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The biblical statement ‘all flesh is grass’ (Isaiah 40:6) and (I Peter 1:24) is almost literally true. Grass is the staple diet of nearly all human beings. Wheat, rice, barley, millet and corn are all grasses, and cattle, sheep and goats (our main sources of meat) survive entirely on grass.

Federico García Lorca in 1914

Landslides carrying millions of tons of rubble can reach speeds of 100 mph, but leave the grass on the hill beneath them completely untouched. This is because air, trapped and compressed, acts as a cushion allowing the moving debris to travel a few inches above the ground.

An agelast is someone who never laughs. The word derives from Crassus Agelastus (the grandfather of the legendarily rich Crassus) who was said to have laughed only once in his life – on seeing an ass eating thistles.

From 1931 to 1941, all graduating candidates of the Japanese Naval Academy were asked the question ‘How would you carry out a surprise attack on Pearl Harbour?’

The career of Federico Garcia Lorca, the greatest Spanish writer of the 20th century, lasted just 19 years. He was killed during mass executions in Andalusia in the Spanish Civil War and is buried in an unmarked grave.

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Dutch Bible Belt

The United States and the Netherlands share a regional social-religious phenomenon called the Bible Belt, also known in the Netherlands as the Bijbelgordel. In both countries the Bible Belt is a strip of land which is inhabited chiefly by a concentration of segregated conservative Protestants.

The Dutch Bible Belt with religious prevalence shown in red

The Netherlands, best known abroad for its liberal policies on sex, drugs and homosexuality, is also home to a Protestant Bible Belt. It is a world away from big cities like Amsterdam or Rotterdam, where society is a lot more free and diverse.

Just 90 minutes’ drive from Amsterdam and its temptations is a village so devout that swearing is banned, women refuse to wear trousers and the bank machine does not dispense cash on a Sunday.

The Bijbelgordel stretches from Zeeland, through the West-Betuwe and Veluwe, to the northern parts of the province Overijssel. According to official figures 41 percent of Dutch have no religion, 30 percent are Catholic, 12 percent Protestant, 6 percent Reformed Protestant and 6 percent are Muslim. Currently, the traditional Dutch churches have around 250,000 members.

The Protestant faith in the Netherlands is fragmented. Besides the traditional Protestant church, there is also a more fundamentalist Reformed Protestant Church, formed in the 19th century.

When Flanders and North Brabant were reconquered by the Spanish army during the Eighty Years’ War, their Protestant inhabitants were required to either convert to Catholicism or leave. Many emigrated north of the border, particularly during the Twelve Years’ Truce of 1609 – 1621. Many of them later became staunch supporters of the pietist movement known as the nadere reformatie (further reformation).

In Bijbelgordel communities, a strong religious tone in public life is accompanied by conservative outlook and an emphasis on traditional values: a preference for large families (protected sex is frowned upon); children attend special religious schools; parents are suspicious towards state-run vaccination programmes; women are not allowed to ‘rule’ in a professional capacity and are not expected to work when they start a family.

The Bijbelgordel differs from Dutch society in many aspects, amongst them a regular Sunday church attendance – often twice on a Sunday. The region also bears a strong contrast to the traditionally Catholic provinces of Noord-Brabant and Limburg in the south and northern parts of the Netherlands where Sunday church attendance averages between a mere 2% to 3% of the population. Overall, the Netherlands become increasingly secular with every passing year.

In the Bible Belt however, conservatism slows this trend. The doctrine of the faith plays a central role in the life of the more fundamentalist communities. Consequently, they typically oppose the liberal ways of Dutch life – perpetuating their segregated outlook on life. Nevertheless, secularisation is causing the Bible Belt to slowly shrink and become clustered into ever smaller societies.

Unknown Facts About The Kama Sutra‏

The exact origins of the Kama Sutra are quite vague, but it was written between the 1st and 4th centuries AD by a man called Vatsyayana, who lived in the North Indian city of Benares – now called Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh, India.

It was first translated into English by the 19th Century British explorer Sir Richard F. Burton in 1876. Born in 1821, the adventurer, who spoke 25 languages, came across the Kama Sutra in Bombay in 1842 and became fascinated with Indian erotica. Following a visit to a prostitute, Burton, who had three Indian mistresses said:

“We British never knew of this kind of love-making. Had we known, we would not have ruined the lives of so many British virgins.”

Kama Sutra Illustration

In 1883 Burton risked prosecution and imprisonment under the Obscene Publications Act after publishing 250 copies of the Kama Sutra privately in Britain. The book did not become legal in Britain until 1963.

It was written in the ancient Sanskrit language. In Sanskrit, Kama means desire and Sutra means rules. In the context of the book “desire” includes singing, reading, poetry and dancing as well as sex.

The Kama Sutra contains a total of 64 sexual positions. Vatsyayana believed there were eight ways of making love, multiplied by eight positions within each of these. In the book, they are known as the 64 Atrs.

Only about 20 per cent of the book is devoted to sexual positions. The remainder gives guidance on how to be a good citizen and insights into men and women in relationships, a bit like Men Are From Mars & Women Are From Venus.

The Kama Sutra describes making love as “divine union”. Vatsyayana believed that sex itself was not wrong, but doing it badly was sinful.

Lovers who suffer from medical complaints such as back pain and arthritis are warned not to attempt some of the Kama Sutra’s positions. Vatsyayana states: “They predispose for rheumatic pains and sciatica.”

After Burton published the Kama Sutra the prudish British Raj banned the book in India. At the same time they also stopped temple prostitutes and child marriages.

The Kama Sutra may have originated in India, but in 1996 the authorities there clamped down on the film “Kama Sutra – A Tale Of Love” and demanded that 14 explicit scenes were cut before it was fit to be shown to Indian audiences.

Kama Sutra Illustration

Code breakers also find the Kama Sutra fascinating as it contains instructions  for making messages unreadable – one of the earliest books to do this. The Kama Sutra included encryption as an art a woman should study, presumably to help her make secret meetings with her lovers.

Kama is the Hindu god of love. The word also refers to the pursuit of love or pleasure, one of the four aims of life in Hindu traditions. Kama is always depicted as a handsome youth, shooting arrows of love that produce love. His wife is Rati.

According to the book a man becomes irresistible to women if he ties the bone of a peacock or hyena which has been covered in gold to his right hand.

It recommends both biting and scratching as ways of improving love-making, but insists on high standards of cleanliness. It states:

“The qualities of good nails are that they should be bright, well set, clean, entire, convex, soft, and glossy in appearance. The defects of teeth on the other hand are that they are blunt, protruding from the gums, rough, soft, large, or loosely set.”

The Kama Sutra also gives tips on the best ways to arrange a house. It suggests that people will be happiest if they have a pot for spitting in, a lute hanging from an elephant’s tooth, a soft bed and pots of flowers

A chapter is devoted to methods of seducing and getting away with sleeping with other men’s wives. But at the end Vatsyayana does admit that men shouldn’t make love to married women.

The book contains an early recipe for Viagra. It suggests that sparrows eggs boiled in milk and then mixed with clarified butter and honey will do wonders for a man’s love life.

There are 10 methods of kissing in the Kama Sutra (including) – the nominal kiss, the probing kiss, the touching kiss, the straight kiss, the bent kiss, the turned kiss, the pressed kiss and the greatly pressed kiss – and four ways to administer the kiss. That gives a total of 40 different ways to kiss a lover.

In April 1998 former president Bill Clinton was handed a copy of the Kama Sutra as he did a walk-about with Canadian Prime Minister Jean Cretien after the Summit of the Americas in Santiago, Chile.

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Goldfish have perfectly good memories and are smart enough to be trained to swim through hoops.

Carassius Auratus Auratus or Common Goldfish

Most goldfish are not gold.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is estimated to have had an IQ of 185.

The ancient Greek word tragomaskalos means ‘with armpits smelling like a he-goat’.

According to tradition, Jimmu was the first emperor of Japan reigning between 711 BC and 585 BC. His father was the god Ugayafukiaezu, short for Amatsuhitaka-hiko’nakisatake-ugayafukiaezu-no-Mikoto.

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Cultural Attitudes Towards Cunnilingus‏

There are numerous (cultural) slang terms for cunnilingus, some are downright offensive, some are whimsically subtle. For instance, plucked from the relative obscurity of the Victorian era is the expression “tipping the velvet” to describe the oral stimulation clitoris.

Fresco from a Roman suburban bath depicting cunnilingus

In the course of history, cultural attitudes towards giving or receiving cunnilingus range from disgust to reverence. It has been considered taboo, or at least frowned upon, in many cultures and parts of the world.

Despite the clitoris being the female’s most sensitive erogenous zone and the primary source of sexual pleasure, cunnilingus is – as far as one can measure – not widely practised in a number of social and cultural settings.

People give various reasons for their dislike or reluctance to perform cunnilingus, or having cunnilingus performed on them: some regard cunnilingus unnatural or wrong because it does not lead to procreation; some cultures attach symbolism to different parts of the body, leading some people to believe that cunnilingus is ritually unclean or humiliating. This has been more or less the case in Christian and Sub-Saharan African cultures and other modern religions.

In Tantric yoga, the same emphasis is placed on the retention and absorption of vital liquids and Sanskrit texts describe how the male semen must not be emitted if the yogi is to avoid falling under law of time and death.

Conversely, cunnilingus is accorded a revered place in Taoism. This is because the practice was believed to achieve longevity, and the loss of semen, vaginal, and other bodily liquids is believed to bring about a corresponding loss of vitality. Conversely, by either semen retention or ingesting the fluids from the vagina, both male and female can conserve and increase ch’i, or original vital breath.

Malchus‏

According to the Gospel of John in the New Testament of the Bible, Malchus is the servant of the Jewish High Priest, Caiaphas, who participated in the arrest of Jesus. According to John, one of the disciples, the Apostle Peter, being armed with a sword, cut off the servant’s ear in an attempt to prevent his Master’s arrest.

St. Peter striking Malchus

The story is related in all four gospels, John 18:10–11; Matthew 26:51; Mark 14:47; and Luke 22:51, but the servant and the disciple are named only in John. Also, Luke is the only gospel that says Jesus healed the ear.

The relevant passage in the Gospel of John, (18:10–11), reads:

Then Simon Peter having a sword drew it, and smote the high priest’s servant, and cut off his right ear. The servant’s name was Malchus. Then said Jesus unto Peter, Put up thy sword into the scabbard: the cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?

The story is sometimes used to illustrate Jesus’ rejection of violence and surrender to God’s will. Nevertheless, violence, as we know, has always been a common act in nature; unfortunately, it could also be argued that it has always been inseparable from Christianity or any of the Abrahamic religions for that matter.

Tantric Sex‏

Tantra involves a slow, sustained form of sexual intercourse founded on Indian mysticism; particularly, an esoteric current of Hinduism.

Contemporary picture of an Indian prince and lady on terrace at night

The word Tantra also applies to any of the scriptures (called Tantras) commonly identified with the worship of Shakti, a divine representative of female energy. Tantra deals primarily with spiritual practices and ritual forms of worship, which aim at liberation from ignorance and rebirth.

Tantrism originated in the early centuries of the first millennium and developed into a fully articulated tradition by the end of the Gupta period (320 to 550 CE). It has influenced the Hindu, Sikh, Bön, Buddhist, and Jain religious traditions.

As tantric practice became known in western culture—a development that started at the end of the 18th century, and that has escalated since the 1960s—it has become identified with its sexual methods. Consequently, its essential nature as a spiritual practice is often overlooked.

Tantric sexual methods may be practised solo, in partnership, or in the sacred rituals of groups. The specifics of these methods are often kept secret, and passed from practitioners to students in an oral tradition.

In Vajrayana Buddhism, tantric sexual practice (Sanskrit: Maithuna; Tibetan:Yab-Yum) is one aspect of the last stage of the initiate’s spiritual path, where he or she, having already realised the void of all things, attains enlightenment and perpetual bliss.

On Interpretations

“No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says; he is always convinced that it says what he means.”

- George Bernard Shaw

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In 2007, Esquire Magazine named Gianni Agnelli (1921-2003), the Italian industrialist and head of the car giant Fiat, one of the five best dressed men in the history of the world, alongside Gary Cooper, Beau Brummell, Edward VIII and Pope Pius V (1504-72), who is by many supposed to be the inspiration for character Santa Claus.

Friedrich Ludwig Jahn

All centipedes are predators. They kill their prey with poisonous claws attached to their heads. The Giant Centipede is 30cm long and kills small mammals and reptiles. It is extremely painful to be bitten by one.

In 1811, Friedrich Ludwig Jahn (1778-1852) invented gym. A German nationalist known as the Father of Gymnastics, he invented the parallel bars, the rings, the balance beam, the vaulting horse and the horizontal bar.

The German philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) was of peasant stock and was persistently mistaken by both students and colleagues at Marburg University for either a janitor or a heating engineer.

Martin Luther (1483-1546), the man who is often credited with starting the Protestant Reformation, was the son of a miner. He was a law student at Erfurt University in July 1505 when he was struck by lightning and thrown to the ground. Seeing this as a sign from God, he vowed on the spot to become a monk, which he did two weeks later.

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