Poke in ham

Another Kiwi recently touched on the use of shrubbery as concealment. It is an old tradition, or a charter or something, dating back to the time of the Roman Empire.
Of course as pioneers it would be unreasonable to expect the Romans to have ascended straight to the acme of perfection. Still, the shields are a dead giveaway.The worst part of disguised-as-shrubbery reconnaissance work for a Legionary was being widdled on by elephants.

Not Sky-clad

As prescribed in the Calendar of Ceremonies, with Hunky-Dory the foul-mouthed misanthropic Master of Ritual providing a stream of profanity-spiced instructions, Uncle the 77^th Earl of Homeward was roused from his bed on the morn of his 12^th birthday. Ignoring his querulous eye-rubbing demands for explanations, unspeaking servitors ushered him through the north-facing Strait Gate of Homeward, past the mud hut dwellings of the Bright Carvers, and into the forest that cloaked the foothills. "The Heir of Homeward goes sky-clad," they told him when he asked for his comfortable purple dressing-gown. "The Heir of Homeward widdles on the armour in the shrubbery." A trail of corroded trophies from past enactments of the ceremony stretched far into the distance like a road into the past.

This event, fanning a spark of resentment against the weight of changeless immemorial tradition, laid down the course of Uncle's youth. It inspired the career of rebellion that would one day lead him beyond the walls of Homeward, to Oxford University, where he would steal a bicycle.

I do not believe that there is anyone else writing Gormenghast / Uncle mash-ups, so I have the field to myself. And who is to say that Mervyn Peake did not meet up with Rev. J. P. Martin at a bar one day in the late 1940s and collaborate on a joint manuscript?

Here are some Trigan Roman legionaries spying on the enemy without even a minimal Ikebana-style shrubbery disguise.

CONCEALMENT FAIL. This will not end well.

Hemp nokia

The Cinnabar moth Tyria jacobaeae is an arctiid moth, from the planet Arctia. It was introduced into New Zealand in 1929-1932 in accordance with the belief at the time that NZ needed more fauna named after mercury ores. That is why we also have the Livingstonite Butterfly but the Moschellandsbergite Moth never really acclimatised to local conditions.

The woolly striped caterpillars can turn cannibalistic. For protection against members of their own species, they have evolved an astonishing ability to disguise themselves as other forms of life.

Finnanigans

It seems that Riddled enterprises has a palpable hit on it' hands! The new restaurant "Scrumdiddleyumptious" has opened to rave reviews with critics comparing it to "that Thai place downstairs from the video place" High praise indeed.!
But, of course, the centrality of the point at Riddled is the science. Note here, as head waiter Alosa, serves the first subjects customers (click picture to embiggen). The Riddled Gentenics staff, disguised as chefs, are carefully observing the reactions of the lady as she is served by a Transgenic Organism. Are those pink shoes about to be employed in running in terror, while screaming?!?!?

More importantly her idiot boyfriend at the other end of the table is being observed by Smut and I carefully disguised as trees. Heh Heh, I have the brown suit on, the plum role if you like.
The menu has been carefully chosen to reflect the special ambience eg. Fish heads in Yggdrasil custard.
Mrs Miggens has excelled herself with a Tree Fern and carrot terrine marinated in fermented fish gubblies. As the menu says "You don't want to know what fish gubblies are!"
Added bonus: The lyrics to the Andy Griffith Show theme "The Fishin' Hole"

Breakin' sweat for you!

Uncle Lou articulates the malaise of America after the assassination of Kennedy pretty well, I think. Also it's Friday in the proper half of the world.

Ahem, Pinko

As it is it written, so shallot beans.

Long live the new flesh

I will have you know that my manly antibodies are performing perfectly! Not a word of complaint has been said about gel-column failures!

It is uncanny, how the scammers and spammers manage to focus so precisely on the exact insecurities plaguing their targets.

This one needs work, however:
It would work better if there were some mention of the vast fortune in royalties acquired by a strain of HeLa cells, which the cells are unable to transfer out of the laboratory, and which they are willing to share with me if I facilitate the process by providing access to my bank account.

Recipes for Disaster

I had no idea that the community of randomised culinary research was so fiercely competitive! It seems, though that Substance McGravitas -- hitherto ahead of the field with his Janusnode template -- cannot afford to rest on his bayleaves, for here is a group of brash young newcomers and their "10,000 randomized recipe datasets". Sadly, they do not report having tried any of these ingredient combinations.

Ahn, Ahnert, Bagrow & Barabási also provide a useful Fig 2 to show the molecular associations among no fewer than 381 culinary ingredients, but not including Figs, so no recursion chiz chiz.

The backbone of the flavor network. Each node denotes an ingredient, the node color indicates food category, and node size reflects the ingredient prevalence in recipes. Two ingredients are connected if they share a significant number of flavor compounds, link thickness representing the number of shared compounds between the two ingredients.

This cook only has 10 ingredients in his Flavour Network. No wonder he looks so dejected.

The top Figure looks like something the Pentagon might produce for a Congressional briefing, to dramatise the interconnectedness of terrorist groups.

But what is that in the centre of the spiderweb...

Run for your lives! It's a trap!

Against a Dark Background

Lowd was the Agrimonie in the Newe Entomologiste last night, with voices raised in unseemlie Dischord.
"Hist!" quoth Another Kiwi. "What means it with these kitsche and stinkardly daubs of underclad Wenches and popular Idolls that bedeck the walls, daubed upon black Cashmere fabrick, so vial in taste as to cast a moraine upon the Kine and to curdle the Eleemosynary Ale in the Mug?"
"Whither away," quoth Smut Clyde, "with the witty portrayts of Hounds playing Shuffleboard and Nine-Mannes-Morris of whych we wot so well?"

"Quoth off," sayeth Evangeline van Holsterin, foremost among serving-wenches, whose word none dare dispute for fear of her wrath with the Banhammer that falleth like Reyne. "You are Elitests quashing the Arte of the People with your High-Browe Æsthetick. Black Vellum Illumination is a Valid Expression of vernacular Taste."