livingbrands

10 things we didn't know before the 51st week of 2007

1. Humour comes from testosterone.
2. Wii players use only 2% more energy than players of regular computer games.
3. There were 1,580 cosmetic treatments in the UK on average last year.
4. Blood alcohol concentration does not decrease when you eat as well as drink.
5. Reading in dim light does not harm your eyesight.
6. Only 10% of a horse's lifetime winnings can be attributed to its bloodline.
7. There are 17 surviving versions of the Magna Carta - or 17 Magnae Cartae.
8. The whale is descended from a raccoon-sized land-based mammal called the Indonyus.
9. Only one in a hundred tourists visiting the UK stay for longer than three months.
10. Nick Clegg, the Lib Dems' new leader, once took a road trip across the US with his friend Louis Theroux.

(Source: BBC)

Merry Christmas Everybody

(OpenThreads)

I'm off now. Back after new year. So I hope you all have a great Christmas, whatever you may be doing, and I'll see you in 08.

Unless the mood takes me to blog before then.

A blogging hibernation

(kHatti~dEam)

For the last month or so, blogging has definitely taken a back seat to paid employment...as it probably should!

To begin with, I went through a few weeks of panic - getting stressed about not posting; not keeping up with my blog reading. Then, a moment of epiphany, much as when (some years ago) I decided life was too short to spend it playing (or is that addicted to?) computer games.

I actually started to find it rather nice not to be blogging. And casting no aspersions on my fellow bloggers, it became quite liberating to click the 'mark all read' button on Bloglines - 100s of posts gone in an instant, never to be seen again. But, yes, life does go on; the world doesn't stop.

And work remains busy.

But I'm not worrying about blogging....for the moment, at least.

I'll see how things feel in the year.

So don't go away...just in case.

10 things we didn't know before the 50th week of 2007

1. Renowned atheist Professor Richard Dawkins likes singing Christmas carols.
2. The White House grounds are a National Park.
3. The Australian town of Eucla has its own time zone.
4. Pentonville prison, when built in 1842, had toilets in all the cells. They were later taken out.
5. Church of England vicars don't have to wear a collar if there's a "justifiable cause".
6. Ike Turner made what's widely considered to be the first rock 'n' roll record - Rocket 88 - in 1951.
7. Iago in Othello is the third longest part in all of Shakespeare's plays.
8. The strength of wine has increased from 11.5% alcohol by volume (ABV) to 13.5% ABV in recent years.
9. Police were banned from striking in 1919, after walk-outs that year by officers in London and Liverpool.
10. Anyone convicted of a criminal offence is bound to pay a £15 "victims' surcharge".

(Source: BBC)

10 things we didn't know before the 49th week of 2007

1. To be declared dead there is no time limit - the seven-year rule only applies in the High Court on the settlement of a disputed estate.
2. No Briton has been extradited from Panama since an extradition treaty was signed 100 years ago.
3. JE55USS - and other combinations of letters and numbers with strong religious connotations - cannot be used for personalised number plates. Rude words are also banned.
4. There are fewer than 50 wild animals performing in UK-owned circuses.
5. Two-thirds of Ricky Hatton's calorie intake when training for a big fight - and trying to lose excess weight he piles on between bouts - is from meal replacement supplements.
6. India's "hugging saint" has dispensed 26 million cuddles - her helpers count each off with a clicker.
7. Books used to be bound in human skin.
8. Santa Claus, for Dutch and Belgian children, lives in Spain and travels north by steam ship.
9. One in four children don't count their father as immediate family.
10. Tango routes are longer routes flown by some airlines to by-pass the expense of flying through several air traffic zones

(Source: BBC)

10 things we didn't know before the 48th week of 2007

1. Eddie Irvine is Britain's wealthiest sports star – beating the Beckhams into second place by £30m.
2. Sleeping on the job is tolerated in Japanese work culture, as long as you remain upright and obey certain other rules. It's called inemuri.
3. Voltaire did not say "I disapprove of your views, but would fight to the death for your right to express them". It's a paraphrasing from a 1906 biography.
4. William Blake was not a fan of his poem in the preface to Milton, which became the words to the hymn Jerusalem. He removed it from later editions of the work.
5. The number of weather-related disasters has quadrupled over the past 20 years, the aid agency Oxfam says.
6. The first telephone directory, dating from 1880 and reissued this week online, had 248 names and no numbers. Callers were expected to call the operator and say the name of the person they wanted to talk to.
7. MI6 calls its spies “operational officers”.
8. The Romans had roadmaps.
9. Pigeon racing is not regarded as a sport while baton twirling is, for taxation purposes, by HM Revenue and Customs, on the advice of the UK's Sports Councils and UK Sport.
10. By the time they are four, children from poor families are likely to have heard 13 million words. For children from better off families, a figure of 45 million is typical.

(Source: BBC)