Where it's at: or better, where "at" (@) has been. What is modern is ancient, if we should notice. From the article: "The earliest yet discovered reference to the @ symbol is a religious one. It features in a 1345 Bulgarian translation of a Greek chronicle. Held today in the Vatican Apostolic Library, it features the @ [...]
Computers transform our knowledge of the past. According to the author, computerized quantitative analysis offers insights that traditional historical study cannot. From the article: Huge swathes of our past are slowly but surely getting digitised as old books and scanned and organised. It stands to reason that surely once the historians get to work it [...]
Judgments about the arts: mind what you put in! Ben Jonson tells his audience how much they may assess what they see, depending on their means: It is further agreed that every person here have his or their free-will of censure, to like or dislike at their own charge, the playwright having now departed with [...]
A classics major adds value for engineering and STEM: a profile of Tim O'Reilly, who brings classical ethics and eloquence to the world of technology. From the article: O’Reilly has a deep understanding of how knowledge should disseminate in a society, and how best to make that happen.... Building a knowledge community is an art, [...]
How the humanities teach us the art of life. A professor of literature asks about life's greater meaning, which the humanities may provide. According to the author, "The humanities interrogate us. They challenge our sense of who we are, even of who our brothers and sisters might be."
In a political season, Daoist thinking on keeping the measure of things. ------------------ Whoever thinks what matters is to get rich is incapable of renouncing salary. Whoever thinks what matters is to get famous is incapable of renouncing reputation. Whoever is too fond of sway over others is incapable of letting another man take the [...]
Her sonnet meditates on human degradation, and self-degradation, in the new Iron Age. From "Epitaph on the Race of Man" Here lies, and none to mourn him but the sea, That falls incessant on the empty shore, Most various Man, cut down to spring no more; Before his prime, even in his infancy Cut down, [...]
Why read the classics: Italo Calvino (1923-1985) explains the nature of a classical literary composition, which has various means of speaking to us throughout the different times of our lives. If the books have remained the same (even though they too change in light of a different historical perspective), we ourselves have certainly changed, and the encounter [...]
Do we need a calendar for the season of love?
Umberto Eco explains how books, as our familial elders, deepen our emotional lives across generations. Valentino Bompiani once circulated a saying: “one person who reads is worth two.” It was said by a publisher probably as a clever slogan, but I think it means that writing (and in general language) lengthen one’s life. From the time when [...]
