If you think British taxi drivers are rude, how about this Parisian driver? I can’t personally attest to the rudest of Paris’ hire car industry, since the last time we tried to hire one, it didn’t turn up.
It’s hard being green sometimes
We try to be green in our house. We recycle. We try to reduce electricity consumption whenever we can. We walk, cycle or use public transport where possible. We try to buy products that use little packaging.
We’ve also tried using products from Ecover. For the most part, these are well worth using, assuming you can believe all thei company’s statements about environmental friendliness.
But we’ve come a cropper with Ecover’s washing powder. Despite the company’s warm words about the powder not being irritating to the skin, we spent three of four sleepless nights scratching ourselves silly after using the powder on our bed linen. After re-washing the bedding in Pesil non-bio capsules, an uninterrupted night’s sleep all round. Hooray. Not so environmentally friendly, but at least we won’t go postal from sleep deprivation.
What gets me is that my otherwise sterling immune system, previously only allergic to penicillin and cat and dog hairs, should have a problem with the plant extracts used to make the Ecover washing powder. What plants are they using? Nettles?
Journalists should go on strike for a year
To prove that bloggers and Google News robots can’t do the work of trained reporters, Chicago Reader executive editor Michael Lenehan proposes a year-long journalism strike.
“I am urging reporters and editors around the world to put down their notebooks, close their laptops, hang up their phones. Lie down and be counted! Let’s have no reporting, no editing, no application of any human intelligence whatsoever to events public or private till January 1, 2007. I’m calling it the Year Without Journalism. Let’s all relax, let go, and float blissfully in the information-free state (excuse me, I mean free-information state) that our public awaits so eagerly. … Let’s see if Wonkette can deal with the devious bastards in the executive branch any better than Judith Miller did.”
No salary for a year. I can manage that…
The effects of binge-drinking
What better way to investigate the effects of binge-drinking than to binge-drink for a month?
One hundred things we didn’t know a year ago. Except we did.
The BBC is running a story containing 100 facts we didn’t know last year. Aside from the 101st fact that we did know quite a few of those things if we’d ever read a book before 2005, there were quite a few interesting nuggets in there, notably:
7. Baboons can tell the difference between English and French. Zoo keepers at Port Lympne wild animal park in Kent are having to learn French to communicate with the baboons which had been transferred from Paris zoo.
29. When faced with danger, the octopus can wrap six of its legs around its head to disguise itself as a fallen coconut shell and escape by walking backwards on the other two legs, scientists discovered.
50. Only 36% of the world’s newspapers are tabloid.
53. It takes 75kg of raw materials to make a mobile phone.
65. Actor James Doohan, who played Scotty, had a hand in creating the Klingon language that was used in the movies, and which Shakespeare plays were subsequently translated into.
99. The Japanese word “chokuegambo” describes the wish that there were more designer-brand shops on a given street.
Renewable energy trends in 2005
Just as the UK government starts to become convinced that nuclear is the only option for future power needs, renewable energy has started to become more affordable. This slightly US-centric article looks at some of the trends in renewable energy in 2005 that will lead to even more green energy sources in 2006.
We’re in trouble if the UK is the best green country in Europe
Oh no. It turns out that practically everyone else in Europe is rubbish at cutting CO2 emissions. If the UK is near the top, given our record, we’re all going to be in trouble.
Texting for deaf people misses the point
The idea of on-the-fly conversions of phone conversations into text is both progressive and impressive. The problem is that a significant number of deaf people don’t speak English as a first language: they ‘speak’ British Sign Language. So while this technology is going to be better than nothing, the nirvana is still going to be on-the-fly signing.
Hungary and Finnish not so close after all
It turns out the Finnish and Hungarian aren’t so close after all, despite my previous impression. According to The Economist, Estonian is a lot closer.
“Philologists’ labours have identified some 200 words with common roots in all three main Finno-Ugric tongues. Fully 55 of these concern fishing, and a further 15 are about reindeer; only three are about commerce. An Estonian philologist, Mall Hellam, came up with just one mutually comprehensible sentence: ‘the living fish swims in the water.'”
If you haven’t picked up the Christmas edition of The Economist, you definitely should. It’s a time when they let their writers go wild and scribble on about anything that interests them (as well as the news). This year’s highlights include the history of wheat, a survey of human evolution, personal finance in Jane Austen’s novels and an analysis of the sex-toy market in China.
Christmas absence
I’m going to be out and about for Christmas, starting tomorrow, so blogging is likely to be either intermittent or non-existent over the holiday period.
A Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year to you all!