Nepenthe

What do you do if you're a meat-eater living with a vegetarian? Chef and committed carnivore Tom Norrington-Davies knows - he has been in a relationship with one for almost 10 years. Here he offers some tips on keeping things cooking A famous London restaurateur once boasted that he loved taking calls from vegetarians. "Do you have anything for us?" they would ask. "Yes," would be his reply. "Contempt." Funny, isn't it? Nearly as good as this one from a radio phone-in. A vegetarian asked a cookery writer how she could liven up her lentils. "Add bacon," came the answer, with howls of laughter from the production desk. Ha. Ha. Ha. It is a truth, fairly universally acknowledged, that chefs hate vegetarians. It's not about them refusing to eat meat, per se. Chefs, male and female, posh or not, see themselves as butch, no-nonsense, pragmatic types who will eat anything. All diets, therefore, are a load of girly nonsense. Customers can just...

"The death of a man is a tragedy, the death of 1 million is a statistic" - Stalin _____________________________ Bhavia is sleeping swaddled in a woolly peach cardigan amid the wailing and flailing limbs of 20 other babies. Nurses in lilac saris and face masks scoop the bundles from rockers and jig them under the wintry Delhi sun. Two days ago, the baby girl became the newest arrival at Palna, an orphanage in the capital's Civil Lines district. But Bhavia is not an orphan. She is what used to be known as "a foundling", abandoned by her mother in a local hospital. When Bhavia came to Palna she was nameless, with no date of birth. What is certain, from a cursory glance at the line of babies, is that an orphanage is one of the few places in India where males are outnumbered. For every boy lying in the sunny courtyard, there are four girls. Some have been dumped outside police stations, some in railway toilets, crowded fairgrounds, or the dark corners of bus stations...

Before anybody knew Mandelbrot, artists were seeing fractals in nature and transfered the patterns in painting, design and sculpture. Fractals, as you know, are geometric patterns that are repeated on smaller and smaller scales to produce intricate designs outside the scope of classical geometry. They are described by a Mandelbrot equation. The mind has always had a fixation with recursive and fractal patterns, largely because our environment is filled with them. Only in the last 40 years have we been able to finally describe this exquisitely subtle math of interacting patterns. Fractals may have become a cliche in modern computer graphics, but they have a long and rich history in art: Medieval Celtic Book of Kells (597 A.D.): This cultural treasure contains every variety of design typical of Irish art at its best. The most characteristic ornaments of the Book of Kells, as of other illuminated Irish manuscripts of the period, are the closely coiled spirals connected with each other b...

Com direcção criativa de Michael McPherson, ex-performer do Cirque du Soleil, FOUR : ESPÍRITO DOS ELEMENTOS recorre a inovadores efeitos especiais e soluções de multimédia que se aliam a surpreendentes números aéreos e acrobacias, criando uma exaltante dinâmica sequencial aos elementos base do universo que nos envolve. Se o AR é o elemento em que se gera a vida, indispensável ao ser para ser, a TERRA é a envolvente que o rodeia, onde ele se move e interage, fazendo emergir a sua personalidade e permitindo-lhe a construção relacional com os demais. Mas a vida só sobrevive se houver ÁGUA, esse líquido incolor e inodoro que flui e vivifica o ser, estimulando-o na aventura de existir. E, finalmente, surge o FOGO, evocativo da paixão que arrebata os espíritos e inspira o ser a alcançar a diferença que o converte em criatura única entre os seus pares.

The Casino Estoril of Lisbon, Portugal was the inspiration for the casino gambling scene and title for the Ian Fleming novel of "Casino Royale". This was a location where German agents would frequent during World War II. On his visit, Fleming bancoed three times and lost three times, yet little did he know that his future James Bond novel title would be made as a movie three times. Casino Estoril

Os portugueses vão poder assistir no primeiro sábado de Março, se as condições do céu o permitirem, ao primeiro eclipse total da Lua desde 2004, visível em toda a Europa, África e Ásia ocidental. O fenómeno terá início às 21h30 (hora TMG e de Lisboa) de 03 de Março, depois da Lua entrar em penumbra às 20h18, e terminará à 01:20 dessa noite, com o eclipse total a ocorrer entre 22h44 e as 23h58, precisou à agência Lusa a astrónoma Albertina do Campo, do Observatório Astronómico de Lisboa (OAL). Se as nuvens não interferirem, a Lua "cheia" estará nessa noite bastante alta no céu, virada a sul, em muito boas condições para se observar a sua ocultação, referiu. O eclipse resultará da interposição da Terra entre o Sol e a Lua, que fará projectar nela a sua sombra em forma de cone. Mas mesmo no meio da fase de ocultação total, às 23h21, a Lua não irá desaparecer completamente devido a radiações luminosas de partículas da atmosfera terrestre que se projectam nela. É por isso que o di...

This is just the colour caption (click the above link for the table)

In the beginning, there was only light. Then inflation kicked in, and that light energy condensed and cooled into the matter that formed the stars, planets, nebulae and other heavenly bodies that illuminate the firmament. This we learn in planetarium shows, like the one projected onto the interior of the dome theater at Griffith Observatory. Then there’s that other power of light we learn about at the observatory — the kind you discover if you stick around for the late show, when the academic astronomy is over and the Laserium kicks in, turning that same dome into a kaleidoscopic display of colorful beams and patterns set to music, and the eager audience, admonished against “smoking of anything during the performance,” explores the universe in a whole different way. Or so it used to be. In 2002, when the observatory closed for its $93 million renovation, the Laserium lost its home of nearly three decades. To the surprise of many, when the observatory reopened last month, the Laseriu...

by Cory Doctorow, courtesy of The Rake online magazine:

Come, my friends, 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down: It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles, whom we knew Tho' much is taken, much abides; and though We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. Alfred Lord Tennyson, 1833

A fast-thinking pilot, with the help of passengers, fooled a gunman who had hijacked a jetliner flying from Africa to the Canary Islands, braking hard upon landing then quickly accelerating to knock the man down so travellers could pounce on him, Spanish officials said Friday. A lone gunman brandishing two pistols hijacked the Air Mauritania Boeing 737, carrying 71 passengers and a crew of eight, Thursday evening shortly after it took off from the Mauritanian capital of Nouakchott for Gran Canaria, one of Spain’s Canary Islands, with a planned stopover in Nouadhibou in northern Mauritania. Speaking to the gunman during the hijacking, the pilot realized the man did not speak French . So he used the plane’s public address system to warn the passengers in French of the ploy he was going to try: brake hard upon landing, then speed up abruptly. The idea was to catch the hijacker off balance, and have crew members and men sitting in the front row...

yeyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy :-))))))))) St. Petersburg in the middle... and so much more

BODY, REMEMBER Body, remember not only how much you were loved, not only the beds on which you lay, but also those desires for you that glowed plainly in the eyes, and trembled in the voice—and some chance obstacle made futile. Now that all of them belong to the past, it almost seems as if you had yielded to those desires—how they glowed, remember, in the eyes gazing at you; how they trembled in the voice, for you, remember, body. Constantinos Cavafis (1863-1933), translated from the Greek by Rae Dalven PUTTING IN THE SEED You come to fetch me from my work to-night When supper's on the table, and we'll see If I can leave off burying the white Soft petals fallen from the apple tree (Soft petals, yes, but not so barren quite, Mingled with these, smooth bean and wrinkled pea;) And go along with you ere you lose sight Of what you came for and become like me, Slave to a springtime passion for the earth. How Love burns through the Putting in the Seed On through the watching for that ...

The Shins, live performance at BBC6 .

Insert Caption contest from Cinematical.

by STEVE MARTIN Virgin No. 1: Yuck. Virgin No. 2: Ick. Virgin No. 3: Ew. Virgin No. 4: Ow. Virgin No. 5: Do you like cats? I have fourteen! Virgin No. 6: I’m Becky. I’ll be legal in two years. Virgin No. 7: Here, I’ll just pull down your zipper. Oh, sorry! Virgin No. 8: Can we cuddle first? Virgin No. 9: It was a garlic-and-onion pizza. Why? Virgin No. 10: . . . so I see Heath, and he goes, “Like, what are you doing here?,” and I go, “I’m hangin’ out,” so he goes, “Like, what?” . . . Virgin No. 11: First you’re going to have to show me an up-to-date health certificate. Virgin No. 12: Hurry! My parents are due home! Virgin No. 13: Do you want the regular or the special? Virgin No. 14: I’m eighty-four. So what? Virgin No. 15: Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Virgin No. 16: Even I know that’s tiny. Virgin No. 17: “Do it”? Meaning what? Virgin No. 18: I’m saving myself for Jesus. Virgin No. 19: Somewhere on my body I have hidden a buffalo nick...

So that's what Macs are good for Japanese food with a twist

Baby Kangaroo Baby Squirrel

Luv this website... Dark blue: drives on left (mainly British ex-colonies). Light blue: used to drive on right, now on left (Namibia). Purple: used to have mixed system, now drives on right. Light red: used to drive on left, now on right. Dark red: drives on right. The island of California The Empire of Love...

Once, sugar was all delight: from the land of milk and honey to Shakespearean innocence - "white-handed mistress, one sweet word with thee ... honey, milk and sugar, there is three". But now it's the devil incarnate; or, at least, the new nicotine. "Sugar is as dangerous as tobacco [and] should be classified as a hard drug, for it is harmful and addictive," according to a recent article in the British Medical Journal. Sugars in all forms are seen by many as dangerous to health and our food is packed full of them: not just sucrose (plain sugar as we know it) but other forms of refined sugars from cane, beet and corn. Eat too much of them and you may become fat, sick and miserable. Sugars rot your teeth and encourage a calorie-rich but nutrient-low diet that contributes to obesity - and obesity is a high-risk factor for heart disease, diabetes and certain cancers. The rhetoric from the government's food standards agency is more muted but the aim is the same: h...

An early reviewer of the writings of DH Lawrence remarked with some degree of accuracy and exasperation: “For Mr Lawrence, everything is always like something else”. In the belle epoque of Edwardian Britain, when a kind of debonair confidence made all knowledge unproblematic, it must have been puzzling for a stolid Times of London reviewer to have a chap come along insisting that things could only be understood by appreciating their likeness to other things. This probably explains why there was never much writing about wine in those days. Wine is always described as being like something else. This is appealingly post modern. If a chardonnay tastes a bit like a peach, what then does the peach taste like? A chardonnay? And if so, what does either taste like? If you must describe the Van Loveren 2001 limited edition Merlot as being “chocolately”, does it mean that chocolate tastes like the Van Loveren Merlot? And if we like the Merlot on account if its tasting like chocolate, why don’t w...

My father, a translator, was hired by a man who suspected that his wife was unfaithful and married him only to get a green card. He had my father translate photocopied pages from her diary. Family members think this was unethical. My father maintains he simply did his job. You? (Incidentally, the diary confirmed the devastated man’s suspicions, and he is initiating divorce proceedings.) — Nicole Schou, San Francisco Although your father was only following orders (sorry, just doing his job), he must subject his actions to moral scrutiny. Because those pages were ill gotten and their possession violated the privacy of the diarist (albeit a two-timing diarist), your dad should have declined the job. The diary’s revelations are beside the point. What’s at issue is his abetting the misconduct of the understandably dismayed but unduly snooping cuckold. The code of ethics of the American Translators Association requires a member “to refuse any assignment he believes to be intended for...

if it were pink twould be sashimi :)

Morocco is too curious, too beautiful, too rich in landscape and architecture, and above all too much of a novelty, not to attract one of the main streams of spring travel as soon as Mediterranean passenger traffic is resumed. Now that the war is over, only a few months' work on roads and railways divide it from the great torrent of "tourism"; and once that deluge is let loose, no eye will ever again see Moulay Idriss and Fez and Marrakech as I saw them. Stained glass-they don't make it like this anymore: brilliant purples, deep rose, rich gold, all melded to depict the Gates of Heaven, the centerpiece of an old-fashioned, whitewashed church. The morning sun filtered in, casting colored shadows upon the host of parishioners, some there because they wanted to be, most because they had to be. And like in any house of worship, no matter the denomination, there were the people who sat in the front pews as if their proximity to the altar made them closer to salvation. Th...

1) Have we discussed whether or not to have children, and if the answer is yes, who is going to be the primary care giver? 2) Do we have a clear idea of each other’s financial obligations and goals, and do our ideas about spending and saving mesh? 3) Have we discussed our expectations for how the household will be maintained, and are we in agreement on who will manage the chores? 4) Have we fully disclosed our health histories, both physical and mental? 5) Is my partner affectionate to the degree that I expect? 6) Can we comfortably and openly discuss our sexual needs, preferences and fears? 7) Will there be a television in the bedroom? 8) Do we truly listen to each other and fairly consider one another’s ideas and complaints? 9) Have we reached a clear understanding of each other’s spiritual beliefs and needs, and have we discussed when and how our children will be exposed to religious/moral education? 10) Do we like and respect each other’s friends? 11) Do we value and res...