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Note from Blog host: Troy Parfitt's closing statement of about 500 words appears first. To read Lloyd Lofthouse's closing statement, you may have to scroll down this page.
Closing Statement [Parfitt]:
I would like to thank Tom Carter for suggesting and facilitating this debate. But most of all, I would like to thank Lloyd Lofthouse. True, this is his website, but Lloyd's been key in getting this organized, and has been nothing but helpful, positive, and polite.
Between the episodes of verbal jousting, which hopefully have kept you interested and entertained, we've communicated amicably about China and related topics, which is great. Two literary publications have refused to review my book, one citing arrogance, the other controversy and bigotry. It's a sign of the times (you have total intellectual freedom to say anything you want, except things people don't want to hear), so good on Lloyd for being so tolerant of someone like me, whose views on China have little overlap with his.
China is a complicated subject, and because debate about it is so divisive, it's sometimes difficult for people with only a casual interest to sort fact from fiction. To come to any kind of understanding, you've got to spend a lot of time reading about China, and it helps enormously to understand Mandarin and travel or live there.
The West has some serious problems; it always has and it always will. Somber problems are normal for human societies; we're a troubled species. In light of Western inadequacy and hypocrisy, it's tempting to see China as a land of answers and alternatives. China can appear as the great Other: the feminine to the West's masculine; grace to aggression; cultivation to calculation. But that's a romanticized construct located in the recesses of the Western psyche, with little basis in reality.
That's not to say China isn't a noteworthy subject; it's a fascinating one. Nevertheless, determined and altruistic cadres, heroic Communist leaders, an overriding system of guanxi, a citizenry instilled with the wisdom and morality of Confucianism, a harmonious society, a glorious past, and a mission to help neighboring states, are concepts that exist largely in people's imaginations. They are myths, both Chinese and Western, that mainly block the view.
People like myths; they're easy to latch on to; easy to remember; they cover up what isn't flattering; they justify, and can make you feel good. But they won't bring anyone closer to understanding what China is, how it got that way, and where it might be headed. To do that, one needs to research, observe, and apply critical thinking. Counter evidence cannot be denied, dubious sources should be treated as such, and a sense of fairness must always be employed. Once you've got a working theory about China, its nature, and so on, you must test that hypothesis constantly; that's how you'll discover the wonderful and terrible truth.
Again, I'd like to thank Tom and Lloyd for setting this debate up. It was good for me to defend and reflect on my ideas, and China is such an important topic; debate about it is crucial.
Thank you very much.
Troy Parfitt
Closing Statement [Lofthouse]:
In the prologue of Lin Yutang's My Country and My People, the author says few in the West understand the Chinese and their culture. He writes, "It is difficult to deny the Old China Hand (Note—foreigners that lived or are still living in China) the right to write books and articles about China…"
Lin Yutang says that only one in ten thousand of these "Old China Hands" understands China, while the other 9,999 results in a "constant, unintelligent elaboration of the Chinaman". He mentions Sir Robert Hart and Bertrand Russell as examples of the few that understand China.
At the urging of Pearl S. Buck, "My Country and My People" was written and then published in 1935 and what Lin Yutang wrote then is still relevant today.
Pearl S. Buck writes in the book's Introduction that when China was "not able to meet the dangerous and aggressive modernity of the West… They forced out of existence the old dynastic rule, they changed with incredible speed the system of education, and with indefatigable zeal they planned and set up a scheme of modern government".
This metamorphosis of China that we have witnessed in the last few decades has almost eradicated severe poverty from more than 70% in 1949 to 2.5% of the population today in addition to the growth of a modern, Western style urban consumer middle class that is still a work in progress. This transformation took a literacy rate of 20% in 1976 and increased it to more than 90% today.
In 1949, we witnessed an element of that transformation as Mao declared war on Confucianism and then again as the age of Mao gave way to Deng Xiaoping's "Getting Rich is Glorious" era, which turned China into the world's factory floor. Then in 1982, China wrote a new constitution and started a process to reinvent its legal system to be more Western in its structure and laws.
I thank Mr. Troy Parfitt for his participating in this debate. However, he is not a Sir Robert Hart or Bertrand Russell.
In Part 1, he claimed that "face" was a license to behave however one pleases, which is not the case.
He then inferred that because Jonathan Spence never mentions Mao's war on Confucianism in his biography of Mao that it never happened.
Yet, Henry Kissinger in On China made it clear that Mao was passionately and publicly anti-Confucian. Zhou Enlai even told Kissinger that Confucianism was a doctrine of class oppression.
Parfitt's "gossip" includes his opinion of "Confucianism", "face", "Guanxi", the "Mandate of Heaven", corruption in China, and Mao being a monster that deliberately caused millions of deaths from a famine, which took place during the Great Leap Forward in a few of China's provinces.
As Lin Yutang says, "It is difficult to deny the "Old China Hand" the right to write books and articles about China… Nevertheless, such books and articles must necessarily remain on the level of the gossip along the world's longest bar."
Return to the Discussion with Troy Parfitt – Part 11, author of "Why China Will Never Rule the World – Travels in the Two Chinas", or start with Part 1.
See Discovering Intellectual Dishonesty – Part 1
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
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Written by Nancy Miorelli
It's happened to all of us. You go to the pet store or the adoption agency and fall in love with a big sweet pair of eyes. Or like, 4 pairs of eyes. And 8 legs. Okay, maybe it doesn't happen to all of us.
But if it does happen to you, you might need to get your new 8 legged home across the country. What are your options for doing this?
Before we get there though, we have establish some base lines about paperwork and where you're going.
Where Are You Going?
Several exotic insect and spider species can be brought across state borders. Chilean Rose Hair Tarantulas, Zebra Tarantulas, and Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches are all popular picks in the pet trade. This is for several reasons including safety and the fact that you don't need a permit to have them in the United States. They can also cross state lines.
Some insects that are native to the United States are considered pest species and aren't allowed to cross state borders. That's why ant farms sold in the US usually have Harvester Ants, despite Harvester Ants having arguably the most painful ant sting in North America. Other ant species are considered pest species and their transportation across state lines is prohibited. Europe is much more insect friendly. Many stick insects and mantises that are illegal to have without permits in the United States are perfectly legal in Europe.
So before you load your fluffy or 6 legged friend into your baggage, make sure you know the laws and regulations in your state. Oregon makes it really easy to know what's allowed and what's not. In other states, however, finding this information is more difficult. If you can't find it yourself, breeders or pet stores who are selling you the arthropods should know this information. It's best to ask.
I Have Something Not on the List!
If you want or have exotic insects, it's your responsibility to have the paperwork and permits. Your seller should also have the appropriate paperwork but the burden ultimately falls on you.
If you have exotic insects or are trucking your bugs across state borders, be sure to have all of your official paperwork on you. You don't want to get caught up somewhere.
If you're moving bugs internationally, things become much more complicated and are beyond the scope of this post. But in short, you'll need a variety of permits including import and export permits from the countries you're involved with. If you're moving bugs that could potentially be pests, then you need to sign up for other permits. If you just have exotic pets, then you need possession permits.
Great! I Got My Bugs and My Papers!
Quick internet searches bring up a lot of discussion forums about the topic. Some people say "It's fine!" Others say "It's totally not fine!" So I called TSA to take the guesswork out of it **.
TSA told me that for domestic flights, arthropods legal in the United States are okay to travel with in a carry on. Your pet may be subject to screening in which case you can ask for non-xray screening for the health of your buddy. Your animal should be properly caged for travel. TSA did say that you should call your airline and determine if it's okay for the tarantula to be in your carry on.
This is where things got a bit more complicated. I called both Delta and American Airlines (which now also owns US Airways). They both told me that only dogs and cats are allowed on the planes in carry on luggage. I didn't talk with a representative for Southwest but their website clearly indicate that they only accept small dogs and cats.
That being said, only TSA actually screens your luggage. I'm not advocating a blatant disregard for airline policies, I'm just stating the facts. I also didn't contact other smaller airlines, so if you're flying with someone besides these three – call and find out their policies.
Story Time
I was told a story at an Entomological Society of America (ESA) conference in Portland that a man had his tarantula and had no problems through TSA or screening. However, there was apprehension when he got to the plane. The pilot didn't want it in the cabin. Instead of being angry, the man used it as an educational opportunity. He took the tarantula out, told the pilot about it, about its biology, its name, and let the pilot hold it. Afterwards, the pilot decided that it wasn't threatening and allowed it on his plane.
Well … Now What?
If you don't want to gamble with carry on luggage, you have two options. You can ship your critter or put it in your checked luggage. Either way, the belly of the plane or the back of a truck doesn't have temperature regulation. So depending on the length of your flight, or where you're shipping, you may want to consider the biology of your animals.
If you do check your arthropod, you'll probably want to pack it the same way as you'd pack to ship it. If you ship your arthropod, I'd highly recommend overnight shipping and no longer than 2 day shipping. Insects and spiders can easily freeze or bake in the back of a truck. Please be respectful of your arthropod's biology.
Here's a video for how you should pack a tarantula, but the concept is same for other arthropods as well. In fact, tarantulas are probably one of the most fragile arthropods because they're prone to hemorrhaging if dropped or mishandled.
Before you even try and bring anything on a plane, know the rules about where you're going. If you need permits, make sure you have the right ones and that they're readily available.
TSA has no problem with our arthropod friends. Your companion will be subject to screening but you can request a non x-ray screening. The problem really depends on who you're flying with. The airlines I contacted said that they don't allows tarantulas to be carried on their planes. So that leaves you with option of checked luggage or shipping your animals.
Good luck! And if you have any experiences let us know in the comments!
*I called TSA. That's blog dedication.

subset: commoncrawl


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17-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Friday, August 23, 1912: Didn't do so very much today and didn't go any place either.
Her middle-aged granddaughter's comments 100 years later:
Sounds like a boring day. Maybe Grandma should have taken a walk. I know that I always feel better after a brisk walk—and she probably would have felt better, too.
Today we constantly hear in the media that we aren't active enough. Amazingly there were similar concerns a hundred years ago:
Walking is one of the most healthful forms of exercise. It may seem unnecessary to devote much space to a subject that everyone thinks they know all about, but the fact is that, with trolley cars, automobiles, and horses, a great many persons have lost the ability to walk any distance.
It is very easy to cultivate the street car habit. An excellent rule to follow if you are going anywhere is this: If you have time, and the distance is not too great, walk.
In walking for pleasure, avoid a rambling, purposeless style. Decide where you are going and go.
Walk out in the country if possible and on roads where the automobiles will not endanger your life or blow clouds of dust in your face.
Never mind the weather. One rarely takes cold while in motion.
To walk comfortably you should wear loose clothing and old shoes.
Walking just for the sake of exercise can easily become a tiresome occupation, but the active mind can always see something of interest, such as wild flowers, gardens, and all the various sides of nature study in the country, and people, houses, and life in the city.
Outdoor Sports by Claude H. Miller (1911)


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MSRTC Shivshahi Bus from Ratnagiri to Pune
MSRTC Shivshahi buses are an efficient source of travel from Ratnagiri to Pune. This recognized Shivshahi bus operated by MSRTC which is known for delivering good quality bus service between Ratnagiri and Pune. Shivshahi buses which are serviced by MSRTC are mostly prefered while commuting from Ratnagiri to Pune due to its on-time service and for the continuous effort taken to make passengers feel comfortable. Besides, all the MSRTC Shivshahi buses safeguard cleanliness and safety.


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The Twisted Plugin System¶
The purpose of this guide is to describe the preferred way to
write extensible Twisted applications (and consequently, also to
describe how to extend applications written in such a way). This
extensibility is achieved through the definition of one or more
APIs and a mechanism for collecting code plugins which
implement this API to provide some additional functionality.
At the base of this system is the
twisted.plugin module.
Making an application extensible using the plugin system has several strong advantages over other techniques:
It allows third-party developers to easily enhance your software in a way that is loosely coupled: only the plugin API is required to remain stable.
It allows new plugins to be discovered flexibly. For example, plugins can be loaded and saved when a program is first run, or re-discovered each time the program starts up, or they can be polled for repeatedly at runtime (allowing the discovery of new plugins installed after the program has started).
Writing Extensible Programs¶
Taking advantage of
twisted.plugin is
a two step process:
Define an interface which plugins will be required to implement. This is done using the zope.interface package in the same way one would define an interface for any other purpose.
A convention for defining interfaces is do so in a file named like ProjectName/projectname/iprojectname.py . The rest of this document will follow that convention: consider the following interface definition be in
Matsim/matsim/imatsim.py, an interface definition module for a hypothetical material simulation package.
At one or more places in your program, invoke
twisted.plugin.getPlugins()and iterate over its result.
As an example of the first step, consider the following interface definition for a physical modelling system.
from zope.interface import Interface, Attribute
class IMaterial(Interface):
An object with specific physical properties
def yieldStress(temperature):
Returns the pressure this material can support without
fracturing at the given temperature.
@type temperature: C{float}
@param temperature: Kelvins
@rtype: C{float}
@return: Pascals
dielectricConstant = Attribute("""
@type dielectricConstant: C{complex}
@ivar dielectricConstant: The relative permittivity, with the
real part giving reflective surface properties and the
imaginary part giving the radio absorption coefficient.
In another module, we might have a function that operates on
objects providing the
IMaterial interface:
def displayMaterial(m):
print('A material with yield stress %s at 500 K' % (m.yieldStress(500),))
print('Also a dielectric constant of %s.' % (m.dielectricConstant,))
The last piece of required code is that which collects
IMaterial providers and passes them to the
displayMaterial function.
from twisted.plugin import getPlugins
from matsim import imatsim
def displayAllKnownMaterials():
for material in getPlugins(imatsim.IMaterial):
Third party developers may now contribute different materials
to be used by this modelling system by implementing one or more
plugins for the
IMaterial interface.
Extending an Existing Program¶
The above code demonstrates how an extensible program might be written using Twisted's plugin system. How do we write plugins for it, though? Essentially, we create objects which provide the required interface and then make them available at a particular location. Consider the following example.
from zope.interface import implementer
from twisted.plugin import IPlugin
from matsim import imatsim
@implementer(IPlugin, imatsim.IMaterial)
class SimpleMaterial(object):
def __init__(self, yieldStressFactor, dielectricConstant):
self._yieldStressFactor = yieldStressFactor
self.dielectricConstant = dielectricConstant
def yieldStress(self, temperature):
return self._yieldStressFactor * temperature
steelPlate = SimpleMaterial(2.06842719e11, 2.7 + 0.2j)
brassPlate = SimpleMaterial(1.03421359e11, 1.4 + 0.5j)
steelPlate and
brassPlate now provide both
IPlugin and
IMaterial .
All that remains is to make this module available at an appropriate
location. For this, there are two options. The first of these is
primarily useful during development: if a directory which
has been added to
sys.path (typically by adding it to the
PYTHONPATH environment variable) contains a
directory named
twisted/plugins/ ,
.py file in that directory will be loaded
as a source of plugins. This directory must not be a Python
package: including
__init__.py will cause the
directory to be skipped and no plugins loaded from it. Second, each
module in the installed version of Twisted's
twisted.plugins package will also be loaded as a source of
Once this plugin is installed in one of these two ways,
displayAllKnownMaterials can be run and we will see
two pairs of output: one for a steel plate and one for a brass
Alternate Plugin Packages¶
getPlugins takes one
additional argument not mentioned above. If passed in, the 2nd argument
should be a module or package to be used instead of
twisted.plugins as the plugin meta-package. If you
are writing a plugin for a Twisted interface, you should never
need to pass this argument. However, if you have developed an
interface of your own, you may want to mandate that plugins for it
are installed in your own plugins package, rather than in
You may want to support
directories for ease of development. To do so, you should make
yourproject/plugins/__init__.py contain at least
the following lines.
from twisted.plugin import pluginPackagePaths
__all__ = []
The key behavior here is that interfaces are essentially paired with a particular plugin package. If plugins are installed in a different package than the one the code which relies on the interface they provide, they will not be found when the application goes to load them.
Plugin Caching¶
In the course of using the Twisted plugin system, you may
dropin.cache files appearing at
various locations. These files are used to cache information
about what plugins are present in the directory which contains
them. At times, this cached information may become out of date.
Twisted uses the mtimes of various files involved in the plugin
system to determine when this cache may have become invalid.
Twisted will try to re-write the cache each time it tries to use
it but finds it out of date.
For a site-wide install, it may not (indeed, should not) be possible for applications running as normal users to rewrite the cache file. While these applications will still run and find correct plugin information, they may run more slowly than they would if the cache was up to date, and they may also report exceptions if certain plugins have been removed but which the cache still references. For these reasons, when installing or removing software which provides Twisted plugins, the site administrator should be sure the cache is regenerated. Well-behaved package managers for such software should take this task upon themselves, since it is trivially automatable. The canonical way to regenerate the cache is to run the following Python code:
from twisted.plugin import IPlugin, getPlugins
As mentioned, it is normal for exceptions to be raised once here if plugins have been removed.


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After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb. There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men. The angel said to the women, "Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; He has risen, just as He said. Come and see where He lay." – (Matthew 28:1-6, NIV)
After the Sabbath, as the first light of the new week dawned, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to keep vigil at the tomb. Suddenly the earth reeled and rocked under their feet as God's angel came down from heaven, came right up to where they were standing. He rolled back the stone and sat on it. Shafts of lightning blazed from him. His garments shimmered snow-white. The guards at the tomb were scared to death. They were so frightened, they couldn't move. The angel spoke to the women: "There is nothing to fear here. I know you're looking for Jesus, the One they nailed to the cross. He is not here. He was raised, just as He said. Come and look at the place where He was placed." – (Matthew 28:1-6, MSG)
The more I dig into the scriptures to unpack the details of Holy Week, the more I notice things that either have escaped me previously, or that I had somehow forgotten over time. This morning, after reading about Jesus' resurrection in all four gospels, I had a moment of "Wow, how did I miss that before?" In Mark, Luke, and John's telling of the resurrection, the accounts each begin AFTER the stone had been rolled away. So, what does this matter, you ask? For me, this added to the already miraculous resurrection, as Jesus had risen and left the tomb BEFORE the stone was rolled away. In the same way that He "appeared" in the locked room where the disciples were meeting after all of this had taken place, Jesus had "disappeared" from the tomb, only to "appear" before Mary in the garden by the tomb. Next, Jesus "appeared" to the two disciples along the road to Emmaus, then among the disciples gathered in the locked room, and later at the Sea of Galilee, where He reinstated Peter, as well as in a variety of other places and spaces to teach and equip His followers before He ascended into Heaven. (Read John 20:11-21:25 for specifics) For me, this is a reminder of the incredible power of Christ. We, in our frail humanity, cannot begin to fathom the power held in the hands of our Creator. The very same God who created heaven and earth, bore the sin of the world to redeem all humanity, and then rose from three days dead. Beyond that, He lived and loved and touched and equipped those around Him further, before He ascended into heaven to be seated at the right hand of the Father, where He is ever moving on our behalf. It is no wonder they say that "Hope Rises." It does indeed. Christ rose. The sun rises each new day. As the weight of fear, suffering, sin and sorrow are laid at His feet, we are empowered and strengthened to rise. I wonder if that is why God created day and night the way that He did. Each morning as the sun rises, we have the opportunity to be reminded that the Son rose for us; new hope, new help, every single day. May we embrace the truth that HE HAS RISEN, and allow hope to rise in all of us on this glorious Easter morning. Let the world rejoice, for hope has risen, HE is alive!
Imagine the tomb,
Cold, lifeless and still;
Guarded, protected,
O God, what's Your will?
All of a sudden,
The earth starts to shake;
Terrifying light,
Moves the stone away.
From atop the stone,
A voice then declares;
"Do not be afraid,
He's no longer there."
Guards frozen in fear,
Ladies look in awe;
Just grave clothes remain,
This scene that they saw.
What He had promised,
Had now come to pass;
Jesus had risen,
Our hope that shall last.
Dear Heavenly Father, thank You that You sent Your Son to live and love, to die and rise again, so that we might know the hope that is found in You alone. Thank You that today is a day to remember how powerfully hope rises, as You rose up out of the grave and defeated death for our sake. Forgive us for forgetting the power held in hope that rises, for You have the power to resurrect anything. Teach us to trust You more, as You are our hope, strength, light and life. Show us how to love well, all those around us. May many come into a lasting relationship with You. Be glorified O God, as we look into the empty tomb and see that the Son has risen for us anew, so that we may know hope in You. Amen.
© Shannon Elizabeth Grabrick and Revelations in Writing, May 2011 – present
We wait in hope for the Lord; He is our help and our shield. – Psalm 33:20
*If you need an Easter service to join, please join me at Grace Church, 10am, PST. ❤


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Last night, you as a community:
Filled a garbage can full of food (kudos to whoever brought the red beans and rice) for Neighborhood Impact
Raised money for Central Oregon Running Klub (CORK) Youth Development: 100% of the ticket sales went straight to a great cause
Watched the YogaSlackers put on amazing show of athletic skill and balance, and come up out of your seats and joined in the fun (note: the 4 people you see on the ground in this photo are trained skilled professionals, the 4 people laying, hanging, and sitting on the trained professionals' feet are not, and were pulling off these tricks within 5 min!)
Watch as Joel Wolpert's camera depicts the soul of Anton Krupicka trekking, running, and climbing all over our world. If you weren't able to join us last night, you can check out the In the Highcountry here.
Lastly – I'd like to thank our gracious sponsors for making this evening possible: Deschutes Brewery, FootZone, Fleetfeet, and the REP Biomechanics Lab @ Rebound Physical Therapy.


text:
It's been a while since I've posted anything to this blog. I am currently enrolled in a local college, so most of my time is taken up by work and study. I love college, and I wish I had enrolled years ago. Better late than never, I guess. Many of you readers have encouraged me to enroll, and that's largely why I finally took the leap. Thank you! You are amazing!
Of all the ex-Amish people I know (hundreds), less than a handful have gone to college. Why don't more of them seek a higher education? I believe there are several reasons:
- Many of them don't think it's necessary. Many of them believe they can make a decent living and enjoy life without going to college. In a way they're right. The Amish are taught to be hardworking and entrepreneurial. Many Amish and ex-Amish start businesses, and whether it's a furniture shop or a construction company, they often succeed fantastically. It is not uncommon to find college-educated people working for an Amish employer that has no more than an eighth-grade education.
- Another reason for not going to college, I suspect, is that the ex-Amish don't set set their dreams very high relative to the general population. For them, just being out among the "English" is so much of an adventure that going to college and doing even greater things doesn't seem that much of a step up.
- For many ex-Amish, college sounds like an intellectual hardship. Many of them didn't enjoy Amish parochial school, and most have been away from the world of study and exams for so long that they shudder at the idea of returning.
- As for myself, I've always planned on going to college some day. The only thing holding me back was time and money. I thought that if I could only put in a few more years of work in my entrepreneurial pursuits, I would have both the time and the money I would need. If I could only make a bit of money at an 'okay' job, then I could move on to pursuing my dreams.
While college does take a lot of time and money, I'm happy to report that it doesn't take nearly as much as I had anticipated it would. If you lack time, you don't have to enroll full-time. You can take one or two courses at a time, if you like. As for the money, if you go to an instate community college where tuition is a lot lower, financial aid may cover most of it.
Then, of course, there are the scholarships. There's actually a scholarship specifically for the ex-Amish seeking a higher education. The Amish Descendant Scholarship Fund was started by two ex-Amish women, Emma Miller (featured in Devil's Playground 2002) and Naomi Kramer. This year they're giving out several hefty scholarships (from $1,000 to $5,000) to ex-Amish students.
I think what they're doing is amazing. If you're an ex-Amish person thinking about going to college, be sure to head over to their website www.amishscholarship.com and apply. Don't think that you won't have a chance. If you're ex-Amish and want a higher education, you've already distinguished yourself from the pack. If you qualify, I think you'll have a very good chance of getting a scholarship. If perchance, the scholarship is $5000, that will cover the tuition and fees at some community colleges for a whole year.
If you're not an ex-Amish student, consider donating to the cause or publicizing the scholarship by 'Liking' their Facebook page and sharing posts.
College is much more than just a crapload of exams and then a stressful job. In college you can learn so many interesting things. In college you can direct your education, to some extent. You can choose many of your own courses, and study what interests you. In college you will broaden your horizons and begin to understand so much more about our society, our history, and where we're going. With a college education, you won't be limited to mindless, back-breaking, labor–you can follow your dreams.
Note: I am not receiving anything other than satisfaction for promoting this scholarship. I promote it only because I think what they're doing is amazing.


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Okay, let's have some fun at the expense of the Kippers and the extreme right-wingers Gerard Batten has brought into the party. Right-wingers like Count Dankula, Tommy Robinson and Sargon of Akkad.
Sargon, Dankula, Tommy Robinson and UKIP
Count Dankula is the idiot, who taught his girlfriend's dog to do the Nazi salute when he said 'Sieg Heil!' and 'Gas the Jews'. He put it on YouTube, and then, unsurprisingly, got prosecuted for hate speech. I don't think he's actually a Nazi, just a prat, who thinks really tasteless, offensive 'jokes' are hilarious. Tommy Robinson is the founder of the EDL, and has been briefly involved with that other Islamophobic organization, PEGIDA UK. He used to belong to the BNP and has a string of criminal convictions behind him. These included a number for contempt of court after he was caught giving his very biased very of the proceedings outside the court building during the trial of groups of Pakistani men accused of being rape gangs. Technically, Robinson isn't a formal member of the party. It's constitution bars anyone, who has been a member of the racist right from joining it, which rules him out. But he has become a special advisor on Islam and prison reform to Batten.
Sargon of Akkad, whose real name is Carl Benjamin, is another YouTube personality and 'Sceptic'. I think he used to be one of the atheist ranters on YouTube at the time when the New Atheism was on the rise with the publication of Dawkins' book, The God Delusion. Then a number of them, Sargon included, appear to have become tired of arguing for atheism and naturalism, and started talking about politics. This was from an extreme right-wing perspective, attacking feminism, Social Justice Warriors, anti-racism, immigration and socialism. Many of them appear to be Libertarians, or see themselves as 'Classical Liberals'. This means their liberals only in the early 19th century sense of standing for absolute free trade and the total removal of the welfare state. Sargon's one of these, although bizarrely he also describes himself as 'centre left'. Which only makes sense to some of the equally bizarre individuals out there, who rant about how Barack Obama was a Communist.
The presence of these three characters at a recent UKIP conference was discussed in an article by the anti-racist, anti-religious extremism organization Hope Not Hate as proof that under Batten UKIP had very definitely moved to the Far Right. And Nigel Farage was apparently so concerned with this move a few days ago that he very publicly resigned from the party. And this naturally upset many long-time Kippers. One of them was a YouTube vlogger, whose channel is called People's Populist Press. He posted this video four days ago on his channel bitterly attacking Sargon and the others he describes as 'YouTube Nazi punks' for ruining the party.
Kipper Official Tries to Dissuade Sargon from Joining
It seems, however, that some members of UKIP didn't want Sargon to join. Not because they objected to his opinions, but because they were afraid that he and his followers wouldn't take the party seriously. The Ralph Retort YouTube channel played a recording of a conversation between Sargon, his mate Vee, and an anonymous UKIP official arguing about whether or not Sargon should be allowed to join the party. I'm not putting this up, because I'm unsure of the Ralph Retort channel's political orientation. Sargon's not only upset left-wing YouTube controversialists like Kevin Logan, but also members of the extreme right, including the Nazi fanboys of Richard Spencer. The argument was also played by Oof Curator on his channel, about whom I have the same caveats.
From the conversation, it appears that the Kippers didn't really want Benjamin in the party, because they wanted committed activists. Benjamin had said that he wanted to join the party simply to show his support and not to take a more active role. They were also concerned that his followers also weren't taking politics seriously. The Kipper believed that most of Sargon's followers on YouTube were people in the teens and early twenties. Sargon told him that the average age of his audience is 34. The Kipper accepted this, but stuck to his point that Benjamin's followers don't take it seriously. This included an incident when some of Sargon's followers got drunk in a pub and started shouting 'Free Kekistan' at passing cars. Kekistan and Pepe the Frog are memes taken over by the Alt Right. They were originally the creation of a Latin American cartoonist, with absolutely no racist element. But they've been appropriated by the Nazi right, to the dismay of the cartoon's creator, who now wants nothing to do with it. The Kipper contrasted the flippancy of Sargon's followers with those of Tommy Robinson, who he believed would take UKIP seriously.
UKIP Factions
The argument also gave an insight into the deep divisions and delicate internal politics in UKIP. The Kipper official stated that UKIP's made up of three different political groupings. There are Christian Social Conservatives. These are political Conservatives with traditional views on social morality, emphasizing the traditional family and condemning promiscuity and particularly homosexuality and gay rights. Then there are the Libertarians, who also free market Tories, but with liberal attitudes towards drug taking and sexuality, although some of these have moved away and become more traditional in the moral attitudes. And then there are the Social Democrats. This means Old Labour, standing for the nationalization of utilities but rejecting immigration, feminism, and gay rights. There are clearly strong divisions between the three groups, and the Kipper did not want this delicate balance disrupted by the mass influx of new members with very strong factional views. This was one of the Kipper's concerns when Sargon tried to argue that he'd be an asset to the Kippers as when he, Dankula and another YouTuber joined, the party's organization rose by 10,000. The Kipper responded to that by stating that raises the question of 'brigading', presumably meaning attempts to take over the party through the mass influx of supporters.
Sargon and Philosophical First Principles
The argument was also interesting for what it showed about the real depth of Sargon's own political knowledge: actually quite shallow. Sargon's despised by his opponents on both the Left and the Right for his intellectual arrogance. He's been ridiculed for commonly responding to any of his opponent's points by saying 'That's preposterous!' and asking them if they've read John Locke or Immanuel Kant. The Kipper was impressed by Sargon's support of property rights and popular sovereignty, which he had in common with the rest of the party, but was concerned about how Sargon derived his views of them. He asked him about first principles. Sargon replied that he got them from John Locke and the 18th century Swiss political theorist, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, although the latter was 'too continental' for him. The Kipper responded by asking about the specific derivation of his support for natural rights, as argued by Locke. Sargon responded by saying that they'd been put there by the Creator. The Kipper then replied 'Ah! You're a theist!' To which Sargon replied that he wasn't, because 'We don't know who the Creator is.' This is the line taken by the Intelligent Design crowd, who argue that evolution isn't the product of Neo-Darwinian random mutation and natural selection, but the result of planned, intelligent intervention by a Creator. Sargon's response is strange coming from an atheist, as for many Sceptics, Intelligent Design is simply another form of Creationism. 'Creationism in a cheap tuxedo', as one critic called it.
Sargon objected to the question about how he derived his support for natural rights on the ground that it didn't matter. And I think he's got a point. I've no doubt that the majority of people in the mass political parties probably don't have a very deep understanding of the fundamental basis of the ideologies they hold. I doubt very many ordinary members of the Tory party, for example, have read Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France or the works of the 20th century Tory ideologue, Trevor Oakeshott. It's probably particularly true of the Tories, as Roger Scruton, the Tory philosopher, said in his book on Conservatism in the 1980s that Tory ideology was largely silent, consisting of the unspoken emphasis on traditional views and attitudes. But clearly, the people at the top levels and some of the real activists in the political parties, including UKIP, do have a very profound understanding of the philosophical basis of their party and its views. And Sargon didn't.
In fact, Sargon's ignorance has become increasingly clear in recent months. There's a notorious clip of him shouting down his opponent, Richard Carrier, in a debate on 'SJWs' or something like that at an atheist convention in America, Mythcon. Sargon is shown screaming at Carrier 'No! No! Shut up! Just f***ing shut up!' That went viral around the Net.
Racism and Views on Child Abuse
He's also got some other, deeply offensive views. Sargon considers himself a civic, rather than ethno-nationalist. Which means he stands for his country's independence but does not believe, contra the BNP, that only members of a specific ethnic group can really be its citizens. He appears to hold a very low view of Blacks, however. There's a clip of him telling his extreme right-wing opponents to 'Stop behaving like a bunch of N****rs!' Quite.
There's another clip of Sargon going around the Net of him apparently supporting paedophile. He was talking another YouTuber, who believed that underage sex was fine, and that the age of consent should be lowered to 12 or 14. When asked about the morality of adults having sex with underage children, Sargon responded 'It depends on the child'. Which has naturally upset and outraged very many people.
Conclusions: Robinson and Sargon Will Damage and Radicalise UKIP
There are therefore a number of very good reasons why decent, anti-racist members of UKIP wouldn't want him in their party. Sargon's own popularity also appears to be declining, so that it's now a very good question of how many people he will bring with him into UKIP. Furthermore, a number of people are going to leave with the departure of Farage, though he isn't the non-racist figure he claims to be. The association of Tommy Robinson with Batten is going to drive people away, so that the party will become even more right-wing and much nastier.
The conversation between the Kipper and Sargon also shows that the party is in a very delicate position at the moment, with a very precarious balance of power between the various factions. As the Kipper official himself said, the only thing they have uniting them is Brexit. If that balance is upset, or the unifying factor of Brexit removed, the whole thing could well collapse in a mass of splits and infighting, like the various overtly Fascist groups have imploded over the years. It also shows that while some people on the extreme right have probably a far too high opinion of themselves and their intelligence, others, like the Kipper official, are genuinely bright and very well read and informed. Even in a party like UKIP, those people shouldn't be underestimated.
Tags: 'People's Populist Press', 'Reflections on the Revolution in France', 'The God Delusion', Alt Right, anti-racism, anti-semitism, Barack Obama, Blacks, BNP, Carl Benjamin, Child Abuse, Christianity, Conservatives, Count Dankula, Courts, Creationism, EDL, Edmund Burke, Feminism, Free Market Ideology, Free Trade, Gay Rights, Gays, Holocaust, Hope Not Hate, Immanuel Kant, Immigration, Intelligent Design, Islamophobia, John Locke, Kevin Logan, Latin America, Mythcon, Nationalisation, Natural Rights, New Atheism, Nigel Farage, OLd Labour, Oof Curator, Pegida UK, Pepe the Frog, Prison, Public Utilities, racism, Ralph Retort, Rape, Richard Carrier, richard dawkins, Roger Scruton, Sargon of Akkad, Social Conservativism, Social Democrats, Tommy Robinson, Trevor Oakeshott, Welfare State, Youtube


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Travel & Landscape Photography from 100 countries around the world
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
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Europe - Spain - España - Alicante Province - Calp - Calpe - Coastal town with iconic Calpe's Peñón de Ifach Rock at shores of Mediterranean Sea at the foot of the Natural Park of Penyal d'Ifac
SpainSpanishEspañaKingdom of SpainReino de EspañaEuropeEuropeanSouthwestern EuropeEuropean UnionEUES


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Bryant, Cowboys keep Lions' playoff hopes on hold, 42-21
ARLINGTON, Texas — Dez Bryant threw his first career touchdown pass between a pair of scoring catches, Ezekiel Elliott ran for two TDs and the Dallas Cowboys kept Detroit from clinching a playoff spot with a 42-21 win over the Lions on Monday night.
With home-field advantage already wrapped up, the Cowboys (13-2) didn't let up in their seventh straight home win while matching their franchise record in victories, reached two other times.
The biggest sign they were serious about this one came late in the third quarter, when Bryant took a reverse pitch from Dak Prescott and tucked the ball as if planning to run before pulling up and tossing a lefty lob to Jason Witten for an easy 10-yard score and a 35-21 lead.
Witten, the normally stoic 14th-year tight end, flashed Bryant's celebratory "X'' when the often-exuberant receiver made the signal in his direction after the touchdown.
Detroit quarterback Matthew Stafford lost in a visit to his hometown team again, after a wild-card defeat two years ago.
While the Lions (9-6) missed a chance to clinch a playoff berth with their second straight loss following five consecutive wins, they still control their postseason fate. Detroit plays Green Bay (9-6) for the NFC North title in the finale Sunday.
Elliott, the NFL rushing leader, had a 55-yard touchdown run in the first half and finished with 80 yards on 12 carries. He has 15 touchdowns rushing, two behind league-leading LeGarrette Blount of New England.
The first-year sensation known as "Zeke," who is 177 yards shy of Eric Dickerson's 33-year-old rookie rushing record of 1,808 yards, was almost upstaged by Detroit's "double-Z" — Zach Zenner.
The little-known undrafted back in his second year out of South Dakota State, filling in with Theo Riddick sidelined for a third straight game with a wrist injury, had a career-high 64 yards and two touchdowns at halftime. But Zenner faded in the second half, finishing with 67 yards.
Stafford had a 1-yard scoring plunge , but was sacked four times. He was 26 of 46 for 260 yards, including an interception that set up Elliott's 1-yard touchdown early in the third quarter to break a 21-all halftime tie.
Prescott tied Pittsburgh's Ben Roethlisberger (2004) for the most wins by a rookie quarterback in the Super Bowl era with 13. He was 15 of 20 for 212 yards with three touchdowns, including Bryant's juggling 25-yard grab in the end zone when he fought off pass interference by Johnson Bademosi.
Bryant broke a tie for second with Hall of Famer Michael Irvin on Dallas' career TD receptions list with his 66th in the first half. The club record of 71 belongs to another Hall of Famer, Bob Hayes. ... Elliott is up to third on the rookie season rushing list, behind Dickerson and New Orleans' George Rogers (1,674 in 1981). He passed teammate Alfred Morris, who held third at 1,613 yards with Washington in 2012.
Los Angeles Dodgers ace Clayton Kershaw, who graduated from Highland Park High School in Dallas with Stafford in 2006, attended the game. Nine days earlier, Highland Park celebrated on the same field after its first state title since Stafford led the way in 2005.
Dallas defensive end Randy Gregory made his season debut after serving a 14-game suspension for violating the NFL's substance-abuse policy. The second-year player almost sacked Stafford in the fourth quarter and had two tackles.
Dallas' already-depleted defensive line sustained two more injuries in the first half, to Terrell McClain (ankle) and Ryan Davis (knee). Starting end Tyrone Crawford missed his first game of the season with shoulder and hamstring injuries. ... Dallas cornerback Anthony Brown left in the first half with a possible concussion.
Lions: Home against Green Bay.
Cowboys: At Philadelphia in a game that likely will feature plenty of backups for the Cowboys.


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Have you seen EA's Game Changer site? It's slowly ticking down to a live event that will be unveiling a new game during the Game Developers Conference next week.
Recently there's been a new addition to the ticking clock: Two speakers have been revealed to be at the event. One of these speakers is Academy Award-winning Davis Guggenheim, whose work includes Deadwood, 24, and, of course, An Inconvenient Truth that won him the award.
Scott Harrison, founder and CEO of Charity Water, will also be speaking at the event.
So what does a director/producer of television drama series and biographical films and documentaries have to do with EA's mysterious new game? And what does the man who helms a fundraising platform to help provide safe drinking water have to do with it?
The only hint we currently have from an EA representative when we reached out to them is: "I can confirm that we will have a brand new announcement from one of EA's most beloved franchises." What a hint.
So, EA fans, what is it that you've been wanting most out of EA? It might just be that. Facebook fans are speculating—or hoping—that it's SimCity 5. The whole "changing the world" message could theoretically fit the landscape of the Sims, especially since the last SimCity title emphasized an anti-pollution stance. Let the prognosticating begin!


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the end-stopped line
I've noticed a number of searches on caesuras, enjambment and end-stopped lines.
Fortunately, these are easy to recognize. When English poets first began writing blank verse (unrhymed Iambic Pentameter) one gets the feeling they had their hands full just counting syllables. Their efforts were stiff, wooden, inflexible. The example I always like to use is Gorboduc, by Thomas Norton andThomas Sackville. The play was written in 1561, 3 years before Shakespeare's birth. For all its limitations, the play was the first (as far as we know) to have been written using blank verse and stands as a template for all the great verse plays to follow, including Shakespeare's. Two features that make the verse feel wooden, by modern standards, is the strict Iambic beat on one hand (there are practically no variant feet) and the heavily end-stopped lines. End-stopped lines simply means that ones thought ends with the line. If you see that the line's end is punctuated with a period, comma, question mark, semi-colon, etc… then the line is end-stopped. The phrasal unit, the syntactic sense, ends with the line.
Interestingly, the on-line text of the play at Luminarium (linked above), doesn't include much punctuation. This could be because their text is taken from a facsimile or because the scanner (OCR) didn't pick up on or recognize whatever text they scanned. I put my money on their having transcribed from a facsimile or an earlier, public domain (and relatively unedited) edition. It also means that you can test your ability to recognize end-stopped lines. Imagine you were an editor. How would you punctuate the following verse? If you can correctly punctuate the verse then you can recognized end-stopped lines. (Most end-stopped lines are marked by punctuation but some aren't. Remember, if you can finish the line without feeling as though some sense is missing, or if you can pause (as though there were a pause in the syntactic sense or comma), then the line is end-stopped.
Are they in Arms? would he not send for me?
Is this the honour of a Father's name?
In vain we travail to assuage their minds
As if their hearts whom neither Brother's love
Nor Father's awe, nor kingdom's care can move
Our Councils could withdraw from raging heat
Jove slay them both, and end the cursed Line
For though perhaps fear of such mighty force
As I my Lords, joined with your noble Aides
May yet raise, shall repent their present heat
The secret grudge and malice will remain
The fire not quenched, but kept in close restraint
Fed still within, breaks forth with double flame
Their death and mine must pease the angry gods. (Act III l. 93)
What follows is an edited version from Drama of the English Renaissance 1:The Tudor Period, edited by Russell A. Fraser and Norman Rabkin.
Are they in Arms? would he not send for me? |
Is this the honour of a Father's name? |
In vain we travail to assuage their minds, |
As if their hearts whom neither Brother's love, |
Nor Father's awe, nor kingdom's care can move, |
Our Councils could withdraw from raging heat. |
Jove slay them both, and end the cursed Line! |
For though perhaps fear of such mighty force |
As I my Lords, joined with your noble Aides, |
May yet raise, shall repent their present heat, |
The secret grudge and malice will remain. |
The fire not quenched, but kept in close restraint, |
Fed still within, breaks forth with double flame. |
Their death and mine must pease the angry gods. |
I added red pipe marks at the end of each end-stopped line and a green one at the only enjambed line. There are 14 lines and only one of them is enjambed. Notice that every one of the end-stopped lines is also punctuated. In this tiny sample, over 90% of the verse is end-stopped. Is that representative of the play? I suspect it's not far off. The actual figure probably hovers around 90% or less. That makes for very stiff verse. That ratio is typical for beginning poets who have a hard enough time thinking through the meter, let alone the line. Some mature poets never pull it off. (I've already named names elsewhere, no reason to beat the horse.)
Enjambment is the opposite of the end-stopped line. There is a syntactic or phrasal pause which coincides with the end of the line. The simplest example:
Enjamb| ment makes | the read |er read |beyond
The end |of a|ny giv|en line |of verse.
This blank |verse line| is not |enjambed |but end-stopped.
Don't be fooled by the feminine ending in the latter line. It's still end-stopped. By the time the Elizabethans, Marlowe, Shakespeare and Jonson, came into their own, so did blank verse. The judicious and skillful use of enjambment is what makes Shakespeare's verse so elegantly flexible (and any verse for that matter). Among the loveliest examples is Florizel's speech from the Winter's Tale:
No, like a bank for love to lie and play on; |
Not like a corse; or if, not to be buried, |
But quick and in mine arms. Come, take your flowers: |
Methinks I play as I have seen them do |
In Whitsun pastorals: sure this robe of mine |
Does change my disposition. |
·········································What you do |
Still betters what is done. When you speak, sweet, |
I'ld have you do it ever; when you sing, |
I'ld have you buy and sell so, so give alms, |
Pray so; and for the ord'ring your affairs, |
To sing them too: when you do dance, I wish you |
A wave o' the sea, that you might ever do |
Nothing but that; move still, still so, |
And own no other function: each your doing, |
So singular in each particular, |
Crowns what you are doing in the present deeds, |
That all your acts are queens. |
The beauty of Shakespeare's verse is that the enjambment nicely dovetails the passions of the speakers. In Florize's case, when he is the most passionate and poetic, wishing his lover like a wave o' the sea, the sense of the poetry washes over the ends of the lines like the wave he describes.
It's a lovely effect.In the examples above, roughly 30% of the lines are enjambed. And just giving the verse of the play a cursory glance, I wouldn't be surprised to see the play's overall enjambment closer to 40%. Out of curiosity, I googled shakespeare, enjambment, and percentage to see if any scholar had actually done the work (I know they have), but I couldn't find anything. I doubt there's a single aspect of his plays that haven't been written about – right down to the recipe for the ink on the manuscript of Sir Thomas More. Who knows?
separating the boys from the men
Where the skill of a poet really shows itself is in the combination of meter and rhyme. The less capable poet will end-stop his or her rhymes. The skilled poet will enjamb their rhymes – not all of them, but enough of them to give their verse a more flexible and natural (unforced) feel. The poet who end-stops their rhymes is the poet who can't think beyond the rhyme. The habit is typical of beginning poets, and to be expected, but the mature poet should learn to think beyond the line. Here's a poem by Dana Gioia, from his book Interrogations at Noon. I marked each end-stopped line with a pipe '|' and left it at that.
Alley Cat Love Song
Come into the garden, Fred, |
For the neighborhood tabby is gone. |
Come into the garden, Fred. |
I have nothing by my flea collar on, |
And the scent of catnip has gone to my head. |
I'll wait by the screen door till dawn. |
The fireflies court in the sweetgum tree. |
The nightjar calls from the pine, |
And she seems to say in her rhapsody, |
"Oh, mustard-bown Fred, be mine!" |
The full moon lights my whiskers afire, |
And the fur goes erect on my spine. |
I hear the frogs in the muddy lake
Croaking from shore to shore. |
They've one swift season to soothe their ache. |
In autumn they sing no more. |
So ignore me now, and you'll hear my meow
As I scratch all night at the door. |
About 90% of these lines are end-stopped. We're back to 1561. The lyric is charming enough, but the end-stopped rhymes give the poem a wooden feel. Gioia should have left this kind of verse behind long ago. By comparison, here are two stanza's from the poet Robert Bagg, from a longer poem called Tandem Ride, a poet who I've reviewed elsewhere on PoemShape. Like Gioia, Bagg dispenses with meter but writes a regular, rhyming, verse.
We search the boathouse on Paradise Pond; |
the window lights of the state asylum
dominate the sweeping skyline beyond, |
radiating a contagious gloom
as if the campus were its anteroom. |
Sensing the madness in our enterprise
we abandon our foundering tandem, |
exhaustion having (at last) made us wise. |
Who'd pump a symbol seven miles but two Amherst guys? |
She pushes a glass door open a crack, |
emerges form a tropical greenhouse, |
shoes squishing, then pauses–almost goes back– |
aware her sweat-drenched translucent blouse
would amuse us, or might even arouse
us more than her breasts did normally. |
She'd never say, Come on to me, guys, now's
the right time!–but I sensed viscerally
she wasn't the same girl we had chased up that tree. |
Roughly half the lines are enjambed, giving the stanzas a nice ebb and flow. The enjambment doesn't overly emphasize the rhymes. Take a look at Shakespeare's sonnets and you will notice the same freedom between end-stopped and enjambed lines. The thing to notice, most of all, is how Shakespeare (and other skillful poets) use end-stopping and enjambment to add emphasis to certain lines and thoughts. For instance, the vast majority of his sonnets' closing couplets are end-stopped. This puts added emphasis on the rhymes which, in turn, brakes the sonnet's momentum and emphasizes the finality of the couplets argument – the end-stopped lines emphasize the feeling of the epigrammatic sting.
Sonnet 63
Against my love shall be as I am now, |
With Time's injurious hand crushed and o'erworn; |
When hours have drained his blood and filled his brow
With lines and wrinkles; when his youthful morn
Hath travelled on to age's steepy night; |
And all those beauties whereof now he's king
Are vanishing, or vanished out of sight, |
Stealing away the treasure of his spring; |
For such a time do I now fortify
Against confounding age's cruel knife, |
That he shall never cut from memory
My sweet love's beauty, though my lover's life: |
··His beauty shall in these black lines be seen, |
··And they shall live, and he in them still green. |
The best poets will, instinctively, fully exploit end-stopping and enjambment when the opportunity calls for it. Lesser poets won't.
Caesuras are essentially nothing more than breaks in rhythm, thought, or syntax that occur anywhere between the beginning and end of a line. In other words, they're the same as an end-stopped line except that the "end-stopping" occurs in the middle of the line. That said, they can be trickier to spot. They aren't associated with the end of a line and aren't always matched by punctuation.
Caesura's were a fixture of classical Greek and Latin poetry but Anglo Saxon was the language in which the Caesura came to glory. In the book Creative Poetry by B. Roland Lewis one finds this little gem tucked away in a footnote:
William Ellery Leonard's two studies, "Beowulf and the Niebelungen Couplet" and "The Scansion of Middle English Alliterative Verse," in The University of Wisconsin Studies in Language and Literature, for an entirely untraditional view about Anglo-Saxon prosody. Or see is Introduction to his own [used to have a link to his introduction but the link rotted – Dec. 16th 2017] metrical translations of Beowulf. He holds that our meter of "Sing a Song of Six-Pence" is directly descended from the Anglo-Saxon meter of Beowulf; and his modernized version of Beowulf is in that meter. Professor E.W. Scripture's new (1929) Grundzuge der Englischen Verswissensschaft has some closing chapters in Old English and Middle English alliterative verse in the light of laboratory analysis.
So, if we were to lineate Sing a Song of Six-Pence as Beowulf's author might have, it might look like this (caesuras marked):
Sing a song of sixpence, || a pocket full of rye.
Four and twenty blackbirds, || baked in a pie.
When the pie was opened, || the birds began to sing;
Wasn't that a dainty dish, || to set before the king?
The king was in his counting house, || counting out his money;
The queen was in the parlour, || eating bread and honey.
The maid was in the garden, || hanging out the clothes;
When down came a blackbird || and pecked off her nose.
If you click the link to Leonard's translation, you'll see how this translates when applied to Beowulf. You might get an idea as to how the Anglo Saxons would have "heard" the great poem (and how the caesura was an integral part of the poem's rhythm and structure). I always favor translations which try to capture, not just the sense, but the sound and structure of the original — something which is altogether too rare with the near total dominance of free verse.
The caesura's importance to English poetry faded with the language's modernization. Still, examples can be found. Wikipedia offers an example from the ballad Tom O'Bedlam. I'll give another from the same poem (which you can read in its entirety in Harold Bloom's book The Best Poems of the English Language: From Chaucer Through Frost):
When I short have shorn my sow's face
·······And swigged my horny barrel,
At an oaken inn || I impound my skin
·······In a suit of gilt apparel.
The moon's my constant mistress
·······And the lovely owl my marrow.
The flaming drake || and the night-crow make
·······Me music to my sorrow.
While I do sing || "Any food, any feeding
·······Feeding, drink or clothing?
Come dame or maid, || be not afraid:
·······Poor Tom will injure nothing.
Notice that only the final caesura coincides with any sort of punctuation. (Is the rhythm of the ballad a faint echo of the ancient Anglo Saxon poetry? Possibly.) The caesura, in the stanza above, indicate rhythmic pauses. Also, all of the caesuras would be masculine caesuras. They each occur after a stressed syllable. Here are the first two stanzas from Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven.
Once upon a midnight dreary, || while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious || volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, || suddenly there came a tapping,
As of someone gently rapping, || rapping at my chamber door.
`'Tis some visitor,' || I muttered, || `tapping at my chamber door –
Only this, and nothing more.'
Ah, distinctly I remember || it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember|| wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; – || vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow – || sorrow for the lost Lenore –
For the rare and radiant maiden || whom the angels named Lenore –
Nameless here for evermore.
Once again, some of the caesura are marked by punctuation, some aren't. Most native English speakers will instinctively pause mid-line, even without punctuation. The combination of the internal rhymes (dreary/weary, napping/tapping) and the trochaic meter encourages us to read the lines as bipartite. Normally, for example, one wouldn't pause between curious and volume in the second line, but the poem's rhyme and meter strongly encourage us to divide the line (if only to reinforce the rhythm of the others). Try it. See if you agree. Conversely, we want to read through pauses that we normally wouldn't. For instance, the heavy mid-line caesuras make us want to ignore the syntactic breaks in the first stanza's third, fifth and last line::
While I nodded, nearly napping…
`'Tis some visitor,' I muttered…
Only this, and nothing more.
We might be more hard-pressed to ignore the natural break in 'Tis some visitor,' I muttered…, but we could. In Poe's poem, unlike Tom O'Bedlam, all the Caesura are feminine caesuras because they each occur after unstressed syllables.
In the following, another passage from Shakespeare's Winter's Tale, you will find caesuras and what's called an epic caesura (generally in reference to a feminine caesuras within an iambic line – I highlighted the epic caesura in red.
It is for you we speak, || not for ourselves:
You are abused || and by some putter-on
That will be damn'd for't; || would I knew the villain,
I would land-damn him. || Be she honour-flaw'd,
I have three daughters; || the eldest is eleven
The second and the third, || nine, || and some five;
If this prove true, || they'll pay for't. || By mine honour. (Act II, sc. I :142-148)
The fifth line contains the epic caesura. The unstressed syllable –ers at the end of daughters is hypermetrical (because the line immediately continues with the unaccented 'the' instead of an expected strong accent.). In other words, it's an extra unaccented syllable. Below, the blue represents an anapestic foot and the green represents a feminine endings (the colors I use in all my scansions). Notice how Shakespeare, ever the dramatist, uses the unusually frequent caesuras and end-stopped lines to denote an agitated mind. Not all uses of caesura create the same sense of agitation. Context is everything and a good poets uses whatever tools are available.
I have | three daugh |ters; the eld| est is | eleven
The other way to scan it is to treat the epic caesura as its own feminine ending within the line.
I have | three daugh ters; |the eld| est is | eleven
My habit has been to use the second scansion (having learned to read and write Iambic Pentameter with George T. Wright's book Shakespeare's Metrical Art). Shakespeare's line, therefore, has twelve syllables, unlike the expected ten of iambic pentameter, but nevertheless falls within the graces of standard practice.
A second kind of feminine Caesura would be the lyric caesura. This is probably the most obscure of all caesuras (and the one you'll forget the quickest). Give something a name for the sake of giving it a name. This term refers to a caesura which occurs after an expected unstressed syllable. Got that? Four examples can be found in Dickinson's poem Because I could not stop for Death–. I've highlighted them in red.
Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me –
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
And Immortality.
We slowly drove – He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility –
We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess || – in the Ring –
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain –
We passed the Setting Sun –
Or rather || – He passed us –
The Dews drew quivering and chill –
For only Gossamer, my Gown –
My Tippet || – only Tulle –
We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground –
The Roof was scarcely visible –
The Cornice || – in the Ground –
Since then – 'tis Centuries – and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses' Heads
Were toward Eternity –
free verse
The use of enjambment and end-stopping can be very useful to the free verse poet and for similar reasons. T.S. Eliot, in his poem Rhapsody on a Windy Night, skillfully uses a combination of enjambment and end-stopping to control the ebb and flow of the verse and thought. Writing free verse, he could have broken his lines anywhere, but clearly manipulated the lines in such a way that they suggested a kind of rhythm.
Twelve o'clock.
Along the reaches of the street
Held in a lunar synthesis,
Whispering lunar incantations
Dissolve the floors of memory
And all its clear relations,
Its divisions and precisions,
Every street lamp that I pass
Beats like a fatalistic drum,
And through the spaces of the dark
Midnight shakes the memory
As a madman shakes a dead geranium.
Half-past one,
The street lamp sputtered,
The street lamp muttered,
The street lamp said,
"Regard that woman
Who hesitates toward you in the light of the door
Which opens on her like a grin.
You see the border of her dress
Is torn and stained with sand,
And you see the corner of her eye
Twists like a crooked pin." (….)
Notice, in the second stanza above, how the first four lines are end-stopped, emphasizing and slowing down the verse with a kind of childlike, mother goose-ish feel. Then notice how, when the street lamp speaks, the lines are enjambed and the verse has the feeling of spaciousness. The voice feels different. The effect is accomplished both through enjambment and the lack of a recognizable rhyme scheme.
It's an effect, however, that the vast majority of free verse poets are unaware of or have chosen to ignore. The result is that their poetry is nothing more than lineated prose. While their lines may be end-stopped or enjambed, the effect feels completely arbitrary.
The caesura loses all it's effect in free verse. After all, if the verse is regular enough to make the reader aware of such a syntactic feature, then the verse by definition isn't free. If the verse has structure, then it's not free. I've had this argument with practitioners of free verse and they either get that glazed look of breathtaking denial or they lose the ability to speak. Free verse can't be both free and "structured" (in the sense of a regular pattern). Can't happen.
Anyway, that's that. If the post has been helpful, let me know. If not, I'm always ready to improve.
❧ up in Vermont • March 26 2011


text:
Hi Everyone!!
It has been quite a while since I have done a post – sorry everyone! It has been a busy year indeed – planning a wedding, getting married together with work being crazy busy! But that doesn't mean that I haven't been out and about trying out new places – I have – I mean a girl has got to eat right! So in the coming weeks leading up to Christmas I will post a few blogs…. PROMISE!!
Leading up to Christmas is a time when people are wanting to get together with family and friends and of course enjoy a good meal. So I will just name a few places that I have been to lately that I would highly recommend.
Enjoy and have a great Christmas and an awesome New Year!!
Grazing Panda
Breakfast and Brunch
Denis the Menace – Cremorne
A cool coverted space that serves Breakkie with a difference. Sugar bowls are Mr and Miss Cups. This was my dish Something Fishy Is Going On Here – Garden Pea Puree, Asparagus, Avocado, Steamed Spinach, Crispy Red Kale and Hot Smoked Trout with a Poached Egg
Website: https://www.facebook.com/denisthemenacecafe
Two Birds – Collingwood
They have an amazing looking and delicious Chai Pudding. Looks like a mini garden sitting on top of the chia pudding.
They also do a Kaffir Lime Crumbed Poached Egg which is DIVINE!!
Website: http://www.twobirdscafe.com.au/
Menu: http://www.twobirdscafe.com.au/#!menu/e0wqw
Ascot Food Store – Moonee Ponds
A really great menu which leaves you second guessing what you want to order – from a big breakkie to a crab burger they have it all. They also do these really amazing desserts such as Raspberry and White Chocolate Filled Cronut. Their coffee is delicious and their Tea Selection is fantastic!
Website: www.facebook.com/ascotfoodstore.com.au
Menu: https://www.zomato.com/melbourne/ascot-food-store-moonee-ponds/menu
The Reverend Cafe – Ascot Vale
These were their special – Rocky Road Waffles – Fresh Berries, Toasted Marshmallows, Raspberry Curd, Lemon Curd, Vanilla Mascarpone, Fruit Jelly & Chocolate Almond Crumble. YUMMMM!
Website: http://thereverendcafe.com.au/
Rustica Canteen – Melbourne CBD
Rustica Canteen is newly opened in the Melbourne CBD and has this delicious Nutella and Banana finished with Hazelnuts on toast. They also serve other delicious meals for breakfast and lunch such as this Quinoa Salad. Another highlight of Rustica Canteen is the delectable selection of cakes, dounts and crossiants like the Ispahan Rose Crossiant. A must try!
Website: http://www.rusticacanteen.com/
Menu on website
Long Story Short Cafe – Richmond
A cute cafe with a great range of dishes for breakfast and lunch.
Website: http://www.longstoryshortcafe.com.au/
Menu: http://www.longstoryshortcafe.com.au/wp-content/uploads/bsk-pdf-manager/long_story_short_menu_5.pdf
Bawa – Hawthorn
A newly opened cafe this year – named after Geoffrey Bawa who was Sri Lanka's most prominent architect and a driver of the 20th century style known as "tropical modernism", known for bringing the outdoors in, mixing elements from different times and places, and making use of lots of greenery – which is exactly the philosophy that Bawa follows. The menu is versatile and covers a range of dishes – trust me there will be something for everyone. Below is a picture of the delicious Ricotta Hot Cakes with Lavender Custard.
Website: http://bawacafe.com/
Menu: http://bawacafe.com/cms/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Bawa_Menu1.pdf
Mastic – Kew
Mastic has a very healthy but delicious take on breakfast. The larger tables are table tennis tables so if the cafe is really quiet you can even enjoy a game of table tennis! Love the decor and the service is great.
We had the French toast, blueberries, strawberries, crème fraiche, buckinis and the Roasted mushrooms, poached eggs, avocado mousse, carob croutons, feta
Website: www.mastic.com.au
Menu: http://hellenicrepublic.com.au/menu/mastic-takeaway
The Premises – Flemington
The Premises is one of my fave places for breakfast. Always impressed by their dishes – be it a bread pudding special to these delicious dishes we had which came on the best tasting Turkish bread I have ever tasted. Delicious!
Website: https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Premises/170466319637539
Trei Cafe – Glen Waverly
I love the fitout of this cafe – lovely pastel shades line the back walls and the chairs – super cute. They also do a really great Matcha Latte and the food not only looks but tastes great. I still have to go back and try the coconut pancakes – there are a limited amount each day so if you want to try these awesome looking dish – get in early!
Check out the colourful pics on their Instagram Page : https://www.instagram.com/treicafe/?hl=en
Website: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Trei-Cafe/454227061427297
Naughty Boy Cafe – Carlton
A cute little cafe located on Lygon Street. I had the Red Velvet Pancakes – Fresh Berries, Vanilla Mascarpone, Chocolate Soil, Freeze Dried Mandarin, Citrus Powder, Burnt Meringue.
Website: http://www.naughtyboycafe.com.au/
Menu: http://www.naughtyboycafe.com.au/food/
Let Me Be Frank – South Melbourne
This cafe is hidden in the streets of South Melbourne and was such a gem of a find. As you step inside you feel as if you have stepped into your grandmorther's living area. There are bookshelves filled with books for the lil ones as well as toys. There is a huge communal table as well as individual tables. The menu is extensive and have such gems as the picture below – French Toast with Berries, Plums and Maple Syrup.
Square and Compass – East Melbourne
There is a wealth of experience behind the creation of Square and Compass – located on Clarendon Street in East Melbourne. The menu has changed since I have been – they now have a variation of the waffle dish that I had below. Great selection of dishes!
Website: http://squareandcompass.com.au/
Menu: http://squareandcompass.com.au/_pdfs/menu.pdf
Baba Sus – Glen Iris
Baba Sus serves all day breakfast which includes the delicious Hong Kong Egg Waffles – Vanilla Custard, Berry Compote, Green Tea Ice Cream, Pistachio Praline. However they do sell out of these babies so get in early to try it out – well worth the early wake up call. They also do great combination milk shakes – COOKIES AND CREAM FTW!
Website: http://babasus.com.au/
Menu: http://babasus.com.au/images/BS_Menu_12.08.15%20-%20WINTER.pdf
5 Lire – North Melbourne
Serving an all day breakfast consisting of Savoury Bites and Sweet Dishes as well as daily specials. I had the special which was a Breakkie Board which came with Toast, Poached Egg, Avacado, Orange Juice and Muesli with Fresh Fruit – sooo damn good!
Website: http://www.5lire.com.au/
Menu: http://www.5lire.com.au/menu/
The Black Trestle – Balwyn
A newly opened cafe in Balwyn that serves up great tasting coffee and delicious breakfast dishes to match. There are donuts from The Dessert Parlour that are also available. Food that looks and tastes great. Check out their Instagram page – https://www.instagram.com/theblacktrestlecoffee/
Website: https://www.facebook.com/The-Black-Trestle
Lennox Coffee + Kitchen – Richmond
A cool cafe located in the streets of Richmond. There is an outdoor sitting area as well. I had "The Mushroom Dish" – Brioche, Mushroom, Parmesan Cheese, Egg. It certainly was a dish with a different with the egg located in the centre of the Brioche Bread!
Website: http://www.lennoxcoffeeandkitchen.com/
Menu: http://www.lennoxcoffeeandkitchen.com/menu/
Giddyup Mule – Yarraville
Giddyup Mule is attached to the state-of-the-art workout space, Art of Cycling. It is a great warehouse filled space – complete with a fireplace in the main room for those wintry days! Great selection of food on the menu with a healthy spin on classics. An all round place to just chill out at.
Website: http://www.giddyupmule.com.au/
Percy's Aeroplane – Kew
They are trialing a new dish – Cacao Pikelets served with Matcha Panna Cotta. A cute space filled with a yellow aeroplane out the front and finished with a combinatino of delicious tasting food and coffee. Not to mention great service. Check out my review at https://thegrazingpanda.wordpress.com/2014/06/26/percys-aeroplane-yellow-model-plane-tasty-food-all-in-one/
Website: www.percysaeroplane.com.au
Le Miel et la Lune – Carlton
I love the cute little bear logo that greets you at the entrance and braces all the coffee cups – it is super cute. The food menu has hidden suprises with bursts of excitement in the form of squid sausage for example. Coffee is from Proud Marys.
Website: http://www.lemiel.com.au/
Lunch / Dinner
Benjamin's Kitchen – Alphington
I absolutely love the illuminated paper clouds that sit in the centre of the restaurant, and pays homage to Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, the walls are painted in white and grey tones. The menu is a fusion of Thai, Japanese and Chinese and simply wonderful. The menu is designed to share so grab a bunch of friends and try as much as you can from the menu.
Website: http://benjaminskitchen.com.au/
Menu: http://benjaminskitchen.com.au/menus/
Zero95 Pizza – Doncaster
If you are after some delicious and fresh tasting wood fire pizza, pasta coupled with entertainment for all then this is the place for you. The boys who run this restaurant hail from Italy and if you are lucky enough to score a dinner booking – there will be a time when the lights turn off and out comes the twirling pizza dough show which is mighty impressive. If this isn't enough to WOW about then you should try their Nutella calzone. It is to die for!
Website: http://www.zero95.com.au/
Menu: http://www.zero95.com.au/menus/
Belles Hot Chicken – Fitzroy
Calling all chicken lovers! This is the place for you.You can the meat you want, then pick the Heat – Southern, Medium, Hot, Really Hot and Really F**kin Hot. I love my spice and can usually handle my spiciness but I got the HOT and this was pretty damn hot really – I cannot imagine what the Really F**kin Hot would taste like! All Meats come with a selectino of 1 side – be it Old Bay Fries, Broccoli & Almond Salad, Coleslaw, Mixed Pickles or 3 Bean Salad, Red Peppers and Dill. And you have a selection of sauces to choose from – Mississippi Comeback, Belles Ranch Dressing, Belles Blue Cheese, House Made Ketchup, House Made Hot Sauce.
Website: http://belleshotchicken.com/
Menu located on website
L'Altro Mondo – Albert Park
I am actually not sure how I stumbled on this restaurant – but I am sure glad I did. The cuisine is Italian and the main meals were wholesome and really tasty. Then you come to dessert and they were certainly different. The Tiramasu is what appears inside of the sphere and the Poached Pear dessert had a mix of flavours that worked really well together. A degustation menu is also available.
Website: http://laltromondo.com.au/
Menu: http://laltromondo.com.au/menu/
Johnny Pump – Essendon
Dessert Shakes are all the rage in 2015 and Johnny Pump are the king (IMO). There are 6 different flavours to choose from with a daily special. They taste pretty damn good too but once again this could depend on the flavour that you pick. They also do a great breakfast, lunch and dinner menu. Servings are very generous and there is a large variety of food to choose from.
Website: http://www.johnnypump.com.au/
Son in Law – Collingwood
Son in law takes it's name from a famous Thai street food favourite, a dish with a humorous back-story. Newly opened mid 2015 – it comes to us from Tony and Oh Rungpradit who used to own Ayatana on Chapel Street (and who was my very first blog invite 2 years ago when I started my blog – https://thegrazingpanda.wordpress.com/2013/03/28/ayatana-authentic-thai-with-a-modern-twist/ -THANK YOU!)
The venue is bright, colourful and inviting. The service is warm and friendly. The food is really tasty and has all the right notes of spice. The stand out dessert is definitely the Marshmallow and Nutella Puffs (pictured below) and are a genius of an idea.
Website: www.soninlaw.com.au
Menu located on website
Emilia – Melbourne CBD
Emilia has taken over the old Gills Diner premises and brought a sweet charm to it thanks to great service, delicious food and exquisite artwork. Emilia showcases Italian dishes at its best with the dishes reflecting the diverse Italian flavours all whilst keeping the traditional techniques in check. You wont be disappointed.
Website: http://www.emiliamelbourne.com.au/
Menu: http://www.emiliamelbourne.com.au/
Botherambo – Richmond
Botherambo is a newly opened Vietnamese and Thai restaurant open in Richmond. The food menu consists of dishes to share as well your larger dishes and one signature dish. Their Saigon Slushie mocktail is right up there with the best mocktails I have had – a combination of pineapple, coconut and mint – just divine! The food was tasty – some hits, some misses – but overall delicious. The dessert of Mango Sticky Rice with Coconut Ice Cream was the best way to finish off the meal. I really wanted to try the Banana Spring Rolls – however they had sold out by the time it was dessert time for us. Need to go back to try them out.
Website: http://www.botherambo.com.au/
Menu on website
Belleville – Melbourne CBD
Belleville is a fusion of bar, cafe, restaurant and live entertainment venue, housed in a historic multi-storey building off Chinatown that captures the pure essence of Melbourne. The point of attraction is definitely the enormous Brazilian rotisserie (located in prime position in the kitchen), rotating up to 90 chickens at any one time. The chicken comes in quarter, half or whole serves, smothered in sauces from the mild house chicken gravy, to the "hot as F#@k – and the best part is that it comes to your table and the waiter cuts it up for you (refer to pic below). The chicken is cooked to perfection and the other food on the menu is just as good! Check it out for a quirky, uniquely Melbourne night out!
Website: http://belleville-melbourne.com/
Menu: http://belleville-melbourne.com/#Menu
The Noble Experiment – Collingwood
The Noble Experiment is all about reliving the 1920s – Prohibition Era – and bringing a sense of theatre to every drink and dish they create. I don't drink but the most interesting drink would have to be their Bathtub Gin which comes served in a miniature bathtub complete with a floating rubby ducky! How awesome is that. There is a wealth of different spaces to choose from when you come and visit – think pop up basement bars, cocktails on tap or a vintage Absinthe fountain surrounded by the comfiest chesterfield lounges. This three-tiered bar has been designed to explore. Great place for drinks and delicious tasting food – not sure why we waited so long to check it out!
Website: http://www.thenobleexperiment.com.au
Menu: http://www.thenobleexperiment.com.au/menu/
Longhorn Saloon – Carlton
Longhorn Saloon is a type of place that transports you into another time and place – where you could lose track of all your time and stay all night long. Named in honour of a shady bar where the underage Balleaus tasted their first beers – it has a great fit out to match thanks to naked bricks and wrought iron. I love the old chesterfield couches by a mini fireplace that you can just sit back and enjoy some drinks. The food servings are generous and taste amazing. They are known for their burgers – but I must admit their other dishes are just as good.
Website: http://www.longhornsaloon.com.au/
Menu: http://www.longhornsaloon.com.au/menus.html
NOTE: If you are looking for a restaurant simliar to this – check out Le Bon Ton – Collingwood – www.lebontonmelb.com
I really loved my time at this place too – a New Orleans-inspired oyster saloon, smokehouse, cocktail bar and absinthe den. The food takes inspiration from American South – their smokehouse brisket is done Texas-style, their blackened fish and crab cakes come from the Louisiana Gulf Coast – with inspiration coming from as far west as New Mexico and as far east as Alabama.
The Press Club – Melbourne CBD
The Press Club really needs no introduction – one of many of George Colombaris' restaurants which has recently undergone a refurbishment. It is spectacular – filled with mirrors to make it look bigger than it actually is (especially when you look in from the outside). Certain tables have a vantage point looking into the kitchen so you can watch as the chefs create your unique dishes. The Press Club is all about the attention to detail and great customer service – from the friendliness to the in-sync placed dishes on your table – there is nothing to fault. This dish pictured was given to us at the end of our meal – petit fours – their very own housemade chocolate and caramel cubes displayed on a mini clothesline. Adorable! The food is full of theatrics with a flavour to match. A must try!
Website: http://www.thepressclub.com.au/
Menus can be found on the website
Lounge – Melbourne CBD
Lounge has been around for years – located on Swanston Street – being quite a popular night spot and bar for uni students. Most recently they have revamped their kitchen menu – to target a wider clientele. You can now find sliders, patatas bravas and even a salted caramel panna cotta!
Website: www.loungekitchen.com.au
Menu can be found on website
Port of Call – Melbourne CBD
Port of Call Salon Bar & Grill is a bar inspired by the eats, treats and beats of the Caribbean. My hubby is from the Carribean and has been telling me all about the foods that you can get there – such as Doubles and Bake and Shark – so I was really excited to try them out right here in Melbourne (until I actually get to visit the Carribean). I love that in Melbourne you can try out various types of cuisines from all around the world. Amazing. This place is a definite must try. And eventhough the dish sizes look small – they are deceivingly filling!
Website: http://www.theportofcall.com.au/
Menu can be found on website
Sabas Ethiopian – Fitzroy
Speaking of being able to try out almost every cuisine right here in Melbourne – Ethiopian is yet another cuisine you can try out. This was always on my list to try and I was really excited to check out Sabas. Saba herself (who runs the restaurant) is lovely – she helped me out when I asked if the meat was halal (which it is btw). Hailing from the far northern region of Tigray, the beautiful meat, vegetarian and vegan dishes are served on the famous Injera bread. You get to experience the way that the Ethiopians eat as well – on a shared place with the curries you choose all placed in the middle of the injera – with extra injera surrounding it. Such a special thing to try out different customs and ways that different cultures embrace food-time.
The menu is completely gluten-free and vegans and vegetarians are well catered for. Ethiopia is a country with serious coffee-growing credibility, and Saba's performs the coffee ceremony, which starts with roasting green beans, moves through grinding and brewing (in a jebena, which is like a clay moka pot) to serving in little cups.
Additionally you can purchase teff (gluten-free flour used to make injera flatbread) – which has been awarded a superfood status – and how Saba first started her business venture. A must visit.
Website: http://sabashealthfoods.com.au/pages/sabas-ethiopian-restaurant
Mr Hive Kitchen + Bar – Crown Entertainment Complex
The many times that I have visited Mr Hive Kitchen and Bar – I have never been disappointed. Located at the Crown Metropol end of the Crown Entertainment complex – Mr Hive is a great place for a relaxed dinner date or catchup with friends.There is lively bar area at the front serving cocktails, snacks and shared platters. Move inside further where you will find tables spaciously laid out to devour your perfect meals. Service is great.
Website: https://www.crownmelbourne.com.au/restaurants/premium/mr-hive
Menu can be found on wesbite
Tip00 – Melbourne CBD
If you are in a pasta mood – then this is the place to be. Handmade in-house, fresh and super delicious! Tip00 is a name to reference the flour used in what they specialize in 'pasta'. They also do a really great Panna Cotta! A point to note is that there are limited amount of seats available – so booking a table is highly recommended. Tip00 is really popular with the city folk and usually gets packed out at all times of the day! Yep it really is that good!
Website: http://www.tipo00.com.au/
Menu: http://www.tipo00.com.au/food/
Sugar Prawn – Collingwood
Sugar Prawn replicates the feel of a hawker market in Malaysia – complete with the plastic chairs and colourful decor. There is also fresh juice is available from Jasmine Jus Bar and their own in house radio station located across from this. Malaysian breakfasts are also served – think kaya (coconut jam) toast and coconut sago pudding with sliced fruit. You can also find Everyday Coffee which delivers quality filter coffee. At dinner time you can devour the most delicious chilli crab served with fried buns here along with other great tasting Malaysian inspired dishes!
Website: http://www.sugarprawn.com/
Menu: http://www.sugarprawn.com/menu/
Dutchess – Melbourne CBD
Located on the third level of The Duke of Wellington with a New York vibe is a standing-room bar and 110-seat restaurant. There are two dinner settings with the later group (around 8:30pm) encouraged to stay around till lights out (around 1am). Resident DJs will play a mix of soul, funk, punk and anything you can't find in the top 100, plus the DJ sets will be available on Dutchess' own Spotify channel each week. The look and feel is luxurious which further encourages customers to want to stay. The food focus is on dry-aged steak with meals designed to be shared. There is also a raw bar focusing on seafood located next to the bar, for those looking for lighter snacks with a beverage, as opposed to a full meal. They also serve a King Crab Mac and Cheese which is the bomb!!
Website: http://www.dutchess.com.au/
Menu can be found on the website
Mr Huang Jin – Melbourne CBD
Mr Huang Jin used to be located within the Rialto building but has now moved and taken up shop in The Archway. The menu includes an array of traditional Taiwanese foods – think noodle soups, rice dishes and stir fries together with the signature handmade (on site) xiao long bao (soup dumplings). The dumplings here are really quite delicious and rival those made at the famous Hutong. I love the interior – complete with pale timbers which is reminiscent of bamboo steamers – and rather interesting chairs (when you visit you will see what I mean). The space is quite small (seats about 40) so perhaps you would want to book just in case. You don't want to miss out these dumplings.
The Millhouse – Melbourne CBD
The Millhouse is located in the heart of the city and resides in the basement of Tomasetti House (which was built in 1851 to house a steam flour mill). The original bluestone walls remain with additional features such as brass finishes and recycled beechwood accents to created a relaxed bar and eatery. There is a subtle South American influence over the menu thanks to Peruvian chef Augustin Ortega. The menu is designed to share – and the portions are generous indeed! I love the picture themed words that you will find on the menu as well as the coasters (not to mention their website) – enjoy deciphering these! Great chilled out space with fantastic bar tenders who can whip up great mocktails / cocktails!
Website: http://themillhouse.com.au/
Menu: http://themillhouse.com.au/pdf/TheMillHouse_Menu.pdf
MJR Tom – Collingwood
MJR Tom is the newest venue to grace Smith Street in Collingwood – there are two main areas to it – a cosy front cafe dominated by tables and benches and a big standing-room bar out back, with a bluestone pool table den downstairs. I love the fitout – complete with plywood – it creates light and an inside-outside vibe. During the day you will find a breakfast menu which includes blue swimmer crab omelette with papaya and Vietnamese mint, patatas bravas and pa amb tomàquet. The lunch and dinner menu has a somewhat Asian / Latin feel to it. Also a great place to have drinks and hang with friends. The night we went – there were a lot of parties happening.
Website: http://www.mjrtomcollingwood.com.au/
Dinner by Heston – Crown Entertainment Complex
Dont think this place even really needs a spiel about it – Heston Blumenthal – that is all!
Your best bet at getting a table here is booking online and looking out for available tables. Bookings also open two months out from a date.
Website: http://dinnerbyheston.com.au/
Dex2Rose – Melbourne CBD
Love Hot Chocolates? Dex2Rose does one with a difference – it comes with our very own mini fire to toast marshmallows one.And the best bit – aside from the taste – is that there an unlimited amount of fire and marshmallows!
Hash Specialty Coffee – Melbourne CBD
Want another type of Hot Chocolate with a difference – check out Hash Specialty. This comes served with pure melted chocolate served with Fairy Floss to lend some extra sweetness.
Bibelot – South Melbourne
Love cakes, macaroons or chocolate? Then this is the place for you. Has great tasting coffee to match as well. They also do cakes for any special occasions that you need to pre-order. I ordered one for my sisters 21st – and it was soo good! Highly Recommended.
Kwak Scrolls
I got this from Code Black Coffee Roasters (Southgate, Docklands)
Cookies and Cream FTW!! SOOO DELISH! Check out @kwakscrolls for current locations.
Code Black Coffee Roasters – Southbank, Docklands, Brunswick
MY ALL TIME FAVOURITE COFFEE PLACE! Really great tasting coffee and great service. Not to mention the special sweet and savoury treats that you can get to go with our coffee such as Kwak Scrolls (see above) and these addictive Butter Bing Cookies! Enough said!
Website: http://codeblackcoffee.com.au/
Butter Bing Stockists: https://butterbing.neto.com.au/stockists-list