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.
Category: Heathen philosophers
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.
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.
Solving Africa’s woes with a simple parlour game
Desultory bar philosophising on the socio-economic function of Secret Santa.
Factual/fucktual revisited
Launch of Arcadi Espada news-site.
An unusual case of risus sardonicus
Is Mr Barbecue Bunny’s sardonic grin pre- or post-mortem?
El gallito inglés / le coq anglais
Proud English cock, limp Latin hen: the binary opposition of English and Spanish fowls as a metaphor for the contrast between growing British military might and declining Spanish power.
The lurch and fall of the Almería coast
Excerpts from Juan Goytisolo and Ramón Fernández Palmeral, with an epitaph from George Orwell.
Freaky assault on Gracia pseudo-anarchist stronghold
Joan Txàpal strikes at the heart of dorkness.
Spanish woman academic dresses according to stereotype
From an off-the-record report of a departmental seminar somewhere in the UK.