Massive cock

Here, in a magical photo by John Robertson. It would be interesting to know which Morris group it belongs to. We’ve been thinking about cockerel costumes rather like a pantomime horse, large enough to be split into two, large enough to fit a river, a mountain and a wolf (or three children dressed as them)…

The storks of war

A fragment from Italo Calvino’s quasi-17th century folk romance, Il visconte dimezzato/The cloven viscount, uses storks as a portent of battle. Several unconnected 2nd century Greek accounts might appear to do the same, perhaps particularly if one’s a lazy sod and doesn’t read anything but scraps of stuff on Google Books.

Gabriel Cabrera Mendez me roba contenido

Prueba: http://www.babelxelsabio.com/contenido.php?modulo=detalle&volver=inicio&tabla=anecdotario&id=18 Data Whois: Domain name: babelxelsabio.comRegistrant:Gabriel Cabrera Mendez (SROW-1351833)Trv. de Pizarro, 5MERIDA BADAJOZ 06800 ES+34 924300519 Administrative contact:Gabriel Cabrera Mendez (SRCO-2126877)Trv. de Pizarro, 5MERIDA BADAJOZ06800 ES+34 924300519Technical contact:Gabriel Cabrera Mendez (SRCO-2126878)Trv. de Pizarro, 5MERIDA BADAJOZ06800 ES+34 924300519 Domain servers in listed order:dns19.servidoresdns.net 217.76.128.137dns20.servidoresdns.net 217.76.129.137Created: 25 Jul 2006 10:25:41:000 UTCExpires: 25 Jul 2011 10:25:41:000 UTCLast…

The etymology and typology of “trash bean”

Kindly contributed by C, here’s a sign from the toilets of a restaurant in Jaén: Don’t though any papers into the water close. Use the trash bean. There is too much material here to deal with in one post, but we can report that modern forensic linguistics, combined with a couple of glasses of wine,…

The secret language of doctors

Why and how the 17th century Portuguese tropical medicine specialist, Aleixo de Abreu, tried to prevent proles from reading his cure for scurvy.

Scorbutic gums, CC from <a href='http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Scorbutic_gums.jpg'>Wikimedia Commons</a>

Time to behead Fèlix Millet?

On this day in 1466, one Juan Sort, aged 70, was beheaded for the misappropriation of public funds. Millet is said by the auditors to have stolen around 30 million and has fessed to around 10%, but has not been anywhere near a prison, and indeed seems to think that by looking old and grey…