiz sur le vocabulaire

We already know that the massive waste of life in our prisons is morally troubling; those who defend the conditions of incarceration usually do so in non-moral terms (citing costs or the administrative difficulty of reforms); and we're inclined to avert our eyes from the details. Check, check and check.

Roughly 1 percent of adults in this country are incarcerated. We have 4 percent of the world's population but 25 percent of its prisoners. No other nation has as large a proportion of its population in prison; even China's rate is less than half of ours. What's more, the majority of our prisoners are non-violent offenders, many of them detained on drug charges. (Whether a country that was truly free would criminalize recreational drug use is a related question worth pondering.)

And the full extent of the punishment prisoners face isn't detailed in any judge's sentence. More than 100,000 inmates suffer sexual abuse, including rape, each year; some contract HIV as a result. Our country holds at least 25,000 prisoners in isolation in so-called supermax facilities, under conditions that many psychologists say amount to torture.

The arguments against the cruelty of factory farming have certainly been around a long time; it was Jeremy Bentham, in the 18th century, who observed that, when it comes to the treatment of animals, the key question is not whether animals can reason but whether they can suffer. People who eat factory-farmed bacon or chicken rarely offer a moral justification for what they're doing. Instead, they try not to think about it too much, shying away from stomach-turning stories about what goes on in our industrial abattoirs.

Of the more than 90 million cattle in our country, at least 10 million at any time are packed into feedlots, saved from the inevitable diseases of overcrowding only by regular doses of antibiotics, surrounded by piles of their own feces, their nostrils filled with the smell of their own urine. Picture it -- and then imagine your grandchildren seeing that picture. In the European Union, many of the most inhumane conditions we allow are already illegal or -- like the sow stalls into which pregnant pigs are often crammed in the United States -- will be illegal soon.

The institutionalized and isolated elderly

Nearly 2 million of America's elderly are warehoused in nursing homes, out of sight and, to some extent, out of mind. Some 10,000 for-profit facilities have arisen across the country in recent decades to hold them. Other elderly Americans may live independently, but often they are isolated and cut off from their families. (The United States is not alone among advanced democracies in this. Consider the heat wave that hit France in 2003: While many families were enjoying their summer vacations, some 14,000 elderly parents and grandparents were left to perish in the stifling temperatures.) Is this what Western modernity amounts to -- societies that feel no filial obligations to their inconvenient elders?

Sometimes we can learn from societies much poorer than ours. My English mother spent the last 50 years of her life in Ghana, where I grew up. In her final years, it was her good fortune not only to have the resources to stay at home, but also to live in a country where doing so was customary. She had family next door who visited her every day, and she was cared for by doctors and nurses who were willing to come to her when she was too ill to come to them. In short, she had the advantages of a society in which older people are treated with respect and concern.

Keeping aging parents and their children closer is a challenge, particularly in a society where almost everybody has a job outside the home (if not across the country). Yet the three signs apply here as well: When we see old people who, despite many living relatives, suffer growing isolation, we know something is wrong. We scarcely try to defend the situation; when we can, we put it out of our minds. Self-interest, if nothing else, should make us hope that our descendants will have worked out a better way.

Of course, most transgenerational obligations run the other way -- from parents to children -- and of these the most obvious candidate for opprobrium is our wasteful attitude toward the planet's natural resources and ecology. Look at a satellite picture of Russia, and you'll see a vast expanse of parched wasteland where decades earlier was a lush and verdant landscape. That's the Republic of Kalmykia, home to what was recognized in the 1990s as Europe's first man-made desert. Desertification, which is primarily the result of destructive land-management practices, threatens a third of the Earth's surface; tens of thousands of Chinese villages have been overrun by sand drifts in the past few decades.

It's not as though we're unaware of what we're doing to the planet: We know the harm done by deforestation, wetland destruction, pollution, overfishing, greenhouse gas emissions -- the whole litany. Our descendants, who will inherit this devastated Earth, are unlikely to have the luxury of such recklessness. Chances are, they won't be able to avert their eyes, even if they want to.

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Even when we don't have a good answer, we'll be better off for anticipating the question.

By Alice Fishburn Last updated: February 8, 2013 8:40 pm Financial Times

The British Library aims to digitise its 25,000 medieval manuscripts, so readers around the world can see them. Here are six of the rarest

©Michael Bodiam

The opening pages of Beowulf in the Beowulf manuscript, anonymous, c AD1000, in Old English

Nothing brings a book of 900-year-old parchment to life as much as realising that you can still see the hair follicles of the unfortunate beasts who gave up their hides for it. The illuminated “Silos Apocalypse” manuscript may date from 1091, grapple with the end of the world and contain page after page of miniatures depicting devils, foxes, snakes and the angel of the abyss. But it is the marks on that long-dead animal skin that make its history really hit home.

The book is part of the British Library’s collection of medieval manuscripts. One of the greatest in the world, it features 25,000 books dating from before 1600, as well as numerous medieval charters and papyri. Some are the sole copy in existence, others are worth millions of pounds (how do you value something that is literally written in gold?). The only way for scholars or the rest of us to view them is via a pilgrimage up the Euston Road in London and into the reading room or gallery.

Book of Hours,'Use of Rome (The Golf Book), Crucifixion', c1540, in Latin

Until now, that is. British Library curators have long followed the mantra that nothing within the library should be inaccessible to the public (though in many cases, one has to apply). Their plan to digitise all the manuscripts – and place the high-quality, full-colour, completely-zoomable-down-to-the-last-animal-pore pages online for free – will make this much easier. “It’s a transformational thing … These are national, international, treasures,” says Claire Breay, head of medieval and earlier manuscripts. “Anybody can enjoy them whether they are the leading academic on some aspect of that manuscript … or a schoolchild doing a project.”

Two hundred of the highest-profile and most valuable manuscripts in the collection are currently undergoing digitisation. The six photographed exclusively for the FT can be viewed online from today, the first time readers all over the world will be able to see them in full. Among them is the Spanish “Silos Apocalypse”, as vivid and well-preserved as if the monk had just stopped for lunch. “You couldn’t go down to WH Smith and get that kind of yellow felt tip pen,” says Julian Harrison, curator of pre-1600 manuscripts. You’d have a similarly hard time finding the ink for the ninth-century “Harley Golden Gospels”, written in gold.

But the books offer us more than aesthetics. “The thing about medieval manuscripts is they’re about the whole range of human knowledge from the middle ages – history, literature, philosophy, religion, art … They are the primary sources for knowing about that period of history,” says Breay. The ultimate example of this is the Leonardo da Vinci notebook – complete with mirror handwriting, astronomical drawings and doodles that are actually an early study for the “Virgin of the Rocks”.

©The British Library Board

©The British Library Board

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  Book of Hours, ‘Use of Rome (The Golf Book)’, c1540, in Latin. Books of Hours [Christian devotional books, often illuminated] typically begin with a calendar giving saints days. For May the image is of ladies and gentlemen riding, with Gemini in a roundel in the right-hand border
  

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  This calendar scene for the month of September gives this manuscript its name, ‘Golf Book’. It is said to be one of the earliest known representations of the game of golf
  

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  The Gospel of Mark, ‘Harley Golden Gospels’, first quarter of the 9th century, in Latin. An Evangelist portrait of Mark writing the first words of his Gospel in an open book. Above him, his symbol, a lion, unrolls a scroll bearing the same words
  

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  On the opening page of the Gospel of John the letter ‘I’ is supported by the eagle of John and decorated with two medallions showing John and the Lamb of God
  

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  This page from the Gospel of John is written entirely in gold, as is the rest of the text, giving the manuscript the epithet ‘Golden Gospels’
  

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  A page from Leonardo da Vinci’s notebook (‘The Codex Arundel’) showing his characteristic left-handed mirror writing and technical drawings, 1478-1518, in Italian. Leonardo’s notebooks provide a fascinating insight into his creative process. One scholar has described them as containing “an explosion of ideas”. Leonardo was an exceptionally skilled draughtsman, whose sketches record natural phenomena, the designs of apparatuses and machines, and allegorical drawings
  

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  Here Leonardo advises how to design a coal stove that would provide long-lasting heat. He probably executed this drawing about 1500, in connection with his duties as court artist and engineer in Milan
  

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  The ‘Petit Livre d’Amour’ was commissioned in about 1500 by Pierre Sala as a gift for Marguerite Bullioud, and contains a collection of love poems that he wrote for her. Pierre and Marguerite were childhood sweethearts but went on to marry other people; when they were both widowed, they eventually married each other in about 1515-1519. Here, Pierre places his heart into a ‘Marguerite’ flower
  

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  A portrait of the author of ‘Petit Livre d’Amour’, Pierre Sala, attributed to Jean Perréal
  

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  In ‘The Silos Apocalypse’ John’s vision of Christ in Majesty is surrounded by the symbols of the four Evangelists: the angel of Matthew, the eagle of John, the lion of Mark and the ox of Luke, at the beginning of Beatus of Liébana’s commentary on Revelation
  

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  Here, Christ is surrounded by angels appearing in a cloud above the 24 Elders of the Apocalypse, at the beginning of the commentary on Revelation 1:7-10
  

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  Also in ‘The Silos Apocalypse’ is a map of the world where the earth is surrounded by the ocean. Numerous inscriptions identify geographical regions and cities, but only the most important places are shown in more detail. Jerusalem is represented as an architectonical structure (doubtless referring to the Temple of Jerusalem) and the Garden of Eden is seen with Adam and Eve being tempted by a snake
  

Petit Livre d’Amour, by Pierre Sala, c1500-18th century, in French and Italian

For sport-lovers, a Book of Hours from 1540 contains the first rendering of golf, in which tiny players show off their swings. Or for romantics, there is the Petit Livre d’Amour, with the initials of the lover and his mistress appearing alongside miniatures of the lovestruck suitor. “No wonder she married him,” says Kathleen Doyle, curator of illuminated manuscripts. Just don’t ask the curators to pick their favourite. “To me, that’s part of the point. You can’t pick because there’s so much and that can be so surprising to people,” Doyle says.

Many of these books have been treasured for centuries, on a shelf or inside a desk drawer. As such, they are often much less well known than paintings from the same periods, and much better preserved. “The illuminated manuscripts contain a fantastic number of works of art from the medieval period – far more than you’d find in the National Gallery,” says Breay. Doyle agrees. “Because they are in this form, they survived.” It was a close call for some though. In 1731, the Ashburnham House fire destroyed several manuscripts and singed the only copy of Beowulf known to exist. But it lives on, a headless man adorning one of its tattered pages. “Most people who’ve studied the poem will never have looked at the manuscript … They don’t realise it’s got all these other illustrations,” says Harrison. “Every time you look at a medieval manuscript, you see something you’ve never seen before.”

As more libraries put their collections online, the question remains of what happens to the institutions left behind. So far, digitisation of manuscripts has increased demand to see the originals. And for every reader turning pages in a hushed reading room, many more are clicking through them in the comfort of their homes or classrooms, with 100,000 visiting the British Library site to date. Some might even notice those follicles. As Harrison puts it, “They’re not museum objects, not something to be put in a case. They’re still a book. There’s still so much you can learn from it.”

©Michael Bodiam Leonardo da Vinci notebook ('The Codex Arundel') showing mirror writing and technical drawings, 1478-1518, in Italian	©Michael Bodiam The Gospel of Luke, 'Harley Golden Gospels', first quarter of the ninth century, in Latin

©Michael Bodiam

Beatus of Liebana, Commentary on the Apocalypse, 'Silos Apocalypse', 1091-1109, in Latin

The Gospel of Luke, ‘Harley Golden Gospels’, first quarter of the ninth century, in Latin

Largest ever hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold found in Staffordshire First pieces of gold were found in a farm field by an amateur metal detector who lives alone on disability benefit Maev Kennedy guardian.co.uk, Thursday 24 September 2009 06.56 BST

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  A harvest of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver so beautiful it brought tears to the eyes of one expert, has poured out of a Staffordshire field - the largest hoard of gold from the period ever found.
  

The gold includes spectacular gem studded pieces decorated with tiny interlaced beasts, which were originally the ornamentation for Anglo-Saxon swords of princely quality: the experts would judge one a spectacular discovery, but the field has yielded 84 pommel caps and 71 hilt collars, a find without precedent.

The hoard has just officially been declared treasure by a coroner's inquest, allowing the find which has occupied every waking hour of a small army of experts to be made public at Birmingham City Museum, where all the pieces have been brought for safe keeping and study.

The find site is not being revealed, in case the ground still holds more surprises, even though archaeologists have now pored over every inch of it without finding any trace of a grave, a building or a hiding place.

The field is now under grass, but had been ploughed deeper than usual last year by the farmer, which the experts assume brought the pieces closer to the surface. Herbert reported it as he has many previous small discoveries to Duncan Slarke, the local officer for the portable antiquities scheme, which encourages metal detectorists to report all their archaeological finds. Slarke recalled: "Nothing could have prepared me for that. I saw boxes full of gold, items exhibiting the very finest Anglo-Saxon workmanship. It was breathtaking."

As archaeologists poured into the field, along with experts including a crack metal detecting scheme from the Home Office who normally work on crime scene forensics, Herbert brought one friend sworn to secrecy to watch, but otherwise managed not to breath a word to anyone – even the fellow members of his metal detecting society when they boasted of their own latest finds.

None of the experts, including a flying squad from the British Museum shuttling between London and Birmingham, has seen anything like it in their lives: not just the quantity, but the dazzling quality of the pieces have left them groping for superlatives.

They are still arguing about the date some of the pieces were made, the date they went into the ground, and the significance of most seemingly wrenched off objects they originally decorated. There are three Christian crosses, but they were folded up as casually as shirt collars. A strip of gold with a biblical inscription was also folded in half: it reads, in occasionally misspelled Latin, "Rise up O Lord, and may thy enemies be dispersed and those who hate the be driven from thy face."

Kevin Leahy, an expert on Anglo-Saxon metal who originally trained as a foundry engineer, and who comes from Burton-on-Trent, has been cataloguing the find and describes the craftsmanship as "consummate", but the make up of the hoard as unbalanced.

"There is absolutely nothing feminine. There are no dress fittings, brooches or pendants. These are the gold objects most commonly found from the Anglo-Saxon ere. The vast majority of items in the hoard are martial - war gear, especially sword fittings."

If the date of between AD650 and AD750 is correct, it is too early to blame the Vikings, and just too early for the most famous local leader, Offa of Offa's Dyke fame.

Leahy said he was not surprised at the find being in Staffordshire, the heartland of the "militarily aggressive and expansionist" 7th century kings of Mercia including Penda, Wulfhere and Æthelred. "This material could have been collected by any of these during their wars with Northumbria and East Anglia, or by someone whose name is lost to history. Here we are seeing history confirmed before our eyes."

Deb Klemperer, head of local history collections at the Potteries museum, and an expert on Saxon Staffordshire pottery, said: "My first view of the hoard brought tears to my eyes – the Dark Ages in Staffordshire have never looked so bright nor so beautiful."

The most important pieces will be on display at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery from tomorrow until Tuesday October 13, and will then go to the British Museum for valuation – a process which will involve another marathon collaboration between experts. Their best guess today is "millions".

Leahy, who still has hundreds of items to add to his catalogue, has in the past excavated several Anglo-Saxon sites including a large cemetery of clay pots full of cremated bone. He said: "After all those urns I think I deserve the Staffordshire find."