I misspoke (or, rather, miswrote). I had not meant the comment to be about the socio-economic structure beyond the writers of the New Testament and cadre closest to Jesus (I was not speaking of the apostles only, the inclusion of Paul, Mark, and Luke was deliberate). It is perhaps true that many of the original 12 may have been illiterate, though I would not go so far as to say only Matthew had a job that required education -- we know several of the disciples were fisherman, but we do not know the original occupation of all of them. Judas Iscariot seems to have been Jesus' accountant, which could imply a training outside of fishing.

Also, highly educated Paul was a tentmaker by trade, so a training in "blue collar" work does not necessarily imply a lack of education.

As to "copying" scrolls and literacy: while manuscripts of literature were becoming increasingly common, they were still a rarefied commodity, enough that copying them was primarily done by scholiasts. Primary medium for reading among the general public would have been in letters, wax tablets, public inscriptions, writing on pots, and graffiti.

This has always bothered me as well. Even if someone claims that (w)oinos doesn't mean wine (and Liddel-Scott-Jones provides ample evidence that it can't mean anything but wine, especially when Greek already has a word for unfermented grape juice - botria), the context of the passage makes it clear it was fermented when it mentions people having too much drink and not being able to tell the quality of what they are drinking. Only wine could do that.

Most people in Israel during Augusts' and Tiberius' reign (there was no year 0, our counting -- not theirs, obviously -- of the calendar jumps from 1 BC to 1 AD) were multilingual in Aramaic (a language they picked up in Babylon) and the Koine dialect of Greek (a language they picked up when Alexander the Great came through the area) and were almost certainly literate. If they had advanced education, which Jesus, Paul, and Luke (who wasn't raised in Israel) most certainly did, they would also know Hebrew and speak Latin. Paul certainly spoke all four languages, since he was pharisee, he spoke Hebrew, his letters all showed a command of Greek, he was raised in Israel so his first language was Aramaic, and he was a Roman citizen who could argue cases in court, so he spoke Latin.

The writer of the Gospel of John shows complete fluency in Greek. Contrarily the writer of Revelations can barely speak Greek, suggesting a non-native speaker (though I have also heard it argued that Greek in Revelations isn't muddled the way a non-native speaker muddles a language, but in the way someone coming out of a trance and is still extremely drowsy muddles a language).

There is evidence that the writers of the gospels were who they say they were (many historians have suggested the gospels aren't written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John), since the Gospel of Matthew (who was a tax collector) talks more about money than any other gospel, and the Gospel of Luke (who was a physician) shows more interest in medical miracles than any other gospel.

Yeah, the Venus de Medici is modeled on the Aphrodite of Knidos (Cnidus), which was sculpted by Praxiteles: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphrodite_of_Cnidus

Praxiteles pioneered the use of the S curve, a naturalistic and subtle curve in the body (in the Venus de Milo, the S curve his ham fisted and exaggerated. See this unflattering angle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wenuszmf.jpg The mark of a decent sculpture, IMHO, is there are no unflattering angles). He was also the first to sculpt a fully nude female (again, the Aphrodite of Knidos). Before him, the completely nude female had always been taboo in Greek sculpture.

The Venus de Milo does not belong on this list. It was a third rate statue from the Hellenistic era by an obscure sculptor. It wasn't mistakenly attributed to Praxiteles, a famous sculptor; it was intentionally misattributed to him. The sculpture doesn't in any way match his style, and the stylistic details of the statue clearly place the statue several hundred years after Praxiteles. There is a very, very good reason no one ever shows pictures of the back of the statue, because the sculptor gets very sloppy. The statue was meant to sit in a niche in a wall, and if no one was ever going to see the back of the statue, the sculptor wasn't going to be bothered putting any effort into making it look nice - a common technique among low quality statues in the Hellenistic period. The reason the statue is famous is that the Italian government had forced the Louvre to return several famous statues to Italy, and the curators at the Louvre needed something famous to compete. They found this third rate statue and gave it a lot of great press. That is all the Venus de Milo is. It is the Justin Bieber of statues.

Having lived most of my life in Florida and attended Florida State, I can attest the FSU/UF/UM is probably the most publicized three-way rivalry in college football. I have heard of the Australia/New Zealand/South Africa rugby rivalry, which means it has to be pretty big, since I know nothing of rugby.

Hades was not a prominent figure in mythology. The treatment he gets in modern movies (namely Disney's Hercules) is completely out of sync with his treatment in mythology. He mostly just wanted to be left alone, with the occasional adventure abducting Persephone or dealing with Orpheus. He certainly never tried to one up Zeus or Poseidon.

It would not be difficult to simply change the setting of the fight so they aren't nude in a shower, but alone in the barracks or something.

Despite Card's objection, I think it will be difficult to make the children in Ender's Game the same age in the movie. That was the initial hold up of the movie. Hollywood wanted to turn the story into a teen flick, and Card insisted the characters have to be pre-pubescent. The problem is, I don't think audiences could take pre-pubescent dramatic violence very well. I hope I am wrong; the story is powerful enough that it deserve a fair shake on the screen.

Since #7 has come up quite a bit with people saying one of two thing a) Gringo is not derogatory or b) gringo comes from "Green, go!"

First, the two positions are incompatible. If gringo really did come from an English phrase, then it was expressing antipathy towards US interventionism, and by extension US peoples present in Latin America. If Gringo is not derogatory, then its origin can't have been meant as derogatory. I am not suggesting anyone has adopted both position simultaneously, but it seems many people are bringing up one point or the other.

As to the whether or not the term is derogatory. I have travelled through Latin America on several occasions. When I was in Mexico, it was unquestionably derogatory, since the people calling us gringos were the same people slashing our tires. At other times, it was used affectionately or not at all. It will not come as any surprise to anyone (hopefully) to know that Latin America is not a single culture. Some cultures in Latin America used the term in a derogatory way, some didn't.

As to the folk etymology that gringo comes from an English phrase: This is simply not true. The origin I presented in #7 is not 100% certain, but it is the most likely origin. Gringo is first attested in Spanish literature in the Diccionario Castellano, published in 1787, where it was listed as meaning anyone who spoke Spanish poorly. By 1849, it can be seen in Mexican literature, where its meaning does have a negative connotation. US military uniforms did not become green until 20th century, more than 50 years later. The term is at least a century older than the green uniforms. Furthermore, if "green" was slang for the US military, then the term would not universally morph into green-go. It just doesn't make any sense.

I won't repeat timefillmyeyes' points, as I think they stand on their own. I will only add a couple of points.
1) The great majority of what we know about the presocratics is both severely fragmented and heavily filtered by later philosophers who had their own axes to grind. I think mordecaimordecai goes too far in declaring (it was a declaration, not an argument) that the theories of the presocratics were not made from physical observation. There is not enough historical evidence to support such a position to the exclusion of all others.
2) Trying to understand the exact context of their beliefs, while a worthy goal, is impossible. Calling them scientist-philosopher-mystics is as much a distortion of the truth as calling them scientists or philosophers or mystics. They themselves had no notion or understanding of those roles. Their self perception was certainly closer to "none of the above" than "all of the above."
3) My point in writing the article was to demonstrate that calling the theories naive is in itself naive (to be clear, in light of my previous point, "theory" is a necessarily modern word. The ancients themselves had no notion of the modernly defined term), but refusing to divest them from their context is also naive. Feminist, Marxist, and many other philosophical schools make a point of explaining the past in terms of a modern philosophical framework. Such a process is impossible without divesting the meaning from the historical context. Indeed, I would argue that Plato and Aristotle make a point of doing it to the presocratics. Galen certainly discarded the mysticism of the Stoics and focused exclusively on their understanding of the physical sciences.

NSA definitely does not handle human intelligence, and they don't have agents. Their role is clearly defined in Executive Order 12333. NSA is solely responsible for communications intelligence and protecting US communications (i.e. encryption).