Here's another example of nominative determinism - people whose jobs suit their names.
In a study of long-tailed tits' co-operative breeding, entitled "Ecological and demographic correlates of helping behaviour in a cooperatively breeding bird", the lead author is…..
Prof Ben Hatchwell!
(See other blog posts on nominative determinism.)
Spot the unfortunate typographical error or perhaps spellchecking mishap in Netimperative's report on Apple's deal to let Safari users set privacy-preserving search engine Duck Duck Go as their default search engine…
Not content to over-block or over-filter perfectly innocuous websites, it seems that the UK nanny state's ineffective over-cautiousness is spreading… to TV programmes.
Note the warning in the programme info (shown on my, generally pretty good, Humax Fox T2) for a TV show depicting an elderly couple pottering gently along the canals of Wales:
Needless to say, the programme contained no "very strong language", nudity, violence or indeed sexual scenes!
Although occasionally they did grumble about the weather, and there was the odd swear word when their boat bumped against a canal wall…
Seen in Soho, London recently (and I'm sure it was a lot of work to make those products too!):
I've not done a nominative determinism post in ages, but here's another good one.
The author of a draft report on the proposal for a new EU directive on recreational crafts and personal watercrafts is called…
Malcolm Harbour
It must be tough for those people who have to subtitle TV programmes, especially at speed.
Here's a great example of a clear slip of the subtitling finger, which made me laugh. Or rather, titter.
(Humour interlude)
If you've not read the "Apologies to the House of Commons since 1979" (latest version), there's some light relief there.
Amongst the serious stuff like apologising for claiming for expenses they shouldn't have (why only a few apologies there??), and failing to declare interests they should have, there are funny things like:
My favourites:
Heated debates, much? Did you know that in the House the line which members aren't allowed to physically cross was drawn so that the other side would be at least a sword's length away from it? (see Wikipedia on "toe the line").
Interestingly, there haven't been many MP apologies lately. Presumably because they think they have no reason to.
This is actually the best dental floss I've ever used by the way, but it's hard to get it except expensively at expensive dentists, so I buy online. Still not cheap, but to me it's worth it.
From YouTube blog, the first time they're sharing their "Most Watched" stats - here are the 5 most watched videos of 2009 across the world, most popular one first. If you've not seen any of them yet, enjoy!
See the BBC video (story here) of Dorkbot enthusiast James Larsson where he shows off his VCR cat feeder (dispenses food at the time the VCR’s been set to).
The cat's shown at the start and, err, the demo is at 03.08 if anyone wants to know, of a kinky boot fetish Pong game where the onscreen players are made to go up and down by groping and fondling leather boots (seriously) – and if you miss a point you get punished by a motorised whip (severity level adjustable)!
James Larsson and his inventions have also been featured in the New York Times and Wired.
See also this equally funny pub sign (which I’m not showing here, as it’s not licensed under CC).
(For those who don't know, Bing is Microsoft's new search engine, the first that's likely to prove to be any serious threat to Google.)
As Kirk points out (and Blogger acknowledged), some users of Google's Blogger who publish via FTP have been seeing a new post that says "eeyore is cute!" (awww, yeah, see the pic above) - and some non-FTP users who chose to get post confirmation emails may also have got an email about a test "eeyore is cute!" post.
