Child: “Mummy, why do people have to kill chickens?”
Mummy: “Because you can’t eat them if they’re alive.”

Correct answer.

BBC: Oldest hamster food store found
A hoard of nuts buried by a rodent 17 million years ago is the oldest food larder so far discovered in the fossil record, say scientists in Germany.

Apparently, the nuts were found near an ancient wire treadmill.

BBC: Offensive jargon comes under fire (27-Nov-03)
Technology firms supplying Los Angeles County with hardware have been asked to avoid using the words “master” and “slave” to describe their products.

I take it they have no objection to the term “PC”.

BBC: No volunteers for orgasm implant (26-Nov-03)
A scientist claiming to have invented a device which produces orgasms at the touch of a button can’t find women to help him conduct trials into it.

With a chat-up line like his, is it any wonder?

BBC: Red sea urchin ‘almost immortal’
The red sea urchin found in the shallow waters of the Pacific Ocean is one of the Earth’s longest-living animals.

Two quibbles:

• how can something be almost immortal
• if it lives in the Pacific Ocean, why isn’t it called the Pacific Ocean Urchin?

On this date in 1963:

• John F Kennedy died
• C.S. Lewis died
• Aldous Huxley died
• Jen was born

On this date in 1990, Thatcher the Milk Snatcher resigned as UK prime minister.

…And on this date in 2003, those talentless whinging Poms made the Wallabies look like a bunch of Sheilas.

But of course, being English, we won’t be unbearably smug about it. We won’t spend the next four years reminding the Aussies how we beat them in the last minute of extra time in front of their home crowd to replace them as World Champions. We won’t go on and on about it every time we bump into one of our antipodean cousins. No, we will act like gentlemen—just as they would, had the result been reversed.

Yeah, right… In yer face, Kylie!

BBC: Wind farm plan dropped
Plans for six wind turbines in West Norfolk have been scrapped after protests from wildlife conservation groups and villagers.

Whoo-hoo! Get this: the company that wanted to build them is called Ecotricity. As they insist of calling these things wind farms, shouldn’t they call themselves Agro-tricity? Or does that sound too much like the far more apt name for them: Atrocity?

BBC: Jobs blow at yarn factory

BBC: Arrest warrant for singer Jackson
Police in California have issued an arrest warrant for Michael Jackson, Santa Barbara police department said.

Apparently, they’re looking for a moonwalking black man with white skin, a flat, pointed nose and chubby, razor-edged cheeks. He is believed to be accompanied by a chimpanzee.

…And, in a spookily unrelated story:

BBC: Surgeons oppose face transplants

BBC: Potato disease to cost £400,000 (14-Nov-03)
An outbreak of the world’s most damaging potato disease in mid Wales is going to cost the farm involved £400,000… The whole crop will then be destroyed at a cost to farmer John Morgan and his family of £400,000. It will then be buried or sent to a landfill site.

Aren’t spuds supposed to be buried?

“Hello, Carolyn.”
“Oh, what is it now?!”

Bloody charming.

BBC: ‘The whisky critics are wrong’ (17-Nov-03)
When worldwide drinks company Diageo changed the composition of the famous Cardhu malt, a storm raged in the whisky world. The firm’s rivals said the industry’s reputation was being damaged because the 12-year-old single malt was now being made from a mixture of vatted malts from several distilleries while still being sold under its original name.

In the name of everything that is holy, Diageo, Cardhon’t!

BBC: Climate ‘killed’ Alaskan horse (13-Nov-03)
[…] Researchers found the horses shrank in size before their extinction 12,500 years ago, which fits with the theory that they did not have enough to eat.

They must have been on the same diet as Sydney.

One I missed at the time:

CNN: Palace: Charles claims ‘ludicrous’ (07-Nov-03)
…Fawcett, 40, was the “indispensable” royal aide said to have regularly squeezed the Prince of Wales’s toothpaste.

From the newspaper that brought you Cat Killer Virus Epidemic Alert and the all-time classic Dead Hen Found in Tripe Works Freezer comes:

Local dog in slimming finals
Sydney, a dog from Hebden Bridge is one of 13 hot contenders who (sic) pound-shedding prowess have merited them a place in the North East Hill’s Pet slimmer of the Year regional final.

We were watching Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (sic) on telly last night. He was gathering hazelnuts from what he described as a hazelnut tree. Call me old-fashioned, but didn’t they used to be called hazels?

Jen then pointed out that, if Mr Fearnley-Whittingstall were being consistent, he would actually have been gathering hazelnut tree nuts—presumably from a hazelnut tree nut tree.

And so forth…

• Richard Carter by Hazel
• Photo of Down House, the home of Charles Darwin (with large hazel nut tree nut tree to the left)

BBC: Bush’s Middle East shift
In a major foreign policy speech in Washington, US President George W Bush has challenged the countries of the Middle East to adopt democracy.

Or they could always try the US electoral system.

Jerry Springer was interviewed on BBC Radio 4′s arts programme, Front Row, this evening. He recounted how he had spent the first five years of his life in London, his Jewish parents’ having fled to England from Hitler’s Germany.

Fancy escaping the Nazis, living through the Blitz, then calling your son ‘Jerry’.

BBC: Prince Charles denies ‘ludicrous’ claims
The Prince of Wales has denied allegations he was involved in an unspecified incident witnessed by a servant.

Yes indeed. And I should like to take this opportunity to deny that any unspecified incident ever took place between yours truly and antipodean pop chanteuse, Natalie Imbruglia, in a Jacuzzi in the Cayman Islands in April 2002.

That would be truly ludicrous.

Unfortunately.

BBC: Male sex hormone easily triggered (05-Nov-03)
Scientists have proved that even the most seemingly innocent chat with a woman can be enough to send male sex hormones soaring.

And they need experiments to tell us this? (Nice sneaky experiment, though.)