Each of the fingers has its own name: thumb, index, middle, ring and little finger. The third, or half finger o heart finger, also is called “digitus impudicus” “obscene finger.” Why?
Local elections in Pompeii
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.
Gabriel García Márquez and the Greek and Latin classics
Many elements of Greco-Roman culture still alive in our time, among many others, myths and literary topics. The current writers and artists sometimes look to them directly and consciously even quoting verbatim, sometimes develop the same issues adapting them to changing times and on other occasions they integrate them into their work unaware naturally.
Plato rejects writing by the mouth of Socrates
Frequently hear someone reject the computer as an educational tool for children and youth with the argument that it harms the development of memory or of some reasoning ability. Previously we heard similar arguments in rejecting electronic calculators that would prevent the ability of mathematical thinking. All this reminds me of a famous passage in Plato’s dialogue Phaedrus 274c-277a; Plato in the mouth of Socrates rejects the invention of writing by the same reason that it will end up with memory, essential human faculty.
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:
Library of Alexandria (and 6): The Bible of the Seventies.
In the populous city of Alexandria there was a very large Jewish community. The Jews were already numerous groups throughout the Greek world, to the point that many of them barely understand Aramaic or Hebrew.
The library of Alexandria (3): The Library of Alexandria acquired books in a curious way
The claim of the Ptolemies was to collect “all books of all peoples of the earth” , perhaps following the advice of Demetrios of Falera . Certainly some of the stories that were told in antiquity reveal the passion of the Ptolemies to equip its library of Alexandria with the books which were in the known world. Sources also foreshadow the rivalry between the two great libraries of Alexandria and Pergamum.