maths matters

"el pollo, si 100% pollo, dos veces pollo"
It doesn't add up

Well, maths matters to me, which is why it bothered me when I saw this advert in Madrid.

The caption echoes a Spanish refrán, though I’m not sure which is the original version. I’ve found both “Lo bueno, si breve, dos veces bueno” (attributed to Baltasar Gracián), and “Lo bueno, si barato, dos veces bueno”.

Both are valid points, but in the Burger King ad, the sums don’t add up: Chicken, if it’s 100% chicken, is not twice chicken.

Gracián’s phrase is best translated as “Less is more”, and is excellent advice for writers. A more literal translation would be, “If it’s good, and it’s short, it’s doubly good.”

The quote is often followed up with something to the effect that “lo malo, si breve, no tan malo.” – “if it’s bad, and it’s short, it’s not so bad.”

Either way, I’d better stop now.

subtitles and subtexts

There’s been plenty of talk about the latest Sherlock Holmes movie starring Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law. Downey himself caused some of the controversy with his comments on The Letterman Show in December. (Currently on YouTube: part 1 and part 2.)

The discussion (half way through part 2) touched on the relationship between Holmes and Watson. After a brief bantering exchange, Downey says: “Why don’t we observe the clip and let the audience decide if he just happens to be a very butch homosexual. Which there are many. And I’m proud to know certain of them.”
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Westminster sunset

St Paul's cathedral
Sneak view from the rear

As a follow up to the pictures of pigs post, another story from the BBC:

BBC News photographer Jeff Overs was stopped and questioned for taking photographs in Westminster.

(I took the photo to the right on a trip to London earlier this year. Nobody tried to stop me, although, with hindsight, my choice of perspective of the monument seems far more suspect than the usual tourist might choose.)
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picture a fact

Don't confuse the narrator wordle
'Wordle' word cloud of last five blog posts

There was an interesting article on the BBC yesterday, about “information visualisation”, written by Davd McCandless, the guy behind the Information is Beautiful website.

The article discusses how information can often be shown more easily by pictures than by text, and includes a number of different types of graphic to demonstrate the point.
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“back to common sense”

bbc article: domestic violence
From the BBC news website yesterday:

Every school pupil in England is to be taught that domestic violence against women and girls is unacceptable, as part of a new government strategy.

Which is all very well – and I’m glad they got that comma right – but what about domestic violence against men and boys? And what about violence in general?
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