This is not aimed at the commenter, but rather a generalized statement:
yntries like this make me love and at the same time hate HN. Great articles with mostly uninformed comments, whereas the two or three guys with knowledge on the topic are buried deep underneath.
Egypt was ptolemaic, thus hellenised. Cleopatra is famously Greek, not Egyptian.
I loved that book! It's interesting with the perfect balance between being academic and still being accessible.
I was just gutted, that it stops in the middle of the 20th century... Yeah, i know, Mulaney will publish a second part, but it was a bit of a let down.
"[...], but for now it is enough to observe that people who don’t know how to use a particular tool very well are being told to throw that tool away and learn to use an entirely new one on the grounds that it will enable them to do things that they could have done at least as well with the old one – which is (when you think about it) a little peculiar if the aim is really to help people with their writing, and not (heaven forbid!) simply to evangelise for a community’s preferred way of doing things."
I'm sorry, but this is a bad argument and the worst life advice in the article.
It's the same students in school tell all the time, when they question why they should learn math, though they are set to become an artist or editor or anything that seemingly does not involve math. You particularly go to college or university to learn NEW things. Even if they are things you probably won't need in the future and are seemingly obsolete.
While he does have a point that (La)TeX Users fetishize their tool of use, most of his arguments can be used on Word or any WISIWYG tool, too. The example he gives in point 4 is so arbitrarily chosen and his minimal example he thinks is better is just as ambigious and confusing as the LaTeX one. Most comments already mention what the author's real problem: Preference of tool.
It should not. Moral decay is a result of the system itself. Not that it is something new, but it gets more and more adamant when more and more people or employers want a PhD. Standards for post graduate students have been lowered (at least in my country) over the last 30 years to cope with the demand.
Plus the points she mentions in the fourth part of her posts is the one that made me turn my stomach over, because it is the one argument that i always knew myself, but could not grasp. It's the same reason why i left. You are not wanted because you will take the job someone already occupies.
Ah I'm sorry, i got it a bit wrong. Currents and winds in the Mediterranean are mostly counter-clockwise.
Ancient seafaring was difficult and mostly bound to land. I mean, that they had to travel along the Coast for most of the time and usually tried to avoid high waters. It WAS possible to cross from one side to the other in certain places, e.g. from Sicily to Tunisia, as it is less than 300km apart, but it was generally avoided elsewhere.
Also, sea travel was depended a lot on weather and season. Greeks and Romans were usually advised NOT to travel during winter as winds were rough and unsteady. Even short distance travels took unusually long and were dangerous. The most famous example is of St. Paul who was shipwrecked in Malta at one point. And counter-intuitive at all: The Greeks were actually not very good at seatravel. They always were jealous of the Phoenicians for doing better sea-trade than they.
The Odyssey falls broadly in the category of Periplus. I forgot what a lot of people interpreted into Homer's story, but i guess he just wanted to say "Follow the rules, don't try to sail against the currents or bad things will happen!"
This is why maybe he sailed westward in the story and not straight back...
It is probable that the Odyssey is some kind of navigational diary. In ancient times, ships could only sail the Mediterranean clockwise, alas westward. So it might've made sense he traveled westward.
I did. (as a millenial)
I didn't even study a subject connected to mathematics. I came across it and thought it was neat, so i learned it... but forgot it.
I love the debate in ancient historical studies, that argues if those people that were "conquered" by Alexander and were subjects to later rulers (even though the often tried to deviate from this status by violent or nonviolent means), simply adapted to the new influence not because it was necessary, but because it was fashionable.
Just like a lot of people are fascinate by American culture today and therefore try to learn English or watch Hollywood movies.
https://breitbandmessung.de/kartenansicht-funkloch