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Archives for March 4, 2012 - March 10, 2012

10 things we didn't know last week

15:48 UK time, Friday, 9 March 2012

Snippets from the week's news, sliced, diced and processed for your convenience.

1. Dr Seuss wrote an adult book with nude illustrations.

2. Bees have different personalities and some are thrill-seekers.

3. Wearing a white lab coat helps you perform better in tests.

4. The Masons have six million members around the world.
More details

5. Typing with your left hand can make you sad.

6. Oreos are the best-selling cookies in the world.
More details

7. A chicken nugget resembling George Washington is worth £5,000 on eBay.

8. Women who have just finished ovulating are better at detecting snakes than at other times of their menstrual cycle.

9. LSD could help alcoholics give up drinking.
More details

10. The moon may be to blame for the sinking of the Titanic.

Seen 10 things? .

Your Letters

15:04 UK time, Friday, 9 March 2012

Unless human beings do start being able to fly off rooftops, I feel like this may be the definition of a pyrrhic victory.
Nadja, Virginia, USA

David Dee (Thursday's letters) - no, no, no - the words to the song aren't "Dead ant", it's a repeated reference to the Pink Panther's birthplace - Durham.
Keith, Dartford

Third Forth Firth Bridge?
Chookgate, Milton Keynes (ex-Stranraer)

Thanks David, Liverpool (Thursday's letters). What Shall We Do With The Drunken Sailor? had been earworming away for a week, I finally got rid of it, and you reminded me of it!
Laura, Maldives

I can tell when I have had a week where I'm far too busy in work to read the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ News site whenever I do really badly in the quiz of the week's news!
Jackie, Belfast

Caption Competition

13:20 UK time, Friday, 9 March 2012

Comments

Winning entries in the Caption Competition.

The competition is now closed.

Performers at the Geneva International Motor Show

This week, it was performers draped over a Peugeot 208 at the Geneva International Motor Show.

Thanks to all who entered. The prize of a small amount of kudos to the following:

6. ARoseByAnyOther wrote:
But does it come with a cup holder?

5. Mr Snoozy wrote:
Always the same at this time of year, you wash the car and within minutes it's covered again.

4. eattherich wrote:
Driver accused of road rage for getting all bolshoi.

3. Balfor Coren wrote:
Prang's People.

2. Nero Cabflor wrote:
After the accident, the troupe file their insurance claim

1. JimmyG wrote:
The product placements in the last Twilight film were slightly overdone.

Paper Monitor

11:11 UK time, Friday, 9 March 2012

A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.

How's for a hatchet job?

John Carter is one of those films that is so stultifying, so oppressive and so mysteriously and interminably long that I felt as if someone had dragged me into the kitchen of my local Greggs, and was baking my head into the centre of a colossal cube of white bread. As the film went on, the loaf around my skull grew to the size of a basketball, and then a coffee table, and then an Audi. The boring and badly acted sci-fi mashup continued inexorably, and the bready blandness pressed into my nostrils, eardrums, eye sockets and mouth. I wanted to cry for help, but in bread no one can hear you scream. Finally, I clawed the doughy, gooey, tasteless mass desperately away from my mouth and screeched: "Jesus, I'm watching a pointless film about a 1860s American civil war action hero on Mars, which the inhabitants apparently call Barsoom. I can't breathe."

That was Peter Bradshaw of the Guardian. It's fair to say he wasn't taken with the movie.

His counterpart on the Times, Kate Muir, to dismiss a newly-released gangster flick:

You just want to shove Hard Boiled Sweets "dahn the khazi" and flush - and that's exactly what happens to the head of Cockney gangster Jimmy. Hackneyed and crass, this so-called thriller has each gangster, pimp or prostitute represented by a different boiled sweet. So Jimmy is 'The Mint Imperial: the king of mints even though it looks like a mothball'. The script was also written in two minutes on a sweetie packet.

Paper Monitor enjoys a vituperative one-star review as much as the next office worker approaching the end of a busy week.

But sometimes wry condescension is more satisfying than bile.

David Edwards of the Daily Mirror's review of a remake of Sam Peckinpah's Straw Dogs "Rather than spinning wildly in his grave, Peckinpah is probably merely rotating."

Your Letters

17:47 UK time, Thursday, 8 March 2012

Thank you for publishing the article What do you do with a dead whale? Until today, I only knew what to do with a drunken sailor but I now feel able to deal with twice as many unlikely situations as before.
David Richerby, Liverpool, UK

Sarah (Wednesday's letters), I think the new Forth bridge should be called the "William McGonagall" to mark his remarkable contribution to
Lewis Graham, Hitchin

"...and was just about to do the apostrophe when I saw the blue lights flashing so obviously I had to quit." Yeah, right.
Sarah , Basel, Switzerland

So this story next to this story amounts to torture by stealth. Thanks Magazine!
James Dawkins, London

Don't worry Suzie (Wednesday's letters), this should shift the Pink Panther Theme tune... Mnah, mnah, doo doo duh doo-doo.
Ian, Redditch

Suzie's problems with the Pink Panther theme tune arise from singing the wrong libretto. She is not the first to fall into that trap. The original and correct wording is, of course; "Dead ant, (rpt)".
David Dee, Matola Mozambique

Paper Monitor

11:08 UK time, Thursday, 8 March 2012

A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.

Paper Monitor's formative impressions of journalism were shaped in no small part by the New Musical Express - that weekly almanac of what is currently hip in Camden Town's grottier live venues.

The NME turns 60 this year and, to celebrate, the Times runs an about the publication's history.

In particular, it focuses on its 1976 advert for "hip young gunslingers" to serve as staff writers.

Famously, one applicant was Julie Burchill - then a 17-year-old Bristol schoolgirl. Another was Neil Tennant, subsequently singer with the Pet Shop Boys. And much of the competition was just as retrospectively noteworthy:

From Worcestershire a prog-obsessed schoolboy called Jonathan Coe, later to draw on his fixation with the Seventies music press in his novels. From Camden, a schoolteacher with dreams of being a novelist called Sebastian Faulks. The shortlist was eventually narrowed to four: Burchill, a PhD student from Edinburgh called Ian Cranna, a fanzine writer and bookshop assistant from Stockport called Paul Morley and a 23-year-old gin distillery worker from Essex called Tony Parsons.

Burchill and Parsons, famously, were hired - two young, working class iconoclasts, enthused by the dawn of punk, in an office full of hacks who cut their teeth in the hippy era and were suspicious of change.

Of course, the NME was looking for more than just writing talent. On her first assignment, Burchill demonstrated a novel technique of gathering interesting quotes by slipping amphetamines into the drink of her subject, a relic of the hated flower power days.

"The job interview was more like an audition," recalls Parsons. "They were picking people who looked the part more than anything."

This set a new stylistic tone for a publican that would adorn teenage bedroom floors for decades hence.

Indeed, the Independent reports that the NME is to From Bristol and Essex to the world.

Your Letters

18:50 UK time, Wednesday, 7 March 2012

To Simon: The "Gin" in Ginsters is pronounced as in "begin". I wish everyone would stop mentioning pasties. That's started my stomach rumbling all over again!
Fi, Gloucestershire, UK

Anyone else think this could be a disaster?
Sarah, Basel, Switzerland

No, no, no David I have now had the Pink Panther theme tune in my head for the past 3 hrs! Dur nuh, dur nuh, dur nuh, dur nuh, dur nuh, dur nuh, dur nuhhhhh...
Suzie, London

London breweries were not always as .
Rahere, Smithfield

As a foreigner living in France I'd like to suggest that this news story
be retitled for the UK edition of the site as "Foreign president says foreign country has too many foreigners".
Chris in Paris, Paris, France

Paper Monitor

13:56 UK time, Wednesday, 7 March 2012

A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.

Paper Monitor can't ignore it any more. Prince Harry's trip to the Bahamas and Jamaica - the papers have been full of it for the past three days.

So far, he's met a number of beauty queens and hugged Jamaican Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller.

Today we hear he beat the fastest man on the planet, Usain Bolt. This story gets better, because Harry cheated. Harry, apparently, lined up with Bolt, but jumped the gun. The headline writers have clearly enjoyed this one.

"Harry may not be the Lightning Bolt but he knows how to pull a fast one," the Times headline reads. The Daily Star really goes to town, with "Sprints Harry" on its front page and its "One needs to Harry up Usain!" on page four. On page six, the says that the young royal has become a hit and "salutes" the "new faces of the British Monarchy" Prince William, Princess Kate - as they call her - and Harry:

He is having a royal hoot! He has already danced joyfully with babes in Belize. He wowed the Baha- mas at a youth conference. And wooed some of the world's hottest babes, including sexy Miss Bahamas Anastagia Pierre. Then yesterday, a hilarious race against the world's fastest runner Usain Bolt... He is showing the world the best that British royalty has to offer.

It's all good humoured stuff. The Guardian's Eyewitness - it's double-page spread featuring a big photograph - features Harry and Usain laughing and running. In the text accompanying the pictures, we learn that even the great Lightning Bolt has warmed to the royal. We are told that Bolt later tweeted: "Good Jamaican vibes hanging out with the Prince Harry... See you at the Olympics".

The Daily Mail's website shows with an "attractive" young woman:

The 27-year-old royal proved that, unlike most men, he had remarkably good rhythm as he gyrated to a rendition of reggae legend Bob Marley's One Love.

But one thing really stands out - Harry's bright blue desert boots.

Expect the papers' fashion writers to pile in tomorrow.

Your Letters

17:37 UK time, Tuesday, 6 March 2012

So "Dr Vicky Williamson is currently trying to find the best 'cures' for earworms. She says the structure of one tune may have a bearing on whether it's useful in displacing another." She should know that Monitorites solved the issue .
David Wilson, Coventry, UK

Beer saves (Monday's letters)! But Cider scores on the rebound. I'll get my football scarf.
Buzz, London

HB (Monday's letters), I wonder who I should include in my Jordan/Katie Price joke - Brian, James or West?
Susan, Newcastle

While we're on a Cornish theme, could someone tell me if the pasty maker Ginsters is pronounced as in begin, or as in Gin and Tonic?
Simon Robinson, Birmingham, UK

Typical! I spend years - well, most of my life in the UK and then Am I jealous ? Pass the Rioja while I enjoy the sun before it sets... Hic hic...
Tim McMahon, Martos/Spain

Paper Monitor

09:08 UK time, Tuesday, 6 March 2012

A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.

RIP Lord St John of Fawsley, former cabinet minister, barrister, aesthete, amateur constitutional historian, Roman Catholic, staunch monarchist, arts administrator, author, journalist and subject of the most colourful obituaries in recent memory.

As Norman St John-Stevas, he provoked the ire of then-prime minister Margaret Thatcher by crafting a series of nicknames for her including "Tina" (from her arguments that "there is no alternative"), "the blessed Margaret", "the leaderene" and "she who must be obeyed".

Although his short tenure in government, during which he set up the select committee system, left a lasting impact on British politics, he will surely be remembered, in the words of the Guardian's Simon Hoggart, as the The paper records solemnly how he owned "a white Jaguar and a white Rolls Royce which he would drive to Westminster, occasionally dropping off flowers for the Queen Mother at Clarence House en route".

The Times notes that his love of royalty extended to the "He had a photograph of Princess Margaret in a silver frame on his bedside table, and one wall was adorned by a framed pair of Queen Victoria's stockings." But, nonetheless, it notes that his mannerisms were decidedly Roman. "He was prone to proferring his hand in papal fashion, lapsing into Latin and deliberately mispronouncing modern words."

An in the Daily Telegraph gives further flavour of his character:

He liked to tell the story of how he asked to be excused from a meeting because he had a reception to go to. "But I'm going to the same function," protested Mrs Thatcher. "Yes, but it takes me so much longer to change," replied St John-Stevas.

It also celebrates his love of rank and ceremony:

"The trouble with you, Norman," one listener complained, "is that you're such a compulsive name dropper." "The Queen said exactly the same to me yesterday," came the rejoinder.

Even the relatively puritan Daily Mail looks back on the peer fondly, recalling a time when he outraged ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio Two's Jimmy Young by breaking off a live radio interview to answer a knock on his front door. "It's the man from Harrods come to fix my new curtains," he explained.

It

He used to cox a Cambridge crew in a top hat, white tie and tails and was once genuinely upset when he arrived at an occasion in a red cloak, only to find he had been upstaged by someone in a purple one.

After leaving office he went on to serve as chairman of the Fine Art Commission and Master of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where, according to the Times, "he lavishly upgraded the Master's Lodge and a group of his friends were once caught skinny-dipping in the Fellows' swimming pool".

Paper Monitor salutes the memory of a man who was always, throughout his life, good copy.

Your Letters

16:58 UK time, Monday, 5 March 2012

"Of course many people think beer is great but it does not save lives" - Jenny Formby. Actually, it does. A cholera outbreak in Soho, London in 1854 was memorably halted by pioneering doctor John Snow, who simply removed the handle from the pump in Broad Street which was serving up contaminated water to its unwitting victims. One of the clues which led him to the source of the contamination was the fact that even though they lived in the very street where the pump was located, seventy employees of the Broad Street brewery were unaffected by the disease. They were given an allowance of free beer every day by the brewery and so never drank water at all - which saved their lives.
Angus Gafraidh, London, UK

Paper Monitor quotes pro-devolution councillor Bert Biscoe: "There is a word for Cornwall in every European language except Finnish and Basque," he says. "There is no word for Devon in any of them." I reckon most of us here could name one European language that has a word for Devon...
Toby Speight, Lochcarron, Wester Ross

I know the Cornish pasty now has EU protected status, but this has taken nominative determinism to a whole new level. I'll get me Cornish tartan trousers.
Fi, Gloucestershire, UK

Did anyone else sit and listen to the War of the Worlds after seeing the meteor last weekend?
Di, The Castleton, North Yorkshire

"May visits Jordan over Abu Qatada" [insert standard Jordan/Katie Price joke here].
HB, London

10 Things, point 10: I have reduced the population figures since moving yet I have always said I would rather be 60 years young than forty years "old".
Tim McMahon, Spain, formerly of Wales

Paper Monitor

10:19 UK time, Monday, 5 March 2012

A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.

Happy St Piran's day! That's the national day of Cornwall, for those of you unfamiliar with the significance of the date, and Paper Monitor - who holidayed in the county last autumn, and is clearly now halfway to full Brythonic status - looks forward to raising a a glass of Doom Bar by way of celebration.

The Times marks the occasion by asking whether Cornwall's burgeoning nationalist movement could, like their counterparts in Scotland and Wales, secure a devolved Assembly.

Certainly, It says a survey of 70,000 schoolchildren found that 41% see themselves as "Cornish" rather than "English", a rise on 2009's figures. In December, a petition demanding home rule was submitted to Downing Street after attracting 50,000 signatures - equivalent to 10% of the county's population.

However, a quote from pro-devolution councillor Bert Biscoe suggests intra-West Country rivalries may have contributed to this groullndswell. "There is a word for Cornwall in every European language except Finnish and Basque," he says. "There is no word for Devon in any of them."

The Daily Mirror takes a less controversial approach to St Piran's day: it covers the World Pasty Championships at the Eden Project.

"Pasties are taken very seriously in Cornwall," "Additions like peas and carrots are frowned upon."

Appropriately, accolades went to a chef who specialises in beef and smoked fish pasties named Graham Cornish.

Readers tempted to pack up their belongings and relocate to the western end of the A30 may wish to consult an article by the Daily Mail's Liz Jones, in which she asks whether
Although the feature is decorated by an image of Ms Jones in full squire attire, she concludes in the negative:

I find Barbours simply not warm enough for the reality of looking after horses in winter, while a flat cap might make me look as though I condone shooting and fishing, which I most certainly do not. I tend to dress in a much more eccentric and townie fashion, with Prada jodhpurs, a Helmut Lang frock coat for walking my four dogs, and a Topshop parka for mucking out.

Ms Jones's are once again given fuller context. Perhaps she could pop down to Cornwall and pick up some pasties for them as a gesture of reconciliation.

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