Archive for the ‘Silly’ Category
Radio 4 Mash-Up
Sometime last year, I was on the phone to a writer friend of mine. I’d caught her parked up at some anonymous soul-sapping service station, munching her lunch and listening to a CD. Mid-chat, my friend changed her CD. Now, at this point, you could be thinking one of two things:
1. Either I am so interminably dull, that I wouldn’t notice when I’ve bored someone so much that they’ve listened to an entire CD while I’ve been rambling on or,
2. I’ve just proved (as if proof were needed) that age-old adage that women can eat, talk, listen, write, apply make-up, prove the existence of the Higgs boson and change CDs, all at the same time.
Pay Attention!
So the government is introducing a new test for six year olds. To check their ability to use phonics, kids are going to be tested to see if they 
recognise made-up words like ‘koob’ or ‘zort’. I don’t know whether this is a good thing. I’m not a literacy expert. Six year olds sitting exams does whiff slightly of post-communist Asian education systems, but on the face of it, it’ll definitely check whether they get the whole phonics thing or not. It’s the classic test to see if you’re paying attention; the insertion of a red herring or deliberate mistake.
It reminded me of Gamestation and their little April Fool’s joke last year. Gamestation changed their online terms and conditions to state that they had the right to claim your soul:
How To Spell Spam.
An interesting piece popped up on Yahoo News last week; an account about a council tax scam where fraudsters contact you to say you’re due a financial reward as a thank you for paying your bill by direct debit.
Now I don’t know about you, but the concept of my local council financially rewarding me for paying tax would be enough to make me click ‘SPAM’ faster than you can say ’seriously unlikely state incentive’. However, clearly enough people were falling for this to warrant its broadcast, albeit hidden within the confused jumble that is Yahoo’s landing page. So I read the whole thing and there – towards the end – was a paragraph about spelling.