Counting the corrupt

A numerate, corrupt mayor, some innumerate anti-corruption campaigners, and de Tocqueville.

100% of Spanish graduates interviewed (sample size: 1) said this <a href='http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rechentisch.png'>abacus</a> was in fact architect's plans for a bowling alley.

Accompanying the big A

In which I proffer my experience in the service of the East European mafia as a model for helping us help the Aricept generation.

Cover of The World magazine of Jan. 18, 1914 featuring Francis Grierson as Psychic Pianist. Public Domain over at <a href='http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Psychic_pianist.jpg'>Wikimedia Commons</a>

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>

Chest problems?

Take Goig Heroin Elixir: From La Vanguardia anno 1912. Their current principal source of immoral earnings, apart from editorial-related state subsidy and tax-(ahem-)efficient paid-for journalism, is, of course, brothel advertising. I seem to recall it worked out at around €1M pa, but now most things do. The first ever front page of this then conservative,…

Spanish funeral service

Spanish insurers Fiatc have a fairly grisly reputation for health provision care in general. Here‘s how they deal with you once you’re dead: “When we arrived at the crematorium we were taken in through the rear entrance, down a long corridor, where we passed someone else laying in a coffin, a woman walking down the…