Photo: Courtesy Betty Cuningham Gallery
Delectable Waters, 1898 - Paul Gauguin
Oil canvas
The Thousand Nights and a Night |
"...But when it was midnight Shahrázád awoke and signalled to her sister Dunyázád who sat up and said, "Allah upon thee, O my sister, recite to us some new story, delightsome and delectable wherewith to while away the waking hours of our latter night." "With joy and goodly gree," answered Shahrázád, "if this pious and auspicious King permit me." "Tell on," quoth the King who chanced to be sleepless and restless and therefore was pleased with the prospect of hearing her story." |
Hiragana letters on earthenware bring back memories of Heian culture
Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a daily column that runs on Page 1 of the vernacular Asahi Shimbun.
2012/01/22
Hiragana letters are not only easy to write, but they are also easy on the eyes. Their gentle curves remind me of "ame zaiku," or works of intricate candy art. Clustered together, they resemble "hitofude-gaki" one-stroke drawings with lines that flow like delectable nectar.
Beer-Drinking Tree Shrews: Sober As Judges
by Michelle Trudeau
All Things Considered, July 28, 2008 · In the rain forest of Malaysia, scientists have found a small mammal, closely related to primates, whose major source of food is a type of beer.
It's believed to be the only animal other than humans that chronically consumes alcohol. But this animal never appears drunk, according to a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
This little critter, the pentail tree shrew, is about 4 inches long; it weighs just a few ounces.
"It looks like a mix between a squirrel and a mouse," says Frank Weins, a biologist from Bayreuth University in Germany, who lived in western Malaysia studying these tiny mammals.
"They have this very strange naked tail. The tip looks like a bird feather."
With big eyes that face forward, and tiny grasping fingers and toes, the tree shrew is an evolutionary cousin of primates. They're nocturnal and spend most nights out in the jungle drinking nectar.
"They walk up and down the cluster of flowers and lick off nectar from the different flower buds," Weins says.
But they have one favorite food source: the bertam palm, whose flowers have a very strong and distinctive smell. "They smell like a brewery," Weins says.
In fact, the flower buds function as brewing chambers — they have been invaded by previously unknown species of yeast, which ferment the nectar into frothy alcohol.
"The maximum alcohol concentration that we recorded was 3.8 percent," Weins says. "That's in the range of a beer."
And the tree shrews spend several hours each night drinking this palm beer. Weins calculates that the tree shrew is imbibing what would be the human equivalent of nine glasses of wine an evening. However, the pentail tree shrew shows no signs of being drunk.
"They move normally on the palms when they go for the nectar," Weins says. "There's no sign of motor incoordination or other odd behaviors. They just move as efficiently as they would on any other tree." 四肢動作不協調
Weins says there are no pentail tree shrews in captivity, so it hasn't been possible to do lab tests to detect intoxication.
But with jungle predators always lurking, Weins says, it would be very risky for a little mammal in the wild to be tipsy or drunk.
And that leads Weins to believe that the tree shrew probably has a specially evolved metabolism that detoxifies the alcohol quickly, keeping the alcohol concentration in the brain very low.
As a result, the tree shrew is able to detoxify alcohol more efficiently than its primate cousins: humans.
Yuri Valentinovich Knorosov, a Soviet artillery soldier, made a breakthrough in Maya decipherment after chancing upon abandoned books in Berlin. His findings were trumpeted by the Soviet propaganda apparatus as a kind of defeat of the capitalist world, proclaiming that "this young scholar has done what none of the imperialist scholars in Britain or the United States or Germany could ever do"
chance
Yuri Valentinovich Knorosov, a Soviet artillery soldier, made a breakthrough in Maya decipherment after chancing upon abandoned books in Berlin. His findings were trumpeted by the Soviet propaganda apparatus as a kind of defeat of the capitalist world, proclaiming that "this young scholar has done what none of the imperialist scholars in Britain or the United States or Germany could ever do"
chance
VERB
shrew
n. (名詞 noun)[C]
- 【動】鼩鼱
- 潑婦,悍婦
他發現自己跟一個俗不可耐的悍婦結了婚。
n. (名詞 noun)
- 羽尾樹鼩
To shoot this week’s TIME cover story about animal friendships — which you can read here — photographer Catherine Ledner called on years of experience of hanging out with cute critters, including her work on two books of animal photography, Animal House and Glamour Dogs. But this shoot offered something new, even for the animal pro. Most of Ledner’s work involves pictures of singular animals, while TIME’s portfolio features animal pairs. “I had to make sure that the dogs that were coming were actually friends,” she says.
Read more: http://lightbox.time.com/2012/02/09/animal-friendships/#ixzz1m3ah5ZqX
Read more: http://lightbox.time.com/2012/02/09/animal-friendships/#ixzz1m3ah5ZqX
critter
- 【口】異常動物
- 【謔】生物;家畜
- 【貶】人
noun [C] (ALSO crittur) US NOT STANDARD
a creature
nectar
- 【植】花蜜
- 【希神】【羅神】神酒,瓊漿玉液
- 甘露
蜜蜂夏天採集花蜜並將它釀成蜂蜜。
sober (NOT DRUNK)
adjective
not drunk or affected by alcohol:
Are you sober enough to drive, Jim?
I'd had no wine all evening so I was stone cold (= completely) sober.
sobriety
noun [U] FORMAL
the state of being sober:
US The police said his car had been weaving all over the road, so they pulled him over and gave him a sobriety test.
nocturnal
(nŏk-tûr'nəl)adj.
- Of, relating to, or occurring in the night: nocturnal stillness.
- Botany. Having flowers that open during the night.
- Zoology. Most active at night: nocturnal animals.
[Middle English, from Old French, from Late Latin nocturnālis, from Latin nocturnus, from nox, noct-, night.]
nocturnally noc·tur'nal·ly adv.noc・tur・nal
━━ a. 夜の; 【動】夜行性の; 【植】夜咲く.
nocturnal emission 【生理】夢精.
noc・tur・nal・ly ━━ ad.
nocturnal emission 【生理】夢精.
noc・tur・nal・ly ━━ ad.
delectable
Line breaks: de¦lect|able
Pronunciation: /dɪˈlɛktəb(ə)l/
adjective
Derivatives
Origin
late Middle English: via Old French from Latin delectabilis, from delectare 'to charm' (see delight).delectable[de・lec・ta・ble]
- 発音記号[diléktəbl]
[形]((文))喜ばしい, 楽しい, うれしい, 愉快な;おいしい;((通例限定))美しい, 魅力的な
a delectable personality
愉快な性格
愉快な性格
a delectable meal
おいしい食事.
おいしい食事.
de・lec・ta・ble・ness, de・lèc・ta・bíl・i・ty
[名]
de・lec・ta・bly
[副]wherewith
Line breaks: where|with
Pronunciation: /wɛːˈwɪð/
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