Headlines that make you smile inscrutably

So the BBC News site serves up the following headline to me via the Firefox live bookmark I have pointing to their RSS feed:

China finds major dinosaur site

Um, yeah… that’s the Politburo, right?

Have a Happy (Non-Lunar, have to wait til January 26th for that…) New Year!

I am a snorathelete

Yet another BBC News headline — this time it’s personal…

Heavy snorers ‘burn more energy’

Yes, if there were snorlympics, I’d be in medal contention for sure…

If beaked whales had email…

…would they get teeth enlargement spam?

BBC News reports that “Whales’ teeth are aid to mating“.

It’s an interesting article, despite my slightly flippant comment about spam — although I felt sorry for the beaked whale when Scott Baker, associate director of the Marine Mammal Institute at Oregon State University in the US, was quoted in the article as saying “Beaked whales are among the least known, least understood and, frankly, most bizarre whales in the ocean.”

Bizarre?  Compared to a species that creates the internet and then uses it to send enlargement spam?  Sort of the kettle calling the pot black, no?

Been there, seen that

Another headline from the BBC News feed caught my eye, this time only because of my “French Connection” — having lived and worked in France for 4 years while at previous job, I have a continued interest in things to do with France (and French-speaking cultures elsewhere, comme notre Belle Province de Québec).

So, the headline was: A curiously French complaint

And having lived there and dealing with the French medical system, I can attest to the truth of what the article’s author has written about the propensity to dole out pills and potions at the drop of a chapeau.

To be fair, though, both K and I did receive excellent medical care while there — we had a wonderful physician, Dr. C-A Pigeot, as well as excellent para-medical practitioners (a chiropractor and an osteopath, in particular).

As well, in addition to jambes lourdes or “heavy legs” being a common and largely French condition, the French also seem to have a near-pathological aversion to drafts or courants d’air, to which all sorts of maladies are attributed.

Ah, well… vive la différence.

Headlines that make you hungry, after they make you smile

OK, this one from BBC News just caught my eye, and it’s just too good to pass up:

US man uses pizza in self-defence

What next, pepperoni spray?

Three-for-Three, A Hat Trick And All That

Another marvellous BBC News headline to bring a smile to your lips (and a bit of indigestion to your gut):

Lard day’s work – sculptures made from fat by army chefs

OK, so the actual headline when you get to the page is “Chefs’ award for lard sculptures”, but the one above is what showed up in my Firefox live bookmark.

I’m sure the British people are resting much easier knowing that their fair land is well guarded…

We’re on a roll this week — thank you, BBC News for another headline that makes you… wonder

OK, another headline from the BBC News site that’s just too good to pass by:

Chinese girl gets ‘kiss of deaf’

I don’t make ‘em up, folks, I just reports ‘em…

Headlines that make you wonder how do you get a job writing headlines like this?

Haven’t posted a “headlines that make you…” entry in a bit, but this one on the BBC News website was just too good to pass up:

Daily nuts may help boost health

I mean, seriously, I would kill (well, metaphorically speaking…) for a job where I got paid to write stuff like that

6th Photo Meme – PAB2008 Time for social networking in person between presentations

Time for social networking in person between presentations, originally uploaded by Rob_42.

I’ve been tagged by the lovely and talented Bob Goyetche (co-organizer of Podcasters Across Borders a.k.a. PAB, and co-host of the Canadian Podcast Buffet) for the 6th Photo Meme. And since there’s apparently an innocent dolphin’s life at stake, I figured I needed to follow through on it…

The rules of the meme are simple enough, it works like this: if you use Flickr, go to the sixth page of your photostream and pick the sixth picture there, then post it to your blog.

Except I don’t post many photos to Flickr, so it took a bit of juggling with the photstream layout to get it onto 6 pages. And even then, there are not 6 photos on the 6th and last page — so I’ve fudged a bit by using the 3rd photo, which in my pretzled logic I reasoned was halfway to 6.

So the photo that’s posted is actually from PAB 2008 — nice bit of symmetry after being tagged by one of the organizers

In the photo, you can see the Comfy Sofas that were a new addition to the facilities this year, and by all accounts were very popular so it’s likely they will make an encore appearance at PAB 2009.

And people, you can see people — that’s the great thing about attending PAB is meeting people face-to-face that you’ve know via the internet. This photo was shot in between presentations, when everyone had a chance to mingle and talk.

OK, so the backlighting from the windows was less than ideal for the shot, but you work with what ya got, eh? Still turned out reasonably well, particularly given the age of our camera — it’s a circa 1999 vintage Kodak DC290 digital camera, with a whopping 2.1 megapixels and an appetite for AA batteries like you wouldn’t believe (have completely worn out several sets of rechargeables over the years with it).

Now, to tag 6 new recipients:

John Meadows Damn! Blevis beat me to him…  let’s try tagging Oza Meilleur instead.
Valerie Hunter
Colin
Todd Tyrtle
Mark Blaseckie
Nora Young

Forgive me for meming you… but it’s for the dolphin!

The Non-Coalition of Canadians For The Prorogation Of Damn Near Everything

Since hearing the sad news today that Her Excellency Governor General Michaëlle Jean has accepted the request of the Right Honourable Prime Minister Stephen Harper to prorogue the 40th Canadian Parliament, I have reflected on my post of yesterday declaiming exactly this undemocratic maneuvre of requesting the prorogation of Parliament for the, to my eyes at least, fairly venal purpose of saving the Prime Minister’s job and dodging his accountability for the government’s fiscally irresponsible actions (Canada had already been running a deficit earlier this year, and then when the economic crisis hit full force, the PM announced that he was prepared to do so even more vigourously in an attempt to stimulate the economy…  let’s see, the economy was already tanking whilst running a deficit, so we’ll keep trying that until it works.  Riiiiight!  You know what they say about insanity: it’s when you do the same thing over and over, expecting a different result.)

Yes, I am recanting (OK, maybe not so much… read on) my position — rather than see purely the negative in the PM’s self-serving actions, why not learn and profit from them?  Why not, indeed?

So, to that end lets take a positive look at his actions and see how we can all apply the same sort of logic (erm, well, if you can call it that…) to the lives of ordinary, everyday Canadians like you and me.

And having thought about how the PM’s actions can serve as a lesson to us all, it came to me in a flash of inspiration: The Non-Coalition of Canadians For The Prorogation Of Damn Near Everything (or TNCOCFTPODNE — really rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?)

So just what does the TNCOCFTPODNE think we should all do in a show of solidarity with the poor, beleaguered PM?  Here’s the FAQ:

Afraid of losing your job due to a layoff, downsizing, rightsizing, off-shoring or just plain old greedy profit taking?  Request the GG to prorogue job losses!

Mortgage payments are too high?  Request the GG to prorogue your mortgage!

Can’t afford your car loan?  Request the GG to prorogue that too!

Credit card companies are hounding you?  Easy — get the GG to prorogue those pesky statements!

I have started a Facebook group for TNCOCFTPODNE, which is open to one and all.  Join now and start enjoying the freedom from stress that the prorogation of damn near everything will bring you!