Variety of Factors

There is no doubt then but Centaurs as well as other Monsters, are produced, partly by the influence of the stars, and partly by other causes, as the ill disposition of the matrix, the bad temperature of the seed, the perverse inclination of the woman, the commixtion of seeds of divers kinds, sudden fear, bad diet, unwholsome air, and untimely Venus.
 - Alexander Ross, Arcana Microcosmi.

Comments

  1. american fez29/3/10 7:26 AM

    And is he able to refute the vulgar errors of Sir Thomas Browne in this worke?

    ReplyDelete
  2. C. Van Carter29/3/10 11:46 AM

    Surprisingly enough, he actually does get some shots in. It's amazing what people liked to argue about in days of yore.

    Sir Thomas wrote an essay called "The Garden of Cyrus or The Quincunciall Lozenge, or Network Plantations of the Ancients, naturally, artificially, mystically considered", which has to be one of the greatest titles ever.

    ReplyDelete
  3. american fez29/3/10 2:30 PM

    It certainly beats "Avatar in 3d" - actually "Avatar in Quincunciall Lozenge" has a certain ring to it (since Quincux encoding is one of the display formats considered for stereoscopic television compression).

    Apologies for that piece of nerdism in advance.

    ReplyDelete
  4. C. Van Carter29/3/10 3:34 PM

    Interesting. I assume it has something to do with quincunxial patterns...I hear quincunx and think of the Galton Box. If given a large financial grant I will make a genuine effort to build a huge quincunx in a field somewhere and not squander the money on frivolities.

    ReplyDelete
  5. american fez30/3/10 12:51 PM

    I feel the Mayans could have been more accurate in their end-of-days predicting had they employed the quincunx in a field method.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Rock Hill Garage Door Repairs29/8/22 6:17 AM

    Hi thanks for sharing thiss

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Misc. Hate

A Mustiphino has been spotted wandering the halls of Congress. The deranged babblings of an SPLC apparatchik inspired me to coin the word hatefact . Hatefacts are unquestionable facts about immigrants , blacks , women , homosexualists , et al., that the SPLC and those sharing its ideological inclinations deem “hate” or “hateful” to mention. UPDATE: It seems I unwittingly stole the idea for the word hatefact from Peter Brimelow, who used the term “hate facts” in a speech last November .
Read more

Christmas Books

Image
The Illustrious House of Ramires , by Eça de Queirós. A novel about an ineffectual nobleman writing an historical novel about his heroic ancestors. Queirós has been called the Portuguese Flaubert. Large Fees and How to Get Them : a book for the private use of physicians , by Albert V. Harmon, M.D. If you practice early 20th medicine and want large fees, this book is essential reading. If you don’t, there are still lessons in its amusing and unsentimental discussion of various topics, like in the chapter “The Bugbear of Ethics”, where Harmon advises “ethics in its place is a good thing...But there is such a thing as overdoing the ethical proposition”. Histrionics: Three Plays and Over All the Mountain Tops , by Thomas Bernhard. Bernhard once said “I despise actors, indeed I hate them, for they ally themselves at the least sign of danger with the audience and betray the author and completely identify with stupidity and feeble-mindedness. Actors are the destroyers and exte...
Read more