Personal Blogs

 Would "Ein sera góður maður" be Faroese "a jolly good fellow"?

WHAT DO YOU CALL a man with a tank of salt water on his head?

Brian!

WHAT DO YOU CALL a man with a painful contusion on his head.

Bruce!

All the kids loved the Safari Park. Except Jake.

He didn’t see the snake.

All the kids enjoyed the aquarium. Except Neil.

He tried to stroke the electric eel.

I'm studying for a very unusual degree: Town and Country planning with Judo. I've reached green belt.

All the kids loved the candle factory. Except Max.

He put his finger in the wax.

Image: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chess_Players_by_James_Northcote_(1746-1831)_-_IMG_7288.JPG

Apparently contactless cards can be cloned, so banks are looking at an extra layer of security.

A new system will involve the customer's card being held on one side of their nose, and the card reader on the other. Sophisticated AI software will then look for the unique pattern of blood vessels that identifies each customer's nose.

Early press releases suggests the new system will be known as PTTN (paying through the nose).

Salt's bad for you. So I had all mine taken out by a brine surgeon.

Then, from the back, a small man said,

"I've never fancied being led",

"And, if I just might make so bold",

"I've never fancied being told".

Security were somewhat vexed

And you can guess what happened next.

* After Harry Graham https

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Graham_(poet)

My friend told me he'd bought a house 10 floors high. But it was just one his of his tall stories.

This unhappy-looking animal

 is a manticore.

It's probably unhappy because it doesn't exist, and never did. Or perhaps because, if it had existed, it might feel miserable about this exotic but unflattering description.

The face of a man, the mouth open to the ears with a treble row of teeth beneath and above; long neck, whose greatness, roughness, body and feet are like a Lyon: of a red colour, his tail like the tail of a Scorpion of the Earth, the end armed with a sting, casting forth sharp pointed quills.

This is taken from Randle Holme, The Academy of Armorie and Blazon, 1688. But manticores were mentioned by ancient writers; such as Aristotle, who had his information in turn from Ctesias. 

Ctesias, writing ca. 400 BCE, spent time at the royal court in Persia, and the name of the beast is from Persian, and means "man eater". 

So Ctesias got this story from the Persian court, and it was still being repeated 2000 years later. A long-lived bit of fake news.

Image: Museum Meermanno, MMW, 10 B 25, Folio 13r. Manticore