February 18, 2009
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Speaking of Archimedes (see below),Olivia Judson incipits a piece in the New York Times thusly: The snobbish idea that pure science is in some way superior to applied science dates to antiquity, when Plutarch says of Archimedes: “Regarding the business of mechanics and every utilitarian art as ignoble and vulgar, he gave his zealous devotion…
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There have been a pile of news reports about the Archimedes Palimpsest this week … near as I can tell, what is new in these reports is the revelation that Archimedes’ thoughts on infinity in the palimpsest are different than previously thought. The salient excerpt (via the Live Science version): “Scholars are now talking about…
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At UEFA.com there’s an interview with Ukrainian football/soccer star Anatoliy Tymoshchuk … towards the end he sez: These days, some consider the role of captain as just a nod to tradition. But remember that Herodotus described a game in ancient Greece, where soldiers played to develop their fighting capacities and used the head of the…
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Azzaman is reporting the discovery of of a bridge somewhere north of Mosul purportedly built by Alexander the Great. In the rather vague article, archaeologist Omer Sharif is quoted inter alia: “The bridge dates to 330 B.C. and to the reign of Alexander the Great … I have asked the Antiquities Department in Baghdad to…
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IRONY AND THE IRONIC IN CLASSICAL LITERATURE A conference at the University of Exeter, 1st-4th September 2009 Call for Papers What precisely do we mean when we talk about ‘irony’? The term ‘irony’ is often bandied about – as a glance at the Index of any commentary or literary-critical monograph will attest. Both ‘irony’ and…
rogue classicism 