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.…
Amid celebrations of plane crashes and the imminent extermination of everyone congenitally uncongenial (uncongenital?) to a deranged fascist from Omaha, Malcolm ZZZ in his must-read 1963 Alex Haley interview for Playboy makes the following interesting assertion: When I’m traveling around the country, I use my real Muslim name, Malik Shabazz. I make my hotel reservations…
Intrigued (and overjoyed, as always) to receive a mail from my good friend, Moses Aziz, in which he writes (my emphases): Dear Friend. As you read this, I don’t want you to feel sorry for me, because, I believe everyone will die someday… I have been diagnosed with Esophageal cancer . It has defiled all…
The Peckham chapter of the Taliban and a horde of Yorkshire lesbians are going to be fighting it out here for the next few days so , to remind you of how good life was before Reagan, is Radio Tirana’s old call sign. When I first found its excellent signal on the short wave in…
The elderly Galician in the seafood bar down the street is essentially a demand side economist. Octopus? No problem. Customers? Never been worse. Although he doesn’t know why, he’s basically right about the first bit. Here’s a snapshot of why that is: The Moroccan catch fell from 107,000 tonnes in 2000 through 96,000 in 2001…
I assume someone else will comment on the Laporta-Pujol double act at the Barça match (1-2 at home to Real) last night: the young club president who, despite an appalling week, still believes he can win it all, and the weary old politician who has just seen his successor shut out of the new regional…
A couple of profs up north have just published a book, Manual de Redacción Ciberperiodística, that explains useful things like … er … what a hyperlink is. Books like this have been remaindered for years in other countries, so how come lecturers here still get away with inflicting them on their students? Any currently blog-less…
Stern weet het. Ik ben er een paar keer geweest om – met angstige ogen en bevende oren – rechtstreeks en roekeloos door de decors heen te razen totdat de uitgang in zicht verscheen. (Via Stefan Geens en Transblawg.)
If you want to know what a genuine Mediterranean diet does to you, just count the number of stomatologists’ signs on the doors as you walk down any street here. A Murcian clairvoyant friend goes to visit one every couple of weeks to get her plumbing checked out. “My stomach,” she declaims, “is the most…