In which I proffer my experience in the service of the East European mafia as a model for helping us help the Aricept generation.

Restores the power of speech to stricken Andalusians.

It’s Pig’d over at Calculated Risk has a toothy smirk for the bailout which, for the usual reasons, we are not to call a bailout.
Mr Artificial Turf confirms our opinion that Bordeaux is astonishingly good value compared to Barcelona. And it has real waves.

Why and how the 17th century Portuguese tropical medicine specialist, Aleixo de Abreu, tried to prevent proles from reading his cure for scurvy.

Is Mr Barbecue Bunny’s sardonic grin pre- or post-mortem?

Don’t believe the wine pundits.

An etymological hop from kite-flying with Juan Marsé back to Concha Piquer’s greatest hit.

Debating at lunch how long it would be before we’re all eating grass soup (sopa de golf on the costas), we progressed to the devil’s cookbook, and someone mentioned the 16th century colonial chronicler, Bernardino de Sahagún.
Back when Bernardino was booking the cooks Mictlan was where dead Aztecs lived–way up north, probably in New [...]

I caught the first train out of town this morning to go and inspect what a certain farmer has in the fields round the the back (large sections of horse skeleton) before the man rose from his slumbers. Sitting across the carriage from me was an attractive woman, and at the next stop a drunk [...]

Here. Now all I need to do is stop the cat vomiting on the kitchen table.

So there I was, dear reader, saying the nicest things about Margaret Marks. And now I discover, to my dismay, just the vaguest trace of irreverence in her posts (1/2) re John Cage’s 4′33″, implying that she secretly possesses seven heads, ten horns, various crowns, and upon her heads the name of heresy. For what better than a piece that can be performed by anyone, that provides automatic free updates reflecting changing soundscapes, and that reminds one of Thoreau when he writes: