Now that I have my laptop back and have found a temporary and partial fix for my spam-comment problem (more on that soon), it’s time to start posting more regularly. I will continue posting occasional footnotes on events of the day, but only where I have something original, however trivial, to add. If you want to be informed of every passing event, go to the big dogs such as Instapundit. I will mostly try to cultivate my own little garden: ancient literature, the ancient world, Latin and other languages, and whatever bits of modern culture interest me. In other words, this will be even more of a cultureblog (mostly non-contemporary) than it already is, rather than a ‘warblog’ or politics blog.

On my apolitical non-pseudonymous blog for classicists, I’ve been posting an ‘Ancient Joke of the Day’, in PDF files, since half of the jokes are Greek and I like to include the original text with all the accents. There are 75 so far, covering all of November and December and the first half of January. (I actually started the project in November of 2000, and took it up again on January 2nd after a five-year gap.) I plan to post an ‘Ancient Joke of the Day’ here as well, starting today. These will be ordinary blog-posts, with the translation first and all Greek translated so it will appear in HTML. Anyone who wishes to read the new jokes and skip the rest of this site can link to the category archive (as soon as I create it). Warning: I will recycle some of the PDF jokes on this site.

The second new feature will be a weekly ancient or modern text, to be posted (in English) every Sunday afternoon. The first few will be letters of the younger Pliny, starting today with 3.14, his account of the murder of a cruel master by his own slaves. Like many of Pliny’s letters, it raises numerous issues worth pondering. The comment feature will allow a slow-motion virtual seminar.

Finally, I will be posting miscellaneous notes on whatever I’ve been reading, listening to, or watching (on DVD, since I don’t have a cable).