Sinister nursery rhymes

Did you know that the nursery rhyme "Georgie Porgie pudding and pie" refers to a notorious case of wanton sexual indiscretions and harassment in the 17th Century? Or how about "Mary Mary quite contrary" being all about the torture of Protestants in Queen Mary's bloody reign?

These are from another cracked.com list: The Disturbing Origins of 5 Common Nursery Rhymes.

To me, these explanations seem rather contrived, and I wonder how much the words have been fitted to the history in retrospect.

Or maybe future generations of children will be singing nursery rhymes all about the death of Diana, and the scandal of the valet and the "senior royal"

Photo by Flickr user Jacob Whittaker
Licensed under Creative Commons by-nc-sa 2.0

Mostly female

Apparently, according to the BBC's sex I.D. quiz, my brain is mostly female.

I was actually surprised to see that I was slightly above average in spacial awareness, and that my memory for objects was good. These are both things that I know I'm not good at. But then that's "above average" compared to people idly playing online of course.

My verbal fluidity was below average though, and I didn't do well at judging emotions from photos of eyes.

It's an interesting test though, well worth a look.

A lifetime lost

Here's a sad story. Paul Mawhinney has the world's largest music collection, more than 3 million records and 300,000 CDs. But all that takes a lot of looking after, and it's not something he can do for much longer.

You would think a collection like that would be in high demand. But sadly there are no buyers. Of course, it's the maintenance that's going to be a problem, not the price. But even so, it's so sad to see that no one can give this unique resource a home.

The Archive from Sean Dunne on Vimeo.

Anyone out there with a few million and a love of music?

Source: defgrip.net
Credit: Avatar

Where does the day go?

Time. I need more of it.

Facial art

This has got to be the best beard I've even seen.

© andybarker2008

This is Willi Chevalier, the winner of the "Partial Beard Freestyle" section of the 2007 World Beard & Moustache Championships

There are some great entries for this, although I'm not quite sure what is going on with the winner of the "Full Beard Freestyle" section... is that a bridge?

This is a site I'm keeping in my bookmarks. I'm fascinated to see what they come up with next year!

Credit: ApeOnThursdays on #uncyclopedia
Image: Andy Barker. Used with permission.

Spam, Spam, Spam

Part of my job at Wikia is helping to keep the wikis free of spam. Of course, this is a never-ending task. And as soon as something new is developed to help, the spammers find ways around it.

I knew that spammers used bots, but I didn't really have a clear idea of how this was done. Or, for that matter, how effectively.

So this demonstration of a spam-bot from pandasecurity was fascinating. The bot does so much, even coping with verification emails.

Looks like it's the anti-spammers move in the never-ending chess game.

Image by Flickr user Grumbler %-|
Licensed under Creative Commons by-nc-sa 2.0

Pointless harmony

Sometimes, one just has to ask... "why?"

Of course, the answer is always "why not?"