Archive for the ‘Trivia’ Category
Thursday, May 8th, 2008
When I'm talking with my students about their news diet, at least some - though not as many as you might think - will mention the Daily Show or similar satirical content. I've repeatedly commented that my sense is that the Daily Show doesn't inform viewers about what's happening in ...
Posted in Corporate media, International Affairs, Society and culture, Trivia | No Comments »
Monday, October 29th, 2007
So, a variant on the old 'man bites dog' story, with the dog as the main actor. Courtesy of the BBC.
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Wednesday, January 3rd, 2007
There's a 'standard' grammatical error, whereby when a person is talking about doing something with another person they say "My brother and me went to the shops" or similar. To avoid this, generations of teachers have stressed the importance of saying "my brother and I went..." instead.
That's not my peeve. ...
Posted in Trivia | Comments Off on Grammar peeves
Sunday, May 7th, 2006
Seemingly a deckchair from the Titanic is being auctioned off today. It sounds like the setup to a joke of some sort....
Posted in Trivia | Comments Off on Rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic
Monday, April 10th, 2006
From the news of the strange department, Martin Sheen is to become an undergrad at my Alma Mater in Galway.
Posted in Trivia | Comments Off on Will he attend West Wing viewing parties?
Friday, February 24th, 2006
I've been a fan of Flann O'Brien since I read The Third Policeman at 15, followed shortly afterwards by At Swim Two Birds. It's heartening, if somewhat perplexing, to learn that sales in the United States have skyrocketed since the book was featured - very briefly - in a recent ...
Posted in Trivia | Comments Off on Is it about a bicycle?
Monday, February 13th, 2006
NBC plans to launch a 'Eurovision-style' contest, with the winner gaining a recording contract. Funny thing is, the Eurovision song contest is actually won by a songwriter, not by a performer. So the '50 states, 50 entrants' thing is kind of like the Eurovision, but the concentration on performers rather ...
Posted in Trivia | Comments Off on NBC to launch Eurovision not-so-clone
Thursday, January 12th, 2006
The Freakonomics blog has had a number of posts about Deal or No Deal, a television show that had passed me by until I came back to Ireland for Christmas. I've now seen parts of several episodes of the British version, which I'm guessing is fairly close to the U.S. ...
Posted in Trivia | Comments Off on Risk aversion on television
Saturday, August 6th, 2005
Sometimes it's the vaguely off-kilter stories that get you. There's just something about a story that begins: A Baptist pastor who ministered in Bandon in west Cork has been charged with holding up his local bank.
Posted in Trivia | Comments Off on Say, what?
Monday, June 20th, 2005
A friend 'tagged' me with a book meme - the idea being that I post my answers to some questions, so here goes:
Number of Books
Here in Urbana I've got around 460 books (and 40-something on loan from libraries). Back in Ireland I'm not sure how many I have - probably ...
Posted in Trivia | Comments Off on Book-meme time