Natural history

The great British tin entrepôt mystery

Wednesday, March 14th, 2012

Yet another cunning plot to reconcile Diodorus with Pliny, Ictis with Mictis. With thoughts on Pliny’s use of “introrsus” and “Britannia”, and notional curragh sailing times along and across the English Channel.

Tags: Cornwall, Diodorus, England, English Channel, France, Galicia, Les bourgeois, Mediterranean Sea, Phoenicia, Pliny, Rivers, sailing, sex, Ships, Spain, Stones and metals, The ocean, The sea, tin, translation
Posted in (Pre-)Roman, Albion, Bays, Belerion, Belerium, Bibliotheca historica, Bolerium, Britain, Britannia, Britannic Ocean, Cantium, Dover, French language, Garonne, German language, Harfleur, Historiae naturalis, Honfleur, Iron Age, Islands, Kent, Le Havre, Loire, Mictim, Mount Batten, Natural history, Naturalis historia, Penwith, Plymouth, Plymouth Sound, Posidonius, Promontories, Pytheas, Rhine, Richborough, Sandwich, Seine, Timaeus, Timeo, Vectis, boat, boatmanship, coracle, currach, curragh, ship, skin boat | No Comments »

Langston Hughes in Spain

Saturday, October 1st, 2011

Idealism vs realism as a Stalinist hack copes with the Italian bombing of Barcelona but struggles to explain why Moorish peasants are slaughtering Spanish workers in the battle for Madrid.

Tags: Barcelona, catalonia, Civil War, Empires, rulers and warfare, Falange, Film, Francisco Franco, Generalitat de Catalunya, Guerra Civil, History, Les bourgeois, Madrid, moors, nationalism, Poets, Russia, Spain, War
Posted in Abraham Lincoln Brigade, Carl Murphy, English literature, Federico García Lorca, George Orwell, Karl Marx, Langston Hughes, Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Natural history, Politics of Spain, Spanish literature, air raid, tree | No Comments »

Goethe, responsible for Victorian pteridomania?

Tuesday, February 15th, 2011

The disastrous horticultural consequences of fucked literary translation.

Tags: English language, Languages, Les bourgeois, Liberals & locals, Orientalism, poetry, Poets, Spanish language, translation
Posted in Aromatic shrubs, Chinoiserie, Fad, Fern, German language, German literature, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Jorge Luis Borges, Natural history, Pteridomania, Spanish literature | No Comments »

Montserrat Tura and PSC hypocrisy in La Clota, Horta

Monday, February 7th, 2011

The demented, evil swine has herself photographed in a neighbourhood her party has spent the last 20 years doing its damnedest to destroy.

Tags: architecture, Barcelona, Buildings, catalonia, Cities, Cultivation of the fields, Empires, rulers and warfare, Fields, landmarks, land measures, Les bourgeois, Liberals & locals, Roads, Spain, War
Posted in 1992 Summer Olympics, Antoni Gaudí, Dante Alighieri, Divine Comedy, Horta (Barcelona), Italian literature, José María Gironella, Montserrat Tura i Camafreita, Natural history, Ricardo de la Cierva, Socialists' Party of Catalonia, Spanish literature, urban renewal | No Comments »

Assaulted by a pine processionary caterpillar!

Saturday, February 5th, 2011

With chunks of Dioscorides and Andrés Laguna, including the wonderful story of what happened when an impotent bridegroom and a constipated friar involuntarily swapped medicines.

Tags: Acute diseases, Aleppo pine, Antwerp, Barcelona, catalonia, Dioscorides, dog, Empire, Empires, rulers and warfare, Heathen philosophers, Les bourgeois, pine tree, Pinus halepensis, Remedies and medicines, Spain, translation, Trees, Worms
Posted in (Pre-)Roman, Chemical warfare, Natural history, Pine Processionary, Venice, allergy, animal experiments, antidote, aphrodisiac, caterpillar, dermatitis, tree | No Comments »