Bonne nuit!

Bonjour!

Cartoon of the day

Bad joke of the day

Paddy and Mick were walking along a street in London.

Paddy looked in one of the shop windows and saw a sign which caught his eye. It said, "Suits £15 each, Shirts £3.50 each, Trousers £4.50 per pair."

Paddy said to his pal, "Mick, look at those prices! We could buy a whole lot of those and when we get back to Ireland we could make a fortune. Now when we go in, stay quiet ok? Let me do all da talking 'cause if they hear our accents, they might think we're thickos from Ireland and try to screw us. I'll put on me best English accent."

"Roight y'are Paddy, I'll keep me mouth shut, so I will. You do all da business," said Mick.

They went in and Paddy said in a posh voice, "Hello my good man, I'll take 50 suits at £15 each, 100 shirts at £3 each and 50 pairs of trousers at £4.50 each. And oy'll back up me truck to load 'em on, so I will."

The owner of the shop said, "You're from Ireland, aren't you?"

"Well yes," said a surprised Paddy. "What gave it away?"

The owner replied, "This is a dry cleaners."

Dangerous man of the day

Do you think he was a Movember man?

Great cricketing nations of our time

My friend was very excited when her son's (English) school's cricket coach asked her to bring in his Belgian passport. The Belgian selectors were arriving! He was thrilled to be invited to play for one of their youth teams and went off in the summer to take part in their tournament. Other members of the team included three Afghan refugees, four Pakistanis, an Indian and a half-French, half-Scottish boy who'd been born in Belgium. The tournament was against Germany, France and Switzerland.
The Belgian-Afghans were exuberant players, trying to hit as many sixes as possible and being caught out in their enthusiasm. In every match, my friend's son opened the batting and in every match he was the last man standing. His steadfastness paid off: they won the tournament!

Late post

What do you think about the relaxation of the one child policy in China? Should we stock up on 2014 vintages?

1729

Why is that interesting?

Illusion of the day

The German psychologist, Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850-1909) discovered that two circles of identical size will appear to be different sizes if one is surrounded larger circles and the other is surrounded by smaller circles.

Pitfalls of the day

Recipe of the day

Fagiano Parmigiano is a great way to cook a pheasant breast:

Score the underside of the breast with a knife and season it with black pepper.

Coat it with a generous amount of grated Parmesan and chopped sage leaves.

Place it on a chopping board and cover the top of the meat with Parma ham.

Cover the whole board with cling film and beat the breast with a rolling pin until it's 1cm thick.

Drizzle some olive oil over the Parma ham and fry it, ham side down, for 2-3 minutes.

Then drizzle some oil on the other side, flip it and fry for another 2-3 minutes.

Limerick of the day

There was an Old Man on whose nose

Most birds of the air could repose;

But they all flew away

At the closing of day,

Which relieved that Old Man and his nose.

Wasteland of the day

Thought for the day

The tail wags the dog

Giorgio Vallortigara, a neuroscientist at the University of Trento, has come to the conclusion that happy dogs wag their tails more vigorously to the right whilst anxious ones wag to the left and that other dogs appear to respond to that. Dogs in his tests were happy when they saw food or their owners and stressed when they saw aggressive looking dogs. He then fitted 43 dogs with heart monitors and showed them films of dogs with tails wagging one way or the other. When they saw the left-tailers, the observing dogs' heart rate increased, they looked away and lifted their paws.
He also concludes that left-brain activation causes the tail to wag to the right and right-brain activation drives the tail to the left. This leads him to suggest that if you want a good response from a dog, you should approach it from its left-hand side.
What do my doggy readers think?