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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."
An address in a dead language available only in a dead video format. I suppose that should be expected...
Seems 100% accurate to me, just a little short on the details and context. Plenty of folks know some juicy tales of paper tape and Aiken labs.
But what can you do? He was dead on right about the future of the home computer, and he made that future, or broke it, depending on who you ask. He is a brilliant businessman.
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Toro
Whatever is said in Latin sounds profound.
Ewige Blumenkraft.
I think it lost something in the translation from Klingon.
Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
Because it happened and someone reported it. That's how news works.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
And here I am, thinking I was missing something by not attending Harvard...
I think I am going to start a new religion.
It will be called The Church of the AntiReal. We will be dedicated to driving a certain dead video format even further into the ground, not for any logical reason mind you, then it wouldn't be a proper religious crusade.
I dont read
Now that this is cleared up, will you marry me?
Wait, don't run away!
He makes the perfect role model for a greed-driven, hedonistic, capitalist society. At least Rome had the virtue of being honest about its.
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
Anybody else reminded of C3PO's narration of the characters' story thus far to the Ewoks in Return of the Jedi? It was probably his intention to mimic C3PO. This made me smile :)
"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.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Biographies of Gates, including critical ones, all make it pretty clear that he dropped out of Harvard precisely because of his vision of the future of computing -- in the form of the Altair -- having arrived and of there being no time to lose.
If you have a different version of history why not share it?
I'll go ahead and non-anonymously disagree and see what it does to my karma, too :)
/.
This is at least as interesting to me, a nerd, as, say, yet another article about Final Fantasy n+1 being maybe exclusive maybe not exclusive maybe coming out this year maybe not coming out this year. Or another article in which someone who was very influential at one point in time but is now completely irrelevant babbles about how they think Apple/Unix/Windows/Whatever is alive/dead/goingup/goingdown/slamdancing. Or another askslashdot in which someone comes up with a completely fabricated question about "which distro of Linux should I run on my new fridge." Or dupe of a dupe. Or... well, you get the point.
It appeals to me because, like many nerds out there, I've been shut down when discussing something I found neat because non-nerds don't seem to enjoy conversations that involve thinking too hard. But this guy - he said fuck it, and basically co-opted the Harvard Commencement just to do it. Rock on, Harvard nerd, rock on.
From a different angle, has this story making the front page in any way taken anything away from more "deserving" stories? Anything that's really super-duper relevant is gonna hit the front page eventually, even if there are fluff pieces like this one up there.
So I guess I just don't see that it would even be worth posting a comment asking why it was put up in the first place - on several levels it has at least as much, if not more, merit than much of the other content on
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
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.
Elen sìla lùmenn' omentielvo
Youve never heard of 'Lost'?
Where have you been living the last three years. On a desert Island...?
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beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his mind he dreams himself your master
Shouldn't that be I:IX:XXX?
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"
Pining for the fjords
In Russia consiliae, Lingua Latina TE loquitur!
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
That was all part of the joke - in the program distributed to family & guests, it didn't SAY "John Harvard, Jedi Knight," it said "Latin Salutatory: Iohannes Harvard, Eques Iediensis." And then all the student programs had an insert with the transcript and an English translation. So we (the graduates) got to read along and laugh at all the dumb jokes (he called Yale the death star, yuk yuk), thus appearing to understand Latin like the good little Hahvahd sophisticates we're presumed to be. It wasn't "stupid," it was just a bit of a light inside joke.
BTW, can any other slashdotters who attended in a non-student capacity verify that you didn't get the translation? It was definitely an insert, and not part of the regular program, but obviously I can't be sure who got them and who didn't.