BBC: Arrow fired through family’s cat
A family cat is expected to survive after its body was pierced by an 18-inch aluminium arrow.
I’d have had backup, just to make sure.
(And, at the risk of being pedantic, the arrow wasn’t fired through the cat; it was fired into it—as the X-ray photograph accompanying the article quite clearly shows.)
New Scientist: Wind turbines make bat lungs explode
… A new study shows that the moving blades [of wind turbines] cause a drop in pressure that makes the delicate lungs of bats suddenly expand, bursting the tissue’s blood vessels. This is known as a barotrauma, and is well-known to scuba divers…
[Scientists] collected 188 dead bats from wind farms across southern Alberta, and determined their cause of death. They found that 90% of the bats had signs of internal haemorrhaging, but only half showed any signs of direct contact with the windmill blades. Only 8% had signs of external injuries but no internal injuries.
The movement of wind-turbine blades creates a vortex of lower air pressure around the blade tips similar to the vortex at the tip of aeroplane wings. Others have suggested that this could be lethal to bats, but until now no-one had carried out necropsies to verify the theory.
BBC: Rome’s battle of the bells
In Rome, the capital of Christendom, which has some 600 churches with over 1,500 bells in their bell towers, the ancient art of bell-ringing has almost died out.
I’m sure there must be a good many Christians out there who would object to Rome’s being described as the capital of Christendom. Just do a Google search of ‘pope’ + ‘antichrist’, if you don’t believe me. On second thoughts, don’t: life’s too short.
As a non-Christian, I take great exception to the area I live in being described as part of Christendom. I also take great exception when news reporters use phrases such as a Moslem area of the city or a Jewish area of the city or a gay area of the city. As far as I’m aware, we don’t reserve specific areas of cities for people of specific religions, races or sexual orientations: it’s a genuinely offensive idea.
If journalists must describe areas in such ways, they should at least use a qualifier such as predominantly to indicate that the current demographic situation has emerged as a result of the contingencies of history, and should not be taken to endorse exclusivity.
Now, I’m going to get off my hobby-horse and pop down into the Lesbian Capital of Britain for a newspaper.
Driving into Hebden Bridge for The Sunday Times this morning (our butler reads it), I turned a corner and came face-to-face with an elderly chap driving his car the wrong way down a one-way street. I slammed on my brakes, flashed my lights, and held a finger in the air, mouthing thing the words “ONE WAY!!”
The old chap mounted the pavement and squeezed past me, staring at me as if it was me who was the total fucking idiot.
How the International Olympic Committee saw the final Olympic rankings.
How the American broadcaster NBC saw the rankings
Still, at least they’re agreed on one thing: Great Britain came a magnificent fourth.
That’s above Australia.
Got that, Bruce?
(Hat-tip to John Lynch.)
Anonymous emailer Ken Keenes writes:
I am mightily impressed by gruts which I stumbled upon quite by chance whilst researching fart related material via google. Actually, that is not strictly correct as I was looking for ‘trapped wind‘ which I suppose is quite the opposite of fart. Nevertheless, your site is wondrous to behold because of the grammatical clarity and, in my opinion, proper use of punctuation.
I despair at some of the inane ramblings which appear on the internet which are clearly written by someone a) drunk, b) on drugs, c) both, but more importantly who did not pay full attention to English lessons while at school.
Glad to see all those hours of grammatical hell in Messrs Harrison’s and Stephens’ English lessons weren’t a complete waste of time, Ken. I rather pride myself on my punctuation: I think it’s important. I make a point of methodically punctuating all of my text messages, and pretending not to be able understand anyone who uses those silly SMS abbreviations. It drives my sister up the wall.
Now all I need is some content to match the quality of the punctuation. Not much chance of that, I’m afraid.
See also: The Darwinian Revolution
Do you know where the word plagiarise comes from? I do, and it’s very interesting:
plagiarize or plagiarise
v. take (the work or an idea of someone else) and pass it off as one’s own.
– DERIVATIVES plagiarism n. plagiarist n. plagiaristic adj. plagiarizer n.
– ORIGIN C18 (earlier (C17) as plagiarism): from L. plagiarius ‘kidnapper’.
I wrote that definition myself.
Which moron decided that our Beijing Olympics team should be called Team GB? Some sort of stupid focus group, no doubt.
Gordon Brown is behind this, mark my words.
In celebration of the return of Association Football to our television sets (has it really only been 3.4 nanoseconds?), we give you the timeless Kicker Conspiracy by the equally timeless The Fall:
(Come on you Reds!)
This Nationwide item is a legend in my family. I well remember watching it live, aged 9, back in 1974 (Christ!):
(Via BoingBoing)
God (right), 4004 BCE.
Assuming, for the sake of argument, that an omnipotent God exists—which He doesn’t, obviously, but just assuming…
Presumably an omnipotent God would be perfectly capable of creating an exact, equally omnipotent copy of Himself. No point in being omnipotent if You can’t do something like that, is there? I mean, if You couldn’t, it would rather cast doubt on Your omnipotence, wouldn’t it?
So, setting aside the rather massive issue of where a God Who is, after all, also supposed to be omnipresent would manage to find space to put an exact copy of Himself (Jen pointed out that God is also supposed to be omniscient, so He should easily be able to work that one out—and I suppose two omniscient minds would be better than one), here’s my question:
What if the two omnipotent Gods then decided to have a fight? Who would win?
They really haven’t thought this one through, have they?
BBC: Eat kangaroo to ‘save the planet’
Switching from beef to kangaroo burgers could significantly help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, says an Australian scientist…
He said: “It tastes excellent, not unlike venison – only a different flavour.”
In other words, it tastes unlike venison.
I ate kangaroo once, in Cairns, Australia. Not a whole one, obviously. The waitress was intrigued to know what I thought.
“I didn’t like it,” I said. “I kept thinking of Skippy.”
She seemed delighted that I knew who Skippy was.
Ah-ha! This might explain the legendary long-arm of the law!
I had a major senior moment at work the other week. Actually, it was more than a moment really; it lasted several days.
Whenever I went to make a cup of tea in the kitchen, or popped to the loo, or headed off to a meeting somewhere, I kept bumping into this young woman in the corridor outside my office. Metaphorically bumping into, that is—it wasn’t that kind of senior moment. It was uncanny: almost every time I had cause to walk down the corridor, there she was coming the other way. I had no idea who she was; a new face from another department, no doubt.
After a while, our bumping into each other became something of a private joke: I would nod at her, or share a conspiratorial smirk we walked past each other.
Until a week last Thursday, that is, when I finally realised that she was two totally different women. I know this for a fact, because I saw them talking with each other. Apart from their blonde hair, petite builds, and stylish suits, they looked absolutely nothing like each other. Not even remotely.
I’ll bet they were talking about the nutter down the corridor who keeps smirking at them.
See also: Senior moment
You’ve heard the sordid rumours, but now all can be revealed:
Telegraph: Strange sex life of melons exposed
BBC: Author and playwright Gray dies
English playwright and diarist Simon Gray has died aged 71.
The author penned more than 30 plays for stage and TV, including Butley, Quartermaine’s Terms, Melon and The Common Pursuit, as well as five novels.
Gray recently gained in notoriety for his series of witty memoirs, The Smoking Diaries and The Last Cigarette.
I can’t speak about his plays, but Gray’s three volumes of diaries (The Smoking Diaries, The Year of the Jouncer, and The Last Cigarette) are modern masterpieces in the genre: moving and, at the same time, laugh-out-loud funny. Gray developed a unique voice in his diaries. It’s sad to think there will be no more.
Postscript: Oh, according to the Guardian’s obituary, there will soon be a final volume about the last few months of Gray’s life.
Guardian: Scotty’s ashes fail to reach final frontier
The ashes of actor James Doohan, who played Montgomery “Scotty” Scott in Star Trek, were lost on the way to space on Sunday morning, when the rocket carrying them malfunctioned minutes after take-off.
Giving a front-page-headline-making interview to the highest-selling quality newspaper in Britain seems like such a good way to maintain a low profile:
See also: Famous people lucky never to have met Rev. Spooner