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 upper level of the cellar For earlier vintages The cellar deeps is here |
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| "I hate quotations. " - Ralph Waldo Emerson | Daily Cheese, Bread & Medlars |
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More Quotations
"Some day she will walk
out that door and come back only when she has time. Make sure that
she wants to come back."
-
John Klima,
One of my favorite posts I ever wrote
The first rule of aggressive
bag-pipe playing is to get out of the way of the things you play it
at.
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"Undine Love" by Kathleen Jennings,
Andromeda Spaceways Inflight
Magazine
There's one more thing you
should know about the art disease. It's highly contagious.
-
"The Art Disease" by Dennis Danvers, Electric Velocipede
The domestic patterning of the activity of folding clothes is extended in this work to include pairs of gloves as they are hung out to dry, also recalling the absent presence of their former wearers. - Parramasala events - Art Hey…uh…do you think I could buy you dinner or something? You can always blow up the world afterwards. - Bob, in Flash Hole by Ethan Fode Beit Shemesh's growing ultra-Orthodox population has erected street signs calling for the separation of sexes on the sidewalks, dispatched "modesty patrols" to enforce a chaste female appearance and hurled stones at offenders and outsiders. Walls of the neighborhood are plastered with signs exhorting women to dress modestly in closed-necked, long-sleeved blouses and long skirts. - Aron Heller, Israeli girl's plight highlights Jewish extremism, Associated Press Those who are outwardly lawless and wicked often are heard saying, "for God's sake" or "for Christ's sake." It is done in an irreverent, blasphemous way. Those who are more cultured use substitutes: "for Goodness sake" "for Pete's sake" "for the love of Mike" "for crying out loud" etc." - Minced Oaths: An important message for believers These books are so dark that no light can escape their gravitational pull. - Spencer Pate, reviewing David Peace’s Red Riding Quartet, Light of Lost Words A timberyard lies just beyond the dust, welcoming the felled hearts of Borneo on flatbeds of diesel. – budak, Fuelings, The annotated budak He has the most distorted ideas about wit and humour. – Arthur Herman Gilkes, headmaster, in his report to the parents of P.G. Wodehouse the unpleasant, acrid smell of burned poetry – P.G. Wodehouse, The Fiery Wooing of Mordred Could Homo sapiens' sizeist prejudice be holding back progress? Psychologists have been hinting at it for years, but we always assumed they were all crazy feminists driven to studying because they can't bake a decent pie. - Kate Oliver, Massive particles 'too fat to come out in public', LabLit The more successful a children's book is, the more adult readers there are. – A.C.E. Bauer, It's just a children's book, The Virtuous Medlar Circle I slightly mourn the more whimsical names but their time was past. - Sue Povey, quoted in Bye-bye boojums; Are scientists losing their sense of fun? New Scientist, 20/27 December 2008 I bought a paperback and read it. I set my alarm watch for 6:30. The paperback scared me so badly that I put two guns under my pillow. It was about a guy who bucked the hoodlum boss of Milwaukee and got beaten up every fifteen minutes. I figured that his head and face would be nothing but a piece of bone with a strip of skin hanging from it. But in the next chapter he was gay as a meadow lark. Then I asked myself why I was reading this drivel when I could have been memorizing The Brothers Karamosov. - Raymond Chandler, find the book I find people almost as fascinating as insects. – The Dragonfly Woman, The Economics of Insect Collections As a rule excited readers can be successfully calmed down by means of scholarly biology lectures, e.g. featuring the properties of allium cepa or the difference between mitosis and meiosis. Please note that it might be unwise to mention tardigrades in presence of those biology teachers who have never heard of them. - Martin Mach, The Tardigrades (water bear) Web Base Mysteriously absent from a Norwegian frozen pizza is the thick layer of grease found on Canadian frozen pizzas. - The Norway Post, A Canadian discovers brown cheese 9 Dec '09 "Did you want the Sherlock Holmes with witches" the waitress asks in the low, weary voice of someone who has been lectured on the preservation of literature too many times today. - Tansy Rayner Roberts, "Relentless Adaptations", in the Sprawl anthology Eliot’s continued popularity may be due to the fact that plagiarism seems to have acquired a certain cachet in recent years. - Spencer Pate, Poetic Justice: Rediscovering the Life and Work of Madison Cawein “Just” as a creative concept does not exist. - Val Littlewood, Deborah's Bee Book, Pencil and Leaf Was dirt the first thing Adam tasted? Was God’s beard brushing against his chin the first thing Adam felt? When he slept, did he dream of God stealing his rib, and did it crack when it came away from him? What did he make of Eve and the fact that she was the only woman for him to marry? Was he thankful it wasn’t Amy Lash? - Jeffrey Ford, Creation, Fantasy Magazine Just adding filler does not a good book make, any more than doubling the amount of flour in a cake recipe makes for a better cake. All you end up with is a dry, tasteless, crumbly mess. - Brian Baker, Amazon review . . . consider the heartbreaking, lost-innocence flavor of cashmere. - a young moth, quoted by Peter S. Beagle in "The Fable of the Moth", in the delicious collection, The Line Between I am not ashamed to admit that my memory is imperfect. Because the practice of chest radiography encompasses the entire breadth of medical knowledge it is very difficult to consider all the possibilities for the different patterns of chest radiography. As a resident, I memorized a list based on tunafish. Unfortunately, this was difficult to remember because it had nothing to do with interstitial lung disease. - Chest X-ray.com When the sun is beating down and the lizards are running, a roof, a chair and 10-cent bottles of Apache Beer can bring a lot of forgiveness. – Leo W. Banks, Murderous Madam, Tucson Weekly You're so lucky to live in Malaysia. It's one of the best places in the world to study invertebrates. – Ben Goldfarb, Fishileaks I think we’re breeding a generation of people who trust what they see on a computer screen over their own experiences, their own senses." – Matthew Kressel, I Am Not My Data, Senses Five Press [Stephanie] Cutter is a Nanette Lepore/Milly/Theory gal. - Lisa DePaulo, Lovely & Amazing: The Women in DC Power List, in Life-Love/Society-Career-Power/, Elle We ended up gassing most of the way through Eric Clapton’s set, but we only got called up for it during the awful and maudlin Tears In Heaven when the woman sitting behind us leaned forward and politely informed us that we were ruining her favourite song. We bit back out initial reaction which was to tell her that her taste was in her arse, and if any song should be drowned out in any way possible, it was that one. We bit it back because the follow-up realisation was that she was right. – Neil Williamson, Etiquette of Silence Let's talk about the disparity between developed countries and developing countries. I'm worrying about this issue because I currently live in a developed country and am paid in its currency. If I were living in Malaysia, earning in ringgit? Frankly, I would not give a shit. There's a meme that Malaysians don't read and you know why? Money. Books are freaking expensive. The average English language paperback retails for RM40 -- in Malaysia I could have seven or eight meals for that amount of money. And that's assuming the book I'm interested in is even available in the country. - Qian, ebook piracy Anything old can be made new by the right writer. – Ellen Datlow "Convince a group of Gentoo penguins that it is your birthday and you want to treat them to some Minty-Fresh Export-Quality Aadi Velli Special Non-Cola Cola to celebrate." – Kuzhali Manickavel, "A Basic Guide to Instigating Violence Among Gentoo Penguins in the Tropicool Icy-land Urban Indian Slum", Diagram In a badly designed book, the letters mill and stand like starving horses in a field. In a book designed by rote, they sit like stale bread and mutton on the page. In a well-made book, whre designer, compositor and printer have all done their jobs, no matter how many thousands of lines and pages they must occupy, the letters are alive. They dance in their seats. Sometimes they rise and dance in the margins and aisles. — Robert Bringhurst, The Elements of Typographic Style version 3.2 Wise, beautiful, indispensable. Pages to pages, this is the bible worth taking to heart. The main disadvantage of cesium as a metal for jewelry is that it explodes on contact with skin.- Theodore Gray, The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe, by Theodore Gray, Nick Mann Gray calls this book "the definitive be-all, end-all book of the elements" but I think that claim is too modest. This is what art books should be, filled with gorgeous pictures — such as the saucer of light blue liquid oxygen that would freeze a lapping tongue, the beaded artificial hip joint that looks made for a Sumerian king, and an "elegant vanadian sculpture, actually a tiny chip cut from a vanadium cylinder on a lathe." But even if the book had no pictures, it would be great. Gray is hilarious. I can't resist this quote from his first paragraph in Hydrogen (his italics): Our sun alone consumes six hundred million tons of hydrogen per second, converting it into five hundred and ninety-six million tons per second. Even at night. Not one to decline offers of free food and beverages, my duck thought it a shame to pass up a lunchtime treat of stir-fried mopane worms with snow peas. Belonging to the same family as the Atlas moth, mopane worms are Sub-Saharan delicacies that feed largely on the mopane tree and are harvested in vast numbers as a cheap source of protein and to serve hungry football fans. But like most things good for you, the worms are sadly overrated as culinary ingredients. - "Budak", Worms in my salad Any specimen the camera spots which fails to match its pre-programmed ideal of carrotness is marked down as condemned, a jet of air is fired at it with infernal precision, and the misfit is blasted down into a chasm below . . . - Tristram Stuart, in Waste Just when you thought you couldn't stomach another shrill, depressing, stilted and self-righteous "environmental" book, Stuart puts out Waste. This is a highly entertaining, deeply informative, and refreshingly positive look at how we live, with many recommendations that make sense. Salvatore stayed with us until the end of the war. He learnt to speak English and to ride a horse and drive a tractor, and became quite a good stockman ... He was a wizard at rolling a cigarette with one hand and he picked up such a good vocabulary of swear words that even the sheep dogs could understand him. - Judith Wallace, Memories of a Country Childhood, University of Queensland Press, 1977 I maintain that all children should be forced to learn the piano – after that, you can read the music for anything else.- Tanaudel, Illustration Friday: Music It's the sort of restaurant where all the patrons are out-of-town tourists. - Michael Swanwick We ... would never condone the use of the word "hip." - Anticraft: Knitting, Beading, and Stitching for the Slightly Sinister One man even ended up stuck in wet concrete after wading in to pick up a stray biscuit. Custard creams get a risk rating of 5.63, the highest of all. - The Telegraph, "Crumbs: half of Britons injured by biscuits on coffee break, survey reveals" Parents be warned-- although this book is ostensibly a children's book, it is not what you'd call politically correct (Which means baby-sitters and relatives roped into reading a bedtime story to the kids will find it far more bearable than the usual fare!) - Lela Dowling, description of The Impudent Child's Picture Book of Poetry written and illustrated by her. Health scare of the week - headline, The Week 16 Oct 2009 Both my parents were given to telling medical stories — stories which might start from a description of a pathological condition or operation, and extend to an entire biography. My mother, especially, would tell such stories, to her students and colleagues, to dinner guests, or to anyone who was around . . . I would occasionally see the milkman or the gardener transfixed, listening to one of her clinical tales. - Oliver Sacks, Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood (one of my favourite books, and the best antidote to today's over-parenting) Grammars, like theatre, call for a suspension of disbelief.- Tim Mackintosh-Smith, Yemen: Travels in Dictionary Land Quidquid latinae dictum sit, altum videtur Whatever is said in Latin is profound. - Philip Matyszak, "Useful phrases", Ancient Rome on Five Denarii a Day He also tells you how to say (in "Dating") "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn" and a host of other useful phrases. Punsters are perhaps the people who best understand the flexibility of language and the power to go beyond numerical limitations. For instance, it is difficult (if not impossible) to find a joke without a dirty word or obscenity in it. Here is one with no obscenities that demonstrates the dexterity of the English language. - Tony Deyal, Pun my word, Trinidad & Tobago Express Controversial plans to legislate government spending on election campaigns is not being met with welcome support from the company community.- Promotional stress toys (Australia) Crime novels never end well. - China Miéville, on Crime Novels, in John Scalzi's blog That's a richt glottnit ee, what in the name o the wee man did you do to get a poke in the ee like that? - Scottish Words illustrated An anthropogenic photon soup floods village and cities, drowning out the view of the stars. - Marco Evers, The Death of the Night, Der Spiegel I rather like the fact that you have the title of Distinguished Professor as it suggests that you can be promoted to the next level of Extinguished Professor, much in the same way as one wants to elevate some Visiting Lecturers to Non-Visiting Lecturers. - Sydney Brenner, "Then the full professor", Loose Ends from Current Biology, Current Biology, London, 1997 Maudeen was special in many ways. Her song began with a low-pitched creeeeak like a rusty iron cemetery gate being forced open. - Sue Weaver, The Donkey Companion: Selecting, Training, Breeding, Enjoying & Caring for Donkeys (This is the definitive book on donkeys. Even if you don't think you're interested in one of earth's most intelligent species (not to mention the finest proportioned of equines) this enticer will draw you in. Great historic pictures and bray-tales, too.) Over the weekend I spotted a couple of frogs hanging out in my garden, enjoying the flowers. The first was this huge Leopard Frog, who seemed to take a liking to the Love-Lies-Bleeding. - Seabrooke Leckie, Frogs in the Garden, The Marvelous in Nature For years I have been saying that Brazil could benefit from at least one beer that is not a replica of Bud Light—and I finally found it. - Scott Solomon, Brazil's Other Rainforest, The Ant Hunter When I woke up, I thought about the dream and wondered what the music in old age homes would be like in another twenty years when I'm no longer just observing. I pictured a crowd of old farts, leaning this way and that, some asleep, some hooked up to oxygen, some whispering to themselves, and half of them half crazy. Up in front there will be a middle aged woman at the piano, playing a wobbly, slowed down, 'Black Magic Woman,' striking every note as if with a hammer. - Jeffrey Ford, Stones Hour in the Activity Room, 14theditch The owl says nothing. It is not, after all, a talking owl. - Karen M. Roberts, Awakening in Six Parts, New Fiction in Futurismic In Rome, priests stand for election like anyone else (though the emperor might announce the winner in advance) - Ibid. (This book gets my Best Travel Book Prize with Extra Cheese, for being the most informative, dryly amusing, and easiest-to-use travel book ever [and I've torn up and stamped with both feet on some], as you don't even have to leave your chair or time to enjoy this travel experience, let alone tip Philip Matyszak, your delightful guide.)
It seems books, too, were
improved by the sea—dipped into it, even the slimmest plumped up.
Ambrose
Rokewood was one of the peripheral gunpowder plot members and he was
hanged drawn and quartered (no decimals then) in the Westminster Palace
Yard on my birthday. There can be few more fertile interchanges between science and lore than that which has revolved for centuries around Cryptogams. - Giles Watson, Cryptogams: Poems about their secret lives If my hands are god’s hands, and god’s hands are mine,And god has no hands of his own There’s nothing that I can achieve with god’s help I can’t do myself, all alone." - the first verse of God's Hands by "The Digital Cuttlefish" Buy the book The Digital Cuttlefish, Vol. 1 A list of “great” poets will look quite a bit different from a list of “perfect” poets, which may have almost no overlap with a list of “spectacular” poets, which in turn may be completely different from a list of “sublime” poets. - David Orr, The Great(ness) Game, New York Times, Feb 22, 2009 Poetry can strike without regard or respect for occupation. - Hal G.P. Colebatch, Quadrant Singles go out to eat black noodles and commiserate over their lonely hearts. - Sharanya Manivannan, Black noodles and Shiv Sena wine, Express buzz Wear darker colors so that if something spills on you, it won’t be too noticeable. - Priyamvada Gupta, 10 ways a date could go wrong, The Tartan (Carnegie Mellon's student newspaper) My Dear Tommy, You and I have long cherished an affection for that elementary type of tale which Americans call the 'dime novel' and which we know as the 'shocker' – the romance where the incidents defy the probabilities, and march just inside the borders of the possible. During an illness last winter I exhausted my store of those aids to cheerfulness, and was driven to write one for myself. This little volume is the result, and I should like to put your name on it in memory of our long friendship, in the days when the wildest fictions are so much less improbable than facts. - John Buchan, dedication, The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915) A group of passionate pear lovers is promoting these unsung heroes of the fruit world. - Sarah Hudson, Pear Fest for sweet morsels "I bought a paperback and read it. I set my alarm watch for 6:30. The paperback scared me so badly that I put two guns under my pillow. It was about a guy who bucked the hoodlum boss of Milwaukee and got beaten up every fifteen minutes. I figured that his head and face would be nothing but a piece of bone with a strip of skin hanging from it. But in the next chapter he was gay as a meadow lark. Then I asked myself why I was reading this drivel when I could have been memorizing The Brothers Karamosov." - Raymond Chandler, find the book The whole plan hinged upon the natural curiosity of potatoes. - Stanislaw Lem, "The twenty-fifth voyage", The Star Diaries I slightly mourn the more whimsical names but their time was past. - Sue Povey, quoted in Bye-bye boojums; Are scientists losing their sense of fun? New Scientist, 20/27 December 2008 The 44th President of the United States may have had a tough speech to deliver, but as statements of conciliation go, of humility and of confidence, it was a cake-walk compared with the task facing his wife. Frankly, could there be a tougher decision than choosing the First Lady’s inauguration outfit?- Lisa Armstrong, Fashion Editor, First Lady passes fashion test, The Times I want to see the beginning of a shared responsibility by people, not just white, not black, not any one people, but together. . . I hope the time comes when we can just be who we are and not worry or believe that, if we call ourselves something else, we'll get better attention, better treatment. I hope that we get to the point, not because we're Christians or Jews or Muslims, but because we're human. And we want to be treated, we need to be treated, not one taking advantage, but all recognizing that there won't be peace -- there may be quiet or silence -- but it won't be peace." - Ella Mae Johnson Stop Googling myself. The people who say flattering things, you decide are mad. The people who say unflattering things make you want to kill yourself. - James Delingpole, a New Year's Resolution, The Spectator, 3 Jan '09 Browne put his problem this way: "It has been maddeningly impossible for me to read in print any word, phrase, or idiom without questing for the amusingly irrelevant anagrams or double meanings built in." In short, Browne was addicted to crosswords and other word games. He once walked with his wife to Machu Picchu in Peru. From the moment he observed that "picchu" was an anagram of "hiccup", the long-lost Inca city lost some of its magic. - Always a crossword, the obituary of Lindsey Browne, Cruciverbalist 1915-2003, Sydney Morning Herald "It is not what I don't understand in the Bible that worries me - it's what I do understand." - Mark Twain When the chances are a million to one, some see only the million, some only the one. - Greg Baum, Time for cricket to go into bat to support India, The Age (Melbourne, Australia) They just don't make movies like 'Australia' any more. And we are all the better for it. - Brandon Fibbs (honestly!), review, The Colorado Springs Gazette A German animated film...exists, however, due to its mature content, it was not imported for North American audiences. -Wikipedia, about the filmFelidae, based on Akif Pirinçci's first novel in his Felidae series Many of the most important specimens in the world are held in cigar boxes. -Stephen Jay Gould, Finders, Keepers: Eight Collectors by Rosamund Wolff Purcell & Stephen Jay Gould (the glorious photography is by Purcell), Pimlico, 1993 In this town, it's easier to hail a cab in the rain at 5 p.m. than it is to kick a local lawmaker out of office. - Clyde Haberman, Bloomberg got what he wanted but at what Price? The New York Times But pretending to douse flames that you are busy fanning does not qualify as straight talk. - Khaled Hosseini, (author of "The Kite Runner" and "A Thousand Splendid Suns") McCain and Palin are playing with fire, The Washington Post I'm thinking of making 10-foot diameter records and installing them in places where they're likely to be covered in lava someday. The goal is to play the resulting stone records on 15-foot hand-cranked Victrolas. - Walter Kitundu To watch a cinnamon peeler at work is akin to witnessing a magic show where the hand appears to be quicker than the eye. - Ian Hemphill, Spice Notes: A cook's compendium of herbs and spices Food will win the war, and the nation whose food resources are best conserved will be the victor. - C. Houston Goudiss and Alberta M. Goudiss, Foods that Will Win the War and How to Cook Them (1918) New pups are cute, but the old ones are our best friends. - Gene Weingarten, Celebrating the Older Dog, The Washington Post The wild world is becoming so remote to children that they miss out, and an interest in the natural world doesn't grow as it should. Nobody is going protect the natural world unless they understand it. - Sir David Attenborough, Attenborough alarmed as children left flummoxed...The Independent How can you debate against a tape recorder? comment by "Winnetoo" to "The VP Debate" Post-partisan, The Washington Post, 2 Oct 2008 Faster than the speed of spin - The Fact Check Wire Traditional bank branches are often quite masculine, sterile places, so the new design incorporates more earthy tones with wood and cork flooring and feature lighting.- "National Expansion", BankWest, Australia Reaction both here and in Beijing has been largely unanimous. - World News Australia, SBS, 26/08/08 We appear to have been told off in gym today, for not being friendly. This is at least observant. - David Carroll Holidays in the BlackBerry era can be divided into two categories: "soft" (where the vacationer stays in radar contact and continues to exercise his thumbs) and "hard (when he staves off divorce by switching everything off). - "Bagehot", The Economist, Aug 23 '08 Like brambles fences are rising rampantly around us. What would happen if a patch of embroided wire would meet with and continue as an industrial fence. Hostility versus kindness, industrial versus craft. - Demakersvan (design house), The Lace Fence Why wait until a world event happens before writing about it?- Steve Aylett, Interview with Andrew Oldham, Incorporating Writing, "Author of LINT wades in" We may cancel, suspend or restrict your Service by giving you as much prior notice as we reasonably can if: a) the law requires us to do so; or b) you die - Telstra Next G Network User Guide The very nature of a cucumber sandwich makes it poor throwing. - P.G. Wodehouse, "Open House", Mulliner Nights Sensationalism is a grossly undervalued and misrepresented effect of fiction. –Alistair Rennie, On the spot at Fantasybookspot 12 New Body Shapes - Cosmopolitan cover story Smythe drained his glass and placed it meaningfully on the table. I did the same, a trifle more meaningfully. - David Langford, "The Case of Jack the Clipper" in The Mammoth Book of Comic Fantasy II edited by Mike Ashley McDonalds on Mars - Constructed with crystals of Cibachrome bleach, protein, and the microscope field diaphragm. - Michael W. Davidson and The Florida State University, Microscapes He looked much more like a parrot than most parrots do. - P.G. Wodehouse, Three Men and a Maid We often convince ourselves while we argue. - Maybanke Anderson, "Should we tell the children?" The Woman's Voice, Australia,1895 Q: Is Britain the worst country to grow up in? - New Statesman Poll, London, April 2008 A: Yes. Except for Sudan, DRC, Iraq, Palestine and Belgium." - Jane Greene, in comments from readers As a citizen of Burma and an elected representative, I want to stress that, pursuing diplomatic options to convince an intransigent regime like the Burma generals, is like waiting for people to die and time is something that the people of Burma do not have. - Sein Win, the prime minister in exile of Burma, No Time Left for Diplomatic Options by Lalit K Jha, irrawaddy.org The following recipe is compulsory for all entrants . . . NOTE: to ensure uniformity and depending upon the size, it is suggested that the raisins be snipped into 2 or 3 pieces, cherries into 4-6 pieces and almonds crosswise into 3-4 pieces. - The Agricultural Societies Council of New South Wales Rich Fruit Cake Competition, (common rule for Australian country show competitions, though with different compulsory recipes, see for instance Victoria's "Boiled Fruit Cake") Your agonies - Agony mail form, Agony Masi, oxfordbookstore.com Shop all the time. - Melissa Penfold, "Be a brilliant shopper", House & Garden Magazine (Australia) March 2008 ... mouse buttons that mimic foot pedals . . . a little more flash than dash for a whole lot of of cash. - David Flynn, Acer Ferrari laptop review, Sydney Morning Herald, March 17, 2008 In a swarm you seldom see a love bug without a partner flying upside down above it, though this arrangement makes for a very low flying speed. - William Joseph, "Lord of the flies",The Last Word, New Scientist, 15 March 2008 Palmerston North police were faced with a prickly problem during a drink-drive blitz on Milson Line on Friday night when a hedgehog tried to cross their checkpoint. - Hedgehog gets police escort,The Dominion Post, New Zealand, 17 March 2008 Since the dawn of time, the pie has been central to the evolution and survival of man. - Matthew Mumford's Pie of the Day Trevor Hickman is without doubt the greatest expert on the history and development of the Melton Mowbray pork pie. - review of The History of the Melton Mowbray Pork Pie by Trevor Hickman "It is very difficult to remain the unchallenged leader in Italian fine-dining in a city where people go on Tuscan holidays and hold forth on Sicilian wines as if both were going out of fashion." -review of La Piazza Pizza Paradiso restaurant, New Delhi, in the 2006 Destination India Travel Planner, Cross Section Publications, India (Rs. 800) The balmy night air wraps around you, the candlelight sparkles in your partner's eyes, and somewhere in a secret kitchen out of sight and earshot a German chef called Thomas is busy creating culinary delights - like Maine lobster ... review of a "hidden gem" resort in Thailand, "where the dark seashore is gradually illuminated by the swaying lamps of shrimp boats" - Matthew Brace, Hotel Heaven, Confessions of a Luxury Hotel Addict, Random House Australia, 2007 Some Italian restaurants do make an attempt at putting hamburger on the menu, but hey, what's the point? It would be like eating spaghetti made by Russians. - "Restaurants in Rome", romebuddy.com Burger Burger - "And to eat", Hindi Phrase Book & Dictionary, Berlitz 2006 Sadly, as with most popular fiction, it was too ephemeral and too entertaining to warrant critical examination. - Toni Johnson-Woods author of Pulp: A Collector’s Book of Australian Pulp Fiction Covers Civilisation is the agreement to have gaps between wars. - Steve Aylett, Lint But how do we make them order lattes for $2.45 or one of those sentence-long, code word-riddled, fat and sugar-packed nightmares for $3.75? Easy. Make the coffee horribly nasty. Think about it. How many people have you seen go into Starbucks and just order a cup of coffee? Now you know why. Seriously, the stuff is like yak ass. - Daniel Brown, Star. Bucks. See? Now you get it. Food and Whining Maybe in order to understand mankind, we have to look at the word itself. Mankind. Basically, it's made up of two separate words–'mank' and 'ind.' What do these words mean? It's a mystery, and that's why so is mankind. - Jack Handey, Deeper Thoughts Green meetings are becoming increasingly popular, according to the Green Meeting Industry Council" - Elisabeth Rosenthal, Business of Green, International Herald Tribune Moths are severely underrated. Budak, of the delightful Annotated Budak It is difficult to outwit leeches. - Leeches Fact Sheet, the (Australian) Wet Tropics Management Authority and the Queensland Environmental Protection Agency, based on the Tropical Topics newsletters edited by Stella Martin Perhaps nothing will spark a lengthy dissertation from an entomologist more quickly than calling a spider a 'bug.' - Jeremy Bruno, Why spiders aren't insects (a 3-part series) The Voltage Gate "Acid brights are in, as our verdant campus displayed on Darfur Awareness Day, but some hues have yet to see the sun. Try red, canary yellow (none of this pastel nonsense) and drenched purple. The result pops, adds interest to staid outfits, but requires a little bravery to pull off." - Loren Olsen, "Spring Fashion Returns Despite Cold Weather", The News: The Student Newspaper of Choate Rosemary Hall Worms working in Atchafalaya - headline, Opelousas Daily World, Louisiana We aim to meet most client requests within one year, although crocodile bags and the even rarer matte crocodile-skin Birkins ($37,000) require longer lead times. Hermes spokesperson, Sydney Morning Herald, "Fashion: Spring Summer 2007" In my mind there is nothing so illiberal and so ill-bred as audible laughter. - Lord Chesterfield (1694-1773) This book is intended primarily for those who desire to take up the study of Entomology and should therefore be of particular value in primary and secondary schools. - Life Stories of Australian Insects by Mabel N. Brewster, Agnes A. Brewster, and Naomi Crouch, Dymocks Book Arcade, Sydney, 1946 In my experience far too many people read an encyclopedia article and think they now know something about the subject they looked up. - Duane Smith, The problem with Wikipedia, Abnormal Interests "We're seeing about 120,000 new weblogs being created worldwide each day." -now one born every second, The Guardian Why venture out into space to try and find bizarre life forms, when you can be assured of finding them right here on Earth? Science, review of The Deep: The Extraordinary Creatures Of The Abyss, Claire Nouvian, ed. If it engaged my sense of wonder it was for questions like, why are so many films with significant science content so bad? -Marcus Chown, review of Sunshine, directed by Danny Boyle , New Scientist, 7 April 2007 If you study Latin long enough, you start to write strange English. - Glenda Warren Carl Because the pleasures of reading are inseparable from the surprises, secrets and revelations that all narratives contain, we strongly advise you to enjoy this book before turning to the Introduction. - Keith Carabine, introduction to an Introduction in a Wordsworth Classic, Wordsworth Editions Defect Details: The warning label may, in use, absorb water, soften and fall apart - Reason for a bath support's recall under Australian law. Shoes both protect feet as well as, when incompatible in size and shape, present exciting factors in inflammatory conditions e.g. bunion. - Cameron Kippen, The History of Shoes: Shoe Making Website (a huge and fascinating place) Each household had a still brewing this 'acqua santa' or holy water. - Pietro Demaio, grappa recipe notes, Preserving the Italian Way The art of portrait painting has outscaled the art of landscape painting. Maybe that says something about ego.- Edmund Capon, director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, quoted in A very big head takes the Archibald Prize, Sydney Morning Herald There is far more diversity and complexity of interactions in the invisible world than in the visible realm. The bacterial world could function quite satisfactorily without visible living organisms, just as it did in the Beginning, but the reverse is not the case. - Mary E. White, Earth Alive! Mere poets are sottish as mere drunkards are, who live in a continual mist, without seeing or judging anything clearly. A man should be learned in several sciences, and should have a reasonable, philosophical and in some measure a mathematical head, to be a complete and excellent poet. - John Dryden, Notes and Observations on The Empress of Morocco, 1674 The usual excuse of junk food companies is that their products are supposed to be treats consumed only occasionally. Cottee's can hardly mount this defence when it promotes a beverage nearly as sugary as Coke as an "everyday" drink. If a child got half her daily recommended water intake from cordial, she would consume nearly 2½ kilograms of sugar in a month. - Lisa Pryor, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald about Cottee's Cordial from Cadbury Schweppes, whose ads say, "Kids like water. Cottee's makes it fun." Spam Classic - recipe from Presidents made their mark on America's food customs , Marie Hoyer's Recipes and Reflections column, The Prairie Star The booming insolvency specialist industry was riven by sudden investor doubts yesterday as two of the biggest players issued profit warnings. - The Times (UK) I wouldn’t have minded if it had come out as a kids’ book, to be sold at a price that would allow the kid to tear it up with a clear conscience. - Norman Lindsay, about his book, The Magic Pudding This beautifully produced gift book is the essential modern compendium to being a woman in the 21st century - from Brazilian waxes to coping with the failure and success of friends. - Australian bookseller's catalogue blurb (on the Mind Body Spirit page) for Pleasure: An Almanac for the Heart by Nikki Gemmell For those who want to have a quiet meal in, they can visit the hotel’s Tactics Brassiere and Bar. - Hotel press release, Auckland I think most people understand the nature of MySpace: it's for fun, so it doesn't matter if it's "real" or not. - Confessions of a MySpacer: Just can't get e-nough, New Scientist, 20 Dec 2006 Santa's fingers feel like human. Why? - a child's question to his father in India, letter to (Mumbai) "City Uncanned", "To tell or not to tell" She went to bed, and instead of lying awake all night like an orthodox heroine, wetting her pillow with tears, she fell asleep at once, and slept profoundly. - from Martha Brown, The Heiress; Collection of British Authors. vol 581, published by Bernhard Tauchnitz, Leipzig, 1861 (author's name delightfully omitted) At present, of course, I am not the author of The Irrational Knot. Physiologists inform us that the substance of our bodies (and consequently of our souls) is shed and renewed at such a rate that no part of us lasts longer then eight years: I am therefore not now in any atom of me the person who wrote The Irrational Knot in 1880. The last of that author perished in 1888; and two of his successors have since joined the majority. Fourth of his line, I cannot be expected to take any very lively interest in the novels of my literary greatgrand-father. - George Bernhard Shaw, preface, The Irrational Knot Purchasing a toothbrush has become one of life's most traumatic experiences. - Victor Baskir, letter, Sydney Morning Herald, 23 October 2006 One particular incident fired my interest in nature. One mild, overcast Sunday afternoon I was helping my father sieve soil for the garden, anticipating exciting finds with every spade of soil turned over . . . - Bert Brunet, Australian Insects: A Natural History One big manufacturer dumbfounded us by saying, "We don't consider wholemeal flour to be a characterising ingredient in wholemeal bread." - The Australian Consumers' Association, "Bread and superbread",Choice, September 2006 Our attempts to understand the biology of human behaviour cannot move forward until we try to explain things as they are, not as we would like them to be. - Rebecca M. Young & Evan Balaban, "Psychoneuroindoctrinology", review of The Female Brain by Louann Brizendine, Nature, 12 October 2006 Aspartame, the newcomer among artificial sweeteners, was discovered by chance in 1965 when another research chemis, James M. Schlatter, noticed that his fingers were sweet (these stories make one wonder about the standards of laboratory hygiene). - Harold McGee, On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen When the first Xerox machine came along it was cutting edge, even though it regularly caught on fire. - Rae Raphael In all my retirements, I have so far been able to avoid attending the celebrations of the final symposium and the farewell dinner where I would be presented with some absolutely useless gift to be used in my retirement . . . I hope that the editor will allow me to use this column to let anybody who may be planning a party for me know that I would very much like a multiprocessor work station and an electron microscope as parting gifts. - Sydney Brenner, "A retiring fellow", Loose ends from Current Biology, Current Biology (1997) My son has just sat his HSC (Higher School Certificate) English exam. He has gone through all his schooling in English without being required to read a 19th-century novel. - Susannah Fullerton, letter to ed., Sydney Morning Herald, 23 October 2006 While some people may not believe it, sometimes we actually do get bored working with computers. - Urban Potato Art "Watching insects having sex brings our own, insignificant sexual obsessions into perspective." - Steve Baker, reviewing Microcosmos Do not obtain your slaves from Britain because they are so stupid and utterly incapable of being taught that they are not fit to form part of the household of Athens. - Marcus Cicero, 77 BC Surely no one outside France cares whether the yolk is exactly in the middle of a boiled egg, and the English-speaking world, which is presumably the target for this edition, probably cares even less than the rest. - John Piggot, "A question of taste", review in Nature (June 2006) of Molecular Gastronomy: Exploring the Science of Flavor by Hervé This Mr Silvers may have not had ideals, but be unquestionably knew what to do when you handed him a still and a potato. - P.G. Wodehouse, Men in Spats Every hour, over 12 million cattle dung pats are dropped onto Australian soil. This means that each year, the 30 million cattle in Australia cover over 20,000 square kilometres of grazing land with their dung. - Karl S. Kruszelnicki, Karl Trek, "Dung beetles" "The caterpillar is one creature, at least, the may openly proclaim it lives to eat." - Robert Evans Snodgrass, Insects: Their Ways and Means of Living Among the many fatalities attending the bloom of young desire, that of blindly taking to the confectionery line has not, perhaps, been sufficiently considered. - George Eliot, Brother Jacob Garry Coombe's downfall was his stutter. Charged with assaulting his wife, his speech impediment in court was mistaken for dishonesty. He was convicted after the magistrate did not believe his evidence because there was "a noticeable tremor in his voice". Fear of stammering caused him to pause before replying so that he could think of words that were easier to pronounce. - Tim Dick, "How slip of the tongue meant justice wasn't done", The Sydney Morning Herald, August 3, 2006 The producer of Ritalin, Novartis, has even launched a picture book for children that tells the story of the octopus Hippihop, who gets "terribly scolded" because he is "everywhere and nowhere" and prone to accidents and mishaps. Fortunately, the turtle doctor knows what Hippihop has: an attention-deficit syndrome. Moreover, it knows what Hippi lacks: a small white tablet. - Jörg Blech, Time to resist the illness industry, New Scientist The physician, with his medical art and his drugs, Cannot avert a summons that has come, What ails the physician that he dies of the disease That he would have cured in time gone by? There died alike he who administered the drug and he who took it, And he who imported and sold the drug, and he who bought it. - Verses upon the death in Baghdad of the physician Yuhanna ibn Masawayh in 857 (243 H) "Transistria" (Transnistria, but what the hell) I'd once thought covering wars would be fun. - Eric Campbell, Absurdistan Aged cheese. Date Tens of Thousands of Sexy Singles over 50 or Single Seniors - ad in Google on "aged cheese" search Often I decide that I can't go on another minute without rating my favourite songs in iTunes or tidying my stationery drawer. I daydream that my lab mates look like the case of ER. Occasionally I envisage myself making a major discovery and winning a Nobel prize. - Mhairi Dupre, first-year PhD student in evolutionary developmental biology at the University of Oxford, UK, "Graduate Journal", Nature, 8 June 2006 A first grader offered everything she had (about $700) because my brother lost his dog and that made her very sad. - Neil Clarke, speaking about the reaction after his brother lost his house and "his beloved dog...who was like his child" , from a lightning strike, Clarkesworld Note that the cards are very open-ended: they don't say "give something to someone else." They don't even say "make someone happy." They say "Go do something good for someone else." And what we mean by that is: get creative. Go think about it; see what you could do. Have fun! - The Generosity Game Monaco - Luxury Yacht Show Fights Global Warming - headline, PR Leap Is it coincidence a human finger fits exactly into a human nostril? If not, why does my mum tell me not to do it? - question in "The Last Word", New Scientist,. Read the answers here Anyone see the origin? Anyone see the Big Bang? Anyone see the dinosaurs? These are metaphysical speculations. - Kansas State Board of Education press secretary David Awbrey, quoted in Josh Rosenau's Thoughts from Kansas I remember that I ate a chocolate cookie with orange marmelade filling. The cookie tasted like cardboard from space and I almost fainted by the strong sensations it caused to my tastebuds. I looked inside the halfeaten cookie and there it was; a universe consisting of small twinkling stars, suns and circulating planets. Somehow I was able to gaze inside this "cookie universe" and see the infinity that lie inside cookies. I tried staggering to describe what I saw to my equally stoned friend, and I remember myself calmly saying: "I think the sky is trapped inside my chocolate cookie..." - "The Colonel", The cookie universe and Finnish mushrooms, lycaeum.org The most distressing aspect of teaching university students in Istanbul has been answering the regular question 'What do your students in America think of us in Turkey?', to which I have yet to find a better answer than 'For the most part, hardly anything at all'. - Gerald MacLean, author of The Rise of Oriental Travel: English Visitors to the Ottoman Empire, 1580–1720 Getting caught playing poker gives professors all over the world a real reason to ban laptops in class. It is as almost as though professors all over the world were waiting for something to happen that would give them an excuse to forbid laptops and go back to their world of peaceful preaching. - Lux Gurusamy, "Banning laptops in class is complete foolishness", Drexel University student newspaper I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn't care who knew it. - Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep Give a bachelor some dal, some rice, assorted spices and masalas, a pressure cooker, some whiskey and a baggie of Mysore Maal, and he'll make himself quite a pleasant little dinner, thank you very much. - Jayaprakash Satyamurthy, Criminal English "Ummm, can't think of a title" - title of blog entry in World of Bowles: everything about me, updated reguarly. Invisible gorilla steals Ig Nobel prize - title of New Scientist 'breaking news' article Nothing is so red in tooth and claw as market forces in the beer world. - Carel Brest van Kempen, A more advanced amber ale, Rigor Vitae I was quite nervous when I began my treatment, but at the end I can actually say these wonderful people made radiation fun! - patient comment about therapeutic radiology at a medical center The removal of the tree's dead heart brings yet another advantage. The change of form from solid pillar to hollow cylinder alters the way in which the trunk reacts to mechanical stress. - David Attenborough, The Private Life of Plants, as extraordinarily wonderful a book as the TV series is great TV. But every one of his nature books is a masterpiece. Dick's shed is a place of memory. At his funeral, one of his daughters sprinkled over his coffin shavings gathered from the floor of his shed instead of the traditional rose petals. - Mark Thomson, Blokes & Sheds "I've heard people say, 'Tiger Morse was a fraud.' Well, of course she was. But she was a real fraud." - Andy Warhol and Pat Hacket, POPism: 'The Warhol' It's one of those landmark events many will likely never forget--the moment they found out that Nintendo was officially swapping the code name of its next-generation gaming console "Revolution," for "Wii." - Parmy Olson, Iwata's Nintendo Lampooned For 'Wii' , Forbes Let the college's standing drop in publications that rank universities, he said, and "my value as a human being feels like it's dropping." - Peter Cohl, an "image committee" founder for Cornell, Cornell's Worried Image Makers Wrap Themselves in Ivy, New York Times 3,779 words later, I’ve finished my English paper on the sexual identification and decision-making of Anna Morgan in Jean Rhys’ Voyage in the Dark. The paper looks quite nice when you look at it from 10 feet away - Elliot Back, Anna Morgan essay done
Getting an education was a bit
like a communicable sexual disease. It made you unsuitable for a lot of
jobs and then you had the urge to pass it on. There was never a time when dinosaurs ruled the earth. From the very beginning of creation, God gave man dominion over all that was made, even over the dinosaurs. - ChristianAnswer.Net We salute the improvement of the human genome by honoring those who remove themselves from it. Of necessity, this honor is generally bestowed posthumously. - Darwin Awards On the sixth day the Lord said, "Let there be music," and RocKwiz was born. - TV ad for show on Australia's publicly-owned SBS 'Blair's novels haven't any plots.' 'No? Why's that?' 'He thinks they're crude.' 'I must read Blair's novels some day. Not just now. Later.' 'The critics say they have a strange fearless quality.' 'Well, that's always something, isn't it?' - Hot Water, P.G. Wodehouse More than half the herring caught in Norway are now turned into fish- food and sent to the salmon farms. It doesn't help that Norway is said to eat more pizzas per capita than any other nation. - Fjordful of fish, Thalassa, SBS Grass is not as passive as it might appear. - David Attenborough, "The Leaf Eaters", Life of Mammals Few persons who have not watched a toad can form any idea of the dexterous manner in which it uses its fore-paws . - the Rev. J.G. Wood, "My Toads", Once a Week, 188 ? Bill and I now judge events in our lives as to whether they are blog-worthy. When we’re together, we have an unspoken agreement as to who gets to blog about whatever cool thing we encounter . . . And he’s crestfallen if I haven’t read his entry before we go to bed. - Julie Zickefoose, on All Things Considered, NPR Why should I not publish my diary? I have often seen reminiscences of people I have never even heard of, and I fail to see -- because I do not happen to be a 'Somebody' -- why my diary should not be interesting. My only regret is that I did not commence it when I was a youth. - "Charles Pooter" My colleagues at NOAA (the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) . . . have to have a listener on the phone every time they talk to the press to examine what they are saying. This seems more like something Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia would do. - James Hansen, NASA's top climate scientist No doubt, lack of knowledge accounts for much of the assumptions of the existence of gods – gods and not just one God, as every religion has its own god or gods, which another religion proves there is no objective ground for assuming existence. - Showan Khurshid, Freedom of Expression: the perspective of an Evolutionary Political Theory, Kurdish Media I believe that the impact of an influenza pandemic will be akin to that of a blizzard on Washington, except that the effects will be global and rather than lasting a couple of days, it will go on 12 to 18 months. It will ultimately change the world as we know it today." - Michael Osterholm, an internationally known epidemiologist who directs the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. Novelists are merely those who have failed as contributors to the correspondence column. Unable to make the grade, they drop down a rung on the ladder and write novels. - P.G. Wodehouse The first sign of getting old is when you realise that Barbie is not really sweet or beautiful and actually needs a radical new hairstyle. - Jessica Lavelle (age 11), The Sydney Morning Herald Every schoolboy who has placed a crab or shore-fish in fresh water must know that it is poisonous to sea creatures. Not everyone knows, however, that a solution of common salt in fresh water is almost equally poisonous. - W.J.Dakin's classic study: Australian Seashores, Fully Revised and Illustrated by Isobel Bennett Sea water has been defined as a weak solution of almost everything. - Herbert Swenson, Why is the Ocean Salty? Local farmers are calling on the University of Hawaii to give up its patents on three kinds of taro. - Scorecard , Nature Anger is a brief distraction from grief, but within days it will wash back in, and families will once again look toward the God whom they had sought in the midst of the disaster. - Frederica Mathewes-Green , When the Miracle Doesn't Happen Those that are addicted to gambling continue despite knowing that they cannot afford it, and that they will lose overall. - Gambling Addiction: Mental Health Matters At its inception, the Greek alphabet probably was fairly complete in its inventory. Still, writing remained pretty much a 'primitive' business. For many centuries, there was no standardized Greek orthography. There was no distinction between capital and small letters, no punctuation and no word separation, and every region followed local conventions — sometimes using local letters of their own. - Steven Roger Fischer, A History of Writing The First Law of Economists: For every economist, there exists an equal and opposite economist. The Second Law of Economists: They're both wrong. - from Economist Jokes [Thomas] Paine is best known for his book The Rights of Man, but his initial training as a corset maker probably better prepared him for structural engineering. - M.G. Lay, Ways of the World: A History of the World's Roads and of the Vehicles that Used Them Additional, the quantity of food and beverages can affect someone's comfort, laced into a corset. Too opulent dinners should be avoided at ambitioned tight lacing (nevertheless, some Ladies have the behaviour of an artist for opulent dinners without an effect on their wasp-waist in respect to comfort). Specifically food with swelling effect, like rice, cereals or carbonic aerated beverages (like Coca-Cola) can mar your healthy comfort. No doubt, any food cause flatulence should be avoided. Theatrical fainting-attacks (also an often repeated bias against corsets) at real meetings of corset-enthusiasts are hardly to see. Who participates first time at such a meeting, may be astonished on the wasp-waist laced ladies, merry talking and eating all time without any symptom to sink down by a fainting attack. At balls or other events, extended dancing is quite common. - European Corset Society Wednesday evening I'm taking stock of the rest of this week and it's not pretty: The Thursday evening workout won't happen because I need to be baking and said I'd go to sister's thing (evening workouts are often waylaid); Friday evening is also shot due to birthday dinner at restaurant. To top it off Easter is this Sunday so most of Saturday I'll be shopping and baking. I already decided I want to make the "Almost Better Than Sex Cake" and scalloped potatoes. This is turning out to be a lousy week for my new getting in shape plan. - Kathryn Martyn, "The Weight Loss Lady" "Solo munching is always fun and of course it means you don't have to share us with anyone else." - package blurb for a.o. brownie bars, made in Australia The wings, breast, and merrythought are esteemed the prime parts of a fowl, and are usually served to the ladies of the company, to whom legs, except as a matter of paramount necessity, should not be given. Byron gave it as one reason why he did not like dining with ladies, that they always had the wings of the fowls, which he himself preferred. - Mrs Isabella Beeton, The Book of Household Management, 1861 In about 700 B.C. the Assyrian king Sennacherib forbade illegal parking on the Royal Road in Nineveh. ... the penalty was death by impalement on a stake. - M.G. Lay, Ways of the World: A History of the World's Roads and of the Vehicles that Used Them History suggests that good times do not shake the British conviction that the world is going to the dogs. - The Economist, "Whingeing Poms" A: In my day, we had to program with ones and zeros. B: You had ones? Lucky bastard! All we got were zeros. - "old joke" (new to me) in Mark Liberman's Language Log Critics of anthropomorphism tell us that animals are not people, which is true, but forget that people are animals. - Frans de Waal, Animals and us: Suspicious Minds, New Scientist If there be truth in the old saying, cleanliness is next to godliness, insects are but one remove from piety. - Reverend Henry C. McCook, "The Daintiness of Ants", Harper's Monthly Magazine, 1905 But the truth is, that when a Library expels a book of mine and leaves an unexpurgated Bible lying around where unprotected youth and age can get hold of it, the deep unconscious irony of it delights me and doesn't anger me. — Mark Twain Religions are like nuclear radiation. Of course they can be utilized to engender betterment for humanity, but only if limited to their peaceful usages and isolated under strict precautionary measures. Above all, their practical applications must be subjected to absolute scientific scrutiny. Take these safeguards away, and you will only end up with either one of two fates: an accidental Chernobyl or an intentional Hiroshima. - Zaid Nabulsi Lots of men played in the gum leaf bands and old Charlie [Ardler] used to sing. People would come from miles around to attend the dances and hear the old fellas play. They used to harmonise with the gum leaves. It was very popular entertainment because it was so good. - Barry Moore, Geebungs and snake whistles; Koori people and plants of Wreck Bay Q.Do you remember to have lost a blue coat? A. Yes, it was taken out of my wardrobe; two volumes of Smollett's works, and a silk handkerchief. - from The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, for a trial for theft, 1798 In hindsight, many investors now know what they should have done a year ago. - Tom Petruno, Market Beat, Los Angeles Times "We have the BEST microorganisms!" - Brenna Lorenz, Microscopic Critters of Guam Now white-collar workers face the grisly prospect that, with their Blackberries out of commission, they may have to pay attention to their children, rather than their e-mail. - The Economist, "Black and Blue" Don't Kill Your Wife with Work. Let Electricity Do it! - London Electricity Poster quoted in Foolish Words by Laura Ward I discovered duck confit rather late - Albiston, Il Forno As his senses dwindled, his courage had grown. He swam through the green twilight practicing a left jab as occasional sparks of colored light exploded in his field of vision. Then a cold wind was all around him, blowing down from the north with a force that shook the limbs of the trees the way a child shakes the dead to wake them. White, pink, yellow blossoms tasted ice in the sudden gale and, fearing they had miscal-culated the onset of autumn, let go their hold of summer. - Jeffrey Ford, The Cosmology of the Wider World Vintage Two wombats growling at each other, & other voices from the Australian Bush Petticoat punishment in Ulysses Alice's Discriminating Palate
Rethink the world with
Anyone for a pineapple daiquiri?? A True Tale of Innocence before 9-11 Marilyn Pride, extraordinary artist - "Her style can be traced back to her childhood when she wrote and illustrated stories about sea serpents, bunyips and dinosaurs. Even then, she was careful to detail not only how they looked, but also how they lived." "English Food? Exotic?" Snobs and snobbier snobs "Imagine a place where all your darkest nightmares come true. Now imagine somewhere far, far worse."Too intellectual? Talk Too Much? Boring At Parties? Everything you wanted to know about Nudibranchs but were too timid to ask Secret Life Comic sage of the ages Is the Moon made of Green Cheese? (the scientific evidence)
Bringing Science Back to the People The Story Behind the Book about "that cruelest and most beautiful of imaginary places, Ambergris" In Search of the Perfect Pork Martini"The illiterate man is like a blind man" ~ Soviet posters from the 1920s literacy campaign BANNED BOOKS WEEK "Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it." - Mark Twain |
The Cellar Irresistibles Archive Kindle for Corrections Who can sit when Bombay Royale wails? The baby elephant 'puppet' at Parramasala, created by Erth Erth's Dinosaur Petting Zoo Phantasmagoriana by Adam Browne When did you last play hide-and-seek? Blood and Other Cravings edited by Ellen Datlow Turkish Rose Petal Jam The Book of the Toad A Natural and Magical History of Toad-Human Relations by Robert DeGraaff "Bufonidae" by Genevieve Valentine in Phantasmagorium #1 Tales from the Secret Shop Written by Marc Laidlaw Painted by Jim Murray Gallery of Walruses by Paul Nicklen Bletting the open arse False Dogs by Ethan Fode The Damned Busters by Matthew Hughes I Paid a Bribe Pulai Millagai: Indian chilli in sweet tamarind sauce Dante's Inferno Test The Magdalen Female Penitent Asylum Memorial Stone Decision-making abilities of cells: "They bound the messenger cells with a glowing tag..." Famous Last Meals (some would say infamous) "Those who thought Rector now incapable of understanding his crimes and death sentence may cite his last meal for further support; apparently, Rector didn't eat the pecan pie, believing he could save it for later." Matilda Told Such Dreadful Lies: The Essential Lucy Sussex Introduction by Delia Sherman Cover artwork by Deborah Klein Gurumustuk Singh: "As with any digital device that I get, I like to customize it and tinker to make it more personal. That is part of the fun and making it my own ... I don’t even know how many Sikhs use eBook readers however expect that after today, many more will consider getting their very own 'eGurbani Reader'!" Heli: An automated futuristic helicon 2000 Ancient Tombs Amazon's corpiracy cahoots Here endeth the ethics lesson? Never at Home by L. Timmel Duchamp John's Ophicleide Directory & Gallery The Ephemera by Neil Williamson What's in a title? Poppy portraits "Pink oriental, just opening, looks like Fortuny silk" The Honest Look by Jennifer L. Rohn The Soul of Hats Basking clusterwinks More odd stuff in the garden, such as crinkly things unfolding themselves "Ten hundred books I could write you about her . . ." The genius of Myles Na Gopaleen Above / Below Dos-à-dos & Tête-bêche Bindings "Graphic novels, and comics in general, are created with a unique synthesis of the written and visual forms that, at its best, is no less literary than the works of Herman Melville, Colin Wilson, George Orwell or any other author that may appear on the current school syllabus." But picture books are not for kids Reading differently Butnege Feast in Wales Lucy Sussex's "delicious" Duchess of Newcastle There is Nobody Around by Tekgül Özcan Syringed fritters, Nun's Farts and Churros
The PhD &
the children's book
How high degrees burn
the
pudding
Polyphony
More Than
You Know
Molding
fascists, one student at a time
 
The
Company Articles of Edward Teach
by Thoraiya Dyer
&The Angaelien Apocalypse by Matthew Chrulew Two novelettes, back to back in one volume Beauties and Beasts: Buloh Beyond the Birds Intelligent Design II by Ian Watson 
Driven by the rhythm of rising dough
The Boy Who Followed
Lovecraft
by Marc Laidlaw
One
More Unfortunate
by Kaitlin Queen
Seasonal Italian Favourites
'well
again, you have had a wonderful career. I have missed most of it
because I have been busy and also some of the titles didn't strike
me.'
Fun with Theodulf
Raindrops on roses ... and whiskers on kittens Speak Bird, Speak Again: Palestinian Arab Folktales Why can't a Palestinian woman tell her own story? Old-School Surprise The Brian Boru harp Kefir Farm at FARMshop Creativity and addiction Wagashi Where are you going, you monkeys? Folktales from Tamil Nadu by Ki. Rajanarayanan translated by Pritham K. Chakravathy published by Blaft Publications Deepscreen by Marc Laidlaw Book haul and a plea for better artificial memory Medical Mnemonics Relentless Adaptations and Seamonsters and Vampires and a Latte Please by Tansy Rayner Roberts The Centre for Genomic Gastronomy Who gives a brinjal? Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherazade New York Philharmonic conducted by Yuri Temirkanov Molla Nesreddin: The Magazine That Would've, Should've, Could've by the Slav and Tartar Collective The limitless world of the small view Hymns of No Resistance Music for Another World ~ an anthology of Strange Fiction on the theme of music edited by Mark Harding published by Mutation Press Watch and listen to Neil Williamson sing from his story "Arrythmia" from Music for Another World Resistance Bites Again Rats by Robert Moreira The Laundromat fine art by Naomi Frost Uterus Brooches by Ricky Boscarino The Lucifer Cantos by Hal Duncan published by Papavera Press 30 Speculation Road "Much Sort After Location" "Orstralia" by Spike Milligan Portugal's cork stamp The Blaft Anthology of Tamil Pulp Fiction Vol. II translated by Pritham Chakravarthy Intoxication by star fruit Fruit crate labels and the lost art of agri-lithography Alien squids vs. giant robots in tourism videos Science for good or ill by Chandler Davis the new Heirloom Series from Aqueduct Press It Walks in Beauty Selected prose of Chandler Davis Introduction & editing by Josh Lukin Dorothea Dreams by Suzy McKee Charnas Introduction by Delia Sherman Victorian Turkish baths: their origin, development, and gradual decline OCCULTATION and other Stories by Laird Barron Miniature landscapes: Fungal art at its best Delish paximadia The Whale's Tale by Edwina Harvey Aranya's Last Voyage by Jayaprakash Satyamurthy Pokky Man, a Film by Vernor Hertzwig (Excerpt) Cat Mask Flames Writer's victory over "Orwellian" libel laws Pleasure by Ehsant T. Dafydd ap Gwilym: Paraphrases and Palimpsests by Giles Watson Kumari Loves a Monster — I'm not telling you more except to command you to go here. Illustrations that you must see! Elementeo Louisa Burton's Hidden Grotto Mister Gum by Rhys Hughes Come Fall by A.C.E. Bauer Micronaut Aranya's Last Voyage by Jayaprakash Satyamurthy Delish paximadia Elementeo Pokky Man, a Film by Vernor Hertzwig (Excerpt) OCCULTATION and other Stories by Laird Barron Cat Mask Flames Writer's victory over "Orwellian" libel laws Pleasure by Ehsant T. Louisa Burton's Hidden Grotto Mister Gum by Rhys Hughes Dafydd ap Gwilym: Paraphrases and Palimpsests by Giles Watson Kumari Loves a Monster — I'm not telling you more except to command you to go here. Illustrations that you must see! Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerers by Lizzie Collingham Compulsive Knitting: A show by Daniela Edburg Quantum dot fluorescence image of mouse small intestine by Thomas J. Deerinck The Four Steps of Standard Plastination & The Importance of Having a Minty-Fresh Export-Quality Aadi Velli Special Non-Cola Cola in the Tropicool Icy Land Urban Indian Slum by Kuzhali Manickavel Love in Infant Monkeys by Lydia Millet Help your child learn Engligh: Learning English through sharing rhymes The science of natural history elevated to the status of art Ushahidi Spider's Moon by Lavie Tidhar Soulless by Gail Carriger The way to launch a book The Perils of Custard Creams The Cancer Alphabet (by Ma. Ivy Clemente) and other stunning bioscapes "These kids have TOO MANY SODDING TOYS" The Whale's Tale by Edwina Harvey (for young adults) Fungi Perfecti Pencil and Leaf "My darling Popsy"Letters to a daughter from Kenya and India 1925 to 1932 A rant on proper manuscript formatting The Impudent Child's Picture Book of Poetry by Lela Dowling
Frog : the
amphibian world revealed
by
Thomas
Marent
Torturing poor mushroom
Cursed by
comfort
Mantar
Kurabiye
(Turkish
mushroom cookies)
Detectives
Beyond Borders:
A forum for international crime fiction
Sybil's Garage
no. 6
Mind
Meld's Guide to International Science Fiction & Fantasy Part I
&
Part II
More on
Jarkko Sipilä's Helsinki Homicide
On the Lot
and In the Air
Clever colours
The
millionth English word arrives with great fanfare. So why am I still
struggling to find the right one?
Nature a day at a time
Emma's
dress
The
Michelle's-dress obsession
Charu's
ven pongal and eggplant gotsu
Death
Dines Out
Twists of
the Tale: An anthology of Cat Horror
edited
by Ellen Datlow
Do-Over!
by Robin
Hemley
Still some room for Daddy
What
a car is Tara Sharp's!
edited
by
Dean
Francis Alfar & Nikki Alfar
Pope
Science
Curiosities of Biological Nomenclature
Genius in
a bottle
Of course
farmers name their cows! Just not after their wives
Zillij
Objects of
Worship
by
Claude Lalumière
I don't usually write about writing, but in Lalumière's case, I did
twice:
Do English-as-a-second-language writers (and speakers) have
more fun?
On "Different Flesh"
The Accord
by Keith
Brooke
"a rare treat"
-
starred
review,
Publishers Weekly
Herding
Vegetable Sheep
by
Ekaterina Sedia'
in
Middle-Eastern Gods: The current Top Ten
from
Godchecker.com
The top 10
Infectious Disease News stories of 2008
51
Versions of the Inaugurable Poem Remix
Economist
Jokes
Printer's Error
& others:
The poems
of
PG "Plum"
Wodehouse
Delightful, delicious dumplings
Seeking a
brand for Vietnamese paintings
Spiders: Learning to Love Them
by Lynne
Kelly
Spotted Dick recipe
The Imaginary Invalid
Escape
from Hell
by Hal Duncan
I want
what she wants; Online shopping and the Harry Potter effect
East
African drink fights Coca Cola
For
Coca-Cola,
things go better with USAid
A perfect storm of dots
Poe: 19 New
Tales Inspired by Edgar Allen Poe
edited by
Ellen Datlow
Tanglefoot
(A Story
of the Clockwork Century)
by Cherie Priest
The
Mother of all Excuses Place
Lieberman 'Speaks Arabic'
The Holocaust is Over; We must Rise from its Ashes
by Avraham Burg
Felidae
by Akif
Perincci
"You'll
never look at Tiddles the same way again."
Talking Cock
Electric
Velocipede double issue 15/16
"Readers
are sophisticated enough not to judge a book by its cover, right?"
When right
is completely wrong
A Field
Guide to Surreal Botany: an anthology of fictional plant species
Illustrated by Janet Chui
Dorn
Swhine
Weapons of Mass Desire
The Odd Music Gallery
"Dear Oyster’s Garter,I am an attractive male sea squirt . . ." Wool Organs The National Public Toilet Map Fairy Rings Voices from Fairyland: The Fantastical Poems of Mary Coleridge, Charlotte Mew, and Sylvia Townsend Warner Electric Velocipede double issue 15/16 "Readers are sophisticated enough not to judge a book by its cover, right?" When right is completely wrong A Field Guide to Surreal Botany: an anthology of fictional plant species Illustrated by Janet Chui Dorn Swhine Weapons of Mass Desire The Odd Music Gallery "Dear Oyster’s Garter, I am an attractive male sea squirt . . ." Wool Organs by Sarah Hillenberger The National Public Toilet Map Fairy Rings Voices from Fairyland: The Fantastical Poems of Mary Coleridge, Charlotte Mew, and Sylvia Townsend Warner edited by Theodora Goss Hopper Case Files: The widower who wouldn't Al-Maqamat Flaws on paws: Welfare problems in breeding pedigree dogs Jules Vernian Analog Synthesizer Saffron and Brimstone by Elizabeth Hand Hopper Case Files: The widower who wouldn't Al-Maqamat Flaws on paws: Welfare problems in breeding pedigree dogs Jules Vernian Analog Synthesizer Saffron and Brimstone Fabulous Whitby The Gibbet Bell Windmills split towns and families The man with the musical broomstick Lawyers curdle at "the other white milk" No rains despite frog marriages Hal Duncan interviews translator Hannes Riffel Kama SEAtra : Secrets of Sex in the Sea Polona Tratnik microcosmos Letter from Afghanistan Elater or Pseudoelater? World of Monsters Get That Thing Away From Me The Funeral, Ruined Slime time Molecular Expressions Microscapes Shapely pear Skunk: A Love Story Do you have any Pomeranssinkuori ? The Tenth Rasa: An Anthology of Indian Nonsense Abol Tabol: The Nonsense World of Sukumar Ray translated from the Bengali by Sampurna Chattarji Making sense nonsensically: Sukumar Ray The British Calendar Act of 1751 No Castles Here A memoir? Moths remember life as caterpillar The incredible water bear Attenborough launches project to stem butterfly decline Dunn & Dunn's landmark butterfly survey Do ants enhance diversification in Lycanenid butterflies? Phylogeographic evidence from a model myrmecophile, Jalmenus evagoras The Major General's Song Are there any vegetarian carnivorous plants? Anatomy of a balloon animal The Clapp Pear sculpture by Laura Baring-Gould "Who's that sniggering in the back?" The Cloud Appreciation Society Sea of Cortez Marine Invertebrates 2nd Edition (Revised) by Alex Kerstitch and Hans Bertsch Leeches Herudinea and don't miss Roy Sawyer with an affectionate Haementeria ghilianii Wearing your anatomy on your skin: The anatomy tattoo gallery Moths of Sabah (Borneo) The New Weird edited by Ann & Jeff VanderMeer Biodiversity Mystery Theater Special Yakinasu (grilled eggplant) ice cream Using flu for world domination? Blood of Dreams by Susan Parisi The Tongue by Brendan Connell Do you have any Pomeranssinkuori? E.V.S.O. (Extra-Virgin Snake Oil) 80 Dollars? Seriously 80 Dollars? Open thread C (with 563 comments) Hidden Brain Imaging In Renaissance Masterpieces? Reflections on a Summer Sea by Trevor Norton Bonkers Ant by Charlotte Sleigh The laziness of magical realism Absolute Uncertainty 100 years of solitude - on crack Muhajababes Towards peace in and with Iraq Map of Dreams Lepus Animatus Pezizomycotina The popiah-skin maker's popiah In defence of imagination The Endicott Studio Journal of Mythic Arts Spring 2007 issue Unspeak The annotated budak Blogswarm against Theocracy Conflicts Forum Spiders of Australia Why spiders aren't insects The Sunshine Project The beautiful cockroach Preserving the Italian Way Stretch's Lair: Stilt History Earth Alive! From Microbes to a Living Planet Moorabaa-yeh Haveej The Cristal Baschet LucifugousDomino's Pizza - School lunch program I confess: Cineplex drove me to piracy The legend of the boiling frog is just a legend Three Tales from Sky River: Myths for a Starfaring Age Wordgumbo Sellafield Zoo - where the wildlife has a half-life Is it right to write? The Rosa Parks of Israel A state of all its citizens Dear Patriarchy The Mocklore files Swords, sandals and spaghetti Stick Talk How to make homemade corn chips, homemade tomato salsa and homemade sour cream in IndiaFebruary 2007 
Pulp: A Collector's Book of Australian Pulp Fiction covers
War between two species:
A Lone Fly and an Angry Wasp
Pucker up: The fine art of whistling
History of
Paan
"The"
teapot
A freedom ride
Enough!
The
Arrival
and
other books by Shaun Tan
(be
sure to read his notes about them, including his thoughts about
so-called children's books)
Claudia
Roden, on
food in London, "The post-colonial city"
Hunkin's experiments
January 2007 The virtue of sin Early Hindu art in India Is Pammy Art? Cursively speaking "The most interesting, surprising, and sometimes alarming" of US Patent applications, 2006 December 2006 Salt of the Air The Cloud Appreciation Society Beaten biscuits Feet in the Bible Lifestyles of the spineless and slimy Talk to the Hand General observations on pudding and pastry Urban Dragon Hunters TThe wassail round in good brown bowls, Garnished with ribbons, blithely trowls. There the huge sirloin reeked Thin Journal November 2006 Squish-crunch vs. Crunch-squish The Coup de Grâce The Potato Museum How big is the library of Babel? What scat is that? 'The word "meat" may not mean the same to you as it does to the Food Standards Code.' Sweetmeats in Bangladesh How do animals see underwater? Dazhdbog in Russian mythology The Joy of Bad Verse (out of print, so find a used one) September-October 2006 When my husband upsets a whole neighbouring country The men who can produce limitless amounts of clean, free energy Wishful seeing Fine but costly art Accessorizing the Christian life: What would (can) Jesus sell? Dung beetles - working for you Bawds & Bordellos Szilvas Gomboc and other Hungarian recipes Exploding Rice: "Perhaps the best way to enjoy a Riverbed production is not to try to make sense out of it, but to sit back and enjoy it." I Hold My Father's Paws August 2006 Uncle Phaedrus, finder of lost recipes The red crystal and the Red Cross "Like scattering landmines in the name of peace" Puddings Prophetic medicine Gnoli's 'Modern Bestiary' Antiklerikale Karikaturen und Satiren Fain the Sorcerer The Descent of the Corn-Queen of the Midwest Hunting the Welch rabbit Open-source office software in Welsh June - Sargasso 2006 The Gist Hunter & Other Stories Way back yonder when Fairy-ring mushroom recipes The Fish Fry Collection: Sporting designer style Eau de Stilton Dung beetles' food situation stinks Killer bush The savage life of Herbert Lehmann or Ich bin ein Apache 20th Century personal naming practices in Azerbaijan Naming and classification of fungi and other organisms Picardia Chicana: Latino Folk Humor The Atlas of Gastrointestinal Endoscopy — now featuring 1,035 endoscopic images Daddy, tell me a story It will appear on your water and sewerage bill US attacks Iran in reality game May 2006 Blokes & Sheds A tropical butterfly paradise in the dead of winter "I just don't get poetry" Iowa corn cam Top ten: Weapons of the future The man who wasn't there Nylon Angel Conch love Kissing the right way begins in the womb Fourteen Little Red Huts Teen lit 'packages': Forget the young writer in a garret New Grub Street The Advanced Rutabaga Studies Institute Radiation Fun Stuff April 2006 "What my son notices are those things small enough to be contained in multiples in a matchbox." Astonishing Animals The fool enters politics The 7th Circus of the Spineless Apropos of Mrs. Charbuque . . . Where railfanning and science collide Wine selections from the Wizznutzz cellar Reporters Without Borders' Handbook for bloggers and cyber-dissidents How the Sea People Mourn & Ibis, Scribe Life After Exoneration Program Heaven - Are you going? Classic Devil's Food Cake The curse of the little thunderbunniesMarch 2006 City of Saints and Madmen Crescent Moon: Islamic art and civilisation in Southeast Asia Bulan Sabit: Seni dan Peradaban Islam di Asia Tenggara The Language of Moths Oh spiky fruit, how I love thee Arthur Circus of the Spineless: Wordless edition The reinvention of self Surveillance Camera Players Dry Suckets Everything you wanted to know about Garum & Liquamen Why I don't blog about my life Of all that mankind has conquered, nothing is as great (and as unnoted!) as the elimination of Effect from Cause: A Pandemic Influenza: The inside story B How to create new pandemics C Progress D"Saluting American Medical Innovation . . . that transform the world" E How to turn Wolf! into chicken F Animal-to-human transplants: Who pays, and with what? February 2006 Flora: An Illustrated History of the Garden Flower Flowers of evil: Potent chemicals lurk behind some of South America's most alluring blossoms Where's the australus? Passionfruit Melting Moments Genetopia Politics in Fantasy Dangerous Minds Automat Macaroni and Cheese The Magpie sings the Great Depression: Student voices from the 1930s The Girl in the Glass Bringing Evo Devo to Life Baker Tony baked a pizza... The real meaning of nursery rhymes Sans Serif history A rapier fencer's view of The History of Fencing Double-tongued Word Wrester Dictionary Salsi di noci Incident at Ainslee Grotto The Sea Was Wet As Wet Can Be January 2006 The fly in your eye Shriek: an Afterword Pod Pooja Macchiato Lane Hummingbirds and torpor Sizzling organic chemistry dramas "be warned...I had to discontinue the plays because a student complained to the Dean that the plays were sexually offensive, even though: (1) the students were repeatedly reminded that atoms and molecules don't have gender..." Cleavage in sea urchins A man and his dog Divinity Vellum: The Book of all Hours Teaching gravity 'What goes up' ... is basis for a breakthrough Apples and pears in Welsh literature Branding Iftar in Istanbul is handy to mouthy The Ester Republic "Forsskål’s famous 'Fish Herbarium' " & more in the history of The Copenhagen Zoological Museum "You can't screen for what you don't know exists" Star Tricked:The Next Perpetration Johnny Cash: A Tale in Questionnaire Results December 2005 The Book of the Toad: A Natural and Magical History of Toad-Human Relations Different Flesh Narnia represents all that is most hateful about religion The great Christmas Plum Pudding Disaster And this plum pudding collapsed, but there's fun shooting BBs at cream cheese An Unrivalled Plum Pudding An Elizabethan Dinner Conversation CDC Wonder When in Rome Lost Over East Texas Spondiferous not found Butterfly Alphabet AndyHat's 2005 Recommended Reading The Clients of Caralios Did you ever wonder? History of the Nerd History of Gangs Adam, Eve, and T Rex Love against the Law "a hardy colonial seasquirt under attack from poisonous yellow dinoflagellate scum" Jeff Lint's THE CATERER "Color cover and strange 1970s ur-color throughout - full use of the word 'thru', the term 'strides' for pants, and repetition of the phrase 'stroll on', never used by a single person in real life ever." James Bond theme was made for Mr Biswas Mouse November 2005 Touched by His Noodly Appendage Flying Spaghetti Monsterism Unrequited Love Published and Not Perished The History of Cookies Willy Willies and Other Weird Winds Flu Wiki The Featherless Chicken "Pay no attention to the pseudo-academic bluster about pheasant pluckers, labiodental fricatives and the English longbow; this is a clever and amusing spoof, not to be taken seriously." Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte Nanopores: The Art of Sucking Spaghetti The Art of Self-abuse Beauty products from the skin of . . . The Torture Garden McEyeballs Losing a finger: it can happen to anyone Spittoon plant The Clock King and the Queen of the Hourglass A Princess of Mars October 2005 The reviews I did and did not write about Julius Caesar - "It's never a good sign when you get half an hour into a play and have no idea what is going on or why Caesar's wife is a man." Am I Famo-- YES, You ARE Famous Now. Sheesh. History & Psychosexual Aspects of Footwear Songs of Leaving Aussie Strine The Three Little Wombats Aussies losing broad ocker strine Benjamin Franklin's phonetic alphabet "It is not Mee. It is Yu -- Beowulf Yu. I have named myself after an English literature. You will be glad." List of fictional cats Common Errors in English Usage boxed daily calendar Present from the Past Virtual open-heart surgery An outbreak of semolina poisoning "Death by vanilla pudding" recipe International Chili Society Pop-tarts and elixers of death: An examination of FDA's recall authority Crossing the Camp Bestseller in Mideast: Barbie with a prayermat New textbook seeks to return Bible to public schools Intelligent Design: An ambiguous assault on evolution 
A fish
with hands
Haven't
you always wished you could remember that Albanian tongue-twister?
Now you can!
1st
International Collection of Tongue-Twisters
September 2005 Oyster reefs for shoreline protection? Ashbury's Aubergines How to buy dinner at a fancy French restaurant Ordering food in America Did God send the hurricane? The alchemy website The Universe of Bagpipes Bonefields How one should make the Zerena Reading Kipling We and They "I'd bet Marlowe was constantly on the lookout for how he fared against The Big Will Shakespeare." A novel approach to podcasting Goode Cookys Stephano's Biscotti Bikkies Free speech: Going, going . . . I owe it all to Nancy Drew Genetics: a poem Alchemy of Stars: Rhysling Award Winners Education: What it means to the Nigerian of today A spot of clutter Ew! Japanese home kitchens: Cluttered with convenience August 2005 Bill Carter - Mug Baker The controversial Pavlova dessert "I come not to raise the pavlova issue, but to bury it." L'Aquilone du Estrellas (The Kite of Stars) What do vampires really eat? 
Phillipe Masson Ex Libris
Collection
Fun with
grapes - a case study
50 things to eat before you die
I Know Why
Sales Clerks
Fall From the Sky
Owls and
owl pellets
A blind eye towards reality
Living in
Sin
Nose
flutes, bowed rebabs, and other musical instruments from around the
world
Desert Fishes
The story of Burnt Njal
Pokerounce - a medieval
sweetmeat
We are the Music Makers
Ukranian scandal sheet
Bureaucracy Club of the Antipodes Islands
They're Made out of Meat
July 2005 Painted computer mice from Russia The People's Choice Awards: Nominate a New Deadly Sin An official guide to the Land of Engles Sokwanele They banned Louie Louie: Music censorship in America All about Alkan, the composer who wrote Funeral March on the Death of a Parrot Yo, Wocky Jivvy, Wergle Flomp The Anti-Spam Litigation League Confessions of a lonely stripper "Virtually unemployable" scientist slated to sell body to fund researchr Maggot therapy Finding a more human way to patch the body The 1st Annual Art of Science Competition Lachrymose and the Golden Egg Hole in the wall Glowing embers Recipe: Hamine Eggs Durian, "The God of all Fruit" Ashera, the Israelite god's consort The three monkeys of Israeli media The wrong message to the world Why birds sing Bessie Smith singsJune 2005 Albert and the Lion A Short Note About Poets "The gostak distims the doshes." A boy painting zebra lines on a horse The Faery Handbag The Egg Cream Racket Conchshells and bananas: The Bengali way of birth Cooking for the Gods "... if one looks beyond the nonsense facade, there seems to be a glint of a message in it all - whether or not he intended it to be, we will never know.'' The Airy Transit Circle The Mobile Bed-Object Tuberculosis: The Enduring Enemy Nonsensicon University of the Psychogenic Fugue It Takes a Sycophant " Swiss scientists have realised the snake oil salesman's dream: a potion that increases trust." Three secret lives The origin of Pinkie The Hedgehog Can Never be Buggered at All The Barnacle Goose Sredni Vashtar17 May 2005 Australian Pie Floater 20,000 Tentacles Under the Sea ~ Cephalopods in Cinema German-Welsh Dictionary Bread of Embarrassments Murder Bottles and other exhibits in the Baby Bottle Museum Lady Faraway Taking a beating for science The Laying-Out Shetland fiddler Privacy toolkit Andy Goldsworthy - An artist who collaborates with natureItalian traditional confectionery Australian weather and the seasons "The 'golden age' of Campbellian science fiction is one of the worst things that ever happened . . ." Moonbase foibles: moths to the light? Shave the moon! The Poet and the Cheese Cheshire cheese: a slice of history The Black Cat
The Master
Cat; or, Puss in Boots
Chinese
puppets perform Swan Lake
Swans and
short tempers
A Houseboat
on the Styx
1 May 2005 The Boorhaman Brass Band with a Man Mounted on a Bicycle and Dressed as a Giant Magpie Visitants from the Moon Chinese Moon Cakes When your guests say "Delicious!" what do they really think? The "guilt, frustration, over-optimism, sly deception, and compulsion" of knitters
Creationism, pluralism and the compromising of science A list of deported convicts and vagabonds Passing of the Minotaurs "The website for the defence industries" The history of butter The King's Breakfast The Black Crusade The unwelcome mural find: a tree covered with phalluses "one of my favourites for the rest of my life" Unusual Plants of the Galaxy7 April 2005 
"I
can't sing, but I can carve."
"Shelter" and other "responses"
by
Susan Wraight
The Orphanage
" It
is politically correct to say only nice things about a person
when they leave this world, but it is also a disservice to
humanity. "
Medieval gingerbread
Bearded in Théodora
Travis
Tea
Nostradamus predicts the future of literature
"One
does not shuffle cards. One mixes!"
Squails and Crokinole
The
Cherry Seed
Museum of Menstruation
MicroAngela
The Legend of Jake Einstein
The
courage to change the rules:
A
Proposal for an Essential Health R&D Treaty
The
hippo and the tortoise:
The true
story
The
hippo and the tortoise, in fiction
The
eccentric mind
Longmire does Romance novels
A Wicked Voice
14 March 2005 Cane Toads: An unnatural history Fantasy art in Australia Rude Awakening "Barbara, could you please pass me the Rhabarbermarmelade?" The Secret of Laughter: Fairy Tales & Folk Tales of Ancient Persia Die European Laughter Society Laughter yoga workshop and raw food potluck Dr. Stein Modesty Blaise (in a different league from Tarentino's trash) Classic good girl & romance covers Bath buns XENOTRANSPLANTS 1 "using pigs is morally preferable to using human stem cells." XENOTRANSPLANTS 2 "What if we were trying to design the ideal experiment in which a new virus that would infect humans would be cross-transmitted from pigs to humans? We would be hard pressed to come up with a better experiment than what is planned to be done with xenografts." Decameron Web Ever been killed with a song? The history of marshmallows Servants! Gout: The patrician malady Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day Letterforms and the Image Migraine aura symptoms gave rise to "Adventures in Wonderland" The Adventures of Mr. Lear, the Polly and the Pusseybite on their way to the Ritertitle Mountains 24 February 2005 Indian mynahs in Australia: The "Flying Canetoad" point-of-view In defence of this "misunderstood migrant" "I boasted when my first scholarly monograph, The Age of Elizabeth in the Age of Johnson, zoomed up to the 1.5 millionth bestseller on Amazon.com, leaving Distributional Ecology and Abundance of Dung and Carrion-Feeding Beetles (Scarabaeidae) in Tropical Rain Forests in Sarawak, Borneo in the dust at a pitiful number 1.596 million. But today it stands at number 320,499, which is as close to "bestseller" as a professor of eighteenth-century literature is ever likely to see. I've therefore decided I'm a celebrity, and will no longer waste my time talking with little people." "Fruits and Candies" A recipe book with a difference The Hoppin' Heathen Brewpub The Deviled Egg To be Christian or not to be Christian: a Viking conversation Baking Bread in the World War I Army Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts: The Subversive Folklore of Childhood Strange Pleasures 2 Semen displacement as a sperm competition strategy in humans Pavlov's Dog - Pampered Menial Poe Pie Toba Tek Singh The EU and tomatoes Jargon & Gibberish Conversation of a resthome deputy director with guests on the day of their arrival Six exploding knots 'Ay, ay,sir,' says I. The life & works of Captain Marryat 3 February 2005 Southern Hemisphere constellations Wogspeak The beautiful baobab The Empire of Ice Cream Faludeh Shirazi for a party 70 Most Beautiful Words in English A mix of English, Hindi, and 350 million speakers "There is no egg in eggplant." Why is English so hard to learn? ' '"Communicating is much more than just speaking.", Webster.' The magic of the accidental Nigun Gateway of the Heart Carrying Dates to Hajar How the "k" got into the mackintosh Mamoul: the best cookies in the world (or maybe just my favourite) Sowing the seeds Preturnatural Biology 101 'The Phoenix and the Carpet |
The virtuous medlar circle
is part of
Anna Tambour and Others