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10 things we didn't know before the 39th week of 2007

1. Deep-voiced men have more children.
2. Rangoon is now called Yangon - a renaming that dates from 1989, when Burma's rulers renamed the country Myanmar.
3. Relocating crocodiles doesn't work - they come back.
4. There is a monastery in every village in Burma.
5. The going rate to emit a tonne of carbon is £11.36 according to the first auction to be held on a regulated exchange.
6. Jack Straw (senior Labour politician) has intervened in alleged crimes four times, apprehending a person on three occasions.
7. On average a UK commuter travels the equivalent of two-and-a-half times around the globe over a full working career.
8. Ants don’t die in a microwave - they find the cooler areas.
9. Tony Blair's first text message said "are" and his second said "This is amazing, you can do words and everything", according to Alastair Campbell.
10. A 23.8lb baby was born in the US in 1879, but it only survived 11 hours.

(Source: BBC)

Chemical umbrellas

Can't say I go in for emo particularly, so My Chemical Romance have rather passed me by (actually, I don't even know if they are emo - yes or no?).

But I do know my comics. And if you check out the (very good) Umbrella Academy (latest title from Dark Horse, home of Hell Boy), you will note that it's been written by one Gerard Way.

Nope, meant nothing to me either. But he is lead singer with MCR apparently.

What I thought was interesting is there's absolutely no cross selling: no bigging up the MCR connection or doing the 'Gerard Way's Umbrella Academy' thing, even though I'm sure it would have had a big impact on sales.

Which I like. Shows integrity and a desire to be creative for it's own sake, rather than just trying your hand at something different because you're famous and fancy the PR.

Anyway, if you like MCR, or if you like comics, check it out as it's well worth a read.

Big Brother makes no difference

Interesting bit of information unearthed by Influx, which suggests that, despite the 10,000 or so CCTV cameras we have in London, 80% of crimes go unsolved.

Ed raises an interesting point about whether BIG IDEAS are sometimes so very BIG and exciting and iconic, that we all just accept them as 'right' and (Emperor's New Clothes-like) forget to actually look to see if they are working or not.

We all know that's how I felt about the Daily Milk ad.

And much as I'm terribly excited and buy the myth, I always have a slight worry that 2012 falls into the same camp.

Or is it just that, from the outside, we can't always see what the real objectives are - e.g. that, sometimes, it's actually the feeling that's important and not the hard numbers.

So with CCTV, (as Ed also alludes to) maybe the real objective is to make people feel safer ('it won't happen to me') rather than to solve the crimes that do happen.

Actually, there's probably no 'maybe' about it on this one - politics being all about presentation and perception after all!

Stop sex trafficking

Following on from gun crime, this is another issue we've been getting heavily involved with as an agency.

Initiated by Sam Roddick, Emma Thompson and Helen Bamber, The Journey is an art & action based campaign to highlight the issue of sex trafficking.

There have been a number of marches/performances over recent weeks (photos here), all culminating in an instillation event running for the next 8 days in Trafalgar Square, demonstrating the 7 stages of one individual's sex trafficking journey (you can see a digital representation here).

It's a pretty harrowing experience (we contributed step 4 - The Bedroom), but it's getting some good PR for the issue.

So get on down there.

(PS honesty requires me to add that I've not had anything to do with this myself - so congrats to everyone involved).

10 things we didn't know before the 38th week of 2007

1. Being born without an ear is called microtia.
2. Zsa Zsa Gabor is related to Paris Hilton.
3. In Iceland, 96% of women go to university.
4. Gordon Brown has broken prime ministerial convention by getting a mobile phone, but it does not take incoming calls.
5. It costs 100 euros to hire one of the prostitutes' windows in Amsterdam for part of the day.
6. About 16,000 hyphens have been dropped from the latest edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary.
7. The Belgian army had to be called in recently to deal with an infestation of moths.
8. Dinosaurs had creches.
9. Conservative haircut' is economists' jargon for a form of loan collateral.
10. Meteorites do not let off dangerous fumes - but on landing can expose rotting organic matter, filling the air with methane, hydrogen sulphide and carbon dioxide.

(Source: BBC)

We can't do everything

Sometimes we just have to remind ourselves that we're not as effective as Dr Juma...

Fighting gun crime (UPDATED)

A little something on the side we're getting up to (click to see bigger)...

UPDATE

Interesting that MCBD have just produced a new anti-gun commercial...

This isn't meant to be a diss at all, as I think this is a really good piece of work. But it does make you think whether sometimes we might have a greater impact on 'issues' if we used the creativity in our industry to come up with our own solutions, rather than just make stuff for others. Because good as this might be, it will probably only ever be comms of one form or another.

Diesel: clever or stupid

Missed these the first time round, so thanks to Olivier for pointing them out again.

What I can't work out is whether they are a clever, ironic statement on the laissez faire attitude most of us have towards the future of our planet. Or whether they are displaying a stupidly laissez faire attitude to the future of our planet.

Or whether that confusion is the whole point. In which case they are probably a little to clever for my simple brain!

10 commandments of Avril Lavigne

Up this month, Q gives us rules for life from pop punk sk8r girl Avril Lavigne...

1. Deal with it (whatever hassles life brings, only you can sort it out);
2. Develop an image (no matter how good the 'product', there are always other good things out there. Which is why you need a 'brand');
3. Don't get mad get even (take negative feelings and put them to positive use);
4. Party hard…but not too hard (live life to the full. But don't lose control, because that's when it all goes wrong);
5. Practise good karma (you get back from the world what you give out to it);
6. Be grateful (look on the positive side of what you have. Because there's always someone worse off than you);
7. Advocate spirituality (like it or not, there's a need for the spiritual, the transcendent, in all of us. So embrace this);
8. Find Mr Right (there is a perfect match for you out there somewhere);
9. Extend yourself (stand still and you stagnate. We all need to stretch if we are to grow);
10. Love yourself (no matter what others think, just make sure you love yourself and you'll be OK)

10 things we didn't know before the 37th week of 2007

1. Poverty costs British people £600 each per year, says the TUC.
2. Israel has active neo-Nazis.
3. Osama Bin Laden is known to fellow jihadists as Abu Abdullah.
4. The Marquess of Blandford's real name is Charles Spencer-Churchill, although he is commonly known as Jamie Blandford.
5. It takes police 25 minutes on average to fill in a stop-and-search form, according to chief inspector of constabulary Sir Ronnie Flanagan.
6. Telly Savalas was recruited to help promote Aberdeen as Europe's oil capital in 1980.
7. A women's football match drew 53,000 spectators to Goodison Park, Liverpool, in 1920, a year before the sport was banned by the Football Association.
8. George Bush once locked Colin Powell out of a meeting for being late.
9. More than one in 10 (12%) of school absences are down to agreed family holidays.
10. Older siblings stunt growth.

(Source: BBC)