Humor Darwinian gardening 2 Jan 2008 For some time now I have told anyone who didn’t get away fast enough that I am a Darwinian Gardener: any plant that survives my total lack of care deserves to be there until it gets in my way. After the fact, I justify it that I am letting native… Read More
Ecology and Biodiversity Watch out for the crocs, you drunks! 10 Nov 2007 When people visit Australia, we locals like to play up the dangers, like the most poisonous snakes and spiders, poisonous jellyfish, sharks, the drop bears, and of course the crocs. Very few of these are actually dangerous, in that with a bit of sensible precaution and awareness, you can avoid… Read More
That joke was old when done there. The best ones are really old. I think that goes back to “1066 and all that”.
I’m reminded of a panel in the comic “The wizard of Id” where the king, on being informed that the peasants are revolting retorts “You can say that again”
It’s that old, is it? I first encountered it in Robert Manson Myers’s From Beowulf to Virginia Woolf (1951), in which we learn “…when Wycliff [of Dover] translated the Old Testament into the New, he was condemned as hereditary and burned as a steak. Following his death several “University Wits” instigated the so-called Pedant’s Revolt, upon which occasion Henry VI Part III made his astute observation: “The pedants are revolting.” An excellent book if you like that sort of thing. Still in print the last time I looked. Oh, BTW: “Chief among medevil dramatists was Mahatma Dante, whose Divine Comedy has become the favorite farce of all time. … He stood with one foot in the Muddle Ages, while with the other he hailed the dawn of a new day.”
Where were all these excellent texts when I was an undergraduate? Or are they the texts that undergraduate essayists write?