Sunday, August 22, 2004

first post

this is my first blog of any sort, and i'm regarding it as something of an experiment -- not quite a 'lark,' but i like the ludic quality of that approach, so i will hope to hold on to it.

'corax' has been my screen name since the mid-90s, back when purdue's email system still used bitnet. when we switched to various versions of 'purdue.edu,' i kept the handle 'corax,' and in april 1997, i put up an instructional website, which i used to call 'the corax zone.' it has been running nonstop since then, and now has its own dedicated URL -- www.corax.us -- an a newer, more streamlined portal page. at this point 'corax' [as i also now call the site] is fairly dense -- it's what i term a 'hypersite' because it depends heavily on *metasites* to take you to the material you need. but the point of it all is to provide, as i say, 'a comprehensive online curriculum for classical studies.' it's no exaggeration to say you could teach an entire MA program in classics from this site alone.

corax.us morphs all the time, of course, because the web itself does so. the average life-span of a website is 90 days, did you know that? this means that many links expire quickly. by the same token, new resources are being put online all the time, so one has to be vigilant about updating such a site.

what i have not yet added, as i've indicated above, is a blog. CORAXIOMS is meant to fill that gap. we'll see how it fares; i'm envisioning it as a place for me to express my ideas about the field of classics in specific, and the academic world in general. i expect there will be posts on texts and authors, but also about learning and teaching, about scholarly publishing, and about the profession [and the professoriate]. who knows what else. maybe some random extras [my favorite recipes?]

meanwhile, for an auspicious beginning, oblations to hermes, god of communication and eloquence; to apollo, god of the arts; to athena, goddess of wisdom; and to dionysus, god of bliss and ecstasy [there's altogether too little of those in the world generally or the academy specifically]. and off we go!