Around the Classical blogosphere yesterday:

• Greek and Latin inscriptions preserved in the United States of America August 10, 2011 Charles Ellwood Jones
• Aspergers in ancient Greece August 7, 2011 John Birchall
• Round-Up: August 9 August 9, 2011 laura-gibbs@ou.edu (Laura Gibbs)
• Man Was Never Made for Books August 9, 2011 Michael Gilleland
• Creation and Destruction of Ancient Art August 9, 2011 Dorothy King
• On This Day in Ancient History – Pharsalus August 9, 2011 (N.S. Gill)
• Fighting Hannibal – The Man and not the Phalanx August 9, 2011 Mike Anderson
• Telesphorus, a cult hymn from Epidaurus August 9, 2011 Nikolaos Markoulakis
• Open Access Journal: Lampeter Working Papers in Classics August 9, 2011 Charles Ellwood Jones
• The scale of looting in Turkey August 9, 2011 David Gill
• Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (TLG®) Updates August 9, 2011 Charles Ellwood Jones
• How to look good, ancient: The empress as the Imperial model August 10, 2011 History of the Ancient World
• “This is Sparta!” – The Battle of Thermopylae August 10, 2011 Jennifer Lockett

Our long-time eamicus Gabriel Bodard gives and interesting interview on what Digital Classics is and where it is heading in the grand scheme of things:

My spiders may have been slacking earlier today, but one of them just brought back something very interesting from the Wikimedia Boston list:

Hello Bostonians,

Prof. Gregory Crane (Head of Classics Department) from Tufts University is
looking for a ‘Classics’ experienced Wikimedian to assist on a new project.
The premise of the collaboration is to Wikisource and translatevClassic
texts, which will be annotated and interpreted collaboratively to form a
‘Wikiedition’. If you are, or know anybody in the intersection of the
Wikimedia and Classics please contact me.

• via: [Wikimedia-boston] Classicist wanted to collaborate with Tufts department on first ‘Wikieditions’ project. (the contact info is there)

Hopefully we’ll be hearing more about this project … it’s got huge potential (and I’ve suggested similar things in the past, back before there were wikis) …

I used to love reading the Weekly World News and its occasional strange reportage about the ancient world (and no, I didn’t believe a word of it) … what follows is a long-time-coming list of pages from the WWN (via Google Books) of items pertaining to Cleopatra:

• Cleopatra’s Beauty Secrets Discovered (these reappeared in various versions throughout the years; oddly, many of these still appear in one legitimate newspaper or another every day)
• Will the Real Cleopatra Please Stand up? (a couple of competing reincarnation claimants; there are a few of these over the years)
• Cleopatra Was Ugly as a Pan of Warts (self explanatory … the story also reappeared a number of times over the years; never figured out how that lined up with the ‘beauty secrets’ stuff)
• The Oedipus Complex (an ancient psychiatric institute which catered to Tony and Cleo at some point)
• WWN Rome (headlines from an ancient tabloid; Cleo mentioned in one of them)
• Alien Camera Found (clearing up the business about the asp)

… and one which doesn’t deal with that Cleopatra, but the exploits of some actress in ancient Roman times named Cleopatra Jolix (I couldn’t resist):

• First Celebrity Tabloid Found