How many severed feet does it take to make the British news? Six, apparently.
- BBC News: Foot mystery baffles Mounties
- Telegraph: Sixth foot washes up on Canadian beach
- Guardian: Six feet under
- Times Online: Sixth foot washed ashore in Canadian mystery
Canada's not boring today.
A fourth severed foot has been found in British Columbia (see B.C. severed foot mystery continues). When will this bizarre mystery be solved?
Here's a good description of computer programming, published in today's Guardian:
High-level programming can be like mathematics or music: it brings order and harmony out of chaos. There is a fundamental sense in which everything is clearly right or wrong. A note is either in tune or it is not. A solution is either correct for an equation or it is wrong. A program - well, it fails to work. But eventually, some work right, and when they do there is an extraordinary feeling that the necessary, unarguable structure of the world has been revealed. In this way, programming is more like physics than pure mathematics, because if you apply the right logical or mathematical transformations to your input what comes out is not merely satisfying on its own terms but appears to rule the world as well.
The author Andrew Brown's weblog, Helmintholog, often has interesting posts and is worth adding to your favourite news reader.
Sometimes I despair for humanity. The following story is reproduced from the BBC in full. Apologies for violating their copyright, but it's succinct and simply too good to resist.
Teacake set to cost taxman £3.5m
The UK Treasury is facing a £3.5m bill, because of VAT wrongly imposed on a Marks and Spencer teacake, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has ruled.
Customers paid VAT for 20 years before the authorities accepted the product was a cake, which does not command VAT.
The UK argued that paying back the total sum would "unjustly enrich" M&S as customers had paid the money.
The ECJ ruled that, in principle, VAT had to be repaid in full, but left the final decision to the British courts. That decision will be taken by the House of Lords and HM Revenue and Customs said it was too early to make a comment.
"This is a very complex judgment on which it would be premature to make any comment until the House of Lords has handed down its judgment," Revenue and Customs said in a statement.
Marks and Spencer also gave a cautious response.
"It does look encouraging. However, it is a complex matter and we are reviewing the decision of the ECJ with our advisers," a spokeswoman said.
What hope is there for mankind if it takes us 20 years to determine the difference between a biscuit and a cake? Even now, the language used by the parties involved is stultifying:
"This is a very complex judgment (remember that fundamentally, this is about the difference between a biscuit and a cake) on which it would be premature (it's only been 20 years) to make any comment until the House of Lords (the highest court in the land) has handed down its judgment."
Meanwhile, Marks & Spencer feels it necessary to consult with its advisers. If ever proof were needed that we are the cause of all our problems, this example is it.
Since the decades of indecision must have caused the UK's bakers untold stress, I think the money should be donated to the Bakers' Benevolent Society or perhaps the National Association of Master Bakers Benevolent Fund. How's that for a speedy decision?
I'm currently dropping in and out of Letter from America by Alistair Cooke.
The following passage from The Immigrant Strain, the first essay in the book and dated 6 May 1946, jumped off the page for obvious reasons:
If you feel baffled and alarmed at the prospect of differentiating one American type from another, you can take heart. You have more hope of success than Americans, who shuffle through every stereotype of every foreign culture as confidently as they handle the family's pack of cards. Americans are not particularly good at sensing the real elements of another people's culture. It helps them to approach foreigners with carefree warmth and an animated lack of misgiving. It also makes them, on the whole, poor administrators on foreign soil. They find it almost impossible to believe that poorer peoples, far from the Statue of Liberty, should not want in their heart of hearts to become Americans. If it should happen that America, in its new period of world power, comes to do what every other world power had done: if Americans should have to govern large numbers of foreigners, you must expect that Americans will be well hated before they are admired for themselves.
Apart from the now-dated reference to families shuffling cards badly — families no longer shuffle cards much — Cooke's prophecy seems strikingly accurate today.
