Is it just me, or is the Summer Olympics resembling one of those kids in the days of street lights and “come out, come out wherever you are”, that just kept hiding. I have been waiting since the beginning of the actual summer for this all to start. The jig is up, let the games begin.
Here is my main issue - why am I actually waiting? I love Canada first and foremost but the Summer Olympics has never really been our countries time to shine. 12 medals in Athens in 2004 - 12! Team USA had 102. I was a smart child, before understanding that you had to live and breathe your country for a span of two weeks and decided to cheer for Team USA during the 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics. These were the days of Gymnastics featuring Shannon Miller and Dominique Dawes that made me want to swing [...]
kamari beach: santorini, greece.
Filed Under (Greece) by on 06-08-2008
Tagged Under : athens, Greece
escaping to the islands.
after an eventful stay in athens (read part I of the trip here) we departed for the islands: our first stop the fabulous, famed santorini. there are a number of ways to travel between the greek islands, depending on your time and budget there are different speed boats which depart continuously from the port of piraeus - from slow, hulking ferries to high speed ships and ultra fast speed catamarans. we chose to fly on one of the daily flights, making it a sweet 45 minute trip as opposed to a possible 8 hour voyage by ferry.
santorini is the southernmost island of the cyclades and 240 miles to the southeast of piraeus (mainland greece.) all the individual greek islands belong to a larger group of islands, most prominent are the ionian, the cyclades, the dodecanese, and the aegean. crete, by far the largest and most diverse island, is the [...]
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It was during the 2004 Summer Olympic Games in Athens that “Indioms” was added to the Sharma lexicon, due in no small part to the newest member of the clan - my dear, patient husband (boyfriend at the time) - who has the uncanny ability to tease my father without getting teased too much in return (unless it’s about his likewise uncanny ability to nap. he’s a champion napper. he would gold-medal in all napping competitions worldwide. i am so proud).
But I digress.
It was during those Olympic Games that the first Indiom was uttered. Or at least, the first one that we wrote down and have used regularly since.
What was it, you ask? I shall tell you, but only through the dialogue as I remember it, and with a quick caveat.
My. Father. Loves. The. Olympics. When the Games are happening, they are on the TV constantly. We forego the news, we [...]
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Symmetria Meeting: Aesthetic Plastic Surgery
Filed Under (Greece) by admin on 05-08-2008
Tagged Under : athens
The most “beautiful” conference is organinised this winter in Athens. The 2nd International Symmetria Meeting will bring together an international faculty of distinguished plastic and aesthetic surgeons from around the world.
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Nana Mouskouri in Athens
A misanthropic moment, just one amongst many, just lately. Strange to think that as I sit here on this warm stone step of the acropolis, looking down at the city lights, just a few hundred metres away is Nana Mouskouri, Greek singer, (whose music, incidentally, I cannot stand), singing the last song of her last ever concert.
Nana, now 73 years old, announced her retirement in the local papers today. She’s held in high regard here – in fact by most Greeks everywhere. Everyone’s been talking of nothing else for days. In England, no one even knows – or really cares. There she was considered a laughable figure, a graceless Greek woman with silly hair and stupid-looking glasses.
Tom Disch died, and so did Alex Solzhenitsyn, but their deaths have just slipped past the cultural radar with hardly a blip. Alive, Solzhenitsyn made an enormous contribution to [...]
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Vox Day looks back in history at the Athenian system and how it was doomed to failure. America is making the same sort of mistakes.
Of course, all of the ominous parallels between latter-day Athens and America notwithstanding, it must be admitted that history seldom repeats itself with any great degree of precision. It is said to rhyme, however, and there can be no doubt that while America attempts to sponsor democracy in the autocratic Middle East, America’s European allies are moving away from democracy and toward oligarchy in much the same way that formerly democratic Athenian allies in Samos, Mytilene, Corcyra and Chios did. As America attempt to forcibly install democracy in Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine, it has all but vanished in Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and 21 other member states of the European Union, in which only the citizens of Ireland are permitted a voice in [...]
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The 13th International Anti-Corruption Conference (IACC), takes place from 30 October to 2 November 2008 in Athens, Greece where Human security, climate change, compromised livelihoods and energy security are some of the critical issues of sustainability which will define a common future.
Register in the 13th Anti-Corruption Conference 2008.
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Greece: Ancient Meets Contemporary
Filed Under (Greece) by admin on 04-08-2008
Tagged Under : athens, Greece
(GREEK NEWS AGENDA) Work on excavating ancient Pellina in Thessaly has begun and is continuing at a rapid pace, local authorities said on July 28, in a project that ultimately aims to create an archaeological park with various educational, recreational and sports facilities around the ancient site. The immediate goal is to clean and display the ancient wall, and to calculate its course. Ancient Pellina or Pellinaion was situated on the left bank of the Peneus River in western Thessaly, between Trikki and Farkadona. The first ancient reference to the city that survives was in Pindar, who cited it as the home of the athlete Ippocles, who won a race in the Pythia Games held in 498 B.C. Ancient accounts and architectural remains yield information about the city mostly during and after the 4th century B.C. Athens News Agency: Ancient Pellina archaeological park; Region of Thessalia: www.thessalia-region.com (Photo: Peneus River )
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Improved access for Athens-protected resources
Filed Under (Greece) by admin on 04-08-2008
Tagged Under : athens
We will soon be introducing a new feature to improve access for Athens-protected resources that you access using STUDENTS\ or STAFF\ before your network username. This feature will pre-set a ‘cookie’ on your machine when you access certain pages.
Try it yourself - go to our demo page and click on the A-Z of Electronic Resources. If you haven’t got the cookie on your machine, you will see this screen (above) - but only for the first time. Click the orange link to continue.
Tell us what you think about this new feature by emailing athens@bcu.ac.uk
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Introducing Shibboleth
Many of the electronic information resources which Sheffield Hallam University subscribes to currently use the Athens access management system to confirm that users are members of a subscribing institution.
Over the next year, many services will be moving from Athens to a new system called Shibboleth (via the UK Access Management Federation).
For most services the change will be invisible and you will still login to them using your SHU username and password.
One of the main advantages of Shibboleth is that if you have logged into shuspace you will not need to log in again to access resources within LitSearch.
To access Shibboleth managed SHU resources which you may come across independently on the internet, look for a link to “Institutional login via UK Access Management Federation”.
Phasing out Athens
A small number of resources will continue to be accessed only via Athens over the next few months. Most are expected to move [...]
