from the maybe-irma-will-unearth-some-in-florida dept.
Long ago, in the ancient city of Cyrene, there was a herb called silphium. It didn't look like much – with stout roots, stumpy leaves and bunches of small yellow flowers – but it oozed with an odiferous sap that was so delicious and useful, the plant was eventually worth its weight in gold.
To list its uses would be an endless task. Its crunchable stalks were roasted, sauteed or boiled and eaten as a vegetable. Its roots were eaten fresh, dipped in vinegar. It was an excellent preservative for lentils and when it was fed to sheep, their flesh became delectably tender.
Perfume was coaxed from its delicate blooms, while its sap was dried and grated liberally over dishes from brains to braised flamingo. Known as "laser", the condiment was as fundamental to Roman haute cuisine as eating your food horizontally in a toga.
Then there were the medical applications. Silphium was a veritable wonder herb, a panacea for all manner of ailments, including growths of the anus (the Roman author Pliny the Elder recommends repeated fumigations with the root) and the bites of feral dogs (simply rub into the affected area, though Pliny warns his readers never, ever to try this with a tooth cavity, after a man who did so threw himself off a house).
Finally, silphium was required in the bedroom, where its juice was drunk as an aphrodisiac or applied "to purge the uterus". It may have been the first genuinely effective birth control; its heart-shaped seeds are thought to be the reason we associate the symbol with romance to this day.
The herb resisted cultivation, and was thought to have been harvested to extinction. Could it have survived somewhere?
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 10 2017, @12:19PM (7 children)
Awful, florid prose.
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 10 2017, @12:25PM
What would you know, you proseur?
(Score: 5, Funny) by lx on Sunday September 10 2017, @12:49PM (1 child)
Are you saying that it lacks cultivation?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 11 2017, @06:04PM
this is truly +1
(Score: 2, Touché) by maxwell demon on Sunday September 10 2017, @01:01PM
After ingesting a bit of silphium, the author would surely have written better.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday September 10 2017, @08:23PM (2 children)
Hey, it ain't nearly as bad as "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away..."
(Score: 3, Funny) by Pslytely Psycho on Monday September 11 2017, @03:19AM (1 child)
"Where no man has gone before...."
Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 11 2017, @07:27AM
… to boldly quote what every man has quoted before.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 10 2017, @12:48PM (1 child)
They were always losing something. Legions, virginity, lives, and now herbs. Maybe they smoked more herbs than was good for them?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 10 2017, @01:16PM
They were always telling stories too, my guess is that this panacea fell far short of the extravagant claims.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Sunday September 10 2017, @01:03PM
Am I supposed to test all four links to find out which one contains the actual story?
A proper attribution line with the link would have helped with that.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 5, Funny) by choose another one on Sunday September 10 2017, @03:30PM (20 children)
From TFA:
> If you’d like to see for yourself, why not try this Roman recipe for braised flamingo and parrot
Been round every single local supermarket and butchers and none of them stock flamingo or parrot, no luck online either.
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Sunday September 10 2017, @03:33PM (2 children)
It's just two aisles right of the garum [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Funny) by Megahard on Sunday September 10 2017, @04:03PM (1 child)
Hm, I got a lot of hits online for "dead parrot".
(Score: 3, Funny) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday September 10 2017, @08:47PM
Ah, that's no good for the recipe. It's not dead, it's just...pining.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 10 2017, @03:44PM (7 children)
"Been round every single local supermarket and butchers and none of them stock flamingo or parrot, no luck online either."
That is because you are not a "progressive liberal", you should see the kind of alternative food craft stores they have in their stupidly expensive areas.
Alas, sometimes, when high up in their ivory towers, they forget that the normals don't quite have the same kind of exotic goods on offer as the peasants, nor the money to pay for them (because someone has to pay the tax bill for all the liberal policies)
--
Sarcasm? insightful? Trollish? You decide! :-)
(Score: 4, Funny) by TheRaven on Sunday September 10 2017, @03:52PM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 10 2017, @05:48PM (5 children)
I dunno, stop shopping at Walmart. I've lived in flyover country my whole life. Currently living in a small city. I can get whatever I want right here in town.
You conservatives have turned feeling sorry for yourself into an art form.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by fritsd on Sunday September 10 2017, @06:15PM (4 children)
Actually, I'd expect uncommon locally-sourced delicacies to show up more in "flyover country" and equivalents than in the big city.
Every year at the summer yearmarket in the village, a hunter sells his wares, and in the large supermarket in town, there is sometimes a stall selling bear sausages.
I'd expect licensed American hunters selling their slabs of deer and elk (and raccoons? armadillos? alligators? rattle snakes?) in a refrigerated stall rented at the local Walmart. Or is that not "a thing" over there?
(Score: 4, Informative) by Arik on Sunday September 10 2017, @07:11PM
It's a shame too. Having fresh venison available at the butcher for a few pennies more than the beef was something I really appreciated.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 10 2017, @07:19PM (2 children)
Arby's is Selling Venison Sandwiches in Six Deer-Hunting States [soylentnews.org]
Arby's is a fast food restaurant.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Informative) by PocketSizeSUn on Monday September 11 2017, @03:33AM (1 child)
Farm raised deer is a thing.
Non-farm raised deer meat is not legal for sale, AFAIK.
(Score: 3, Informative) by LoRdTAW on Monday September 11 2017, @12:37PM
And imported from New Zealand.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 10 2017, @07:37PM (8 children)
Yeah. When I saw that in TFS, it made me wonder if there is an open season on flamingos these days.
.
Another thing that bugs me is when the term "heart-shaped" is used.
It's as if no one ever saw a human heart or even a picture of one.
A cardioid (symmetrical) and a human heart (asymmetrical) [google.com] don't have much in common.
Now, an amphibian's heart, [google.com] with 1 fewer chamber, sorta looks like a cardioid.
So, valentines are for expressing your affection for newts?
The part of a human that resembles a cardioid is a female's genitals.
...but, apparently, it's impolite to mention that.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 11 2017, @02:08AM (4 children)
Maybe when Nirvana sang about a heart-shaped box, they were really singing about a moist vagina.
(Score: 2) by Pslytely Psycho on Monday September 11 2017, @03:22AM
Thank you, my entire life now makes sense!
Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 11 2017, @04:24PM (2 children)
This is modded funny? I thought that was exactly what it literally is about...
'Box' is already slang on its own, plus references to Pisces (==fish==vag), then you've got "Meat-eating orchids", "Broken hymen of your Highness", "Throw down your umbilical noose so I can climb right back", and it's on the album "In Utero"...
It's all pretty clearly vulvic as fuck on purpose...
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 11 2017, @04:51PM
Oh, wow, I missed "eat your cancer", Cancer being another zodiac sign that's also 69'ing fish == vag.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 11 2017, @07:13PM
Back when a musician was a "cat", and a "bone" was a trombone, a piano was a "box".
Someone wrote a song called "Baby Let Me Bang Your Box" and we were off to the races with folks who didn't know the hipster language of that day making up their own meaning.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 11 2017, @07:32AM
While often it would probably be more honest if a man said "please let me into your genitals", I think his chances are still much better if he says "please let me into your heart." :-)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 11 2017, @08:47PM (1 child)
It's almost as if you don't realize that "cardioid" comes from the Greek word for "heart"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 12 2017, @04:23AM
First, "Re: ___" in a Subject line indicates that you are responding to an item where "___" or "Re: ___" was the Subject line of the parent comment.
"WRT" would have been more appropriate.
.
Yeah, as a guy with a bum ticker ("a cardiac patient"), I'm fully aware of the origin.
Using the standard method prescribed to draw a "cardioid" [ixquick.com], however, doesn't give you the classic "heart" (valentine) shape. [wolfram.com]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]