Curculio
Curculio

Saturday: October 2, 2010

Nomen Omen? Apparently Not

Filed under: — site admin @ 11:23 PM EDT

Last week I drove down I-97 from Baltimore to Annapolis and found that part of it is named “Senator John A. Cade Memorial Highway” after a long-time state legislator. Having seen and enjoyed Henry VI, Part 2 at the Blackfriars Playhouse last spring, I wondered whether his friends called him ‘Jack’. Google suggests that they did (examples here and here [PDF]). Of course, Shakespeare’s Jack Cade was not a Republican, or not a Republican in the contemporary American sense, so the coincidence of names is not as appropriate as it might have been.

A Clue Hidden in Plain Sight?

Filed under: — site admin @ 11:08 PM EDT

In all the discussion of the Stuxnet worm (here is one recent example) many have noted the bit of code ‘DEADF007′, though they can’t agree whether it means “Dead Fool” or “Dead F***in [Secret Agent] 007″ or something else to do with death or deadness or killers. No one I have read has noted that ‘Stux’ is an equally valid transliteration of the Greek name usually spelled ‘Styx’ in English, the Underworld river whose name means ‘Hate’ or ‘Hateful’ or something to do with hatred. That seems a very appropriate name for a destructive worm, and ‘-net’ is a plausible enough suffix, though not the most appropriate imaginable.

Hot Topics in Classical Studies

Filed under: — site admin @ 11:00 PM EDT

A few weeks ago, Bryn Mawr Classical Review published revised guidelines for authors. At the end, they also gave a list of the most visited reviews and replies to reviews from the previous year. I found it interesting that no fewer than seven of the fifteen were wholly (2, 4, 5, 6, 12) or partly (9, 13) on sex and gender issues, and two more (3, 11) on race.

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