Stuff below the fold

The BBC/PBS series Call the Midwife, features an Anglican convent called Nonnatus house.

Fountain of Elias has the details on St. Raymond Nonnatus:

According to the most reliable Mercedarian tradition, Saint Raymond was born in the town of Portello, situated in the Segarra region of the Province of Lérida at the dawn of the thirteenth century. He was given the surname of Nonnatus or not born because he came into the world through an inspired and urgent incision which the Viscount of Cardona made with a dagger in the abdomen of the dead mother.

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POETRY LIVES....
Holly Ordway has a sonnet about Oxford  mp3 for your listening pleasure...

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Paleoglot discusses the future tense of Etruscan, and wonders if it exists per se, or if Etruscan, like Hittite, only has two tenses.

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Professor Mary Beard's son's van had to be towed back to Cambridge? What, no one able to fix it in the great and efficient European Union? Why didn't they just FedEx a clutch to the Italian mechanic and replace it?

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3 D printed shoes...

will it revolutionize fashion? Well, only if you think these shoes would be nice to wear when you are hiking around the Palenke or local supermarket.

Who cares about fashion: For women, what we need is shoes that don't hurt our feet. What is needed is for us to get our feet scanned, and then a shoe that actually fits our fett.

I didn't realize how much I missed good fitting shoes til I moved here and had to wear men's sandals (even if I found women's sandals, they are too narrow). as a result, I wear plastic "nike" (fake) sandals...
Ironically I splurged on a pair of medium heels that are leather and fit, and they don't hurt my feet...and of course I still have my old Birkenstocks...but I don't wear them around the house or when it is rainy...

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The mystery of Venus, the two faced cat...

 

Photograph courtesy TODAY Show/NBC

the story includes this factoid:

Among cats, "chimeras are really not all that rare," Lyons said. In fact, most male tortoiseshell cats are chimeras. The distinctively mottled orange and black coat is a sign that the cat has an extra X chromosome. But female cats, said Lyons, already have two X chromosomes so they can sport that coat without the extra X. That means Venus is not necessarily a chimera.

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Brian Sibley's post of the day is about the wedding of Mr Mickey Mouse and includes this song



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