Darrell J. Pursiful

They really should have thought of this years ago. Oh, wait. They did:

In what many are hailing as a breakthrough solution to Greece’s crippling debt crisis, Greece today offered to repay loans from the European Union nations by giving them a gigantic horse.

Finance ministers from sixteen EU nations awoke in Brussels this morning to find that a huge wooden horse had been wheeled into the city center overnight.

The horse, measuring several stories in height, drew mixed responses from the finance ministers, many of whom said they would have preferred a cash repayment of the EU’s bailout.

But German Chancellor Andrea Merkel said she “welcomed the beautiful wooden horse,” adding, “What harm could it possibly do?”

(H/T: rogueclassicism)

Barry Strauss lists his top six.

Ronald Helfrich has written an intriguing essay comparing and contrasting Biblical Studies with Buffy Studies: “Note to Self, Religion Freaky”: When Buffy Met Biblical Studies.

I’ll admit I know very little about Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but I am quite familiar with the kinds of “crystal ball textualism” Helfrich describes. Unfortunately, I cannot agree with him that the field of Biblical Studies is as immune to this tendency and he seems to think.

This is a fascinating essay about hermeneutics, among other things. I commend it to you.

Rogueclassicism has suggested a few. Here are my favorites:

Jim Davila has the goods on a new book exploring angelic speculation and veneration in Roman religion:

NEW BOOK: Rangar Cline, Ancient Angels: Conceptualizing Angeloi in the Roman Empire (Brill, March 2011).

Although angels are typically associated with Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, Ancient Angels demonstrates that angels (angeloi) were also a prominent feature of non-Abrahamic religions in the Roman era. Following an interdisciplinary approach, the study uses literary, inscriptional, and archaeological evidence to examine Roman conceptions of angels, how residents of the empire venerated angels, and how Christian authorities responded to this potentially heterodox aspect of Roman religion. The book brings together the evidence for popular beliefs about angels in Roman religion, demonstrating the widespread nature of speculation about, and veneration of, angels in the Roman Empire

All those years of verb conjugations…et pour rien?

Sarkozy admits French language a hoax after Wikileaks exposé.

Zut alors!

(H/T: Language Log)

The Granny Woman trudges up the muddy road
that leads to the head of the holler
where her patient, impatient, awaits her ministration.

An anxious father greets her at the door.
She makes her way to the back room
where sisters and female cousins
are whispering courage to the woman
doubled over on the lumpy, white-metal bed.

She washes her hands in a basin
and opens up her bag,
rummaging for just the right instrument.
A knife slipped under the mattress
will draw away the pain,
the stabbing fiery declamation
that new life is on its way.
The sharpness of the blade
matches the sharpness of the labor—
and, God willing, intimidates it into silence.

Now the Granny Woman begins quietly
to sing,
to chant,
to cast her spell.

Who knows how long it will take?
It doesn’t matter:
Granny is here.
Granny is here.

She and everyone have entered the sacred moment.
They will stay there as long as it takes.

I missed this when it first came out in 2009. Anthropologists have constructed a “genetic” tree noting the developments and variations in the story of “Little Red Riding Hood.”

Contrary to the view that the tale originated in France shortly before Charles Perrault produced the first written version in the 17th century, Dr Tehrani found that the varients shared a common ancestor dating back more than 2,600 years.

He said: “Over time these folk tales have been subtly changed and have evolved just like an biological organism. Because many of them were not written down until much later, they have been misremembered or reinvented through hundreds of generations.

“By looking at how these folk tales have spread and changed it tells us something about human psychology and what sort of things we find memorable.

“The oldest tale we found was an Aesopic fable that dated from about the sixth century BC, so the last common ancestor of all these tales certainly predated this. We are looking at a very ancient tale that evolved over time.”