More Spices: Cinnamon, Nutmeg, Clove & Pepper In this article we will look at some unrelated spices - Cinnamon, Nutmeg, Clove & Pepper – and their medicinal effects. Cinnamon (***Cinnamomum Zeylanicum Bl***. and other species of ***Cinnamomum***) There are many sorts of Cinnamomum and cinnamon oil is prepared from several of them. But the main source for the genuine spice, cinnamon, is the dried inner bark of Cinnamomum zeylanicum. (However see about ***cassia*** below.)…
Another Three Spices: Aphrodite's Birth, Smoke & King Minos' Daughter This time we will take a look at the three spices rosemary, thyme, and coriander. The title of this article might be confusing, but there is a story behind it. For a time in the past, I created monthly quizzes for a magazine, and one time the question was “Which three spices am I thinking of if I say Aphrodite's birth; smoke; and Ariadne, the daughter of king Minos of Crete?” The correct answer is:…
Medicine, Modern Superstition & Flawed Paradigms All around the world, although more in less developed countries than in the industrialised West, I have faced what must be the most widely spread superstition of our times: the belief that a doctor is a magician who can always administer a tablet or injection to cure any ailment. It's even worse than that; magical properties are attributed to the medical drug itself. The mere existence of a medicine, any medicine, must help. I…
Dictionary of Selected Spices + A Little Story *14 spices in 10 languages & a little story about Turmeric, teaching us that a foreign language is not always easy.* Since many readers do not have English as their first language, and I have recently written about spices, it is justified to add a supplement with a list of names of selected spices in some major languages. There is no doubt that it could be very useful, as this little story illustrates. The first time I thought…
Retrospection 5 With my very first article here, I introduced a topic, whose importance cannot be overrated: ***privacy****,* soon followed by its sibling ***freedom***. It was Why Should You Always Write under a Pseudonym?, published on this platform on 16 March 2020. I am not writing about it all the time because there is just so much to say about it and I don't want to repeat myself too much. However, I consider my personal privacy as a part of life's necessities and I am…
Rhyme & Reason: Verse, Structure, & Memory There is no doubt that initially poetry, or verse, in the classical western sense, was a mnemo-technical tool; a method to make it easier to remember large quantities of information. Before the invention of script, the history of a family or a tribe, its laws and customs, its myths and rites, etc. had to be preserved by memory and oral tradition. Some individuals had the special task to preserve the knowledge and to forward it to a…
Anagrams, Palindromes, Cryptarithms and Alphametics In *"La Dame de Montsoreau"*, Alexandre Dumas père lets Chicot, the court jester of Henri III, make an anagram of Henri's name. He got *"Vilain Herodes"* by *"Henri de Valois"*. Only a court jester could show such a lack of respect to a king in those days! As we can see, the one is obtained from the other by rearranging the letters. That is to say, one is an ***anagram*** of the other. In Cabbalism, letters are seen as…
On the Genealogy of Script I & II *This is a brief exploration of the origin of written language and how different writing systems and alphabets are related – or, in some cases, how they can possibly be related. As with everything else, when we get very far back in time, we enter an area of theory and speculation rather than certain facts. That's unavoidable. I want to make clear that such theories and speculations are subjective, they are a matter of plausibility rather…
On the Genealogy of Script III - VIII *The lead image shows Egyptian god Thoth - according to Egyptian mythology, the inventor of hieroglyphs and of script in general. Here, as often, depicted with the head of an ibis.* *Here follows sections III-VIII of the article "On the Genealogy of Script". For sections I & II, read "**On the Genealogy of Script I & II**".* https://read.cash/@Mictorrani/on-the-genealogy-of-script-i-ii-92b3e103 I. Introduction (In "On the Genealogy of…
Pictures at an Exhibition A Slavic witch, a monumental entrance in the Ukrainian capital, and a French abode of the dead are three stations of ten, in a picturesque walk in sound. Who is the creator? This was a quiz I once created for a magazine, and the answer is Modest Mussorgsky; the walk in sound refers to his musical composition "Pictures at an Exhibition" [Картинки с выставки]. "Walk" is a special clue since a returning theme is called "Promenade", "picturesque"…
Sepia, Grisaille & Verdaille: Monochrome Art... and how about Japan? *What colour pigment was originally made from a substance secreted by cuttlefish? Now made synthetically, the colour is still called the same.* The answer is *sepia*. It is a secretion of the common cuttlefish, Sepia officinalis, a pigment containing melanin. (Melanin is the same pigment that colours human skin and hair.) A German painter and professor, Jacob Seydelmann (1750-1829), developed a method to…
Retrospection 6 This time I will not discuss my own production, but rather assume the role of reader and bring some attention to other read.cash authors, or specific articles by other authors. I was inspired to this article by 10 Best read.cash Articles I've Read So Far... by @LucyStephanie. https://read.cash/@LucyStephanie/10-best-readcash-articles-ive-read-so-far-2b0e72e5 It is not easy to find the gems in the huge production that is published at read.cash every day. I am…
The Human Predisposition to Schism - and What it Means to Bitcoin *In this article I will discuss how schism has formed the human world and how it is a fundamental part of Bitcoin evolution.* The State Today In today's world, the states, nations or countries are slowly suffocating all valuable human activity. Whether they are Fascist or Communist, or exercise the Tyranny of Benevolence under the name of Welfare Socialism, it doesn't matter. People are brainwashed and…
@Mictorrani