A story we've been covering at work recently is the possible merger of truck manufacturers MAN and Scania.One of our writers suggested that if they were to merge, the new company could be called 'Mania' - or 'Scam'...
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The London Evening Standard today ran a feature on "multi-tasking beauty treatments" ('Party Season Pit Stops', page 36). One of the crossheads was rather ambiguous:FOR MEN WHO NEED A POST-OFFICE PICK-ME-UPI'm a man, and the only thing I'm likely to pick up in the Post Office is a book of stamps.Granted, putting the crosshead in caps (a trap that the online version avoids) doesn't help, but couldn't the Standard have run with 'post-work' or 'after-office' instead?
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So I just tried to log into a certain program and got this error message:"Access was denied after it has been already asserted." What does this mean? I can't log in because I've already logged in?And surely the tenses are wrong too. Access was asserted first, and then denied, so "Access was denied after it was asserted" would make more sense. Or perhaps "Access has been denied after already having been asserted".I'm still not sure what it means, though.
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A couple of snippets of raw copy for you today, chosen for the interesting images they bring to mind.First, a simple typo:The proposed regional distribution centre is currently at the planing stage, but Morrisons is confident that the site, just off the M5, will be operational by mid-2011.Is the distribution centre made of wood?And then there's this:Since January, the company has opened a 273,000ft2 Barking facility, invested in electronic proof-of-delivery technology and won several signific... Read Full Story
On Friday, Metro ran a story about the Scrudle, a plastic device which is "said to allow cooks to seamlessly scoop up equal amounts of ingredients without any spillages".It added:Scrudle, which rhymes with strudel and is a mixture of the words scraper and ladle, was the brainchild of Margaret O'Callaghan.A mixture of the words scraper and ladle? Surely that would be 'scradle' (or 'scraple') rather than 'scrudle'? So was there a third word contributing to the name - and if so, what? 'Stew'? 'O... Read Full Story
There's a long-running BBC TV show called SMart. It's about art and it's aimed at children. So why the name 'SMart'?Well, obviously, the word 'smart' contains within it the word 'art'. So far, so good. It's just that capital 'M' that bugs me.I would have gone for 'SmArt'. I can also see the argument for 'SmART' - or even just 'Smart'. But 'SMart'?Perhaps 'SMart' stands for 'Super Magic Art' or something similar. Wait a minute, though, that would give us 'SMArt'...So many alternatives!
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The Wikipedia page on Derby, Iowa begins:Derby is a city in Lucas County, Iowa, United States. The population was 131 at the 2000 census.A city with 131 inhabitants! That made me laugh. Even St David's, the UK's smallest city, has a population of 1,800 (ish).But then I dug around on Wikipedia a little more and discovered this: "In Oregon, Kansas, Kentucky, North Dakota, Minnesota, and Iowa, all incorporated municipalities are cities."So that explains it.
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The company behind the adhesive 'No More Nails', UniBond, also makes a foam filler called 'No More Big Gaps'. What a great name.However while 'No More Nails' is a substitute for nails (in certain circumstances), 'No More Big Gaps' is not a substitute for big gaps.Looking at it another way, 'No More Big Gaps' eliminates big gaps, but 'No More Nails' does not eliminate nails. It only eliminates the need for nails.
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It looks like the Eastenders crew has been having some fun with language.The cafe in the BBC soap opera is owned by a character called Ian Beale. And instead of the traditional BLT, Ian's cafe offers a 'Beale-L-T'.I've even managed to get a screengrab from the BBC's iPlayer as evidence:The Beale-L-T seems to include a burger, but I can't quite read that first word in brackets. Anyone?
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According to Metro, a paper not renowned for its understatement, this portrait of Gordon Brown's wife Sarah "would struggle to make it on to the fridge door if it was painted by a three-year old".I'm fairly confident that any three-year-old producing art like this would be acclaimed a genius.(The portrait is taken from Carla Bruni's website, and was not created by a toddler.)
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