Gypsy madonna, madonna gypsy
Who’s copying who?
Category: (Pre-)Roman
-409
Eye of the sabre-toothed tiger in Horta, Barcelona?!
Could extravagant and shameless extrapolation of the last glacial period put the fear of the woolly mammoth into the council?
A bicycling boho hobo, tempted by Cockaigne, fearful of Ruin
What to do when a mysterious lady offers you a free ride?
Alectryon, the Ancient Greek model for our cuckold’s horns?
With a field study of the nymphomaniacs of Goa and brief notes on the early history of composite grafts.
How not to win la Guerra de los Toros, or The Cattle Raid of Cooley revisited
Some historical advice from an Irish perspective for Esperanza Aguirre on the pitfalls of attempting to demonstrate by symbolic means the virile and libertarian spirit of Madrid in the invented and regrettable conflict between it and doldrummed Barcelona.
The right and the wrong type of snow, according to Avicenna, Aristotle and Plutarch
With an excerpt from a plea for more state funding by the Bostonian Western Rail-road, in which we are given to understand that snow is not necessarily a bad thing.
Galen: not nuts
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.
Nice work if you can eat it
Influence of fat content on palatability of roast beef.
A West Cornish Barbary pirate and ghost-ship
“Discontented devil of a blackamoor, why canst thou not be satisfied to live here?” “Avast there; all our gold and diamonds can’t procure us here the bright sunshine and joyous people, nor the rich fruits and wine, of my native clime.”
