Monthly Archives: June 2009

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

Posted in Orbilius | 1 Comment

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 | 3 Comments

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 | 1 Comment