nocto

my sister sent me one of those annoying round robin emails full of junk. this one was full of supposedly true facts. many of these are just badly concocted, unverified and unverifiable statistics but having nothing better to do (yeah, right) i tried to verify a few of the more intriguing “facts”:

• most lipstick contains fish scales:
  i don’t think this kind of thing is particularly strange but i can believe that pearl essence is used to make cosmetics shimmery.
• wearing headphones for just an hour will increase the bacteria in your ear by 700 times.
  i don’t know about 700 bit but this sounds feasible
  

  the soft plastic headphones used on airplanes create a warm, moist environment in the ear canal that is ideal for breeding bacteria.

• between 1937 and 1945 heinz produced a version of alphabetti spaghetti especially for the german market that consisted solely of little pasta swastikas.
  not true:
  

  the h.j. heinz company did not produce pasta, in any shape, for the german market during world war II.

  interested parties can still spell out all manner of war-related terms using heinz’ standard alphabetti spaghetti product, though.

bradford now has singing bus shelters. i had to check that it wasn’t april 1st already.

a hidden camera spots the colour of a waiting passenger’s clothes and then triggers an audio sequence piped out of hidden speakers in the scarlet walls.

the much more useful aspect of the super shelter is that they have heated seats! now that is something you want in a cold and rainy bus shelter.

this “practical people’s art” is part of bradford’s bid to be european capital of culture 2008. sorry bradford, but that honour is to be newcastle gateshead’s (a single entity with no conjunctions, apparently)

luke has been attempting to write a 50 000 word novel in january and he’s nearly there. he admits that he has plot problems but the excerpts he’s been posting on his website are hilarious.

i’m also glad to see that the algorithm involving taking depressants (ie alcohol) and stimulants (ie diet coke) alternately in an attempt to find that in between state that isn’t the same as that achieved by taking neither has other practitioners than me.

so kay hammond has found herself a husband after offering her hand in marriage in an online auction, though it remains to be seen if a marriage actually results. whilst i don’t think this is unethical (as ebay did), i do think that it’s spectacularly unimaginative and that someone who can’t find the time or effort to start a relationship is unlikely to find the time or effort to maintain one. it’s just a gender reversed version of the dowry system as far as i can see, not very 21st century.

i thought that by creating an online auction I would be able to reach as many men as possible and hopefully prove that the internet is not full of cyber-geeks, there are normal people out there.

that’s normal people with a quarter of a million quid to spend on unseen goods before they’ve even thought about the wedding plans.

[found via boing boing]

i’ve been stuck on the end of a non resolving name server for days and days (at least two). it’s pure torture.