Play With Words

前首相 John Prescott 一直以自己是 working class 出身而自豪，同样一直认为英国的 class system 依然顽固地存在着。他为BBC拍摄的2小时长的纪录片 The Class System And Me 就是他到处找人辩论 class system。其中一段他和17岁的少女 Josie Hall 和她的朋友对话。Josie Hall 住在council house，中学因打老师被开除，没有工作，但是能说会道，颇有思想。他们谈到 class system:

John Prescott: What class are you then?

Josie Hall: I’m middle class.

John Prescott: You are middle class?

Josie Hall: Yeah. I ain’t got lots of money. I’m not poor.

John Prescott: As far as I see, I will say you are working class, but you say you are middle class.

Jose Hall: But I don’t work.

这其实是一部蛮有趣的纪录片。Independent 上有一篇详细的评论。

Marc Abrahams 是双月刊《不可思议的研究》(Annals of Improbable Research)主编和 “搞笑诺贝尔奖”Ig Nobel Prize组织者。他为《卫报》写的专栏就叫”不可思议的研究”(Improbable Research)。今天的专栏介绍了三位英国巴斯大学的研究者对啄木鸟身体结构的研究。

How Woody the living hammer hit the spot
Improbable research into how to make a better, lighter hammer involved two mechanical engineering students carrying out a post-mortem on a dead woodpecker

* Marc Abrahams
* The Guardian,
* Tuesday November 4 2008

While others tried to build a better computer or teapot or mousetrap, Julian FV Vincent, Mehmet Necip Sahinkaya and W O’Shea of the department of mechanical engineering at the University of Bath tried to build a better hammer. Unlike most previous hammer smiths, they studied woodpeckers. Why? Because to mechanical engineers, when they are in a certain frame of mind, a woodpecker is nature’s finest version of a hammer.

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今天《卫报》邀请了几位美国作家以”大选之后的早晨”为主题写一篇短篇小说。这里是最短的一篇，也是想像最狂野的一篇，作者是 Harry Shearer, 小说 Not Enough Indians 的作者，还是电视剧Simpsons 中 Mr Burns 等角色的配音。有兴趣的可以阅读和翻译所有五篇小说。

Harry Shearer

November 5, 2008, was the best of times and the worst of times for Senator John McCain. Eking out a surprise electoral-college victory in the presidential election he was favoured to lose, McCain was taking a victory lap around his Sedona, Arizona, compound when, complaining of chest pains, he texted his wife Cindy. What turned out to be his final message was: “Sell Budweiser stock.”

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