Nepenthe

Para o blogue O Jardim Assombrado , de Carla Maia de Almeida: – Como é que isto aconteceu? Não é uma maravilha? Sinto-me como se tivesse acabado de nascer! Já não estou sozinho! Tens noção do que isso significa para mim? – Mas tu és bom no básquete e coisas – protestou Meg. – És bom nas aulas. Toda a gente gosta de ti. – Por todos os motivos mais irrelevantes – disse Calvin. – Ainda não conheci ninguém, ninguém no mundo com que eu possa conversar. Claro, sei portar-me ao mesmo nível que toda a gente, sei diminuir-me, mas esse não sou eu. Meg tirou um molho de garfos da gaveta e virou-os uma e outra vez, a contemplá-los.  – Estou toda confusa outra vez. – Oh, também eu – disse Calvin alegremente. – Mas agora, pelo menos, sei que vamos para algum lado. Um Atalho no Tempo , de Madeleine L'Engle, Oficina do Livro, 2013. [Poucos devem ter dado pela edição em português deste clássico contemporâneo da literatura juvenil, numa colecção em que o ponto fraco são semp...

Meeting the Malawians Malawi, the land of the lake

1. It is the 316th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 49 days remaining until the end of the year.   2. David's Bridal estimates that more than 3,000 couples will get married on 11/12/13; compared to Nov. 11 of last year, that’s a 722 percent increase.   3. Fueling the rush to the altar on 11/12 this year is the rarity of it: the next consecutively-numbered date doesn’t roll along until Dec. 13, 2014.   4. After that, in purest numerical form, another consecutive date won’t mark the calendar again until next century.   5. At 2:11:21 a.m., it will be 12/11 2:11:21 which is three repeats of three numbers: 121-121-121.   6. At 8:09:10 a.m., the time and date will read as 8:09:10 11/12/13, a full complement of consecutive numbers.   7. At 2:15:16 p.m., when stated in military time, it will be 11/12/13 14:15:16; a series of six increasing numbers.   8. For a simple sequence, at 9:10 p.m., it wi...

 Needs no introduction  Celia Cruz - I had the good fortune of watching her perform "You can have anything you want in life if you dress for it." The inspiration for Edna Mode in The Incredibles Profile on the amazing Grace Hopper by Women Rock Science  Katherine Mansfield Selma Lagerlöf Profile of the Human Computer Shakuntala Devi by Women Rock Science Helena Zmatliková, Illustrator Extraordinaire

The Word Made Flesh does it again Une Orange sur la table Ta robe sur le Tapis Et toi dans mon lit Doux présent du présent Fraîcheur de la nuit Chaleur de ma vie - Jacques Prévert

I see (actual) pig tails all over the scripts. Oinc!

BOULEVARD OF BROKEN DREAMS Few streets in the world are as famous as this one, but we tend to see it through a screen, darkly. Laura Barton gets under the skin of Sunset Boulevard From INTELLIGENT LIFE magazine, November/December 2013 SIX IN THE morning, Beverly Hills. The air is filled with the aroma of expensive lawns, warming in the pallid sun. Plastic-bound copies of the LA Times lie before wrought iron gates, watched by security cameras, a chatter of birds, a glimpse of pink sky. Stand quite still on the sidewalk here, and the neighbourhood draws into focus. Box hedges, orange trees, the scent of magnolia. The ineluctable neatness of here.  For several blocks, Sunset Boulevard is home to LA as we know it—millionaires and billionaires, Oscar-winners and entrepreneurs, supermodels and TV shrinks. And over its high fences you catch flickers of affluence: a floodlit basketball court, a sliver of turquoise swimming pool. But stand a little longe...

Editado há quase 20 anos, em 1994, o livro Lisboa Vista do Céu  é agora republicado pela Argumentum Edições. « Esta nova edição será enriquecida com dezenas de imagens antigas (desde 1917 até aos anos 70), com imagens atuais (de outubro deste ano) e tornar-se-á um  ex-libris  da cidade», pode ler-se em comunicado da editora. No mesmo comunicado, a Argumentum explica que «o livro tem um custo de produção de 25 000€ e conta apenas com o apoio da Câmara Municipal de Lisboa, que fica aquém de 20% desse valor». Como tal, a editora está a recorrer a uma campanha de venda antecipada da obra.  Desta forma, atingindo as 400 vendas, a edição do livro será possível.  A venda antecipada do livro garante um desconto especial de 30 por cento. «Lisboa Vista do Céu é o livro onde se ilustra toda a cidade de Lisboa e o Rio Tejo, através de uma narrativa visual, constituída por cerca de 200 imagens, comentadas pela historiadora Maria Calado». Visto no ...

How to host a Downton Abbey dinner party by Terrys Fabrics .

10 Figures of Speech from Max Tohline on Vimeo .

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I guess I have always been deeply terrified at to really be someone’s wife since I know from life one cannot love another, ever, really  * Only parts of us will ever touch only parts of others – one’s own truth is just that really — one’s own truth. We can only share the part that is understood by within another’s knowing acceptable to the other — therefore so one is for most part alone . As it is meant to be in evidently in nature — at best though perhaps it could make our understanding seek another’s loneliness out. * Life – I am of both of your directions Life Somehow remaining hanging downward the most but strong as a cobweb in the wind — I exist more with the cold glistening frost. But my beaded rays have the colors I’ve seen in a painting s — ah life they have cheated you * Oh damn I wish that I were dead — absolutely nonexistent – gone away from here — from everywhere but how would I do it There is always bridges — the ...

  When first seen by botanist and explorer Joseph Dalton Hooker in 1859, he described them as "one of the most striking vegetable productions hither-to discovered," but it wasn't until 1862 that someone first notice just how unusual these plants really were. Nepenthes Rajah is the largest of the pitcher plants, and is also the largest carnivorous plant in the world, sometimes referred to as the King of the Pitcher Plants. It is essentially a trap filled with up to three and half liters of water and two and a half liters of digestive fluid. It is evolved to lure insects to it, and when the insects fall in, they are unable to escape and are digested by the plant. While insects, particularly ants, are by far the Giant Malaysian Pitcher Plant (aka the Rajah Brooke's Pitcher Plant, aka the King of Nepenthes, aka Nepenthes rajah) main staple, occasionally the large plants catch bigger prey. On a number of occasions rats have been found half-digested inside the pi...

1. About halfway through  A Clash of Kings , the second installment of George R.R. Martin’s epic fantasy series  A Song of Ice and Fire , a refugee princess—she is fourteen years old but already a widow, has silver hair and purple eyes, and happens to be part dragon—stands exhausted before the walls of a fabulous, vaguely Babylonian citadel called Qarth. The last surviving scion of the deposed ruling family of a faraway land called Westeros, she has led a ragtag band of followers through the desert in the hopes of finding shelter here—and, ultimately, of obtaining military and financial support for her plan to recapture the Westerosi throne. Her first glimpse of Qarth leaves her bemused: Three thick walls encircled Qarth, elaborately carved. The outer was red sandstone, thirty feet high and decorated with animals: snakes slithering, kites flying, fish swimming, intermingled with wolves of the red waste and striped zorses and monstrous elephants. The middle wall, f...