CNN caught using Onion headlines!

Official: Al Qaeda hasn't gotten far in getting nuclear weapons
04/13/10 04:02 AM, EDT
The president's top counterterrorism adviser says there is indisputable evidence that dozens of terrorist groups have sought weapons of mass destruction. But a U.S. intelligence official who is not authorized to speak for attribution said although al Qaeda clearly wants a nuclear weapons capability, it hasn't gotten very far.

Small talk

Me: I don't drink white wine.
KR: You're sitting in front of a painting writing a classical music review.

Copyright (for Mother)

Contra my own literary blunders, Wendy Cope's views on copyright are actually a matter of record. Oops.

Intriguing copy, just in

(CNN) -- Outside court a few blacks watched nervously, one of them telling CNN they are scared.

Outside court a few blacks watched nervously, one of them telling CNN they are scared.

Outside court a few blacks watched nervously, one of them telling CNN they are scared.

Outside court a few blacks in South Africa watched nervously, one of them telling CNN they are scared.

Video: The promise of black gold

Outside court a few blacks watched nervously, one of them telling CNN they are scared.

Outside court a few blacks watched nervously, one of them telling CNN they are scared.

Anita Davis contributed to this report.

--
Sent out at 6pm, Sri Lankan time: http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/04/06/test/index.html

Found on the internet today

Got a question about Smyth?
Get your answer with Help.com
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Carl (F.) Orff (in context)

"si puer cum puellula... then her father will come after him. So to speak."

Best of Bowra

"I expect to pass through this world but once and therefore if there is anybody I want to kick in the crotch I had better kick them in the crotch now, for I do not expect to pass this way again."

- Maurice Bowra, Professor of Poetry, University of Oxford

Articles of faith (= you can't make it up)

Vienna Boys' Choir caught up in sex abuse scandals

by Roger Boyes

Amnesiac Texts - IX

Dom: Our newspapers are beyond a joke. Jermaine Defoe has a column. We don't.

Dictionary.com - bizarre stats

Common Misspellings of 'dictionary'*
* in order of decreasing regularity/idiocy, apparently.

dictionar
dict
dic
dictonary
diction
dictionnary
dictionery
dictinary
dicionary
dicitionary

I'm sorry, but I feel I have to ask: who's looking up 'dictionary'? And when someone types in 'diction', how do They know it's a typo?

InDefinition - 14

ohmigod, n. unit of measurement for adolescent enthusiasm (rare)

Leather Fair Draws International Community

The three-day long All African Leather Fair (AALF), organised by the Ethiopian Leather Industries Association (ELIF), ended on a note of satisfaction.

- Ethiopian News, February 2010

My new photoblog

is here.

amnesiacsrearview.blogspot.com

The wise man asks many questions

... as I'd tell my class if the buggers'd put their hands down for just a second.

Rationalisation

"The BBC has stated that it plans to do fewer things better"

- BBC announcement, BBC news.

Here's hoping...

The older and crankier he got, the more convinced he was that in the end all writers get pretty much what’s coming to them: the destructive praise and flattery, the killing attention and appreciation.

(New Yorker)

From the horse's face

"It’s a funny thing about life that, when you put it in a novel, it’s dead."

- Martin Amis, in Prospect

Indefinition - 13

slowlights, n. Real-time test-match footage, as shown on Day 5, to fill broadcast schedule in light of humiliating defeat.

Boswell vs Johnson - LIVE!

ASH: Diary idea a cracker. My biographer (i.e. I) will be so gutted when I reach 70 and have never got round to it.

Dom: You'll have to busy yourself editing mine... X

ASH: You are a total Johnson x

Slanket

(Thanks to RL)

From Cairo

Pretty sure that, while I'm trying to finish my book over some lunch, there is a woman in a burkha breast-feeding a baby.

- JRHS, brother and A-rabist

The death of humour

Dear all,

It pains me to admit that I have just deleted an Amnesiac post(-it), at the request of a lawyer.

The lawyer in question (you may or may not recall) had, last April 1st, executed a superb prank on his colleagues, prompting an increasingly absurd correspondence between him and several office juniors about a non-existent all-expenses trip to the Caribbean and the young French counterpart they might have to share a room with.

Alas, he writes to tell me that killjoy types have given him shit about it, so would I take it down? Since I didn't get the FWD'd e-mails from him in the first place, this seemed fair. The only thing worse than seeing this splendid joke deleted would be seeing the joker fired.

Grimly,

A

Incoming!

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Booty Poppppppp

(Thanks to RL)

Pour mon camarade

How did they command such deference - English teachers? Compared to the men who taught physics or biology, what did they really know of the world? It seemed to me, and not only to me, that they knew exactly what was most worth knowing. Unlike our math and science teachers, who modestly stuck to their subjects, they tended to be polymaths. Adept as they were at dissection, they would never leave a poem or a novel strewn about in pieces like some butchered frog reeking of formaldehyde. They'd stitch it back together with history and psychology, philosophy, religion, and even, on occasion, science. Without pandering to your presumed desire to identify with the hero of a story, they made you feel that what mattered to the writer had consequence for you, too.

- Tobias Wolff, Old School

Apocalypse Acoupleofweeksago

Reviewing The Indian Core jazz gig at Barefoot, Colombo.