We are now in election campaign to we elect deputies or representatives in the European Parliament. The streets are again plastered with election ads. Also the Old World had elections for some political office and had “campaign” with their messages of propaganda to persuade voters.
Marcus Tullius Tiro, father of shorthand
We find it striking and curious the usual image of some officials (mostly women) of the Spanish Congress of Deputies, busily transcribing on a paper tape the oral intervention of the deputies. They are shorthand writers or fast writers (actually they are stenographers, as we will clarify later).
Ancient cities were very noisy
We often develop our busy lives in an excessively noisy urban environment. The life and urban society, labor activity and some social customs and practices as hobby to large outdoor concerts, often produce excessive noise no according to health and peace of mind.
No book is so bad as to not have something of use in some part of it. (Nullum esse librum tam malum, ut non in aliqua parte prodesset) Pliny Pliny the Younger, Epist.3,5,10
This may be a good phrase to celebrate World Book Day, which according to UNESCO is celebrated on 23 April every year since 1995. On that day, in 1616, Miguel de Cervantes, William Shakespeare and the poet Garcilaso de la Vega, the Inca, died.
A current joke 2,000 years old
Few days ago, in a coffe talk or beer talk, about an informal conversation about the physical resemblance between some people, a good friend, who has lived many years in Latin America, told a joke located in Venezuela:
Shameless plagiarists but no poets
Today the plagiarism is certainly more usual given the enormous intellectual production and the ability of modern computer tools which have reduced the work of copying and plagiarism to “copy and paste” of word processors. But these modern tools are also effective to detect and locate the plagiarist.
The “Medulas” are the evidence of
As Pliny says in his Natural History, Book 33, dedicated to metals, there existed in antiquity a real gold rush. See http://www.antiquitatem.com/en/the-gold-rush-in-antiquity-minery-pliny
The gold rush in Antiquity
Since men discovered the usefulness of metals, one of their biggest worries has been to locate the places where the gold, the silver, the iron, the tin, the copper, the lead… are.
Dinosaur Fossils in Antiquity
In Greco-Roman mythology, as in almost every mythology, monstrous beings and fantastic animals are frequent. Sometimes these monsters are large animals, others they are the result of the mixture of several different animals and sometimes they are even a mix of human beings and animals.
Political corruption in Athens
If something so insufferable plans on Spanish politics, it is corruption. Actually it seems inherent to the human condition and to the insatiable thirst for money. So there it is in all countries, depending on the intensity of the strength of democracy and the existence of appropriate controls. Nor is it unique to our time, but of all time