Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right

It's been a good couple of weeks for attending things and learning stuff. In the National Museum there was a day-long seminar on matters geological, where I learned all manner of fascinating facts about rocks. The National Library had a talk on Robert Boyle, which elucidated on his work in the field of medicine, of which I previously knew nothing. And yesterday I was in the Science Gallery, listening to a debate on the future of copyright. At that I learned I should buy shares in EMI.

The headline should really have been... um...

Getting the Irish Times via RSS as I do, I occasionally suffer some slight bemusement when I see a headline without context (I've sort-of mentioned this phenomenon previously). The headline on this particular occasion — Over 51,000 illegal drugs seized — caused confusion for slightly different reasons; I just assumed (but wasn't entirely sure) that it was a bad headline.

"Pah!" quoth I to no one in particular. "Fifty thousand drugs? Surely not. They must mean €50 000 worth of drugs, or perhaps fifty thousand, er..."

Okay, that's why they did it. There was no pithy way (that sprung to my mind) of saying "tablets or other similar items". The nearest I could manage was "units of illegal drugs", and that could generously be described as "inelegant" in the context of a headline.

So the sub ed failed in his job, and gave us a crappy headline.

Except he didn't.

I agree with The Bloodhound Gang

Did you know about google's http://wdyl.com ? I just found out myself, but it could well have been around for a while. It's a fascinating page, and one that lets our searchy friends help us find out all about topics that we love. Try it out. I'll wait.

So you're back... welcome. Now that you've typed in 'unicorns' or whatever the hell it is that you like, you're probably quite impressed. The thing is, though, you're probably wondering what other people are typing in. Because those others are on the internet. And that in all probability means that they're horrible, horrible people.

Your Majesty is Like a Stream of Bat's Piss

The Irish Times has a breaking news RSS feed that, I must confess, is quite annoying; sports results count as breaking news these days. In terms of Irish news it's far from the worst; that accolade belongs to breakingnews.ie and its insistence on including drivel about celebrity diets in its top stories. But the sports thing annoys me, inasmuch as I have practically no interest in sport.

I say 'practically' as I periodically watch Formula 1 Grands Prix. Every once in a while I'll watch the entire season, and possibly keep it up for three years or so. I almost did this year, but as soon as the first race was over the result made it into the headline. The fucking headline. The thing I see which makes me decide whether I'll read the story.

I don't care

So LOL has made it into the dictionary. BFD.

I have a lot of problems with LOL as an acronym (or, for the minority, an initialism), but as for making it into the dictionary, it was inevitable. The BBC tells us that language purists are up in arms, but what does that tell us? That language purists are dicks? We all knew that already.

What's Wrong with Dog Day Afternoon?

Sidney Lumet died yesterday (as I write this). He's made some great films over the years, including Serpico, Network, The Anderson Tapes and many others that I really enjoyed.

Yet when IMDB reported his death, at the time of this typing 3,000 people had clicked the facebook 'like' button.

Bastards.

A Game the Whole Family Can Play

I've recently discovered an interesting game, and one that I've been playing for a while now without realising it. It's best played with an RSS feed, but there's a simpler version, too, suitable for younger readers.

The source of this game is the rather entertaining Out of Context Science, which offers a highly selective quote from various papers or articles. The game? Just guess what the quote refers to.