larryhammer: floral print origami penguin, facing left (Default)
If you toss “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit,” which is the first sentence of lorem ipsum text my help authoring tool gave me, into Google Translate, you get “The customer is very important, he will be followed by a customer service.”

I have … no words.

It handles the version from loremipsum.io, which I’m more familiar with, a little better: “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua” becomes “It is important to take care of the patient, to be followed by the patient, but it will happen at such a time that there is a lot of work and pain.”

For very small values of “little,” anyway. That … yeah, no.

Cicero’s original, much-corrupted text, “Neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit, sed quia non numquam eius modi tempora incidunt ut labore et dolore magnam aliquam quaerat voluptatem” comes out pretty much accurate, if not exactly great English: “Nor is there any one who loves pain because it is pain, pursues it, wants to gain it, but because such times never occur when he seeks some great pleasure through labor and pain.” (Rackham’s 1914 Loeb translation: “Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure.”)

Procrastinate—me? Psha! Of course I am.

---L.

Subject quote from Smells Like Teen Spirit, Nirvana.
larryhammer: floral print origami penguin, facing left (space/time otp)
ProTip: Do not get strep throat and a sinus infection at the same time.

Short shameful confession: I would love being a professional yarn detangler. Or even semi-pro. (via lost)

Poking at the limitations of quantum mechanics. (via lost)

A report on a 1519 Latin primer for schoolboys, with English translations of the dialog.

---L.

Subject quote from "Red Sea, Black Sea," Shearwater.
larryhammer: drawing of a wildhaired figure dancing, label: "La!" (La!)
Knowing that January is named for Janus and March is for Mars, I'd always assumed that June was for Juno and May (though I couldn't see why) for Maia. But of the possible etymologies that Ovid proposes in Fasti, which is what I'm really reading right now rather than that sparkly idealistic lovey-dovey stuff, the theory he ultimately supports (and which these translators think is probably correct) is May and June are from maiores ("elders", "seniors") and juventes ("young men", "juniors").

I am now trying to keep my brain from thinking of them as the senpai and kouhai months.

Edited to fix link -- sorry 'bout that.

---L.
larryhammer: floral print origami penguin, facing left (greek poetry is sexy)
Ah, the rose-colored glasses of love poetry:
Not to the rich these rules of love I preach:
He who can give needs nothing I can teach.
"Here's something for you" is the soul of wit,
And all my arts of pleasing yield to it.

The Art of Love, ii, 161–4, trans. Moore/Melville

This, suddenly, in a passage of Ovid explaining how, once you've got a woman, you'll need to be a smooth talker to keep her -- and I'm just the man to tell you how. On the sliding scale of idealism vs. cynicism, he may not have slid as far over as 1984 or Watchmen, but he'd sit quite comfortably next to Austen. Though she might not be comfortable with Ovid.

---L.
larryhammer: topless woman lying prone with a poem by Sappho painted on her back, label: "Greek poetry is sexy" (classics)
A plea to the Internets: Are there any good translations -- and by "good" I mean "readable as English poetry" -- of Ovid's Fasti? or is scholarly pedantic the best I can hope for?

Which latter has its own virtues to be sure, but does not make for poetry.

---L.
larryhammer: floral print origami penguin, facing left (disappearance)
The answer to the challenge is Robert Browning, of all people. The title is, in full, "On Being Defied to Express in a Hexameter: 'You Ought to Sit on the Safety-Valve'" -- and he does just that, seven times in the first seven lines. With some syntactic gymnastics (full disclosure: some lines, while I get the drift, I can't honestly say I can construe them completely).

The implication is that he's addressing himself in the last line: "Imprint on your mind, little Robert, this complicated verse."

I think I'll pass on that, thanks.

---L.
larryhammer: a wisp of smoke, label: "it comes in curlicues, spirals as it twirls" (what tangled tales we weave)
For those whom it might amuse, a quote and a challenge:
Plane te valvem fas est pressisse salutia,
Aequum est te valvâque, salutis sede, locari;
Convenit in sellâ, valvâ residere salutis,
Omninoque salutis par considere valvâ;
Sedibus est justum valvae mansisse salutis,
Haesisse in valvâ te, sede salutis, oportet;
Est tibi valvis, inque salutis sede, sedendum;
Valvâ, sede salutiferâ super, assidet omnis
Qui discrimen adit, fortem quem numina servant:
Mutliplicem versum tu mente, Robertule, figas!
Can you guess whose hexameters and who is little Robert?

---L.
larryhammer: floral print origami penguin, facing left (Default)
Some quotes for those who might appreciate them:
  1. Lingua Latina saepe dicitur mortua esse. Coleus! Modum iam pridem meridiatur. Iam diu autem multa verba facit dormiens. Re vera, non potes eam in silentium redigere. Circuspice—Lingua Latina se pandit ubique tanquam toga vilis.

  2. There is one characteristic which may be safely said to belong to nearly all happily-married couples—that of desiring to see equally happy marriages among their young friends; and in some cases, where their wishes are strong and circumstances seem favourable to the exertion of their own efforts, they may even embark upon the perilous but delightful course of helping those persons whose minds are as yet not made up, to form a decision respecting this important crisis in life, and this done, to assist in clearing the way in order that this decision may forthwith be acted upon.

  3. 53. Repeat steps 45–52 on the other side.
    55. Squash fold.
    58. Repeat steps 55–57 on the right.
    59. Repeat steps 45–53 for the second head.
    60. Repeat steps 55–59 behind for the third head.


  4. A Midsummer Night's Dream remains an enchanting work after four hundred years, but few would argue that it cuts to the very heart of human behavior. What it does do is take, and give, a positive satisfaction in the joyous possibilities of verbal expression.

  5. As a new face [The Times New Roman] should, by the grace of God and the art of man, have been broad and open, generous and ample; instead, by the vice of Mammon and the misery of the machine, it is bigoted and narrow, mean and puritan.
The Answers:
  1. Henry Beard, X-Treme Latin: Lingua Latina Extrema (London: Headline Book Publishing, 2005).
  2. Sybil G. Brinton, Old Friends and New Fancies: An Imaginary Sequel to the Novels of Jane Austen (Naperville, IL: Sourcebook Landmark, 2007 reprint of the 1914 edition).
  3. John Montroll, "Three-Headed Dragon," in Mythological Creatures and the Chinese Zodiac in Origami (New York: Dover Publications, 1996).
  4. Bill Bryson, Shakespeare: The World as Stage (New York: HarperCollins, 2007).
  5. John Morrison, A Tally of Type, 3rd ed. (Jaffrey, NH: David R. Godine, 1999).
The Annotations:
  1. Yes, I'm dubious about his Latin, too.
  2. Yes, a sequel to all six novels at once. Edward and Elinor Ferrars have one of the Darcy livings, for a start, and Mary Crawford is in the orbit of Sir Walter Eliot.
  3. I have now proven it is possible to fold this in 15cm paper, but the result is so small as to be barely worth the effort. Also, Tiamat looks so silly shrunk to 4cm long. Undignified.
  4. A brief but generally sensible work, which breaks no new ground.
  5. To be fair to Morrison, he's putting these words in William Morris's mouth. But I more or less agree.
---L.

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