Tapir alert

For reasons I won't go into, I know for a fact that at least one Gruts reader out there has more than a passing interest in tapirs. To that particular individual (plus anyone else with more than a passing interest in tapirs), I address the following remark: you might find this recent post on the Laelaps weblog rather interesting.

See also: Compare and contrast

I am kurious… orang?

How's this for a spooky coincidence? Orang-utans are orange in colour, but the orang bit of their name has absolutely nothing to do with the colour orange.

The word orang-utan derives from the Malay/Indonesian words orang, meaning person, and hutan meaning forest; orang-utans were people of the forest. Years before Darwin, the wise folks of the Malay Archepelago knew a close relative when they saw one.

The word orange, on the other hand, has a very complex derivation, given on Answers.com as follows:

Middle English, from Old French pume orenge, translation and alteration (influenced by Orenge, Orange, a town in France) of Old Italian melarancio: mela, fruit + arancio, orange tree (alteration of Arabic naranj, from Persian narang, from Sanskrit narangah?, possibly of Dravidian origin).

In other words, absolutely nothing to do with orang-utans. Like I said, spooky coincidence.

I worry about this sort of thing a lot.

Feminist plot

They're trying to do us out of a job, lads!

Observer: MPs back artificial sperm for childless

MPs are planning a change in the law to allow babies to be conceived from artificial sperm, a move described by opponents as playing God with human DNA.

This is clearly a feminist plot to make us chaps totally superfluous. Ensure all of the offspring are female, and they could half the world's population through natural wastage within a century. It would probably also curtail nearly all global conflict.

Actually, I'm struggling to come up with a reason why this is a bad idea.

Stupid genetics!

Googled

Lorks-a-lordy and ruddy heck! Carolyn's niece did a Google search for her own name the other week, found nothing, then searched for her parents' names—still nothing—then searched for Carolyn's name and hit the Gruts motherlode (or should that be auntielode?). Carolyn's niece was mortified.

She didn't mention it to Carolyn right away, though. No, she waited until the entire Farthing Clan had gathered for a meal, then announced to the world that Auntie Carolyn was on the internet and it was "ABSOLUTELY DISGUSTING!"

So the whole family (apart from Carolyn) rushed upstairs to the computer to have a gawp.

Stupid internet!

Phew!

BBC: Peers vote to scrap blasphemy

The government has got its controversial plan to scrap the blasphemy law through the House of Lords… The amendment [to the Criminal Justice Bill] will abolish the offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel in England and Wales.

Interesting use of the word controversial, I thought, bearing in mind the last three prosecutions for blasphemy were in 1922, 1841 and 1676. Routine housekeeping is how I would have described this amendment to the law.

But, as of last Thursday, I have been sleeping just a little bit more soundly in my bed.

The bag's out of the cat

Times: Series of blunders turned the plastic bag into global villain

Scientists and environmentalists have attacked a global campaign to ban plastic bags which they say is based on flawed science and exaggerated claims.

The widely stated accusation that the bags kill 100,000 animals and a million seabirds every year are false, experts have told The Times. They pose only a minimal threat to most marine species, including seals, whales, dolphins and seabirds…

The central claim of campaigners is that the bags kill more than 100,000 marine mammals and one million seabirds every year. However, this figure is based on a misinterpretation of a 1987 Canadian study in Newfoundland, which found that, between 1981 and 1984, more than 100,000 marine mammals, including birds, were killed by discarded nets. The Canadian study did not mention plastic bags.

Fifteen years later in 2002, when the Australian Government commissioned a report into the effects of plastic bags, its authors misquoted the Newfoundland study, mistakenly attributing the deaths to "plastic bags".

This is not to say that we shouldn't try to use fewer plastic bags—I understand they're pretty disastrous for marine turtles, which eat them, mistaking them for jellyfish—but it is an interesting example of far too much being read into a single, flawed scientific study. Remember MMR?

Still think spinach is good for you because it's full of iron? Think again.