Archive for Yurie HongPage 4
Ancient Greek Alive
Before you let anyone say that Ancient Greek is a dead language, direct them to this article, which tells us that… …An isolated community near the Black Sea coast in a remote part of north-eastern Turkey has been found to speak a Greek dialect that is remarkably close to the extinct language of ancient Greece. As […]
Ancient Greek Computer…Legos-Style
HT Joe Leonioni Watch this incredible video demonstration of a replica of an ancient Greek computer…built out of legos! Those Greeks sure were smart. And they would have *loved* legos.
The Peloponnesian War: The Soundtrack
Music makes everything better. Ever wish that the Peloponnesian War had its own soundtrack? Now it does! This indie band based in Austin put Thucydides to *music*! Click here to listen to their songs, which are free and downloadable.
The Colosseum Finds a Patron
Out from the rubble of the bad news about collapsing Roman ruins comes a bit of good news: An Italian shoe tycoon has offered to provide the entire 25 million euro (£21 million) cost of renovating the Colosseum after the project failed to attract the support of any international sponsors. Diego Della Valle, the head […]
Italian Ruins Further Ruined By Government Negligence
It’s been a bad year for ancient Roman monuments–particularly gladiator-related ones. Last May, part of the roof of the Colosseum fell in. The three chunks of mortar plummeted to the ground around dawn on Sunday, a few hours before thousands of tourists tramped through the gladiatorial arena. They crashed through a wire protection net which […]
Dick Van Dyke = Modern Day Arion
According to Herodotus, Arion was a famous lyre player who was kidnapped by pirates and saved by a dolphin when he leapt overboard. More than 2 1/2 millenia later, Dick van Dyke (star of Mary Poppins and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang) was rescued by porpoises after he fell asleep on his surfboard and drifted […]
SUNY Albany Eliminates Classics and Other Humanities Departments
On hearing that the State University of New York, Albany eliminated five humanities departments, including classics, Prof. Gregory A Petsko from Brandeis University wrote an article addressed to the university’s president. It’s long but worth a read–especially at a time when budget cuts force us all to ask: What the worth of a college education, a […]
Kathy Gaca
(This is a bit late–apologies) Professor Kathy Gaca from Vanderbilt University delivered a talk entitled “Warfare Beyond the Battle in Classical Antiquity” at Gustavus on Thursday, October 21st. Her talk challenged the dominant notion of warfare as armed man-to-man violence, looking instead at practices that attacked women and girls. Professor Gaca is a nationally renowned scholar of women […]
Ted Turner: “Classical Snob” and “Jackass.” Or “What My Classics Major Can Do For Me”
http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/03/major/ A New York Times piece on the real significance of a college major begins with this quote from a letter written by Ted Turner’s father: I am appalled, even horrified, that you have adopted Classics as a major. As a matter of fact, I almost puked on my way home today. … I am a […]
This Just In…Greek Civilization a fraud!!
Required reading from the Onion: Historians Admit to Inventing Greece WASHINGTON—A group of leading historians held a press conference Monday at the National Geographic Society to announce they had “entirely fabricated” ancient Greece, a culture long thought to be the intellectual basis of Western civilization. The group acknowledged that the idea of a sophisticated, flourishing […]