SUNDAY SECTION

The English language is to dificult to spel. The Register

“more than half of native speakers of the lingo can't spell "embarrassed" - and even more have entered the new millennium without the foggiest idea of how 1,000 years pan out in our beloved mother tongue.

To be precise, 54 per cent of us are embarrassed by "embarrassed", while 60 per cent can't handle "millennium", according to a pole poll by the Spelling Society - a pack of linguistic do-gooders who reckon the time has come to introduce "a more simplified, phonetic system",

The article claims that we are still using English as it was spoken in the 13th to 15th centuries, not how it is spoken today. So many sound changes have occurred that are not reflected in modern spelling, that we are left with a fossilised system.”

Isn’t that the idea, otherwise it wouldn’t be “English” would it.

Anyway if you want to test your spelling (and yes I know the header is misspelt) you can do it here.

One for the Ladies.

Want to find the sexiest, funniest or rudest? Weird news stories, bizarre, strange the Reader’s Digest apparently have carried out a survey , and Italy seems to have come out on top as the most popular, the most sexy and the nationality they would most like to be.

Brits came out as the best sense of humour and we are thought to have contributed most to the world, with respondents citing football, medicine and industry among others as the reason.

The main ratings are below.

Sexiest – Italians, followed by Spain, then France

Least sexy – Belgians

Funniest – British

Least funny - Swiss

Most efficient – Germans

Rudest – Germans, with French secondLeast rude – Norway and Switzerland

Most open-minded – Dutch

Favourite European city – Paris

Favourite country – Italy, with Spain second, France third

And a few comments from respondents-

Middle-aged Belgian woman – “The Germans make too much noise and are too chauvinistic.”

Young Dutch woman – “The English do not seem to know how to behave when they’re on holiday. All they do is drink and yell.”

Spanish shop assistant on Italians – “They party and have a great sense of humour.”

Young Briton on Italians – “They know they’re sexy, which is annoying, but it makes them even more attractive.”

Briton on contribution of Irish – “They gave the world Guinness.”
Elderly Swiss man on British contribution to world – “They created football.”

That’s us nailed then!


I want one of those!

Man accused of changing traffic lights - Boston.com A man who said he bought a device that let him change traffic lights from red to green has received a $50 ticket on suspicion of interfering with a traffic signal.

Jason Niccum of Longmont told the Daily Times-Call that the device, which he bought on eBay for $100, helped him cut his time driving to work.

"I guess in the two years I had it, that thing paid for itself," he told the newspaper Wednesday.

Niccum was cited March 29 after police said they found him using a strobe-like device to change traffic signals.

"I'm always running late," police quoted Niccum as saying in an incident report.
The device, called an Opticon, is similar to what fire-fighters use to change lights when they respond to emergencies. It emits an infrared pulse that receivers on the traffic lights pick up.

Sadly City traffic engineer Joe Olson said traffic engineers plan to update the city's Opticon system this year to block unauthorized light-changing signals.

Oh well I live in hope.


And finally if you are a bit “green” and want to see who is destroying the world with
Greenhouse gasses and how many people are being born and the other thing take a look at breathingearth.net , but turn the sound up.

“Nothing is wonderful when you get used to it.” Edward W Howe


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