Word of the Day 6: Retronym

(Noun) The renaming of something because it has been superceded by something newer with a similar name or quality, such that a distinction needs making.

Usage: For example, The First World War was previously known as 'the Great War' until a distinction needed to be made between it and its bigger, altogether nastier brother, the Second World War.

Source: Wikipedia: Retronym

Word of the Day 5: Three Penny Upright

(Noun) "A retailer of love, who for the sum mentioned, dispenses her favours standing against a wall."

Usage: "I was ruttish and hungry upon my journey home from the alehouse, so availed myself of a three penny upright and a meat pie and still had change from a shilling."

Source: The Vulgar Tongue by Francis Grose (1785)

Word of the Day 4: Obesogenic

(Adj) Tending to cause obesity.

Usage: "Would you prefer semi-skimmed or obesogenic milk in your coffee?"

Source: Ask Oxford: New Words

Zen 24: Nothing new under the sun

You know when you watch a Hollywood blockbuster and you have that nagging sense of deja vu? Like your eyeballs have walked this path before? That's because they probably have. To whit:

No signal - essential mobile phone component of any self-respecting scholck horror:



Let's enhance - Hollywood bends the laws of physics:




The Wilhelm Scream - cinema's most overused sound effect; discover how deep it has bored itself into your psyche:

Zen 23: Geek humour

Coolest geek webstrip in the world bar none. I give you XKCD.

Zen 22: He'll stab you up

Fine lunatic art from Ryan Abegglen. Compare the lusty bray of his biomechanical equine marvel with the rabbit loathing of his death dealing Cockney weasel.





















http://www.ryanabegglen.com/

Word of the Day 3: Chillax

The bastard hybrid of "chillout" and "relax", to be used in a post-ironic, I've-seen-Madagascar-2 sort of way. If at all.

Source: The Urban Dictionary: Chillax [LINK]

Zen 21: The customer isn't right

Not Always Right is a collection of retarded exchanges between shop assistants and their customers. (This site sent to me by my American Indian (web)tracker chum, Little Horse.) Laugh-um. Heap big. How.

Pet Store | Calgary, AB, Canada

Me: “Thank you for calling [pet store], how can I help you?”

Customer: “Yes, operator. Can you please connect me to [pet store]?”

Me: “This is [pet store], ma’am.”

Customer: “[Pet store]! I NEED TO BE CONNECTED TO [pet store]!”

Me: “Ma’am, this is [pet store].”

Customer: “[Pet store!] I NEED TO BE CONNECTED IMMEDIATELY, IT’S AN EMERGENCY!”

Me: “Ma’am, this is [pet store]. How can I help you?”

Customer: “Oh, this is [pet store]? I’d like to buy a doggie sweater.”

Not always right [LINK]

Zen 20: The archbishop makes a point, but we're not sure what it is

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, says the government treats religious faith as an "eccentricity" practised by "oddities". At last! Brown's got something right!

Word of the Day 2: Neoteny

(Noun) Retention of juvenile aspects of in the adult of the species. The capacity to play, no matter how old you are, might be considered a form of neoteny. Toy dogs are a less appetising example of same and distinctly more kickable.

Neoteny: Wikipedia [LINK]

Zen 19: Lightning Sichuan face-changing

The ancient face-swapping art of traditional Sichuan opera. Interesting, but suspect this works on a rig that's much the same as the one magicians use to make handkerchiefs vanish. Jolly clever all the same:



For extra points, see if you can spot the difference between the New Tang Dynasty TV report above and the BBC link below:

BBC News: Chinese performer wows with speedy face mask changes [LINK]

Zen 18: Strange beliefs

From Ted talks, the director of the Skeptic's Society, Dr Michael Shermer, "debunks myths, superstitions and urban legends, and explains why we believe them". It's a really excellent talk. And Katie Melua has just shot up in my estimation too...

Zen 17: Support this campaign

It may be decades since you really last gave a damn about what was number one in the charts, but find it in your heart to get Rage Against the Machine to the top spot ahead of whichever anodyne nobody won the X Factor this year. It so doesn't matter, but it so does. Give generously.

Buy your mum a copy perhaps? "Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me..." (repeat until festive crescendo).

BBC News: Rock anthem outselling X Factor winner Joe McElderry [LINK]
Facebook group: Rage Against the Machine for Christmas No1 [LINK]

Zen 16: Ho-ho-holy shit that's a lot of patronage

Who could resist a website with the strapline: "notes about your extended family in heaven". Not me, especially when it boasts more 'saints, beati and venerables' that literally any other site in the whole wide world (6,446 and counting). I was following up a line about Santa Claus a.k.a. St Nicholas of Myra being, amongst other things, the patron saint of murderers.

I'd have thought that even for a benign and forgiving god, murderers would be pretty much beyond the pale in the whole patronage scheme of things. Turns out they are for the most part, but penitent murderers are indeed patronised by Santa, who also extends his aegis to the following:

Apothecaries, archers, bakers, barrel makers, brewers, boot blacks, children, the Greek Catholic Church in America, judges, mariners, merchants, prisoners, newlyweds, old maids, parish clerks, pilgrims, the poor and scholars.

And is additionally patron saint of the following places: Amsterdam, Beit Jala (Palestinian Territory), Greece, Limerick, Liverpool, Portsmouth, Russia, Sicily, the University of Paris and no less than 18 towns in Italy.

But strangely not the North Pole. I smell a rat.

Word of the Day 1: Fussock

(Noun) A lazy, fat woman. An old fussock. A frowzy old woman.

Source: The Vulgar Tongue by Francis Grose (1785)

Zen 15: How evil prevails

Social psychologist Phil Zimbardo, who conducted the notorious 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, has outlined the seven processes 'that grease the slippery slope of evil':

1. Mindlessly taking the first small step

2. Dehumanisation of others

3. De-individualisation of self (anonymity)

4. Diffusion of personal responsibility

5. Blind obedience to authority

6. Uncritical conformity to group norms

7. Passive tolerance of evil through inaction or indifference

Stay vigilant.

Zen 14: The 12 days of a French Christmas

Stumbled upon the French lyrics for the classic English carol, the 12 days of Christmas. While the English version is principally concerned with wholesome poultry and pageantry, our Gallic cousins display an altogether more French set of preoccupations. Far be it from me to congratulate the French for anything, but they may actually have improved on the original.

A loose translation follows:

On the 1st day of Christmas, my true love gave to me a good stuffing without bones.
On the 2nd day of Christmas, my true love gave to me two breasts of veal.
On the 3rd day of Christmas, my true love gave to me three joints of beef.
On the 4th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me four pigs' trotters.
On the 5th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me five legs of mutton.
On the 6th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me six partridges with cabbage.
On the 7th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me seven spitted rabbits.
On the 8th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me eight plates of salad.
On the 9th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me nine dishes for a chapter of canons.
On the 10th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me ten full casks.
On the 11th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me eleven beautiful full-breasted maidens.
On the 12th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me and twelve musketeers with their swords.

Zen 13: O-oh, saaaay caaan youuuuuu seeeeee...

I was going to write this blog post about the symbolism of the number 13 in the United States. It crops up all the time. Take, for example, the presidential seal. There are 13 stars and 13 cloud puffs above the eagle, 13 leaves on the olive branch in its right claw, 13 arrows in its left and 13 bars on the shield. There are 13 stripes on the American flag and 13 levels to the pyramid on the dollar bill.

Does this, indeed, prove that the United States is a Satanic agency upon the face of the Earth? No. It means that there were 13 original colonies when the US went solo. Anyway, in the midst of my travels around the topic, I came across this sublime message board exchange on the unluckiness or otherwise of Friday the 13th. Enjoy.

icemarle: I've been through Friday the 13th a few times, and it's an ordinary day. I know so many people who haven't had anything happen to them on that day considered as bad luck. In fact, it's merely a coincidence if people have bad luck on that day.

Invisible: I don't think Friday the 13th brings bad luck, some people do but they also fear a black cat and stuff and I had a black cat and I was not unlucky at all.

sonyguy: Well, unfortunately last year on Friday 13th August, I lost a friend, he died in a bicycle accident.

cmatcmextra: [scenario] You hate your neighbour and someone vandalises her property. To your neighbour this is bad luck but to you it is good because you have a grudge against her. [/scenario] Bad luck depends on who you are.

Neutrality: I believe has to do with Jesus Christ dying on a "Friday the 13th". I doubt this one is true, but it's possible.

rvovk: Friday 13th actually happened in the past.

iGuest: totall superstition, all invented by the brain......Its just like bloody mary...If you want to see her your brain makes you see her, totall hallucination.

Behold the mighty power of the interwebs.

Zen 12: Go forth, Walt, in your Levis

Visually arresting little films, set to the poetry of bonkers Walt Whitman. The second one purportedly features Walt himself reading his 1888 poem 'America'. Sort of a shame they're both just ads for Levis, but sort of appropriate too.

"We, the youthful, sinewy races, all the rest on us depend." Yeah baby.


Go forth. [LINK] (There's even a bit of man love in the first one, if that rings your bell.)

Zen 11: Not jazzy enough

A festival-goer has called the police on a band who were not jazzy enough for his tastes, claiming it was "psychologically inadvisable" for him to listen to non-jazz music.

Full story on the Guardian website [LINK].

Zen 10: How people scam you

These are the six principles people use to rip yo ass off, neatly summarised on the blog Schneier on Security* [LINK].

"1. The distraction principle. While you are distracted by what retains your interest, hustlers can do anything to you and you won't notice.

2. The social compliance principle. Society trains people not to question authority. Hustlers exploit this "suspension of suspiciousness" to make you do what they want.

3. The herd principle. Even suspicious marks will let their guard down when everyone next to them appears to share the same risks. Safety in numbers? Not if they're all conspiring against you.

4. The dishonesty principle. Anything illegal you do will be used against you by the fraudster, making it harder for you to seek help once you realize you've been had.

5. The deception principle. Thing and people are not what they seem. Hustlers know how to manipulate you to make you believe that they are.

6. The need and greed principle. Your needs and desires make you vulnerable. Once hustlers know what you really want, they can easily manipulate you."

*Schneier got it from a Cambridge University paper entitled 'Understanding scam victims: seven principles for systems security' [LINK]. Interesting to think Cambridge types actually study this stuff.

Zen 9: Scoutmaster gets fingered

Much excitement surrounds a document, bought at auction today for nearly £4K, that suggests that the founder of the Boy Scout movement, Robert Baden-Powell, was a war criminal. He wasn't, if for no better reason that the concept didn't exist in 1897. Even so, but for the old-boy network, the world might never have dib-dib-dibbed. Or indeed dob-dob-dobbed for that matter.

It all happened when Baden-Powell was chief staff officer to a British force sent out to put down a late 19th century rebellion in what is now Zimbabwe, but was then Matabeleland. Baden-Powell himself covers off the socio-political landscape very neatly in his memoirs:

"The reason for the sudden call for General Carrington was that the Matabele tribe in South Africa had broken out, and its warriors were murdering the white settlers there. The Matabele were originally Zulus who under the leadership of 'Msilikatsi, son of Matshobane, had been sent on a raiding expedition by the Zulu King, Tshaka in 1847.

Their attack having failed they were expected to return according to custom, and to be disarmed and then to have their necks broken by the women of the tribe. On this occasion they did not see it in the same light, and elected not to return home but to go off, on their own, with unbroken necks, to the northward, until they could discover a suitable country to settle in.

This they eventually found in what is now known as Southern Rhodesia, where, having wiped out the unwarlike Makalaka inhabitants, and having bagged their women and cattle, they settled down at Gubulawayo and formed a new tribe."

The Matabele attack having failed, Baden-Powell and chums went in search of one the 'Mlimo' - oracles who had encouraged the uprising. "After an exciting scrap" writes BP, "our men captured the Chief [named Uwini], wounded but defiant." Then they shot him.

BP maintains that they shot him following a court martial for murdering white settlers. The greater likelihood is that they shot him as a graphic illustration to his followers that their bullets wouldn't turn to water as Uwini claimed they would.

So far, so colonial. Only it turns out that Uwini hadn't been captured, he'd surrendered and should properly have been handed over to civilians to face justice. BP narrowly avoided a court martial for taking matters into his own hands, and the subsequent board of enquiry was fudged to exonerate him, basically because he was a thoroughly pukka chap. But the records of the inquiry (auctioned today) made it clear that Uwini had definitely come out with his hands up.

As for BP, he skates over it in his memoirs, reserving comment beyond saying that he felt a bit aggrieved he didn't get a decoration for his work in putting down the Matabele. Still, it was all OK in the end, as he writes:

"Some years later, when I was in Africa again for the Boer War, a man came up to me in Cape Town and asked: 'Did you ever get that C.M.G. for the execution of Uwini?' And when I laughingly told him 'No' he drew from his wrist a common iron wire bracelet which he handed to me and said: 'Here it is then - the bracelet Uwini had on him when we shot him. I was one of the firing party.'"

Zen 8: Lucky seven

Lists are the last refuge of the blog scoundrel, but these are all worth a look:

• Pilot lands aircraft with one wing
• Man casually disarms gunman
• Baby hit by 250 tonne train escapes unharmed
• Man hit by train hit by truck 'born again'
  
• World's toughest 4-year-old
  
• Rally safety guy safe
  
• And this is just fucking incredible...[got to love the voiceover]
  

Zen 7: Nunchucks

Geddit?!!?

Zen 6: A posh goose (proper gander)

While looking for a picture to slap on Zen 5, I happened upon these marvellous examples of wartime pithiness.

















We've all experienced this one, chaps.


















Isn't there some ironing for you to be doing?


















"At the next exit, turn east..."





















So subtle it's almost subliminal.

















That's it Adolf. Look back over your shoulder. Like a frightened deer. Yeah. Mmm.



















Who? Darth Vader?

Zen 5: The Devil's Mountains

Did you ever wonder what they did with all the rubble after the Second World War? Take a big city like Berlin, the centre of which was virtually levelled. What did they do with all that brick and mortar? Where did the megatonnes of powdered concrete, marble and sandstone go?

These things keep me awake at night, so I looked it up.

It turns out that being organised people, the Germans generally made a big, tidy pile of all the junk and then gave it a name. One or more of these big, tidy piles resides next to most major German cities (thanks to our very efficient strategic and area bombing campaigns 1942-1945) and is generically known as a trümmerberg or 'rubble mountain'.

The biggest trümmerberg of the eight dotted around Berlin is called the Teufelsberg or 'Devil's Mountain'. It represents around half-a-million buildings and stands 115m high. It was positioned on top of a Nazi college - the Wehrtechnische Fakultät - designed by Hitler's architect Albert Speer (we don't know if they took the Nazis out first) and the Allies built a impressively phallic listening post at the top of it to spy on the Russkies during the Cold War. (Seriously. It even has balls.) The Teufelsberg once boasted a ski run and is now classified as forest famous for its wild pigs.

The Birkenkopf near Stuttgart is the product of 53 heavy air raids and is known locally as the Monte Scherbelino, which roughly translates as Mount Bits-and-Pieces.

Zen 4: Tiger Woods though, wouldn't he?

I have not, to the best of my knowledge, ever had an affair with Tiger Woods.

Zen 3: My favourite YouTube clip ever

You need the volume up.

Zen 2: Christmas Rat

This morning much enlivened by news that a singing Christmas mouse has been withdrawn from sale after it was discovered it sang the word 'paedophile' instead of 'jingle bells'.

Update: Here's the clip from the Today programme. Judge for yourself...[LINK]

Zen 1: You have to start somewhere

A Korean woman has finally passed the written exam for her driving test at the 950th attempt. She still has the practical to go, but harken to her heartwarming tale of perseverance.

"I believe you can achieve your goal if you persistently pursue it," Mrs Cha Sa-soon (no relation to Siegfried apparently) told Reuters news agency. She plans to use her licence to drive 260 miles a day delivering fruit and veg.

Heartwarming, yes, but examine the detail of the story. The written test she spent £2,600 and four years passing consisted of just 50 multiple choice questions and had a passmark of only 60%. This means that, statistically speaking, she could have set a trained parrot to answer the questions for her entirely randomly and stood a good chance of passing after a couple of hundred attempts.

So should we be celebrating the fact that someone so demonstrably obtuse is one step closer to gaining solo control of two tonnes of hurtling metal and plastic as a conveyance for a potentially lethal cargo of outlandish oriental groceries, to be propelled along the highways and byeways on a daily commute that would require someone half her age to be permanently smacked off their bonce on uppers and Red Bull just to keep themselves at a level of deadly sub-optimal alertness - a monstrous pickled radish of death, bestridden by a hopped up geriatric sybil possessed of a fiendish determination commensurate with a water buffalo in rut and an intellect to match? Is that really what we're saying?

As it turns out, she lives in Korea, so yeah, why not.