trivia

Blogjam is trying to get Blur's Damon Alburn to be the top entry for the word cunt (which if you are British or Irish or Australian, normally refers to a guy and can be used in general bar talk). Cunt, or quoint used to be polite speak for Vagina (which sounds a hell of a lot more rude to me) and appears in Chaucer. The word 'quaint' is actually the same word via a different route. Isn't Damon quaint? blogjam: cuntbomb

Edison, the Man was made in 1940, in it, I have a recollection that a machine stops working because 'there is a bug in it'. If that is true, this clearly predates the accepted origin when a moth appeared in the Mark I computer at Harvard in 1945. Can anyone confirm?

The phrase 'what the dickens', has nothing to do with Dickens, but was ironically coined by Shakespeare hundreds of years earlier. Trivia: Shakespeare top 10

Swiss bank account money scams are one of the rare delights of spam email, if only for the reason that somehow everyone involved seems to use a particularly obsequious form of convoluted Victorian English that is usually reserved for UK civil servants. "It is of great importance that I would require your humble help in assisting me to claim a deposited consignment at swiszerland." Swizerland - classic

Soft drink is purified tap water. "Soft drink giant Coca-Cola has admitted it is selling purified tap water in a bottle. It says the source for its new Dasani bottled water is the mains supply at its factory in Kent." At least snake oil sounds exotic.

Ah, Waldrobemalfunction.com - obviously a site about difficulties with IKEA's (un)dresser called Janet.

what do real kids think of classic guitar anthems - I am peeing myself... "Bob Dylan: Like A Rolling Stone (1965)" "What the grown-ups say: "Dylan drives his inspiration and imagination to even greater heights... Anger, hatred, disgust, defiance, disbelief, apathy, ignorance, repugnance; it's all here." (Earthsound)" Kid: "Sophie: He sounds like he's just smelled something really bad, like cat poo." "Nirvana: Smells Like Teen Spirit (1991)" "What the grown-ups say: "... reflects Kurt Cobain's skilful mingling of Stooges'-style brute yobbism (grinding guitars and yelping vocals), American punk and late 1970s art rock." (NME)" Kid "Sophie It's making me think about doing bad things like putting snowballs down my sister's back. " "The Sex Pistols: Anarchy In The UK (1977)" "What the grown-ups say: "They play with an energy and conviction that is positively transcendent in its madness and fever... It has an Ahab-versus-Moby-Dick power that can shake you like...

Parrot's oratory stuns scientists: "The bird, a captive African grey called N'kisi, has a vocabulary of 950 words, and shows signs of a sense of humour. He invents his own words and phrases if he is confronted with novel ideas with which his existing repertoire cannot cope"

"In olden days the nobility would ride on the left so their sword hand--usually the right hand, of course--would be on the same side as an oncoming horseman...Napoleon switched the convention in Europe from driving on the left to driving on the right for a simple reason--he was left-handed. This meant he mounted and dismounted his horse on the right-hand side, which he naturally preferred to be at the road edge." New Scientist: The Last Word Science Questions and Answers

Why is Ben Affleck parking his car in Google's lot?

Hmm, it seems that Google has a limit on the size of words it will index - 128 characters. So mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm returns 30 results, but one more m and nothing. Hmmmmmm.

Two thirds of all the worlds Bengal tigers are thought to live in backyards and basements in the US. BBC NEWS | Magazine | 10 things we didn't know this time last week