I think we get a bit of insight into Rupert Murdoch’s mindset when we read things like this:

Nicknamed after Julius Caesar’s victorious siege of Gallic forces in 52 B.C., Rupert Murdoch’s “Project Alesia” was supposed to be his attack against Google News, which he’s always seen as a content-thieving enterprise. [more]

• via Rupert Murdoch Kills ‘Project Alesia’ Digital Newsstand Plan — Daily Intel.

FWIW, almost a year ago the Daily Inquisitr was commenting on the name of the project and warning about the Ides of March … meanwhile, back in September Vanity Fair proclaimed Mark Zuckerberg:

our new Caesar. He rules from the imperial capital of Palo Alto, California, the Rome of our nascent millennium.

Meanwhile the two guys in charge of Research in Motion have also been dubbed Caesars … clearly we need a new Suetonius. We’re clearly shaping up for another year of the four (or more) emperors …

This sounds like it would have been very interesting to attend:

These days, when an event is billed as vampire related, one might expect the target audience to be mostly made up of adolescent girls.

Not so for the considerable crowd that turned out to the Penn Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology’s Rainey Auditorium on Thursday evening. The program, “Vampires, Demons and Mystical Creatures in the Ancient World,” was organized by Young Friends, a group of active volunteers that seeks to encourage Museum membership and participation among young professionals and students in the 21 through 45-year-old range — though Thursday’s crowd ranged from children to older adults.

The evening began with two speakers who presented on magic and monsters from ancient times. The first, associate professor of Classical Studies Peter Struck, spoke about the prevalence of magic in ancient Greece — and, indeed, throughout the ancient world.

“In Greece, everyone used magic, and believed it worked,” Struck said. The most prevalent method, he explained, was to “enlist the untimely dead” — young people who died early, violent deaths — to do one’s bidding by dropping spells into their graves.

Struck was followed by Jennifer Wegner, the associate curator of the Egyptian section and a regular of Young Friends programs, who spoke about the variety of ancient Egyptian deities and monsters.

“Animal life alone in Egypt is the stuff of nightmares,” Wegner said. But the deities that these creatures represented were “viewed as positive” in Egyptian culture.

Both speakers were very well received.

“I thought it was really interesting, both were really good speakers,” said Becky Kolacki, a student from Drexel who, though not a member of Young Friends, said that she would definitely consider going to future events.

“The Egyptology was really fascinating, and they did a great job picking speakers,” said Stephanie Met, who was there with her father, a Penn professor.

After their presentations, people were given the opportunity to tour the Museums’s “FANG! The Killing Tooth” exhibit on the biology of the canine and the history of vampire myth.

Young Friends hosts two to three major events a year, and members of the group receive discounts on Museum events.

“There’s all this great research going on and great speakers here,” said Emily Goldsleger, the assistant director of membership and annual giving at the Penn Museum and a coordinator of the Young Friends program. “We try and make it more lighthearted and accessible.”These days, when an event is billed as vampire related, one might expect the target audience to be mostly made up of adolescent girls.

Not so for the considerable crowd that turned out to the Penn Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology’s Rainey Auditorium on Thursday evening. The program, “Vampires, Demons and Mystical Creatures in the Ancient World,” was organized by Young Friends, a group of active volunteers that seeks to encourage Museum membership and participation among young professionals and students in the 21 through 45-year-old range — though Thursday’s crowd ranged from children to older adults.

The evening began with two speakers who presented on magic and monsters from ancient times. The first, associate professor of Classical Studies Peter Struck, spoke about the prevalence of magic in ancient Greece — and, indeed, throughout the ancient world.

“In Greece, everyone used magic, and believed it worked,” Struck said. The most prevalent method, he explained, was to “enlist the untimely dead” — young people who died early, violent deaths — to do one’s bidding by dropping spells into their graves.

Struck was followed by Jennifer Wegner, the associate curator of the Egyptian section and a regular of Young Friends programs, who spoke about the variety of ancient Egyptian deities and monsters.

“Animal life alone in Egypt is the stuff of nightmares,” Wegner said. But the deities that these creatures represented were “viewed as positive” in Egyptian culture.

Both speakers were very well received.

“I thought it was really interesting, both were really good speakers,” said Becky Kolacki, a student from Drexel who, though not a member of Young Friends, said that she would definitely consider going to future events.

“The Egyptology was really fascinating, and they did a great job picking speakers,” said Stephanie Met, who was there with her father, a Penn professor.

After their presentations, people were given the opportunity to tour the Museums’s “FANG! The Killing Tooth” exhibit on the biology of the canine and the history of vampire myth. [more]

• Demystifying the history of vampires | The Daily Pennsylvanian.

Felton seems to hang out her shingle for such things every Hallowe’en, so we might read some more from her soon. As folks prepare to regale their kiddies with assorted ghost stories, they might want to check out an interesting interview with Debbie Felton on ‘Spooky Rome’ at eternallycool … N.S. Gill has also put together a few pages of relevant ghost stories from ancient Greece and Rome …. Horror Masters’ page of ancient ghost stories is also interesting (although it really would have been nice if there were footnotes!). Of course, you’ll want to check out some of the purported sightings of ghosts that we have mentioned in these pages, here and here (the latter has links to earlier stories).

The Wall Street Journal had an item of interest … an article comparing US and Italian education systems penned by an ‘urban professional’ from the US working in Rome. Here’s the excerpt that caught my eye:

The pedagogy is old-fashioned, with lots of memorization: the despised “rote learning” that American educators have been warning against since before my own distant youth (but which news reports say is making a comeback there). Italian teachers make little effort to cultivate their pupils’ self-esteem or celebrate their precious snowflake-like individuality. Meetings with parents are about what their child does wrong, while whatever he’s learned is passed over in silence.

That can be frustrating for anyone who thrives on what Thomas Mann called “Vitamin P.” Yet no one who has let an excited second-grader drag him through the Musée D’Orsay in search of Impressionist masterpieces, or heard a third-grader give forth on Australopithecus and the Big Bang, or a fourth-grader recite a poem by Sappho, can doubt that Italian teachers are doing something right. With many other countries’ systems having all but abandoned classical languages, the prospect of my son taking five years of Latin and Greek in his teens gives me hope that he will reach adulthood with a sharp mind attuned to the resonances of the past.

via European Life: Getting a Classical Education in Italy – WSJ.com.

… trying to picture a fourth-grader at my school reciting Sappho … can’t do it.