About 30 miles west of Charleston, West Virginia is a little town called
Milton, which was the home to the Plato Records label back in the 1960s.
According to Al Collinsworth, vocalist and co-songwriter for The Outcasts, Plato was intended to be an African-American music (Afrilachian) label, but the only known Plato releases are a handful of garage rock and funk singles from predominantly white bands, like The Outcasts'
Loving You Sometimes. That particular track has seen an uptick in interest, since it has appeared on some recent mixtapes, including Diplo's
Chasing the Dragon (MP3,
streaming on Grooveshark). For more on those few known Plato recordings,
Garage Hangover has interviews, information and promo photos from members.
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Jun 13, 2013 -
7 comments
Humanities and the Liberal Arts is the personal website of former Middlebury classics professor
William Harris who passed away in 2009.
In his retirement he crafted a wonderful site full of essays,
music,
sculpture,
poetry and his thoughts on anything from
education to
technology. But the heart of the website for me is, unsurprisingly,
his essays on ancient Latin and Greek literature some of whom are book-length works. Here are a few examples:
Purple color in Homer,
complete fragments of Heraclitus,
how to read Homer and Vergil,
a discussion of a recently unearthed poem by Sappho,
Plato and mathematics,
Propertius' war poems, and finally, especially close to my heart, his commentaries on the poetry of Catullus, for example on
Ipsithilla,
Odi et amo,
Attis poem as dramatic dance performance and
a couple of very dirty poems (even by Catullus' standard). That's just a taste of the riches found on Harris' site, which has been around nearly as long as the world wide web has existed.
posted by Kattullus
on Sep 30, 2011 -
18 comments
An attempt at a
collaborative translation of Plato’s Protagoras. Every day for a few months, Dhananjay Jagannathan will post roughly a page of the dialogue, side by side in Greek, in his own translation, and in Jowett’s classic 1871 translation. He's invited readers to comment and offer suggestions to improve the translation. Jagannathan's goal is to communicate Plato in English the way readers of his would have interpreted his Greek.
posted by unliteral
on Jun 30, 2010 -
11 comments
The Happy Hacker offers you the secrets and tools to become an
Überhacker and
Cyberwarrior, and even
how to build a railgun. But who is this Happy Hacker? Though
other folks are now involved with the website, Carolyn P. Meinel is the primary face of The Happy Hacker. She is a long-time computer hacker, going back to
getting unapproved access to the PLATO system (
previously). She started Happy Hacker because "
all sorts of guys were begging me, 'teach me how to hack'." Her webpage gained attention, getting mentioned in
The Happy Mutant Handbook, and being invited to speak at
Defcon. But there are people
who doubt her credentials, and others who are
a lot more harsh. Regardless of the backlash, and the
appearance that the peak of The Happy Hacker has passed,
her articles are still being published.
posted by filthy light thief
on Apr 29, 2009 -
23 comments
"...the aspiring speaker needs no knowledge of the truth about what is right or good... In courts of justice no attention is paid whatever to the truth about such topics; all that matters is plausibility..." A
Glossary of Rhetorical Terms with examples.
posted by sluglicker
on May 31, 2008 -
7 comments
If you were doing research in the 60s, You might've heard of Polywater, A form of water that exhibited wide variety of interesting characteristics and existed under identical conditions to that of normal water. Eventually debunked, none the less is a fascinating story. Naturally one draws parallels to Vonnegut's ice nine, but did you know there
actually is an ice nine? In fact, there's
twelve to sixteen types of ice,
depending on your opinion. More recently, computer simulations have indicated
water may structure itself into icosahedra, which, incredibly, is
the platonic solid (described over 2000 years ago!) representing the element water! And if you don't know what an icosahedron is,
I bet you've used one before. One of the most ubiquitous,
and arguably most important, substances in our lives, our
understanding of water is far from complete.
posted by Large Marge
on Apr 29, 2008 -
38 comments
All Politics is Thymotic. "Let me tell you what men want. Let me tell you why some middle-age men wear the sports jerseys of semiliterate behemoths half their age while others customize their cars with so many speakers they sound like the hip-hop version of the San Francisco earthquake as they roll down the street.
Recognition. Men want others to recognize their significance. They want to feel important and part of something important." (NYT via
donkey o.d.)
posted by ZenMasterThis
on Mar 27, 2006 -
36 comments
