Holy shit!

Keith is interviewing some Congressman (Stephen Cohen), and he made a Roman mythology reference to Janus!! And better yet, he used a paraphrase of Obama's own words to do it. He said, "this is January, a month that is named after Janus, and Janus looks forward, but he also looks backward." (or as close as I can get to a quote from memory).

Fantastic!!

Man, we really need more intelligent discourse. All those years of debating the pronunciation of nuclear... I am starved for it. And I am now a new fan of Congressman Cohen!

My brother sent me five lines of Greek today and asked me to translate them for him. Apparently, two of his coworkers have been going around about the translation of these verses, and since I know Classical Greek, he thought he'd get my opinion. The text he sent is scanned below the cut.

( he said it's from the book of John, apparently Chapter 1, verses 1-5 )

It's been a long time since I've translated anything seriously, and I'm hardly a Biblical Greek/Koine expert, but I proposed the following preliminary and then "final" translations. Classical scholars, please feel free to comment on my choices.

( it's somewhat lengthy )

Yes, I made some choices that were deliberately different than what others have done (at least as much as I know them... I don't think I've ever read John frankly; I don't think I made it that far). I just don't understand what "In the beginning was the Word"... what does that mean anyway? It could probably be tightened up a bit, but it seems serviceable to me.

EDIT: ( more discussion of the definite/indefinite article )