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.
Eat chocolate (in moderation!), it's good for you.
Enjoy the many April's Fool jokes e.g. on the Google blogs - my favourites are the mobile "Where am I?" one and the Gmail vowel outage, although storing anything (including your luggage) in Google Docs come close.
And see also, for the privacy-conscious, this on biometrics plus: the printing and scanning of bottoms.
Happy holidays!
Well, it's heartening to know that amongst all the doom & gloom of the recession, UK fine art print retailer ObsessionArt.com grew their turnover by 120% in the six month to February 2010 compared with the same period last year, thanks largely (geddit?) to "a provocative Kelly Brook photo". Good that she's helping the British balance of payments, eh?
It seems North America, including Canada and the US, has been the source of the strongest, ahem, growth - in sales, that is, with demand particularly high for black and white photography prints of celebrities, according to the press release. Best sellers in the category have also included photos of burlesque artiste Dita Von Teese (and no, I'm not linking to those!).
There. That's me doing my bit for British exports.
(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.
Start of list
End of list
Uh, "Unknown"?
For anyone who missed it, the BBC had an item about unfortunate names, discovered by parenting site TheBabyWebsite.com from going through online phone records.
See the Baby Website’s full list, and the BBC item for more names sent in by readers.
My own favourites, apart from the ones above, are:
If you like this sort of thing, do see:
