“The Cardinal Espinosa, prime minister under Philip the Second of Spain, died, as it was supposed, after a short illness. His rank entitled him to be embalmed. Accordingly, the body was opened for that purpose. The lungs and heart had just been brought into view, when the latter was seen to beat. The cardinal awakening…
The question has been asked, so no, hell, I am not going on the Marcha Ciclonudista on Saturday. It looks exactly like the Dutch Society for Sexual Reform’s sadomasochism evenings were reputed to be (I lived next door): lots of fat old guys drifting around lusting after young female flesh. Let’s keep cycling healthy.
The excerpt feature in Google Books sometimes delivers surreal gems, Escher stones. Here’s one from Advance Japan: A Nation Thoroughly in Earnest: “that the equivalent of the expression ‘not worth a button’ is, in Japanese, ‘not worth the head of a sardine.’ Mackerel also are extremely plentiful.” (I’m translating some mid-nineteenth century colloquial Flemish and…
I was sitting peacefully on a bench yesterday when an Italian architect came and sat beside me. (I knew he was a architect, because all the Italians here are architects. I don’t know why.) He asked me where the nearest supermarket was, but I knew this was just what chessplayers refer to as the Berlin…
“Saleh al-Hami – who, like many former guerrillas who fought in Afghanistan, has a long black beard and a plastic leg – married Mr. Zarqawi’s younger sister.”
This is an absolutely phenomenal bike photo, and I haven’t got the faintest who it’s by. (My front page displays photos from a Flickr feed using a WP plugin. Until now I thought I preferred the sheep.)
OK, it was a mixture of bismuth powder with small quantities of vaseline, but what was it meant to do (late C19th) and what was its English name? (Lots of products at the end of the C19th were made by mixing powders with petroleum jelly (eg coal dust to make mascara). It might be unsafe…