Some of nation's best libraries have books bound in human skin

By M.L. Johnson, Associated Press Writer | January 7, 2006

PROVIDENCE, R.I. --Brown University's library boasts an unusual anatomy book. Tanned and polished to a smooth golden brown, its cover looks and feels no different from any other fine leather.

But here's its secret: the book is bound in human skin.

A number of prestigious libraries -- including Harvard University's -- have such books in their collections. While the idea of making leather from human skin seems bizarre and cruel today, it was not uncommon in centuries past, said Laura Hartman, a rare book cataloger at the National Library of Medicine in Maryland and author of a paper on the subject.

An article from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch from the late 1800s "suggests that it was common, but it also indicates it wasn't talked about in polite society," Hartman said.

The best libraries then belonged to private collectors. Some were doctors who had access to skin from amputated parts and patients whose bodies were not claimed. They found human leather to be relatively cheap, durable and waterproof, Hartman said.

In other cases, wealthy bibliophiles may have acquired the skin from criminals who were executed, cadavers used in medical schools and people who died in the poor house, said Sam Streit, director of Brown's John Hay Library.

Full article: [link]

I stopped takeing vitiamins because I was takeing so many drugs that the vitiamin - just pushed my stomach over the edge. and I don't take anything unless I've eaten. Blech.

Bah! Someone "upgraded" and decided not to install something. Lurvely.

Don't you listen to Tom Cruise, the vitamin is the only thing you need.

Besides, people who take their vitamins have skin that makes better book binding material.

Dude! Today's Woot is a Roomba Discovery. $119 + shipping.

[eta: And in the time it took me to post this, it's sold out. Drat!]

Crap, I seem to be running out of outrage again....

[link]

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration has illegally stopped making public detailed tax enforcement data, which has been used to show which kinds of taxpayers get the most and toughest audits, a noted tax researcher says.

...

Long, who has researched and written about federal tax administration for more than 30 years, used the Freedom of Information Act to win the court order in 1976 directing the revenue agency to provide her regularly with its data on criminal investigations, tax collections, the number and hours devoted to audits by income level and taxpayer category and other enforcement records.

Since 1989, her FOIA requests have been submitted by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a data-research organization at Syracuse of which she is co-director.

TRAC has used the records to report in 2000 that the Clinton administration was auditing poor people at a higher rate than rich people and in 2004 that business and corporate audits were down substantially and criminal tax enforcement was at an all-time low. TRAC also reported that in fiscal 2002-2004 IRS audited on average only a third of the largest corporations, which control 90 percent of all corporate assets and 87 percent of all corporate income.

OK, lets stop going after wealty individual and corporate tax cheats, and then lets illegally refuse to disclose that we're doing that.

Reminds me of a few years back - there was a conservative editorial in the WSJ advocating increased auditing, etc. of the poor, in order to get them to hate the government and thus not complain when funding benefitting the poor was cut.

Damn. I'm oosting over the Roomba hardcore right now.

Hee. From the site:

According to iRobot, "world-class roboticists created Roomba" and then "experts tested it." We take this to mean that the Roomba will almost certainly not massacre your entire family in a death orgy of inscrutable machine rage, but we regret that we cannot offer refunds in the event that it does. Hey, if you want a plantation full of robot slaves, you have to accept the risk of a bloody uprising.

I've starting taking a Calcium supplement because I hate drinking milk, so I know I don't get enough calcium in my diet, and because both my grandmothers had osteoporosis.

I worried about that, but my doctor told me that my love of cheese was taking care of my not drinking milk. Do you eat other dairy products?

A Buffista New Years resolution in today's Get Fuzzy [link] .