On this day

… Henry VIII was at something of a loose end, so he told a builder to put a bowling alley in Whitehall. No one asked him if he had planning permission.

Undone

A friend in Nairobi tells me that Kenyan newspaper sales were up 10% yesterday on the news that the local champion of unpulped wood had got the Nobel.

National stereotypes

As a Brit, I wonder if there are also Americans who roll around laughing when they discover FranklinCovey’s Mission Builder (“Use our Mission Builder exercise to add focus, direction, and a sense of purpose to your daily decisions”). I suspect not, because whereas Brits usually look at me as if I have suddenly produced a…

Who’s afraid of the big bad Wolof?

I once read some complete nonsense by UCD prof Clarence Major, so I do kind of wonder whether he’s got any evidence for the claim (Prentiss Riddle → MSNBC) that relates hip “to the Wolof verb hepi (‘to see’) or hipi (‘to open one’s eyes’)”. The Peace Corps Wolof-English dictionary (PDF) lists xippi, but they…

Introducing the Aragonese albino dragon slug

Nick Lloyd notes that “The spread of mad cows disease into Spain means that, following EU rules, dead cows, sheep and goats can no longer be left in the countryside, and must be destroyed.” Fortunately for Brussels this is not all that remains of a sheep but one of Spain’s rarest creatures, the Aragonese albino…

Speaking of football…

However much you hate football, this is the kind of thing that makes it all worthwhile. Ah, say people, Ronaldinho is able to do that kind of stuff because he is Brazilian. We liberals know better than to believe any such nonsense. When I was a lot smaller, I saw ex-England keeper Gordon Banks play…

Enough Lloretisation!

I keep seeing new words that describe the destruction of the Catalan countryside by corrupt Catalan constructors and politicians. There’s a sheet hanging in the Plaça de la Vila de Madrid, plagued by drunks and junks since the council landscaped lurking places into it, that says PROU LLORETITZACIO!

Zapatero already more notorious than Chamberlain–in the US

John Chappell suggests (scroll quickly past the bizarre homophobic rant) that “pull a Spain” (“hacer una españolada“) is becoming the new “pull a Chamberlain”, an expression for poorly reasoned cowardice. That’s clearly true for Americans in pyjamas, but doesn’t yet apply to British+ anklebiters. Here are the official results (in ghits) from the gorpus:  …