Cheese Bread and Medlar - Earlier

Anna Tambour presents

The virtuous medlar circle
thoroughly bletted

the cellar

— More Irresistibles —

a selection of links you might find of interest

Note: This is the lower level of the cellar, storing the oldest vintages

The upper cellar is here

"I hate

quotations. "

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Daily Cheese, Bread

& Medlars

My response to Humpty Dumpty as a child was, did he fall, or was he pushed.

- P.D. James

But as the scientists inform us, toads do not always sound like birds. The Mexican burrowing toad emits a loud gutteral moan... and "a chorus of them sounds like a shipload of seasick landlubbers"...Other species emit nasal quonks, deep moans, faint buzzes, shrill liquid trills, whistled wheets, warbling chirps, raspy snores, metallic vibratos, weak low-pitched toots, short squeaks, doglike barks, deep low-volume honks, or explosive grunts.

And this is only the beginning of the devastation wrought upon the scientists by the poetic muse.

- Robert M. DeGraaff,

The Book of the Toad

(see this month's top "Irresistible")

We like to think of [dinosaurs] as creation lizards, or missionary lizards.

- Frank Sherwin, researcher and author at the Institute for Creation Research museum

A surprisingly frequently asked question is can you fly on an airplane with a rabbit.

- Beth Woolbright, To Fly or Not to Fly

This began as a site where I could share some books and writers I've loved over the years, especially the more obscure ones that people might not have read in college. But since I put together the etymology dictionary, it's becoming a site for people who are curious about what sort of no-life obsessive-compulsive would do something like that.

- Douglas Harper, Brambles

It's the true mark of making it in Australia when you've got this many Port-A-Loos at your show.

- Missy Higgins

What I would like are more mixed and negative reviews of books. If you look at the reviews right now, you see a vast sea of saccharine. I refuse to believe that this is such a golden age that 90 percent of the books being published are great.

- Jeff VanderMeer

Australian (cricket) fielding has been sloppier than packet custard

- Richard Hinds, Sydney Morning Herald

This text (The Twelve Chairs) was the most popular comic novel in Soviet Russia and so amused Stalin that Ilf and Petrov both died normally.

- Seth Wolitz

There is a startling difference between the prices that university libraries must pay for academic journals owned by commercial publishers and the prices for journals owned by professional societies and university presses.

- Carl T. Bergstrom and Theodore C. Bergstrom , The Economics of Scholarly Journal Publishing

You may be interested to know that global warming, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking numbers of Pirates since the 1800s. For your interest, I have included a graph of the approximate number of pirates versus the average global temperature over the last 200 years. As you can see, there is a statistically significant inverse relationship between pirates and global temperature.

- Bobby Henderson, Open letter to Kansas School Board

The salsify, or "vegetable oyster," is a typical example of a most
unaccountably slighted vegetable with us, and yet it is highly appreciated on the continent and in the United States.

- Philip E. Muskett, "The Art of Living in Australia" (1909?)

Like the peanut, it forms pods and seeds on or just below the ground. To achieve this, the flavor stalk elongates and penetrates the soil. The bulbous tip creates a tunnel through which the fertilized flower, attached just behind the tip, is drawn into the soil.

- James M. Stephens, describing the Bambara Groundnut

all the news that interests me - banner, Magic City Morning Star

The Times of India had ruled the roost in Mumbai for so long that no one even bothered to ask, "What came first, the news or the paper?"

- Bachi Karkaria, The Times of India

"Hilarious and irritating, this man and his adventures will make you laugh and think about your dreams and how good it is you never tried to make them come true."

- Guillermo Maynez, reviewing one of my favourite books, Tartarin de Tarascon by Alphonse Daudet

Can the outcomes of military conflicts be predicted, just like the weather? - The Economist,

And now, the war forecast

Soon every band in the world will have a dedicated keytar player. - Gizmodo

Must epidemics always catch humanity by surprise? They kill far more people than war does, while billions of dollars are spent watching the political shifts that presage war.

- The next generation of diseases are in hiding, somewhere, Donald G McNeil Jr NYTimes Dec 28 2003

"David Alexander, Confronting Catastrophe: New Perspectives on Natural Disasters. Oxford University Press (Dec 2000), Remaindered, 2003"

but now due Oct 22 2005

super eggplant: Another blog about knitting, sewing, baking, and other stuff - title

Pacific Catch opened Monday, putting the word "fish" in official. - Marin Independent Journal

When people blame words they are actually blaming the society that uses them.- John Simpson, chief editor, Oxford English Dictionary, quoted by the BBC, Farmers stew over 'couch potato'

It's just as well government doesn't have control of the dictionary. - Anonymous

You have to respect a student who can stay well-accessorized in the rain. - Molly Fergus, student correspondent, CNN

The serious part of learning something is done outside the classroom and by the individual. - Ben Peek

Under America's system of religious freedom, church and state are separate. Still, we have learned that faith is not solely a private matter....These are the good works of good people relying on the wisdom of the Good Book, a book that tells us how God rescued life from the flood waters. And like Noah and his family, we have faith that as the waters recede, we will see life begin again.

- President George W Bush, speech

Using a church key style can opener, make a few more holes in the top of the can. - Beer Can Chicken with Cola Barbeque Sauce ,

Food Network

"Please don't talk about dinosaurs" - what I was told a few years ago by US elementary school officials after I gave an invited talk about Australia. I'd showed the children pictures of fossils that I said "dated from the age of dinosaurs."

"Sure, part of me recognises the contradiction in buying someone a book for no good reason in the week where people say you should buy a book for no good reason, but so what? I have friends. Some of them can even read. Pornography, mostly, but it's still reading. And because I'm going to do it, I think you all should do it, too. So: spread it round. Buy someone a book. Preferably one they'll like."

- Ben Peek, spruiking (for no good reason) Buy a Friend a Book

Belch thou near no manis face with a corrupt fumosity.

- Boke of Nature, or Schoole of Good Maners

As anyone who's gained or lost weight well knows, getting fat really ruins your life, and getting thin doesn't fix it.

- Jean Gonick

Scientific theories have to prove their worth by surviving the scrutiny of professional scientists. It is only then that they can be taught as science. Intelligent design doesn't deserve special treatment.

- Joe Kaplinsky, Creationism, pluralism, and the teaching of science

Spiked

The injection of live animal cells into human brains is likely to raise ethical concerns and fears of pig viruses being transmitted to humans. But researchers say the benefits of a cure outweigh such concerns.

- Gaia Vince, Pig cell implants in Huntington's trial

New Scientist, 11 Aug 2005

"What we found was completely unexpected. We found that the human and pig cells had totally fused in the animals' bodies," said Jeffrey Platt, director of the Mayo Clinic Transplantation Biology Program. ...Importantly, the team also found that porcine endogenous retrovirus (PERV), which is present in almost all pigs, was also present in the hybrid cells. Previous laboratory work has shown that while PERVs in pig cells cannot infect human cells, those in hybrid cells can. The discovery therefore suggests a serious potential problem for xenotransplantation.
- Gaia Vince, Pig-human chimeras contain cell surprise

New Scientist, 13 January 2004

Christians enter here

All others enter here

- Repent America

"cotton wool, sticking plasters and restorative stiff drinks" Whew, I only recognized one of these without having to think about it. Talk about two peoples divided by a common language!

- Larry Brennan, comment on Making Light: Memo to British Fandom

FLORAL BASKET TO KIM JONG IL
Pyongyang, July 29 (KCNA) -- Leader Kim Jong Il was presented with a floral basket by the first Japanese delegation for the study of the Juche idea on a visit to the DPRK. It was handed to an official concerned by Yoshio Suzuki, president of the Hokkaido Society for the Study of Kim Jong Il Works, who is leading the delegation.

- top story, Korean Central News Agency

If you find the tap off please could you turn it on and leave it running. Thanks.

- gallery notice beside running tap 'art project' protesting water waste, The House Gallery, London

For the building of a new Japan

Let's put mind and strength together,

Doing our best to promote production,

Sending our goods to the peoples of the world,

Endlessly and continuously,

Like water gushing from a fountain.

Grow industry. Grow grow grow!

Harmony and sincerity. Matsushita Electrical.

- Company hymn

Observations are gold; hypotheses, silver; and conclusions, bronze.

- The Corpus Callosum

The maggots are not harmed by this paint, and they are released as adults after they have completed their development.

- Maggot Art

Here's Halgerda tessellata, displaying the cosmopolitan insouciance that has made it the envy of boulevardiers from Manitoba to Kwajalein.

- Bouphonia

The most famous book of domestic reference in the English language.

- Cover blurb for Enquire Within upon Everything, 113th edition

Everyone grumbled. The sky was grey.
We had nothing to do and nothing to say.
We were nearing the end of a dismal day,
And then there seemed to be nothing beyond,
Then
Daddy fell into the pond! ...

- Alfred Noyes

Happy are wee

who from virtue are free.

- Anon. English Poetry manuscript; with a group of recipes, some magical. 1702.

...she was a little solitary wasp - handicapped, dependent, timid - but she accepted the ministrations of a man and became a friend

- George D. Shafer, The Ways of a Mud Dauber

I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when you looked at it in the right way, did not become still more complicated.

- Poul Anderson

'Life is very strange' said Jeremy.

'Compared with what?' replied the spider.

- Anon. (in N. Moss Men Who Play God, 1970)

" So big and bright are these black fishes' bellies that one time I thought a bedsheet had blown into the lagoon, but no. It was only two mantas

twirling in circles."

- Susan Scott

" Wind is caused by

the trees

waving their branches."

- Ogden Nash

Who needs an afterlife when you have got sweets?

- Tim Richardson

Here's Halgerda tessellata, displaying the cosmopolitan insouciance that has made it the envy of boulevardiers from Manitoba to Kwajalein.

- Bouphonia

One creative mind in a thousand is perfectly sufficient. Any more and the country would collapse in chaos.

- Yasunori Nishijima

Everyone grumbled. The sky was grey.
We had nothing to do and nothing to say.
We were nearing the end of a dismal day,
And then there seemed to be nothing beyond,
Then
Daddy fell into the pond! ... - Alfred Noyes

I should not think of devoting less than twenty years to an epic poem.

- Samuel Taylor Coleridge

A classic is something everybody wants to have read and no one wants to read.

- Mark Twain

Ruthie was at that tender age when monsters first start to show up. Not that they ever stop, of course, but no one tells you that when you're 4.

- Jean Gonick

Man: Hello, my boy. And what is your dog's name?

Boy: I don't know. We call him Rover.

- Stafford Beer

21 January 2005