Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Codes and Codexes

Don't miss Laura's excellent post from last night about a totally obnoxious Reuters story which repeatedly refers to Leonardo da Vinci's Codex Atlanticus as the "Atlantic Code." No, "code" does not equal "codex."

As Laura notes, the problem appears to be rooted in the Wikipedia page for the codex, which as of right now, refers to the Codex Atlanticus parenthetically as (Atlantic Code).

Ironically enough, the next thing that hit my Google Reader last night after Laura's piece was a Salon interview headlined "Are we dangerously dependent on Wikipedia?" Hmmm. Well, it seems Reuters might be.

Of course the original story (minus the flub) is quite interesting: conservators are disbinding the codex.

[Update: As pointed out in comments, somebody's changed the Wikipedia entry]