I want to illustrate at ridiculous speed the change in status of Ficus carica – once found outside the back door of farmhouses around the Mediterranean – over the last couple of thousand years. Since you’re all familiar with Genesis 3, I’ll start a bit later, with the Ethiopic version of the Apocalypse of Peter.…
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (1953): I contemplate a face, and then suddenly notice its likeness to another. I see that it has not changed; and yet I see it differently. I call this experience “noticing an aspect…” And I must distinguish between the ‘continuous seeing’ of an aspect and the ‘dawning’ of an aspect…. I…
Dictionaries source the Spanish word guay (current meaning: cool/super/excellent/smashing) back to an (Arab) cry, ay. This never makes any kind of sense to me, since the latter is used to signal woe, grief and all manner of misery. Where did the current guay come from, and how (if at all) did this reversal of meaning…
Transblawg posts re the adaptation of the language used in British novels for the American market and vice versa. This subject also occasionally exercises John of Iberian Notes (2003/10/17, for example), who thinks that it’s time we Brits started caring again about the eccentric pastimes of folk who were so very rude to us only…
Transblawg has a translation of the Berlin police report of the capture of a Nigerian fraudster practising the famous 419 fraud. There’s now a growing industry of people pitching for readership by publishing (probably fictional) accounts of how they responded. The Raving Atheist is still my favourite: The Directors were immensely gratified that you are…
Those of you with a memory longer than those interesting socks your boss is wearing this morning may remember that I pointed out in May that Rafael Ramos, La Vanguardia’s correspondent in London, appeared to be semi-literate, prone to invention, and a plagiarist. When I complained to the paper’s ombudsman, Josep Maria Casasús, he emailed…
