Online books

The amazing technological developments of the past decade have completely altered the nature of scholarly work.I still remember with horror what it was like to try to find rare books -- let alone to have access to them (!!). Keep in mind that about ninety per cent of my time is spent working with rare books (fifteenth to seventeenth century scientific books). This has completely changed now, and it will change even more in the next years. The bottom line is this: In a few years we will have online, for instant download, ALL printed books of past centuries. Due to commercial greed this will not be so for today's books, but for old materials it is unavoidable.

There are so many great places for online books nowadays that it is difficult to say where to start. Obviously, Google Books is always a good place to begin searching and the same can be said of the Internet Archive. Somewhat messy but very useful is the Analytical Bibliography of online neo-Latin texts. Check also the excellent list of sites collected by Samuel Gessner at the CHC site. For Portuguese online books (scientific or otherwise) start with the Biblioteca Nacional Digital, but other libraries in Portugal such as the Biblioteca Geral da Universidade de Coimbra are entering this game. For Portuguese scientific books do not miss the Biblioteca da Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade do Porto.

History of Science

This is my hobby. Luckily it is also my job.

Latin

I always had an interest for ancient languages and learned enough Latin to be able to work comfortably with sixteenth century materials. I even dared to publish some of my translations. I do not trust -- and generally avoid -- historians that "study" any topic of European learned culture of past centuries and do not read Latin.

Classical Greek

Classical Greek was more of an hobby than something I really need. I always wanted to be able to read (and translate) some texts in Ancient Greek.I am far from being an expert, but I can read ancient mathematics in Greek. 

Arabic.

This is more a desideratum than a real thing. I started learning Arabic last year. Still at the very, very early stages of learning this beautiful, but difficult language. Our class has an excellent blog (maintained by André Filipe), and I also visit regularly other sites such as these: Aljazeera (Arabic); Arabic Newspapers and Magazines.


Education matters.

The present state of education in Portugal is disastrous, the result of wholly unrealistic policies in the past decades and, most of all, the direct consequence of a string of socialist governments that have used the public education system for ideological campaigning and social engineering. Results have been catastrophic. See the IMF Working paper by Benedict Clemens, «The Efficiency of Education Expenditure in Portugal». (1999) and also the excellent comment by Álvaros Santos Pereira, «The truth behind the passion for education» (The Portuguese version is here: «A verdade da paixão pela educação»). Data and analyses from the Portuguese Ministry of Education are generally unreliable and highly biased. For reliable data on education see the Pisa surveys (OECD Programme for International Student Assessment; PISA) or the Barro-Lee Dataset.

Some news:
Marçal Grilo, «Portugueses não são exigentes na educação», Público, 10.5.2011.


Other links

Here are some other places I visit regularly.

Warping History: Analytical Methods in Historical Cartography.
This is John Hessler's blog, "Dedicated to the use of mathematical modeling and fieldwork in the study of the history of cartography".
Lots of overlap with my own interests, from historical cartography to differential geometry, sixteenth century science, etc.

Envisioning the World: The First Printed Maps, 1472-1700.
A beautiful site on a traveling exhibition on early printed European maps.

Dead Reckonings: Lost art in the Mathematical Sciences.
A beautiful and inspiring blog by Ron Doerfler on nomography.

Robert van Gent. History of Astronomy.
Excellent repository of information on the history of astronomy.

wilbourhall.org.
The very useful site by Wilbour Hall. Lots of ancient and medieval scientific texts in the best editions.

Terence Tao's blog.
Most of the stuff here is way above my expertise, but from time to time I can follow in detail some discussion.

Edward Tufte.
No explanations needed. The site of Edward Tufte: just go and see.

Bonecos de bolso.
Beautifiul drawings and sketches by Pedro Cabral.