More Updating In House and On Line

I've now updated the Rationalist Essays section of my website http://www.mayhematics.com/e/e.htm.
The changes are mainly cosmetic, using CSS to keep the style consistent and put in coloured backgrounds. There is one new Essay on "Rewriting of History by Christian Apologists", which was the subject of my 9 February talk to Hastings Humanists.

On Friday I took delivery of a new sofa-bed. This is to replace the oslo futon I previously had but found too heavy, because of the metal base, and difficult to keep the mattress in place in the upright position. The new one is smaller and has no arm rests. It is in plain brown upholstery but I can cover this with a selection of differently patterned duvet covers. I've also moved everything round to make space for it, but not sure I've found the best way to fit the computer in.

History of Ideas and Science Overview

I've at last got round to updating the sections on my website dealing with "History of Ideas" and "Science Overview". Much of this was done towards the end of last year but I've only just got to the position where all the necessary facilities my new computer are operational. There is still a lot of work to be done on these pages - they are an ongoing project. The "History of Ideas" pages make much use of colour-coding of the entries, to distinguish between subjects.

Next on my to-do list is the section on "Rationalism", which I propose to put in the form of a series of Essays.

Words

A day or two ago I finally got round to updating the Words section of my website. There is not much difference really except in the presentation, which now makes use of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to ensure the pages are in a consistent style throughout. There is a lot more to CSS that I need to learn, I've only used the basics to determine the background colours, typefaces, margin settings and suchlike.

In the simplified spelling I've gone back closer to the orignal 1997 article, though with j used for the th sound in 'then' and q for the indefinite vowel. The only new feature is the use of th for the tch sound in 'match' and dh for the dge sound in 'hedge', which I consider an analogous use of h as for sh in 'fish' and in the combination zh often used for the sound in 'leisure'. It always seems to me that there must be another little tweak somewhere that will make the system better, but when I try it there is usually some unforeseen problem. I'll probably come back to the question in another three years.

The z-section, which used to contain the verse anthologies, is now devoted to lists of links, and the s-section whch contained the stories is no more. Instead they are all in the w for Words section.