Saturday, May 15, 2004

 
How come, on a nice, hot, sunny afternoon, I'm sitting in a cold room writing on a computer? Answers on the back of a postcard please.

I think I'm doing the traditional waiting for someone to reply to an email thing. Except obviously I wouldn't be that desperate, would I? Well, it is a particularly random and gossipy email...

The entirety of the internet, merely a few keystrokes away, and I can't think of anything to do. Ok, so my random look-up quota for today was largely taken up with finding out the origin of pork-barrelling [apparently gerrymandering relates only to movement of constituency boundaries to ensure support, rather than any improper manipulation of voting. Pork barrelling is pretty much bribing, as the seats belonging to the governmental party gain through one-off projects, which only occur in constituencies electing members of the ruling party. Though quite a few of the papers covering the Dame Shirley Porter case use gerrymandering in the looser sense of any inappropriate activity (selling council houses cheap to Conservative voters in this case)]. Also discovered the derivation of the term "slush fund".

So what's the betting on there being a President Schwarzenegger? Well, if India can elect an Italian...

Running with the theme (ish) - The Indian entry for the Eurovision song contest perhaps? It is on par with most of the entries.

That's on tonight - dare I watch it? Well, I suppose, for research purposes only, you understand. I wonder if the newer EU countries have figured out that much of Northern Europe treats as one huge [albeit very poor taste] joke?

[Playing round with webstats} Wow, I got one from Macao - the Portuguese Hong Kong. Did it get (or will it get) handed to China? Or did the Portuguese have a different lease? According to the CIA, it's back in China. Still got .mo for internet stuff though. Apparently it's also supposed to be Macau, though as the government website switches between the two spellings, I'm not going to worry.
But as the person was searching for Nordic Walking Stripes .Italy, I don't think he wanted me.

I'm a little concerned as to why violent incest pics comes up with this page, as I thought the person seeking "Dar es Salaam porn" was odd enough. And this time it wasn't even a WebTV account.

Is it me, or does anyone else find the concept of someone using an Accenture computer, having to look up ferrero rocher pronunciation, rather amusing? Maybe it's just the concept of any social climber being so desperate to avoid a faux-pas, that they look up the pronunciation of the trashiest "roit klassy" chocolates. It's fur-rare-ro rosh-shay BTW (at least according to the advert). Call them ferry-o rocker if you want, they'll still taste just as bad.

And while I'm doing the laughing at fellow humans thing, I think I should point out the increase in hits I've received, simply for using the word "summery" when talking about the weather. There have been a lot of people running Google with terms like "[classic work of literature]+summery".

And speaking of the weather, well actually more ouside-iness per se, it's currently like living in the sea. There's a constant stream of planktonic motes going past. Surely there can't be that many dandelions already? Nope, just pussy-willow going into overdrive. Tip of the day: don't inhale them, intentionally or otherwise.

And why is the comments feature on Blogger so...not quite as good as it should have been? It has funky feature whereby it tells me if someone lives a comment, only it neglects to mention where the left and what it was about. So someone, somewhere has left a comment, and I have to trawl through my entire blog trying to find it? Ok, so at the moment it's easy, as there aren't that many posts with commenting available, and it is the only comment that isn't me testing the system, but still, the potential for utter confusion remains unbounded.

BTW, Neil of GforB [should you happen to be reading this], ta muchly, any idea who did the research, or where they did it? I'm guessing not, and if so, don't worry about it.

Well, that'll do for this post, have fun peeps,

Anyhoo,

I haven't the faintest, it will have been in the "weird short news" at the front of Science or Nature or else in New Scientist - it was definetly done by some fluid dynamics people because as I "do embryos/genetics" it wouldn't be in any of the specialist literature I read.
I do know that every Friday afternoon rush-hour I used to drive 400km (250miles) and it got discussed pretty often. My co-driver would know, but I'm not asking her (we're not speaking).....
 
As someone else who retains an infinite amount of unattributal seemingly random information, I'd guessed as much, but thanks anyway Neil.
 
Got here by googling Ferrero Rocher pronunciation :) Thanks!
 
At last! Someone's found a use for my blog.
 
eurovision is hilarious...and yes the choc brought me here:)

while googling ferrero rocher pronunciation i also found websites with really odd ideas about how one should go about pronouncing 'mango'
 
How can anyone mispronounce mango, whether the clothing brand or not?

Hang on, you list Seabiscuit amongst your favourite films? I'm not sure I should be talking to you, despite your choice of best books.

And I'm not sure whether to be awed by the mighty power of globalisation, or dismayed that it would seem that Ferrero Rocher have reached Mumbai. Is there no end to the tyrany? Does India get the original, badly dubbed, Ambassador's Reception advert?
 
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