Well it’s good to return after an unplanned, unannounced sabbatical from the blog with something unusually positive. (BTW, I’m writing this after deleting about 1380 spam comments–has anyone else noticed that in the last year or so the concerns of spam have shifted from porn, viagra, and, erm, “member enhancements” to focus mainly on offers […]

The BBC features an article on The Meaning Of Tingo, a book by euphoniously named Adam Jacot de Boinod that collects some words or phrases that deserve to be borrowed by English.For example, the Japanese phrase “bakku-shan” describes a girl who appears pretty from behind but not from the front (a phrase that is quite […]

From the surprisingly dependable National Enquirer:”Bush, who said he quit drinking the morning after his 40th birthday, has started boozing amid the Katrina catastrophe.”When the levees broke in New Orleans, it apparently made him reach for a shot,” said one insider. “He poured himself a Texas-sized shot of straight whiskey and tossed it back. The […]

Those who have earned a crust writing courseware for that nebulous industry, e-Learning, often cringed at the “scenarios” they had to create that illustrated some recommended workplace behavior. These scenarios are usually populated by saintly figures of decorum and tact (illuminating the “right” approach) and oblivious boors who make sexist comments and say the worst […]

That, I can imagine, would be the response if you invited the “cool kid” from school over to your house to play this touchingly ill-begotten attempt to help children “discover fundamentals of computer programming by playing a board game!”(As reported by Wired news.)

Review of Kevin Stevens’s latest novel, Song for Katya reviewed here.

The most recent issue of The Economist features an article describing the finding of the Chernobyl Forum, “a group of several hundred scientists, economists and health experts supported by the three governments involved�those of Ukraine, Russia and Belarus.”Broadly speaking, these experts conclude that the long-term effects of the disaster are significantly less severe than was […]

Saturday’s Irish Times featured an entertaining review by Booker-shortlisted author John Banville of Neil Steinberg’s Hatless Jack: the President, the Fedora and the Death of the Hat.This exhaustive compendium of headgear-related facts attempts to correct the myth, of which I was blissfully unaware until yesterday, that Kennedy’s aversion to hats doomed the industry. Steinberg points […]

From Saturday’s Irish Times article headlined “Two homeless found dead in 12-hour period”:When contacted for comment, Alice Leahy, director of the homeless charity Trust, said homeless people dying on the streets of Dublin is now “almost a weekly occurrence”.