Greek Beds and Vista Pasting

Thinking about Plato's example of the bed to exemplify his concept of ideal forms, I googled "Greek word bed" in various ways. Most interesting was a thread on a group I think is called B-Greek. They were discussing a New Testament verse in which "two" (duo) were in a bed, specifically asking whether the "two" were specifically both male. The thread wound up discussing the fact that men often shared beds when traveling, as late as Lincoln's time (I'm not sure what Lincoln has to do with it, but that sets off all sorts of connections for me of people sleeping in the Lincoln bedroom in the White House) and about generic pronouns for human beings in various languages. One really interesting post discussed the history of the use of the word "he" to describe both men and women, stating that the word "they" was used in the singular up until about 1745 when a grammar (written by a woman!) prescribed the singular "he" instead. The poster went on to say that it was a man who fought for women's rights who argued in Parliament for women to be included in the idea of "mankind" and to be referred to using the generic "he"; this poster also cites court cases that tried to determine whether or not women are "persons" under the language used in the law--I think this was in Canada. The discussion is worth looking up, sifting through to get all of the thread, if you get the chance. Meanwhile, I started wondering if the word "kline"--the word from which we get "recline" and "clinic"--was the word that Plato used. The thread I mentioned above brought out the fact that Greek (as is usually the case) has more than one word for what we translate into English as bed. One early result: http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/Furniture/Furniture.htm.

I'm still researching, but I took a side trip into how to cut and paste using Vista--my current computer related question. I've been frustrated by not being able to highlight a web address, for example, and paste it onto this blog; instead, I've been doing it the (gasp!) old-fashioned way--writing it down, then typing it in. This was especially frustrating when I was posting the course description for my new ENG 387 course on the UNCW English Department site. I couldn't figure out how to copy it from my Vista WORD document to the form provided online and had to retype the whole thing, count words, proofread, etc. Aren't we spoiled?!? I actually can remember the days before computers, typing everything on a manual typewriter, using Wite Out, composing in longhand, etc. In fact, my experience with blogs rather than journals is in its infancy. But this seems to work: Highlight the text you want to copy, hold down Ctrl and hit C on the keyboard. To paste, hold down Ctrl and hit V. Seems to work.