Organ-grinding tweets for February
More untruths & idle opinions.
Tag: voltaire
Beyond digesting ducks
Medium-sized data and the street organ’s mannequin.
Two versions of Flann O’Brien’s “The workman’s friend”
With some relevant chunks of Henry Fielding.
Wellington vs Glasgow Rangers’ International Brigadiers, and the origins of “No pasarán” and “No surrender”
Nominations for the noblest British fighter in a Spanish war, and speculative revisions of the history of two idiot idioms.
More tongues
Crocodiles have no tongue; frogs have half, because it’s backwards, attached at the front and free at the back; men have one, the best of all, because with it they speak all languages and imitate every animal, as the philosopher Archidamos said; sea foxes [raposas marinas] have two, as I have said; women have three, because they talk with their mouth and with their fingers and heart, and their tongues are rough and sharp, like those of cats and leopards.
Gone with the wind
“My Lord, I had forgott the Fart.”
Academies
“The first Project was to shorten Discourse by cutting Polysyllables into one, and leaving out Verbs and Participles, because in reality all things imaginable are but Nouns.”