Phil Bradley's weblog

Who Is A Failure, liar or idiot?

Danny over at SearchEngineLand has written up what may be a new Googlebomb Bush - Tops For "Who Is A Failure" On Google, though it's an odd one as he describes. Since it's Friday, I thought I'd run through a few other queries, and see what comes out on top, or as the first sensible result.

Who is a liar? - Jesus Christ
Who is a fraud? Mitt Romney
Who is an idiot? Bush
Who is a moron? Bush isn't apparently, he's a cunning sociopath
Who is a cretin? The French Ambassador to Lebanon apparently
Who is an incompetent idiot? Bush again
Who is an incompetent fool? See above. Ya gotta feel sorry for the guy. Maybe.
Who is unethical? Twitter
Who is irresponsible? Obama, according to Clinton

OK, getting bored now, so lets finish with... Who are the REAL 7 Dwarves?
Who is bashful? El Nino
Who is doc? She's the cover girl for medical marijuana
Who is dopey? Dopey is, according to Google's image results. We have a match!
Who is grumpy? An old bookman
Who is happy? Darwin day. (Who knew?)
Who is sleepy? Drivers
Who is sneezy? The Clown party specialist.

So there you have it. Back to work!

Librarian stereotypes

Here's a conundrum about Librarian stereotypes. * (Links to an image of a supposed librarian in sexy librarian pose with sexy librarian clothes on, but it's SFW). What's worse - to be thought of as being nothing more than having a 'sexy librarian' look, or for the reference to be about how librarianship is in the top 10 occupations inaccurately associated with sexiness?  And , come to think of it, why are there no  pictures of sexy hunky male librarians? On second thoughts, don't answer that. **

Other occupations include: tennis players, police, animal trainers, teachers, cowboys.

* It's a Sunday morning, you cannot blame me. I am exempt from being serious on a Sunday morning.
* I had to go and check, didn't I. You knew I would, and I knew that if  I didn't look, you'd have to. Then you'd get into trouble for typing in 'sexy male librarian' into your favourite image search engine. Don't bother. Best you come up with is Giles from Buffy. Which isn't so bad I guess.

Librarian Dress Up!

Librarian Dress Up! Do not blame me, I just find this stuff.

Librarian Dress Up! via kwout

RulesofThumb

I don't usually do too much humour in this weblog, but it's a Sunday, which is my excuse. Take a look at  RulesofThumb. It's got hundreds of different rules of thumb, by which it means a homemade recipe for making a guess. So they're not facts, but a good way of working out ballpark figures. Some examples:

When buying an antique, if a one-drawer stand has more than two pieces of wood on the top, it's a new top.

People are willing to walk for seven minutes to get to a McDonald's. That's why you'll find McDonald's restaurants a 14 minute walk apart in downtown areas.

Generally speaking, if your cat nudges your feet in the morning, it wants to stay inside. If it nudges your face, it wants to go out.

Well, that's me set for the rest of the day!

Really funny 'Nigerian' scam letter

I normally delete these things unread, but this one did end up being opened. It's a slightly different version of the normal scam. I won't bother you with all the boring bits, and I'll jump straight to the oddity:
Your name appeared among the beneficiaries who will receive a part-payment of US$21.5 million and has been approved already for months. You are requested to get back to me for more direction and instruction on how to receive your fund. However, we received an email from one Dr. Robert Walter who told us that he is your next of kin and that you died in a car accident last week. We want to hear from you before we can make the transfer to confirm if you are dead or not.

How fantastic is that! I couldn't resist a reply:
Thank you very much for your email correspondence, and I wish to thank you for taking the time and trouble to check to see if I am dead or not. You hear so many dreadful things in the world do you not, about graverobbing and so on. Most dreadful. And of course people do die on a regular basis so I believe. It is certainly as well to check in advance. However, in this particular instance I should inform you that I have, in actual fact, died. Oddly however, this was not as stated by your contact Dr Walter, because it was not in a car crash last week. A turtle fell on my head dropped by a penguin passing overhead while I was sunbathing in the Antarctic back in June 1973. I suspect that your Dr Walter is being something of a scamp, out for his own ends and you should be careful of him.

I await with interest to see if there is a reply...

An Appraisal of the Utility of a Chocolate Teapot

An Appraisal of the Utility of a Chocolate Teapot. This just amused me. We've all heard the expression "as useful as a chocolate teapot", but in order for this to have any real validity as a comment I suppose that we should know how useful one actually IS. This paper explains all.....

Brian Dettmer: Book Autopsies // Centripetal Notion

Brian Dettmer: Book Autopsies. Not sure what to make of this. While I'm not exactly in favour of books being hacked to bits, this guy really is producing good quality artwork in the process. It's also very clever. And it's better that the book should have a second life than just get dumped or burned I suppose. Possibly you'll find that individual copies get looked at more this way than they did when they were whole! I'm in two minds though - what do you reckon?

Library Celebrations and Events

Library Celebrations and Events. Who'd have thought it?

Amazon perfect partners - Potter and Bond

Amazon perfect partners - Potter and Bond
Originally uploaded by Philipbradley.

I happened to notice this while I was browsing around Amazon. Don't *quite* see just how these two go together, but there you are. However, it does lead to some fun ideas:

'The name is Potter, Harry... Potter.'

Or

'Bond felt the lean hard wand in his pocket, and smiled grimly, relishing the prospect of seeing Hermione later than evening'.

Or

"Do you expect me to cast a spell, Voldemort? No Mr Potter, I expect you to die."

Or

"Yes Bond, it is as you suspected, I'm a member of SMERSH" "You mean... Smert Shpionam, Death to Spies?" "Er, no... School of Magic, Enchantments and Real Spells, Hogwarts."

Too funny. I'm going to have to keep a look out for odd combinations in the future...

Upper Peninsula War fake Wikipedia entry

The Upper Peninsula War - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This is a great example of a fake entry into Wikipedia. It's clearly marked as such, so it's not high on the fake or spoof counter, but it's amusing and could be used to make some really good training points. Thanks Jane - much appreciated!