A balls-up from iTunes Genius

So iTunes' Genius feature is not such a genius (click on the image to see a larger version):

I selected a song from my collection by North London singer-songwriter Edward Ball, and Genius suggested an album of easy-listening piano music by Peter Triggvi and Edward Ballantyne.

If Duncan Bannatyne and Johnny Ball ever take up singing and release a duet, I shall have to disable Genius entirely.

Update 9.30pm - so here's a video from Ed Ball (not Edward Ballantyne) complete with Anna Friel guest appearance:

Orange you glad I'm a banana?

Thanks to my colleague Adam Tinworth, firstly for taking this photo and secondly for letting me publish it here on The Engine Room.

Photo special: infer / imply

Today I took an online course on competition laws ('antitrust' to some of you), and I was pleased to see it contained this example of infer/imply confusion:



Great photo too.

'Stand up or lay down'

Here's a good example of lie/lay confusion.

I don't want to be too prescriptivist or anything, but most people would agree that the sign should read 'Stand up or lie down...'

I'm not going to go into too much detail about 'lie' and 'lay' because doing so would probably give me flashbacks to my teaching days, but there's some useful information about them on the British Council website.

I took this photo in Croydon last year, as I recall.

Incidentally, I think the rhyme would scan better if the second line read 'Come in and get brown'.

Oh dear, I've just had a flashback to my performance poetry days...