h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

You could add a few lines about his death. You mention his last conversations, but the extraordinary thing to me is to read words spoken by a man who had just taken poison and could feel his body gradually going numb.

In the words of The Philosophers Song

"Yes, Socrates, himself, is particularly missed;
A lovely little thinker but a bugger when he's pissed!"

http://www.laughnet.net/archive/misc/monty3.htm

You are right, but then I think everything that Socrates said was amazing to one degree or another. The very fact that he announced his importance to Athens and Greece in the face of the fact that he knew he would suffer death for such "arrogance" is shocking as well.
Once you start adding details of his words, I myself (because I think he is so influential) would not be able to stop

It may also be pointed out that Socrates life could have likely been saved if he had begged forgiveness and renounced his beliefs. He could have also been smuggled out of prison by his friends, but neither of these options were worth the short term gain to Socrates, who accepted death as another part of life, and felt we should have nothing to fear of the unknown if we have lived for good.

With all these excellent suggestions going about, if I add them in, how do I make sure that you get credit for the information added?

Just put a note somewhere in the text, or a link to the appropriate person (using in GuideML mode will show the link in the border on the the right but not in the main text) and the sub-editor'll do the rest.

Great article, BTW

26199

Thanks. I'll try andd o that... if I ever grow to understand what this whole GuideML/HTML suff is. Toasters still confuse me.

Guide ML is relatively simple. However, if you ever want to use it for other things, I'd learn HTML first.

You don't need to worry about Guide HTML unless you really want to. As someone else has already said, just put a note in your article; the subs and editors will do the rest.
I enjoyed reading the article.

Oh, cheers. In that case when (if) I ever have the time to change the entry properly I'll just leave a little note for them then.
Thanks again

CAN you change entries after they've been approved? I haven't even so much as got anything looked at, so I don't know how that would work.

Once they've been approved, only the editors can make changes, so if you want to make changes, leave a note for the editor of the article.

byeeeeeeeeee

At the very beginning of H2G2, they explained (and it's still in the rules somewhere) that if you contributed to an article you would be put down as an editor. But they didn't explain how to contribute to an article, which was pretty key I would have thought. Never mind eh old sport?

Contributing to an article is fairly easy... just write the update, submit it, and it'll get added to the article. It's the job of the editors and sub-eds to make sure that if there's already an article on something you've written about, whatever you write gets added to the existing article.

A note somewhere (in the article) pointing in the right direction'd be appreciated, though...

26199

And of course the irony of these latter entries is that we'll never know just how much editorial license was employed by the people upon whose works we are reliant for the modern day image of Socrates.

Whilst I agree whole-heartedly that the stories as told by Plato provide the basis for an inspirational and far-sighted figure, (spot on about his death by the way,) shouldn't we be advising a modicum of healthy cynicism?

Otherwise I'd agree with everyone else...Top banana!

r.

Very true, for all we know Plato could have been writing about a friend named "Wibble," who ate raw fish and sang bawdy songs to the women folk much to their distaste, and decided to give him a better image by portraying him as super-wise.
But either you deny Socrates' existence, accept it, or you highlight the possibility that Plato could be glorifying him in which case you accept that he exists anyway. Drinking in the article with a touch watery scepticism is what (I hope) most people will do anyway.
Cheers for the compliment

That's always a good idea...

thanks