After the weekend travels in Spain, with a veritable photo fest, today we'll have a very simple but lovely picture...
Sunday, 27 January 2013
Andalucia
I'm still in a very Spanish mood, so let's continue our little trip to Andalucia. I mentioned some bits and pieces on the last thread, but I think it's better to illustrate the historical facts with some pictures.
El Alhambra and Generalife
The Moors ruled southern Spain for 800 years and were finally kicked out by Fernando and Isabel, los Reyes Catolicos. When the last Moorish ruler left Granada, he went to the top of the minaret in the city's outskirts, looked back and wept. His mother said to him: "Now you cry like a baby over what you couldn't defend like a man."
The Arabs left some precious gifts: Fantastic architecture and flamenco music.
Cordoba
The mosque of Cordoba is considered the most magnificent outside Mecca. Isabel la Catolica planted a catholic altar bang in the middle of it after she got rid of the Moors.
Seville
Seville is very beautiful (incredibly hot in the summer) and I'm particularly fond of the Sevillanas, the local music.
El Alhambra and Generalife
The Moors ruled southern Spain for 800 years and were finally kicked out by Fernando and Isabel, los Reyes Catolicos. When the last Moorish ruler left Granada, he went to the top of the minaret in the city's outskirts, looked back and wept. His mother said to him: "Now you cry like a baby over what you couldn't defend like a man."
The Arabs left some precious gifts: Fantastic architecture and flamenco music.
Cordoba
The mosque of Cordoba is considered the most magnificent outside Mecca. Isabel la Catolica planted a catholic altar bang in the middle of it after she got rid of the Moors.
![]() |
| This altar would look OK in some other place... |
Seville
Seville is very beautiful (incredibly hot in the summer) and I'm particularly fond of the Sevillanas, the local music.
Labels:
virtual travel
Saturday, 26 January 2013
Las Alpujarras
My maternal grandparents were born in Granada, Spain. I still have many cousins over there and have visited the family a few times. One memorable trip was in 1979, my first, when I was still married to my first husband, Martin. Most of my mother's cousins were still alive and there were many young second cousins, making the family gatherings nothing short of epic. We counted 33 people at a restaurant where all the tables had to be joined to accommodate us!
One of my mothers' cousins, Paco, was a salesman for a wine producer of the Denominación de Origen Valdepeñas. His patch covered an area called Las Alpujarras, on the Sierra Nevada. He invited us to go with him on his rounds so we could see the lovely whitewashed houses adorned with geraniums, the narrow streets and all that. So we went.
The first couple of villages were OK, not too high, but Paco's enthusiastic style of driving on those narrow, winding mountain roads was beginning to alarm us, especially as we were due to climb higher and higher. Martin was turning a funny shade of green and we were definitely scared. We were stuck with Paco until he finished his rounds and the only solution at that point was to start joining in the wine tasting. The wines were excellent and if we plunged down the mountain, at least we would be too merry to care!
Labels:
family,
virtual travel
Friday, 25 January 2013
Thursday, 24 January 2013
Wednesday, 23 January 2013
Peanut butter delights
I did a bit of googling about "peanut butter" and found out that it wasn't always combined with jelly.
Ye Olde English Coffee House made a "Peanut Butter and Pimento Sandwich" and The Vanity Fair Tea-Room served peanut butter with watercress.
There's a fine establishment in Arizona, Chez Pallottine, where the finest peanut and mustard sadwiches may be found...
Tuesday, 22 January 2013
Hysterical!
I was browsing a website that has a section called "Amazing Fact Generator" and came across this statement:
The vibrator was invented by a physician to treat women who suffered from "hysteria."
I decided to check it out and found this on Wikipedia:
A physician in 1859 claimed that a quarter of all women suffered from hysteria. One physician cataloged seventy-five pages of possible symptoms of hysteria and called the list incomplete; almost any ailment could fit the diagnosis. Physicians thought that the stresses associated with modern life caused civilized women to be both more susceptible to nervous disorders and to develop faulty reproductive tracts. In the United States, such disorders in women reaffirmed that the U.S. was on par with Europe; one American physician expressed pleasure that the country was "catching up" to Europe in the prevalence of hysteria.
It was observed that such cases were quite profitable for physicians, since the patients were at no risk of death, but needed repeated treatment. The only problem was that physicians did not enjoy the tedious task of vaginal massage (generally referred to as "pelvic massage"): The technique was difficult for a physician to master and could take hours to achieve "hysterical paroxysm". Referral to midwives, which had been common practice, meant a loss of business for the physician. The chaise longue and fainting couch became popular home furniture to make women more comfortable during home treatment. Fainting rooms were also used for more privacy during home treatment.
A solution was the invention of massage devices, which shortened treatment from hours to minutes, removing the need for midwives and increasing a physician’s treatment capacity. Already at the beginning of the 19th century, hydrotherapy devices were available at Bath, and by the mid-19th century, they were popular at many high-profile bathing resorts across Europe, the United States and other American countries. By 1870, a clockwork-driven vibrator was available for physicians. In 1873, the first electromechanical vibrator was used at an asylum in France for the treatment of hysteria.
While physicians of the period acknowledged that the disorder stemmed from sexual dissatisfaction, they seemed unaware of or unwilling to admit the sexual purposes of the devices used to treat it. In fact, the introduction of the speculum was far more controversial than that of the vibrator.
By the 20th century, the spread of home electricity brought the vibrator to the consumer market. The appeal of cheaper treatment in the privacy of one’s own home understandably made the vibrator a popular early home appliance. In fact, the electric home vibrator was on the market before many other home appliance "essentials": nine years before the electric vacuum cleaner and 10 years before the electric iron. A page from a Sears catalog of home electrical appliances from 1918 includes a portable vibrator with attachments, billed as "Very useful and satisfactory for home service."
Women's sexuality has been misunderstood or discarded for a long time, not to mention their rights... But I must confess that I find these early ads for vibrators absolutely hilarious.
The vibrator was invented by a physician to treat women who suffered from "hysteria."
I decided to check it out and found this on Wikipedia:
A physician in 1859 claimed that a quarter of all women suffered from hysteria. One physician cataloged seventy-five pages of possible symptoms of hysteria and called the list incomplete; almost any ailment could fit the diagnosis. Physicians thought that the stresses associated with modern life caused civilized women to be both more susceptible to nervous disorders and to develop faulty reproductive tracts. In the United States, such disorders in women reaffirmed that the U.S. was on par with Europe; one American physician expressed pleasure that the country was "catching up" to Europe in the prevalence of hysteria.
It was observed that such cases were quite profitable for physicians, since the patients were at no risk of death, but needed repeated treatment. The only problem was that physicians did not enjoy the tedious task of vaginal massage (generally referred to as "pelvic massage"): The technique was difficult for a physician to master and could take hours to achieve "hysterical paroxysm". Referral to midwives, which had been common practice, meant a loss of business for the physician. The chaise longue and fainting couch became popular home furniture to make women more comfortable during home treatment. Fainting rooms were also used for more privacy during home treatment.
A solution was the invention of massage devices, which shortened treatment from hours to minutes, removing the need for midwives and increasing a physician’s treatment capacity. Already at the beginning of the 19th century, hydrotherapy devices were available at Bath, and by the mid-19th century, they were popular at many high-profile bathing resorts across Europe, the United States and other American countries. By 1870, a clockwork-driven vibrator was available for physicians. In 1873, the first electromechanical vibrator was used at an asylum in France for the treatment of hysteria.
While physicians of the period acknowledged that the disorder stemmed from sexual dissatisfaction, they seemed unaware of or unwilling to admit the sexual purposes of the devices used to treat it. In fact, the introduction of the speculum was far more controversial than that of the vibrator.
By the 20th century, the spread of home electricity brought the vibrator to the consumer market. The appeal of cheaper treatment in the privacy of one’s own home understandably made the vibrator a popular early home appliance. In fact, the electric home vibrator was on the market before many other home appliance "essentials": nine years before the electric vacuum cleaner and 10 years before the electric iron. A page from a Sears catalog of home electrical appliances from 1918 includes a portable vibrator with attachments, billed as "Very useful and satisfactory for home service."
Women's sexuality has been misunderstood or discarded for a long time, not to mention their rights... But I must confess that I find these early ads for vibrators absolutely hilarious.
Labels:
women
Monday, 21 January 2013
Scammers
I received a phone call this morning, warning me that my computer would crash in a couple of days because it had been hacked. The caller said he was from Microsoft and that it was a service call, etc, etc. He said his name was Nick Carter, a rather unusual name for somebody with a heavy Indian accent.
The alarm bells rang loudly in my head, but I went along with it because I'm the curious type and wanted to see where he was going with it. While he was giving me various commands to verify the risks and to prove he was genuine, I was googling part of his script. The results were very interesting - and alarming.
They target English speaking Windows users in several countries. This is from an article in the UK Guardian:
The scam always starts the same way: the phone rings at someone's home, and the caller – usually with an Indian accent – asks for the householder, quoting their name and address before saying "I'm calling for Microsoft. We've had a report from your internet service provider of serious virus problems from your computer."
Dire forecasts are made that if the problem is not solved, the computer will become unusable.
The puzzled owner is then directed to their computer, and asked to open a program called "Windows Event Viewer". Its contents are, to the average user, worrying: they look like a long list of errors, some labelled "critical". "Yes, that's it," says the caller. "Now let me guide you through the steps to fixing it."
The computer owner is directed to a website and told to download a program that hands over remote control of the computer, and the caller "installs" various "fixes" for the problem. And then it's time to pay a fee: £185 for a "subscription" to the "preventative service".
The only catch: there was never anything wrong with the computer, the caller is not working for Microsoft or the internet service provider, and the owner has given a complete stranger access to every piece of data on their machine.
Here's another one, from an American site:
Have you ever picked up the phone to hear the following: "I'm calling from Microsoft. We've had a report from your Internet service provider of serious virus problems from your computer"? Of course the caller offers to help, offering a free scan, which invariably leads to warnings over mass malware infections, and the offer of paid technical support to assist.
He quotes from and links to a blog post by a security expert, who gives a step-by-step account of the scam, with several screenshots.
My friend Hilary said they have received loads of these calls, both here in France and the UK. Her husband is an IT guy and he usually has a lot of fun with them. But many people have fallen for it, mainly older people, new to computers...
I was having some fun, but Peter spoiled it by saying very loudly: "Tell him to f*** off!"
Labels:
internet
Sunday, 20 January 2013
Shark wisdom
Two great white sharks swimming in the ocean spied survivors of a sunken ship.
"Follow me, son" the father shark said to the son shark and they swam to the mass of people.
"First we swim around them a few times with just the tip of our fins showing."
And they did.
"Well done, son! Now we swim around them a few times again, this time with all of our fins showing."
And they did.
"Now we eat everybody."
And they did.
When they were both gorged, the son asked, "Dad, why didn't we just eat them all at first? Why did we swim around and around them?"
His wise father replied, "Because they taste better without the sh*t inside!"
********
Further fatherly advice:
Labels:
jokes
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