Tricky caterpillar: Dining like an ant-queen

Now, that's clever:

A kind of European caterpillar can garner royal treatment from ants by mimicking the ch-ch-ch-ch of their queen, says an international research team.

Ants of the species Myrmica schencki can be fooled into carrying certain caterpillars into the colony nurseries where the fakers enjoy full care and five-star dining, explains Jeremy Thomas of the University of Oxford in England. An interloper caterpillar gains most of its body mass while luxuriating in ant care, and then turns into a Maculinea rebeli butterfly.

Learn more 'antazing' details at ScienceNews.

And don't miss hearing the caterpillar and ant sounds

Njam njam njam: Living like god in Ants.

Laughing Lhursday

Typo in the title?
Nah. It's just that I would not let a tiny T spoil an avantgardistic alliteration.

Hard news first.

According to Tetrapilotomos a most reliable deep throat of his eminent trustworthy source has off the records been told by General İlker Başbuğ, the Commander of the mighty Turkish Armed Forces (TAF), that the Turkish military is going to marginally change its device, by changing 'at home' to 'in bed'.

Peace in bed, Peace in the World.

Asked for the reason, after sipping a drop of coffee and reaching for a fig the Commander reportedly said: Sorry, I am urgently awaited at home. You'll find all details at Internation Musing.

Another good news:

Ardent has not got lost in The Numinous Vacuum.

Well, and all good things come in threes:

Especially Asterisk- respectively *-afficionados will enjoy Bock the Robber's 'very open letter' to the PC-Brigade.

I am sure, even if you happen to be a most sensitive contemporary like I am, you'll be *ucking amused.

Personal note to my various Nonsanto watchdoggies: Choose the attributes you like best at Bock's and let me know, so that I may be able to address you in the way you like best.

Closed book opened

Thanks to Tetrapilotomos since yesterday the mechanisms of bourse respectively stock exchange to me no longer are a riddle wrapped up in enigmata:

You buy one hen, one cock,
and sooner or later you have 100 hens.

Then there comes a torrential flood,
and all your hens get drowned.

When in this moment you sigh:
'Ah, if only I had bought ducks', - that's stock exchange.

Felicitous jubilee

Nothing much to be written. Today's the 200th birthday of Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy who died early, whose music, though, is still alive.

Enjoy the 13 year old Itzhak Perlman performing the Violine Concerto ...




... and the 17 year old Felix' Midsummer Night's Dream

James Joyce - Walking into Eternity

It's been said he would have written like Flann O'Brien had he not been crackbrained; and who am I to disagree.
On the other side, what James Augustine Aloysius Joyce put on paper is not the worst one could find in the realm of letters, would you agree?
And: It's Jim's 127th birthday today.

So, what about a(n informative and entertaining) 'walk into eternity' and - who knows? - on the very tower in Sandycove we might get served some pints of plain so that we can raise our glasses on Mr. Joyce and his protagonists.


Part one



Part two





For those who did not have the pleasure yet, and those who couldn't get enough of it - voilà:

Pitch'n'Putt with Joyce'n'Beckett:

Molly Bloom's Soliloquy


Enjoy(ce)! :)

The most beautiful word ...

En güzel deniz:
henüz gidilmemiş olanıdır.
En güzel çocuk:
henüz büyümedi.
En güzel günlerimiz:
henüz yaşamadıklarımız.
Ve sana söylemek istediğim en güzel söz:
henüz söylemiş olduğum sözdür ...
Nâzim Hikmet, 24 Eylül 1945.


The most beautiful sea:
the one not been sailed yet.
The most beautiful child:
the one not grown up yet.
The most beautiful days of ours:
those we did not live yet.
And the most beautiful word I want to tell:
the word I did not tell you yet.
September 24th, 1945


Das schönste Meer:
das noch nicht befahrene.
Das schönste Kind:
das noch nicht herangewachsene.
Unsere schönsten Tage:
jene, die wir noch nicht erlebten.
Und das schönste Wort, das ich dir sagen möchte:
jenes, das ich dir noch nicht gesagt habe.

:)

Inanılmaz! Nâzım Hikmet is a Turk

Considered a traitor in life and denationalised, his poems which got translated into more than 50 languages forbidden for decades, only about 46 years after he died (June 3rd, 1963), from January 6th, 2009 on Nâzım Hikmet is allowed to call himself a Turkish citizen, again.

If Mr. Hikmet ("I love my Country") has already applied for a passport has not yet been disclosed.

Anyway, here's an excerpt from the oratory Fazil Say composed and dedicated to the poet who'd not mind to be called a traitor if ...

Dafydd ap Gwilym XV

A lock has been put on the door of the house, I am sick with loving you: hear me! Let me come and see you for God's generous sake and for your own. You are the girl I have celebrated in song (why should the song end in madness?) I swear by the Blessed Virgin who punishes me for it.

With my cold clumsy fingers I broke the latch while giving our signal of three clicks, then quickly the door was locked. Do you hear me now? The lock sounded loud as a bell to me out here. Morfudd, my chaste jewel, you are the nurse of all the deceit in the Principality. I make my bed against your wall, and call and pray to you my dear: have pity on my sleep lessness, the night is dark and I have been deceived. My feet know only weariness, alas! for the wretched weather that falls from the sky tonight. Torrents stream from the roof like eager weapons on my flesh, yet the rain is not harsher than my wound nor the snow under which I stand. I have been shut out and the snow lies on me like a cold yoke of tallow: I shiver under your eaves and the gray snow falls on me.

So I stand shivering, no greater punishment could be inflicted on a dead skin than the care which racks me: the Man who made me could not use me worse. In Carnarvon my prison was not worse than this road: there I would not be out all night, nor would I groan because of you, nor suffer the nightly ache of loving you. Nor would I now be out in rain and snow except for you. In my distress I would even forgive the whole world for your sake.

Here am I then enduring the cold, and you with all your grace and charity are in the house: my soul is with you there, my ghost is here outside. I doubt if I can suffer here much longer and remain alive my dear. By day I cannot meet you, at night my madness brings me here to the tryst which you yourself made with me. I am here now, and where are you?

Mozart's homage to Erdoğan

As an homage to Taqiyya .... err ... Tayyip Erdoğan, the greatest hero Turkey would ever get, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart ("I write as a sow pisses") about 226 years ago composed the Turkish March.

Voilà, Omnium proudly presents a jazzy version with the fantastic Fazil Say.

Lord of the Flies

Coincidence? One would find impertinent idiots [in the classic sense, mind you] not only in Germany, but everywhere else, f.e. in England.

Beginning with the Netherlands, though.

You might have heard of that peroxide blonde gentleman who, as my friend Tetrapilotomos recently murmured, is looking like a sunlamp-tanned songster-queen and would obviously do all to attract attention and endear himself to certain folks of another wilde faculty.
Thus he let produce a lousy little film called 'Fitna', and called it a 'documentation'.

Now would some folks not like this lousy film (no matter if they've been wasting their precious time with watching it, or not); moreover, it became a political issue, and unlike the cleric cretin who recently talked as if he was an admirer of the 'great scientist' Fred Leuchter who once stated he had gone to Ausschwitz to prove the holocaust but after about 40 years just could not find any gas and 'Eureka! no gas, no holocaust'. (Mr. Leuchter, by the way, enjoyed close business connection with several US-states who use lethal injection machine designed by him. Official sides prefered to deny this, but Tetrapilotomos still has an interesting video in his cupboard, and would certainly be delighted to jog the memory of anybody who kindly asked. You could, of course, also just have a look at the small medal on the machine whilst you are executing the next death penalty. It reads: Fred Leuchter, Boston, Massachusetts), and still earned a 'welcome back within the pales of the Catholic Church', (which is why the Central Council of the Jews in Germany ... guess! ... right: ... publicly announced they will not speak with the Pope for a while) our blonde philanthropistic would-be saviour of the western word earned severe critics. Political correct politicians behaved as if they were disgusted, and as valiant defenders of democracy and free speech demanded to censor the lousy film.

End of the beforegoing.

Now, while the plebs, i.e. the ordinary stupid voting-cattle (German: Stimmvieh) ought not to be allowed to decide themselves to watch this lousy film or not, those who consider themselves a bit more equal than others, 'of course' are not only allowed to watch the lousy film, it's even their duty, one should think, hm?

I mean, unlike those privileged people who'd not need to watch a lousy film or a mediocre book, 'spontaneously' and with burning enthusiasm to support the flags-producing industry, politicians should at least watch respectively read it.
After all, they might come to the wise conclusion that censoring a lousy film or a mediocre book does not solve any problem.

And herewith we jump across the Channel, reach London and enter the House of Lords.

Now don't you need to know each Lord and Baroness, but you should know Lord Ahmed. So let me introduce His Extraordinary Magnificence to those amongst you who up til now had the great pleasure to never ever come across his name.

With thanks to 'His Grace'
where I pinched this pic.

For the beginning it's enough that you know the Lord loves to send text messages while driving.

Alright? Fine then. Here we go:

Lord Ahmed, the Muslim Peer, has admitted dangerous driving after sending text messages while driving on a motorway just before a crash in which a father-of-two died. Full article here.

Well, and what would do who wantonly negligent killed another person?
He'd at least feel miserable and hide himself in a mouse-hole, if only he could, you say?

Right.

And what did 'our good Lord' do, when a lordly collegue invited the producer of said lousy film in order to together with him and her esteemed colleagues watch and afterwards discuss it?

According to what I learned at Cranmer's, the Lord by grace of a certain Tony Blair reportedly 'threatened to mobilise 10,000 Muslims to prevent Mr Wilders [that's the blondie that let produce said lousy film; sj] from entering the house and threatened to take the colleague who was organising the event to court'.

And what did the honourable Lordships do?

Giving Mr Ahmed a democracy-lesson, you guess?

Nah! Showing him the white feather.

And the Lord announced via BBC, Daily Telegraph, Guardian, Times etc ... err ... via Associated Press of Pakistan "a victory for the Muslim community".

And here the words almost fail me.
Imagine, next time the Lord of the Flies cometh and demands: 'Eat shit, Mylords! 100 trillion flies can't err.'

Apropos 'Lord of the (F)lies': Is it possible that Lord Ahmed on this very day sent one text message to Fethullah Gülen and four to the most intellectual mastermind's - Ha ha ha ha ... - intelligently designed mouthpieces?

Oops. Never ever heard such names in Merry Old England?
Now, that's surprising, hm?

Perhaps, after having read this and followed the links some English(wo)man feels fancy of investigating a bit on Lord Ahmed's connection with this self-styled elite and their common purpose?

Well, good luck, enjoy and let me know the results of your research.

* Title of a book written by William Golding. What did you think? :)

Jedem das Seine or: A bloody conflict

On the 64th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp today,

Germany has remembered the victims of National Socialism with a variety of events. But the country's Jewish leaders chose to skip the main government ceremony on Tuesday in protest for what they say is lack of respect.
Full article here.
And here another one on Spiegel online.

As one grand dame of the German Social Democracy who for decades was involved with the Gesellschaft für christlich-jüdische Zusammenarbeit / Society for Christian-Jewish Cooperation once stated: "As long as - even when there is an obvious reason - a German must not call a Jew idiot, and vice versa, as long there do not exist normal relations between Germans and Jews."
Well, and that's why I wouldn't call said ladies and gentlemen what they are.

However, noone - I repeat: noone - and if she or he happened to worship the head of a dead sardine - will ever tell me what I am allowed to express in my or any other language. Not even an idiot.

Perhaps I should not have written 'noone will ever, 'cause one should not underestimate the mighty mightiness of the Central Council of Jews in Germany.

Tiny example:

German Coffee roaster Tchibo and oil company Esso have abandoned a nationwide advertising campaign for coffee following criticism from the Jewish community that it had been using a slogan similar* to a phrase used by the Nazis.
Full article here.
* emphazise mine

Oh dear! After Auschwitz there can't be any language / poetry etc. etc., hm?

Ah, I wonder why none of the absolute altruistic and uncorrupt ladies and gentlemen sewed George Tabori, who postulated "There are taboos that need to be destroyed" and thus in a way was the obstetrician to a serious reflection of the holocaust and other atrocities 'made in Germany', and of whom none of his plays impressed me more than this 'joke' (German: Witz):

"Wie lautet der kürzeste deutsche Witz? - Auschwitz."
"What's the shortest German Witz? - Auschwitz."

As said: Jedem das Seine. To each his own. Or, as Cato the Elder reportedly put it: Suum cuique.

Having written this, I do feel much better now.:)

Thus, with thanks to Bock and Jams, here two postings that moved me deeply:

Auschwitz,

Forgiving Mengele

Please read it!

The peace of the night!

I feel I shall have a lovely dream: Some members of the Central Council of Jews in Germany wake up and henceforth speak a very rare Hindu-dialect.

Dafydd ap Gwilym VIII

Unhappy the man who is in love except in the summer, fruitless his prayers and great his desires. After the one night I had with the girl, all that is left me of that love-affair is my recollection of it, and the winter, I swear, is angry, black and bare after Christmas: and the snow, sure sign of the cold, and the frost and numerous icicles.

Coming drunk from the tavern, disgruntled and in a wretched humour, I went to look for her, terrified lest I find her making love to some other handsome man. Through the wood in the valley I went, feeling no love at all, till I arrived at the stone wall inside which the beauty lives.

There was a dismal sound of dripping from the eaves like an overflowing cheesepot; but when I arrived there I felt a kind of relief because of the danger close at band beyond the wall. Thick under the edge of the cold roof were the frosty icicles, freezing cold, and cleverly the drops contrived to fall into my mouth as I stood at the mercy of the frost and the whistling rime of the ice. The frost bit me like a rake, and the cold went through me like the tender teeth of a harrow. As I stood in the porch the drops fell angrily on me from Jealousy's fine candles of ice, like freezing tears, and the snow drove every recollection out of me but that of black frost.


While my head endured the pangs of the drips from these cold spindles and the dismal sounds, I knocked on the window with my band, hearing within the sounds of those in their first sleep, the man louder than the woman. Suspicious he nudged the pretty creature with his cold elbow, easily persuaded that someone was looking diligently for his money. Then the withered oaf rose out of his bed like a draught of foul air, enraged and terrified and calling "Villain" after me. And this was a dangerous journey for me, for he set a scoundrelly pack on me consisting of the whole town; and he, promising a candle to Mary at every sight of my footprints, bellowed after me with a hundred voices, "After him there! he's barefoot!"

So I fled with painful haste along the black back of the frost, till I came to the pleasant birch-wood which used to hide me in summer, thinking it to be, as I remembered it, a house of leaves under a fine roof, where the birds loved me and I saw the girl in May. But this was no trysting-place now, but a place of grief, even in the grove of the wood. No sign of love nor anything else did I see, nor any person nor any leaf, for the barren winter had winnowed the green warp of the leaves to the ground. And so I am begging May for a thaw before I freeze to death: I am a man imprisoned in winter; good luck to the summer and may it not be long coming!

Murderous

Today 200 years ago, Edgar Allan Poe was born.

A short story he wrote: The Murders of Rue Morgue.

Two novels he did not write:

The murder in Istiklal Caddesi

Today two years ago, Hrant Dink was murdered.
The mills of justice are still grinding. Or not.

The murder in 8 Lesnaya Ulitsa

104 days before Hrant Dink got murdered,
on October 7th, 2006 Vladimir Putin celebrated his birthday,
and perhaps some gentlemen intended to surprise (?)
their beloved President with a very very special present,
Anna Politkovskaya was assassinated.

Well, and I'd not be surprised when in 365 days the 'patriotic gentleman' who today killed Staneslav Markelov and Anastasiya Baburova , will also be not behind bars.