Caboose

[via MeFi] Los Angeles Times: Tests, textbooks: Only men bake cookies in these parts : a review of a book about how textbooks and exams are censored for offensive ideas.

I hadn’t realised that questions involving mountains might offend people from areas without any.

This reminds me of the new textbooks that started to come in while I was at school. In the old ones everyone was called Mary or John, all standard British names. The new textbooks seemed to feature only children from ethnic minority groups: Asian, Carribean, Chinese, Irish…

Update: the MeFi comments had this link to an article showing that this kind of censorship is not only an American phenomenon. Stupidity gets everywhere.

[via MeFi]An interesting speech by an interesting woman.

[via MeFi]What type of brain do you have?

This features two tests to work out how good at empathising and systemising you are. I did each test twice, the first time I got an EQ of 19 and SQ of 40, the second time I got 30 and 37.

According to the results page this puts me either well in the (possibly autistic) extreme type S area or on the boundary of it.

Hmm, I know I’m not a hugely sociable person at times but I didn’t think I’m that bad.

[via Aprendizdetodo.com] An article about translating Asterix into English written by one of the translators.

I always thought a lot of the humour in Asterix was there because of the marvellous translation.

The Gazetteer for Scotland and especially its Stirling section are full of interesting information.

Some of the details seem slightly confused, the reference to Torbrex High School is one example (surely they mean Stirling High School?).

I had never thought that the Drip Road might actually lead to a place called Drip.

Update: aargh! I had used “it’s” when I meant “its”.

Don’t Link to Us! lists web sites with bizarre restrictions on their usage that attempt to prevent other sites linking to them.

Many of them seem to think that by just looking at the site you’re accepting their terms and conditions. That would be interesting if applied to other things, pay-per-view advertising billboards being one of the more extreme ideas I’ve thought of.

I discovered today that the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office has a travel advice page for the British Antarctic Territory.

Apparently there is an extremely low risk of terrorism and “There is no evidence of crime or disorder”.

“They can take back the Statue of Liberty as far as I’m concerned.”, after all they don’t want large reminders of all the things they’re enthusiastically giving up in the fight against terrorism, such as personal liberty, justice and free speech.

via Obscure Store

Comments closed, I can’t be bothered with semi-literate people (whatever nationality) using these comments as a forum for attacking each other: get out more!

[via kottke] a U.S. Diplomat’s Letter of Resignation.

I know once you start picking at films you can keep going and the whole thing unravels, but I like this list of things that only happen with Computers in Movies.