Yes, raspberries.

We are living inside a gigantic pavlova, which is somehow quite heartening.

Image below shows recent experiments to capture this essence.

]]> http://blabel.wordpress.com/2010/07/02/blowing-raspeberries/feed/ 0 blabel raspberries http://blabel.wordpress.com/2009/04/15/149/ http://blabel.wordpress.com/2009/04/15/149/#comments Wed, 15 Apr 2009 08:41:53 +0000 blabel http://blabel.wordpress.com/2009/04/15/149/ ]]> “The remarkable Ripley Scroll is, in simple terms, an alchemical manuscript that shows in pictorial cryptograms the production of the philosopher’s stone (the elusive ingredient that produces incorruptible gold out of lesser metals; and/or the elixir of life).” HT: Bibliodyssey

“In June 2002, the Bodleian Library acquired the unique complete manuscript of a hitherto unknown Arabic cosmographical treatise, the يKitāb Gharāʾib al-funūn wa-mulaḥ al-ʿuyūn, known as the Book of Curiosities. The manuscript is a copy, probably made in Egypt in the late 12th or early 13th century, of an anonymous work compiled in the first half of the 11th century in Egypt. The treatise is extraordinarily important for the history of science, especially for astronomy and cartography, and contains an unparalleled series of diagrams of the heavens and maps of the earth.”

Emilie Savage-Smith and Yossef Rapoport (eds.), The Book of Curiosities: A critical edition. World-Wide-Web publication. (March 2007).

” They are like marsh-geese, but smaller. they are produced from fir timber tossed about at sea, and are at first like geese upon it. afterwards they hang down by their beaks… in the course of time.. they either fall into the water, or seek their liberty in the air by flight… i have seen with my own eyes more than a thousand minute bodies of these birds hanging from one piece of timber on the shore, enclosed in shells and already formed…hence the bishops and clergy in some parts of ireland are in the habit of partaking of these birds, on fast days, without scruple”.

Giraldus Cambrensis

“In my countrey are trees that beare fruit, that become byrds flying, and they are good to eate, and that that falleth on the water, liveth, and that that falleth on the earth, dyeth.”

Sir John Mandeville

“We find trees in scotland which produce a fruit enveloped in leaves, and when it drops into the water at a suitable time, it takes life and is turned into a live bird, which they call the tree bird.”

Sebastian Muenster

image: British Library, Harley MS 4751, Folio 36r

michel foucault

image: the goose tree, sebastian munster

&

“The ideal reader subverts the text. The ideal reader does not take
the writer’s word for granted. “

He answered nothing.

“Will you, or will you not, quit me?” I now demanded in a sudden passion, advancing close to him.

“I would prefer not to quit you,” he replied, gently emphasizing the not.

“What earthly right have you to stay here? Do you pay any rent? Do you pay my taxes? Or is this property yours?“

He answered nothing.

“Are you ready to go on and write now? Are your eyes recovered? Could you copy a small paper for me this morning? or help examine a few lines? or step round to the post-office? In a word, will you do any thing at all, to give a coloring to your refusal to depart the premises?“

He silently retired into his hermitage.

anon

These strange alien structures are among the seeds and pollen conserved at the Kew Millennium Seed Bank. Seeds from more than 10% of the world’s flowering plants – around 30,000 species – have been collected in the decade since the bank was established.
HT: AS