'Hedgehogs copulate erect, belly to belly'

The boys steal with such earnestness that there is a story of one

who had taken a fox's cub and hidden it under his cloak, and, though his

entrails were being torn out by the claws and teeth of the beast,

persevered in concealing it until he died. This may be believed from

what the young men in Lacedaemon do now, for at the present day I have

seen many of them perish under the scourge at the altar of Diana

Orthias.

After dinner the Eiren would recline, and bid one of the boys sing, and

ask another some questions which demand a thoughtful answer, such as

"Who is the best among men?" or "How is such a thing done?" By this

teaching they began even in infancy to be able to judge what is right,

and to be interested in politics; for not to be able to answer the

questions, "Who is a good citizen?" or "Who is a man of bad repute?" was

thought to be the sign of a stupid and unaspiring mind. The boy's answer

was required to be well reasoned, and put into a small compass; he who

answered wrongly was punished by having his thumb bitten by the Eiren.

[Plutarch]

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… the

majority of quadrupeds copulate as best they can, the male mounting

the female; and this is the only method of copulating adopted by birds,

though there are certain diversities of method observed even in birds.

For in some cases the female squats on the ground and the male mounts

on top of her, as is the case with the cock and hen bustard, and the

barn-door cock and hen; in other cases, the male mounts without the

female squatting, as with the male and female crane; for, with these

birds, the male mounts on to the back of the female and covers her,

and like the cock-sparrow consumes but very little time in the operation.

Of quadrupeds, bears perform the operation lying prone on one another,

in the same way as other quadrupeds do while standing up; that is

to say, with the belly of the male pressed to the back of the female.

Hedgehogs copulate erect, belly to belly.

[Aristotle, HISTORIA ANIMALIUM]

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A few DWARF CONIFERS have acquired their reduced stature in response to environmental stresses, the most notable being the dwarf balsam fir (Abies balsamea ‘Nana’) … in the White Mountains of New England, and the dwarf mountain pine or Pinus mugo of Europe. …

Picea abies ‘Little Gem’ was bred from a witch’s broom that appeared on another dwarf spruce, Picea aabies ‘Nidiformis’, ITSELF the produce to a broom. …

A few dwarfs that have become well known were discovered in the wild but under circumstances that indicated they were descendants of a mutated plant long ago. The most famous is the Sargent weeping hemlock, Tsuga canadensis ‘Pendula’ …

One common manifestation of genetic mutation in conifers is the … WITCH’S BROOM, a thickly congested growth mass that may appear at any growing point on a tree and that sometimes does have a broomlike look. The cause is believed to be the abnormal triggering of ADVENTITIOUS buds – the kind that enable a tree to leaf out anew after losing its foliage in a hurricane … now and then a genetic mishap causes them to burst out in one spot to make broom. The progeny of such growths – propagated vegetatively by cuttings – almost invariably yield dwarfs. …

Some dwarf conifers produced from witch’s brooms are stable: they remain dwarfed, and cuttings made from them will produce plants identical to the parent. Some species, however, are characterized by unpredictable behavior … the Norway spruce has given rise to more than 80 dwarf forms …

[GARDENING WITH THE NEW SMALL PLANTS]

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A neighbor once asked my wife if she worried about me going off in the fields and woods with attractive women reporters, but she answered, ‘Not at all. They will soon learn, as I had to, that no woman can compete for Euell’s attention against a wild plant!’ …

On top of the hill we found first-year EVENING PRIMROSE plants growing so thickly that they actually overlapped one another, making a solid carpet of green rosettes. These are also biennials, storing vast amounts of food in their reddish, carrotlike roots the first year, and then sending up their seed stalks that bear beautiful yellow flowers the second year. These flowers stay closed during the day, then open rather suddenly, and even faintly audibly, just before dark.

When the evening primrose grows as thickly as it does here, it can furnish two excellent foods. The starchy root is a hearty root food, with a hint of pungency that most people like. But even this pungency can be removed by boiling in two waters, then practically drowning it melted butter. … The central crown of the first-year rosette, with all the old outside leaves removed and nothing left but the tender, blanched heart, makes a grand green vegetable. Some people even like them in salads, but to me they are a bit too pungent to be palatable raw. I like these cooked in two waters, even if I am sacrificing some of the vitamins I am sure are there. After all, these wild plants have proved, whenever analyzed, to be so extremely rich in nutrients that one can afford to pour part of them down the drain and still have a more vitamin-rich food than you can get from vegetables sitting for days on a produce counter. We dug another basket of the fat roots and gathered a bagful of the tender green crowns.

[Euell Gibbons]

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CYCLAMEN: sows and wild boars love to eat the roots – ‘Mrs Beeton, the famous Victorian cookery writer, claimed that the pigs’ diet of cyclamen bulbs imparted special flavour to the pork products of the Périgord’. … a pieces of the root, inserted into a man’s nostrils, will prevent baldness … an excellent treatment for your ‘suppurating boils’ … cyclamen is a genus of 17 species … the wild stock in Turkey has been raided and sold to corporations; the corporations evidently do not know that ‘the species are best raised from seed which, with few exceptions, is freely produced and will germinate readily if sown fresh, as will old seed soaked in water for a day or so. The young seedlings should be encouraged to continue growing as long as possible and not dried off’. …

[THE VANISHING GARDEN]

==========

LIZARD’S TAIL | Saururus cernuus L.

… rhizomatous … colony-forming … ‘Reestablishment of the beaver after near extinction in the sUS has increased the Lizard’s-tail habitat. Common. Swamps, margins of streams and lakes, and low woodlands’ …

WILD BUCKWHEAT | DOG-TONGUE | Erigonum tomentosum Michx.

… 225 species, mostly in the West … ‘Seeds and other parts of many species are important as food for various kinds of wildlife’. …

==========

The EASTERN FOX SPARROW is a bird of the lingering snow. … This is one of the few of our sparrows that scratches with both feet at once. It leaps into the air, and while off the ground scratches with both feet at once. It leaps into the air, and while off the ground scratches or kicks quickly with both its powerful feet … Thus it is able to excavate rapidly, throwing leaves and dirt sometimes a yard or more. … He excavates! Jumping and scratching he makes the snow fly, and is soon is at the bottom of a hole and at his usual occupation of turning over the dead leaves and searching for seeds and insects. … Along the coast they begin to sing about the first of April in damp easterly weather, which may remind them of the fog in their homes along the Labrador coast. The song, though short, is a fine clear effort, a typical song of the northern wilds.

[Edward Howe Forbush]

==========

I can now confidently say that QUANTITY of diet may be safely left to the natural appetite; and that is is the QUALITY only, which is essential to abate and cure corpulence.

[LETTER ON CORPULANCE]

__________

»Brown Fat, Triggered by Cold or Exercise, May Yield a Key to Weight Control

Fat people have less than thin people. Older people have less than younger people. Men have less than younger women.

It is brown fat, actually brown in color, and its great appeal is that it burns calories like a furnace. A new study finds that one form of it, which is turned on when people get cold, sucks fat out of the rest of the body to fuel itself. Another new study finds that a second form of brown fat can be created from ordinary white fat by EXERCISE.

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The DECEMBRIST REVOLT or the DECEMBRIST UPRISING took place in Imperial Russia on 26 December [O.S. 14 December] 1825. Russian army officers led about 3,000 soldiers in a protest against Nicholas I's assumption of the throne after his elder brother Constantine removed himself from the line of succession.

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George Clooney Defends Making Coffee Commercials

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Demi Moore Rushed Hospital for Drugs, Headed to Rehab

Jennifer Aniston adopts shelter dog

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Oklahoma Lawmaker Wants To Outlaw Use Of Human Fetuses In Production Of Food

Oklahoma GOP State Senator Ralph Shortey is on a mission to finally put an end to his state’s allegedly rampant cannibalism problem. Alarmed after his own research, which consisted of reading a nameless report stating that companies have used stem cells in the production of food, Shortey introduced a bill that would prohibit the manufacturing and sale of food “which contains aborted human fetuses.”

Shortey was unable to provide any specific examples of the problem he’s trying to curb, and admits that it’s possible there aren’t any human fetuses in Oklahoma’s food. “I don’t know if it is happening in Oklahoma, it may be, it may not be,” he said.

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Eating fried food may not bad for the heart, as long as you use olive or sunflower oil to make it, experts say.

They found no heightened risk of heart disease or premature death linked to food that had been cooked in this way.

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Secret recordings made by President John F Kennedy reveal in the days before his assassination that he predicted the following Monday would be a "tough day". It would prove to be the date of his funeral.

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Steve Jobs hated the stylus. It’s obvious why: controlling your mobile device with a penlike thing meant having to carry something extra, and Jobs always disdained extra things. “God gave us 10 styluses—let’s not invent another,” he used to say, according to Walter Isaacson’s biography.

The stylus was one of the reasons Jobs killed the Newton, Apple’s 1990s-era mobile personal assistant. It was also one of the reasons he decided to build the iPhone and the iPad. A decade ago, when Microsoft was pushing its vision for tablet machines, Jobs considered Bill Gates’ love of the stylus a key vulnerability. “As soon as you have a stylus, you’re dead,” he said. In 2002, after hearing a description of Microsoft’s tablet, Jobs marched into his office and issued an order: “I want to make a tablet, and it can’t have a keyboard or stylus,” he said. “So could you guys come up with a multi-touch, touch-sensitive display for me?”

And that was it—the moment the stylus died for good. Over the next few years, Apple worked in secret to perfect touch computing, and with the introduction of the iPhone in 2007, Jobs sought to make the touchscreen the signature digital interface of our era. “Who wants a stylus?” he sneered at his Macworld keynote unveiling the phone. “You have to get ‘em, put ‘em away, you lose ‘em. Yech! Nobody wants a stylus. So let’s not use a stylus.”

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Mourning the loss of 'The Senator,' a 3,500-year-old tree

Fans lament the loss of a giant bald cypress in Florida, one of the world's oldest trees.

A 3,500-year-old bald cypress tree known as "The Senator" burned to the ground in Big Tree Park in Longwood, Fla., earlier this week, bringing forth mournful comments from the people who lived near it and from around the globe.

The 118-foot tree, which was designated a national historic landmark by President Calvin Coolidge in 1929, had likely been smoldering deep inside its trunk for two weeks after a lightning strike, according to investigators.

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GoDaddy Goes After Lucrative Idiot Demographic With New Naked Lady Ad

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Wildlife Experts Alarmed

Stallone Action Movie Wakes Up Hibernating Bats

Thousands of bats hibernating in a Bulgarian cave have been woken up by the filming of Hollywood action movie "The Expendables 2," wildlife experts say. They complain that authorities shouldn't have permitted filming in one of Europe's top winter bat refuges, and warn that many of the creatures are so confused that they may starve. More...

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'Sarkozy Has Learned to Like Angela Merkel'

1949 - John Belushi