My head has put together that 'strange customs of your people' thing that was going around a couple of weeks ago, with the 'new Olympic events' thing, and come up with:

Guaranteed Gold for Team GB in 2012!

with the following suggested Olympic sports:
- Grumbling
- Queuing
- Understatement
- Heroic failure
- Stiff upper lip

Quite a good article on sex education in the UK in today's Guardian G2 - though I am wincing away from looking at any Comment is Free feedback on it.

However, is the parlous state of sex ed really detachable from wider issues of national culture and Brit weirdness about sex? and while I can see that better sex ed might do something to shift this, ( Read more... )

I'm sure you all know the drill by now: if you would like five questions, indicate in comments.

Here are my five from wordweaverlynn:

1. How did you first get involved with computers?When I was at university and people doing arts had to do an obligatory one year 'subsidiary' in a science, I picked computer science on the grounds that unlike most of the others, ( Read more... )

Popped onto the PM's e-petition site to subscribe my name to the No Charges at the British Library petition (British citizens and residents only, alas), and discovered that the fine old national tradition of eccentricity and obsession continues to flourish.

I was initially looking under Leisure and Culture (the BL petition turned out to be under ( Read more... )

Joan Bakewell, appositely, considering my post yesterday, writes that The most ancient places in the land can tell us more about Englishness than any politician, in today's Guardian:
a lot has happened here a very long time ago and has left its mark. The landscape, a product of weather and man, yields at almost every turn a hill fort, an ancient ( Read more... )