The Observer informs us that a new language class being tested by Thomson in Spain could help holidaymakers untie their tongues. Spanish (Out There!) lessons were given to travellers in Tenerife last month. A group of over-50s took five two-hour lessons over the course of their holiday, then put what they’d learnt into practice with…
Sez Roland Piquepaille of Mindjack: An international team of neuropsychologists has improved a device named “Tongue Display Unit” (TDU) pioneered at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. The device consists of a grid of 144 gold-plated electrodes set in the mouth and able to activate the cerebral cortex, the area of brain normally used for…
I caught the first train out of town this morning to go and inspect what a certain farmer has in the fields round the the back (large sections of horse skeleton) before the man rose from his slumbers. Sitting across the carriage from me was an attractive woman, and at the next stop a drunk…
Here’s a photo of Gypsy Eric in his first proper job after attempting to cycle to the Ends of the Earth with two pigs, Space and Time, in his panniers. He was quite frequently stoned during the trip, and children also threw rocks at him, partly on account of his clothing but principally because of…
Interlingua is a highly user-friendly language with a pedigree that is a bagful of doughnuts better than bitter, twisted Esperanto. Try this: Interlingua es un lingua international facile e de aspecto natural elaborate per linguistas professional como un denominator commun del linguas le plus diffundite in le mundo in le dominios del scientia, cultura, commercio,…
I’m pretty sure this picture is of the boar-pig hybrids mentioned the other day: These little darlings have been tusked where applicable, but the shoulders look broader to me than on boar I’ve seen before and the hide less hairy. On the other side of the hill there are what look like their feral cousins,…
Talking of the Italian hostages in Iraq, Alessandro Cevese, foreign ministry flunkey recounted a moment of high tension when one of the kidnappers tried to strip Mr Stefio of his wedding ring. The 34 year old had said he would sooner be shot. “The kidnapper at that point replied: ‘Then, I’ll take you outside’ and…
Submerging Markets is the only blog I know of that gets scraped by Google News. I don’t know if they’ll take Kaleboel now that Gypsy Eric the Beerstainvoyant has finally signed up to float by occasionally. Send in your photos…
The Organització pel Multilingüisme wants the Spanish royals to start using Basque and various other lesser-used languages in official ceremonies. That seems fair enough to me, but what I found interesting is that they only seem interested in languages which are associated with racist or ethnicist nationalism (list is page right, halfway down). The figures…
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