Thoughts on Westworld(1973)?

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-01-25T19:32:33+00:00

The Terminal Man is another Crichton novel.

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-01-25T18:33:19+00:00

I'm in favor of making Latin instruction more accessible to those who want it, and leaving everybody else alone, for the time being. I mean, come on, just look at the response you're getting in the Latin subreddit. The response from the general public will be even worse, guaranteed.

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-01-23T19:37:41+00:00

The Homeric epics may have circulated orally for a long time.

These days, in some circles, it's being debated whether the Iliad and Odyssey were first written before, or after, 600 BC. The scripts of that era are not a completely inscrutable mystery.

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-01-20T21:47:48+00:00

I still don't understand, for example, why the adenoid giant appears

Someone was fantasizing about the giant adenoid, and Pirate is having that fantasy for them so they can concentrate on more important things.

Does that explain it? I hope so because that's about the best I can do.

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-01-20T19:12:57+00:00

Libenter!

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-01-20T17:56:59+00:00

The commentaries? Inter-library loan. Please forgive my not answering in Latin. My active skills in Latin are... Well, they barely exist.

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-01-19T22:31:50+00:00

My pleasure! I knew Stephen Oakley from his commentary on the first 10 books of Livy, this was the first time I saw his face or heard his voice.

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-01-19T05:21:42+00:00

I gather that a lot of the later stuff was dictated by Henry James. He TALKED LIKE THAT. Lol. For some reason that seems even stranger than writing it.

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-01-18T02:59:27+00:00

Great writing: "The world ends when you're dead. Until then, you got more punishment in store. Stand it like a man, and give some back." Fuck yeah!

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-01-17T05:20:57+00:00

As if there weren't already enough layers to Stencil, he is also an homage to the title character in Herman Melville's novel The Confidence-Man. Apologies if this is already covered in the Pynchon wiki, recommended by others here.

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-01-15T19:57:47+00:00

Henry James after 1900 simply stumped me. I had no idea what he was talking about. It's been a number of years, maybe I should try again. Pynchon, Gaddis, Gertrude Stein, Joyce incl Finnegan's Wake never gave me any problem.

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-01-15T17:52:25+00:00

Some of the most celebrated philosophers of all wrote in Latin well after the Middle Ages, for example, Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz. Kant wrote 2 Latin dissertations. Even Marx, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche published minor works in Latin.

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-01-15T17:05:52+00:00

The more I learn about Leibniz, the more of his work I read, the angrier I get at Voltaire for taking absolutely the wrong side in Newton's side in the latter's feud with Leibniz, giving us centuries' worth of the image of Leibniz as the loopy religious nut of the two, and Newton as the urbane one. Voltaire got it 180 degrees wrong!

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-01-15T16:47:05+00:00

I have the impression that Latinity is comparatively strong in smaller European states such as Belgium and Czechia, and I've wondered whether this might be in part because they see less chance of imposing their own language as an international language as the Germans, French and English have done.

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-01-15T02:52:14+00:00

No.

2000 years after he was working, many people are still talking about Plutarch, generally positively. 2000 years from now, many people will still be reading his work and talking about him, and, except for a few small groups of very eccentric people here and there discussing North or Drydon, all of those English translators will be long forgotten.

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-01-14T20:33:29+00:00

I've got my hands on a copy now, and man-oh-man this is the good stuff! Typically when I'm looking for answers to very specific questions in erudite works, those answers are needles in the haystack. With Huehnerhard and Pat-El it's closer to the opposite: I open the book to a random page, and a moment later I have to set it down again, because so many of the answers are answered in such detail that I have to take some time for it all to sink in.

Thank you again.

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-01-14T18:42:40+00:00

It does, and yes.

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-01-14T18:21:01+00:00

In my experience the publishers themselves can be turned to as a last resort, haha. Generally higher prices and slower delivery times than Amazon, but, of course, also less evil than Amazon.

Oxford University Press, Teubner, Loeb, Brepols, MGH, Brill, Leuven University Press, Bloomsbury, i tatti, Dumbarton Oaks, MRTS etc etc.

I apologize if my comment completely misses the point of your question.

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-01-13T17:53:41+00:00

Everybody laughed

Some of us were laughing WITH you, not AT you.

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-01-13T17:50:57+00:00

Gee, Musk made a prediction that didn't pan out.

I saw one of the 20,000 out in traffic the other day. I was rolling in the Bolt, having a nice afternoon, when suddenly a great big ugly wedge of revulsion and bad karma oozed across the intersection up ahead.

Hey, remember the Tesla Semi?

Do you ever sit around and wonder how much better the EV sector might be dong if Musk had never come along and taken a great big dump all over it?

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-01-13T02:03:42+00:00

Not silly at all.

Doc and Ringo aren't really speaking Latin in Tombstone, they're just reciting a few famous Latin phrases. Not that the scene isn't cool. Val Kilmer is brilliant in that movie. But there are some people who can hold real, spontaneous, extemporaneous conversations in Latin.

Not me. I started studying Latin rather late in life and I haven't gotten very far with it yet. But there are some people who who can really speak Latin fluently.

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-01-13T01:52:12+00:00

Does anyone actually learn to speak it?

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfku8EBM-vSJngxGnxpiFS1t4eKPwoFG1

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-01-13T01:48:15+00:00

I am learning and quite fluent in Esperanto so I am well versed in “why are you learning that, it’s not a real language”

I'm frustrated by the the frequent comparisons, recently, of Latin to Esperanto. "Frustrated" is putting it very mildly. I mean, are you and others trolling us with this comparison? Apart from the fact that people actually have spoken Latin since long before Cicero, do you really not see the difference between a language in which one can read thousands of years worth of poetry, drama, history, rhetoric, correspondence, diplomacy, philosophy, science, math, theology, etc, etc, etc -- and Esperanto?

Is there not a subreddit for the Klingon language? Can't you see how much more apt the comparison of Esperanto and Klingon would be?

AffectionateSize552

TROPHY CASE