… while
an elephant is 10,000 times the size of a guinea pig, it needs only
1,000 times as much energy.
==========
A
father had not the right of bringing up his offspring, but had to
carry
it to a certain place called Lesché, where the elders of the tribe
sat
in judgment upon the child. If they thought it well-built and
strong,
they ordered the father to bring it up, and assigned one of the
nine
thousand plots of land to it; but if it was mean-looking or
misshapen,
they sent it away to the place called the Exposure, a glen
upon
the side of Mount Täygetus; for they considered that if a child did
not
start in possession of health and strength, it was better both for
itself
and for the state that he should not live at all.
[Plutarch]
==========
But
among insects and fishes, some cases are found wholly devoid of
this
duality of sex. For instance, the eel is neither male nor female,
and
can engender nothing. In fact, those who assert that eels are
at
times found with hair-like or worm-like progeny attached, make
only
random assertions from not having carefully noticed the locality
of
such attachments. For no eel nor animal of this kind is ever
viviparous
unless
previously oviparous; and no eel was ever yet seen with an
egg.
And animals that are viviparous have their young in the womb
and
closely attached, and not in the belly; for, if the embryo were
kept
in the belly, it would be subjected to the process of digestion
like
ordinary food. When people rest duality of sex in the eel on
the
assertion that the head of the male is bigger and longer, and
the
head of the female smaller and more snubbed, they are taking
diversity
of
species for diversity of sex.
There
are certain fish that are nicknamed the epitragiae, or capon-fish,
and,
by the way, fish of this description are found in fresh water,
as
the carp and the balagrus. This sort of fish never has either roe
or
milt; but they are hard and fat all over, and are furnished with
a
small gut; and these fish are regarded as of super-excellent quality.
[Aristotle,
HISTORIA ANIMALIUM]
==========
For
some years I have been haunted by a story of [William Dean] Howells
and that most civilized of all our presidents, James A. Garfield. In
the early 1870s Howells and his father paid a call on Garfield. As
they sat on Garfield’s veranda, young Howells began to talk about
poetry and about the poets that he had met in Boston and New York.
Suddenly, Garfield told him to stop. Then Garfield went to the edge
of the veranda and shouted to his Ohio neighbors. ‘Come over here!
He’s telling about Holmes, and Longfellow, and Lowell, and
Whittier!’ So the neighbors gathered around in the dusk; then
Garfield said to Howells, “Now go on’.
Today
we take it for granted that no live president will ever have heard
the name of any living poet. This is not, necessarily, and unbearable
loss. But it is unbearable to have lost those Ohio neighbors who
actually read books of poetry and wanted to know about the poets.
For
thirty years bookchat writers have accused me of having written that
the novel is dead. I wrote no such thing but bookchat writers have
the same difficulty extracting meaning from writing as presidents do.
What I wrote was, ‘After some three hundred years the novel in
English has lost the general reader (or rather the general reader has
lost the novel), and I propose that he will not again recover his old
enthusiasm’. Since 1956, the audience for the serious (or whatever
this year’s adjective is) novel has continued to shrink. Arguably,
the readers that are left are for the most part involuntary ones,
obliged by the schools to read novels that they often have little
taste for.
[Gore
Vidal]
==========
The
local people, even the Indians, considered us daft when we told them
we were trying to find enough wild foods to live on in this arid,
barren overgrazed, high-altitude land in the middle of April. I had
been a teenager in this same country back in the 1920s and had ranged
the length and breadth of this big land on horseback. Then one could
find places where a horse could eat his fill in the circle covered by
a thirty-foot lariat rope tied to a stake. I could find enough wild
food to stave off starvation for a week at the time, and I knew far
less about wild food then than I know now.
But
the country has deteriorated. Rainfall has decreased and overgrazing
has increased. We encouraged the Indians to build costly houses
rather than cost-free hogans. We encouraged them to drive expensive
pickups that eat high-priced gasoline, rather than horses that raised
themselves on the open range, fueled with grass. We gave these noble
Red Men a taste of processed food, store-bought clothes, hamburgers,
and whiskey. It needs cash, in considerable quantities to support
such a life, so each Indian family increased its herds and they vied
with one another for the scanty grass this land produces. The land
retaliated by producing even less. I was able to locate a few of the
identical spots where I tethered my horse to eat his fill forty-five
years ago, only to find them bare and gullied now.
[Euell
Gibbons]
==========
Darwin
studied this species in 1862 and reckoned that a yet-to-be-discovered
long-tongued moth was the pollinator … in 1903 the mystery moth was
discovered by a person presumably named Morgan and given the name of
Xanthopan morganii praedicta … not hardy … can be grown
indoors amidst bright light and high humidity … the potting soil
should consist of 50% fir bark …
==========
SWEDISH
IVY | MINTLEAF | Plectranthus madagascariensis ‘Variegated
Mintleaf’ (syn. P. coleoides ‘Marginatus Minimus’, P.
coleoides ‘Variegatus’)
… they
make ‘incredibly easy houseplants’ … stem cuttings at any
season … ‘immensely popular for containers, and understandably
so’ … the stems hang down from the hanging basket 30 inches or
more …
[ANNUALS
FOR EVERY PURPOSE]
==========
The
EASTERN LARK SPARROW is a handsome, well-marked, unmistakable bird,
and one of the finest singers of the sparrow tribe. It is not so
terrestrial as some of the other ground-sparrows, as it alights in
trees, frequenting them much after the breeding season, and in some
cases nests in bushes or low trees. In spring it frequents roadsides.
Hence the name ‘Road-bird’, which is applied to it in the West. …
The
song of the ~ is somewhat like that of the Indigo Bunting, but
louder, clearer, and much finer. …
The
nest site is usually in a grassy field, a pasture, or a prairie in
the neighborhood of bushes and trees. The nest is built mostly of
grasses, lines with rootlets, fine grass and long hairs, and is
either on the ground or in a low tree or bush.
[Edward
Howe Forbush]
==========
Most
herbs are watered in early morning or at evening, so that they may
not be dried up; but basil is watered even at noon, for it is said
that it grows more quickly if it is watered at first with warm water.
In general water seems to be extremely beneficial, especially if it
is mixed with dung; for, they say, pot-herbs often are hungry, and
experienced gardeners can recognise when this is so.
All
herbs grow finer and larger if transplanted; for even the size of
leeks and radishes depends on transplantation. Transplanting is done
especially in view of collecting seed: and, while most herbs bear it
well, as long onion, leek , cabbage, cucumber, celery, turnip,
lettuce, others bear it less well. All however make better growth and
are larger if the seed is planted rather than scattered.
[Theophrastus]
__________
»PETA
Trying To Turn OJ's Foreclosure Into A Murder Museum
Well,
PETA certainly knows how to spin a gruesome murder and possible
miscarriage of justice into a parody of itself. They are appealing to
JP Morgan bank, asking them to donate the house to be turned into a
“Meat Is Murder” Museum.
-----
Rick
Santorum Actually Won That Critical First State in the Presidential
Race
The
Iowa Republican party has a minor update to the results of this
year's caucuses, something it discovered while going through the
formality of certifying Mitt Romney's 8-vote victory: Someone else
won. Eh, don't sweat it, Iowa Republican officials. We all change the
course of a major party's presidential nominating process out of
sheer incompetence from time to time.
-----
Newt
Gingrich’s Ex-Wife Drops the Bomb: He Wanted an ‘Open Marriage’
-----
Eastman
Kodak Co filed for bankruptcy on Thursday in a bid to survive a
liquidity crisis after years of falling sales related to the decline
of its namesake film business.
-----
Apple
Lisa Launched (1983)
In
1983, after five years of development, Apple released the Lisa, the
first personal computer with a graphical user interface. Although the
Lisa was a commercial failure—due in part to its initial price tag
of $9,995—it had a significant impact on the computer industry. It
is often rumored to have been named after the first daughter of
Apple's Steve Jobs, though several acronyms have been ascribed to the
name. What project did Jobs join after being forced out of the Lisa
project? Discuss …
-----
President
Obama Demands to See Betty White's Birth Certificate in the Most
Adorable Way Possible
WILD
POSSUM ON THE LOOSE IN NYC!
Kodak
bankruptcy action 'won't affect New Zealand'
Pantless
prisoner walks out of Swedish jail
-----
'Your
baby looks like Saddam Hussein'
An
administrator at the Swedish Migration Board is facing disciplinary
action after telling a family of Iraqi asylum seekers that their
newborn baby looked like Saddam Hussein.
-----
Man
Arrested for Stealing Saddam Hussein’s Buttock
-----
Three
years ago to the day, Barack Hussein Obama stood before a crowd
shivering in the frigid January air and took the oath of office that
made him the 44th president of the United States.
-----
Ken
Livingstone overtakes Boris Johnson in race to be London mayor
-----
… It’s
no mystery why the audience of Republicans so instinctively and
passionately rallied to Gingrich’s defense. His final line was the
key: that the liberal media is out to get Republicans and will stop
at nothing to destroy them is an absolute article of faith on the
right. It’s why so many conservative leaders claimed that Herman
Cain was the victim of a liberal smear when he was confronted with
sexual harassment charges in November. Never mind that the conspiracy
theory made no sense (why would liberals take down a candidate they’d
love to face in the general election?); logic has little to do with
this. Likewise, the left would be thrilled to face Gingrich next
fall, but that didn’t stop Rush Limbaugh from arguing on Thursday
afternoon that the Marianne Gingrich interview was part of a media
plot to take out the former speaker.
What
Gingrich did brilliantly on Thursday night is to articulate this
paranoid victimhood in a clear and compelling (for his audience, at
least) way. It’s the same basic trick he pulled in this week’s
other debate, when he connected with another strain of the
persecution complex: that honest, tax-paying Republicans are the
victims of a dependency class of poor people and minorities that
Democrats intentionally enable. Thus did Monday’s crowd rejoice
when Gingrich insisted to Fox News’ Juan Williams that there was
nothing remotely insulting about his statement that the NAACP should
be asking for paychecks instead of food stamps, or his suggestion
that children in poor neighborhoods don’t understand the value of
work.
-----
Cheating,
Serial-Divorcing Pig Upset By Adultery Question
Was
there a highlight to tonight’s GOP debate? No. But CNN
number-reader John King did manage to really get the amoral
jewelry-debt piglet Newt Gingrich in full squeaking rage because, boo
hoo, somebody asked Newt about his endless adultery and divorcing and
banging other ladies while he’s married, etc.
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