Place of Stuff

Inspired by Stevo’s post on Wonderful Search Terms and hoping to jump on the internet meme bandwagon, here are the top 20 searches for this site.

Firstly, I know what the number one search term for this site is and I know it without checking.  I find it fantastic that particular search term brings so many people in and I think I am about to up it’s searchability!

So, without further ado, here is the list of the top 20 according to Woopra (searching via Google - text and image search), with comments:
Continue reading ‘I Know How You Got Here!’ »

Coverage of the recent Olympics has made me realise that despite the fact that Political Correctness is widespread and pretty much ingrained in Western society, there are still 2 groups of people that we can still be patronising and rude to without any comebacks. I don’t know if this is a loophole or whether the groups aren’t deemed worthy of our protection. Oh, and before I go any further, use this at your own risk! I am not liable for any damage you receive…..

This whole thing was prompted because of a cheesy BBC slot. A reporter was asking the locals in Beijing whether they recognised certain London landmarks - Big Ben being the main one. None of the people on camera could name them. Cue the reporter looking at the camera with a wry look. Oh dear, people in China can’t recognise landmarks from a city more than 5000 miles away. Those ignorant Chinese people! But let’s flip that around. I’m relatively intelligent and know things about foreign countries. I doubt I could recognise any landmark from China apart from the Great Wall and maybe the Forbidden City. Does that make me mockable? Would anyone in China reading this be rolling about the floor in tears because the ignorant round eye doesn’t have an encyclopedic knowledge of their places of interest? Or would they, and I think this is more likely, just say “OK” and forget about it? Because it doesn’t matter and I’m sure the Chinese have better things to do with their time than memorise landmarks. Unless there’s a Chinese version of Jeopardy, of course.

Secondly, and this really really annoys me, is the use of a short phrase which is employed to encompass a whole range of people. “Simple folk/people”. As in “I would love to live in a rural area among the simple folk”. This isn’t restricted to the UK and is used to describe people in small villages/towns and rural areas. Basically, using it means that those people couldn’t possibly understand the horrible pressures that traders and bankers and accountants have in the City, because life is so much easier in the country. Let’s forget that farms are going to the wall every day and that suicide rates among the farming community are on the rise because farmers are seeing their livelihoods disappear and land held in their families for generations are being sold so the family can survive. Forget the bankruptcies and having to negotiate the minefield that claiming subsidies entails. Forget the fact that abattoirs are closing regularly and new regulations mean that farmers have restrictions on transporting the animals to be slaughtered so end up with a lot of dead livestock rotting on their lands. Their lives are just so simple.
Continue reading ‘It’s Safe to Insult Certain People. Apparently.’ »

Schrödinger’s Cat: A cat, along with a flask containing a poison, is placed in a sealed box shielded against environmentally induced quantum decoherence. The flask is shattered, releasing the poison, if a Geiger counter detects radiation. Quantum mechanics suggests that after a while the cat is simultaneously alive and dead, in a quantum superposition of coexisting alive and dead states. Yet when we look in the box we expect to see the cat either alive or dead, not in a mixture of alive and dead.

I’m working at home this week and probably next week. Which means that I am simultaneously in a state of either wearing pants or not wearing pants. So if anyone phones me, remember that I may be answering in a serious tone of voice, but I may not be properly dressed.

None of these things is worth a full post on it’s own. So here are some random thoughts:

• Recycling - until the council forced us to seperate our rubbish out I had thought that a collection every two weeks wasn’t enough. Now I realise that 75% of our rubbish is paper/cardboard so two weeks seems about right.

Continue reading ‘A Few Random Jottings’ »

So my words of wisdom have far more gravitas.

Now get off my lawn.

FAO: Mr Chodsley, CTO

Dear Mr Chodsley,

I am writing to you, as my section head, to tender my resignation and to give you the reasons I am doing so in the hope that you will be able to use my comments to further improve the companies image and policies. Having worked here for 10 years in a variety of capacities, I feel that I am well placed to give my insights on the workings of the company.
Continue reading ‘Re: The Recent Outrages’ »