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BBC: Odd mishaps cause computer grief (16-Oct-03)
A man so angry with his laptop that he shot it has topped an annual league table of the oddest computer mishaps.
I'm sorry: spilling coffee over your keyboard is a computer mishap; deleting a file by mistake is a computer mishap; plugging your modem cable into the mains is a computer mishap… Pumping your laptop full of holes with a gun sounds pretty pre-meditated to me.
BBC: Pope beatifies Mother Teresa
Mother Teresa of Calcutta has been beatified by Pope John Paul II, before hundreds of thousands of pilgrims packed into St Peter's Square.
They must be kicking themselves to have missed it. Wouldn't you think His Holiness could have waited a few minutes?
Mind you, perhaps he didn't think he had time.
A reader and benefactor writes:
As you're mainly responsible (via your warm beer page) for my conversion to Real Ale […], I wanted to make sure this didn't escape you (pretty much reinforces your observations on the history of lager in the UK of course).
Yes, it would appear that the great British public has finally wised up to the cold, fizzy piss that the major breweries have been foisting on it for years: gorilla's is how one friend of mine describes it (placing it one rung up the ladder from gnat's).
According to the article:
The [UK] breweries liked lager because it could be served from bottles and cans easier than traditional British ale. But they were worried that the British drinker could not consume the stronger beer in the large volumes they were used to [i.e. drinking the generally weaker, but tastier English ale] - and the breweries needed to keep their profits up. So the first lagers created for the UK market were watered down versions of their continental cousins, brewed for a shorter period of time and, therefore, with less flavour.
So now all the British lager drinkers are migrating to stronger, continental-strength lager, but still drinking the same volumes: the lager lout is born! What a pity more of them don't see the light and, like my correspondent, return to a more British (and tastier) way of drinking.
Hey, did I really help convert someone to the cause? How cool is that? (Around 12°C, I hope.)
You know, that headline is so much funnier if you read it out loud in a Japanese accent.
I sat on my favourite riverside bench with a Starbucks™ coffee and phoned Stense at lunchtime… She was 222 miles away, waiting to place her order at, you've guessed it, Starbucks™.
Sign of the times.
BBC: Darwin's theory under attack [Link removed - see below]
…The Galapagos Islands, famed for its giant tortoises, is where Darwin came up with his theory of evolution by natural selection.
NO "IT" BLOODY WASN'T. Shame on you, BBC, for perpetuating this myth: Darwin came up with his theory of evolution by means of Natural Selection in London, after he'd returned from his five-year voyage around the world aboard HMS Beagle. (Shame on you as well for referring to the clearly plural Galapagos Islands as "it".)
The BBC is contradicting its own potted biography of Darwin, which correctly states (my emphasis added):
Upon his return to England in 1836, Darwin tried to solve the riddles of these observations and the puzzle of how species evolve.
[The Darwin's theory under attack headline on the first article quoted above is equally inaccurate, by the way: the article makes absolutely no mention of anyone attacking Darwin's theory.]
I should probably get out more.
Postscript (18-Oct-03): I didn't get out more, of course; I stayed in and wrote an email to the BBC, telling them about the mistakes in their article. They have now replaced the offending piece with a corrected version entitled, Did Darwin evolve his theory? (which is still a misleading title, by the way). The corrected section now reads:
[Darwin's] observation of different types of finches on the Galapagos Islands - also famed for its giant tortoises - also helped mould his ideas. […] When he returned to England in 1836, Darwin used his knowledge of the animal and plant life he had seen to try to solve the riddle of how species evolve.
The finch observations weren't actually Darwin's—a friend of his called Gould drew his attention to the fact that the Galapagos finches were closely related—and the BBC is still referring to the Galapagos Islands in the singular (which I guess is OK, as I keep referring to the BBC as they), but I'm not prepared to split hairs.
Bad-mouth Charlie Darwin, and you have Richard Carter to contend with!
BBC: China hails its first man in space
Chinese President Hu Jintao has described his country's launch of its first manned spacecraft as an historic step for the Chinese people.
Hey, I thought that, if the Chinese people all took a step together (particularly an historic one), it was supposed to start an earthquake or something!
Be that as it may, nice one, me old China!
BBC: 'Prince of thieves' shot dead
A man who admitted stealing jewellery belonging to the Prince of Wales has been shot dead at his Italian home.
You can run, but you can't hide from the House of Windsor—and especially not from Charlie 'the Don' Windsor.
Apparently, the Don had a nasty shock recently when he woke up to find a horse's head on the pillow next to him—but he was all right, it turned out to be Camilla.
Don Windsor, didn't he used to be in It Ain't Half Hot, Mum?
BBC: Poles party for Pope's jubilee
Celebrations have begun across Poland to mark Pope John Paul II's silver jubilee next week… For many, our correspondent reports, the Pope is regarded as the greatest Pole in history.
Greatest Pole in history? What about Chopin? What about Madame Curie? What about Szymanowski? What about bloody Copernicus, for Christ's sake? Yeah, Copernicus: remember him? He's the one who pointed out that the pope might not be all that infallible when it came to the whole earth-round-sun vs. sun-round-earth debate. Yes, Copernicus gets my vote.
One sign of someone's greatness is when you refer to them using just their surname, and everyone knows who you're talking about—Chopin, Curie, Szymanowski, Copernicus, Darwin, Newton, Einstein, Churchill—you get the idea. So what's this about the pope being great? Wojtyla, I ask you!
I seem to be having a bit of a downer on the pope today—just for a change.
BBC: Mt Schwarzenegger looms into view (11-Oct-03)
Georgia - the country in Europe, not the American state - plans to name a mountain after Arnold Schwarzenegger.
All of Arnold's gay fans will be delighted: now they'll finally be able to announce that they're going to Mount Schwarzenegger.
(Hey, fair do. Each to his own, and all that. Don't knock it till you've tried it. Horses for Caucasus.)