I’m currently reading Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay (available for free from Project Gutenberg here). I’m about to start the chapter entitled “Influence of Politics and Religion on the Hair and Beard” which is quite possibly the best title of any chapter, ever, but unfortunately it’s got nothing to do with what I’d like to say here.

So far Mackay has covered the ’south sea bubble’, ‘tulipomania’ and various alchemists – he’ll go on to talk about witch mania, haunted houses and the proliferation of duelling. In all of these chapters there is one conspicuous absence – religion. Now Mackay published his book in 1841, some 18 years before Darwin’s Origin of Species (which he apparently held back for about 20 years because he was afraid it would receive a poor reception from what we’d call Creationists). It still annoys me that someone like Mackay, who shows contempt for all the alchemists (even if some of them did discover useful chemical properties) says things like:

“God himself, for his own wise purposes, has more than once undrawn the impenetrable veil which shrouds those awful secrets; and, for purposes just as wise, he has decreed that, except in these instances, ignorance shall be out lot for ever.”

There’s such a massive elephant in the room I keep expecting it to start performing circus tricks.

Okay, so that’s a crap title but it rhymed so I went with it. Remember Compare The Market’s Compare the Meerkat ad? Well, if you needed any proof of its penetration of the national consciousness, it’s caused searches for our furry friends to skyrocket over the last few months:

Competitors confused.com and moneysupermarket haven’t been slow off the mark – they’re bidding on ‘meerkat’ as a search term. Interestingly, comparethemarket.com aren’t:

I find brand bidding pretty interesting so it’s nice to see it’s stretched to bidding on your competitor’s marketing campaigns too. I can also report that all three companies are bidding on ‘confused.com’, all three are bidding on ‘compare the market’ and the only one not bidding on ‘money supermarket’ is comparethemarket.com.

Please click for the full examination:

In Japan, cats are treated as gods and the Japanese have come up with the ‘cat house’ so that our feline friends can dominate us in our own homes. I for one would have this installed in my house…if I owned it. And if I had a cat…

It’s common knowledge that broadcasting is London-centric and having lived there, I got the impression that most Londoners rarely think about anything outside the M25. Sky New have taken things a step further however, by asking Patrick to go on the telly, then cancelling at the last minute because they didn’t realise he lived outside London.

Eh? You’re not even prepared to have someone travel down for a day? Pretty xenophobic, Sky News. I hope you find someone else to fill the spot, maybe from the office next door?

I was looking through my Analytics just now and saw some pretty awesome things I must have written on my blog. After all, Google sent me some visitors for the following keywords:

chrome vs pikachu
paul and barry vs. aids (1992)
mina anwar
rampaging elephant pics
www.sex nap.com
are the chuckle brothers father and son?
which one of the chuckle brothers is dead
uksnow

A frozen Sunday morning in Scarborough…

“Sandra’s love of the Chuckle Brothers led her to get them tattooed on her back in 1996. Director Jan de Bont was furious as several key scenes in “Speed 2: Cruise Control” had to be digitally edited to remove all trace of the UK comedy giants’ faces, and since then Sandra has used body doubles for almost all her scenes, even when clothed.”

A streetlamp:

My car: