Category: The material universe
Archaeological highlights of walk along old Hispanic military frontier
Empty chairs
Irrigation folds
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This has been on the back burner for a while, but, following the fine example of Untergunther, it is hoped that work will soon be resumed on recladding all those farmhouses whose profitable stripped-stone effect is unauthentic and causes them to fall down sooner. Sheep-dyeing (thanks MM) is not done, although if they have just…
From the baldie: Some unusual Neolithic rock paintings. Apparently the locals used to take tourists to visit them and, to improve their colour and line, throw buckets of water over them. Once almost everything had been washed away, the authorities acted with characteristic firmness, building a 4m wall-with-spikes around the complex. The locals now explain…
Below the Burcht at Leiden: … and on a Gent lamp post: Faced with global warming, Dutch civic Canutes are off somewhere else contemplating amongst other engineering wonders the construction of (a) a great new channel to sea to prevent flooding from upstream on the major rivers, and (b) a megalopolis to the East to…
Pascual Boronat y Barrachina, Los moriscos españoles y su expulsión (1901): “su admirable sistema de irrigación por medio de acequias y canales.” There are few sights and sounds more satisfying than this system of horizontal soaks and vertical sluices in action.
Over at Michael Gilleland’s place. I am laid low by village water, which comes out of the hill unpurified, which is fine, but which ravages stomachs lacking the correct ecology of flora and fauna, which is tough on me and even tougher on the porcelain. Beware the great god Fart under such circumstances.
Will this lead to revision of the etymology of filibuster?
I rather like NATO’s new designs for the Zaragoza expo. More likely to put it on the map than take it off it, if you ask me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GOvhw1pb0I Máximo Puente (I don’t think that’s a pseudonym–think “ain’t no mountain high enough”) also swims in it every day, says Mariano Gistaín.
Thanks to MM (with a little help from BB) for news of the English musician who used to play bugle calls on his rifle using a mouthpiece inserted into the barrel. The photograph recalls the following Spanish joke: Two hippies from Gracia are shrooming in the woods when they find a shotgun. “Hey man, get…
This is the anjova (Pomatomus saltatrix) caught off Galicia. According to Europa Press, fisherman Pablo Oliver got in touch with the Spanish National Research Council/Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas and the Institute of Oceanography/Instituto Oceanográfico to tell them of his discovery and to enquire as to why this fish was in waters outside its known…
Great tunes, great doggerel, small simians