Category: Culture

Geoffrey Sampson is a very good scholar in Natural Language Processing. One of my .sigs quotes him. He’s also a UKIP member who got kicked out of the Tories after saying he was an unashamed racialist. Protests at his university wanted him kicked out, saying no person of colour could comfortably sit his classes. And […]

As you found out in comments, OP, the history came along for the ride with the literature: Thucydides and Caesar were read more as literature, than because schools actually cared what happened in Syracuse in 415 BC. But they are great literature. Why were the Classics valued in elite schools in 19th century England? Well, […]

My time for struggling with that question, like so many others’, was high school. I did not have Augustine to debate with, as Michael Masiello did. But it was pretty painful. I looked over the poems I wrote at the time, to see if I had an answer at the ready back then. To my […]

Ordelafo Faliero de Doni, 34th Doge of Venice, ruled 1102–1117. Like the Latin says: Orfaletrus D(e)i Gra(tia) Veneciȩ Dux. Ordelafo, By God’s Grace, Doge of Venice. Ordelafo is a one-off name, and is presumed to be the Venetian name Faledro, spelled backwards. Spelling names backwards as far back as the 12th century. And coming up […]

For all the possibility that it is an authentic independent source on the Historical Jesus (and I believe that it is), the Gospel of Thomas is clearly gnostic, and gnosticism was not the theology that the Christian biblical canon was going for. The surprise is in fact that John made it in the canon; there […]

Why yes, I do watch The Bachelor and The Bachelorette. Why do you ask? … Yes I am male and straight. Where are you going with this? Only the Australian versions though. I find the US originals boring. Hence me asking the question. A few things that stand out for me with the Australian versions, […]

Gospel of Thomas for me as well: Parable of the assassin: The kingdom of the father is like a certain man who wanted to kill a powerful man. In his own house he drew his sword and stuck it into the wall in order to find out whether his hand could carry through. Then he […]

I don’t know the answer, OP. But the attitude of Christianity towards eroticism is indeed on the ascetic side, and has been since St Paul, and arguably Jesus himself (if you look on someone with lust, poke your eye out). The attitude towards the naked body would follow suit; and of course the Games were […]

Once more, I’m going to cite the renowned Greek humorist Nikos Tsiforos. It worked for me quite well with Nick Nicholas’ answer to What do Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland think of each other? Ελληνική Μυθολογία του Νίκου Τσιφόρου (Μέρος 1) Once upon a time, there was a guy called Goethe. A German and a […]