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Archive - Apr 2008

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April 28th

"Free Tibet" flags made in...

Two people holding colorful flag

You guessed it: China.

From the BBC via FARK:

'Free Tibet' flags made in China

Police in southern China have discovered a factory manufacturing Free Tibet flags, media reports say.

The factory in Guangdong had been completing overseas orders for the flag of the Tibetan government-in-exile.

Workers said they thought they were just making colourful flags and did not realise their meaning.

But then some of them saw TV images of protesters holding the emblem and they alerted the authorities, according to Hong Kong's Ming Pao newspaper....

More bad automated recommendations

I read the above-pictured article on the Independent website about the Austrian family in which the father imprisoned his daughter in a secret cellar and fathered seven children by her, three of whom were also imprisoned and had never been outside.

I clicked on the link "Interesting? Click here to explore further" and got links to three articles, including:

From that article:

Sam Dunn goes underground to look at the costs, benefits and pitfalls of building a new living area below stairs...

"I'm sure it will add value but we'd always thought about how we needed an extra room for our children to use."

See also earlier story on bad computer-generated recommendations.

April 26th

Freudian slips

From Martha Barnette's blog, the London Guardian ran a correction (Feb. 6, 2008):

Whether the romance of the French president and Carla Bruni was very pubic only they can say. We meant to say it was very public (Sarkozy marries royally with Versailles wedding night, page 15, February 4).

It reminds me of the time a student in a math class at my high school referred to "circumcising" a circle (instead of "circumscribing").

If you like language, I recommend Martha Barnette and Grant Barrett's radio show, A Way With Words, available as a free podcast.