Dear All,
The metric connection is tenuous, but you might be amused by this item
from Michael Quinion's newsletter on word usage in the English
Language called , 'World Wide Words'.
Thirty years ago, to assuage the boredom of the Frankfurt Book Fair,
Bruce Robertson of the Diagram Group invented a contest to choose the
oddest book title of the year. Ever since, it has been run by Horace
Bent of The Bookseller. Some wonderful titles have been featured,
including the first winner, "Proceedings of the Second International
Workshop on Nude Mice", and last year's "If You Want Closure In Your
Relationship, Start With Your Legs". Others of note have been
"Bombproof Your Horse", "Highlights in the History of Concrete", "The
Joy of Sex: Pocket Edition", "The Big Book of Lesbian Horse Stories",
and "Living With Crazy Buttocks". Last autumn the best winner of the
last 30 years was chosen: "Greek Rural Postmen and Their Cancellation
Numbers" with the runners-up "People Who Don't Know They're Dead: How
They Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What to Do About
It" and "How to Avoid Huge Ships".
The shortlist is said to have been particularly difficult to create
this year. It must have been, to exclude the title "Excrement in the
Late Middle Ages", which should have replaced "Techniques for
Corrosion Monitoring", an utterly mundane and sensible title. The
others on the list were "Curbside Consultation of the Colon", "The
Large Sieve and its Applications" (a mathematics treatise), "Baboon
Metaphysics", "Strip and Knit with Style", and "The 2009-2014 World
Outlook for 60-milligram Containers of Fromage Frais" (since the usual
size is 60g, I'm betting that the market is as minuscule as the pots).
The winner was announced on Friday as the result of voting by the
public. By a significant margin it was the last title. It turns out
that it's not a real book, being the product of a patented method of
automatic production of print-on-demand works from databases. It won't
actually exist until a tragic soul desperate to learn about the
subject forks out $795 for a copy. Professor Philip Parker, who
invented the production method that avoids the tedious part of the
publishing business called authorship (and, it seems, the bit that
sanity-checks numbers), has some 200,000 titles on tap, including - or
so Horace Bent swears - marketing advice for toilet brush makers
thinking of emigrating to Kyrgyzstan.
You can find more details about World Wide Words from:
http://www.worldwidewords.org
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin
PO Box 305 Belmont 3216,
Geelong, Australia
Phone: 61 3 5241 2008
Metric system consultant, writer, and speaker, Pat Naughtin, has
helped thousands of people and hundreds of companies upgrade to the
modern metric system smoothly, quickly, and so economically that they
now save thousands each year when buying, processing, or selling for
their businesses. Pat provides services and resources for many
different trades, crafts, and professions for commercial, industrial
and government metrication leaders in Asia, Europe, and in the USA.
Pat's clients include the Australian Government, Google, NASA, NIST,
and the metric associations of Canada, the UK, and the USA. See http://www.metricationmatters.com
for more metrication information, contact Pat at [email protected]
or to get the free 'Metrication matters' newsletter go to: http://www.metricationmatters.com/newsletter
to subscribe.
