Don’t feed him after midnight!
Elwood, a two-year-old Chinese Crested and Chihuahua mix who looks more like a Gremlin, has been crowned the world’s ugliest dog.
Judges were unanimous decision in their decision.
It was the New Jersey mutt’s second year competing for the title at the Marin-Sonoma County Fair in California (he came second last year).
All hail King Elwood!
Sometimes an expression can make a picture. This is true for both humans and cats. For example:
“If I ignore him, maybe he’ll go away.”
For more cat shenanigans wander over to stuffonmycat.com.
Has the world gone mad?
From AP:
An attempt to revive famous TV adverts from the 1950s that encouraged people to “Go To Work On An Egg” have been blocked by regulators on health grounds.
The British Egg Information Service (BEIS) had wanted to bring back the adverts featuring comedian Tony Hancock to mark the 50th anniversary of the British Lion mark.
But the Broadcasting Advertising Clearance Centre (BACC) said the famous commercials could not be repeated because eating eggs every day went against the policy of encouraging people to eat a varied diet.
“The concept of eating eggs every day for breakfast goes against what is now the generally accepted advice of a varied diet and we therefore could not approve the ads for broadcast,” a BACC spokesman told the BBC.
The BEIS had said it would put in an additional line saying eggs should be eaten as part of a balanced diet but this suggestion was rejected.
Author Fay Weldon, who headed the team of eggheads that came up with the slogan in 1957, criticised the decision.
“When you think of what can be run and what is run, like low cost airlines and cars … cars kill and eggs aren’t actually likely to do so, it is absurd,” she told BBC radio.
Anyone who wants to see the adverts can go to the BEIS Web site: http://www.gotoworkonanegg.co.uk/watch_the_egg_adverts.html
Officialdom will be the death of us, not eating eggs.
ABC have an interesting piece up on how Americans are being eclipsed by the Dutch in the height stakes.
The average Dutch man is six-foot-one, while the average US male is five-foot-ten. The ABC report says America has the shortest population in the industrialised world, but then points out that the average height for a Japanese man is five-foot-seven.
What the story doesn’t make clear is that Americans are shrinking while the Japanese are getting taller.
The above link is worth following if only for the photo: Paul van Sprundel standing next to a life-size model of (five-foot-seven) Vincent van Gogh, who barely comes up to the man’s shoulders.
To illustrate the disparity between the nations, ABC sent a six-foot-three reporter, Jim Sciutto, to Amsterdam. There he was left looking up at the likes of van Sprundel, who is six-eleven (watch Sciutto’s story here).
However, I’m not convinced by some of the facts he cites. The study that Americans are coming up short is reputable: it was researched by teams at the University of Munich and Princeton University.
Sciutto says: “Historians have found height to be about the best single indicator of a nation’s success, reflecting not just wealth but overall health and well-being.”
That’s fine. It’s backed up by quotes from Professor George Maat of Holland’s Leiden University, who has been researching this kind of thing for years.
“Health, nutrition, living conditions, genetics — everything at the end goes down to one thing that represents all of that, and that is stature,” he said. “And I think that is the easiest parameter to use to follow the conditions people are living in.”
Fair enough. And the health link has been mentioned before; I have read of studies showing that the population of northern China is getting taller because of a higher meat content in the region’s diet.
But then Sciutto says: “And so, at the height of the Roman Empire, the Romans were the tallest in the world.”
Um, no. The Romans were smaller than members of various Celtic and Germanic tribes — one study claims they were as much as 4cm shorter. The same study points out that the average height did not increase while the Empire lasted but, paradoxically if going by Sciutto’s claim, did after the Empire’s demise in Western Europe.
Even the Egyptians in their heyday were only a whisper above five feet.
Have I sufficiently sucked the fun out of this story?
It’s as if someone peered inside my mind!
Strange Maps is fast becoming one of my favourite blogs, largely because of my love of the unusual.
Check out the most recent post, a map of the US where each state is named for countries with a similar Gross Domestic Product.
Ireland equates with Nevada and is 21st in the list with a GDP of $203bn (E152bn).