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BakingFood, restaurants and cookingHistory

The Bundt Pan Booklet

Unusual Old World and American Recipes: The 1972 Bundt Pan Leaflet


December 9, 2016
0 Facebook Twitter Google + Pinterest “True Republicanism”: on slaves building the White House


AstronomyEuropeHistoryHome lifeHumorIrelandMediaOOA2tumblrpredicting the futurepredicting the future badlyreligionthings that piss you off

Dude, where’s my Apocalypse?! 

Zip. Zilch. Nada.

But who do I complain to?

Dude, where’s my apocalypse?!


Current eventsEuropeFeaturedHistoryIrelandMediaTV in general

An afternoon at Trinity 


Current eventsHistoryHumorMediaNews

A royal wedding sentiment 


Film and TVHistoryliterature

What, no Burton? Was watching the BBC program last night on the Arabian Nights, featuring Richard Grant. When they started dealing with the issue of translations, it surprised me a little that not a single word was said about Sir Richard Burton, though a fair amount of air time was spent on Edward William Lane, whose version of the Thousand Nights and a Night was extremely sanitized.

I find myself wondering whether some scholar involved with the program had a bug up the butt about Burton’s fairly explicit translation. Granted, it’s not as if the man isn’t a source for continuing controversy: you run into scholarly opinion suggesting that Burton had committed that most heinous of offenses, “getting too close to the material” — the literary version of “going native”. Stilll, it’s odd to see an analysis of the Nights that doesn’t even mention his name. I wonder what was going on…

It’s interesting also to note in passing that Burton discusses Lane in his introduction to his own translation. “That amiable and devoted Arabist,” Burton calls him, and then gently takes him to task for “converting the Arabian Nights to the Arabian Chapters. Worse still, he converts some chapters into notes. He renders poetry by prose and apologizes for not omitting it altogether; … he is at once too Oriental and not Oriental enough. …Worst of all, these handsome volumes are rendered unreadable …by the stuff and stilted style of half a century ago when our prose was perhaps the worst in Europe.” (Well, don’t mince words, Sir Richard, tell us what you really think…)

What, no Burton? was last modified: April 22nd, 2011 by Diane Duane


Film and TVHistoryPsychology / psychiatry

In the O RLY? Dep't: Dinosaurs helped build the pyramids


Now all we need to hear is that Hitler was somehow involved and we’ll have the perfect documentary pitch for The History Channel.

(It could have made a good Stargate SG-1 script too, but unfortunately it’s a little late for that. See, the Goa’uld started experimenting with re-evolved saurians as hosts, but then the Ancients…  oh, never mind.)

Tags: dinosaurs, dinoceros, Job, Hitler, pyramids, Stargate+SG-1, Discovery+Channel
In the O RLY? Dep't: Dinosaurs helped build the pyramids was last modified: August 24th, 2008 by Diane Duane


Computer stuffCurrent eventsHistoryMediaOnline life

A timeline of Internet memes


And apparently it’s still growing (to judge by the “Add An Event” button).

Tags: Internet, history, meme, online
A timeline of Internet memes was last modified: August 7th, 2008 by Diane Duane


Current eventsEuropeHistory

In the "You Could Not Make This Up" department

…And it’s fascinating.

Purported descendants of the Knights Templars are suing Pope Benedict for recognition of the seizure of a hundred billion Euros’ worth of their ancestors’ assets and property in the mid-1200s. (The seizure was secondary to accusations that the Order was heretical, and involved — among other things — in devil worship: but these accusations now usually thought to have been a smokescreen intended to allow the appropriation of the Templars’ great wealth.)

[Those suing the Pope] claim that, when the order was dissolved , more than 9,000 properties as well as other commercial enterprises belonging to the knights were appropriated by the church.

Their legal claim, they say, is just to “restore their good name.” In a press release, the self-proclaimed “sons of the knights” declared, “We are not trying to cause the economic collapse of the Roman Catholic Church, but to illustrate to the court the magnitude of the plot against our Order.”

Tags: Templar, Knights, Pope, Benedict, Order, France, Crusades, Crusaders
In the "You Could Not Make This Up" department was last modified: August 6th, 2008 by Diane Duane


Graphic and plastic artsHistoryTravel

Sung dynasty porcelain: yum While working on something else, I just caught a teaser on Euronews about this exhibition marking the reopening of the National Palace Museum in Taiwan.

I’m a sucker for antique porcelain, and this stuff is sublime.

(BTW, Gung hei fat choi, everybody. It’s the Year of the Fire Pig, which is supposed to be good for us Dragons. We’ll find out…)

[tags]Sung, Soong, dynasty, porcelain, National Palace, museum, Taiwan, Chinese new year, Year of the Pig, Year of the Fire Pig[/tags]

Sung dynasty porcelain: yum was last modified: February 19th, 2007 by Diane Duane


February 19, 2007

Stonehenge…where the party animals go! …Er, went.

Archaeologists have found the remains of an ancient settlement two miles from Stonehenge which seems to have been built specifically to celebrate the Winter Solstice… big time.

The new finds at Durrington Walls, two miles northeast of the stone circle, indicate that the entire region was a large religious complex where the early Britons gathered in midwinter for raucous feasts and solemn ceremonies before sending their deceased on a voyage to the afterlife.

…Durrington Walls “is either the richest site or the filthiest that we have ever found for this period,” Pearson said. “It’s absolutely stuffed full of trash or rubbish: broken pots, chips, flints, burned stones used for cooking and animal bones. Many were thrown away half eaten, a sign of conspicuous consumption. This is an enormous feasting assemblage. People were here to have a really good time.”

Significantly, there was no evidence for the processing of grain or baking it and little evidence of crafts. “This was not a full-time, year-round community, but one for specialized activities.”

Like partying!

[tags]Stonehenge, Solstice, winter, Durrington Walls[/tags]

Stonehenge…where the party animals go! …Er, went. was last modified: January 31st, 2007 by Diane Duane

 HistoryHobbyhorses and General RantingMediaWriting

Goody Two Shoes

Not about Jade. (Well, only peripherally.)

So, finally, it was over and it ended, of course, in tears. By an overwhelming majority, the viewers voted to expel Jade and keep Shilpa.



The inevitable comments are starting to come out of the British newspapers regarding the Big Brother bullying-and-racism flap. A few of the articles are making puns on Jade’s last name, including a very specific one: Is it too late to be Goody Two-Shoes?, etc. And something about that brought my head up. What’s with these references to the name of the main character in a children’s book two hundred fifty years old… a book in which even the identity of the writer is in doubt, and which (I would be willing to lay down at least a ten-Euro note) almost nobody who uses the phrase has ever read?

It seems lots and lots of English-speaking people know the phrase, even after the source has been almost completely forgotten in (at least) popular culture. What kind of book remains so long alive in the language — if only in title — while no one knows much of anything about it? Why this strange etiolated fame? …I’m as familiar with the phrase as anyone else, but had never given a moment’s thought to the source. After seeing these news stories, though, suddenly I got curious and went hunting.

“Goody Two Shoes” (with or without the hyphen) turns out to be a shortened version of the proper title, The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes, one of several titles for a work first published in England in 1765. (The title page itself is worth mentioning, as it looks like this — )





Otherwise called,



The Means by which she acquired her Learning and Wisdom,
and in consequence thereof her Estate;
set forth at large for the Benefit of those,

Who from a State of Rags and Care
And having Shoes but half a Pair;
Their Fortune and their Fame would fix,
And gallop in a Coach and Six.

And you might be forgiven for thinking, Oh no, here comes another ghastly “improving” work of that period… if the author didn’t immediately tip you the wink, giving himself/herself away:

Illustrated with the Comments of our great modern Critics.

…Uh huh. I confess to having been suckered in, so I took the half an hour or so required (I was making dumplings at the same time) and read the book online at Gutenberg. It’s not very long. Yes, it is moralistic, yes, sometimes the dated style and phrasing will nearly send you around the bend: but there’s some funny stuff in it…and I can believe that in its time it may have seemed groundbreaking. It turns out to be a rags-to-riches story in which a poor little girl named Margery, made homeless and shortly orphaned by the connivance of a greedy farmer-estate manager and his boss (a thoughtless absentee landlord) manages to make something of herself. She does this — and here she instantly wins my support — by teaching other kids to read. And the book has some other surprises in it, among them possibly the earliest instance of product placement I’ve ever seen (medical preparations referred to in the text have ads at the end…), and some very serious discourse on animal rights, surely not something you’d routinely expect of a work produced in the mid-1700s. Margery has a lively time of it: some scary things happen to her, some amusing things: and at last she comes out on top.

Yes, the author does let you know that Margery’s success is at least partially because she is Good and Behaves Like A Good Girl while those around her are behaving badly. (There is a certain Polyanna quality to her behavior: and there we have yet another character whose name remains famous though most people haven’t read the book — though certainly Disney has intervened on her behalf.) And the author also lets you know that Divine Providence is about, punishing the wicked and rewarding the good. Whatever. I would need to do some research, but there are dangerous signs in this book of someone writing a children’s book that is both (argh) improving, and (dangerous new idea) funny.

The book was much loved by five or six generations, and stayed in print for at least a hundred and twenty-five years or so, being published and republished in many editions on both sides of the Atlantic, ripped off, recast, and otherwise digested by its parent culture. Eventually, as happens, its interest for newer generations started to wane, and it fell out of the public consciousness, except for its title character’s name.

Some people had strong opinions about this growing, general amnesia about what they felt was a good book that deserved to be remembered. Listen here to the great Andrew Lang getting tetchy about the decline of quality children’s literature (he was writing to Coleridge in one of a series of letters to dead writers: there’s another great one here, where he writes to Sir John Mandeville, Kt. But never mind that at the moment). To Coleridge, he says:

Goody Two Shoes is almost out of print. Mrs Barbauld’s stuff has banished all the old classics of the nursery, and the shopman at Newbery’s hardly deigned to reach them off an old exploded corner of a shelf, when Mary asked for them. Mrs Barbauld’s and Mrs Trimmer’s nonsense lay in piles about. Knowledge, insignificant and vapid as Mrs Barbauld’s books convey, it seems must come to a child in the shape of knowledge; and his empty noddle must be turned with conceit of his own powers when he has learnt that a horse is an animal, and Billy is better than a horse, and such like, instead of that beautiful interest in wild tales, which made the child a man, while all the time he suspected himself to be no bigger than a child. Science has succeeded to poetry no less in the little walks of children than with men. Is there no possibility of averting this sore evil? Think what you would have been now, if instead of being fed with tales and old wives’ fables in childhood, you had been crammed with geography and natural history!

Hang them!–I mean the cursed Barbauld crew, those blights and blasts of all that is human in man and child.

The tone of the complaint sounds kind of familiar… You can take a look at a little of “Mrs. Barbauld’s stuff” over here and see why Lang was getting so riled. It looks to me like an early form of the Dick-and-Jane form of early-reader material, now with Extra Added Didacticism and Mommy holding your hand real tight. Yes, she too was groundbreaking in her way and her time — see this longish article setting out reasons why — but her stuff still sets my teeth far further on edge than Two-Shoes does.)

Anyway. The question I’m left with is: when did “Goody Two Shoes” turn into a pejorative? What happened? Are we just seeing an accretion of scorn, decades thick, for a discarded nursery book whose prose style has fallen out of fashion, and a heroine seen (in modern or pre-modern times) as literally too good to be true?

But also…this whole business makes me look ahead several centuries and wonder if there will come a time when somebody might be referred to as “such a Harry Potter…” …and almost no one will have read the book, or have any idea why the phrase means what it does — or realize that what it’s come to mean may have nothing to do with the genuine trials or triumphs on paper and film of one young wizard. Two hundred fifty years is a long time: even print, eventually, becomes ephemera. Very few are the books still read even a century after they’re published: how many people now know even the names of the superstar writers, let alone the superstar children’s writers, of 1900? Yes, we have the mass media now, and many more ways to disseminate fame. But sometimes I wonder whether that will make the written word more likely to be forgotten, rather than less.

…Who knows. I’m going to go have some of that soup with the dumplings in it.

Goody Two Shoes was last modified: August 20th, 2014 by Diane Duane


January 21, 2007
Graphic and plastic artsHistory

Is this minimalist enough? Originally uploaded by designsponge.

…Though I imagine you’d have to say the blessing real fast on the eighth night… [tags]minimalism, minimalist, Hanukkah, Chanukah[/tags]
Is this minimalist enough? was last modified: September 9th, 2006 by Diane Duane


Current eventsGraphic and plastic artsHistory

OMG, how did I miss this?!

I am a big fan of Benvenuto Cellini’s. Okay, maybe it sounds a little strange to say that, at this end of time: but the man’s personality is an endless fascination to me. He was an exquisitely talented painter and sculptor who worked for popes and kings, a contemporary and acquaintance of Michaelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci; an incorrigibly opinionated boaster, duelist and brawler, an occasional jailbreaker (for that fast mouth of his got him in trouble more than once), and an indefatigable self-promoter and traveling PR show, with an ego the size of the planet. He wrought as he lived, hugely. And one of the most magnificent things he ever made was a salt-cellar, a saliera. Here’s how he describes it:

…it was oval in form, standing about two-thirds of a cubit, wrought of solid gold, and worked entirely with the chisel. While speaking of the model, I said before how I had represented Sea and Earth, seated, with their legs interlaced, as we observe in the case of firths and promontories; this attitude was therefore metaphorically appropriate. The Sea carried a trident in his right hand, and in his left I put a ship of delicate workmanship to hold the salt. Below him were his four sea-horses, fashioned like our horses from the head to the front hoofs; all the rest of their body, from the middle backwards, resembled a fish, and the tails of these creatures were agreeably inter-woven. Above this group the Sea sat throned in an attitude of pride and dignity; around him were many kinds of fishes and other creatures of the ocean. The water was represented with its waves, and enamelled in the appropriate colour. I had portrayed Earth under the form of a very handsome woman, holding her horn of plenty, entirely nude like the male figure; in her left hand I placed a little temple of Ionic architecture, most delicately wrought, which was meant to contain the pepper. Beneath her were the handsomest living creatures which the earth produces; and the rocks were partly enamelled, partly left in gold. The whole piece reposed upon a base of ebony, properly proportioned, but with a projecting cornice, upon which I introduced four golden figures in rather more than half-relief. They represented Night, Day, Twilight, and Dawn. I put, moreover, into the same frieze four other figures, similar in size, and intended for the four chief winds; these were executed, and in part enamelled, with the most exquisite refinement.

And for once he’s not bragging too much about the beauty of the piece. …So I was very, very annoyed when the Saliera was stolen in from its museum-home in Vienna in 2003.

But they got it back in January!! I had no idea.

And today the thief was sentenced. (Or in this case maybe “artnapper” is a better word: the guy decided he would return the piece after a ransom was paid.) He’s claiming the theft was a spur-of-the-moment thing. I’m not entirely convinced.

The funny thing is that he got caught by sending one SMS too many.

[tags]Cellini, saliera, salt cellar, saltcellar[/tags]

OMG, how did I miss this?! was last modified: September 8th, 2006 by Diane Duane


September 8, 2006
Current eventsFood, restaurants and cookingHistoryHumor

Looks like the "French" is back in fries

Took them long enough. (eyeroll)

Of course, the real joke is that the fries are actually Belgian in origin. (The WWI US “doughboys” who discovered them had simply wound up in a French-speaking part of Belgium.) The best evidence of this provenance — not concrete, granted: the dish is too old for that — can be found in the fact that every other language assigning fries a national origin associates them with either the Belgians or the Dutch. Only US English calls fries “French”.

Much more on the subject here.

(Argh, I wish I was standing in the main square in Brugge right now, outside that little frietkot that sits down by the door of the Bell Tower, with a paper box of fries. Or down at that frituur around the corner from the apartments we stay in when we’re visiting there. [BTW, I agree with the photographer: this guy unnerves me somewhat.] …Oh well: back to work)

[tags]France, French fries, French, freedom fries, freedom, Congress[/tags]

Looks like the "French" is back in fries was last modified: August 5th, 2006 by Diane Duane


August 5, 2006
Current eventsHistory

"The Irish 'Dead Sea Scrolls'"

Don’t know if I’d call them that, but unquestionably the find is important.

Fragments of an ancient manuscript, possibly more than 1,000 years old, have been uncovered in a bog.

The discovery of the Psalter or Book of Psalms in the south Midlands has already been hailed by experts as the greatest find from a European bog.

The find is said to be one of the most significant discoveries in European and world archaeology in decades and has been referred to as the Irish equivalent of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Specialists have said it is impossible to know how the manuscript ended up in the bog, but believe it may have been lost in transit or dumped after a raid possibly 1,000-1,200 years ago — while estimates date the book to 800AD.


A version of the story with many more details is here.

[tags]Ireland, Dead Sea Scrolls, manuscript, psaltery, bog[/tags]

"The Irish 'Dead Sea Scrolls'" was last modified: July 26th, 2006 by Diane Duane



Is the (US) penny doomed?

The question comes up once again, as the one-cent piece now costs more to produce than it’s worth.

…The U.S. Mint could lose a mint, or $43.5 million, producing the coin this year, according to at least one expert.

…The Mint is also losing a pretty penny on the nickel. The agency, which plans to produce 1.7 billion of them this year, shells out 6.4 cents for each five-cent piece. Yet, there has been far less hoo-ha over the nickel.

“There is more sentimentality associated with the penny,” said Anthony Zito, 53, former president of the Massapequa Coin Club and avid penny collector. “It has a beloved president on it and has inspired a host of sayings, such as ‘penny-wise and pound-foolish,’ ‘a penny saved is a penny earned’ and ‘a penny for your thoughts.’ It is more ingrained in our culture than any other currency.”

Well, the “pound-foolish” saying would have come from the British side of things, or at least the pre-dollar side.

Another take on the situation from further on in the article:

Another penny advocate, Mark Weller, executive director of Americans for Common Cents, an advocacy group, argues that the elimination of the penny would hurt consumers and many charities, which rely on penny drives as part of their donation collections.

Most convenience stores would round up instead of round down, costing consumers $600 million, said Weller, citing a study by Raymond Lombra, a Penn State University economist.

Weller added that Kolbe is pushing the legislation because Arizona is a copper-producing state. The elimination of the penny would force the Mint to make more nickels, which are mostly composed of copper, he said.

“This is special interest legislation at it worst,” Weller said.

…There was a lot of noise, I seem to remember, when the euro was first being structured, as to whether or not there should be a one-cent coin. I can’t now recall all the justifications for the “yea” or “nay” positions. Whatever: we’ve got it now.

Meanwhile, it’ll be interesting to see if our cent outlasts the US one…

[tags]money, penny, US Mint[/tags]

Is the (US) penny doomed? was last modified: July 24th, 2006 by Diane Duane


Current eventsHistoryTravel

Dancing on Olympus Looks like something a little unusual was going on recently up on the slopes of one of Europe’s highest mountains.

Last week, like a thunderbolt from Zeus himself, an unexpectedly large horde of pre-Christian devotees descended on Mount Olympus for the annual Prometheus festival.

Many wore white robes although a minority, it is true, came wearing little more than their love for the 12 ancient gods. But a bit of near-nudity notwithstanding, their arrival might have gone unnoticed had it not been for the fact that there were 4 000 of them dancing in the wood-encircled meadow halfway up the mountainside.

Apparently, though, this has really, really annoyed some people.

This year, despite fierce protests from the Orthodox Church, pagans were allowed to set up a cultural association. Now they want to take their battle to the ancient temples of Greece in the hopes of one day having the religion officially recognised.

…”What their worshippers symbolise, and clearly want, is a return to the monstrous dark delusions of the past,” hissed Father Eustathios Kollas, who presides over the community of Greek priests. “They should be stopped.”

This should be interesting to watch. I have strange visions of this issue winding up in front of the European Court of Justice at some point, if some involved EU citizen feels his or her right to worship freely is being infringed…

[tags]Greece, religion, paganism, pagan, Greek Orthodox, Olympus[/tags]

Dancing on Olympus was last modified: July 2nd, 2006 by Diane Duane


July 2, 2006
 


New at Ebooks Direct

Last Tweets

At Ebooks Direct


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What happens…

…between A Wizard of Mars and Games Wizards Play?
 ...all divisions of the Previously on “Out Of Ambit”…
