Leona Lewis attacked by fan / buck-toothed nut

So singer Leona Lewis has been punched in the head at a book signing. Here's the BBC News headline and intro:




Even if the man who attacked Lewis bought a copy of her autobiography and queued up nicely for a signature, I still think it's a bit of a stretch to assume he is a "fan".

The Sun, on the other hand, calls the attacker a "geeky bumpkin", a "maniac", "warped" and a "buck-toothed nut".

Cambridge: Home of Anglia Ruskin University

I spotted this sign while on the train to Ely recently:




Cambridge, home of Anglia Ruskin University.

Wait a minute - isn't there another university in Cambridge too? I can't for the life of me remember what it's called...

The Nordics - and Scandinavia

A recent email from our CEO talked about "plans to sell our businesses in the Nordics". The Nordics?

I'd thought that 'the Nordic countries' and 'Scandinavia' were synonyms (if I'd thought about it at all), but it appears that the former term almost always includes Finland and Iceland, while the latter term often doesn't.

As Wikipedia says (referencing the brilliantly named Kenneth R Olwig):

"Scandinavia" has no official definition and is subject to usage by those who identify with the culture in question, as well as interpretation by outsiders who attempt to give the term their own meaning. The term is, therefore, often defined according to the conventions of the cultures that lay claim to the term in their own usage

The OED Online defines 'Nordic' (adjective) as "of or relating to Scandinavia, the Scandinavian people, or their languages", which doesn't really clarify the matter. I'm sure my Concise OED gives different definition, but I'll have to check when I'm back at work.

• Is it Scandinavian or Nordic? The Difference Between Scandinavian vs Nordic

James Brown's latest request

As regular readers of this blog will know, a couple of weeks ago I received an email from James Brown wanting to know if I had sun loungers for sale.

Undeterred by my lack of response, Mr Brown has written to me again - and now he's after some asymmetric bars:



I'm surprised he isn't asking for a brand new bag to put them in...

Headline: Grant seals return to Portsmouth

I first saw this headline out of context - in a giant news ticker in the window of my local Sainsbury's supermarket. It left me wondering what Grant seals were, and why they had abandoned Portsmouth in the first place. Perhaps the water was too polluted?

It was only when I got home and Googled 'Grant seals return to Portsmouth' that I discovered the headline was from a BBC Sport story about Avram Grant's return to Portsmouth FC (as you can probably tell, I'm not much of a football fan).

The Turner Prize and Enrico David Enrico

On Monday the London Lite ran a short piece on the entries for this year's Turner Prize. Here's part of it:


I feel sorry for the caption-writer on this one. David Enrico sounds a more plausible name than Enrico David (in my opinion).

At least the London Lite is less critical of the Turner Prize than the Daily Mail...

Word of the day: microperfed

The notebook I use at work is "microperfed", which I assume means it has tiny perforations.

To my surprise, the word throws up a respectable 25,400 results on Google (and that's not including variations such as "micro-perfed").

It's not only paper that can be microperfed - plastic bags and shoes are also microperfable. And, er, shapes.

I've just checked again and my notebook is actually a "jotta". That's the description, not the product name...

JD gets Wired

For the first time since I was at school, I'm a magazine subscriber. I've been bought a subscription to Wired UK as a birthday present, and my first issue dropped through the letterbox today. I haven't read it yet, but it does smell nice.

Incidentally, the magazine (or rather, comic) that I subscribed to during my schooldays was Eagle. It folded in 1994. I hope I have a better influence on Wired...

It's 0 Aug 2009

Pete Docherty Doherty sang about the 32nd of December, but my web mail seems to be inventing dates of its own: