1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people.

earth station n. ground equipment that is necessary to communicate through a satellite, which can be ‘receive only’ or ‘transmit and receive’ and which varies in size and cost, depending on application.

1980 We are confident that the technology involved in delivering these satellite services via small, individual house or homestead earth stations is dependable. - Sydney Morning Herald 19 Sep 3

1988 The first live TV programs into and out of Australia were made in November 1966 through Itelsat II from OTC’s satellite communications earth station at Carnarvon, Western Australia, and a British station in Cornwall. - Sunday Mail (Brisbane) 17 Jan 21

From the Macquarie Dictionary of New Words 1990 edition.
“Bottom-of-the-harbour-scheme and Clayton’s (the x you have when you haven’t got an x) are among our best linguistic products of the 80s”.

Now if you want to do something like this too, go nuts. And tell me all about it.

This is a winner. it is just superb. i learnt how to make it a year ago, when i moved into the house with the colour walls, and we were searching high and low for vegan gluten free cake recipes.
Because i still need the recipe for exact amounts, and the cookbook has long departed with its owner, i reckon everyone will benefit from knowing the recipe, so here it is, from the excellent Holly Davis’ cookbook Nourish (of Iku fame). (plus eager anecdotal comments in brackets from me).
I would also treat you with a spectacularly bright image, except, as you know, I’ve been having a little trouble with bogs and codes, and that has now extended to displaying images. (It’s alright, this is not a cry for help, I’m just explaining why i couldn’t be bothered posting a picture). On with the recipet!

You will need:
- 1 ½ unpeeled whole navel oranges, boiled in water until very soft
- 200g (6 ½ oz) silken tofu, drained (if you’re using coconut –see below – in the recipe, you might want to add a bit more, I’ve used 260 – 300g tofu with no problems.)
- 1 teaspoon of orange flower water (although I’ve had no complaints using whisky)
- 250g (8 oz) palm sugar, grated (so there’s two kinds of palm sugar around where I shop, the dark brown 500g thai log in a white greaseproof wrapper, and the lighter coloured large disk shape. I like to use both, the lighter one is best in the cake mix, and the dark broun log really comes into its own in the syrup, adding Character and Depth to the whole show.)
- ½ cup (125ml/ 4 fl oz) olive oil
- 400g (12oz) ground almond meal (ok, this is expensive, so I like to use 200g dessicated coconut. Mind you, 200g of coconut is much bigger in volume than almond meal, so make sure you weigh it out on the scales. And don’t be alarmed at the amount. Just make sure you’re using a big bowl)
- zest of 1 lemon
- zest of 2 oranges
- 1 tsp baking powder

ORANGE SYRUP
- 1 tsp orange flower water
- 2 cups (500ml/ 16 fl oz) orange juice
- 250g (8 oz) palm sugar

(Holly has a lovely way of writing recipets, so I’ll reproduce it faithfully.)

(the first thing to do is put the oranges on the boil, and after you’ve measured out the dry ingredients and zested the fruit, the oranges will be ready.)

Blend the oranges, silken tofu orange flower water, palm sugar and oil until smooth, set aside.
Combine the almond meal (dessicated coconut) lemon and orange zest and baking powder. (If you zest the fruit straight into the dry ingredients, then you get all the oil from the skin as well, instead of wasting it on the chopping board.)
Gently fold the blended ingredients into the dry ingredients; the mixture will be fairly wet.
Pour the batter into an oiled 22cm (9in) cake tin.
Bake uncovered at 180ºC (350ºF) for approximately 1 hour.
Check after 45 minutes and cover with foil if it is getting too dark on top.
Cool completely before removing from the tin
Serve with orange syrup

To make orange syrup, place all ingredients in a pan
Stir, without boiling, until sugar dissolves
Boil for approximately 15 minutes until syrup has thickened
Pour over the cake as you serve.

suddenly, i’m terribly unsatisfied with the editing capabilities of blogsome. especially fiddling around with templates. i mean, i loved the blue and grey ferns, there was something so suitably fey about it, and gaylourdes felt at home. but i’m sick of the silly crunching columns that have trouble with images, and a blogroll that i just can’t shape. and no matter which other theme i change to, i just can’t seem to edit the template how i want. some more knowledge of code would help i’m sure.
i’m almost about to go back to blogger.
if anyone has any suggestions about better blog-type servers…flood me!
In the meantime, i resign myself to looking like a BHP annual report.
Edit: Woo! Webmatrix compares…

From Cabinet magazine, via 3 quarks daily:

In their external characteristics and mode of life, whales are basically fish (if by that you mean, as people did, “a creature living exclusively in the water”), but in their internal anatomy they are pretty much indistinguishable from a big carnivore. And it was in moving the cetaceans out of the category of fish and into the emergent category of “mammals” that comparative anatomy had its triumph in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Did whales and fish all have fins? Sure. But when you got out your scalpel, you discovered that the whale’s “fin” secreted the bones of a human hand!

(A comparative anatomy of the hand from The Natural History of the Ordinary Cetacea, or Whales (1837), by Robert Hamilton. Diagrams C and D show the bony structures in the flippers of a dugong and a bowhead whale, respectively. Diagram E shows a human arm for comparison.)

This wobbled the old certainties of natural order and implied new and troubling kinships. We don’t any longer hear the word “breast” (mamelle in French) in “mammal,” but people very much did hear that in the beginning of the nineteenth century, and it raised eyebrows. Much resistance to the non-fish whale hailed from anxiety about this newfangled taxonomy: lots of folks agreed that there was something louche about organizing God’s creation according to these intimate, bedroom details. Sexual organs? What was wrong with nice, clean external characteristics?

ps: charles linneaus created the category of mammals specifically to draw attention to the fact that humans, like a number of animals - cows, pigs, dogs, goats, sheep, cats, bats, whales etc suckle their young. and he was concerned that not enough women were doing their own breastfeeding. i think he was alarmed at changes to the relationship between humans and technology with industrialisation. and relationships between humans.

oh i’m so envious of all the performance opportunities i could have if i’d just stay plugged in and connected to people and chasing ideas and making the case for why you should bloody ring me up and engage me in ideas for performance etc but at the same time i’m so tired and weary of all that kind of performance, i’m over it. i hardly want to do any more. i’m in a right spot of bother.

there. i’ve shared it. now as to explaining…
heh. don’t hold your breath.