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- Jeremias Grau on Five More Seneca Commentaries
- BAMBOS NEOPHYTOU on Callimachus on Heraclitus
- Raphael Soares on Artemis a Model for Widows?
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- Leonardo de Arrizabalaga y Prado on “Government by Clowns”?
Author Archives: Michael Hendry
If You Are Michael Gilleland (Laudator Temporis Acti), . . .
. . . please e-mail me. My address is gro.oilucruc@oilucruc turned backwards (don’t want to encourage spambots by making it harvestable). If you are not Michael Gilleland, but happen to know his e-mail, that would be good, too. (I can’t … Continue reading
Posted in - Epigrams
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A Stereotypical Canadian in Rossini
Yesterday I saw for the first time Rossini’s first opera, the one-act farce La Cambiale di Matrimonio (The Bill of Marriage). It is set in England, and the most amusing character is the Canadian Slook, who has crossed the Atlantic … Continue reading
Posted in Opera
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Racine: Phèdre (UK National Theatre)
I drove to Charlottesville today to see an HD broadcast of Racine’s Phèdre by the UK National Theatre, with Helen Mirren in the title role. Some desultory thoughts: At 56, I was probably younger than the median audience member. I … Continue reading
Posted in Culture: Plays, Theater Reviews
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Quotation Of The Day
“Children need religion. They can always give it up later.” (Le Plaisir, 1952)
Posted in Culture: Fiction
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Perhaps An Homage to George Jones?
Driving through Berryville, Virginia a couple of hours later I had to slow down for a police car on the shoulder with all its lights flashing. There was no other car on the shoulder, and the policeman was having an … Continue reading
Posted in General
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If This Is A Joke, It’s A Good One
Driving through Waynesboro, Virginia yesterday, I passed the entrance to The Eastside Speedway, a venue for drag-racing, Motocross, and demolition derbies. The one-block-long road leading to it is Al Gore Lane.
Posted in General
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“Government by Clowns”?
In a recent post at Chicago Boyz, David Foster asks “what the proper Greek would be for ‘government by clowns’”. There are several possibilities: A bomolochos was originally “one that waited about the altars, to beg or steal some of … Continue reading
Posted in Etymology, Orbilius
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Latin Puzzle
I think it was Patterico’s Pontifications where I recently ran across a weblog called Verum Serum. An interesting name, since it has three or four meanings in Latin: True Whey (taking Verum as an adjective and Serum as a noun). … Continue reading
Possibly?
In its article on Leibniz, Wikipedia reports: “No philosopher has ever had as much experience with practical affairs of state as Leibniz, except possibly Marcus Aurelius.” Possibly? Privy Counselor of Justice to the House of Brunswick, trusted adviser to the … Continue reading
Posted in Orbilius, Philosophy
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One in Sixty Million or So
The Perseus Collection of Greek and Roman Materials provides a convenient list of Word Counts by Language. As of half an hour ago, the totals were: English (42,956,587 words) French (2,001 words) German (426,929 words) Greek (8,263,757 words) Italian (178 … Continue reading
Testing a Greek Font
Glycon (A.P. 10.124): Πάντα γέλως, καὶ πάντα κόνις, καὶ πάντα τὸ μηδέν· πάντα γὰρ ἐξ ἀλόγων ἐστὶ τὰ γινόμενα. All is laughter, all is dust, all is nothing, for all that is cometh from unreason. Is this Greek legible? I’m … Continue reading
Posted in General
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Are My Tastes Hopelessly Proletarian?
In Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell twice quotes a song popular among the proles of his imagined future, “composed without any human intervention whatever on an instrument known as a versificator”. He calls it “dreadful rubbish” and a “driveling song”, but it … Continue reading
Posted in Culture: Fiction, Music
2 Comments
Quotation of the Day
An English English professor — I mean an Englishman who is also a professor of English — mocks the hard sciences to a mathematician: A great poet is always timely. A great philosopher is an urgent need. There’s no rush … Continue reading
Posted in Culture: Plays
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Absit Omen
The Gramophone has put much (all?) of their archives on-line, but the texts have been OCR’d, and the results are as one would expect: often erroneous and sometimes unintelligible. My favorite typo so far is from the review of one … Continue reading
Posted in General
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What Maketh the Heart Grow Fonder?
Absinthe, of course, which recently appeared at the state liquor store down the hill. They have four different brands, all priced from $42.95 to $59.95, so I need to do a bit of research before trying one out. Not to … Continue reading
Warm Front Coming Through?
I know very little about meteorology, but tomorrow’s National Weather Service forecast for my town includes what must be a quite unusual combination: “Patchy frost / Hi: 70o F”.
Posted in General
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When Euphemisms Mislead
InstaPundit writes that if Obama takes Nick Gillespie’s advice to legalize and tax drugs, gambling, and prostitution, “it’ll be your patriotic duty to smoke dope and sleep with hookers”. My knowledge of hookers is purely theoretical, but surely if you’re … Continue reading
Posted in Orbilius
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Quotation of the Day
Emily Dickinson at her coldest and clearest: The heart asks pleasure first, And then, excuse from pain; And then, those little anodynes That deaden suffering; And then, to go to sleep; And then, if it should be The will of … Continue reading
Posted in Culture: Poetry
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Bureaucratic Syntax?
It should be known that Akaky Akakievich expressed himself mostly with prepositions, adverbs, and finally, such particles as have decidedly no meaning. If the matter was very difficult, he even had the habit of not finishing the phrase at all, … Continue reading
Life in a Small Town
Most depressing things I’ve seen or heard in the last two weeks: 1. The policeman who pulled me over for speeding last Tuesday asked me about my driving record and I told him, quite truthfully, that I’ve had four moving … Continue reading
Posted in General, Orbilius
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