A strange story from the BBC today, with the headline Peru arrests ‘human fat killers’. According to the report,
Four people have been arrested in Peru on suspicion of killing dozens of people in order to sell their fat and tissue for cosmetic uses in Europe.
I wonder what use the fat is put to. Particularly as, according to the Health First Europe website: “Europe has the highest number of overweight and obese people in the world.”
Continue reading “the fat of the land”
Esperanza Aguirre, the presidenta of the comunidad de Madrid who described herself as “el verso suelto dentro del poema” has come up with another quotable phrase: “Yo no hablo cuando llevo zapatos planos.” – “I won’t make a statement when I’m wearing flat shoes.”
Most women are familiar with the concept of getting dressed and putting our make-up on before making an important phone call, and I guess this is much the same thing. The problem is the psychological reasoning behind it.
Continue reading “tall tales”
Or, perhaps, a question of numbers.
A headline in today’s El Mundo says that 4,158 million euros has been lost in the last ten years due to political corruption. Except, it being Spanish, it doesn’t say it quite like that:
The Spanish use “million” in the plural after a number, giving phrases like seis millones rather than “six million”. They also use a full stop as the thousands separator and a comma where we use a decimal point.
Continue reading “a number of questions”
This headline has caught my attention:
Whether it was in any way connected with Global Handwashing Day, which fell a few days ago, I don’t know.
It was of course the use of the verb “ring” that caught my eye. I’m pretty sure that even in American English that should be “wring”.
Actually, there was far more to set me thinking in the article, which started off:
Continue reading “it rings a bell”
I don’t want to get involved with the rights and wrongs of the original 1977 Polanski case, nor even with the current extradition issue, but there is something disturbing about this juxtaposition of headlines from Reuters yesterday:
I wonder what the Poles would have done to him if he’d travelled there.
(I find the ‘video’ tab adds another slightly disturbing twist to the headlines, but maybe that’s just me.)
don't confuse the narrator 