Links and Thinks: Hackers look to Odysseus, the Acropolis is closed

The hacker group LulzSec seems to compare itself to the companions of Odysseus, according to an illustration of an ancient Greek warship on its website. Odysseus is both a very positive and a notorious figure in Greek literature, a reputation which perhaps began with his opportunistic soliciting of gifts and the strategic lies he tells in Homer's Odyssey.

The Acropolis is closed to visitors.

The NY Times Review of Books has an interesting discussion about translated novels and the dominance of English on its blog. If you look about two thirds of the way down the page, they get to what seems to be the heart of the argument:

Rather, it seemed that the contemporary writers had already performed a translation within their own languages; they had discovered a lingua franca within their own vernacular, a particular straightforwardness, an agreed order for saying things and perceiving and reporting experience, that made translation easier and more effective. One might call it a simplification, or one might call it an alignment in different languages to an agreed way of going about things. Naturally, there was an impoverishment. Neither of these authors have the mad fertility of Claus; but there was also a huge gain in communicability, particularly in translation where the rhythm of delivery and the immediacy of expression were free from any sense of obstacle.

Was it possible, I asked myself, that there was now a skeleton lingua franca beneath the flesh of these vernaculars, and that it was basically an English skeleton?

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