h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

not the word "Book" while they're at it?

"'Facebook Plans to Trademark the Word 'Face''"

That'll bring the A-Team down on them, like a ton of Snickers.

On a far less cerebral topic-

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/21/20101125/ten-lembit-bitten-by-snake-in-jungle-5f8abb3.html

Let's hope the snake makes a speedy recovery.

"Meanwhile it appears that 'inflation' is entering the language in its new meaning." [toybox]

C'est absurd! My question is, which language is the word entering, English or French? I have *never* heard it used in a sexual context in English. If we English-speaking people begin using it that way, yeah, maybe the BBC will need to tweak its filters.

Yesterday I saw the film "Love and Other Drugs," which is about a Viagra salesman who falls in love with a young woman who has early-onset Parkinson's. They never once mentioned inflation, but Viagra was there for the opposite condition.

Yes, it was French I meant

Oxygen found on Saturn's moon Rhea

>>Nasa's Cassini probe has scooped oxygen from the thin atmosphere of Rhea – the first time the gas has been detected directly on another world<<

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/nov/25/oxygen-saturn-moon-rhea

Y.

Big Issue conman 'sold woman's dog for £20' while she was in Tesco

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/848449-big-issue-conman-sold-womans-dog-for-20-while-she-was-in-tesco

Everything about this story made me laugh!!

Snow at last

I guess it's only a matter of days until someone pretends to be surprised that snow is cold and slippery, and uses the phrase 'grinds to a halt'?

Every time there's a massive snowstorm moving from the west coast to the east coast, North Dakota gets the worst of it. I would think that they're used to it, and have figured out how to manage. It's southern places like Washington, D.C. and Georgia that get traffic gridlock from two inches of the white stuff.

Does Vancouver get much snow? Given that palm trees can grow there, I'd guess not, but maybe they can survive a *little* bit of snow?

Religious intolerance alive and well in Scotland

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/scot_prem/9230531.stm

'The world is deeply divided on the question of whether religion is a force for good, a survey by Ipsos Reid suggests.

The pollster found that 48 per cent of the more than 18,000 people it reached online in 23 countries agreed that "religion provides the common values and ethical foundations that diverse societies need to thrive in the 21st century."

A bare majority — 52 per cent — thought otherwise. They agreed with the sentiment that "religious beliefs promote intolerance, exacerbate ethnic divisions and impede social progress."'


http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/11/26/religion-good-evil-poll-hitchens-blair.html#ixzz16RT6qXng

I find it fascinating that Russia, which was officially an atheist country under the Communists, is far more supportive of the idea that religion is a force for good than France, which is nominally a Roman Catholic country. What am I missing here?

Perhaps that France had an anti-clerical Revolution in 1789 and Russia waited until 1917. Or, to put it another way, France has had over two centuries of state protected freedom of conscience while Russia has had less than a century of state protected freedom to be a Party Member.

Or, to put it another way, Stalin did what Diderot desired. And, while many alive today remember Stalin's time, no one alive today remembers much of anything about Diderot.

Everything else is being cut, so why not student numbers?

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/mary-dejevsky/mary-dejevsky-everything-else-is-being-cut-so-why-not-student-numbers-2143901.html

"Employers and others increasingly complain about the calibre of many graduates, not just in their chosen specialities – but in the basics, such as standards of written English and the work ethic. They also complain about professional courses offering too much theory and too little practice. Granted that employability need not be the sole criterion of educational success, the value of a British university education does not seem to have increased with the numbers admitted. So long as selection is according to qualifications and potential, rather than ability to pay, fewer students should mean better."

Ghana bans second-hand knickers

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-11845851

Reminds me of Paddys Market in Glasgow, now gone.

Meanwhile, in Japan you can get your used school girl knickers from a vending machine: http://www.snopes.com/risque/kinky/panties.asp

I once saw a woman in Paddys holding up a very second-hand pair of men's shreddies with the cry "Get yer y-fronts here, twofurrapoun"

Complete with scorch marks

Diderot was an 18th-century French encyclopedist. I remember writing a paper about him in college. That whole century had winds of change blowing through it, though the gale force didn't come until the century was 3/4 over. Think of authoritarian Louis the Fourteenth ushering in the century ("The most arrogant man I have ever met," one noble said of him). But Voltaire had a knack for tweaking the noses of the highborn, and he was joined by the Adamses and Franklins from across the sea. Early in the century, musicians like Haydn had to dress in livery and do their work as servants, but by 1799 there were younger composers like Beethoven who would storm out in a rage if an aristocrat like Paul Eszterhazy dared to criticise his work ("And what have we here again, my dear Beethoven?"). Beethoven was never a servant in the employ of some noble family, though a group of nobles still got together to subsidize him so Vienna wouldn't lose him. Gradually, more and more people were earning their livings away from the orbit of the aristocrats.

(I have another rant ready for thr 19th century. )