Following on my posting on une bergère allemande, three notes: on the Folies Bergère; on shepherd vs. sheepherder; and on the cultural role of shepherds and shepherdesses.
Archive for September, 2013
Sheepish notes
September 16, 2013Playing with French morphology
September 15, 2013From Benita Bendon Campbell, this reminiscence of a moment during her time in Paris with Ann Daingerfield Zwicky, many years ago:
Ann and I and aother friend were having afternoon tea at our local café on the Boulevard Saint Germain. The patron and patronne had just acquired a German shepherd puppy named Rita. In French, a German shephejrd is “un berger allemand.” Our friend remarked that Rita must be “une bergère allemande” — or a Gereman shepherdess. That is funny in French as well as in English. (The correct form is “une femelle berger allemand.” The name of the breed is invariable.)
Bonnie’s sketch of une bergère allemande:
Hot Austen
September 15, 2013From Chris Ambidge, this quotation from a Jane Austen letter of September 18th, 1796:
Chris reports hot weather in Toronto, noting that he’s confronted with lecture halls jammed with lots of people, each emitting 100 watts, and adding that 8 1/2 adults give off as much heat as a toaster. So he’s feeling rather inelegant.
Poisoned land
September 14, 2013In the September 19th New Yorker, mail (under this title) from Arthur P. Grollman, M.D. (Distinguished Professor of Pharmacological Sciences, Stony Brook University School of Medicine):
Elif Batuman, in her piece on kidney disease in the Balkans, describes various theories addressing the etiology of the disease Balkan endemic nephropathy, or ben (“Poisoned Land,” August 12th & 19th). Over the past fifty years, many of the hypotheses Batuman mentions have been eliminated by rigorous scientific research. The crucial exception, and now the most widely accepted cause, is aristolochic acid, an environmental toxin from seeds of the aristolochia plant, which has been shown to be present in the kidney and urothelial tissues of patients with ben. We believe that aristolochic acid contaminates wheat grain, which is likely the primary route of toxin ingestion in the Balkans.
Condom humor
September 14, 2013From Chris Waigl on Facebook, a story from the Anchorage Daily News on the 12th, “State’s sex humor cringe-inducing but might work” by Julia O’Malley:
I will now write about the state’s condom distribution program like a grown-up, without veering into questionable puns or juvenile humor. This is not because I have great impulse control. It is because the state has generated all the teenage condom humor I can handle today.
… Condom distribution is part of a new public-health campaign entitled “Wrap it up, Alaska.”
serials
September 14, 2013In the NYT on the 12th, an obit, “Robert Taylor, Who Put Hand Soap in a Bottle, Dies at 77” by John Schwartz:
Robert R. Taylor, a serial entrepreneur who popularized hand soap from a pump [Softsoap], gambling $12 million to prevent competitors from duplicating it, and fragrances like “Obsession,” which he advertised with artful eroticism, died on Aug. 29 in Newport Beach, Calif.
… Mr. Taylor built and sold 14 consumer products businesses during a long career, starting in 1964 with Village Bath Products, a company he founded with $3,000 to sell scented, hand-rolled soap balls through gift shops. Working initially out of his garage, he was soon selling more than 100 products through department stores.
It was serial entrepreneur that caught my eye. Easily understood, but new to me, I think. Not, however, new to the world.
Saturday morning showoff
September 14, 2013The cover of the August/September 2013 Instinct magazine, with (as usual) male eye candy:
(#1)
Given the sexy photo, I expected the Putignano piece to be about so-called “sex addiction”, but in fact it’s about drug addiction.
Défonce Moi
September 13, 2013Cupcake sledding
September 13, 2013From several friends on Facebook, a link to an NPR story of September 10th, “Photos: Enter A World Of Cupcake Sledding And Broccoli Lawns” by Maria Godoy, beginning:
Lots of us play with our food. But for photographer Christopher Boffoli, it’s become a full-time career.
Boffoli rose to fame a couple of years ago. You may have seen some of his photographs — amusing dioramas featuring miniature plastic figurines in dramatic settings crafted from food — when they went viral back in 2011. More than 200 such images — at least half of which, Boffoli says, have not been previously published — are collected in a new book, Big Appetites.
Boffoli’s scenarios, and especially his captions, evoke New Yorker cartoons — many are dark and humorous.
disappoptimist
September 13, 2013Today’s Pearls Before Swine, with an absurd portmanteau:
That’s disappoint(ed) + optimist. Though (like Goat) I wonder how you could maintain optimism in the face of constant disappointment. Note that Rat says he’s optimistic Goat will get smarter — but since Rat is always disappointed, we expect that Goat will not in fact come to understand disappoptimism.