Star Wars Takes Over Harvard Commencement

An anonymous reader writes "Harvard University celebrated its 356th Commencement on Thursday. It is tradition at Harvard is to have an undergraduate deliver a Latin Salutatory address. This year's speaker, Charles Joseph McNamara, delivered an address all about Star Wars in Latin! TheForce.net has a write-up of the event, and the speaker was really hilarious. He apparently doesn't like Star Wars that much, but it's still awesome. The video is available online, and you too can see him do a Yoda voice and make light-saber motions ... in front of over 30,000 people. The speech is under "Morning Exercises" on the Harvard site. The Latin Oration begins at about 1:09:30."

Comments

Re:rewriting of history

[dsanfte]

Gates isn't stupid, but, in the end, it's extraordinary ruthlessness, not extraordinary brilliance, that has given him the edge and allowed him to succeed. And, as far as I'm concerned, that makes him a bad role model.

He makes the perfect role model for a greed-driven, hedonistic, capitalist society. At least Rome had the virtue of being honest about its.

Oblig.

[revengebomber]

"English motherf***er, do you speak it?"

Latin hasn't been a "home language" anywhere for hundreds of years - no one speaks it as their first language. It is used only as a formality out of tradition and the reading of old texts; English is the international business language now.

Each student in Italy? Ehm, no!

[myrrdyn]

I'm an italian student. For sake of precision, is not correct that EACH student in Italy must learn latin...
In fact latin is mandatory only in "licei", the non-technical secondary schools (maybe the most popoulos, i don't known).
Note that the vast majority of students in scientific (math, physics, chemistry, etc) and technical (engineering, architecture,...) faculties in Italy come from licei, so in fact most of "scientist" and engineers in Italy known latin.

No, because in classical Latin times

[Flying pig]

there was no constant rate time measurement and certainly not to the resolution of minutes. As I recall, hours were of variable length depending on the seasons, and would be measured by at best sundials and at worst things like water clocks or candles. The Romans really weren't that interested in accurate time measurement, since the applications for it did not exist. So (and better scholars will I am sure correct me) I guess the time would be "about the VIIth hour"