Tetherd Cow Ahead

The Guardian reports that publisher Penguin Australia has been left with egg on its face after it was revealed that a recipe for Tagliatelle with Sardines and Prosciutto from their book The Pasta Bible, called for the inclusion of ‘salt and freshly ground black people’. 7000 copies of the book have been withdrawn.

Penguin’s head of publishing, Robert Sessions, blamed the gaff on a spellcheck program, and said that proofreaders missed it because they were probably more concerned with checking ingredient quantities.⁽ⁱ⁾ Sessions called the mistake a typo, but I’m thinking that these kinds of episodes, where spellcheck programs offer whole alternative words to the one that is meant, should have a new name. Wordo? Hmm… a bit clunky… Suggestions?

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*Thanks to Violet Towne for spotting it in The Guardian and to my guest sub-editor King Willy for the fabulous headline.

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Footnotes:

1. Rather than the ingredients per se, I guess… [↩]

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I was browsing in a local shop the other day and I noticed a pile of these curious volumes. It looks like a book, right? But no, dear Acowlytes – it’s a cunning ploy to make you think it’s a book. It’s actually a box in which you can hide your valuables!

Brilliant! I’m going to get one of these tomorrow – it will totally solve my problem with illiterate thieving Creationists!⁽ⁱ⁾ And just to really screw with them, I’m going to hide all my fossils in it!
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Footnotes:

1. It will only work on the illiterate ones – the literate ones will spot the title blunder instantly [↩]

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Sometimes the gags just get handed to you on a plate. (Original image.)

Next issue: ‘Major John to Ground Control!’

For our first wedding anniversary (traditionally considered the ‘paper’ anniversary), Violet Towne gave me a beautiful book: Visions of Nature: The Art and Science of Ernst Haeckel.

Haeckel was a biologist and artist and an early subscriber to Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theories. Although he famously made many erroneous assumptions about evolution,* his detailed naturalistic drawings, particularly his intricate observations of the microscopic sea creatures called radiolarians, are entirely accurate and strikingly beautiful.

Haeckel was also fascinated by the obvious mathematical influences that he observed in life-forms, and documented many of their geometrical characteristics in his drawings.

His ornate organic renderings were almost certainly one of the influences that came to bear on the Art Nouveau movement. It’s not hard to understand why – take a look at this beautiful collection of high quality pdfs of some of Haeckel’s astonishing work.

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*Haeckel was a staunch believer in the outmoded ideas of Lamarckism and the now discredited recapitulation theory. Creationists love to wave Haeckel’s name about in reference to errors he made in embryonic illustrations that fulfilled his wishful speculation that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. In doing so they are demonstrating (once again) the profundity of their ignorance; Haeckel was never a believer of Darwin’s idea of natural selection, and in his zeal to advance his own preconceptions, some of his drawings became a little more ‘inventive’ than they had any right to be. Haeckel’s fabrications were never endorsed by Darwin, and in time succumbed to the scrutiny of rational examination, as all bad science necessarily must.

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Edgar Allan Poe is 200 years old today (but still doesn’t look a day over 40!). So break out the Amontillado and raise a glass at midnight to one of the Great Dark Geniuses of our age.

October 15, 2008: ABC News Online:

Australia will join five other countries in what scientists describe as one of the most ambitious explorations of the Antarctic.

Buried deep beneath the Antarctic continent is a mountain range of such a huge scale that scientists are almost in awe of what they are about to do.

My God! DON’T THESE PEOPLE READ!?

Anne Arkham draws my attention to the sad news of the death of Laura Huxley, who you may recall I wrote about in the post Brief Candles.

Rest in peace Laura. One of my very few regrets is that I never called the number you gave me.

The LA Times obituary says:

One of her last projects was to bring “Brave New World” to the movie screen. It is now in development with a major motion picture studio, (estate attorney) Jonathan Kirsch said.

Personally, I hope that this never happens. Some things should just be left well and truly alone.

Thank you Cowerati for your wonderful submissions for ideas for Classic works of literature suitably reduced in scale for publication as Nano Editions, a la Teeny Ted from Turnip Town.

I can tell you that judging a winner was a tough call from so many chuckle-worthy entries. In the end I just had to go with my initial instincts and give the prize to the suggestion that most surprised and delighted me on first reading.

First, some Honourable Mentions:

Phoebe Fay got a chuckle with The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Neighbourhood, as did Casey with Slaughterhouse .5. Chickie definitely got a laugh with The Okay Earth, and Joey also raised a guffaw with … (his abbreviated version of Waiting for Godot)

Pil continued to completely confuse me with a book that Adolf Hitler almost certainly never even thought of writing, Mein Achselhöhle (about his armpit…?), and HughT almost pipped the winner at the post with his wonderful The Life of Pi to Four Decimal Places.

In the end, I had to go with the suggestion that I thought most succinctly summed up the spirit of the Nano Publication (ie, a Classic with essence suitably distilled for sub-miniature reproduction), combined with the most outrageous pun. It was, of course, Radiocative Jam‘s Less Miserables.

Jam, the trophy is yours. Salut, and well done. An appropriate prize is winging its way across the Pacific.

A new anthology of short stories from onetime ‘cyberpunk’¹ science fiction writer and green design visionary Bruce Sterling is due to be released by Subterranean Press this September.

Anything from Bruce is well worth reading, but the very special thing about this particular book (well, as far as I’m concerned anyway) is that the cover features one of my mathematically articulated images.

This image, called Red Portal is from my Complex Systems #1 inventions.

You can read a little more about my images, how they are made, and the creative philosophies behind them in this post, and see my galleries here.

Congratulations Bruce!

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¹I’m sure he really hates that term these days…

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To Make an Homunculus (similar to that praised by Paracelsus)*:

Find the root of the plant called bryony. Take it out of the ground on a Monday (the day of the moon), a little time after the vernal equinox. Cut off the ends of the root and bury it at night in some country churchyard in a dead man’s grave. For thirty days water it with cow’s milk in which three bats have been drowned. When the thirty-first day arrives, take out the root in the middle of the night and dry it in an oven heated with the branches of verbena; the result will be a tiny monster resembling a human being. Wrap it up in a piece of a dead man’s winding sheet and carry it with you when you go about your business.

OK, some points to consider:

•Have a really good excuse prepared for when someone catches you digging around in somebody’s grave in the middle of the night. I’m thinking that “It’s OK officer, I’m just making an homunculus” is not going to get you off with just a warning.

•Lotsa luck with the drowning of the bats in a bucket of milk. That could be a real laff riot.

•I’m not sure how easy it’s going to be to find a dead man’s winding sheet nowadays. Try substituting a deaf man’s whining sheep.

•An homunculus isn’t just for Christmas! When you get your homunculus, you’ll have to look after it. My book suggests: “Keep it hidden in some secret place and feed it with lavender seeds and earthworms. You will have success with everything as long as it lives.” (My feeling is that if you go into business with a well-mulched lavender farm, you’ll be set forever).
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*This may possibly be the first ever hyperlinked homunculus conjuration to appear on the web.