An unlikely England supporter

How long has Kenny Rogers been an England rugby supporter? And sir, respect for your immaculate beard, but in this day and age it's frowned upon to use the phrase 'French bastards'.

Failure to keep a sense of perspective

'Anton Oliver reckoned the All Blacks dressing room [after the ignominious exit from the Rugby World Cup] had the same stench of death as a World War 1 battle field'

 

- Stuff.co.nz, 8 October 2007

 

[Courtesy of FFA.  Jeez, people - it's only a bloody game!]

Two cheers for the 21st century

The annual Ig Noble prizes for 2007, awarded by the science humour magazine Annals of Improbable Research, have been presented at a
ceremony in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Highlights included: "Chemistry" - Mayu Yamamoto of the International Medical Centre of Japan, for developing a way to extract vanillin, or vanilla fragrance and flavouring, from cow dung. "Linguistics" - Juan Manuel Toro, Josep B. Trobalon and Nuria Sebastian-Galles, of Universitat de Barcelona, for a study showing rats sometimes fail to distinguish between a person speaking Japanese backwards and a person speaking Dutch backwards. "Peace Prize" - The Air Force Wright Laboratory, Dayton, Ohio, for instigating research and development on a chemical weapon, the so-called "gay bomb", that "will make enemy soldiers become sexually irresistible to each other". "Economics" - Kuo Cheng Hsieh, of Taichung, Taiwan, for patenting a device in 2001 that catches bank robbers by dropping a net over them, known as the "net trapping system for capturing a robber
immediately".

 

- Reuters

 

[Courtesy of FFA]