This story about what is happening to the mortal form of Seymour Papert is a tragedy, and ineffably strange.

“So a lot of children gradually are taken vocay and the convense.”

Quickly… let’s cheer ourselves up wih a wonderful note from a comment on Mary Beard’s blog, which I am going to steal quite without permission:

Plenty of comedy value in classicists trying to speak or understand Greek (or, as we like to call it, “modern Greek,” as if to register our disapproval of these upstarts for daring to speak such a debased form of the language). I remember seeing what appeared to be a strange linguistic business in Athens, advertising “metaphors and additional corrections” (METAPHORAS KAI EPIDIORTHOSEIS). It really meant “removals and repairs”.

The phrase is very beautiful - “metaphoras kai epidiorthoseis”.

And here is a tower, built of hope and words.

(I really, really wish this Times blog would do its comments from the top down, like the rest of the world).