From jmpfund@bgnet.bgsu.edu Fri Dec 20 09:23:41 2002 Received: from mailscan2.cac.washington.edu (mailscan2.cac.washington.edu [140.142.33.16]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.12.1+UW01.12/8.12.1+UW02.12) with SMTP id gBKHNfCK042984 for ; Fri, 20 Dec 2002 09:23:41 -0800 Received: FROM mxu7.u.washington.edu BY mailscan2.cac.washington.edu ; Fri Dec 20 09:23:40 2002 -0800 Received: from smtp02.bgsu.edu (smtp02.bgsu.edu [129.1.5.18]) by mxu7.u.washington.edu (8.12.1+UW01.12/8.12.1+UW02.11) with ESMTP id gBKHNYl4023392 for ; Fri, 20 Dec 2002 09:23:34 -0800 Received: from [129.1.105.78] (dhcp-105-78.bgsu.edu [129.1.105.78]) by smtp02.bgsu.edu (Switch-2.2.4/Switch-2.2.4) with ESMTP id gBKHNXw22359 for ; Fri, 20 Dec 2002 12:23:33 -0500 (EST) Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Sender: jmpfund@mailstore.bgsu.edu Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: <3E032970.6010003@methymna.com> <3E032970.6010003@methymna.com> Date: Fri, 20 Dec 2002 12:23:33 -0500 To: classics@u.washington.edu From: "James M. Pfundstein" Subject: Re: Parada of the Spartoi Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" X-Filtered: Sendmail MIME Filter v2.3.1 smtp02.bgsu.edu gBKHNXw22359 X-AntiVirus: Sendmail Anti-Virus Filter smtp02.bgsu.edu 4.1.60 4223 gBKHNXw22359 At 7:42 AM -0800 12/20/02, John McChesney-Young wrote: >James L. P. Butrica wrote in part: > >a student went >>to Parada for information about Hestia and found what looked to me like >>mush that referred to Hestia as a woman as well as a goddess; the student >>then paraphrased it in her own words, and the result was incomprehensible. >>Or is the Parada website different from the Parada discussed here? > >That I don't know, but the article on Hestia at the site I was referring to: > >http://homepage.mac.com/cparada/GML/Hestia.html > >doesn't say anything I would interpret that way, although I suppose >a student might take the wording used for her vow of virginity, "she >swore an oath that she would be a maiden all her days" to mean >something along those lines. > >I do tend to be skeptical of the authority of web sites, but in my >spot checks of Parada I've found it to be accurate (except a >typographical error I found once, a transposition of numbers in a >citation as I recall). That said, I'm perfectly willing to lower my >confidence in it if others have found problems with the information >there. Parada's is one of the few web-sites I actually recommend to my myth students. I subscribed to the allied e-mail list for about 42 seconds once-- that I _don't_ recommend, and it might have been the source of the Hestia mush that afflicted Dr. Butrica. Parada's site was also the source of the most amusing piece of plagiarism I've ever seen. A student had turned in a paper that was riddled with contradictions and evidently plagiarized. It turned out his source was Parada's comparison of Disney's _Hercules_ with the canonical Heracles myths. http://homepage.mac.com/cparada/GML/DisneyHercules.html The student didn't even realize that the two columns were supposed to represent contradictions, so he just strung them together, as if they were a coherent exposition (e.g. "Hades is an evil force revolting against the established order. Hades, as lord of the Underworld, is part of the order of the world, and he is not evil, even though mortals, fearing death, might consider him a hateful god"). He was quite surprised when challenged, which should not have surprised me-- but did. JMP("Putting off grading again") .