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Not according to legend. Besides, 100 Euros will buy you just about anything on the Reeperbahn...

upside: any elicit drug [...]

[...] and there is no putting pandora back in the box [...]

by twitter (104583)... Eris's journal entry is not a bad summary...

[spit take]

[replaces coffee-soaked keyboard]

Twitter, you're still operating under the delusion that nobody knows your sock puppets? Although I do appreciate the Freudian slip: You spelled it "Eris". She is, of course, the Greek goddess of discord. But you probably knew that in the first place, which is why you made her your pseudonym's pseudonym.

http://www.pantheon.org/articles/p/pelias.html

will release a patch to fix THIS viral attack REAL soon...

BTW, I "did a Google" and searched for "etymology veritas" and got page that said, "truth, goddess of truth"

I clicked the URL, and veritas is not there...but, verity is...

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?l=v&p=3

I guess etymonline needs to "verify" their listings...
------

http://www.pantheon.org/articles/v/veritas.html

does have it, and Romans appear in the definition. I guess Symantec is going to feel the IRS is the new rear-reaming Romans.

--

But, makes you wonder... who piqued the IRS' attention. A "slip" of the tongue in Ireland? I guess some dragons will be getting slain... Imagine the IRS auditors salivating and rubbing their hands in glee (to Austin Powers.. with a little bit of Ren/Stimpy voice thrown in (Or, if you like, Simon Bar Sinister...)): "You owe US.. **O**N**E** BEEL-YUN dollars...(YEE--hee--haah--haah-haah-haah...)"

I bet the Symantec eyes POPPED out at that board meeting.

Moral of the story about rampant M&A activity: Don't lie about the assets value, OR, just don't make the purchase/acquisition...

Interesting: word image: "backyard"

Besides, Fabulinus is a minor Roman god of infants. Seems mostly approriate for this planetlet...

I'm Greek also. While Artemis is more well known as being goddess of hunt and Selene as goddess of the moon, I tend to agree with this comment.

Probably, I was more amused by it being listed on the spec-sheet as PlaysForSure/Janus

Janus being the 2-faced Roman god of gates and portals
http://www.pantheon.org/articles/j/janus.html?esc

It was because I was 2/3rds elf. No, no, it was because I discovered the Karma Chameleon. (Yeah, bad joke, I know...)

Nope! Uranus was discovered by William Herschel.

Uranus was an early Greek God of the Sky, Son of Gaia. The word predates the english use of "Your Anus" by a couple thousand years.

Ha! When I went to that page, I got a bunch of old folks in the the header image. I wonder how many of them have any idea what an iPod is, let alone that their church is going to have a videocast for download. What do you think they'd say if they knew what was going on behind closed doors at their quite, little Baptist church? I can see it now...

"That Steve Jobs is the spawn of Satan with his evil little iPods! Burn them all!!"

p.s.- You may have to refresh a few times to get a pic of Methuselah's siblings.

Or maybe Homer should sue everyone for ripping off the Illiad

Now of course if you dramatize the Greek Myths, there are details a modern audience isn't going to accept. Naturally, you can't show these details. But you have to be true to the spirit of the story you're trying to tell. If there are parts of the story you can't tell honestly, you shouldn't tell them at all.

Now of course if you dramatize the Greek Myths, there are details a modern audience isn't going to accept. Naturally, you can't show these details. But you have to be true to the spirit of the story you're trying to tell. If there are parts of the story you can't tell honestly, you shouldn't tell them at all.

Lions were common in Greece, Persia, and India until the time of the Roman Empire. North African lions just recently went extinct in the wild.

You're still pronouncing it wrong.

It's "YOU-rain-us."

http://www.pantheon.org/miscellaneous/pronunciatio ns.html

Could you please provide a reference for how the names ought to be pronounced? Every single pronunciation guide I could find on-line said, to the last one, that the pronunciation of "Zeus" is [ZOOS]. I've had an interest in Greek Mythology for some time, and I've never come across any other pronunciation. If there actually is a pronunciation that is more correct than that, I am very curious to know what it is.

Here are a few references I found when attempting to find a pronunciation guide:
http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Diction ary&va=Zeus&x=0&y=0
http://www.pantheon.org/articles/z/zeus.html
http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/society/A0853377.htm l
http://library.thinkquest.org/J002110/zeus.htm
http://www.yourdictionary.com/ahd/z/z0012500.html
http://reference.allrefer.com/encyclopedia/Z/Zeus. html
http://www.gods-heros-myth.com/godpages/zeus.html
http://www.hyperdic.net/dic/zeus.htm
http://www.uwf.edu/english/lanier/Pronunc.html

I've also noticed that nobody seems to make Horseless Carriages anymore (and after they showed such promise). Likewise, the Difference Engine has been a total flop. I do, however, expect we will see in the future some use made of the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary, though no use has been made of it in the last 1000 years since it was discovered.

Like....
the Norse creation myth...
or how about the Egyptian one? Or maybe Greek? or Babylonian

..was there all along in a way: Loki is the Norse deity representing deceit and under-handedness: the Sly One, the Trickster, the Shape Changer

http://www.pantheon.org/articles/c/cerberus.html More random info.

This has to be the most ignorant and trollish post on /. ever

Kama has found mentioned in texts as early as the Vedas. Initially he was regarded as a creative spirit who welled out of Purusha, the supreme male element. Some parts of the Vedas go even farther and say that Kama himself was the supreme creative being, self-existent and sprung out of the cosmic waters at the beginning of time. In this context he was the supreme god who created everything else and whose first emanation was desire and whose second was the power to achieve that desire.

The Vedas are texts prepared over long lengths of time by diverse persons and the older versions were modified frequently. Thus Kama is found mentioned in many forms, all of them being some aspect of creativity.

Later, as Hindu Mythology progressed and developed into what it is today, Kama became identified with sexual desire, a more frivolous aspect of his creativity. Kama is depicted as a handsome youth who carried a bow entwined with flowers and shot arrows that produced love in their targets - That's your cupid.

The aim of Kama in Indian literature deals with pleasure and love. It is hypothesized that Kama teachings came into existence because of frustration in married life in a patriarchal society where marriages were arranged for convenience, while marriages of love were uncommon. The Kama literature was written in a technical format and is thought to have been written for the people of the higher castes because the social atmosphere of the time permitted very little private time for a husband and wife. Sexual relations were seen as the only allowable token of affection a husband could show his new bride, but at the same time, sex was a source of anxiety for the couple because it was one of the only activities privately shared by the couple and stood as the grounds for which the relationship was based. The lower castes did not have such problems because the men and women interacted on a daily basis, and therefore were able to develop relationships not solely based on sexual performance.

The best known of the Kama literature is Vatsyayana's Kamasutra, which was written around the third century C.E. It is a technical account of the social structure dealing with manners, morals, sexology, and culture in the third century.

This has now been bastardised by a western interpretation, that translates the very connotation of Kama to fucking.

If you've had a girlfriend, I'm sure you'd know there's a difference between sex and making love.

You can read more about Eastern Indian mythologies and beliefs at:

www.deliriumsrealm.com
www.pantheon.org
I could write about "Soma" or "Sura", but I'm sure you'd conveniently choose to ignore that, just like you'd this post

This has to be the most ignorant and trollish post on /. ever

Kama has found mentioned in texts as early as the Vedas. Initially he was regarded as a creative spirit who welled out of Purusha, the supreme male element. Some parts of the Vedas go even farther and say that Kama himself was the supreme creative being, self-existent and sprung out of the cosmic waters at the beginning of time. In this context he was the supreme god who created everything else and whose first emanation was desire and whose second was the power to achieve that desire.

The Vedas are texts prepared over long lengths of time by diverse persons and the older versions were modified frequently. Thus Kama is found mentioned in many forms, all of them being some aspect of creativity.

Later, as Hindu Mythology progressed and developed into what it is today, Kama became identified with sexual desire, a more frivolous aspect of his creativity. Kama is depicted as a handsome youth who carried a bow entwined with flowers and shot arrows that produced love in their targets - That's your cupid.

The aim of Kama in Indian literature deals with pleasure and love. It is hypothesized that Kama teachings came into existence because of frustration in married life in a patriarchal society where marriages were arranged for convenience, while marriages of love were uncommon. The Kama literature was written in a technical format and is thought to have been written for the people of the higher castes because the social atmosphere of the time permitted very little private time for a husband and wife. Sexual relations were seen as the only allowable token of affection a husband could show his new bride, but at the same time, sex was a source of anxiety for the couple because it was one of the only activities privately shared by the couple and stood as the grounds for which the relationship was based. The lower castes did not have such problems because the men and women interacted on a daily basis, and therefore were able to develop relationships not solely based on sexual performance.

The best known of the Kama literature is Vatsyayana's Kamasutra, which was written around the third century C.E. It is a technical account of the social structure dealing with manners, morals, sexology, and culture in the third century.

This has now been bastardised by a western interpretation, that translates the very connotation of Kama to fucking.

If you've had a girlfriend, I'm sure you'd know there's a difference between sex and making love.

You can read more about Eastern Indian mythologies and beliefs at:

www.deliriumsrealm.com
www.pantheon.org
I could write about "Soma" or "Sura", but I'm sure you'd conveniently choose to ignore that, just like you'd this post

Siva (Shiva)

Do you know much of the many Nyssas which the Gods Osiris and Dionysus founded -- and that "Dionysus" itself means "God of Nysa" meaning that He was born there? Googling "Nysa Osiris Dionysus" makes for interesting reading! (Since everybody can Google I'm not gonna bother with links.)

According to Religions, the first Nysa was in Egypt. Osiris went a-touring the world. He founded a Nysa in Arabia Felix, and one in India that some think is today's Peshawar.

Dionysos (I alternate spellings religiously) was from the Nysa in Arabia Felix. Or maybe a Nysa in what is today NE Iran, to the SE of Caspian, on the road from Tehran to Balkh in Bactria. The Persian legend says that He first cultivated the Vine in these mountains around their Nysa, producing His entheogen, Wine.

The Nysa of Dionysos is also placed in Libya or Ethiopia. And here we meet an interesting concept, "(A)Ethiopia." The Greek means "Burning Eyes" and it's easy to see why sub-Saharan Africans might be so called. The "Aeth" can, however, also refer to "ethereal" and as such is the root of our English "ether." It refers to the "upper air" a realm of Gods.

It is the root of the name of Aeetes King of Colchis, Son of Helios the Sun, and father of Medea. Colchis is the region to the east and southeast of the Black Sea, it's where the Golden Fleece was kept for Jason to fetch. There are maps showing this region to be called "Ethiopia!" Herodotus records the presence of woolly-haired people there, and it has been guessed that a Pharoah Sesostris (I forget which) founded a colony there.

(The Royal Family of Persia claimed descent from Aeetes through Medea. If biblical Jesus is a descendant of biblical Esther and her husband a King of Persia, then biblical Jesus might actually be the descendant of a God: Helios!) St. Helena mother of Constantine "the Great" ("the great what?" is my question) was from a Balkan Nysa, though whether this be the same as Drepanum later Helenopolis I don't know.

There is a Nysa in Greater Syria that is also associated with Dionysus.

Strangely, the Nysa in Anatolia was founded much too late to be a birthplace of the God Dionysos, like 3 centuries before Julius Ceasar. The Religion of Dionysus was imported to Greece from Anatolia, but not from Anatolian Nysa.

All of this is Googled and approximate, the reader is urged to good sources like pantheon.org for more accurate and useful stuff.

If there's space for Madonna in the Kabbala, then I'm sure there's space for a decent FPS where you frag Golem's in Prague. The manual for the Kabbala game might take several years to read though.

Numbers, greed and ignorance are all they infinite. If a program is nothing more than a mathematical formulae, why not directly allow the patentability of numbers?
That way corporations will find an infinite source of revenue!
Let them follow the Midas path. :)

What's in a sig?

Does your comment mean he now takes Paypal?

from the faces-inclined-in-many-directions dept.

Janus looks in two directions, not many; thus the pejorative usage indicating that the abusee is "two-faced". And quite appropriate; the face MS Janus presents to the music
commercialisation industry is of security and protection, while one of restriction and control gazes down on the unwashed masses.

Notably, Janus is the god of gates and doors but not windows; what can this mean for Microsoft's next operating system release? Certainly it will be more opaque than current offerings. Perhaps we also have a clue as to the MS Doors Startup Sound - "Waiting for the Sun"? But Microsoft's wait is over. Perhaps it's really "The End"?

Such opportunity for dismal wordplay!

Gilgamesh was the builder of the boat

It was part of the Epic of Gilgamesh, but Utnapishtim built the ark.

Houres and houres of good looking girls

A two-faced god that claims to stand between the primitive and civilization, but is in fact just a product of the primitive superstition of a decrepit culture.

Perfect.

Saturn Day, Sun Day, Moon Day, Mars Day, Mercury Day, Jupiter Day, and Venus Day

... which makes sense, sort of, until one realises the planets are named after roman gods, in latin. But modern day astronomical terminology is based on both latin AND greek. For example, our solar system is the Sol system. Named after our very own star, the sun, which has the roman name Sol. However, that which is commonly known as the sphere of influence of our solar system is known as the heliosphere ( ... if we exclude the Oort cloud from our solar system and regard it as a debris field instead... Open for discussion, ofcourse! ) which is named after Helios, the Greek god of the sun.

However, for planetary bodies we usually agree on roman names. ( Whoever the hell named Sedna after an inuit goddess needs to spanked... Whoever called Sedna a planet in the first place needs to be spanked! ) This, to return on our whole day-naming scheme thing, does make for some more confusion considering the names of the days refer NOT to the gods but to the planetary bodies themselves. Sunday, Zondag, sonnstag... English, Dutch and German all refer to sunday as the day of the sun, not the day of the Roman god Sol or the Greek god Helios. Likewise, monday refers to the moon itself, rather then the Roman goddess of the moon Luna or her greek equivalent Selene. Makes sense? Thought not...

Saturn Day, Sun Day, Moon Day, Mars Day, Mercury Day, Jupiter Day, and Venus Day

... which makes sense, sort of, until one realises the planets are named after roman gods, in latin. But modern day astronomical terminology is based on both latin AND greek. For example, our solar system is the Sol system. Named after our very own star, the sun, which has the roman name Sol. However, that which is commonly known as the sphere of influence of our solar system is known as the heliosphere ( ... if we exclude the Oort cloud from our solar system and regard it as a debris field instead... Open for discussion, ofcourse! ) which is named after Helios, the Greek god of the sun.

However, for planetary bodies we usually agree on roman names. ( Whoever the hell named Sedna after an inuit goddess needs to spanked... Whoever called Sedna a planet in the first place needs to be spanked! ) This, to return on our whole day-naming scheme thing, does make for some more confusion considering the names of the days refer NOT to the gods but to the planetary bodies themselves. Sunday, Zondag, sonnstag... English, Dutch and German all refer to sunday as the day of the sun, not the day of the Roman god Sol or the Greek god Helios. Likewise, monday refers to the moon itself, rather then the Roman goddess of the moon Luna or her greek equivalent Selene. Makes sense? Thought not...

Sol is the sun, which is being pulled via chariot by Apollo, who is the God of the sun.

Depends on who you ask. 1 2. Different authors often wrote conflicting accounts of the same heroes/gods. It's luck as to which ones win out. It's alot like history ;)

No really, that's gotta be my favourite tale about Loki!

Where Odin's horse Sleipnir came from

I used to think that Loki was pretty much a rat-bastard, but after reading a bit more mythology, he did have a good side, and was definately more of a trickster God.

Also, the events leading up to Ragnarok are necessary, as Ragnarok is fated and necessary.
All the dead Gods will be reborn...

Frankly, I don't worship any God, but if there is a Martian one I'd sure like to know its name.

He was an extremely gifted mortal...

Or... he was a brigand and a murderer... I guess it all depends on what you consider gifts...

whatever...

Only on Slashdot will you find a word like Sisyphean.

...used wrong. Well, if not wrong, not quite right. I don't think Sisyphus was under a lot of pressure, he just had to push that damn rock every day. It was hard work, and it was repetitive, and he never, ever got it to the top of the mountain, but there wasn't a deadline or anything. Think of it like patching Windows (ok, not just Windows, but this is slashdot) security holes - that's a sisyphusian task... it's painful and it never ends.

Whatever...

As soon as the law makers get their opposable digit out of their anal orpheus...

Hey! That's orifice, not Orpheus!! Don't confuse a Greek man-god with a body opening.

'scuse me?

Selenites eh? In French, a Selenite is an inhabitant of the moon (from Selene, greek goddess of the moon)

There ought to be *something* that can satisfy them in this bestiary. If it's not enough, well, there's plenty more deities and mythical personaes on the site...

Looking at different posts there seem to be allot of educational sites listed, along w/ the obvious jokes. It's useful to have specific links, but I would advise that you teach kids to google for info. I have a younger brother who is currently 11, and booth he and I are glad I taught him how to use googles different features(he because he can find stuff easily, me because he doesn't come to me for help now)

as for specific links I remember finding this one for world mythology(remember thow, some myths may be questionable for young kids). It's a fairly comprehensive encyclopedia for myths and legends

Hmm... You never know with these god types. Bulls, golden showers, making it with swans.. As well as the more common sort of thing.

Ever heard of Tellus?

http://www.pantheon.org/articles/t/tellus.html

Pantheon.org is your friend (really!). Cupid is also mentioned in the last part of that article.

"He tricked the gods into eating bare bones instead of good meat. He stole the sacred fire from Zeus and the gods. Prometheus did not tell Zeus the prophecy that one of Zeus's sons will overthrow him. In punishment, Zeus commanded that Prometheus be chained for eternity in the Caucasus. There, an eagle (or, according to other sources, a vulture) would eat his liver, and each day the liver would be renewed. So the punishment was endless, until Heracles finally killed the bird." from here The part about being chained eternally in caucasus and having its innards picked out may be more prophetic than NASA intended...

Well, it's not entirely true that community writing doesn't pan out. The author mentions Nupedia as a failed effort, but there are many examples of places where this kind of "group writing" has worked very well.

The best I can think of is Everything. I spend many hours reading the stuff there every week. Though it cannot be called an encyclopedia by any stretch of imagination, I've found it to be a very valuable source of general contemporary info.

Then there's the Encyclopedia Mythica.

Someone just mentioned Project Gutenberg too. It's a community effort that's coming out very well indeed. I know that it's not not community authorship, but a community effort.

There are many more counter-examples I can provide. Hell, even the usenet archives are a very useful source of info sometimes.

Community writing should not be written off (pardon the pun) lightly.

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Two things that bothered me:

• Hakul's dragon form shouldn't have had a wolf-head. Too reminiscent of Mononoke Hime, visually. I mean, a girl tending the wounds of a bleeding white wolf whose head is as large as her body? I've got a poster of the exact same scene.
• Disney's foley-musicians. I'm not 100% sure this was a mouse-corporation addition, but their fingerprints are all over it. Disney's got a crew of classical musicians who've practiced Peter and the Wolf a few too many times, and who like to synchronize musical tweeters to a character's every blink and gaze. During the scene where Chihiro is nervously descending the stairs, they go absolutely overboard and turn her into a full-fledged calliope.
  
  The same thing happened in Kiki's Delivery Service too- Kiki was descending a random staircase, and for no reason at all they decided it should play like a piano. They feel a need to stuff in extra stimulation to keep us Yanks in the seats.